Female Religious As Collectors of Relics Finding Sacrality and Power in the “Ordinary”

CHAPTER 9 Female Religious as Collectors of Relics Finding Sacrality and Power in the “Ordinary”

Jane Schulenburg

The hoe she [St. Moninna] used for digging was kept for many years after her death in her monastery in her honor. They also kept for a long time, with great reverence, her badger-skin garment—more precious than gowns of silk—and the wooden comb with which, once a year at Easter, it was her custom to comb her hair, unless the supreme necessity of ill- ness compelled her to use it more often.1 And any sick persons, no matter how seriously afflicted, who placed the smallest scrap of linen or cloth from her [St. Rusticula’s] garments on their bodies and appealed to her sanctity with fullest faith deserved to receive the body’s recovery and the soul’s salvation from the Lord.2

The topic of medieval relics has captured the interest and imagination of medi- evalists for the past several decades.3 There has, however, been a recent surge in the study of medieval relics and reliquaries.4 These works have underscored

1 Vita Sanctorum Hiberniae, Vita Sanctae Darercae 89 (287–88), cited by A.T. Lucas, “The Social Role of Relics and Reliquaries in Ancient Ireland,” The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 116 (1968): 9, and Diane Peters Auslander, Ethnicity in hagiography: The case of Darerca/Moninna/Modwenna/Modwenne in the British Isles, seventh to thirteenth centuries. PhD dissertation, CUNY, 2010, 120. 2 Jo Ann McNamara, and John E. Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham and London, 1992), ch. 27, 136. 3 For a few of the classic studies on medieval relics see: Nicole Hermann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints: formation coutumière d’un droit (Paris, 1975); Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Princeton, 1990); David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989); Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982); Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981); Pierre-André Sigal, L’Homme et le miracle dans la France médiéval (XIe-XIIe siècle), (Paris, 1985); Edina Bozóky and Anne-Marie Helvétius, eds. Les Reliques: Objets, cultes, symbols: actes du colloque international de l’Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale (Turnhout, 1999); Pierre-André Sigal, “Reliques, pèlerinage et miracles dans l’église médiéval (XI-XIIIe siècles),” Revue d’Histoire de l’Eglise de France, 76 (1990): 193–211. 4 For a few of the recent works on medieval relics see: Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, eds. Martina Bagnoli, et al. (Baltimore, MD, 2010); Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204

Female Religious As Collectors Of Relics 153 the pervasiveness and the great importance of relics for medieval society and the church. No longer viewed as merely within the purview of “popular religion,” scholars have focused on the complex relationship of relics and relic cults to politics, economics, health care, magic, liturgical matters, patronage, and art and architecture. However, in general, the major involvement of women and particularly the role of female religious in the collection and use of relics has not received the kind of attention that it merits. While a number of excellent studies have focused on individual female collectors, or local studies of particular relics, or collections found in specific women’s houses,5

(University Park, PA, 2012); Cynthia Hahn, “Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early Medieval Saints’ Shrines.” Speculum 72:4 (1997): 1079–1106; Cynthia Hahn, “What Do Reliquaries Do for Relics?” Numen 57 (2010): 284–316; Katherine French, “Scripture, Textile Brandea, and Early Medieval Relic Boxes,” and “Agency, Apotropaicism, and Amuletic Reliquaries in Early Medieval Gaul,” recent on-line publications; Jean-Luc Deuffic, Reliques et sainteté dans l’espace medieval, Pecia: Resources en médiévistique, vol. 8–11. (Saint-Denis, 2006); Julia M.H. Smith, “Old Saints, New Cults: Roman Relics in Carolingian Francia” and “Appendix: Relic Translations from Rome to Francia, 750–900,” in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough, ed. Julia M.H. Smith (Leiden, Boston, Koln, 2000), 317–40; Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Women’s Monasteries and Sacred Space: The Promotion of Saints’ Cults and Miracles,” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, eds. Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz (Philadelphia, 2008), 68–86. 5 For St. Radegund and her cult see the following—Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun. Ms 250),” The Art Bulletin 72:3 (September 1990): 414–35; Jennifer C. Edwards, “The Sweetness of Suffering: Community, Conflict, and the Cult of Saint Radegund in Medieval Poitiers,” PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008; Jennifer Edwards, “Their Cross to Bear Controversy and the Relics of the True Cross in Poitiers,” Essays in Medieval Studies, 24 (2007): 65–77; Isabelle Moireia, “Provisatrix Optima: St. Radegund of Poitiers’ Relic Petitions to the East.” Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993): 285–305; Brian Brennan, “St. Radegund and the Early Development of Her Cult at Poitiers.” Journal of Religious History 13 (1985): 340–54; Sabina Gäbe, “Radegundis: Sancta, Regina, Ancilla. Zum Heiligkeitsideal der Radegundisviten von Fortunat und Baudonivia.” Francia 16 (1989): 1–30; Cynthia Hahn, “Collector and Saint: Queen Radegund and Devotion to the Relic of the True Cross,” Word and Image, 22:3 (July-Sept. 2006): 268–74. For studies of various medieval convents and their relics see: Katrinette Bodarwé, “Roman Martyrs and their veneration in Ottonian Saxony: The Case of the Sanctimoniales of Essen,” Early Medieval Europe 9:3 (2000): 345–65; Andreas Bauch, Ein bayerisches Mirakelbuch aus de Karolingerzeit. Eichstätter Studien, Neue Folge, Band XII (Regensburg, 1979); Hedwig Röckelein, “Leben im Schutz der Heiligen: Reliquientranslationem nach Essen vom 9 bis 11 Jahrhundert” in Herrschaft, Bildung und Gebet: Gründung und Anfähge des frauenstifts (Essen, 2000): 87–100; Anne L. Clark, “Guardians of the Sacred: The Nuns of Soissons and the Slipper of the Virgin Mary,” Church History 76:4 (Dec. 2007): 724–49; Joan A. Holladay, “Relics, Reliquaries, and Religious