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Signs of Royal Beauty Bright: Word and Image in the Legend of Charlemagne

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Signs of Royal Beauty Bright: Word and Image in the Legend of Charlemagne Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. Signs of Royal Beauty Bright: Word and Image in the Legend of Charlemagne During the feast of Pentecost in the year 1000, there occurred an event which has been characterized as "the most spectacular of that year."1 It was the opening of Charlemagne's tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle by the emperor Otto III. Although the exact location of the tomb was not known, Otto chose a spot in the church and ordered the dig to begin. The excavations were immediately successful, and we have three progressively more elaborate ac- counts of what Otto found, one of them by a putative eyewitness. The first report is that given by Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg (975-1018), an exact contemporary of Otto. Thietmar reports that Otto: was in doubt as to the exact spot where the remains of the emperor Charles reposed. He ordered the stone floor to be secretly excavated at the spot where he thought them to be; at last they were discovered in a royal throne [a royal sarcophagus]. Taking the golden cross which hung from Charlemagne's neck, as well as the unrotted parts of his clothing, Otto replaced the rest with great reverence.2 While this account has found favor with historians for its comfort- ing lack of elaboration, it scarcely conveys the historic drama which came to be associated with the event. Happily that is provided by Otto of Lamello. Otto reports: We entered and went to Charles. He was not lying, as is the custom with the bodies of other deceased persons, but was sitting in a throne just like a living person. He was crowned with a gold crown; the hands were covered with gloves through which the fingernails had grown, and held a sceptre. There was, however, above him, a crypt, strongly built of marble. In order that we might reach him, we first had to have an open- ing broken through there. And when we came to him, we smelled a strong odor. Immediately, we worshipped him by kneeling, and then the emperor Otto covered him with white vestments, cut the nails, and repaired all that was in need of it around him. None of his members had decayed, but a small portion of the tip of his nose was missing, which the emperor restored with gold. He removed one of the teeth from the mouth, rebuilt the crypt, and then departed.3 1Robert Folz, Le Souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l'empire germanique médiéval (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1950), p. 87. 2Thietmari Merseburgensis Episcopi Chronicon, ed. Lappenberg, Scrip- tores Rerum Germanicarum (Hannover, 1889). L. IV, c. 47 (29), p. 90. 3Chronicon Novaliciense, III, xxxii, in Monumenta Germaniae histor., Scriptores, t. VII, p. 106. Quoted in the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chré- 21 22 Olifant/Vol. 4, No. 1/October 1976 Count Otto's description vividly conveys the immediacy of the ex- perience, while refraining from elaboration. That task was reserved for our last contemporary chronicler, Adhémar de Chabannes (ca. 988-1034), whose efforts have not been particularly appreciated by modern scholars. But whatever one's opinion regarding the historicity of Adhémar's account, there is no denying its distinction as the first contemporary report of the exhu- mation outside of Otto's domains; moreover, since Adhémar was a monk at the abbey of Saint-Martial in Limoges—a main stop on the pilgrim route south, right on the border of "Charlemagne and Roland country"—it testifies to the diffusion of the event over a wide area. In those days, the emperor Otto was advised in a dream to raise the body of the emperor Charlemagne, who had been buried at Aix. But having been obliterated by time, the exact place where he lay was not known. At the end of three days fast, he was found in that place which the emperor had perceived in his dream. He was found sitting in a golden throne, within an arched crypt, under the basilica of Saint Mary, crowned with a crown of gold and gems, holding a sceptre and a sword of purest gold, the body itself uncorrupted. After being raised, the body was shown to the peo- ple. A canon of that church, Adalbert, who was enormous and tall of sta- ture, put the crown on his head as if to take its measure, but found the top of his head too small for it, the size of the crown being bigger than the circumference of his own head. He also compared his leg to that of the king, and his was found to be the smaller. Immediately afterward, by a divine miracle, his leg was fractured, and although he lived another forty years, he remained a cripple. Charles's body was buried in the right transept of that basilica, behind the altar of Saint-John the Baptist and a magnificent golden crypt constructed over it, and it began to be known by means of many signs and miracles. There was no thought of a solemn feast day for him, aside from the common rites of the anniversary of the dead.4 If we isolate the elements common to the accounts, or at least to any two of the three, we find nine principal components. They function either to give structure to the ceremony or, equally important, to attach the action firmly to a given time—the feast of Pentecost—and to a given place—the basilica at Aix-la-Chapelle—built by Charles himself. These elements are as follows : 1) TIME: The feast of Pentecost of the year 1000, during a visit Otto III paid to Aix-la-Chapelle. 2) PLACE: The basilica of Our Lady, Aix-la-Chapelle, the former tienne et de liturgie, edited by dom F. Cabrol and dom H. Leclercq (Paris: Letouzey, 1913), III, cols. 793-794. 4Adhémar de Chabannes, Chronique, edited by Jules Chavanon (Paris: Collection de textes pour servir à l'étude ... de l'histoire, 1897), pp. 153-154. Nichols/Legend of Charlemagne 23 capital of Charlemagne's empire. Tomb known to be within precincts of the basilica. 3) DISCOVERY: Although the exact location of the tomb is unknown, Otto discovers or is divinely guided to it. 4) CAST: A restricted number of persons (four) make the visitation. 5) SPECTACLE: Charlemagne is discovered, enthroned in majesty, in a vaulted crypt. 6) ARTEFACTS: Charlemagne's body is found to be adorned with pre- cious objects symbolic of religious and secular authority. 7) RITUAL: Veneration of the site and Charlemagne by visitors; sacred nature of the occasion stressed. 8) TRANSLATION: Body and objects associated with it treated as sacred relics. Remains replaced in tomb or resited in another. 9) REVELATION: Authoritative account of visitation conveys image and details of the event to audience. Our reading of the accounts of the exhumation as well as our summary of the structural elements should make clear the ceremonial nature of the occasion. The visit to the tomb is treated as a ritual of the highest religious significance. One critic has not hesitated to term it a préfigu- ration of the canonisation of Charlemagne in 1165.5 First, the time and the plaça of the ceremony are significant. Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Easter, was traditionally the end of the Easter season; it is also the feast which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit.6 As such, it is the feast which confirms the full import, the truth, of the resurrection. The resurrection itself, as O. B. Hardison has observed, "is the moment when humanity, represented by the holy women visit- ing the tomb of Christ, first recognizes the full significance of the Incar- nation."7 We have thus a series of on-going moments—Incarnation, Crucifix- ion, Resurrection, Pentecost—each confirming the truth and significance of the preceding. Any event on the continuum at once depends upon and confirms the others, while all of them guarantee the future, conceived as eternal life. The Christian concept of time is evidently synecdochic, wherein one part may stand in reciprocal implicational relationship with all the others. The same is also true of Christian space, and, in fact, the place in which our drama unfolds is really one sacred space within another: a tomb within a place for worshipping the tomb. Even more, it is also a sacred space sequence (church—>tomb/tomb—>church) in one place, i.e., Aix-la- Chapelle, which represents other space sequences in other places, i.e., Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome. Let us see how this works, looking first at Charlemagne's church, the Palatine Chapel. 5Folz, op. cit., p. 93. 6John Wilkinson, Egeria's Travels (London: S.P.C.K., 1971), p. 78. 7O. B. Hardison, Jr., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), p. 178. 24 Olifant/Vol. 4, No. 1/October 1976 There is the main part of the basilica: "an eight-sided domed cen- ter room surrounded by an ambulatory on its lower, by a gallery on its upper floor and surmounted by an eight-sided dome."8 It is dedicated both to Christ and to the Virgin Mary. Below this main part, as we have seen, was Charlemagne's crypt, called by Otto of Lamello a turgurium and then a tur- guriolum. The strict sense of turgurium is 'little hut' or 'cottage', a fact whose importance will be apparent in a moment. In this spatial arrangement of a sacred tomb below ground, enclosed above by a basilica, we have the typical arrangement of the early medieval martyrium, but especially of that archetypal martyrium, the Anastasis in Jerusalem.
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