Amalarius of Treves

AMALARIUS OF TREVES (AMALARIUS FORTUNATUS): Archbishop of Treves. Little is known of his life, but he is not the same as the liturgiologist Amalarius of Metz, with whom he has been identified. He became archbishop about 809, and is supposed to be the Bishop Amalharius whom Charlemagne commissioned about 811 to consecrate the newly erected church at Hamburg. In the spring of 813 he set out for Constantinople with Abbot Peter of Nonantula, to bring to a conclusion the negotiations for peace between the Frankish and Byzantine courts. The envoys, learning that Michael, to whom they were accredited, had been succeeded by Leo V., remained eighty days in Constantinople, and returned in company with two Byzantine ambassadors, to find Charlemagne’s son Louis on the throne. This is the last known fact in Amalarius’s life. There is no solid foundation for the assumption that he died in 814 or 816. Certain passages in a letter of his to Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis (ed. G. Meier, in Neues Archiv für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, xiii., 1887, 307-323), have led to the supposition that he resigned his see (his successor Hetti was in possession of it in 816) and lived some time longer as head of a monastery. His writings are a short 146 treatise on baptism, formerly ascribed to Alcuin, in answer to a letter of inquiry addressed by Charlemagne to the archbishops of his empire (in MPL, xcix. 887-902), and the Odoporicum or Versus marini, a poem of eighty hexameters, giving an account of his journey to Constantinople (MPL, ci. 1287-88, among the works of Alcuin; ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poetæ lat. ævi Carol., i. 426-428, 1881; cf. Addenda, ii. 694).

(Rudolf Sahre).

Bibliography: Rettberg, KD, i. 425-428; J. Marx, Geschichte des Erzstifts Trier, Trier, 1858-62; Hauck, KD, ii. 192.