Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  8 Relics needed to consecrate churches: Ambrose, Ep. XXI, PL. xvi. 1019. Bede, Hist. Eccl., I. 29, p. 104 (‘all things needed …’). Cone. Nicaea, session VII, canon VII, in MC. xiii. 427; cf. Hefele, vol. iii, pp. 781–2. Relics acquired in Rome: Llewellyn, pp. 183–90.

  Byzantine collection: William of Tyre, Hist., XX. 23, p. 985 (Amaury). In general, see Ebersolt. On its dispersal in 1204, Riant (1).

  9 Other collections: Bethel, p. 69 (Reading); Morand, pp. 9, 23, and preuves, pp. 7–9 (Ste. Chapelle). In general, Fichtenau.

  Objects of national pride: S. Runciman, The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and his reign, Cambridge, 1929, pp. 145, 229–30. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, V. 268, p. 425. French monk quoted in Fichtenau, p. 72. Matthew Paris, Chron. Majora, vol. iv, p. 642 (Suffield).

  10 Ferdinand of Carrion: Vita B. Zoyli, IV, ES. x. 495.

  Early relic merchants: Delehaye (8), p. 200. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Francorum, VII. 31. pp. 311–12.

  Deusdona: Einhard, Translatio Marcellini et Petri, I. 3, p. 241; Rudolph, Mirac. Sanctorum in Fuldenses Eccl. Translatorum, II, p. 330.

  Emma: Eadmer, Hist. Novorum, ed. M. Rule, RS., London, 1884, p. 108; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, V. 263, p. 419.

  Effect of sack of Constantinople: Cone. Lateran, canon LXII, in MC. xxii. 1050–1. Riant (1), p. 8 (d’Alluye). Rohault de Fleury, pp. no, 396 (Baldwin).

  11 Einhard: see his Translatio Marcellini et Petri, I. 2–5, pp. 240–2. Relics stolen in teeth: Etheria, Peregr., XXXVII. 2, p. 88 (in 385). Gesta Consulum Andegavorum, p. 91. Mirac. S. Eadmundi (Bod. 240), vol. i, pp. 373–4.

  No property of a relic: see example quoted in Baynes, p. 170.

  Theft of St. Benedict: Adrevald, Hist. Translationis S. Benedicti, in Mirac. S. Benedicti, pp. 1–14. Oldest account (late seventh century?) in Mabillon (ed.), Vet. Anal., pp. 211–12.

  12 Theft of St. Nicholas: Nicephorus, Translatio S. Nicolai in Barum, IV–XL, pp. 170–89, esp. pp. 175, 178–9.

  13 Saint has mind of his own: Mirac. S. Benedicti, I. 15–17, pp. 37–42. Translatio Reliquiarum B. Emiliani, VIII, ES. 1. 368–9. Guide, VIII, p. 46.

  14 St. Hugh at Fécamp: Adam, Vita S. Hugonis, vol. ii, pp. 169–70.

  Precautions against theft: Cone. Lateran, canon LXII, MC. xxii. 1049; Cone. Bordeaux, canon IX, MC. xxiv. 283. Capitula de Mirac. S. Cuthberti, VII. 11, pp. 258–9 (Durham). Cartulaire de N-D de Chartres, ed. E. de Lepinois and L. Merlet, vol. i, Chartres, 1862, p. 61. Pero Tafur, Andancas, p. 29.

  Henry III and blood of Christ: Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., vol. iv, p. 643, vol. vi, pp. 138–44.

  15 Guibert on false relics: De Pignoribus, I. 2, II. 4, cols. 621, 628–9. Cf. Caesarius, Dial. Mirac, VIII. 69–70, vol. ii, p. 140.

  Odo of Bayeux: Guibert, op. cit., I. 3, col. 625.

  Fulbert of Cambrai: Vita Autherti Ep. Cameracensis, IV. 30–2, ed. J. Ghesquierus, Acta Sanctorum Belgii, vol. iii, Bruxelles, 1785, pp. 562–3.

  Dispute over St. Benedict: Peter the Deacon, Historica Relatio, I. 1, p. 288; Chamard, pp. 6–12. Cf. Mirac. S. Benedicti, VII. 15, pp. 272–4.

  Dispute over St. Nicholas: Orderic, Hist. Eccl., VII. 13, ed. Chibnall, pp. 70–2 (Venosa, Noron). F. Chamard, Les vies des saints personnages de l’Anjou, vol. i, Paris, 1863, pp. 411–16; cf. GC. xiv. 473 (Angers). Hist. de Translatione S. Nicolai, X-XXIX, RHC. Occ. v. 260–70 (Venice).

  16 Indignation of the Guide: Guide, VIII, pp. 46, 52.

  Mary Magdalene: Saxer, pp. 65–73, 185–7, 230–42.

  17 Relics displayed when authenticity doubted: Detectio Corporis S. Dionysii, II–IX, pp. 166–9 (in c. 1050). Robert de Torigny, Chron., vol. ii, p. 136; Rigord, Gesta Philippi, LXXX, vol. i, pp. 114–15 (in 1186). Secretly inspected first: Suger, De Admin. Sua, XXXIII, p. 203.

  18 Inspection of St. Genevieve: Vita S. Willelmi Roschildensis, II. 22–4, Aa. Ss. April, vol. i, p. 629; GC. viii. 1450–5.

  Trial by miracle; MGH. Epp. v. 338 (St. Felix). Eadmer, De Sanctorum Veneratione, V, pp. 362–3 (St. Ouen).

  19 Trial by fire: De S. Adalberto Diacono, XXV, Aa. Ss. OSB. iii. 635–6 (St. Celsus). Chron. Mon. Casinensis, II. 33, p. 649. Vita Meinwerki, CCIX, ed. F. Tenckhoff, MGH. Rer. Germ., Hannover, 1921, p. 122. Guibert, De Vita Sua, III. 20, pp. 230–1 (St. Arnoul). Cone. II Sarragossa (An. 592), MC. x. 471 (Arian relics). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, V. 267, pp. 424–5; Capitula de Mirac. S. Cuthberti, VII. 7–11, pp. 254–9 (Anglo-Saxon relics). Mabillon (ed.), Vet. Anal, p. 569 (Anna Gonzaga).

  CHAPTER III

  THE SAINTS AND THEIR RELICS

  Heretics and Cynics

  Individual relics might be discredited, minor abuses exposed, but opposition to the cult of relics as such was extremely rare. The same pressures of mass belief which enabled spurious relics to be venerated as genuine without exciting protest, applied a fortiori to stifle objections to a practice which was so basic to mediaeval religious life.

  Levity and popular irreverence in the face of the saints there sometimes was. But even this was limited by the overpowering conventions of religious life of which the most powerful was that the saints, being possessed of a will of their own, mercilessly chastised those who mocked them. Gerald of Wales, in pointing out the extreme devotion of the Welsh to relics, explained that ‘owing to a certain occult power granted to all relics by God, and owing to the special vindictiveness of Welsh saints, those who despise them are usually punished.’ Cautionary tales describing these punishments can be found in almost every surviving collection of miracle stories. Out of the 139 stories by five different authors in the Miracles of St. Benedict, approximately half deal with the fate of those who scoffed at the saint, ignored his feast day, invaded the lands of his abbey, and so on. William of Malmesbury remembered from his childhood how a boy who laughed at a cortège of monks bearing the relics of St. Aldhelm was thereupon tortured by demons. Some courtiers who scoffed at the body of St. Evroul were forthwith struck dead by a thunderbolt. The man who spoke slightingly of St. Emmeram found that his tongue adhered to his palate, while the woman who ‘raising her clothing displayed her posterior to the saint, behaviour which God on no account allows to pass unpunished’ was afflicted with hideous ulcers. Contempt for the relics of the saints was regularly visited with dumbness, bodily distortion, disease, madness, and death.

  If educated men ever expressed criticisms of the cult of relics, their opinions have rarely survived. The mediaeval Church vigorously suppressed heterodox writings and until the later middle ages the views of non-conformists are generally known only through the writings of their opponents. From this source we know that there existed in the fourth and fifth centuries a substantial body of opinion which totally rejected the cult of relics. It is also clear that opposition to the veneration of relics was characteristic of many heresies. The iconoclastic disputes which engulfed the Greek Church in the eighth century affected relics as well as icons. Constantine V, the second of the iconoclastic emperors, conducted a vigorous campaign against relics held by the monasteries of the capital. The iconoclastic position on images and relics was condemned by the council of Nicaea in 787, but it found several sympathizers in the west, particularly among the Franks. Claudius, bishop of Turin, denounced all pilgrimages to the relics of the saints and broke or burnt crosses venerated in his diocese; he was regarded by his contemporaries as a heretic and vigorously condemned by a synod at Paris in 825. In Spain, objections to the cult of relics emanated from the numerous groups of monophysites and manichaeans who had fled from their persecutors in the east. The council of Cordova in 839 was greatly concerned with the activities of a group called ‘acephalites’ whose errors included the rejection of the veneration of relics. But until the fourteenth century these opinions never attained any importance in the west. Such disputes as did occur were usually pale reflections of controversies in the eastern Church, and these had themselves been silenced by the end of the ninth century. With a single exception, orthodox writers rarely considered the spiritual basis
of the cult of relics and never criticized it.

  The single exception is Guibert of Nogent, whose writings con-constitute a remarkable corpus of evidence for almost every aspect of the religious life of his day. Guibert, who died in about 1125, was the abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy near Laon. He was a prolific writer whose works included an autobiography with unusually introspective details, a treatise in honour of the Virgin, a number of Biblical commentaries, and a history of the first Crusade. He also wrote a treatise On the Relics of the Saints in which he examined some of the relics venerated in his own day in the most acid and critical tone. Guibert applied to relics the critical standards developed by Christian scholarship in connection with Biblical exegesis, and he concluded that many of them were wholly unreasonable and based on insecure historical foundations. This, together with his passionate nationalism and fascinating prejudices, has procured for him the unanimous acclaim of historians, one of whom has indeed compared him to Calvin, Rabelais, and Voltaire.

  The historian of popular religion owes much to Guibert’s book, but to contemporaries it passed entirely unnoticed. It survives in only one manuscript which, moreover, came from Guibert’s own abbey of Nogent, and it is never referred to by other mediaeval writers. Although it surveys the whole field of popular religion, its purpose was limited to exposing a particular relic, a milk-tooth of Christ preserved at the abbey of St. Médard at Soissons. The monks of St. Médard had, it seems, issued a pamphlet advertizing the miracles of the tooth. Guibert had no difficulty in demolishing this booklet without straying from the line of strict theological orthodoxy. The Christian’s hopes of salvation depended on the doctrine of the resurrection, which could not be completely true if a single particle of Christ’s earthly body remained on earth. The only true relic of Christ was therefore the Eucharist which contained Him altogether and was incompatible with the existence of any other relics. To these conventional theological arguments, Guibert added historical ones. Since Christ would not have appeared particularly remarkable to his contemporaries until the beginning of his ministry, no one would have troubled to collect relics of his childhood. Guibert was not impressed by the miracles claimed for the tooth. There was no evidence to connect them with this relic rather than another. Indeed, God might work miracles through the relics of notorious sinners as easily as through the bodies of the saints. In the course of his argument Guibert warms to his subject and mentions other relics of doubtful authenticity. The two heads of John the Baptist and the two bodies of St. Firmin are the object of some scathing comments. The milk of the Virgin preserved in a crystal vase at Laon is condemned as an imposture. The absurdities of several contemporary collections are exposed.

  Guibert had no objection to the cult of relics as such. His own abbey of Nogent claimed to possess pieces of the rope which bound Christ to the whipping post and of the scourges that struck his body, together with fragments of the crown of thorns, a portion of the True Cross, and a few shreds of the tunic of the Virgin. In his autobiography, Guibert defends the authenticity of these objects with the most improbable of stories. Guibert was in fact very selective in the relics which he attacked, and we cannot rule out the possibility that he was motivated by some unknown quarrel with those who possessed them. He defended, for example, the authenticity of the Holy Lance of Antioch which his contemporary, Fulcher of Chartres, had questioned. Indeed, in the treatise on relics Guibert asserted that the veneration of genuine relics was wholly justifiable: ‘that which is connected with the divine is itself divine, and nothing can be more closely connected with the divine than God’s saints who are of one body with him.’ Guibert’s quarrel was against the lax standards which his contemporaries applied when assessing the authenticity of relics. In the first place many popular saints did not exist, and of others nothing whatever was known. The Church was beginning to apply stringent tests before recognizing a saint. It had, for example, refused to proclaim the bodily assumption of the Virgin on account of the lack of evidence, a commendable reserve, abandoned in the twentieth century. The populace, however, was satisfied with miracles reported by ignorant men or visions vouchsafed to hermits. The Church might refuse to sanction doubtful cults, but it was in no position to resist them, for by permitting the translation and dismemberment of bodies it had allowed the destruction of the only conclusive evidence.

  The basis of Guibert’s views on relics was his devotion to the inner and spiritual life. In his other works he stresses the value of preaching and confession and of all spiritual exercises which held up a mirror to the faithful in which they might see their inward souls. He sought to create an ‘inward world where nothing is either high or low or localized, where there is neither time nor place.’ By contrast, in the world which he actually saw around him, popular piety was based on the wholly accidental location of the relics of the saints.

  The Body of Christ

  The excesses of which Guibert complained were largely a popular phenomenon. The official doctrines of the Church, created in the earliest centuries of its existence and formalized by the thirteenth-century schoolmen, never made any direct impact on popular piety. Orthodox theology was purveyed to ordinary people by a lengthy and indirect route and was considerably distorted in the process. Such religious education as the populace received was based on the teaching of ritual formulae and above all on stories, or exempla, from the lives and miracles of the saints. All these had the effect of greatly simplifying doctrinal issues and often unintentionally encouraged heterodox notions. In particular they encouraged uneducated men to look on the mysteries of the faith in a somewhat literal and pictorial fashion. Religious thought, in Johann Huizinga’s brilliant phrase, ‘crystallized into images’.

  The transformation of the bread and wine at the consecration into the body and blood of Christ was constantly misunderstood, and as early as the fifth century stories were current in which the host literally turned to flesh and the wine to blood. A tenth-century writer related that Gregory the Great once settled the doubts of a woman who had confessed to him that she was unable to understand how God could be really present in the Eucharist. He told her that she would see the mystery with her own eyes and thereupon transformed the host into flesh on the altar before her, ‘and all who saw it were overcome with the love of God and faith in the orthodox doctrine.’ Guibert of Nogent reported that the figure of a small boy had been seen in the host in a small town near Soissons, and a similar miracle is described by Peter the Venerable. Jacques de Vitry tells of a woman who kept the host in her mouth for later use and found that it turned to flesh and adhered to her palate so that she could not speak. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries such stories multiplied prodigiously, and at a popular level they appear to have been accepted as a normal incident of daily life. The Pupilla Oculi, an English manual for ordinary parish priests, warns its readers of the possibility of such occurrences, as also does the Summa Angelica, an Italian production of the fifteenth century. In the Netherlands it was considered inadvisable to cut the host lest the body of Christ be damaged. George Carter, a servant of the abbey of Sawtrey who was examined for heresy in 1525, asserted that the host had a special band around it to prevent the blood from dripping out and that this notion was universally received amongst his acquaintances. The bishop’s chancellor ‘moved him otherwise to believe’.

  In the later middle ages the doctrine of the immaculate conception and the mystery of the Trinity were literally portrayed in statues and popular devotional pictures. These were not usually works of art and few of them have survived, but several contemporaries have left descriptions of them. The dukes of Burgundy, for example, possessed a small gold statuette of the Virgin, whose body could be opened to reveal the Trinity inside. Jean Gerson saw another in the Carmelite convent in Paris and was horrified, not, it seems, because of the crudeness of this literal image of the miracle, but because of the heresy of representing all three persons of the Trinity as the fruit of the Blessed Virgin. Many churches in southern France and Spain
had scenes of the Visitation carved in wood, in which the abdomen of both the Virgin and St. Elizabeth were open, revealing Christ and John the Baptist within. Some had little mechanisms whereby the stomachs might be opened and closed at will.

  The relics of Christ’s body afford the clearest example of the distortion of orthodox theology by popular imagination. The official position on such relics was that the doctrine of the resurrection was incompatible with the existence on earth of any bodily relics of the Saviour. On this ground Guibert of Nogent denounced the tooth of Christ at Soissons as a fabrication, and Thomas Aquinas expressed doubts about the blood of Christ venerated at Bruges. The relics of Christ preserved at Rome caused so me embarrassment to Innocent III: ‘What shall we say’, he asked, ‘of the foreskin or umbilical cord which were severed from His body at birth? Were they too resurrected? … Perhaps it is better to leave the resolution of such problems to God.’ In the course of the late mediaeval period these theological scruples were slowly overcome in response to the strong popular demand for relics of the Lord. The earliest class of relics to achieve theological respectability included those which were separated from the Lord’s body during his lifetime. Such, for example, were his foreskin, umbilical cord, and conceivably the milk-tooth conserved at Soissons. The umbilical cord, and foreskin were already preserved in the Lateran basilica in the eleventh century, and the official explanation of their origin was that they had been spirited from Jerusalem by an angel and presented to Charlemagne at Aachen, whence they had been brought to Rome by Charles the Bald. These relics were seen in the Lateran by generations of pilgrims but were clearly regarded with some misgivings by the Popes. At the end of the fourteenth century the Swedish visionary St. Bridget enjoyed a revelation in which the Virgin assured her of their authenticity and this seems to have carried some weight. The foreskin was removed by a German lanzknecht during the sack of Rome in 1527 and subsequently lost. The Lateran basilica contained by far the most celebrated relics of Christ’s body venerated during the middle ages. But it had several rivals. At the very end of the eleventh century the monastry of Charroux in Poitou claimed to possess a foreskin, and based its claim on a legend which is clearly modelled on the Roman one. This relic enjoyed an uneven popularity for four centuries until the destruction of the church by the Huguenots in the 1560s, and there was even a brief attempt to revive the cult in the nineteenth century. Another foreskin was venerated in the Benedictine abbey of Coulombs: it was sent to England in 1421 in the baggage of Henry V’s bride, Catherine of France, in the hope that it would bring good fortune on her marriage bed. Pope Martin V proclaimed an indulgence for a foreskin at Boulogne, while at Antwerp another had made its appearance by the beginning of the fifteenth century.