Legendary Treasure at Conques: Reliquaries and Imaginative Memory Author(S): Amy G

Legendary Treasure at Conques: Reliquaries and Imaginative Memory Author(s): Amy G. Remensnyder Source: Speculum, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 884-906 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2865723 Accessed: 27-04-2017 12:25 UTC

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This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques: Reliquaries and Imaginative Memory

By Amy G. Remensnyder

Inherent in memory (social or individual) is a paradox. Memory represents an attempt to fix information or an interpretation of it, an effort to freeze time into a crystalline image. But memory itself exists in time; the process of remembering destabilizes the frozen image, changing the contours of what is remembered.1 This paradox is embodied in the creation and subsequent cultural existence of monuments or memorials, which I define here as physical objects to which a commemorative meaning is attached. A monument is constructed in order to fix a memory and its interpretation, to render them present. But this meaning is hardly fixed; it is destabilized by memory itself, which over time reinterprets the monument to fit present needs.2 Think, for example, of how the pyramids' significance has been transformed by New Age devotees. Such metamorphoses of a memorial's meaning hardly need a millennial time frame. As James Young has shown so powerfully, the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising erected in that same city has increasingly lost its specifically Jewish referentiality, appropriated not only by the largely non-Jewish population as a reminder of Polish resistance to oppression,

I would like to thank Carolyn Dean, Janelle Greenberg, Thomas Head, Harvey Stahl, and Deborah Steiner for their perceptive comments on various versions of this essay. Conversations with Eugene Vance stimulated me to think in new ways about relics and reliquaries. The comments of participants in two symposiums at which this essay was presented as a paper (one at the Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, and the other at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California at Los Angeles) were also helpful. Some of the material in this essay has appeared in a differently oriented discussion in Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Mo- nastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995).

1 Psychologists have examined how over time individuals transform, reconstruct, or construct whole cloth what they remember. See, for example, the discussion and bibliography in Alan Baddeley, "The Psychology of Remembering and Forgetting," in Memory: History, Culture and the Mind, ed. Thomas Butler (Oxford, 1989), pp. 53-54, 57; and Elizabeth F Loftus, "The Reality of Repressed Memories," American Psychologist 48 (May 1993), 518-37 (esp. pp. 530-32). Social scientists and humanists have turned their attention to how "collective" or "social" memories evolve over time. See, for example, Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la memoire, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1952), and his La topographie des Evangiles en Terre Sainte, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1971); and Chris Wickham and James Fentress, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992). See also Pierre Nora's remarks on the fluidity of social memory in his "Be- tween Memory and History: Les lieux de memoire," Representations 26 (1989), 7-25. 2 James E. Young emphasizes this point throughout The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, Conn., 1993). Cf. Nora's comments on the changing meaning of lieux de memoire in "Between Memory and History," pp. 19-20. For a very suggestive consideration of how the meaning of objects in general can change, see Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process," in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in a Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), pp. 64-91. I thank Verity Wilson for drawing this article to my attention.

884 Speculum 71 (1996)

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 885 but even more ironically by the Palestinians in the context of their own uprising, the intifada.3 To be sure, in this process of reinterpretation, the physical object itself is not inert; its design determines the range of possible meanings. The pyramids remain symbols of triumph over death, and the Warsaw memorial with its heroic figures continues to symbolize insurrection and resistance. But these meanings have entirely new resonances as they become attached to a new set of memories. A monument or memorial is then inherently unstable and fluid, as is memory itself. An object that was not originally intended as a memorial may even be reinterpreted as one. My mother gave me a paper-thin china bowl, saying "This was your grandmother's." For my grandmother, the bowl was merely an object, but for me it has become a memorial of her.4 Similarly, the monastery of Moissac in southwestern France transformed an object that originally had no commemorative function into a memorial of the community's miraculous foundation. Decorating the floor near the abbey church's main altar was a mosaic (no longer extant), probably dating from the mid-eleventh century, that depicted two gamboling griffins.5 These eagle-lion hybrids perhaps served as protective guardians of the altar, or as symbols of Christ, their dual nature recalling his.6 But by the fourteenth century, this mosaic had been reinterpreted in light of the abbey's foundation legend, or what I call the community's imaginative memory of its origins.7 According to this legend, Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks, decided to found Moissac after he had a vision of two griffins who trans-

3 James E. Young, "The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapoport's Warsaw Ghetto Mon- ument," Representations 26 (1989), 90-98. 4 This process is an example of what Kopytoff calls the singularization of an object, that is, the withdrawal of a commodity from the realm of exchange as the object acquires a unique meaning: Kopytoff, "Cultural Biography." 5 On the mosaic see Marcel Durliat, "L'eglise abbatiale de Moissac des origines a la fin du XIe siecle," Cahiers archeologiques 15 (1965), 164-66, 174-77. On the use of floor mosaics in southwestern France in this period, see Francois Avril, Xavier Barral i Altet, and Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Les royaumes d'Occident (Paris, 1983), pp. 148-50, 410. 6 On the protective qualities of griffins, see Ingeborg Flagge, Untersuchungen zur Bedeutung des Greifen (Sankt Augustin, 1975); and Carola Hicks, Animals in Early Medieval Art (Edinburgh, 1993), p. 151. On griffins as symbols of Christ, see Hicks, Animals, p. 151; Paul Michel, Tiere als Symbol und Ornament: Moglichkeiten und Grenzen der ikonographischen Deutung, gezeigt am Beispiel des ziircher Grossmiinsterkreuzgangs (Wiesbaden, 1979), p. 67. The negative allegorical interpretations of griffins as pride (Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina [Paris, 1844- 64], 111:222) and greed (implied by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale 16.90, in Speculum quadruplex sive speculum maius, 4 vols. [1624; repr. Graz, 1964], 1:1210) seem less likely to have played a role in the Moissac mosaic. 7 For detailed discussion of Moissac's foundation legend and the legends of other abbeys, see Re- mensnyder, Remembering Kings Past (on the term "imaginative memory," see pp. 1-3). It is possible that the relationship between Moissac's legend and the mosaic was the reverse, that is, that the choice of griffins for the mosaic was influenced by the abbey's foundation legend. But this seems unlikely, as I have found no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Moissac's legend included griffins by the eleventh century. Furthermore, mythic animals such as griffins were a common theme in eleventh-century mosaics from this region and elsewhere. See Xavier Barral i Altet, Les mosaiques de pavement medievales de Venise, Murano, Torcello (Paris, 1985), pp. 17, 32, 66, 69, 76; and Avril et al., Les royaumes d'Occident, pp. 148-50, 410.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 886 Legendary Treasure at Conques ported stones with their beaks to a certain valley where they constructed a church.8 Perhaps the appearance of griffins as the animals that designated the sacred site for the monastery was influenced by the mosaic as well as by the griffins on the imposts of Moissac's cloister capitals.9 Whether or not the legend was shaped by these physical images the monks would have seen daily, by the late fourteenth century the monks' gaze was colored by the legend. Aymeric de Peyrat (1377- 1406), the abbot who composed the history of Moissac in which the legend first appeared, described the mosaic and explicitly interpreted it as a symbol of the foundation.10 The final stage of its metamorphosis from mosaic to memorial occurred in the fifteenth century when the floor decoration was replaced by one that made explicit the acquired meaning; the new mosaic (it, too, no longer extant), a monument from its inception, clearly and consciously depicted the miraculous foundation.11 This power of imaginative memory to inscribe meaning such that it transforms an object into monument or, alternatively, reinscribes the meaning of a monument is what I want to explore here. My focus will be the dynamic relationship between the two elements of the equation, that is, between memory and physical object, in the process of the production of a monument's meaning. For I am interested in the performative, rather than the prescriptive, aspect of commemoration. I have chosen to look at how the foundation legend of a monastic community crystallized around two reliquaries and how in the process they gained a new commemorative meaning.12 The monastery is the abbey of Conques, located in southwestern France. By the mid-eleventh century at least, this monastery had gained international prestige as a favorite destination of pilgrims who came to venerate the relics of the female child martyr, St. Faith, enshrined in her celebrated statue reliquary.13 But these pilgrims would also have seen and prayed before two other reliquaries. The first, a shrine-shaped reliquary of gold plaques on a wooden frame, is an

8 Aymeric de Peyrat, Chronicon, in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS lat. 4991A, fols. 103vb- 104va. 9 For these capitals, see Meyer Schapiro, "The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac I," in his Roman- esque Art (New York, 1977), figs. 79, 83. Durliat argues that the legend was influenced by the mosaic: "L'eglise abbatiale," p. 166. 10 After describing Clovis's vision of the griffins, and subsequent triumph over Alaric, Aymeric writes, "Unde fuit divinitus potissima causa, quod Moyssiacense cenobium hoc triumpho mirabiliter fuit in- ceptum, ex quo deinceps regale monasterium extitit nuncupatum. Unde in lapillis variis duobus grif- fonibus materialiter artificio compactis, prope altare dicti monasterii, major hujus proceditur rei geste figura": MS lat. 4991A, fol. 104ra. " The new mosaic depicted the version of the legend current in the fifteenth century. On the replace- ment of one mosaic with the other, see Durliat, "L'eglise abbatiale," pp. 166-68. 12 Such cultural transformations of various kinds of objects were the subject of a session entitled "What Happened to It? Exploring the Life Histories of Artefacts" at the conference of the Association of Art Historians, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1995). I thank Verity Wilson for generously sending me a copy of the paper she presented at this session. 13 On the eleventh-century cult of St. Faith, see the material in A. Bouillet, ed., Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis (Paris, 1897), translated by Pamela Sheingorn in The Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia, 1994). The bibliography on the statue reliquary of St. Faith is vast; see the references in Amy G. Remensnyder, "Un probleme de cultures ou de culture? La statue-reliquaire et les joca de sainte Foy de Conques dans le Liber miraculorum de Bernard d'Angers," Cahiers de civilisation medievale 33 (1990), 351-79.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 887 amalgam of Merovingian and Carolingian elements assembled into its present form around 1000 (see Fig. 1).14 According to ninth- and tenth-century entries on a piece of parchment inside the reliquary, the shrine contained relics of various saints, the Virgin, and even some generic ones from the flesh of Christ ("sanctis ... ex carnie [sic] Christi").15 The other reliquary is made of panels of beaten gilded silver covering a wooden frame (see Fig. 2). At its apex is a large crystal boss, the container for the relic-probably of the true cross, as an inscription on the reliquary seems to indicate.16 The base, of a different style and fabrication, was a later addition (as were perhaps the angels), but not significantly later.17 Like so many of the abbey's other treasures, the original reliquary was fashioned under the patronage of Abbot Bego III (1087-1108).18 Certainly these two reliquaries-unlike my grandmother's bowl and the griffin mosaic at Moissac-did not begin as objects without a memorial function. Like all reliquaries, they commemorated the saints whose bodily remains they contained.19 Indeed, the Latin word memoria could mean not only a saint's relics but also the tomb or shrine in which the sacred remains reposed.20 But while reliquaries were intended as reminders of the permanent protective patronage and presence of the saints, they also had a more powerful interpretive function. To acquire the status of relics, scraps of flesh and bone had to shed their anonymity; these mute bodily remains needed to be identified and named.21 Medievalists have focused their attention on how written texts such as vitae, miracula, and transla-

14 For a detailed analysis of this reliquary and the way in which it was altered and reconfigured, see Marie-Madeleine Gauthier's description in Georges Gaillard et al., Rouergue roman (La Pierre-Qui- Vire, 1963), pp. 102-3, 115, 117, 125-26, 138-39, and plates 44-48; Les tresors des eglises de France: Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 1965 (Paris, 1965), pp. 296-99; Dominique Taralon, "'Le reliquaire de Pepin' du tresor de Conques," maitrise thesis, Paris IV, 1988-89. I thank Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, who brought Taralon's study to my attention and generously lent me a copy of it. 15 The authentic is edited in A. Bouillet and L. Servieres, Sainte Foy: Vierge et martyre (Rodez, 1900), p. 214. They assign to each entry a date (all ranging from the seventh to the tenth century) presumably based on paleographic criteria. Neither of the documents contained today in the reliquary seems to correspond to the one seen by Bouillet and Servieres; see the transcriptions by Pierre Gasnault, "Quel- ques documents originaux peu connus de l'epoque merovingienne," Bulletin de la Societe Nationale des Antiquaires de France (1969), pp. 262-63. Taralon suggests quite plausibly that when the reliquaries at Conques were opened at various points in the nineteenth century, the authentics were put back into the wrong shrines: "Le reliquaire de Pepin," pp. 29-30. 16 For the inscription, see Les tresors des eglises de France, p. 304. 17 There is some debate about the angels. They are presented as part of the original reliquary in Les tresors des eglises de France, p. 305. But Adolf Reinle (in his "Das 'A Karls des Grossen' im Kirchen- schatz von Conques," in Variorum Munera Florum: Latinitat als prdgende Kraft mittelalterlicher Kul- tur. Festschrift fur Hans F. Haefele zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Adolf Reinle, Ludwig Schmugge, and Peter Stotz [Sigmaringen, 1985], p. 136) argues that they were added at the same time as the base. 18 For this analysis of the reliquary's fabrication, I have relied on Reinle, "Das 'A Karls des Grossen,' " pp. 129-40. See also Les tresors des eglises de France, pp. 304-5 and plate 41. 19 For a general survey of reliquaries, see Joseph Braun, Die Reliquiare des christlichen Kultes und ihre Entwicklung (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1940). 20 "Memoria" in J. F Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1984), p. 669. 21 Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 5-9.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 888 Legendary Treasure at Conques

Fig. 1. Reliquary known today as the "Reliquary of Pippin." Tresor de l'Abbaye de Conques. (photo: Giraudon/Art Resource, New York)

tiones-and their accompanying illustrations-gave relics meaning.22 Surely reliquaries also participated powerfully in this process. Sheltering the relics and hid- ing them from view, reliquaries became the visible face of the sacred remains.

22 The bibliography on the production of written hagiography is enormous; for an orientation to scholarship on the subject, see Jacques Dubois and Jean-Loup Lemaitre, Sources et methodes de l'hagiographie medievale (Paris, 1993); Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Di- ocese of Orleans, 800-1200 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990). On illustrated saints' lives, see Barbara Abou- El-Haj, The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations (Cambridge, Eng., 1994); Mag- dalena Elizabeth Carrasco, "Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers," Art Bulletin 72 (1990), 414-35; Cynthia Hahn, "Picturing the Text: Narrative in the Life of the Saints," Art History 13 (1990), 1-32, as well as her "Peregrinatio et Natio: The Illustrated Life of Edmund, King and Martyr," Gesta 30 (1991), 119-39, and "Absent No Longer: The Sign and the Saint in Late Medieval Pictorial Hagiography," in Hagiographie und Kunst: Der Heiligenkult in Schrift, Bild und Architektur, ed. Gottfried Kerscher (Berlin, 1993), pp. 152-75; and Francis Wormald,

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 889

Fig. 2. Reliquary known today as the "A of Charlemagne." Tresor de l'Abbaye de Conques. (photo: Igor Gorevich)

While reliquaries gained their significance through the relics they contained, these containers also determined and interpreted their contents. The precious materials from which reliquaries were typically constructed symbolically made visible what was hidden, and transformed it. The actual relic was a bodily fragment, something identifiably human. The gold, silver, and precious stones of the reliquary interpreted that fragment and revealed to the viewer what could not be seen even were the relic visible: the other and true nature of the

"Some Illustrated Manuscripts of Lives of the Saints," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 35 (1952), 248-66. I have been unable to consult Hahn's Passio ... Kiliani,... Passio Margaretae, Codices Selecti 83 (Graz, 1988).

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 890 Legendary Treasure at Conques saintly body, intact and glorified in heaven, reigning with Christ.23 But the saints in heaven were not just with Christ; they were actually one with him corporeally (unicorpores), a relationship Vitricius of Rouen eloquently and elegantly puzzled over late in the fourth century and that Guibert of Nogent flatly stated in the twelfth.24 Like many medieval reliquaries, the shrine-shaped reliquary from Conques makes this relationship plain.25 It contains miscellaneous relics, including those of Christ, but depicts only Christ. He is the whole of which all relics are a part. But sometimes reliquaries containing numerous and diverse relics depict, not Christ, but instead one saint, like the statue bust reliquary of St. Chaffre or the one of St. Peter at Cluny (both from the eleventh century).26 Here the relationship between contained parts and visible whole bespeaks the power of the reliquary to determine and transform the identity of its contents. There are many relics inside, but the viewer sees only one saint. A certain disjunction between reliquary and relics is then possible, one hinting that displacement of meaning from relic to reliquary is also possible. One late-eleventh- or early-twelfth-century Spanish reliquary, the Arca Santa of Oviedo, even gains through legend the status of a relic itself.27 According to the legend, in existence by the 1120s, disciples of the apostles fashioned the Arca in Jerusalem; the text relating its arrival in Oviedo reads very much like the account of a relic translation.28 Here the reliquary has become relic, as significant as the fragments it housed. The interstices between relic and reliquary allowed not only the reliquary to interpret its contents, but also the reliquary itself to be reinterpreted by memory. It is just this interplay of container, contents, and imaginative memory that occurred at the abbey of Conques as a legend formed around its two reliquaries-

23 See Ellert Dahl, "Heavenly Images: The Statue of St. Foy of Conques and the Signification of the Medieval 'Cult-Image' in the West," Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 8 (1978), 182-87. 24 Vitricius of Rouen, De laude sanctorum 7-10, in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout, 1953-), 64:79-86. Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pignoribus, in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis (Turnhout, 1966-), 127:104. 25 For the depiction on reliquaries of saints' identification with Christ, see Werner Telesko, "Imitatio Christi und Christoformitas: Heilsgeschichte und Heiligengeschichte in den Programmen hochmittel- alterlichen Reliquienschreine," in Hagiographie und Kunst, ed. Kerscher, pp. 369-84. 26 For a contemporary description of the reliquary of St. Chaffre, see Ulysse Chevalier, ed., Cartulaire de l'abbaye de St-Chaffre du Monastier, suivi de la Chronique de St-Pierre-du-Puy (Paris, 1884), p. 42. Cluny's reliquary of St. Peter is mentioned in Consuetudines Farfenses 2.50 as edited by B. Albers, Consuetudines monasticae, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, 1900-1912), 1:184. For general discussion of statue reliquaries, see Jean Hubert and Marie-Clotilde Hubert, "Piete chretienne ou paganisme? Les statues- reliquaires de l'europe carolingienne," in Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle cam- pagne nell'alto medioevo: Espansione e resistenze, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 28 (Spoleto, 1982), pp. 235-75. 27 On this reliquary, see The Art of Medieval Spain, A.D. 500-1200 (New York, 1993), pp. 259- 60. 28 This text opens Oviedo's Liber testamentorum, edited by Santos Garcia Larragueta as Colecci6n de documentos de la catedral de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1962), pp. 511-15, no. 217. For some remarks on this text, see Francisco Javier Fernandez Conde, El libro de los testamentos de la catedral de Oviedo (Rome, 1971). See also the twelfth-century description of the Arca Santa in Justo Perez de Urbel and Atilano Gonzalez Ruiz-Zorrilla, eds., Historia Silense (Madrid, 1959), pp. 138-39.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 891 a legend that was not the memory implicit or explicit in their original physical design, though dependent on it. This legend appears in a provocative text that is annoyingly difficult to date: the so-called Prologue to the chronicle of Conques. The most logical time for its composition would be the decades around 1100, but certain passages suggest that it might have been written or at least reworked at the end of the twelfth century.29 Charlemagne, proclaims the Prologue, bestowed upon Conques not only property but also the relics of Christ's foreskin and umbilical cord, which are kept in a reliquary called the "great shrine (capso [sic] magna)." Furthermore, the text relates, Charlemagne gave Conques as the "first among all those monasteries founded by him, the letter A of the alphabet made from gold and silver."30 In proclaiming Charlemagne its founder, Conques tapped into a source of symbolic authority and legitimacy almost as powerful as the one Oviedo invoked in its legend of the Arca Santa's construction by the apostles' disciples. Within a generation or so of his death, Charlemagne had passed into legend. In this realm of imaginative memory, his stature grew continuously. He became a source of authority and legitimation invoked by groups and individuals, who as they claimed him enhanced his symbolic value. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, popes and kings might claim Charlemagne as the foundation for their opposing positions in their contest with one another, while urban communities presented him as the source of certain of their privileges and rights, and noble families created genealogies for themselves tracing their origins back to a member of his family.31 Nor were ecclesiastical communities such as monasteries and bishoprics immune to Charlemagne's allure; many such communities, especially those located in Germany and southern France, claimed Charlemagne as their founder.32 Hence for Conques to assert that it had been founded by Charlemagne was not only to appropriate the prestige and privilege of having been established by a king, but also to endow itself with a genealogy of almost charismatic authority. I use the

29 The Prologue must postdate the fabrication of the triangular reliquary (1087-1108) if this shrine is indeed the A of Charlemagne. For other discussion of the text's date, see below, n. 47. The Prologue has been edited separately from the rest of the chronicle as "Chronique du monastere de Conques" by Marc Antoine Francois de Gaujal, Etudes historiques sur le Rouergue, 4 vols. (Paris, 1858-59), 4:391- 94. The only manuscript of this text that I have been able to locate is the seventeenth-century copy in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS Doat 143, fols. 2r-5r, where it is attached (with no transition) to the chronicle. There is also a macaronic version in the seventeenth-century Paris, Bibliotheque Na- tionale, MS fr. 5456, pp. 1-6. The chronicle (without the Prologue) has been edited as Chronicon monasterii Conchensis in Edmond Martene and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris, 1717), 3:1387-88. 30 "Cui monasterio Conchas prima inter monasteria per ipsum fundata tribuit litteram alphabeti A de auro et argento," ed. de Gaujal, Etudes historiques, 4:394. 31 On these various uses (and others) of the legendary Charlemagne see especially Robert Folz, Le souvenir et la legende de Charlemagne dans l'Empire germanique medievale (Paris, 1950); Paul Freed- man, "Cowardice, Heroism and the Legendary Origins of Catalonia," Past and Present 121 (1988), 3-28; and Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin, the Crisis of the Aristocracy and the Beginnings of Vernacular Historiography in France," Journal of Medieval History 12 (1986), 207-23, as well as her Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, Calif., 1993), pp. 69-98. 32 On German ecclesiastical communities, see Folz, Le souvenir et la legende. On southern French monasteries, see Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 150-201.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 892 Legendary Treasure at Conques word "charismatic" deliberately: as Charlemagne was increasingly claimed by southern French monasteries as their founder in legends emerging by the late eleventh century, he was unofficially crowned with the halo of sanctity (a development that was completely independent of this monarch's canonization in Germany in 1165 at Frederick Barbarossa's behest).33 This is the imaginative memory that the monks at Conques both attached to their community and helped to produce in their legend. How, then, are we to understand the objects that the legend associates with Charlemagne: the A and the relics of Christ's foreskin and umbilical cord enclosed in the "great shrine"? Are the A and the shrine of foreskin and umbilical cord identifiable with the two reliquaries of the abbey's treasure? If so, why and how did these reliquaries become attached to the founder Conques clearly claimed in other layers of its legend since at least the late eleventh century, that is, Charlemagne? It is helpful to begin by considering how the monks imagined this monarch, who in legend had displaced the actual royal patron of the foundation, Louis the Pious.34 In the Prologue Charlemagne appears primarily as the generous donor of relics, reliquaries, and privileges. In its celebrated Last Judgment tympanum (dating from the first half of the twelfth century), Conques presented a royal patron in just this role.35 In the middle register of the tympanum, on Christ's right, a prelate holding a scepter, probably an abbot, leads by the hand a bearded and crowned king (see Fig. 3). Following the king are two men. The first carries a diptych, and the second a shrine or container with a draped cloth underneath (iconography usually signifying a sacred object). I would argue that these objects represent the king's munificence. Indeed, above the king and the men behind him are the words caritas (still visible), fides, and spes (no longer visible). Each of these theological virtues resonates with the scene depicted below; surely caritas frames this as a depiction of royal generousity.36 Although the scene does not unambig- uously state the king's identity, the strong claims to Charlemagne made in contem- poraneous legendary texts from Conques suggest that this royal figure with the barbe fleurie is the legendary Carolingian.37 Written texts predating the Prologue sculpt a Charlemagne much like that of the tympanum. The earliest trace of the monarch's legendary presence at Conques appears in the early-eleventh-century Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis of Bernard

33 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 150-201. 34 See Louis's diploma for Conques in Gustave Desjardins, ed., Le cartulaire de l'abbaye de Conques en Rouergue (Paris, 1879), pp. 409-10, no. 580. 35 The dating of the tympanum is a matter of dispute; art historians propose dates ranging from the first quarter of the twelfth century to sometime between 1160 and 1170. See the discussion and bibliography in Jean-Claude Bonne, L'art roman de face et de profil: Le tympan de Conques (Paris, 1984), pp. 313-17. 36 Bonne, L'art roman, p. 208. 37 For a late-eleventh-century text mentioning Charlemagne as the founder of Conques, see Transla- tio metrica s. Fidis virginis et martyris, in Acta sanctorum, ed. Jan van Bolland et al. (Antwerp and Brussels, 1643-), October 3:290. (Hereafter the Acta sanctorum will be cited as AASS.) See also the probably twelfth-century Translatio altera: AASS October 3:295-96. Bonne has argued that the monarch is not a representation of any particular king, including Charlemagne, but rather a multivalent reference to royal foundation and donations: L'art roman, pp. 233-35. But other art historians believe that this is Charlemagne; see Gaillard et al., Rouergue roman, p. 49.

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Fig. 3. Last Judgment tympanum, Conques (detail). (photo: Philippe Buc) of Angers. Bernard writes that Conques possessed a golden reliquary, which the monks believed was a gift of Charlemagne.38 He provides no details about the reliquary's appearance other than that it was made from gold and was portable. There is one reliquary still at Conques that fits this description and that was extant at the time of Bernard's visit: the golden shrine reliquary (see Fig. 1). It is called today the "Reliquary of Pippin," perhaps a reference to Pippin I of Aquitaine, one of the abbey's actual royal patrons, or perhaps to Pippin III, king of the Franks and father of Charlemagne.39 The label is probably a nineteenth-century inven- tion.40 By Bernard of Angers's time, the monks of Conques seem to have transformed this reliquary into a memorial of their community's legendary founder, Charlemagne. Certainly by the time of the Prologue's composition-either circa 1100 or at the end of the twelfth century-the reliquary was clearly associated with Char-

38 According to Bernard, this shrine always accompanied the majestas of St. Faith, the abbey's renowned patron saint, on the monks' ritual public processions: Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis 2.4, p. 100. 39 In the proces-verbal of 1889 describing the reliquary, it is called the "reliquaire de Pepin le Bref"; see the transcription of this text in Taralon, "Le reliquaire de Pepin," pp. 94-95, n. 168. 40 Taralon, "Le reliquaire de Pepin," pp. 24-25 (who also mentions the possibility that, given the date of the crucifixion image that decorated the reliquary in its original form, the name may have been attached to the reliquary already in the Middle Ages; however, there is no textual evidence to support this hypothesis).

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 894 Legendary Treasure at Conques lemagne. The Prologue supports my identification of the reliquary by linking the object with Charlemagne in a more sharply specific fashion: the shrine had become the reliquary of Christ's foreskin and umbilical cord given by the monarch.41 Al- though eventually losing its identification with Charlemagne, the reliquary re- tained its identification with the foreskin until the nineteenth century, as two inventories of the abbey's treasure from that period show.42 The reliquary's metamorphosis into the shrine of Christ's foreskin depended on the relics-but the relics could not have been given their identity without the aid of both imaginative memory and the reliquary's design. The relics' identity is determined by reliquary and imaginative memory, rather than the other way around. First, the relics. Remember that among the many relics in this shrine were, according to the ninth- or tenth-century entry of its authentic (the text enclosed in the reliquary and listing its contents), some "from Christ's flesh."43 These generic relics could have been interpreted as any of the few possible and plausible cor- poreal relics of the risen Christ: milk teeth, toenail clippings, baby hair-as well as foreskin and umbilical cord. To understand why the monks reading the authentic chose these last two and associated them with Charlemagne, we must turn to imaginative memory. According to a legend that emerged in the last decades of the eleventh century, Charlemagne, receiving the foreskin from a boyish Christ at Jerusalem, bestowed it upon the Poitevin abbey of Charroux.44 A version of this legend appeared in a gloss copied into many late-twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscripts of a widely used school text, the Historia scholastica,45 and was repeated almost

41 Even though she interprets the authentic as referring directly to Christ's foreskin and umbilical cord, Gauthier does not connect the reliquary of Pippin with the one mentioned in the Prologue: Gaillard et al., Rouergue roman, pp. 115, 117, 138. 42 For the transcription of the two inventories (1812, 1889), see Taralon, "Le reliquaire de Pepin," pp. 94-95, n. 168. 43 Bouillet and Servieres, Sainte Foy, p. 214. 44 Pierre de Monsabert, ed., Chartes et documents pour servir a l'histoire de l'abbaye de Charroux, Archives Historiques de Poitou 93 (Poitiers, 1910), pp. 7-9, 29-41. 45 "Dicitur quod preputium domini delatum est ab angelo Karolo magno in templum domini et translatum ab eo apud aquis grani et post a Karolo calvo positum in ecclesia salvatoris apud carosium" (with minor variants) in at least the following seven thirteenth-century glossed manuscripts of the Historia scholastica: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MSS lat. 15254, fol. 120va; 16033, fol. 137rb; 16034, fol. 117va; 16037, fol. 109vb; 16040, fol. 11Ova; 16042, fol. 178va; and 18279, fol. 128rb. I would like to thank Philippe Buc, who shared with me his list of the glossed manuscripts of the Historia scholastica at the Bibliotheque Nationale. He also kindly verified for me that the following seven manuscripts of the same text carry the gloss: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 1972 (late twelfth century) and (from the thirteenth century) MSS Ottob. lat. 632; Reg. lat. 303, fol. 120vb; Ross. 511, fol. 115vb; Ross. 570, fol. 185ra; Vat. lat. 1973; and Vat. lat. 9336, fol. 138va. This gloss also appears in the Migne edition of the Historia scholastica-but here it ends "alii dicunt Antuerpiam delatum, nam illic in summa veneratione habetur": PL 198:1541. This latter phrase is no doubt an addition that does not predate the fifteenth century, when the cult of the foreskin at Antwerp is first attested; see "Commemoratio sacrosancti praeputfi Christi Antuerpiae, et alibi," AASS January 1:6-8, and the late-fifteenth-century "Historia de translatione carnis dominicae circumcisionis," written by a canon regular of Antwerp: De codicibus hagiographicis Ioannis Gielemans canonici regularis in Rubea valle prope Bruxellas adiectis anecdotis, Subsidia Hagiographica 3 (Brussels, 1895), pp. 429- 30.

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verbatim in many thirteenth-century texts, including the vastly popular Golden Legend.46 The monks at Conques may have been aware of the tradition of Charroux's holy foreskin.47 Perhaps it influenced them as they contemplated their reliquary and read the list of its contents. They knew the reliquary had been given by Char- lemagne-and they knew that he had been the recipient of Christ's foreskin. What else could the "holy things from Christ's flesh" mentioned in the authentic be other than the foreskin? The monks may have added the umbilical cord because it, like the foreskin, was fleshly proof of Christ's childhood. They may also have been influenced by a renowned late-eleventh-century Roman tradition, according to which the Lateran possessed a cross reliquary that enclosed both the foreskin and the umbilical cord.48 Thus imaginative memory may have contributed to the identification of the relics as foreskin and umbilical cord. But this identification was also suggested by the design of the reliquary itself, which clearly depicts the Crucifixion. Since at least Jerome in the late fourth century, medieval writers had interpreted Christ's suffering at the Circumcision, the blood he shed as a child, as a prefiguration of his suffering on the cross and the blood he would shed as an adult.49 Furthermore, the proof of Christ's childhood and that of his death form, as it were, the alpha and the omega of the Incarnation. Each of the reliquaries I have been able to

46 Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia 3.24 (MGH SS 27:386); Jacopo da Voragine, Legenda aurea vulgo Historia Lombardica dicta, ed. Th. Graesse (Warsaw, 1890), p. 86; Innocent III, De sacro altaris mysterio (PL 217:876-77); Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronica (MGH SS 23:721). See also the late- twelfth-century (?) Descriptio terrae sanctae of John of Wiirzburg (PL 155:1061) and the twelfth- century Descriptio locorum circa Hierusalem adiacentium of Fretellus in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS lat. 5129, fol. 61va-vb (a manuscript of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century; better than the edition in PL 155:1047-48). None of these refer to Antwerp in connection with the foreskin (see n. 45 above), but some mention the foreskin in Rome (see below, at nn. 48, 53-55). 47 A verbal echo of the gloss may appear in the Prologue. The Prologue claims that the foreskin had been given to Charlemagne by his avunculus-possibly a misreading (either by the original scribe or the seventeenth-century copyist) of angelus; see de Gaujal, Etudes historiques, 4:393. If so, then the Prologue must postdate the appearance of the gloss (late twelfth century). On the other hand, Char- lemagne's uncle was Carlomann, who had founded the monastery of Soracte near Rome (Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. Louis Halphen as Vie de Charlemagne, 2nd ed. [Paris, 1981], p. 12 and n. 1). According to a legend written down ca. 968 by Benedict of Soracte, Charlemagne gave some relics to Soracte: Chronicon (MGH SS 3:710-11). Does the Prologue's avunculus represent some confused memory of this tradition? 48 For a description of this reliquary, see Hartmann Grisar, Die r6mische Kapelle Sancta Sanctorum und ihr Schatz (Freiburg, 1908), pp. 82-89 and fig. 42. On the veneration of the foreskin at the Lateran (with some comparative material) see also Grisar's "Die angebliche Christusreliquie im mittelalterlichen Lateran (Praeputium domini)," Romische Quartalschrift fur christliche Altertumskunde und fir Kirchengeschichte 20 (1906), 109-22. 49 Jerome, In Evangelium secundum Lucam, PL 30:569 (in the eleventh century, this tradition was certainly alive; see the citation of Jerome in Jotsald, De vita et virtutibus sancti Odilonis abbatis, PL 142:910-11). The Circumcision was also interpreted as a prefiguring of the Resurrection; see Augus- tine, Epistula clvii, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 443, pp. 461-62, and Pseudo- Alcuin, De divinis officiis liber, PL 101:1176-77. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg," in her Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991), pp. 86-92.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 896 Legendary Treasure at Conques identify as containers of the foreskin (and umbilical cord) articulates this symbolic continuum in some fashion. For example, a reliquary at Charroux may have contained both the relic of the cross for which Charroux was famed in the early eleventh century and the foreskin, which by the early twelfth century had pushed the cross from the limelight. This reliquary consists of a thirteenth-century gold-and-silver frame on a pedes- tal.50 Two facing angels hold an oval box, the compositional focus of the object. On the cover of this lidded box, dated most recently as late eleventh century- just the time when the cult of the foreskin emerged at Charroux-is Christ flanked by the alpha and omega (see Fig. 4). Written around the container's side are words recalling those with which the youthful Christ presented the foreskin to Charle- magne according to Charroux's legend: "here the flesh and blood of Christ is contained (hic caro et sanguis christi continetur)" (see Fig. 5).51 Given the significance ascribed to the Circumcision, this eucharistic reference suggests that the box was a reliquary intended for Christ's foreskin. But it may also have been intended to recall the other relic for which Charroux was famous: the cross. Inside this box reliquary was a Byzantine encolpion, which in the nineteenth century was found to contain a cruciform piece of wood stained with red (blood?).52 It is almost impossible to know if the cross-shaped wood was originally enclosed in this way (or another) in the Romanesque reliquary or if it was added only later. Nonetheless, it is tempting to believe that the foreskin and the cross were enshrined in the same object in the twelfth century-or that the shrine proclaiming itself to hold the foreskin actually held the cross. Even more striking is the Lateran's cross reliquary. According to the Descriptio sanctuarii Lateranensis ecclesie (composed between 1073 and 1118) "in the middle of the cross (in media cruce) are the Lord's umbilical cord and the foreskin from his circumcision."53 The cross thus contained and shaped the relics of the infant Christ quite literally, as an early-twentieth-century examination of the no- longer-extant reliquary showed.s4 Furthermore, the Descriptio sanctuarii relates

50 On the reliquary, see Robert Favreau and Marie-Therese Camus, Charroux (Poitiers, 1989), pp. 25-26, and Les trgsors des eglises de France, pp. 185-86, no. 344. 51 Although the inscription might apply to the eucharist, monstrances were used for the host only beginning in the fourteenth century. See A. Frolow, "Le medaillon byzantin de Charroux," Cahiers archeologiques 16 (1966), 40, and more fully Michel Andrieu, "Aux origines du culte du Saint-Sacre- ment: Reliquaires et monstrances eucharistiques," Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950), 397-418. Frolow comes to the conclusion that I have: this reliquary was intended to enshrine Christ's foreskin. 52 Frolow, "Le medaillon," pp. 40-41. Madame Clement, the current presidente of the Syndicat d'Initiatif of Charroux (which manages the remains of the abbey church and its treasures), was kind enough to inform me that when she opened the reliquary, it contained a wooden cross, two bones, and a piece of thorn (personal conversation, May 1988, Charroux). 53 For this citation from the Descriptio sanctuarii see the long passage reproduced in Grisar, Die romische Kapelle, p. 59. On the dating, composition, and manuscripts of the Descriptio sanctuarii see Giovanni Baptista de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores, 2 vols. (Rome, 1857-88), 2:222-23 (appendix 1). 54 When Grisar examined the cross, he found that it sported at the meeting of its two arms a large amethyst underneath which was the outline of a cross made from gold set into the wood of the frame. The wood in the center of the smaller cross had been dug away as if to make room for something between it and the amethyst-perhaps the relics in media cruce? See Grisar, Die r6mische Kapelle, pp. 82-89 and fig. 42.

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Fig. 4. Romanesque reliquary, top. Tresor de l'Abbaye de Charroux. (photo: Cliche CESCM Poitiers)

that "above [sc. the place where the two relics are lodged], the cross is anointed with balsam. Every year this anointing is made new when the lord pope and the cardinals make a procession in the exaltation of the cross from the Church of St. Lawrence to the Church of St. John [Lateran]."55 The ritual renewal of the relics, the anointing, occurred not on the feast of the Circumcision (January 1) but on the feast of the cross (September 14). Thus ritual, like the reliquary's very structure, made the cross, on the one hand, and the sacred proof of Christ's childhood, on the other, symbolically participate in each other's meaning. At Conques, by inter- preting as foreskin and umbilical cord the relics of Christ enclosed in a reliquary depicting the Crucifixion, the monks played in the same way with the imagery of the Savior's flesh as alpha and omega. Although the relics were essential in this reinterpretation of the reliquary, they did not determine it. Relics disappeared entirely as the monks played, but in a different fashion, with the imagery of the sacred alphabet incarnated in the other reliquary (see Fig. 2). It has been argued that in its original form (that is, without the base and perhaps without the angels) this reliquary was intended as an alpha, which may have hung from one arm of a (very) large cross, balanced by an omega

55 For this citation from the Descriptio sanctuarii see the passage reproduced in Grisar, Die romische Kapelle, p. 59. Grisar notes that when he examined the reliquary, the area under the amethyst (see preceding note) was thickly covered with balsam.

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Fig. 5. Romanesque reliquary, side. Tresor de l'Abbaye de Charroux. (photo: Cliche CESCM Poitiers) on the other.56 Such iconography combining a cross with the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, common in manuscript paintings and reliefs, derived from the even more common image of Christ flanked by these two letters.57 In both cases the images referred to the repeated proclamation attributed to Christ in the Apocalypse: "I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end" (Apoc. 1.8, 21.6, 22.13). It seems quite plausible that the Conques reliquary was intended (or interpreted) as an alpha within this system of Christological reference; in any case, the inscription on the reliquary indicates that it was intended for a relic of the cross, a metaphor for Christ.58 Whether the reliquary could have actually adorned a cross is another matter, for the cross would have had to be extraordinarily large to support such an object. Whatever the intention of the reliquary's designers, it is easy to identify this object with the Prologue's "A of Charlemagne"; it has the appropriate shape and is made of the appropriate material (its panels of gilded silver are surely the Prologue's "silver and gold").59 Indeed, this reliquary is known today as Charlemagne's A.

56 Reinle, "Das 'A Karls des Grossen,' " pp. 129-40. Other interpretations of the reliquary's original form and function have been proposed; see Les tresors des eglises de France, p. 305. 57 For examples of crosses with pendant alpha and omega, see Reinle, "Das 'A Karls des Grossen.'" For other examples of this iconography, see the tenth-century stone relief from Salas (The Art of Medieval Spain, p. 137) and the tenth-century Bible of Leon (Walter Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illus- tration [Ithaca, N.Y., 1982], p. 65). Among the numerous depictions of Christ with alpha and omega are the enamel panel from the twelfth-century shrine at Silos (The Art of Medieval Spain, p. 279) and the late-tenth-century psalter of Athelstan from Winchester (Louis Grodecki, Florentine Miitherich, Jean Taralon, and Francis Wormald, Le siecle de l'an mil [Paris, 1973], p. 233, fig. 226). A mid- eleventh-century illumination in a psalter/hymnal from Saint-Germain-des-Pres shows Christ on a cross from the top of which hang an alpha and omega: Grodecki et al., Le siecle de l'an mil, p. 205, fig. 200. 58 Les tresors des eglises de France, p. 304. 59 It has been objected that this reliquary could not have been interpreted as an A because it lacked the central horizontal crossbar of the capital A in the Latin alphabet. Throughout the Middle Ages, however, capital letters often were written in Roman rustic capitals, a script in which the A did not have a crossbar. On this script and its use see Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Daibhi 6 Croinin and David Ganz (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), pp. 55-61. For some examples of the capital A without crossbar, see the tenth-century Bible of Le6n in Cahn, Ro- manesque Bible Illustration, p. 65 (here the A is the alpha of an alpha-omega pair); an early-twelfth-

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In the process of the reliquary's metamorphosis from an object signifying Christ to the first letter of an alphabet signifying Charlemagne as founder, the relics were almost irrelevant; imaginative memory and physical design determined the object's new nature. Let me begin with imaginative memory, that is, with legend. The earliest text that associates Charlemagne with a monastic alphabet and that can be dated with certainty is the official Charlemagne vita composed in Germany sometime not long after his canonization there in 1165. This text states that Char- lemagne founded some twenty-three monasteries and had inscribed above their lintels a letter of the alphabet to represent the order in which they had been founded.60 Was the monarch's role as provider of letters decorating and distin- guishing abbeys created by the canonization vita-or did the vita borrow this episode from Conques? The answer depends on the tricky matter of dating the Conques Prologue. Remember that I proposed that it dates from either around 1100 or the end of the twelfth century. Hence it either predates or postdates the canonization vita of Charlemagne. If the Conques Prologue is the earlier of the two texts, it is easy to conclude that the tradition of Charlemagne's monastic alphabet originated at Conques and was borrowed by the vita. But what if the Conques text was later than the official vita? Did the alphabet then have its genesis in German traditions? Perhaps, but not necessarily. The vita lists the monasteries that formed Charlemagne's alphabet. They are exactly those abbeys located in Aquitaine and Septimania whose foundation or refoundation is attributed to Louis the Pious in the Astronomer's ninth-century biography.61 Char- lemagne's usurpation of his son's role had already appeared in Hugh of Fleury's early-twelfth-century Historia ecclesiastica-and comments in the Charlemagne vita indicate that the legend of the monastic alphabet equally was borrowed from elsewhere (as was so much else in this text).62 The vita asserts that the "diligent reader" will notice that Charlemagne's many other (read: German) foundations are not mentioned here, including that most famous church of Aachen. The awk- ward explanation provided is that only some of the churches Charlemagne founded were graced with letters.63 Why would the vita, intent on claiming Charlemagne for the German emperor, highlight the legendary Carolingian's special favor toward non-German monasteries unless the tradition was already such a part of the imaginatively remembered Charlemagne that it could not be omitted? And where should we look for the tradition's origins if not among those monasteries the alphabet ornaments-according to the canonization vita, "Charlemagne's foundations" in Septimania and

century manuscript from Citeaux in Avril et al., Les royaumes d'Occident, p. 201, fig. 167; and an early-twelfth-century manuscript from Cluny in Franqois Avril, Xavier Barral i Altet, and Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Le temps des Croisades (Paris, 1982), p. 173, fig. 157. 60 "Hec autem viginti tria monasteria secundum ordinem et numerum litterarum alphabeti notum est fuisse certo epigrammate figure in superliminari ecclesie insignite distincta": Vita Karoli magni, ed. Gerhard Rauschen, Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, Publikationen der Gesellschaft fur Rheinische Geschichtskunde 7 (Leipzig, 1890), p. 38. 61 Vita Hludowici imperatoris, MGH SS 2:616-17. 62 Hugh of Fleury, Historia ecclesiastica, MGH SS 9:362. 63 Vita Karoli Magni 1.15, ed. Rauschen, Die Legende Karls des Grossen, pp. 38-39.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 900 Legendary Treasure at Conques Aquitaine?64 Conques is named as one-and perhaps it was there, at the monastery claiming the first letter of the alphabet and thus the most prestigious posi- tion, that the tradition began. After all, if the tradition had come from another abbey, that community would have claimed the premier place for itself. I have found only one, maybe two southern French ecclesiastical communities besides Conques that claimed a letter-Lagrasse, and perhaps the canons of Brioude- and neither rivaled Conques for possession of the A.65 Furthermore, the only monastery I have found that produced gleaming physical proof of the alphabet was Conques. Perhaps, then, the tradition of the alphabet had its roots in Conques's Charle- magne legend but was first written down in the canonization vita. Given the con- nections between Conques and the Hohenstaufen, it is easy to imagine how the legend could have passed from the abbey to Barbarossa's clerics who composed Charlemagne's official vita. Among the pilgrims to Conques in the last years of the eleventh century were several Hohenstaufen brothers. Upon their return home, they founded a church dedicated to St. Faith in Selestat and gave it to Conques as a priory.66 Hohenstaufen patronage of the priory seems to have continued until at least 1137 in the person of Frederick (II) of Swabia, Frederick Barbarossa's father.67 It is most likely that Barbarossa himself patronized this church, given that it was so intertwined with his immediate ancestors. This Hohenstaufen priory remained very aware of the traditions of the mother abbey; the most complete manuscript of St. Faith's miracula is the one that by the twelfth century was in Selestat's possession, perhaps sent from Conques itself.68 This priory then could have served as the conduit by which a tradition from Conques could have ended up in the canonization vita. But perhaps the alphabet did originate with the canonization vita and not at Conques. Even if this were the case, Conques did not merely copy the vita; instead it actively reshaped the alphabet. Consider the discrepancy between the form of the letters described in the canonization vita-inscriptions-and the three-dimen- sional form they have in every other text I have found to describe them. Like the Prologue from Conques, all later sources to mention Charlemagne's alphabet (in-

64 Vita Karoli Magni 1.15, ed. Rauschen, Die Legende Karls des Grossen, p. 38. 65 Lagrasse claimed to be the twenty-first of the abbeys Charlemagne founded-but that it was in conjunction with its foundation that the king had established the alphabet; see the mid-thirteenth- century text edited by F E. Schneegans, Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam, Roma- nische Bibliothek 15 (Halle, 1898), p. 84. A charter of the early thirteenth century from Saint-Julien of Brioude thunders a curse against a thief who stole "auream literam beati Juliani, videlicet C," but the text itself does not mention Charlemagne in association with the letter (the editor does): Augustin Chassaing, ed., Spicilegium Brivatense: Recueil des documents historiques relatifs au Brivadois et l'Auvergne (Paris, 1886), pp. 22-23, here p. 22, no. 12. 66 See the charter of 1095 in Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Conques, pp. 405-6, no. 575; and the legendary De fundatione monasterii S. Fidis Sletstadtensis, MGH SS 15/2:996-1000. See also Ernst Klebel "Zur Abstammung der Hohenstaufen," Zeitschrift fiir die Geschichte des Oberrheins 102 (1954), 151-63. 67 At least according to the De fundatione monasterii S. Fidis Sletstadtensis, pp. 996-1000. 68 Selestat, Bibliotheque Humaniste, MS lat. 22; formerly Bibliotheque de la Ville, MS lat. 95. See the description and analysis of the manuscript in Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, pp. xx-xxi, xxv- xxvii.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 901 cluding not only writers from the German realm but also the fourteenth-century Aymeric de Peyrat of Moissac and Bernard Gui) consider the letters to have been wrought from gold.69 I would suggest that even if the canonization vita and not the Prologue is the earliest textual reference to the alphabet, the plastic nature of the letters was determined by the reliquary present at the monastery that claimed the first letter of the alphabet and thus first place in Charlemagne's affections: Conques. For where else would the transformation from inscribed letter into golden object have occurred if not at the only monastery I have found that actually boasted such a treasure? A metamorphosis of this sort at Conques would have been all the more natural given that the golden reliquary seems to have been associated with Charlemagne before the composition of the canonization vita. A text written at Sainte-Foy of Selestat by 1155 relates how the two Hohenstaufen pilgrims to Conques engaged in what appears to have been a friendly contest to see who had the larger biceps. Each man placed an arm "through the stirrup (strevile) which is said to have belonged to King Charles."70 Might this royal stirrup be the triangular reliquary, as Jean-Claude Schmitt has recently so plausibly suggested?71 If so, the canonization vita did not determine the reliquary's identification with Charlemagne but instead may have lent the relationship between this object and Conques's legendary founder a new shape. The canonization vita, however, would not have been the only impetus for the identification of the reliquary as Charlemagne's A. Conques's troubled relationship with the nearby abbey of Figeac may have played just as important a role. In the years around 1100, the decades-old acrimonious conflict between these two monasteries reached fever pitch.72 In this rivalry, polemical texts relating to precedence of foundation served as weapons-but so did objects to which a new and commemorative meaning was attached. In its late-eleventh-century chronicle Figeac proclaimed that its refounder, Abbot Aigmarus, had granted a larger crucifix to Figeac and a smaller one to Conques: "so that... it should be clear to all which of those places should rule over the other."73 Perhaps Conques retaliated and replied by embellishing its own legend to include a precious object that even more indisputably and explicitly stated the community's prestige: an A given by its royal

69 ,... tot monasteria construxit quam sunt littere in alphabeto et in quolibet monasterio unam litteram auream valorem C. librarum ad dignoscendum per tempora que ipse fundacionis exordium eorundem extiterat... ," Aymeric de Peyrat, Chronicon, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS lat. 4991A, fol. 128ra. "Deinde ad numerum elementorum alphabeti xxiiii coenobia fundavit et in uno- quoque per ordinem litteram unam ex auro fabricatam reliquit ad tempus fundationis uniuscuiusque monasterii dinoscendum ... ," Bernard Gui, Cathalogus pontificum Romanorum, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS lat. 4976, fols. 52vb-53ra. See also the fourteenth-century texts from Germany and Flanders cited by Rauschen, Die Legende Karls des Grossen, p. 38, n. 44. 70 De fundatione monasterii S. Fidis Sletstadtensis, p. 999. 71 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les revenants: Les vivants et les morts dans la societe medievale (Paris, 1994), pp. 125, 274-75, nn. 24, 27. 72 See Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 271-76. 73 Historia monasterii Figiacensis in dioecesi Cadurcensi, in Etienne Baluze, Miscellanea novo ordine digesta et non paucis ineditis monumentis, ed. J.-D. Mansi, 4 vols. (Lucca, 1761-64), 4:1.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 902 Legendary Treasure at Conques founder.74 If so, the legend of the alphabet was inspired by a reinterpretation of this reliquary in the heat of conflict. The Conques Prologue itself implicitly places the A in the context of this rivalry. On the heels of its description of Charlemagne's donation of the A (and hence a certain primacy) to Conques comes a polemical tale: Figeac's foundation by Pippin I of Aquitaine as Conques's priory and its eleventh-century rebellion, which pro- voked a redeclaration of its subordinate status, this time by the pope, Gregory VII.75 It is with this highly contentious account framed by the A that the Prologue concludes. Perhaps this final crescendo provides a clue to the text's elusive dating-it was composed after Gregory's actual intervention in the quarrel (1084) but while feelings between the two abbeys still ran high, that is, before the mid- twelfth century. If so, the Prologue predates Charlemagne's canonization vita, and it was clearly at Conques that the legend of the alphabet originated. In any case, the Prologue's conclusion is certainly an indication that Charlemagne's alphabet could serve polemical purposes. Admittedly there are rather a lot of hypotheses here. Let me then restate the relevant reality-no matter what date one assigns to the Prologue. Whether or not it was at Conques that the tradition of Charlemagne's alphabet emerged, by the mid-twelfth century, Charlemagne's monastic alphabet was enshrined in text. At Conques the imaginative memory represented by the textual tradition was attached to an object, thereby metamorphosing the reliquary into an A designating this abbey as the apple of its legendary founder's eye. Whatever the legend's genesis, the association of founder and foundation with alphabet would not have been a difficult leap for imaginative memory to make. Alphabets accompanied the sacred beginnings of monasteries. During the central ritual of foundation, that is, the church's consecration, the officiating bishop traced two alphabets in the form of a huge X on the church floor.76 According to Ademar of Chabannes (d. 1034), these consecration alphabets primarily signified Christ, who was the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of everything including the alphabet.77

74 And as Charlemagne preceded Aigmarus in time, so Conques would have received its emblem before Figeac did. 75 De Gaujal, Etudes historiques, 4:394. For Gregory's intervention, see the text in Gallia Christiana, 2nd ed., 16 vols. (Paris, 1715-1865), 1, instr. 241-42. The Prologue deliberately misreads Gregory's privilege; Gregory stipulated that if the present abbot of Conques should die before that of Figeac, Conques should be united to Figeac-and vice versa. 76 See the description of this ritual in Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, eds., Le pontifical romano- germanique du dixieme siecle, 3 vols., Studi e Testi 226-27, 269 (Vatican City, 1963-72), 1:124-73, no. 40. 77 See the sermon composed by Ademar for Saint-Martial's dedication in Paris, Bibliotheque Na- tionale, MS lat. 2469, fol. 94v, partially edited by Charles de Lasteyrie, L'abbaye de Saint-Martial de Limoges ... (Paris, 1901), p. 425. See also Franz Dornseiff, Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie (1925; repr. Leipzig, 1975), pp. 122-25. Herbert Thurston points out that most inscriptions of the alphabet were preceded and/or followed by a cross and that in later English tradition the alphabet was called "Christe's crosse": "The Alphabet and the Consecration of Churches," The Month 115 (1910), 621- 31. For some other medieval interpretations of the significance of consecration alphabets, see Peter Damian, In dedicatione ecclesiae (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis 57:421-22); Ivo of Chartres, Sermo IV (PL 162:531); and Bruno of Segni, De sacramentis ecclesiae (PL 165:1094-95).

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 903 Evident in this ceremony are also less specifically Christian meanings of the alphabet that render its inscription at beginnings particularly appropriate.78 The alphabet contains all possible words and all possibilities. Its inscription thus can define space as the cosmos.79 Hence the association between alphabet and sacred beginnings, a connection that echoes loudly in Christian tradition. Granted the evangelist John did not write, "In the beginning was the alphabet"-but rather "In the beginning was the word" (John 1.1). But the Word was Christ, who was alpha and omega, the sacred alphabet. Christ is only one example of this correlation between alphabet and origins. According to Nennius (ca. 800), St. Patrick "wrote 365 alphabets or more, and he also founded churches in the same number, 365."80 In the fifth-century Ro- mance of Alexander by Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander inscribes the first five letters of the alphabet on the foundations of Alexandria. The author interprets each letter as symbolizing and commemorating Alexander's power as a ruler and as a creator of space.81 Perhaps Charlemagne's monastic alphabet was an inscription with a similar power. These rich symbolic resonances of the alphabet must have colored the monks' vision as they gazed at their reliquary with its suggestive shape. Alphabets signify origins-so why should this A-like shrine not be associated with their own community's foundation and founder? This metamorphosis was then like the one that occurred with the other reliquary. The way in which Charlemagne was imaginatively remembered and the significance that could be read in-or into-the physical design of the reliquaries led the monks to attach new commemorative meaning to these objects. In the case of the shrine-shaped reliquary, imaginative memory played with the interpretive power of the container's design in order to reidentify the contained relics. And in the case of the A reliquary, memory acted on the relative indepen- dence of reliquary from relic. Reliquary metamorphosed into a differently charged object-a physical pledge of a saintly monarch's affection. In both instances the metamorphoses of meaning occurred according to an internal logic in which one principle is evident. Imaginative memory makes the object part of the personal experience of the remembering subject.82 At Conques the two reliquaries no longer

78 In many cultures the repetition or writing of the alphabet has an apotropaic and magical quality; its use in consecration thus resonates with the many exorcisms that accompany the ritual: Dornseiff, Das Alphabet. 79 Dornseiff, Das Alphabet, p. 75. 80 Cited by Thurston, "The Alphabet," p. 625. 81 "A, Alexander; B, the greatest king; C, of the greatest nations; D, in [this] place; E, descended and built a unique city": The Romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes, trans. Albert M. Wolohojian (New York, 1969), p. 51 (this passage does not appear in the medieval Latin Alexander legends). 82 Theorists, modern and medieval, of memory emphasize the way in which memory transforms information by personalizing it in some fashion. On modern theories of memory and personalization, see, for example, Baddeley, "The Psychology of Remembering and Forgetting," pp. 51-52, 53-54. For medieval examples, see Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, Eng., 1990); and Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, N.J., 1994), pp. 158-76. Young (Texture of Memory) emphasizes how such personalization is necessary for the continuing life of monuments.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 904 Legendary Treasure at Conques just reminded the monks of the presence and patronage of Christ and the saints but also incarnated the community's identity as a monastery founded by the shim- mering Charlemagne. The way in which these objects became such repositories of Conques's identity, past and present, was in part through a certain narrative quality that legend attached to them. Integrated into the Prologue, the two reliquaries participated in the narrative of the community's authoritative origins. From treasure, these shrines became legendary treasure, rich objects that themselves implicitly told this story.83 This narrative, however, was not embedded and explicit in the reliquaries themselves; it could easily be upset, displaced, or lost as the meaning of any memorial can be. Narrative as a means for both rendering the memorial specific to the beholder and attempting to fix the new meaning or memory is perhaps more powerful when the object explicitly narrates or is physically integrated into a material narrative context.84 Beginning in the late eleventh century, there was a proliferation of explicitly narrative reliquaries.85 Often in the gorgeous blues and greens of enamel, the panels of these reliquaries narrate the saint's life or, more importantly, death.86 Here the generic message of reliquaries that depict Christ while containing relics of many saints is discarded in favor of the specificity of a narrative about one particular saint (although the visual reference to Christ often remains).87 This saint, then, these reliquaries proclaim-and often they state no less loudly, this saint here in this community.88 For the narrative might end, not with the saint's death, but with the saint transformed into relic and brought to the church, this church,

83 On reliquaries as part of a church's "treasure" (and the use of this latter term), see Dubois and Lemaitre, Sources et methodes, pp. 305-19. 84 Cf. Young's discussion of how the Polish government attempted (unsuccessfully) to fix the meaning of the Warsaw Ghetto memorial so that it could not be appropriated by antigovernment movements such as Solidarity; the government integrated the memorial into a sequence of other sites and monuments most of which related specifically to the Jews. Young calls this a "walking narrative": "Biography of a Memorial," p. 93. 85 On this development, see Braun, Die Reliquiare, pp. 668-75. Braun dates this development to the twelfth century, but the Spanish shrine of St. Aemilianus with its narrative panels dates from the second half of the eleventh century; see The Art of Medieval Spain, pp. 261-67, and Julie A. Harris, "Culto y narrativa en los marfiles de San Millan de Cogolla," Boletin del Museo Arqueol6gico Nacional 9 (1991), 69-85. 86 Braun lists a number of such narrative reliquaries (mainly French and German) of this period in Die Reliquiare, pp. 668-75. See also the many enamel narrative reliquaries discussed by Marie-Made- leine Gauthier in her Emaux meridionaux: Catalogue international de l'ceuvre de Limoges, forthcom- ing in 6 vols. (of which one has been published: Paris 1987) as well as in her Emaux du moyen age occidental and "La legende de Sainte-Valerie et les emaux champleves de Limoges," Bulletin de la Societe archeologique du Limousin 85 (1955), 35-80. For some German narrative reliquaries, see Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Kunstler der Romanik, 3 vols. (Cologne, 1985), 2:216-24, 314-23, 457; and Hermann Schnitzler, Der Schrein des heiligen Heribert (Monchengladbach, 1962). 87 The reliquary may relate the saint's life on one long side while depicting Christ on the other. For a discussion of the saints' imitatio Christi and twelfth-century German reliquaries, see Telesko, "Imi- tatio Christi." 88 See, for example, Harris's discussion of the shrine of St. Aemilianus in "Culto y narrativa," pp. 77-81. Abou-El-Haj comes to a similar conclusion about the illustrated vitae that emerge in the twelfth and thirteenth century; see Medieval Cult, esp. pp. 26-27, 29-31, 55-56, 61, 85-86.

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Legendary Treasure at Conques 905 "our" church.89 In an extraordinary display of self-referentiality and self-con- sciousness, the narrative could culminate with the reliquary itself; the final panel might depict the reliquary's patron or (admittedly rarely) the fashioning of the reliquary.90 By being integrated into the tale of the relics, the container is elevated almost to the level of its sacred contents. Furthermore, just like the relics whose provenance the reliquary narrates, the reliquary itself becomes part of the church's narrative of its identity. Often these narratives of specificity are accomplished not only through the sequence of images, but also through inscriptions explicating each scene.91 By in- terpreting the images, such inscriptions not only tell literate viewers what they are seeing, but also tell them what to see, how to interpret that which is hidden inside. As the inscriptions indicate, these reliquaries attempt simultaneously to prescribe and fix meaning.92 The reasons for the proliferation of such narrative reliquaries certainly relate to complex issues involving the increased use of visual narrative in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and other matters.93 Here I would like to propose a possible material factor in this development. In the context of the swelling popular devotion to saints that began around the year 1000, ecclesiastical communities began to compete intensely with one another over pilgrims, prestige, and relics.94 These

89 For example, the late-twelfth-century enamel reliquary at Saint-Sernin (Toulouse) relates the cross's discovery and its voyage all the way to Saint-Sernin: De Toulouse a Tripoli: La puissance toulousaine au XIIe siecle (1080-1208) (Toulouse, 1989), pp. 287-88, no. 410. For such images in illuminated vitae of this period, see Abou-El-Haj, Medieval Cult, pp. 46-55. 90 The late-twelfth-century enamel reliquary of St. Calminius at Mozat ends its narrative with the abbot who had the reliquary made; see Gauthier, Emaux du moyen age occidental, pp. 333-35, no. 58. For other instances of reliquaries depicting donors, see Ornamenta ecclesiae, 1:129-35. Some of these donors are represented holding the reliquary itself. The late-eleventh-century shrine of St. Ae- milianus of Cogolla depicts the artisans/artists in the process of creating the reliquary: The Art of Medieval Spain, pp. 261-67, and Ornamenta ecclesiae, 1:251. Abou-El-Haj (Medieval Cult, pp. 35- 37) shows how illuminated vitae of this period were often prefaced by author and other portraits establishing the authenticity of the narrative that followed. 91 The majority of the reliquaries referred to above (nn. 85-90) have such inscriptions. For further discussion, see Braun, Die Reliquiare, pp. 681-716. 92 "Attempt" is the key word; inscriptions can be ignored and reinterpreted. The alpha reliquary at Conques bears an inscription clearly stating that its patron was Abbot Bego III (Les tresors des eglises de France, p. 304); nonetheless the reliquary could acquire Charlemagne as its patron. Literate inhab- itants of a Spanish village in the twentieth century can even insist that a memorial inscription in Spanish is written in Latin: Ruth Behar, Santa Maria del Monte: The Presence of the Past in a Spanish Village (Princeton, N.J., 1986), pp. 267-68. 93 Illustrated saints' lives also proliferated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; see Barbara Abou- El-Haj, "Consecration and Investiture in the Life of Saint Amand, Valenciennes, Bibl. Mun. MS 502," Art Bulletin 61 (1979), 342-58 (esp. p. 343, n. 6), and Medieval Cult, pp. 26-27, 148-53, and the other works cited above in n. 22. For general discussions of the development of visual narrative in the twelfth and particularly thirteenth centuries, see Wolfgang Kemp, Sermo Corporeus: Die Erzdhlung der mittelalterlichen Glasfenster (Munich, 1987). I have been unable to consult Otto Pacht, The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford, 1962). 94 Among the many scholars to have remarked on this renewed devotion to saints, some locate its impetus among the masses themselves (for example, Bernhard Topfer, "The Cult of Relics and Pil- grimage in Burgundy and Aquitaine at the Time of the Monastic Reform," in The Peace of God: Religion and Violence in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century France, ed. Thomas Head and Richard Landes

This content downloaded from 132.66.90.180 on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:25:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 906 Legendary Treasure at Conques communities needed increasingly not only to state the identity of their relics but also to attach those relics firmly to a particular shrine, that is, to their own church. They attempted to do so in increased production of sacred biographies, accounts of how the relics had arrived at the shrine, and so on.95 These represented a con- certed textual effort to create the specificity of the relics and to integrate them into the history of the community. The narrative reliquaries were the visual counter- parts of these written texts, equally attempts through narrative to state possibly contested meaning and memory.96 At Conques it was the transformative power of imaginative memory that created a specificity like that sought in the narrative reliquaries. There, texts and reliquaries were made to relate the same legend of Conques's foundation by Char- lemagne. This legend emerged in the context of the contest between Conques and the nearby abbey of Figeac, in the course of which each monastery turned to its origins as a source of authority. Conques proclaimed that it had been founded by Charlemagne, but Figeac replied that it had been founded first-that is, by Char- lemagne's father, Pippin the Short. Conques continued this game of one-upman- ship through legend in the form of the Prologue. The Prologue sketches for Conques illustrious antique origins stretching back to the fourth century. But it hardly renounces Charlemagne; he becomes the most prestigious in a series of kings (including Pippin the Short) who refound the monastery each time it suffers from invasion or ruin.97 What happened when Pippin and Charlemagne were pitted against each other in these legends is another and different chapter in the history of medieval imaginative memory. Suffice it to say that both kings were increasingly made specific to the monastic community that claimed them-just as memory made the reliquaries specific to Conques, just as memory has made my grandmother's china bowl part of my own narrative, and just as memory has allowed the Warsaw Ghetto monument to be appropriated by various groups. As memory attaches itself to an object, the resulting monument becomes a reflection in the eye of the beholder.

[Ithaca, N.Y., 1992], pp. 41-57; and Richard Landes, "Between Aristocracy and Heresy: Popular Participation in the Limousin Peace of God, 994-1033," in The Peace of God, pp. 184-218). Others attribute it instead to efforts by ecclesiastical communities to create "audiences" for cults (see particularly Abou-El-Haj, Medieval Cult, pp. 13-19, 25, 62-63, 131-32). 95 On the increased production of hagiography in this period, see, for example, Abou-El-Haj, Me- dieval Cult, pp. 13-19; and Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, pp. 58-60, 72, 285-87. 96 Abou-El-Haj comes to a similar conclusion about the illustrated vitae that emerge in the twelfth and thirteenth century: Medieval Cult, esp. pp. 26-27, 29-31, 55-56, 61, 85-86. See also Harris's argument in "Culto y narrativa" that the narrative presented by the shrine of St. Aemilianus was shaped to attract pilgrims. 97 For details of the legends of Conques and Figeac and the rivalry between the two communities, see Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 271-76.

Amy G. Remensnyder is Stephen Robert Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 (e-mail: [email protected]).

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