HAGIOGRAPHY AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR POLITICAL CLAIMS IN CAROLINGIAN NORTHERN ITALY: THE SAINT SYRUS DOSSIER (BHL 7976 AND 7978)*

Giorgia Vocino

Repositories of the sacred, relics were important symbolic objects throughout the Middle Ages, considered arbiters of peace, stability and prosperity by the communities that possessed them.1 No longer relegated to the domain of liturgists alone, the history of relics and their control engages historians in a variety of ways. The discovery (inventio) of the remains of a saint, their translation and the associ- ated spread of a new cult, or the renewal of an outdated cult can each be investigated as actions endowed with dense political and economic significance. Despite the sometimes florid rhetoric of the ‘genre’, hagiographic writings – written saints’ Lives (Vitae), accounts of relic translations (Translationes) and miracle collections (Miracula) – can provide, more or less hidden between the lines, valuable information for reconstructing the political situation that prevailed at the time of their creation.2 Each was the product of specific historical circumstances. Hagiography can reveal historical hierarchies of places and persons,

* I have used the following abbreviations: (AASS) Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto urbe coluntur (Antwerp-Brussels, 1643–1902); (BHL) Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, ediderunt socii bollandiani, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–1899); (MGH) Monumenta Germaniae Historica; (RIS2) Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (Città di Castello, 1900–). 1 See above all P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: its rise and function in Latin Chris- tianity (Chicago, 1981) and P. Brown, ‘Relics and social status in the age of Gregory of Tours’ in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982). On the political role of relics, see E. Bozoky, La politique des reliques de Costantin à Saint Louis. Protec- tion collective et légitimation du pouvoir (Paris, 2006); S. Boesch Gajano, ‘Reliques et pouvoirs’, in Les reliques. Objects, cultes, symboles, ed. E. Bozóky and A.-M. Helvétius (Turnhout, 1999), 255–269; G. Tabacco, ‘Agiografia e demonologia come strumenti ideologici in età carolingia’, in Santi e demoni nell’Alto Medioevo Occidentale (secoli V–XI), Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 36 (Spo- leto, 1989), 121–153. 2 A general overview of the different hagiographic writings can be found in the updated edition by R. Godding of the work by R. Aigrain, L’hagiographie. Ses sources, ses methods, son histoire, Subsidia Hagiographica 80 (Brussels, 2000), esp. 125–192, and on the definition of the literary genre ‘hagiography’, ibid., 206–246. OnTrans- lationes as a genre, see M. Heinzelmann, Translationsberichte und andere Quellen 170 giorgia vocino the ties and relationships between various, often competing, authori- ties, exposing to the eyes of today’s historian the numerous assertions and re-assertions of contested authority, claims to pre-eminence and counter-claims made by episcopal sees and monasteries alike during the Early Middle Ages.3 For a religious institution, possessing the relics of a powerful saint could serve to guarantee prosperity and economic survival thanks to its increased attractiveness to pilgrims. An ecclesi- astical centre that could claim the possession of prestigious pignora sanctorum (‘tokens of the saints’), especially those that were said regu- larly to dispense miracles, automatically attracted greater prominence, prestige and investment. A legal entity to which legacies and dona- tions were often made over, the saint – tangibly present in his or her relics – was a recognised landowner and a legal personality possess- ing incontestable rights.4 Possessing the body or even only a few bone fragments of such a powerful patron saint could be very lucrative. In this perspective, politics and hagiography were intimately connected with each other, and the usefulness of hagiographical and liturgical texts for plotting the political activities of bishops and monasteries is evident. Following the conquest of Pavia (774), Charlemagne carefully imposed the Frankish administrative system upon the former Lom- bard kingdom, as part of his effort to create a uniform network of power across all the territories under his rule.5 Charlemagne, the new King of the Franks and the Lombards (rex Francorum et Langobardo- rum), installed in Italy his elder son, Pippin (781–810), as king, and appointed his trusted men in other key positions of political power.6 des Reliquienkultes, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge occidental 33 (Turnhout 1979). 3 For an analogous use of hagiography as an instrument to plot local political his- tory in Merovingian Gaul, see P. Fouracre, ‘Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography’, Past and Present 127 (1990) 3–38. 4 On the legal status of relics, see N. Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints. Formation coutumière d’un droit, (Paris, 1975), esp. 271–312. On saints as ‘present in their relics’, see P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 86–105. 5 For an overview on the making of the Carolingian Empire over the different conquered territories, see R. McKitterick, Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751–987 (London, 1983). On the transition from Lombard to Carolingian kingdom, see P. Delogu, ‘Lombard and Carolingian Italy’, in The New Cambridge Medieval His- tory, II: c. 700–c. 900 (Cambridge, 1995), 290–319; C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000, esp. 47–63. 6 For a still valuable overview of the counts and bishops appointed in Italy by Char- lemagne, see E. Hlawitschka, Franken, Alemannen, Bayern und Burgunder in Oberital- ien, 774–962 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1960).