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The Following is adapted from: The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. Cross, Livingstone; (OUP, 1983).
SMARAGDUS, (d. after 825), abbot of St-Mihiel. Of Spanish or Aquitaine origin, he became abbot of Castellion (near the source of the tiny R. Marsoupe), and was responsible for transferring the community to St-Mihiel, some 5 miles distant, where the Marsoupe flows into the R. Meuse. He took part in the Council of Aachen in 809 and formulated its conclusions in a letter sent by Charlemagne to Pope Leo III. He wrote a commentary on the grammarian Donatus and a number of theological and ascetical works, incl. the ‘Via Regia ’, on the spiritual formation of a prince, addressed to either Charlemagne or Louis the Pious, and, most importantly, an ‘Expositio’ on the Rule of St Benedict, composed after 817 and connected with the monastic reforms of St Benedict of Aniane.
Works collected in J. P. Migne, PL 102. 15–976. Crit. edns. of his ‘Carmina’ by E. Duemmler in MGH, Poetae, 1 (1881), pp. 605–19; of Expositio in Regulam S. Benedicti by A. Spannagel and P. Engelbert, OSB (Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticum, 8; Siegburg, 1974), and of Liber in partibus Donati by B. Löfstedt and others (CCCM 68; 1986). F. Rädle, Studien zu Smaragd von Saint-Mihiel (Medium Aevum, Philologische Studien, 29; Munich, 1974). O. Eberhardt, Via Media: Der Fürstenspiegel Smaragds von St Mihiel und seine literarische Galtung (Münsterische Mittelalter-Schriften, 28; 1977). J. Leclercq, OSB, ‘Smaragdus’, in P. E. Szarmach (ed.), An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe (Albany, NY [1984]), pp. 37–51.This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 1998
