LAY SANCTITY in the CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES, C.970-C.1120
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JOURNEYS TO HOLINESS: LAY SANCTITY IN THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES, c.970-c.1120 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Adrian Cornell du Houx, MA (University College London) University of Lancaster, January 2015 Abstract This dissertation analyses a collection of Lives (vitae) of lay saints from western Europe who were neither martyrs nor from a royal family, to find that lay sanctity was a significant phenomenon throughout the eleventh century. Previously historians (notably André Vauchez) had assumed that the Gregorian Reform hampered its emergence until the twelfth century. In fact lay sanctity was a complex category of sainthood that both underscores and challenges historians’ narratives of this reform. The principal, linking feature of its texts is found to be the saints’ dedication to pilgrimage and voluntary exile at a time when the laity were increasingly exploiting the benefits of spiritual travel. The first part of the dissertation consists of a series of local and individual studies, the most detailed of which pertain to southern France and northern Italy. These demonstrate, among other things, how lay sanctity was promoted during the Peace of God movement (chapter 1), the overlap between secular and spiritual heroic ideologies on pilgrimage routes (chapter 2), a reformist centre at Lucca venerating ‘exotic’ saints (chapter 3), and the emergence of a new asceticism in line with larger developments in eremitism and the evangelical revival (chapter 4). The second part argues for a vital link between pilgrimage, in all its forms, and lay sanctity, locating the vitae within both medieval beliefs about pilgrimage and modern explanations of ritual, especially anthropological models of liminality (chapter 5). This part also addresses the overlap between the laity and hermits, as well as the situation of knightly converts: these ‘quasi-lay’ saints were finding new ways to express their devotion and they too sought pilgrimage as a solution to their spiritual crises (chapter 6). The conclusion relates the findings to the twelfth century and beyond: following discussion of the cult of Homobonus of Cremona (d. 1197), it warns against simplistic attempts to construct grand narratives for the development of lay sanctity in the Middle Ages. ii Contents Acknowledgements iv Abbreviations v Introduction 1 Part I: Saints 1. Lay sanctity in Aquitaine c.1000: Gerald of Aurillac and Martial of Limoges 22 2. Bovo of Voghera and storytelling networks between the Rhône and the Po 75 3. Davino and the ‘exotic’ pilgrim cults of Lucca 109 4. Six lay saints 141 Part II: Themes and Boundaries 5. Pilgrimage and sanctity 168 6. Pilgrimage in the Lives of hermits and converts 200 Conclusion 224 Bibliography 235 Map The Rhône and Po valleys 75 iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without a Lancaster Pamphlets Fund Research Studentship, for which I am very grateful. My three years in the Lancaster History Department have been extremely stimulating thanks to its postgraduate community, among whom many ideas were tested. Special thanks go to my supervisor, Paul Hayward, and my examiners, Julia Barrow and Andrew Jotischky, for their helpful feedback and advice. John Thorley assisted with aspects of the Latin text in chapter 2, though any errors here and throughout are entirely mine. The following have made useful comments or pointed out fruitful directions: David d’Avray, Ross Balzaretti, Susan Boynton, Simon Conway, David Defries, Kathryn Dutton, Michelle Moat, and Miri Rubin, while Samantha Kahn Herrick and Mathew Kuefler both generously discussed or shared unpublished research. Finally the support of my wife Caroline, who married me during this, has proved invaluable beyond measure. iv Abbreviations AASS Acta sanctorum, ed. Societé des Bollandistes, 68 vols. (Antwerp and Brussels, 1643- ) BHL Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, 4 vols. (Brussels, 1898-1986) BN Bibliothèque nationale de France BS Bibliotheca sanctorum, 13 vols. (Rome, 1961-1970) Cat. Paris. Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum antiquorum saeculo XVI qui asservantur in Bibliotheca Nationali Parisiensi, ed. Societé des Bollandistes, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1889-93) CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Hagiographies G. Philippart and M. Goullet (eds.), Hagiographies: histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, 6 vols. (Turnhout, 1994- ) MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica Briefe Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit Constitutiones Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum Libelli Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum SS Scriptores SSRM Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum PL Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64) RB St Benedict, Regula cum commentariis, PL 66, cols. 215-932; The Rule of St Benedict in English, ed. T. Fry (Collegeville, MN, 1982) v Introduction At the beginning of our period, in 972, the cult of St Gerald of Aurillac gained recognition in the Auvergne in southern France when a church was first dedicated to his name in the presence of a large and illustrious assembly. Gerald was an arms-bearer, a secular lord who worked miracles and practised exceptional piety while keeping his powerful position in society. Soon after, in around 987, the cult of a very different saint, Alexius, was recognised for the first time in the West when a monastery in Rome was dedicated to his name. The cult spawned a legend of extremes that narrated this aristocrat’s pursuit of poverty and exile at all cost. Both Gerald and Alexius were venerated as saints even though neither suffered martyrdom, came from a royal family, became a monk, or held a position in the clerical hierarchy.1 But aside from sharing this achievement, they were different in most other respects. They exemplify an important feature of lay sanctity: that it was many-sided, not uniform. In the following century and a half, in a phenomenon that has gone unnoticed by historians, the cults of several other lay saints gained recognition in western Europe. Why this is so, what models of sanctity they represent, and how they reflect their times are key questions which this dissertation will address. The point about historians is a major motivation for this study. There is a widely held belief that people in western Europe who pursued ways of life or professions of a worldly nature were effectively barred from the ranks of the saints until the twelfth century.2 I aim to 1 As will be discussed, martyrs and members of royal families had long achieved sanctity as laypeople. Gerald is discussed in ch. 1, and Alexius in ch. 4. 2 André Vauchez most of all has proposed this view, which has been powerfully influential, in the following works (which are discussed below): idem, ‘Lay people’s sanctity in western Europe: evolution of a pattern (twelfth and thirteenth centuries)’, in R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and T. Szell (eds.), Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1991), pp. 21-32; idem, ‘A twelfth-century novelty: the lay saints of urban Italy’, in idem, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. D. E. Bornstein, trans. M. J. Schneider (Notre Dame, IN, 1993), pp. 51-72, with other articles in the same collection; idem, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge, 1997), esp. pp. 354-6; idem, The Spirituality of the 1 Introduction challenge this assumption through an examination of hagiography from the eleventh century (more precisely c.970-c.1120, sometimes called here the ‘long eleventh century’). This established belief suggests a solid barrier between those who presided over the cult of saints and those who lived in the secular world. That barrier, however, is not as impenetrable as it seems. This study will explore its sturdiness, find where it crumbles, and see who could breach it and why. It will analyse a set of legends that reveal a surprisingly free flow between the secular and spiritual worlds. This, I will argue, is indicative of ‘a new acceptance of variety’ among different social groupings (or ‘orders’) that medieval historians have increasingly recognised as a feature of the age, despite the rhetorical sharpening of divides between clergy and laity in the greater struggle for control of the Church and its functions.3 The laity (laici), who were also known as secular people (saeculares) or those who married (conjugati), are defined here positively – by their secular or worldly life – as well as negatively, since they did not take vows, live by a religious rule, or assume any sort of Medieval West: From the Eighth to the Twelfth Century, trans. C. Friedlander (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993), esp. pp. 135-43; idem, Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint, trans. M. F. Cusato (New Haven, CT, 2012), pp. 33-57. See also A. W. Astell (ed.), Lay Sanctity, Medieval and Modern: A Search for Models (Notre Dame, IN, 2000), esp. p. 11; J.-C. Poulin, L’idéal de sainteté dans l’Aquitaine carolingienne d’après les sources hagiographiques (750-950) (Quebec, 1975), esp. pp. 33-51; R. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 2013), pp. 3-84, 210-11; A. Benvenuti et al. (eds.), Storia della santità nel cristianesimo occidentale (Rome, 2005), pp. 31-156; C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, trans. M. W. Baldwin and W. Goffart (Princeton, NJ, 1977 [orig. 1935]), esp. p. 87. Also relevant are the studies based on quantitative approaches cited in n. 68, and for general studies of hagiography and bibliographies see n. 14. 3 Quote from C. Walker Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century discover the individual?’, in eadem, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1982), pp.