Wernerus Ratisbonensis (Wernherus/Bernherus/Wirnherus/Werner von Regensburg, d. after 1290)
Wernerus Ratisbonensis (Wernherus/Bernherus/Wirnherus/Werner von Regensburg, d. after 1290) OM. German friar. Lector of the convent of Regensburg and in 1266 custos of Bavaria. In 1278 he was arbiter in a conflict between the monastery of St. Emmeran and the bishop of Regensburg. After 1290, when he is mentioned as a friar from Regensburg in a document referring to the death of Duke Henry of Bavaria, Werner disappears from view. Werner is mostly known for his concise and well-written Soliloquia ( Liber Soliloquorum ). This work reaches back to Augustine and other authors who compiled comparable Soliloquia and Meditationes (John of Fécamp, Anselm, Hugh of St. Victor etc.). But the work of Werner also contains personal reflections. The existing edition divides the work into 11 chapters (1. An invitation to find and look for God (heavily dependent on Anselm of Canterbury’s prayer ‘Eia nunc homuncio’); 2. The Trinity (heavily dependent on Anselm’s Monologion 39-40, works of Hilary of Poitiers, and Augustine’s De Trinitate ); 3. The Holy Gost; 4. God is everywhere and invisible (referring to the Proslogion and the Confessiones ); 5. The nature of angels (the nine choirs of angels and their repective roles and qualities); 6. The marvels surrounding the creation of the first man (in any case partly based on Bonaventure’s Breviloquium II, 9-11, and providing a rather positive interpretation of Eve’s creation as man’s equal: ‘nec dominam nec ancillam parasti sed sociam.’); 7. The great deeds performed by God before the coming of Christ (some references to the patriarchs, kings, and prophets, but heavy emphasis on Mary, using Anselm’s Oratio ad S. Mariam ); 8. The great deeds of redemption that Christ and his body performed; 9. The wonders of the Eucharist (heavy emphasis on the transsubstaantiation doctrine); 10. The final judgment (strong affirmation of the resurrection doctrine, based on I Cor. 15), and describing the qualities of the resurrected body of the blessed and the ‘corpora mortaliter viva, quae sic moriuntur ut numquam permoriantur’ of the damned); 11. The presence of God in man's memory (based almost completely in on Augustine's last chapter of the Confessions [compare Dante]. Werner ends with the supplication ‘Sit interim in te mihi quies per gratiam, donec intrem in gaudium Domini mei, beatorum participaturus gloriam, ubi es tu Deus cordis mei et pars mea Deus in aeternum. Hoc per te mihi detur, qui in Trinitate perfecta cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto unus Deus vivis in secula seculorum. Amen.’).
Works
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Soliloquia : MS Regensburg cod. 731, ff. 49-62
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MS Munich CLM 13102 (14th cent., from the Prüfening monastery)
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MS Munich CLM 8496 (15th cent.), MS Regensburg Collégiale U.L. Frau (an. 1475, copy by Johannes Weissenbergen). Pez mentiones an additional manuscript that apparently is lost. For an edition, see: Liber Soliloquiorum, ed. B. Pez, Bibliotheca Ascetica Antiquonova, 4 (Regensburg, 1724).
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