DRUTMARO (CRISTIANO DI STAVELOT). – Benedictine exegete, born at the beginning of the 9th century in Aquitaine, died ca. 870, probably at Stavelot. He was educated in the monastery of Corbie, then a flourishing center of learning. Sent to the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmédy (diocese of Liège), which were governed by the same abbot, he honorably held the office of teacher there.
The fruits of his teaching were commentaries on Matthew, Luke, and John (of the latter two only fragments remain), which, printed by Giacomo Winpheling at Strasbourg in 1514 and later by Menardo Maldero at Hagenau in 1530, sparked a lively controversy between Catholics and Protestants over the passage in Matthew concerning the Eucharist, all the more so because Sisto di Siena attested that he had seen at Lyon a manuscript (now lost) in which the disputed text had a perfectly Catholic meaning. Until recent times, Protestants (e.g., Dümmler) regarded D. as a precursor of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, and some Catholics (e.g., Vernet and Geiselmann) admitted that D. indulged in an accentuated symbolism. The judgment to be made today seems quite different, while still regarding as authentic the somewhat problematic Eucharistic text proposed by Lebon in place of that published by Migne (PL 106, 1474–77). D., who was educated at Corbie precisely during the years in which the celebrated Eucharistic controversy between Pascasio Radberto and Ratramno took place, took the side of Ratramno and assimilated his doctrine and phraseology. Now impartial criticism is becoming increasingly favorable to the orthodoxy of Pascasio’s mordant adversary, because the terms spiritualiter, figura, sacramentum, which abound under the pen of Ratramno and D., harmonize, within a complete system, with the truth of the real presence. In any case, D.’s commentary on Matthew is noteworthy for its faithfulness—more unique than rare in those times—to the literal and historical sense as the foundation for further allegorical considerations.
J. Lebon, Notes sur Christian de Stavelot, in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 9 (1908), p. 491 sqq.; F. Baix, Etude sur l'abbaye de Stavelot-Malendé, Paris 1924, passim; cf. also H. Nelis, in Revue d'hist. ecclés., 21 (1923), pp. 558–61 (review of the preceding work); J. Grieselmann, Die Eucharistielehre der Vorscholastik, Paderborn 1926, pp. 133–34; L. M. W. Laistner, A ninth-century commentator on the Gospel according to Matteus, in The Harvard Theol. Review, 20 (1927), pp. 129–49.