A Companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages 9004305572, 9789004305571

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A Companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages

Brill’s Companions to European History Volume 29

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bceh

A Companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages Edited by

Karen Blough

leiden | boston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Blough, Karen, editor. Title: A companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages / edited by Karen Blough. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2023] | Series: Brill’s companions to European history, 2212-7410 ; volume 29 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022039484 (print) | LCCN 2022039485 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004305571 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004527492 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Stift Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg, Germany) | Art and society--Germany--Quedlinburg--History--To 1500. Classification: LCC BX2618.Q84 C66 2023 (print) | LCC BX2618.Q84 (ebook) | DDC 271/.908043182--dc23/eng/20220831 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039484 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039485

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Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Figures viii Notes on Contributors xvii Introduction 1 Karen Blough 1 Quedlinburg Abbey’s Medieval History in Ever-Changing Political and Religious Frameworks: A Survey 15 Katharina Ulrike Mersch 2 Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th Centuries: An Archaeological View 47 Tobias Gärtner 3 Quedlinburg: The Conventual Buildings from an Architectural History Perspective 90 G. Ulrich Großmann 4 For the Living and the Dead: Memorial Prayers of the Quedlinburg Canonesses in the High Middle Ages 122 Christian Popp 5 Psallite sapienter: Psalms and Learning at Quedlinburg 142 Helene Scheck 6 Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg 181 Karen Blough 7 Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg: Romanesque Craftwork of Great Quality 223 Manfred Mehl 8 The Quedlinburg Frieze and Its Romanesque Context 235 Shirin Fozi

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Contents

9 Of Donors and Patrons: The Abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg as a Site of Remembrance, Distinction, and Representation 279 Clemens Bley 10 A Reliquary Revisited: The Reliquary of St. Servatius and Its Contexts 308 Eliza Garrison and Evan A. Gatti 11 Matter and Spirit: Reliquaries at St. Servatius in the 13th Century 364 Adam Stead 12 Restored, Repurposed, Reassessed: The Abbey Church of Quedlinburg across Five Germanies 403 Annie Krieg Dates of the Quedlinburg Abbesses, German Kings, and Bishops of Halberstadt 433 Manuscripts 435 Bibliography 437 Index 473

Acknowledgments I thank the following for their translations into English of chapters originally written in German: Eliza Garrison (Tobias Gärtner, “Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th Centuries”); Caitlin Bass (G. Ulrich Großmann, “Quedlinburg: The Conventual Buildings from an Architectural History Perspective,”); Shirin Fozi (Christian Popp, “For the Living and the Dead: Memorial Prayers of the Quedlinburg Canonesses in the High Middle Ages”); Wolfgang Stranz (Manfred Mehl, “Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg: Romanesque Craftwork of Great Quality”); and Cara Jordan (Clemens Bley, “Of Donors and Patrons: The Abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg as a Site of Remembrance, Distinction, and Representation”). The bibliography was compiled by Montana Courtney and Annika Fisher compiled the lists of Quedlinburg abbesses, German kings and emperors, and bishops of Halberstadt. I thank Tim Barnwell for copy editing the volume and providing the index. Finally, I am indebted to Alessandra Giliberto of Brill for her invaluable guidance as this volume slowly but steadily evolved in spite of numerous vicissitudes, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic. Karen Blough Plattsburgh, New York

Figures 0.1

Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18284432. Bracteate with abbatial portrait of Beatrix II. 1138–60. Photograph by Christian Stoess XX 2.1 Core settlements of Quedlinburg including the course of the city walls of Westendorf, the Altstadt, and the Neustadt. Map after Ulrich Reuling and Daniel Stracke, Quedlinburg (Münster: Ardey-Verlag, 2006), 3, figure 3, with changes and modifications by Tobias Gärtner 48 2.2 10th- and 11th-century find spots in Quedlinburg. Dots: finds. Circles: uncertain finds or scattered finds. 1 Church of St. Wiperti (FStNr. 44), 2 Schlossberg (ANr. 5070/FStNr. 18), 3 Schlossberg 11 (FStNr. 200), 4 Lange Gasse 10 (FStNr. 170), 5 Carl-Ritter-Platz (FStNr. 170), 6 Marktplatz (ANr. 5560), 7 Pölle 29/Jüdengasse (FStNr. 194), 8 Bockstraße 6/Klink 11 (FStNr. 175), 9 Klink 6 (FStNr. 175), 10 Schmale Straße 55–58 (ANr. 1009), 11 Schmale Straße 43–45/ Dovestraße (FStNr. 161). Map derived from Reuling, “Quedlinburg” 50 2.3 Church of St. Wiperti in Quedlinburg, construction phases of the church 1 10th century, 2 c.1000, 3 11th century, 4 middle to second half of the 12th century (Church of the Premonstratensians). After Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 190, fig. 69, 201, fig. 99, 208, fig. 114, and 210, fig. 120 54 2.4 Attempted reconstruction of the building history of the Stiftskirche after Jacobsen and Leopold. See Jacobsen, “Frühgeschichte,” 64, fig. 2–3, 66, fig. 5, and 68, fig. 6–7, and Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 166, fig. 7, 179, fig. 42, and 188, fig. 64 55 2.5 Quedlinburg, Stiftskirche of St. Servatius. (a) Drawing of the west wall of the confessio, after 1877. After Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 72, fig. 103. (b) Attempted reconstruction. After Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 183, fig. 53 56 2.6 The Schlossberg at Quedlinburg. 1 Chapel from the time of King Henry I, 2 Square Saalbau, likely living quarters of King Henry I, 3 Vaulted cellar beneath the west wing, 4 South Wing, 5 North Wing, 6 Remains of 10th- and 11th-century walls, 7 10th- and 11th-century graves. Ground plan of the castle after Reinhard Schmitt, “Der Schlossberg in Quedlinburg,” in Die Ottonen. Kunst – Architektur – Geschichte, ed. Klaus Gereon Beuckers et al. (Petersberg: Imhof, 2002), 269, figure at bottom of page 58 2.7 Kopfnischengrab found during the 2011 excavations in the castle yard. Photograph courtesy of Kreisarchäologie Harz 63 2.8 Quedlinburg, Schlossberg. The oldest pottery finds. Drawing by Tobias Gärtner 66

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Two sketches from charters issued by King Otto I. A: Charter from August 24, 956 B: Charter from December 5, 956. After Schulze, “Monasterium in monte constructum,” 58, figures 1 and 2 69 2.10 Quedlinburg, Marktplatz. 1: The oldest market pavement from the Ottonian period. Photograph courtesy of Kreisarchäologie Harz. 2: Fibula found in the pavement. Drawing by Tobias Gärtner 72 3.1 Quedlinburg. Convent and convent church from the west. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 91 3.2 Quedlinburg. Convent church from the southeast. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 91 3.3 Quedlinburg. Lower level side chapel on the south. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 93 3.4 Quedlinburg. Northern gatehouse, west side. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 95 3.5 Quedlinburg. Northern gatehouse, detail: traces of Romanesque gate above the present gate arch. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 97 3.6 Quedlinburg. Northern gatehouse, detail: interior with view of the Romanesque arch. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 99 3.7 Quedlinburg. Convent buildings (castle), north and west wings. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 100 3.8 Quedlinburg. Convent buildings (castle), Renaissance portal underneath wooden arcades. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 101 3.9 Quedlinburg. Convent buildings (castle), early medieval area in the cellar of the west wing. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 103 3.10 Quedlinburg. Convent church, crypt, view into the pre-Romanesque crypt. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 105 3.11 Quedlinburg. Convent church, choir and transept from the southeast. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 107 3.12 Quedlinburg. Convent church, transept and nave from the north. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 109 3.13 Quedlinburg. Convent church, south side, detail of ashlar masonry with Gothic pincer holes and Romanesque ornamentation. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 111 3.14 Quedlinburg. Convent church to the west. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 113 3.15 Quedlinburg. Convent church, north transept looking south. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 114 3.16 Quedlinburg. Convent church, building inscription of 1571 with reference to its ruined condition. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 115 3.17 Quedlinburg. Convent church, Romanesque crypt, view to the east. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 117

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Figures Quedlinburg. Convent (castle), view to the southwest. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann 119 Glossed Psalter from Essen. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS fragm. lat. 24, fols. 1v and 2r. Late 11th century. Photograph courtesy of Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena 150 Neumed hymn. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek SachsenAnhalt, Qu. Cod. 216, fol. Ir. Late 10th century. Photograph at https://digital .bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/content/titleinfo/2052423. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 159 Verses honoring St. Pusinna. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 216, fol. Iv. Late 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/content /titleinfo/2052423. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 160 Verse riddle, fol. 34r. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital .bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 164 Ornate initial Q. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek SachsenAnhalt, Qu. Cod. 76, fol. 21r. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital .bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 167 Ornate initial Q, detail. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76, fol. 21r. 10th century. Photograph at https:// digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 167 Pen trial, fol. 33v. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek SachsenAnhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek .uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 171 Fol. 23v. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle .de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 173 Marginal detail, fol. 9r. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital .bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland 174 Marginal detail, fol. 29r. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital

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.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456). Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland. 175 6.1 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigies of Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II of Quedlinburg. C.1125–30. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 184 6.2 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Adelheid I. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg 186 6.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Beatrix I. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg 187 6.4 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Adelheid II. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg 188 6.5 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Agnes II of Meißen. Early 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 196 6.6 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Sophia of Brehna (?). Early 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 198 6.7 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of an unknown abbess. Middle of the 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 204 6.8 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Gertrud of Ampfurth. Late 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 207 6.9 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Adelheid IV. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg 209 6.10 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Anna of Plauen. Middle of the 15th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 211 6.11 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Hedwig of Saxony. Early 16th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 214 7.1.1 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.2 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.3 Hannover, Museum August Kestner. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.4 Hannover, Museum August Kestner. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.5 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.6 Frankfurt a.M., Bundesbank. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.7 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.8 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.9 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1407. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 7.1.10 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227

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Find of Freckleben Cahn 95. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg 227 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1414. Coin of Abbess Meregart 230 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III 230 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1425. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III 230 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1421. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III 230 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1408. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III 230 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. 230 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1426. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III 230 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen 230 Quedlinburg, Castle Museum. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen 230 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1432. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen 230 7.2.23 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen 230 7.2.24 Quedlinburg, Castle Museum. Coin of Abbess Sophia of Brehna 230 7.3 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18205000. Bracteate of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. 1138–60. Photograph by LutzJürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann) 233 7.4 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18205143. Bracteate of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. 1138–60. Photograph by LutzJürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann) 233 7.5 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 1820144. Bracteate of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. 1138–60. Photograph by LutzJürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann) 234 7.6 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18201075. Bracteate of Abbess Adelheid III. 1161–84. Photograph by Lutz-Jürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann) 234 8.1 Exterior north wall of the nave with modern west end towers. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 236 8.2 Interior north wall of the nave. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 238 8.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, view of frieze. 12th century. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv 238 8.4 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, sections that are likely 12thcentury. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv  239 8.5 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, sections that are likely twentieth-century. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv 240

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Como, Basilica of Sant’Abbondio. Exterior from southeast. 11th century. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /File:Lombardia_Como1_tango7174.jpg 241 8.7 Como, Basilica of Sant’Abbondio, detail of main portal. 11th century. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /File:Como,_basilica_di_sant%27abbondio,_esterno_12.JPG 241 8.8 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Interior north wall, detail of a fresh-cut replacement in the stone. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 245 8.9 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Details of plaster choir decorations. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 249 8.10 Nuremberg, GNM Hs. 156142, Codex Aureus of Echternach, fol. 52r. c.1030. Photograph courtesy of GNM 251 8.11 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, with detail of birds drinking from a fountain. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 253 8.12 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Interior north wall, with detail of dragons. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 253 8.13 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, entry hall lapidarium. Detail of snake biting its own tail. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 254 8.14 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, entry hall lapidarium. Detail of finely carved birds. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 254 8.15 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, entry hall lapidarium. Detail of finely carved interlace rosettes. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 255 8.16 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. So-called “Cana Jug.” 1st century. Photograph courtesy of Quedlinburg, Domschatz 259 8.17 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Rock crystal phial in the shape of two parrots. 10th century with 13th- and 14th-century additions. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 260 8.18 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Southern transept pier, detail of birds. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 261 8.19 Southern transept arm apse, frieze. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv) 270 8.20 Southern transept arm apse, frieze. Photograph by Shirin Fozi 271 9.1 Quedlinburg, Collegiate Church, portal. c.1100. Photograph of c.1960 from the archive of Clemens Bley 281 9.2 Quedlinburg, Collegiate Church, nave, capital with eagles. c.1100. Photograph by Clemens Bley 282 9.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt. Capital with masks. c.1100. Photograph by Clemens Bley 283 9.4 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt. Tombs of King Henry I (center) and Queen Mathilde. 10th century. Photograph by Clemens Bley 284

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Reconstruction of the wedding carpet following Julius Lessing (1903) and Johanna Flemming (1997). c.1200. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt / Preuß/Ulrich. Montage by Wolfgang Fischer, concept by Clemens Bley 287 Reconstructed wedding carpet in the high choir (reconstructed 1938–40) in front of the high altar in the abbey church of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg. Photograph: montage by Wolfgang Fischer, concept by Clemens Bley 288 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Carpet, first panel, fragments I+II. c.1200. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt 291 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Bottom plaque from the Reliquary of St. Servatius. c.1200. Domschatz Quedlinburg. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley 295 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt fresco. Archbishop (St. Servatius?) and unknown donor (right). Last quarter of the 12th century. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley 297 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt fresco. Susanna in the bath. Last quarter of the 12th century. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley 299 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt fresco. Susanna with the judges. Last quarter of the 12th century. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley 301 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Servatius, front, ivory core, c.870, gold, gems, and jewels added c.1200. 13.6 × 24.9 × 12.4 cm. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 309 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Servatius, back. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 310 Reliquary of St. Servatius, top. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 314 Plate number 31a in Wilhelm Steuerwaldt and Carl Virgen, Die mittelalterlichen Kunstschätze im Zittergewölbe der Schlosskirche zu Quedlinburg. Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Ornamentstichsammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photograph by Dietmar Katz 315 Relief (fragment): four apostles with the zodiac signs of Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo. Inv.-Nr. MA 174, Foto Nr. D70109 © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München. Photograph by Bastian Krack 317 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, comb, ivory, for liturgical and ceremonial use, depicting Sagittarius shooting at Capricorn. Court School of Charles the Bald, possibly made in Metz. c.875. Accession Number A.544– 1910. Photograph courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum 319 Animal sign for Capricorn (fol. 256v), Fulda Sacramentary. Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim. c.975. Photograph courtesy of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen 321

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Drapery on the female personification of Libra (fol. 255r), Fulda Sacramentary. Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim. c.975. Photograph courtesy of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen 322 Drapery on the female personification of Virgo (fol. 254v), Fulda Sacramentary. Niedersächsische Staats und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim. c.975. Photograph courtesy of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen 323 Representation of the zodiac with names and corresponding months, twelve sons of Jacob, the twelve apostles, and various deities (fol. 23r). Isidorus Hispalensis, Register of Books of the Monastery of Fulda, Recipes, Blessings, Astronomic Tables, Jerome. Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F III 15a. c. 8th or 9th century. Photograph at https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/ubb /F-III-0015a 329 Milan, Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore, Chapel of Sant’Aquilino, apse mosaic. Traditio Legis. c. late 4th century. Photograph by Giovanni Dall’Orto at Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /File:1398_-_Milano_-_S._Lorenzo_- Cappella_S._Aquilino_-_Traditio_Legis _-_Dall%27Orto_-_18-May-2007.jpg 333 Side panel of the Sarcophagus of Stilicho, c.387 and 390, from at least the 10th century used as the pulpit in the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio in Milan. Photograph by Sailko at Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia .org/wiki/File:Sarcofago_detto_di_stilicone,_IV_secolo,_05.jpg 333 Psalm 65(64) (fol. 36r), Utrecht Psalter. Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MSB ibi. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr32. c.830. Photograph courtesy of Utrecht Universiteitsbibliotheek (https://psalter.library.uu.nl/page/79) 335 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, Confessio. View toward the west and of King Henry I and Queen Mathilde’s graves. 10th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 337 Cleveland Museum of Art. Portable altar of Countess Gertrude depicting the Archangel Michael and other angels, and Christ and Apostles, gold, gems, and enamel on wood core, with porphyry altar stone. c.1045. CMA 1931.462. Photograph by Genevra Kornbluth 339 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Servatius, top panel without mounts. c.870. 24.9 cm × 12.4 cm. Photograph courtesy of Domschatz Quedlinburg 340 Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. Wolbero Portable Altar (Inv.-Nr. Kg 54:231). c.1176–1200 and 1701–1800. Photograph courtesy of Rheinisches Bildarchiv, rba c 003883 340 Diözesanmuseum Bamberg. Star Cloak of Emperor Henry II, created in Regensburg between 1018 and 1020. Photograph by Uwe Gaasch 346

xvi 10.19 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9 11.10 11.11 11.12 11.12

12.1

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Figures St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Exterior of the Zitter. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz 349 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Fish-shaped rock crystal. 10th century with fitting c.1230–50. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 367 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of Henry I. c.1230. Photograph ©bpk/ Ann Münchow 370 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Cover of Samuhel Gospels. c.1225–30. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 373 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of Henry I with lid open (photomontage). Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 375 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Katherine. c.1230–40. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 381 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Katherine, detail: Christ in Majesty. c.1230–40. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 382 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Katherine, detail: Crucifixion. c.1230–40. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 383 Freiburg, Augustinermuseum. Chest (so-called Brieflade). Second third of the 13th century. Photograph by Sebastian Polixa 385 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary cross. Early 13th century. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 387 London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Soltikoff Cross. Second half of 12th century, Photograph courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum 388 Domschatz Quedlinburg. Fish-shaped rock crystal set as ostensorium, crystal 10th century, mount c.1250. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 391 Domschatz Quedlinburg. Ostensorium. c.1250. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow 392 Domschatz Quedlinburg. Rock crystal phial in the shape of two parrots, detail: Veronica. Middle of the 13th century. Photograph by Janos Stekovics 393 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. 12th-century nave with Gothic east choir. Photograph from the early 20th century courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv 406 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Nave after SS-led reconstructions. 1938. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv 415 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Nave after first wave of postwar renovations. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv 418

Notes on Contributors Clemens Bley studied art history, history, and political science in Potsdam and Berlin. His MA thesis, completed at Universität Potsdam, is entitled “Herrschaft und symbolishes Handeln im Kaiserlichen freien weltlichen Stift Quedlinburg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.” Bley is also the editor of the volume Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. A freelance academic, he is particularly interested in the social and cultural history of the nobility in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Karen Blough is Professor emerita of Art History at the State University of New York, College at Plattsburgh. She has lectured extensively and published numerous journal articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics in German medieval art. Her current research concerns visual and haptic access, from the Middle Ages to secularization, to the abbatial tomb monuments in St. Servatius, Quedlinburg, and early modern reception of late antique and medieval objects in St. Servatius’s treasury. Shirin Fozi joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the Paul and Jill Ruddock Associate Curator in the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters in 2022 after nearly a decade on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Romanesque Tomb Effigies: Death and Redemption in Medieval Europe, 1000– 1200 (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021) and co-editor of Christ on the Cross: The Boston Crucifix and the Rise of Medieval Wood Sculpture (Brepols Publishers, 2020). In addition to books and articles on monumental sculpture in the tenth through early thirteenth centuries she has published essays on the modern history of medieval collections, especially concerning materials in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Fozi currently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art and the Council of the Medieval Academy of America. Tobias Gärtner studied Pre-and Protohistory and Medieval Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology/ Folklore and History and completed his PhD on the excavations in the deserted medieval village of Edingerode near Hannover. His habilitation thesis deals with the history of the city and monastery of Quedlinburg in the Early and High Middle Ages based on archaeological sources, and with the development of

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medieval ceramics in the Harz-Elbe region. Since 2016 he has been Professor of Archaeology of the Middle Ages and Modern Period at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Eliza Garrison is Professor of History of Art in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Her research is primarily focused on the art and historiography of the Ottonian period, and she is broadly interested in processes of political representation and theories of portraiture. She is currently at work on a book devoted to the Uta Codex. Evan A. Gatti specializes in late 10th- and early 11th-century art commissioned by bishops in connection to and conflict with the Ottonian and Salian empires. She was the co-editor for Envisioning the Bishop: Images and the Episcopacy in the Middle Ages with Sigrid Danielson (Brepols, 2014) and is currently at work on several projects concerned with concepts of facsimile, re-presentation, and historiography with a particular focus on the rotolus featuring scenes from the Acts of the Apostles held in the Archivio Capitolare in Vercelli (Rotoli figurati 5). Gatti is a member and current president of EPISCOPUS: The Society for the Study of Bishops & the Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages and works closely with the Power of the Bishop Conference, with whom she is a partner in publishing conference proceedings. G. Ulrich Großmann studied art history, European ethnology, and Christian archaeology in Würzburg und Marburg from 1973 to 1979. He received his doctorate in art history in 1980 and completed postdoctoral work in architecture at the Universität Hannover in 1994 and in medieval art history at the Universität Bamberg in 1997. From 1980 to 1986, Großmann served as architectural historian at the Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum in Detmold. He was then founding director of the Weserrenaissance-Museum Schloß Brake in Lemgo (1986–94). From 1994 to 2019, he was General Director of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Großmann has served on the boards of numerous cultural entities and was from 2012 to 2016 the president of the Internationaler Kunsthistorikerverband (International Association of Art Historians; CIHA). Annie Krieg is an instructor of art history in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University where she teaches global survey courses as well as upper division courses on medieval and modern European art and architecture and feminist art history. She earned her PhD in the history of art and architecture

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from the University of Pittsburgh where she focused on medievalism and modern architecture in Central Europe. Her current research centers on incorporating materials collections and OERs into art history courses, the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), and inclusive pedagogy. Manfred Mehl is a retired Gymnasium teacher and the author of numerous numismatic corpuses and related publications. His specialization is the history of coins and money in Saxony-Anhalt, particularly during the Middle Ages. Mehl received the Bundesverdienstkreuz in acknowledgment of his scholarship and publications. Katharina Ulrike Mersch is senior lecturer in the history of the Middle Ages at the Ruhr-University in Bochum and has also taught at the universities in Frankfurt am Main and Göttingen. The author most recently of Missachtung, Anerkennung und Kreativität: Exkommunizierte Laien im 13. Jahrhundert (Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2020), she studies the history of women’s convents from a cultural perspective, religious exclusion within the broader frame of social history, and medieval conceptions of crowds. Christian Popp studied history, political science, and philosophy at the University of Trier and the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1993 to 1999. He completed his doctorate in 2005 at the Humboldt University of Berlin with a study of the collegiate church of Stendal in the diocese of Halberstadt. Since 2008 he is editor of the research project “Germania Sacra” at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. One of his main research interests is the history and liturgy of canoness convents in the Middle Ages. Helene Scheck is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Albany. She recently co-edited a collection of essays in honor of Helen Damico entitled New Readings on Women and Early Medieval English Literature and Culture (Arc Humanities Press, 2019). Her scholarly interests center on women’s intellectual culture in early medieval Europe. Adam Stead is Research Associate (Collection Documentation) at the Museum Schnütgen in Cologne. He specializes in Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture, with a particular focus on Germany. His publications have appeared in Architectura and Studies in Iconography.

Figure 0.1 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18284432. Bracteate with abbatial portrait of Beatrix II. 1138–60. Photograph by Christian Stoess

Introduction Karen Blough In the early Middle Ages, the imperial convent of St. Servatius at ­Quedlinburg in the modern eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt was among the wealthiest, most prestigious, and most politically powerful religious houses in ­Germany.1 Subject only to the authority of the emperor and the pope, it shared this status with a very few other female religious communities, such as those at Essen and Gandersheim, that likewise enjoyed a close relationship with the Ottonian and to a lesser extent Salian dynasties that ruled as German kings and Roman emperors in the 10th and 11th centuries. St. Servatius was founded atop the castle hill (Schlossberg) at Quedlinburg in 936 by Otto I, “the Great” (936–73),2 at the behest of his mother, Queen Mathilde, widow of the first Ottonian monarch, Henry I, “the Fowler,” who reigned from 919 until his death in 936.3 Mathilde served from 936 until her death in 968 as first superior of the canonical community. The royal couple are buried in the crypt of the present church of St. Servatius, their tombs still visually accessible. From its inception and throughout its history, which came to a close in the wave of secularization in 1802–03, St. Servatius housed not nuns but canonesses, who lived in accordance with the principles of the ­Institutio ­sanctimonialium promulgated at Aachen in 816.4 The 1 Throughout this volume, the terms “abbey” and “convent” are used interchangeably to refer to the female religious community of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg. Similarly, the church of St. Servatius may be referred to as the convent, canonical, or collegiate church. 2 In this volume, the dates specified for secular and ecclesiastical authorities are typically those of their reigns. To avoid repetition, dates for individuals mentioned in multiple ­chapters appear at the first mention and thereafter only as needed for context. See the list of Quedlinburg abbesses, German kings and emperors, and bishops of Halberstadt at the back of the volume. 3 Burg and Schloss are both German words for castle. A Berg is a hill. The site’s origins are ­discussed in this volume by Tobias Gärtner in “Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th Centuries: An Archaeological View.” 4 While both nuns and canonesses lived lives devoted to God, the latter typically enjoyed greater freedoms and a less austere lifestyle. On the distinction between the two states, see JoAnn McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 176–79. Specific to German canonesses are Michel Parisse, “Les chanoinesses dans l’empire germanique (IXe–Xe siècles),” Francia 6 (1978): 107–26, and Karl Heinrich Schäfer‘s Die Kanonissenstifter im deutschen Mittelalter: Ihre Entwicklung und innere Einrichtung im Zusammenhang mit dem altchristlichen Sanktimonialentum (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1907). For the order promulgated at Aachen, see Thomas Schilp, Norm und © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_002

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members of the ­community belonged chiefly to the Saxon aristocracy. Their primary ­obligations were the liturgically ritualized commemoration of the abbey’s founders and their relatives and the education of young Saxon noblewomen. The convent enjoyed considerable imperial largesse and favor throughout the 10th and 11th centuries, when a series of Ottonian and Salian princesses served as abbess, and it was during this period that its position as a vibrant center of devotional, literary, and especially visual culture was established. Quedlinburg is unique, for example, in the extent of its series of abbatial effigies, now accommodated in the crypt of the convent church, that span nearly its entire medieval history. A visit to the treasury of St. Servatius to this day reveals a large and impressive display of objects of great antiquity and immense value, many gifted to the convent in the early Middle Ages as expressions of royal esteem. But the last princess-abbess of St. Servatius died in 1125/26 and her successors were almost exclusively Saxon noblewomen. The subsequent history of the abbey reveals a near-constant battle to maintain its traditional rights and privileges in the face of meddling in its internal affairs and outright threats to its physical integrity and security from an array of both clerical and secular authorities. The secular, male overseers of the community, the Vögte, or reeves,5 became increasingly powerful over time and tended to put their own interests before those of the canonesses. Additionally, the town of Quedlinburg eventually chafed under the overlordship of the abbess of St. Servatius and a lengthy campaign on the part of the civic government to free itself from abbatial control was an ongoing point of contention. Quedlinburg was the site of military hostilities on more than one occasion in the high and late Middle Ages, and not every abbess proved herself a gifted negotiator with external adversaries or an able administrator of internal conventual affairs. Quedlinburg Abbey thus struggled through a series of vicissitudes, particularly from the 13th century forward. Nevertheless, it remained a significant political and cultural touchpoint on the German landscape throughout the Middle Ages. Over the course of centuries, furthermore, the abbesses of Quedlinburg repeatedly used visual ­ irklichkeit religiöser Frauengemeinschaften im Frühmittelalter: Die Institutio sanctimoniW alium ­Aquisgranensis des Jahres 816 und die Problematik der Verfassung von Frauenkommunitäten (Göttingen: ­Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). 5 Vogt (plural Vögte) best translates into English as reeve, although scholars have also used advocate, steward, and guardian. Vogtei, referring to such an individual’s official ­position and sphere of authority is rendered in English as bailiwick. The position of the reeve in the ­German monastic context differs from that of the reeve in medieval England. In ­Germany, the reeve was normally—but not exclusively—the secular overseer of a convent.

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means to reassert the community’s foundational prestige, manipulating, positioning, and displaying imperial gifts received in a bygone era to assert St. Servatius’s eminent status. The art historical focus of several of the essays in the present volume thus mirrors the actual practices of Quedlinburg’s abbatiate in foregrounding the visual as transmitters of conventual history and identity just as did the abbesses of St. Servatius centuries ago. Quedlinburg’s medieval history is well documented. The Annales ­Quedlinburgenses [Quedlinburg Annals] is a rich trove of first-hand, explicit information about St. Servatius written on-site in the 11th century, while Anton Ulrich von Erath’s Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis of 1764 is a chronologically configured compilation of surviving documentation from the abbey. A general sense of St. Servatius’s conventual and devotional culture may be gleaned from the medieval manuscripts that survive from or are known to have existed in its library. Many categories of text are represented, including among others biblical and liturgical literature, hagiographies, patristics, history, and classical authors. The nature of the texts and the evidence they display for their use in medieval Quedlinburg is enlightening, as the chapters in this volume by Christian Popp and Helene Scheck reveal.6 Enlightenment scholars were enthusiastic Quedlinburg researchers: ­Friederich Ernst Kettner’s Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des ­Kayserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg … [Church and Reformation ­History of the Imperial Secular Convent at Quedlinburg …] and Antiquitates ­Quedlinburgenses [Antiquities of Quedlinburg] appeared in 1710 and 1712 respectively. These were followed by Gottfried Christian Voigt’s three-volume Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg [History of the Convent of Quedlinburg] in 1786–91 and Johann Fritsch’s two-volume Geschichte des vormaligen Reichsstiftes und der Stadt Quedlinburg [History of the Former Imperial Convent and of the Town of Quedlinburg] in 1828. Several writers of the 18th century emphasized the content of the Quedlinburg treasury, including Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland [Remarkable Travels through Lower Saxony, Holland, and England]; 1753), Johann Kaspar Eberhard Wineken (Antiquarische Anmerkungen über ein altes und schätzbares in dem Zittergewölbe der hohen Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg aufgewahrtes 6 See the table of 10th- and 11th-century library holdings for the abbeys at Gandersheim, Essen, and Quedlinburg in Katrinette Bodarwé, “Bibliotheken in sächsischen Frauenstiften,” in Essen und die sächsischen Frauenstifte im Frühmittelalter, ed. Jan Gerchow and Thomas Schilp (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2003), 87–112 at 110–12. Bodarwé’s Sanctimoniales litteratae: ­Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg is an important study of literacy and education in the imperial canoness communities of early medieval Germany (Münster: Aschendorff, 2004).

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Gefäβ [Antiquarian Notes on an Old and ­Valuable Vessel ­Preserved in the Treasury Room of the High Convent Church at Quedlinburg]; 1761), and Johannes ­Wallmann (Abhandlung von den schätzbaren Alterthümern der hohen ­Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg, die mit Anekdoten, besonders der kaiserlichen ottonischen Familie, erläutert worden: Nebst der Geschichte eines bey Quedlinburg ausbegrabenen Einhorns [Essay on the Valuable Antiquities at Quedlinburg, Which Are Elucidated by Anecdotes, Especially about the Imperial Ottonian Family: Together with the History of a Unicorn Excavated at Quedlinburg]; 1776). In the latter half of the 19th century, Prussian conservator Friedrich von Quast together with architect Konrad Wilhelm Hase published the results of archaeological excavations undertaken at St. Servatius in Die Gräber der Schloβkirche zu Quedlinburg [The Graves in the Castle Church at Quedlinburg; 1877]. These important early accounts were complemented in the 20th century by extensive archaeological reports and scholarly analysis of many aspects of conventual culture, particularly the visual and literary.7 There is thus a plethora of materials on medieval Quedlinburg. However, these are practically exclusively in German. For this reason, a volume such as this, in English, with chapters on crucial aspects of Quedlinburg’s medieval ­history and culture, is a significant desideratum. Most chapters take as their point of departure a broad topic within the convent’s history, then refining the focus in accordance with each scholar’s particular area of interest and expertise. The Bibliography includes the standard studies of Quedlinburg history and culture as well as the most recent research, which in turn familiarizes the reader with contemporary discipline-specific methodologies in the Anglo-American and German contexts, as do the chapters themselves, written as they are by a diverse range of European and North American scholars. All essays are geared towards a college or university audience but are also accessible to the interested general reader. Half of the chapters in this volume privilege the visual evidence for Quedlinburg’s history, including the ten surviving abbatial effigies; the ­image-­bearing coins issued by Quedlinburg’s abbesses in the 12th and 13th centuries; the sculpted frieze that decorates the upper wall, inside and out, of the convent church; the knotted carpet embellished with imagery inspired by a Late Antique didactic poem; the crypt frescoes; and the treasury holdings of St. ­Servatius, with emphasis on several 13th-century reliquaries. The single overarching theme that emerges from these disparate studies is the vital role of the visual in the construction and propagation of a unique conventual identity 7 See the individual essays’ Works Cited pages and the full Bibliography at the end of this ­volume.

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that insisted on the community’s prominence on the German ­political landscape throughout the Middle Ages. As these scholars demonstrate on the basis of their individual foci, the abbesses of St. Servatius repeatedly exploited the potential of these objects to recall the original imperial circumstances of the convent’s foundation and its prestige and wealth, and to assert the respect due it from the secular and religious authorities that threatened its stability in the later medieval centuries. The present volume begins with Katharina Ulrike Mersch’s essay entitled “­Quedlinburg Abbey’s Medieval History in Ever-Changing Political and ­Religious Frameworks: A Survey.” This chronologically organized chapter introduces the reader to the fundamental historical facts about the St. Servatius community, taking particular note of intersections with contemporary conflicts such as the Investiture Controversy in the late 11th to early 12th centuries and the lengthy succession crisis that followed the death of Henry VI in 1197. Mersch emphasizes the activities of the Quedlinburg abbesses in response to external forces such as these. Her essay is followed by two chapters that ­discuss the conventual buildings based on archaeological evidence. Tobias Gärtner’s chapter, “Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th Centuries: An Archaeological View,” has as its point of departure excavations on the Schlossberg and in the town of Quedlinburg, surveying the theories and conclusions of 20th-century researchers but correcting and amplifying them based on Gärtner’s own work on 10th- and 11th-century Quedlinburg. The Schlossberg was already heavily inhabited in prehistoric times, but the archaeological record makes clear that the real impetus for the growth of Quedlinburg was Henry I’s predilection for the site, which Gärtner associates with the king’s military campaigns against the ­Hungarians. Gärtner discusses the archaeological evidence for the pre-­Romanesque churches of St. Servatius and the adjacent graveyard as well as the church of St. Wiperti, a canonry established by the widowed Queen Mathilde and subject to the oversight of the abbesses of Quedlinburg. Gärtner furthermore investigates the evidence for settlement in the area of the medieval market at Quedlinburg, revealed by recent, extensive excavations. A market was established at Quedlinburg by Otto III in a charter of 994 and radiocarbon dating of animal bones mixed with gravel in the area indicates that it was in fact active already before the year 1000. While the specifics of the mercantile activity carried out at the market are still unknown, its vigor is suggested by the fact that the abbess of Quedlinburg was granted the right to mint coins very shortly after its establishment. Furthermore, Gärtner points out that the merchants’ association already in existence in the first half of the 11th century formed the nucleus of the emergent town of Quedlinburg, also attested by the housing settlements of c.1000 that have been discovered in the area around the old market

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as well as in the northern part of the Altstadt, or old town. G ­ ärtner’s work provides insight into the origins of the town of Quedlinburg whose ­relations with the abbess of St. Servatius would prove complex over many centuries. His contribution is complemented by G. Ulrich Großmann’s chapter, “The Conventual Buildings from an Architectural-Historical Perspective,” which presents a detailed and methodical overview of the original and current buildings on the abbey’s grounds. Großmann’s essay reveals how very meager are the extant remnants of the original conventual buildings. The showpiece of the complex was always the church, which began as a chapel founded on the site by Henry I. That chapel was then augmented by Queen Mathilde after her husband’s burial there, and that church was further expanded in the late 10th and early 11th ­century. Many scholars believe that this structure burned down, however, in 1070, and the present church, consecrated in 1129, is its replacement. Over centuries, St. Servatius underwent modifications that were in keeping with contemporary tastes, especially during the Gothic and Baroque phases of European architectural history. However, its current appearance, which largely conforms with its original, Romanesque aspect, is the result of 19thand 20th-century renovations. As Großmann writes, the church of St. Servatius “is essentially historicist.” However, the remainder of the conventual buildings present an overview of the changing styles and aesthetic preferences of the millennium throughout which the complex has survived. The theme of essential historicism is fundamental to the final chapter of the volume, Annie Krieg’s essay entitled “Restored, Repurposed, Reassessed: The Abbey Church of Quedlinburg across Five Germanys,” which examines the church of St. Servatius as it was altered by 19th-century building projects, renovations in the 1930s and 40s at the direction of the National Socialist regime, and further renovations undertaken after World War II. Krieg points out that, for Germans of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Gothic was perceived as a French style, whereas the earlier Romanesque manner was understood to be native to Germany. The current Romanesque appearance of St. Servatius was the result of the intense engagement with the site on the part of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), who idolized Henry I. Under Himmler, visible Gothic elements in the church were removed or obscured and replaced with Nazi iconography, while the structure as a whole was transformed from a Christian house of worship into a secular space that celebrated the Nazi ethos. St. Servatius was reconsecrated in the summer of 1945, in the wake of which Nazi imagery was removed, though some Nazi-era structural alterations were retained. The severe Romanesque structural aesthetic accorded with modern tastes and its relationship to the recent fascist regime was soon forgotten. The church performed a role, rather, in the repression of

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historical memory in the German Democratic Republic, while in the era of reunification, its preservation has been a vehicle for the spiritual and cultural rapprochement of the two Germanys of the post-war period. The chapters that fall between Großmann and Krieg’s essays all address one or more aspects of conventual identity and its cultural expression. Engagement with texts among the canonesses of St. Servatius and the ways in which texts elucidate commemorative practices in the convent are the subjects of chapters four and five. The focus of Christian Popp’s essay is the commemorative traditions at Quedlinburg as they can be reconstructed from a variety of textual sources. Popp notes that the principal task of the convent was the commemoration of its Ottonian founders, an obligation particularly associated with royal convents like Quedlinburg, Essen, and Gandersheim because of the educationally privileged inhabitants’ unusual facility with the Latin language. At Quedlinburg, Ottonian memoria continued to be actualized long after the familial relationship was disrupted, although it was restricted to the commemoration of King Henry and Queen Mathilde as well as the two Ottonian abbesses, Henry and Mathilde’s granddaughter Mathilde (968–99) and their great-granddaughter, Adelheid I (999–1044). Additionally, the preservation of the names of living and deceased members of the community, particularly abbesses, was a vital responsibility. In light of the integral role commemoration played at Quedlinburg, necrological evidence is surprisingly spotty. However, a number of texts survive that permit some insight into the practice. The earliest of these is the consecratio cerei, an Easter prayer inserted into the Otto-­ Adelheid Gospels of c.1000, in which reference is made to Otto III, Adelheid I, and, in a later hand, Adelheid’s successor, Beatrix I (1044–61), and a bishop of Halberstadt. On the same quire, in yet a third hand, a necrology appears with 21 names—yet only three of them correlate with those appearing in the Annales Quedlinburgenses. In contrast, there is a strong agreement between the 400 names copied from a Quedlinburg model into the Merseburger Totenbuch and those appearing in the Annales. Additional sources spanning the period from about 1020 to the mid 13th century include a calendar in the Quedlinburg Antiphonary, the fragmentary Wendhusen necrology, a calendar within a psalter from either the diocese of Halberstadt or Hildesheim, and the Golden Calendar from St. Michael’s at Hildesheim. By reading these disparate sources together and analysing their divergences and their agreements, Popp adds to our understanding of the commemorative practices that were the ­community’s obligation from the outset. In “Psallite sapienter: Psalms and Learning at Quedlinburg,” Helene Scheck uses the compilation of Psalm commentaries in Halle, Universitätsbibliothek Quedlinburg Codex 76 as her principal example of the intellectual engagement

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with the Psalms that occurred at St. Servatius. She posits the Psalms as the central text in monastic education and interrogates their role as a site of intellectual development on the part of the elite women who inhabited the royal convents of medieval Germany. For Scheck, knowledge of the Psalms, expressed in multifarious ways, was a core component of unitary institutional identity that, however, differed among communities. While the Church insisted on a single interpretation of each Psalm verse, several factors destabilized that consistency. One was the vagaries of textual transmission. Another was the effect of Psalm performance: read to oneself or aloud, spoken or sung, in private or in public, the ways in which a Psalm was performed and experienced contributed significantly to its interpretation. That experience furthermore nourished intellectual development. The Halle codex seems to have been written for and at Quedlinburg and includes a portion of Cassiodorus’s Explanatio psalmorum as well as texts on the Psalms by Early Christian and early medieval authors. Scheck demonstrates how this unique compilation reveals the intellectual work of a canoness active at St. Servatius in the 10th century whose understanding of the Psalms was informed not only by her reading of the source text and commentaries on it, but also by her personal, lived experience of Psalm performance at the convent. Karen Blough’s chapter on “Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg” surveys the ten surviving effigies of St. Servatius’s abbesses. Made of stucco, stone, or, in one case, brass, these tomb slabs span 400 years and the abbesses they honor served over half a millennium. The earliest three effigies were executed as a group around 1125 but commemorate the Ottonian and Salian princess-abbesses of the 11th century: Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II (1061–95). The appearance of this triple monument, which may well have initially been commissioned by Abbess Agnes I (1110–25/26), probably responds to the conventual agenda of her successor, Abbess Gerburg (1126–37). It is not simply a magnificent, large-scale celebration of its imperial subjects, but comprises a statement of abbatial and communal identity that inspired and served as a formal and iconographical model for subsequent effigies, even as modernisms were introduced over time. Of course, not every abbess of medieval Quedlinburg is commemorated by an effigy, and Blough argues that, typically, the commission of an abbatial image was motivated by a conventual crisis to which the visual assertion of St. Servatius’s historically prestigious identity responded. Recalling the first three, imperial abbesses was a valuable tool to this end, explaining the relative conservatism and the consistency, across hundreds of years, of the abbatial tomb image at Quedlinburg. The abbatial effigies thus functioned, in much the same way as did the art objects discussed by other authors, as mnemonic devices that helped stabilize the community’s circumstances under duress.

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The concept of the Quedlinburg abbatiate was also expressed visually in the seals and coins commissioned by the abbesses of St. Servatius from the time of Adelheid I forward. These have been extensively documented in Manfred Mehl’s Die Münzen des Stiftes Quedlinburg [The Coins of Quedlinburg Convent]. In the present volume, Mehl’s chapter, “Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg: Romanesque Craftwork of Great Quality,” focuses on the imagery and inscriptions on several bracteates—a type of penny—issued by five abbesses of St. Servatius between as early as about 1150 and as late as 1226, all found in a hoard at Freckleben (Saxony-Anhalt) in 1860. These portraits of office do not correlate iconographically with the effigies, unsurprisingly considering their very different, commercial, and public purpose. On coinage, the abbess was typically portrayed seated against a backdrop of architecture that, rather than representing conventual buildings, instead conveyed the extent of the territory she commanded. Her ornate robe and the absence of humility in her pose and gestures suggest her rank, while the veil and the attributes—most typically a book or a lily staff or scepter—communicate her monastic identity and role and status within church hierarchy. As G. Ulrich Großmann’s chapter demonstrates, St. Servatius at Quedlinburg was the site of significant architectural and architectural-decorative achievement, particularly in the first two centuries of its existence. Shirin Fozi explores this further in an essay emphasizing the sculpted stone frieze, depicting real and fantastic beasts among vegetal and floral designs, that runs along the upper walls of both the exterior and the interior of the convent church. Originally dating to the Romanesque building program that concluded with the church’s consecration in 1129, the frieze is heavily deteriorated in some ­sections, while others are the result of modern renovations. The absence of a technical analysis that would reveal which sections of the frieze are medieval and which are modern impedes firm formal and iconographical conclusions. In her review of the existing scholarship on the frieze, Fozi rejects the exclusive focus on a Lombard model and on the ethnicity of the sculptors that informs older publications and introduces recent scholarship on Romanesque sculpture with potential relevance to the Quedlinburg frieze. Still, methodological deficiencies and biases, such as the privileging of French and Spanish sites and of a misogynistic, male monastic context, detract from the applicability of much existing scholarship in the context of St. Servatius: the art historian studying this frieze must adopt a different viewpoint, one that emphasizes instead its location, its audience, and its patronage. Fozi points to the frieze’s origins in the socio-politically chaotic early 12th century, when the community’s prestige, which depended on its Ottonian origins and close ties to the ­Ottonian and Salian emperors, began to decline. This author argues that

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the frieze enframes the contemporary triple effigial monument commemorating the last Ottonian and two Salian abbesses as well as the sacred objects that were held in Quedlinburg’s treasury and deployed liturgically: all are meant to be seen together and they interrelate formally and contextually in a variety of complex ways. Fozi notes, for instance, the Mediterranean origin of the frieze style, of the rock crystal vessels that served as reliquaries at St. Servatius, and even of the (effigial) body of Abbess Adelheid I, the daughter of Otto II’s Byzantine wife, Theophanu. In this way, the frieze contributes to an aesthetic environment that was formed in part from an enthusiasm for southern and eastern models that made sense in a community whose own imperial identity created associations with Roman and Byzantine visual culture. The frieze thus represents an aesthetic that, far from deriving from a single, Lombard source, instead reflects what Fozi calls a “network of associations” with Italy and ­Byzantium that resonated with a community whose wealth and power were forged from its Ottonian origins. In his essay, “Of Donors and Patrons: The Abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg as a Site of Remembrance, Distinction, and Representation,” Clemens Bley focuses on the ways in which the arts and architecture at St. Servatius recall its Ottonian founding. He traces this principle through the architecture and architectural decoration of the convent church, whose Romanesque phase for him synthesizes Saxon traditions and Lombard elements with ultimately classical derivation, in this way relating to the abbey’s generically imperial but specifically Saxon origins. Bley’s chapter emphasizes the frescoes that survive in the crypt of St. Servatius and the knotted carpet with imagery deriving from Martianus Capella’s Late Antique poem, “Wedding of Philology and Mercury.” Agnes II (1184–1203) was the documented patron of the latter and it is quite plausible that she likewise commissioned the crypt frescoes, which conform with stylistic conventions of the late 12th century. In each case, the commission visualizes conventual identity. The carpet, of which portions of four of five original registers survive, bears a dedication to St. Servatius and Agnes II’s name as patron in the inscription. Intended to be placed in front of the high altar of the abbey church, it functions as a Christian exegesis of well-known Roman themes. Bley identifies Agnes herself in the figure of Philology and interprets the carpet’s program as a statement of the abbess’s concern for the education of the canonesses in her charge, the ultimate objective being the knowledge of God that enables spiritual salvation. The dedication to the convent’s patron saint reifies his protective role in the community and serves to commemorate the founding family whose devotion he particularly enjoyed. The crypt frescoes have suffered losses that render the program challenging to interpret holistically. Bley notes, however, the portraits in the western crypt, in

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which Emperor Otto I and Empress Adelheid are unequivocally distinguishable and where an abbess is also depicted. Whether this figure represents the program’s patron—on stylistic grounds possibly Adelheid III (1161–84) but for Bley more likely Agnes II—or the Ottonian princess-abbess Mathilde or even the convent’s first superior, Henry I’s widow, Queen Mathilde, this section of the program relates to the Ottonian circumstances of the founding of St. ­Servatius. The frescoes in the eastern portion, in turn, represent a mixture of Old and New Testament narratives. Particular emphasis is placed on the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders, which presents a strong role model of the chastity that was expected of the canonesses of St. Servatius, especially important in the age of monastic reform that questioned the spiritual rigor and morality of the female canonical lifestyle. Bley argues that the carpet and the fresco program collectively contribute to the ongoing propagation of a conventual identity based on the commemoration of the abbey’s founders and a reputation established on the abbesses’ care for their community and especially their attention to the education and virtue of its inhabitants, all with the goal of the eternal redemption of the individual community members’ souls. Two chapters in this volume address the purpose-built and repurposed reliquaries that survive in the Quedlinburg treasury. Both Eliza Garrison and Evan Gatti have long studied the Reliquary of St. Servatius, which originated in the environment of the Court School of Charles the Bald around 870 and which, the authors argue, was renovated around 1200 as part of Abbess Agnes II’s ambitious cultural agenda. In their essay, Garrison and Gatti collaborate on a holistic examination of this reliquary from its 9th-century origins into its possible relevance in Quedlinburg’s 20th-century history. The authors situate the box in Fulda, where the intellectual climate was commensurate with its original iconographical program, consisting principally of 11 apostles and Christ standing under arcades surmounted by zodiac imagery. A tradition of linking the zodiac signs with individual apostles existed at Fulda, and formal parallels are identifiable between the apostles and zodiac signs on the reliquary and similar imagery in the miniatures of the Fulda Sacramentary of 975. Garrison and Gatti posit a number of textual sources for the representation under arches of the apostles and Christ, all of which relate to Christ’s dual nature manifested in the interval between his death on the cross and his ascension into heaven. The zodiac signs both suggest Christ’s universal dominion and serve an apotropaic function in this context. The authors believe that the Reliquary of St. Servatius originated as a portable altar. The depression under 13th-century green glass atop it implies this function, and the iconography, with its suggestion of duality and liminality, is appropriate for the Christian altar. The box appears to have been at Quedlinburg already in 1021, and Garrison and Gatti associate its

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imagery with the role of Quedlinburg as the locus of Ottonian Easter celebrations as well as military activity conceived at and directed from there. Before the erection of the dedicated treasury space known as the Zitter, the reliquary may well have been accommodated in arcuated niches of the confessio, the burial site of Henry I and Queen Mathilde that also seems to have housed relics. Agnes II and her provost, Oderade, were demonstrably responsible for commissioning a new silver base for the reliquary of St. ­Servatius as part of the historicizing agenda Agnes undertook to assert the status and privilege of her convent when these were threatened in the early 13th century. The iconography and the form of the base relate to the box’s original program. For instance, the saints represented on the former are understood to be the apostles’ successors, while formally, the small golden gates that support the 13th-century filigree resemble the arcades under which the apostles stand. As Adam Stead shows in the following chapter, “Matter and Spirit: Reliquaries at St. Servatius in the 13th Century,” a visual correlation among the treasury objects at Quedlinburg is very intentional and relates to the convent’s place in the surrounding socio-­ political environment. Garrison and Gatti demonstrate this to be true within a single object as well. In his chapter on the reworking of a variety of objects in 13th-century Quedlinburg, Stead elucidates the multivalent significance that resulted from the renovations of and additions to existing treasury holdings. The Reliquary of Henry I, a composite of c.1230–40 that repurposes 10th- and 11th-century ivories of different origins, responds to the theological program as well as historical assertions of the St. Servatius Reliquary to such an extent that Stead suggests it was intended as the latter’s pendant. When opened, the unusual, hinged lid of the later reliquary creates a field of display (Schauwand) that visualizes Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, and apotheosis, while the inclusion of the relics of St. Dionysius relates to the origin story of the convent, of which Dionysius was co-patron with Servatius upon its founding. The formal correlations of the Reliquary of Henry I with the contemporary binding for the Samuhel Gospels suggests the intent on the part of the patron, probably Abbess Bertradis I (1223–24 and 1226–30), to create a visual ensemble that extended the significance of the Servatius Reliquary. The slightly later St. Katherine Reliquary and an early 13th-century reliquary cross held at Quedlinburg likewise correlate theologically with these works. Stead also demonstrates how the new mounts for several Near Eastern rock crystal reliquaries enabled their function as ostensoria in a way that was in keeping with norms of relic display in the 13th century. Although how these crystals came into Quedlinburg’s possession is unclear, they are usually linked with Ottonian beneficence towards St. Servatius. The relics they contain, such as

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Christ’s diapers and the Virgin Mary’s milk, relate to the Incarnation and are in this way associated with the box reliquaries described above. The association they engender with the convent’s Ottonian past is also similar. All these objects constitute a group that asserts the convent’s glorious history and secures the salvation of their patrons and the canonical community. In this way, as Stead points out, they relate to the sequence of abbatial effigies at Quedlinburg. Little evidence survives for how and when these objects were displayed in the church of St. Servatius, but saints’ feast days and commemorative activities for their patrons are obvious occasions when a diverse audience would have been present and thus exposed to the visual message of St. Servatius’s prestige. The essays in this companion volume to the Abbey of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages bring a number of scholarly perspectives and methods to bear on a wide range of artifacts, artwork, architecture, and texts from across the medieval history of the convent. The overarching theme that emerges from these disparate studies is the centrality of the Ottonian imperial origin of the community, which colors every aspect of conventual culture throughout the Middle Ages and, indeed, into the present day. Works Cited Bodarwé, Katrinette. “Bibliotheken in sächsischen Frauenstiften.” In Essen und die sächsischen Frauenstifte im Frühmittelalter. Ed. Jan Gerchow and Thomas Schilp. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2003. 87–112. Bodarwé, Katrinette. Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg. Münster: Aschendorff, 2004. Erath, Anton Ulrich von, ed. Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis. Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764. Fritsch, Johann. Geschichte des vormaligen Reichsstiftes und der Stadt Quedlinburg. 2 vols. Quedlinburg: G. Basse, 1828. Giese, Martina, ed. Die Annales Quedlinburgensis. MGH SS rer. Germ. 72. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004. Kettner, Friedrich Ernst. Antiquitates Quedlinburgenses. Leipzig: Sievert, 1712. Kettner, Friedrich Ernst. Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des Kayserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg …. Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710. McNamara, JoAnn. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Mehl, Manfred. Die Münzen des Stiftes Quedlinburg. Hamburg: Mehl, 2006.

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Parisse, Michel. “Les chanoinesses dans l‘empire germanique (IXe-Xe siècles).” Francia 6 (1978): 107–26. Quast, Ferdinand v. “Die Gräber der Aebtissinen in der Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Die Gräber der Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg. Ed. Konrad Wilhelm Hase and Ferdinand v. Quast. Quedlinburg: Verlag des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1877. 5–16. Schäfer, Karl Heinrich. Die Kanonissenstifter im deutschen Mittelalter: Ihre Entwicklung und innere Einrichtung im Zusammenhang mit dem altchristlichen Sanktimonialentum. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1907. Schilp, Thomas. Norm und Wirklichkeit religiöser Frauengemeinschaften im Frühmittelalter. Die Institutio sanctimonialium Aquisgranensis des Jahres 816 und die Problematik der Verfassung von Frauenkommunitäten. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998. Uffenbach, Zacharias Conrad von. Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland. Ulm: Johann Friedrich Gaum, 1753. Voigt, Gottfried. Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg. 3 vols. Leipzig: Schwickert, 1786–91. Wallmann, Johannes. Abhandlung von den schätzbaren Alterthümern der hohen Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg, die mit Anekdoten, besonders der kaiserlichen ottonischen Familie, erläutert worden: Nebst der Geschichte eines bey Quedlinburg ausbegrabenen Einhorns. Quedlinburg: Reussner, 1776. Wineken, Johann Kaspar Eberhard. Antiquarische Anmerkungen über ein altes und schätzbares in dem Zittergewölbe der hohen Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg aufgewahrtes Gefäβ. Quedlinburg: Andreas Franz Biesterfeld, 1761.

Chapter 1

Quedlinburg Abbey’s Medieval History in Ever-Changing Political and Religious Frameworks: A Survey Katharina Ulrike Mersch 1 Introduction In the context of medieval foundations, Quedlinburg and its abbey are ­perceived as quintessential memorial sites with regard to liturgical and royal commemoration.1 They also play a role in collective memory in modern and contemporary Germany,2 including the politically motivated instrumentalization of medieval history and material culture.3 Upon entering the church of St. Servatius nowadays, the visitor immediately experiences the different layers of history that constitute the abbey’s impact from the Middle Ages into the present: memories of its Ottonian beginnings spring to mind, notably the building’s enlargements in the 11th and 12th centuries, as well as its utilization during the subsequent medieval centuries and those that followed. The peculiarly plain spatial impression evokes the changes the abbey underwent during the Reformation, but overall particularly reminds us of the vain attempt to establish St. Servatius as the “German” memory space in Nazi

1 Bernd Schneidmüller, Die Kaiser des Mittelalters von Karl dem Großen bis Maximilian I. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2020), 46. 2 Heinz-Dieter Heimann, “Brandenburgische Zisterzienserklöster als ‘Erinnerungsorte’ heute: Bemerkungen und Perspektiven zum Umgang mit nicht nur mittelalterlicher Kloster-, Ordens- und Kirchengeschichte,” in Das geistliche Erbe: Wege und Perspektiven der Vermittlung, Studien zur Geschichte, ed. Angelika Lozar (Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2003), 106–26 at 112, and Peter Kasper, Das Reichsstift Quedlinburg (936–1810): Konzept, Zeitbezug, Systemwechsel (Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2014), 11. 3 Sabine Behrenbeck, “‘Heil,’” in Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, vol. 3, ed. Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001), 310–27 at 324; Tim Lorentzen, Ideologische Usurpation: die nationalsozialistische Umgestaltung der Stiftskirchen zu Braunschweig und Quedlinburg als Zeichenhandlung (Wolfenbüttel: Wolfenbüttel Landeskirchenamt, 2005); and Stefan Schweizer, ‘Unserer Weltanschauung sichtbaren Ausdruck geben’: Nationalsozialistische Geschichtsbilder in historischen Festzügen zum ‘Tag der Deutschen Kunst’ (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 155. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_003

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Germany, when the abbey church was of particular interest as the burial place of King Henry I, who in the Nazi era was celebrated as the first “German” king.4 The abbey’s early medieval history and especially the events of the ­Ottonian period have long been topics of scholarly debate. In contrast, the 13th through 16th centuries, which are commonly associated with the development of new monastic Orders and late medieval reform movements, have only recently come into focus. That is possibly because the traditional canonesses’ houses— in Quedlinburg, in Essen, and in Gandersheim, for example—did not participate in the reform networks that have interested most scholars. In the patterns of modern historiography, Quedlinburg Abbey is a paragon for female religious life in the Roman Empire of the 10th and early 11th centuries, but not so in the context of late medieval church reform. It is in fact not possible to write about Quedlinburg’s history in the later Middle Ages without referring to its origins; throughout the centuries, the abbey retained its purpose as a space for the founders’ memoria even as the religious and political frameworks that regulated the lives of the canonesses and their clerics changed significantly over the course of the 10th to the 16th century.5 Hence, it is necessary to take a closer look at the first two centuries of the convent’s existence before addressing the period when monastic life forms became more important because of the changes brought about by late medieval church reform. 2 The Abbey of St. Servatius, Queens, Kings, and Royal Abbesses in the Ottonian Era St. Servatius was an “imperial abbey” (Reichsabtei) whose abbesses held an eminent position within the political power structure of the empire during the 10th, 11th, and early 12th centuries. Many studies of Quedlinburg address the convent’s history during this time, when members of the Ottonian and

4 Gerhard Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg: Zusammenfassende Darstellung der archäologischen und baugeschichtlichen Forschung von 1936 bis 2001 (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010), 13–146, and Ernst Schubert, “Die Kirchen St. ­Wiperti und St. Servatii in Quedlinburg: Eine Interpretation der literarischen Quellen zur Baugeschichte,” Sachsen und Anhalt 25 (2007): 31–80. 5 Compare with Claudia Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 19–64.

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the Salian dynasty were kings.6 But as always when reconstructing the history of the high Middle Ages, the source material is challenging. Even though the abbey’s early history is well documented when we compare its written tradition to sources from less important convents, the evidence is still fragmentary. Charters and narrative sources such as the Vita Mathildis antiquior, which probably dates to c.973 with a subsequent version written c.1002–14, shed light on the efforts of Queen Mathilde to establish the religious house with the aid of her son, King Otto I.7 The Annales Quedlinburgenses, written from 1008 onward at St. Servatius, provide crucial information about the convent’s early history.8 Because the abbey was an important institution within the empire during the reign of the Ottonian emperors, it is also mentioned in various other chronicles and annals dating to the high Middle Ages.9 Scholars in early 6 Caspar Ehlers, “Franken und Sachsen gründen Klöster. Beobachtungen zu Integrationsprozessen des 8. bis 10. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel von Essen, Gandersheim und Quedlinburg,” in Gandersheim und Essen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu sächsischen Frauenstiften, ed. Martin Hoernes and Hedwig Röckelein (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2005), 11–32 at 12. See also Gerd Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg. Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Überlieferungszentren,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44; Joachim Ehlers, “­Heinrich I. in Quedlinburg,” in Herrschaftsrepräsentation im ottonischen Sachsen, ed. Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1998), 235–66; Josef ­Fleckenstein, Pfalz und Stift Quedlinburg: Zum Problem ihrer Zuordnung unter den Ottonen. Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, philologisch-historische Klasse 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992); Christian Marlow, “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen im Hochmittelalter: das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137,” PhD diss., Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2017 (http://d-nb.info/1161462007/34); Ulrich Reuling, “Pfalz – Königsgrablege – Stift: Quedlinburg in ottonischer Zeit,” in Geschichte des Mittelalters für unsere Zeit: Erträge des Kongresses des Verbandes der Geschichtslehrer Deutschlands ‘Geschichte des Mittelalters im Geschichtsunterricht’, Quedlinburg, 20.–23.10.1999, ed. Rolf Ballof (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003), 235–48; and Thomas Vogtherr, “Die salischen Äbtissinnen des Reichsstifts Quedlinburg,” in Von sacerdotium und regnum: Geistliche und weltliche Gewalt im frühen und hohen Mittelalter; Festschrift für Egon Boshof zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Franz-Reiner Erkens and Hartmut Wolff (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002), 405–20. 7 Anton Ulrich von Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis (Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764), and Bernd Schütte, ed., “Vita Mathildis reginae antiquior” and “Vita Mathildis reginae posterior,” in Die Lebensbeschreibung der Königin Mathilde, MGH SS rer. Germ. 66 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996), 107–42 and 143–202. 8 Martina Giese, ed., Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, MGH SS rer. Germ. 72 (Hannover: ­Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004), 56f., 65f. 9 See, for example, Oswald Holder-Egger and Bernhard von Simson, eds., Die Chronik des Propstes Burchard von Ursberg, MGH SS rer. Germ. 16 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1916); ­Robert Holtzmann, ed., Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre Korveyer Überarbeitung, MGH SS rer. Germ. N.S. 9 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1935); Carl Janicke, ed., Magdeburger Schöppenchronik (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1869); Klaus Nass, ed., Die Reichschronik

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modern times, such as Johannes Winnigstedt (c.1500–69) and Friedrich Ernst Kettner (1671–1722), were interested in the medieval history of the convent, too, and could draw on some original sources and material traditions that have since been lost.10 Hence, we are comparatively well informed about the history of events, but information about the spiritual dimension of convent life is scarcer. Katrinette Bodarwé has carefully investigated the surviving portions of the convent’s library, which reveal the high level of education younger sisters could benefit from when entering the convent,11 but detailed accounts of the abbey’s liturgy, for example, are lacking.12 Quedlinburg was situated in the duchy of Saxony and gained in importance when the duke of Saxony, Henry of the Liudolfing family, was elected king in 919. It was part of the Liudolfingian property; Henry I resided here frequently and assigned the site in 929—when he married his son Otto I to the Anglo-Saxon princess Edgith—to his own wife Mathilde as dower. It is possible that Henry himself arranged for the founding of an abbey to guarantee his commemoration at the site he had chosen as his burial place, the castle hill of Quedlinburg.13 But it was Mathilde who suited the action to the word and founded a religious house in Quedlinburg soon after Henry’s death. Although it seems that she and her son argued about the dower for a while,14 the new des Annalista Saxo, MGH SS 37 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2006); Georg Heinrich Pertz, ed., Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum, MGH SS 7 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1868); ­Hermann Bloch, ed., Annales Marbacenses, MGH SS rer. Germ. 9 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1907, repr. 2001); and Ludwig Weiland, ed., Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium 781–1209, in MGH SS 23 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlungsche Buchhandlung, 1874), 73–123. 10 Friedrich Ernst Kettner, Kirchen- und Reformationshistorie, des Kayserl. Freyen ­Weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710), and Johannes Winnigstedt, “­Chronicon Quedlinburgenses,” in Caspar Abel, ed., Teutsche und Sächsische Alterthümer Theil 3: S­ammlung Etlicher noch nicht gedruckten Alten Chronicken, als der Nieder-­ Sächsischen, ­Halberstädtschen, Quedlinburgischen, Ascherslebischen, und Ermslebischen (­Braunschweig: Schröder, 1732), 479–524. 11 Katrinette Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg (Münster: Aschendorff, 2004), 165ff. and 286ff. 12 Other kinds of historical sources shed light on the spiritual life within the convent, as several of the chapters in this volume make clear. 13 Fleckenstein, Pfalz und Stift Quedlinburg, 10f.; Amalie Fößel, Die Königin im mittelalterlichen Reich: Herrschaftsausübung, Herrschaftsrechte, Handlungsspielräume (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000), 67, and Theodor Sickel, ed., Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., MGH Diplomata 4, 1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1879–84), 55f., no. 20, 66f., no. 28. 14 Holtzmann, ed., Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, lib. 1, c. 21, 26ff., and Schütte, ed., “Vita Mathildis reginae antiquior,” c. 4f., 120ff.

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king, Otto I, confirmed the foundation in 936, submitted it to the patronage of the kings, and generously equipped it with various assets.15 In 947, he asked Pope Agapetus II for papal exemption, resulting in the abbey’s autonomous status within local episcopal structures.16 He then continued to provide the convent with possessions and relics.17 Otto’s engagement can be best explained in light of the purpose the abbey served for the Ottonian family: the convent members were asked to pray not only for Henry, but for all Ottonians. Narrative sources highlight this obligation. When Queen Mathilde, who herself initially supervised religious life in Quedlinburg, was near death, she handed over a calendar to her successor, her granddaughter Mathilde, that included the names of many deceased ­individuals whom the sisters should remember.18 Queen Mathilde herself was buried in Quedlinburg, as was her husband Henry. No traces remain of ­Henry’s burial, but Mathilde’s sarcophagus with its inscription survives today. It reads: iii idvs mai obiit reg(i)na mahthild(is) qve et hic reqviescit cvi(vs) anima eterna(m) optineat reqvie(m), or: “On the third day before the Ides of May, Queen Mathilde died and here she rests, may her soul receive eternal peace.”19 The inscription refers to the queen’s “royal status and Christian piety,”20 and the convent members were able to take advantage of the royal status of the founder over the course of decades. Just as Quedlinburg was one of Henry I’s favorite residences, it was a significant site for his successors and descendants, Otto I, Otto II (973–83), and Otto III (983–1002). The Ottonian kings traditionally visited the abbey to celebrate Easter. And Quedlinburg was an important place for the queens as well: Otto I’s wife Adelheid (931–99) and her daughter-in-law Theophanu (d. 991) sometimes resided at St. Servatius.21 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

Sickel, ed., Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., 89f., no. 1. Compare Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 62ff., and Ehlers, “Franken und Sachsen,” 27. Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad a. 947, 646 and footnote 801. Compare Gerlinde Schlenker, “Das Verhältnis der Halberstädter Bischöfe zum Quedlinburger Damenstift vom 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichte und Kultur des Bistums Halberstadt ­804–1648: Symposium anläßlich 1200 Jahre Bistumsgründung Halberstadt, 24.–28.03.2004. Protokollband, ed. Adolf Siebrecht (Halberstadt: Halberstädter Druckhaus, 2006), 459–68 at 460. Nass, ed., Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, ad a. 962, 196. Compare Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 66. Schütte, ed., “Vita Mathildis reginae posterior,” c. 26, 199. Compare Fößel, Königin, 223. Compare Schubert, “Kirchen,” 67ff. Karen Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity Reconfigured,” Gesta 47 (2009): 147–70 at 152. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 69; Ehlers, “Franken und Sachsen,” 27; and ­Fleckenstein, Pfalz und Stift Quedlinburg, 17 and 20.

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Accordingly, the rules for religious life in Quedlinburg were most likely aligned with the living standard of the high nobility. While it is not always clear which norms were observed in women’s convents in the 10th century, it is most probable that the St. Servatius community followed the Institutio sanctimonialium of 816, particularly since the Annals of Quedlinburg mention its practice at St. Servatius in the year 1000.22 The Institutio sanctimonialium allowed a way of life that was less restrictive and more open to aristocratic norms than the Regula Benedicti, which regulated life in monasteries. The canonesses were allowed to own property, to have income, and to choose individual accommodations. Still, as Thomas Schilp has pointed out, their life was committed to the ideals of the traditional canones and writings of the church fathers.23 The first part of the Institutio deals with traditions of female religious existence, emphasizing chastity, humility, and modesty as virtues that paved the way to eternal life. The second part offers information on administrating the c­ onventual lifestyle. To achieve eternal life, all members of the ­community should strive to behave well and in accordance with God’s will. For this purpose, texts were assembled that deal with organizational aspects, such as the convent members’ property, income, and alimentation, divine office, and accommodation for the poor and travelers. The Institutio sanctimonialium also contained information on the administrative hierarchy: the abbess was head of the community, assisted by other convent members who served as provost, celleraria, or instructor.24 As we have seen, in the 10th century, female members of the Ottonian family led the community of St. Servatius: after the queen’s death, her granddaughter Mathilde became abbess. The latter rebuilt the church, founded monasteries in Quedlinburg and Walbeck, and obtained from Otto III the right to establish a market in Quedlinburg. She is famous for her involvement in political affairs, accompanying her brother Otto II on a journey to Rome in 981, for example.25 22 23 24 25

The annals state that “on this hill,” i.e., Quedlinburg, “the holy women serve Christ o­ bserving the canonical custom regularly.” Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad a. 1000, 512, author’s translation. Compare Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 63. Thomas Schilp, Norm und Wirklichkeit religiöser Frauengemeinschaften im Frühmittelalter: Die Institutio sanctimonialium Aquisgranensis des Jahres 816 und die Problematik der ­Verfassung von Frauenkommunitäten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 58. Schilp, Norm und Wirklichkeit, 61ff., and Albert Werminghoff, ed., “Institutio sanctimonialium Aquisgranensis,” in Concilia aevi Karolini, 2,1, MGH Leges 3 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1906), 421–56. Theodor Sickel, ed., Die Urkunden Otto des III., MGH Diplomata 4, 2,2 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1893), 566f., no. 155, and Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad

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Her activities after Otto II’s unexpected death on December 7, 983 in Rome are of particular interest,26 because they shed light on the importance of Quedlinburg’s abbesses in the second half of the 10th century. While the emperor himself was only 28 when he died, his son Otto III was just three years old when he succeeded his father as king, a circumstance that called for his mother and grandmother’s agency. At the time of Otto II’s death, his wife Theophanu and her mother-in-law Adelheid, together with the king’s sister, Abbess Mathilde, were in Pavia, while Otto III had already been sent to Aachen for his coronation. Since the family was separated and it was unclear who could legitimately serve as guardian for the underage king, Otto’s nearest male relative, Henry II, duke of Bavaria (951–95), claimed custody of the child. He was called Henry “the Quarrelsome,” as he had rebelled against Otto II and was released from detention just after the king’s death. It seems that Henry at first only claimed custody, but soon he started promoting himself as the new king. The nobles gathered a few times to discuss how to deal with the minority of Otto III. One of the meetings took place in Quedlinburg. Here, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia supported Henry, while most of the other assembled lords disagreed, among them the duke of Saxony and many Saxon counts. In consequence, Archbishop Willigis of Mainz asked Theophanu and Adelheid to return to Germany in order to take care of the young king and his empire. When they did so, Henry handed the child over to his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt, Abbess Mathilde of Quedlinburg.27 The legal aspects of this affair have been energetically discussed in the scholarship for decades. Were the women capable of being legal custodians, were they regents, or did they only oversee a king who was despite his youth able to rule on his own? Karl ­Kroeschell has laid out the different arguments in a well-organized overview.28 But what is significant for our purposes is the role Abbess Mathilde and St. Servatius in Quedlinburg played in this context. Amalie Fößel has pointed out that the nobles’ consent was important for the child’s custodians, and in contrast to Henry “the Quarrelsome,” Theophanu and Adelheid were able to obtain this

26 27 28

a. 999, 505. Compare Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 65–69. Compare Daniela Müller-Wiegand, Vermitteln – beraten – erinnern: Funktionen und ­Aufgabenfelder von Frauen in der ottonischen Herrscherfamilie (919–1024) (Kassel: Kassel ­University Press, 2005), 193. Fößel, Königin, 320ff. Karl A. Kroeschell, “Theophanu und Adelheid: Zum Problem der Vormundschaft über Otto III.,” in Rechtsbegriffe im Mittelalter, ed. Albrecht Cordes (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002), 63–77.

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consent.29 The Annals of Quedlinburg stress this circumstance by describing the glorious entry of the reclaimed king into Quedlinburg: After they received the precious pawn [Otto III], the above-mentioned imperial mistresses went to Saxony. And as they arrived in the oft-­ mentioned town situated on the top of the hill in Quedlinburg, they were welcomed most courteously with melodious anthems by the ­twofold ­cavalcade consisting of the clergy with the people and of the virgins who in this place serve Christ, and they were complimented cordially and with joy, because of the most anticipated arrival of the spiritual mother [Mathilde] and because of the victorious outcome on account of the king.30 The Annals describe the abbey of Quedlinburg as a center of kingship par excellence, and the author stressed Mathilde’s commitment to this status in the years to come, as well. In June 985, Henry “the Quarrelsome” went to Frankfurt am Main, where the chiefs of the empire had assembled, and submitted himself to the king, “in the presence of the imperial mistresses” Adelheid, Theophanu, and Abbess Mathilde, “who took charge of regnancy.” According to this text, it was not the young king who accepted Henry after his humiliation, but his three female relatives, among them the abbess of Quedlinburg.31 When Abbess Mathilde died in 999, Quedlinburg Abbey did not disconnect from the Ottonian dynasty, as her niece Adelheid, Otto III’s sister, was elected abbess. She had become a canoness of the convent of St. Servatius in 995, her brother attending the ceremony.32 Just like her sister, Sophia, abbess of Gandersheim Abbey, she accompanied the king on some of his journeys. In his Chronicle, Thietmar of Merseburg (975/76–1018) refers to the importance of these two Ottonian canonesses’ houses and their abbesses. He notes that, when Otto III died in 1002 without heirs, one of the aspirants for the throne and subsequently king, Henry II (1002–24), sent a messenger to Saxony and to these women especially to promote himself as monarch.33 Both Adelheid and Sophia outlived Henry, and it is said that, when in 1024 Conrad II was elected 29 30 31 32 33

Fößel, Königin, 326. Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad a. 984, 473, author’s translation. Ibid., 67, author’s translation. Compare Fößel, Königin, 326. Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 61. Holtzmann, ed., Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, lib. 5, c. 3, 233f. Compare Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg,” 133f.

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king as the first member of the Salian dynasty, Adelheid and Sophia met the new ruler in the borderlands of Saxony in order to be the first Saxons to confirm his succession.34 The abbesses the kings interacted with were not only of high nobility, but must also have been very well educated and learned. Throughout the Middle Ages, Quedlinburg Abbey was, like the canonesses’ houses in Gandersheim and Essen, a place where women could learn and write. Bodarwé has assumed that the canonesses wrote the Quedlinburg Annals and has identified several other manuscripts dating from the late 10th and from the 11th century that were written in the convent.35 She also gathered information about schoolgirls within the community who most likely came from noble families. Sometimes, even boys were educated here, such as the famous chronicler and bishop Thietmar of Merseburg, who stayed in Quedlinburg with his great-aunt Emnilde until he was 12 years old.36 Quedlinburg Abbey was therefore not only a significative site for the kings of the Ottonian dynasty and for those who succeeded them. It was also exempt from the authority of the bishops of Halberstadt and was also widely known among the princes of the empire who accepted the abbess of St. Servatius as a distinguished office-bearer with political influence. Finally, Quedlinburg was a place where noble families could send their daughters and even their sons to secure their children a good education. 3 Royal Tradition and Political Challenges in the 11th and Early 12th Century While the Ottonian era came to an end in the course of the 11th century, ­Ottonian remembrance lived on. Quedlinburg Abbey was in this regard among the most important memory spaces in the empire, even as subsequent kings forged new paths. Even though several chronicles mention that the abbesses of the Ottonian canonesses’ houses were still of some importance to the kings in later times (a fact that can be deduced from charters, as well), it is obvious that from Henry II’s reign forward their significance declined in ­comparison to their prominence in the 10th century. Although he is known as the last ­Ottonian 34 35 36

Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg,” 134. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 165–71 and 182f. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 77ff., and Holtzmann, ed., Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, lib. 4, c.16, 150.

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emperor,37 Henry visited Quedlinburg on the occasion of the feast of St. Servatius on May 13, 1003, but then failed to appear there for the next 14 years, hence breaking with the Ottonian kings’ tradition of celebrating ­Easter in Quedlinburg.38 This development continued under the Salian kings and emperors who supported the establishment of new royal memorial sites, such as the cathedral of Speyer,39 even though two daughters of King Henry III (1028–56), Beatrix I and Adelheid II, presided one after the other over Quedlinburg Abbey (and over the canonesses’ house in Gandersheim as well).40 Major political events are considered to be responsible for this gradual decline of importance within the empire for the abbesses of St. Servatius. When King Henry IV (1054–1106) tried to recover the royal estates in Saxony and commissioned foreign ministeriales to perform this task, a strong Saxon opposition formed, and the abbesses of Quedlinburg Abbey were involved in the political networks of Saxony. The rebellion started in 1073 and lasted for roughly 15 years. Among the Saxon leaders were important nobles and officials such as Count Otto of Northeim and Bishop Burchard II of Halberstadt. Even though Henry IV was able to subject the Saxons to his authority after the ­battle near Homburg on the Unstrut in 1075, resistance flared up when the king engaged in a power struggle with Pope Gregory VII, initiating the long-lasting conflict known as the Investiture Controversy, during which the king was excommunicated twice. An opposition among the princes, including the Saxon nobles, fostered the election of a rival king, Rudolph of Rheinfelden, count of Swabia, in 1077. When he lost his life after a battle with Henry’s troops in 1080, he was buried in Merseburg—that is, in Saxony. In 1081, Count Hermann of 37

38 39

40

If and to what extent the election in 1002 of Henry II, son of Henry “the ­Quarrelsome,” c­ onstituted an inflection point for kingship in general is a controversial question. Compare, for example, Bernd Schneidmüller, “Otto III. – Heinrich II. Wende der Königsherrschaft oder Wende der Mediaevistik?,” in Otto III. – Heinrich II.: Eine Wende?, ed. Bernd Schneidmüller (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000), 9–46. Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 70. Heinz-Dieter Heimann, “‘Geschätzter Krämpel’: Über Ansprüche der Memorialkultur und ihre Traditionsbrüche in der Geschichte des Servatiusstiftes,” in Kayserlich – frey – ­weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. ­Clemens Bley (Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009), 14–29 at 19. Claudia Zey, “Frauen und Töchter der salischen Herrscher. Zum Wandel salischer Heiratspolitik in der Krise,” in Die Salier, das Reich und der Niederrhein, ed. Tilman Struve (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 47–98 at 63. King Henry III donated properties when his daughter Beatrix was elected as abbess of St. Servatius. See Harry Bresslau and Paul ­Fridolin Kehr, eds., Die Urkunden Heinrichs III., MGH Diplomata 4, 5 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1926–31), 107, no. 135. Compare Vogtherr, “Salische Äbtissinnen,” 405 and 409.

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Salm (d. 1088) was elected as his successor. He spent most of his time as rival king in Saxony. Hence, the kingdom was divided: on the one hand were the nobles who favored Henry and on the other hand was the opposition allied with Gregory VII. Saxony was the center of rebellion against Henry.41 It is not easy to reconstruct the position of Beatrix I and Adelheid II in these events as narrative sources from this period tend to be highly biased, discrediting either the Saxons or the king by all means, including pejorative testimony about the king’s predilection for sexual harassment.42 Lampert of Hersfeld (d. soon after 1081), a chronicler well known for his invectives against Henry IV, explicitly mentions that Henry had his sister, Abbess Adelheid of Quedlinburg, disgraced by one of his companions.43 Even if this account may lack veracity, there is more evidence indicating the poor relations between the king and his sister. Adelheid was indeed not a supporter of her brother’s interests. Quedlinburg was one of the prominent venues of the Saxon opposition that persisted until 1088. In 1085, Hermann of Salm, the rival king, celebrated Easter in Quedlinburg, just as the Ottonian kings had done. Thus, while the Salian kings had slowly turned their backs on the abbey, their rivals recalled its significance for the kingship and its historical importance in Saxony. Likewise in 1085, a synod took place in Quedlinburg that was led by Pope Gregory’s legate, Odo of Ostia. The participants were all supporters of the Gregorian party and discussed the consequences of Henry’s excommunication. An excommunication of Henry’s main accomplices concluded the meeting.44 In 1088, however, Henry accommodated his wife Praxedis in Quedlinburg while he himself laid siege to the castle Gleichen,45 indicating that he could once again rely on his sister Adelheid’s loyalty.

41 42 43

44 45

Compare Gerd Althoff, Heinrich IV. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), 86–194. Compare Steffen Patzold, “Die Lust des Herrschers. Zur Bedeutung und Verbreitung eines politischen Vorwurfs zur Zeit Heinrichs IV.,” in Heinrich IV., ed. Gerd Althoff (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2009), 219–53. Oswald Holder-Egger, ed., Lampert of Hersfeld, Annales, ad a. 1073, MGH SS rer. Germ. 38 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1894), 162. Compare Patzold, “Lust,” 223, and Tilman Struve, “War Heinrich IV. ein Wüstling?: Szenen einer Ehe am salischen Hofe,” in Scientia veritatis: Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Oliver Münsch (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2004), 273–88 at 274, for further evidence. Georg Gresser, Die Synoden und Konzilien in der Zeit des Reformpapsttums in Deutschland und Italien von Leo IX. bis Calixt II. 1049–1123 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 238–45, and Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 123f. Vogtherr, “Salische Äbtissinnen,” 416.

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The last Salian abbess of Quedlinburg was Agnes II, a daughter of one of Henry IV’s sisters.46 The beginning of her abbacy may have coincided with yet another event of political importance. When in 1105 Henry IV’s son Henry V (1086–1125) plotted to disempower his father—an endeavor soon afterwards crowned with success—he sought to reconcile the Saxons with Salian kingship and to ally himself with them by performing a deeply symbolic ritual. That April, Henry V visited the abbey of Gernrode and pilgrimaged barefoot thence to nearby Quedlinburg, where the Saxon nobles waited to celebrate Easter with him. Once again, a rival king recalled the relevance of celebrating the high feast in the Ottonian abbey.47 With regard to the ongoing Investiture Controversy, Agnes seems to have backed her nephew Henry V as she was among the accomplices of the emperor who were excommunicated by Pope Calixtus II in 1119.48 Agnes died in 1125, as did Henry V, the last Salian emperor. Scholars have argued whether the three well-known, very similar effigy tombs for Abbesses Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II date from this ­period,49 or if they were commissioned by Agnes’s successor Gerburg of Cappenberg.50 If the former assumption holds true, the last Salian abbess would have pointed out in this way the continuity of her office from Ottonian to Salian times and accentuated the equal status of her three royal predecessors. If Gerburg commissioned the effigy tombs, on the other hand, it may be that the equality of the women as abbesses was far more important than their royal descent, since she headed the convent during a period shaped by fundamental changes in the concept and organization of men’s and women’s religious life, which will be addressed in the following section.

46 Vogtherr, “Salische Äbtissinnen,” 418ff. 47 Althoff, Heinrich IV., 236f., and Marlow, Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen, 137f. 48 Vogtherr, “Salische Äbtissinnen,” 419. 49 Kerstin Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die ­romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg,” in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte, ed. Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (­Göttingen: ­Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 45–87, and Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, “‘Die ­hässlichen Äbtissinnen’. Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–48. 50 Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg.” Compare also in this volume Karen Blough, “Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg.”

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27

Quedlinburg Abbey in Changing Surroundings

It is well known that the aforementioned Investiture Controversy is but one of the facets of the reform movement within the church that shaped religious life in the 11th and 12th centuries and that changed the fundamentals of female religious life not only in monastic convents but in canonesses’ houses, as well. Many male and female communities that until then lived in accordance with rules such as the Institutio sanctimonialium took on one of the rules of St. Augustine and augmented them with specifications that sometimes were as strict as comparable provisions in the convents of Benedictine reform. This development was highly diverse even with regard to the initiators of reform: sometimes a single convent decided to change its way of life; sometimes a group of convents collaborated in this respect and even established reform networks; and sometimes a bishop ordered the reform of the canons’ and canonesses’ houses in his diocese.51 Saxony was one of the hotspots of this development within the empire. Bishops like Reinhard of Halberstadt (1107–23) and Berthold I (1119–30), Bernhard I (1130–53), and Adelog (1170/71–90) of Hildesheim aspired to reform the older female Benedictine and canonesses’ houses in order to gain control over the spiritual and juridical administration of convents hitherto often exempt from the metropolitan’s jurisdiction and protected by the king as secular patron. Quedlinburg was situated in the diocese of Halberstadt where many canonesses’ houses were now transformed into convents that followed the Augustinian rule or into Benedictine monasteries.52 Quedlinburg Abbey remained unaffected by these developments that elsewhere led to a loss of authority for the abbesses to the benefit of male provosts and to a certain degree to the loss of noble standards of living as the sisters in the reformed communities were expected to share accommodations and to abstain from the ownership of personal property and income.53 Although Quedlinburg Abbey did not submit to the reform movements enacted by bishops, Christian Marlow has argued that the convent was not 51

52

53

Compare, for example, Stefan Weinfurter, “Funktionalisierung und Gemeinschaftsmodell: Die Kanoniker in der Kirchenreform des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Die Stiftskirche in Südwestdeutschland: Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Forschung, ed. Dieter R. Bauer et al. (Leinfelden-Echterdingen: DRW-Verlag, 2003), 107–21. Hedwig Röckelein, “Die Auswirkung der Kanonikerreform des 12. Jahrhunderts auf ­Kanonissen, Augustinerchorfrauen und Benediktinerinnen,” in Institution und Charisma: Festschrift für Gert Melville, ed. Franz J. Felten et al. (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2009), 55–72 at 56f. Röckelein, “Auswirkung,” 62f.

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resistant to spiritual changes that were concomitant with canonical reform. In 1070, a nun named Pia from the Benedictine convent of St. Mary in Quedlinburg, which was supervised by the abbesses of Quedlinburg Abbey, undertook to live as a recluse. Somewhat later, another convent member, Ida, did the same, and soon Adelheid, a canoness of St. Servatius, followed her lead. It is likely that the abbess of Quedlinburg had to approve this change of lifestyle in all three cases.54 Hence, abbesses in the 11th century were possibly open to reform tendencies. Moreover, Karen Blough has pointed out that the aforementioned Abbess Gerburg of Cappenberg came from a family associated with religious reform.55 However, this potential open-mindedness did not lead to a reform of the imperial abbey of Quedlinburg, steeped in tradition as it was. In this period shaped by the canonical reform movement, yet another political conflict affected the convent’s fate, and once again, Quedlinburg Abbey’s important role in the context of medieval remembrance came to the fore. A quarrel between the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen broke out in the 1170s when Henry the Lion from the house of Welf (1129/1131–95) was duke of Saxony and fell out with several Saxon nobles and church dignitaries over ­territorial ­policies. In consequence, Emperor Frederick I from the house of ­Hohenstaufen expelled Henry the Lion twice, once in 1180 and again after his first return in 1188.56 After Frederick I died in 1191, his son Henry VI succeeded him and soon became emperor. But he died suddenly in 1197, his son and potential successor Frederick II being then just three years old. Instead of confirming the child as king, the German princes decided to elect someone else. Some of them voted for Henry VI’s brother Philip of Swabia, but several princes voted for Otto from the house of Welf.57 From 1197 onwards, two kings ruled the empire and fought for dominance. When Philip was murdered in 1208, Otto IV was unanimously accepted as king, but only for a few years. In 1210, he was excommunicated for attacking papal estates, and in 1211/12 Frederick II, who had grown up in the meantime, was elected king. Again, two ­monarchs contested for rulership. Frederick was successful in strengthening his position, while Otto IV’s supporters soon defeated him after 1214. He

54 55 56 57

Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 107. Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” 161. Compare Joachim Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe: Eine Biographie (Munich: Siedler, 2008), 220–27, 317–45, and 354–66. Peter Csendes, Philipp von Schwaben: Ein Staufer im Kampf um die Macht (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 99.

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died four years later.58 ­Quedlinburg Abbey was involved in this conflict both directly and indirectly. Abbess Agnes I’s successors, Beatrix II of Winzenburg (1138–60) and Adelheid III of Sommerschenburg were members of noble Saxon families that opposed the house of Welf.59 The same holds true for Abbess Agnes II, who was a daughter of ­Margrave Conrad of Meißen.60 During the throne dispute between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV, she and her successors sided with the Hohenstaufen. In the course of Agnes’s abbacy, the partisanship was even ceremonially displayed when Philip celebrated Christmas in nearby Halberstadt and led a festive procession. He was equipped with imperial insignia and accompanied by his wife Irene. Among the noble women in the queen’s entourage was Abbess Agnes.61 Peter Csendes, Philip’s biographer, has characterized this Christmas celebration as an act of state shaped by the “sovereign attitude” typical of the kings and emperors from the house of Hohenstaufen.62 Therefore, Agnes’s participation in this ceremony was an explicit political statement that demonstrated the Quedlinburg abbess’s ongoing sense of herself as an important force within imperial politics. This attitude is reflected in abbatial housekeeping, too. Marc von der Höh has gathered evidence for the fact that the abbesses of St. Servatius from the 12th century onwards took up the imperial tradition of court appointments. Within the king’s household, the steward supervised the administration of the court and of property; the chamberlain took care of clothing and finances; the cup bearer was responsible for the drinks; and the marshal initially supervised the horse stable and as the position evolved eventually took on responsibility for military and juridical affairs. During the 12th century, more and more lords introduced these court appointments in their own households, and so too did the abbesses of Quedlinburg. The first mention of a cup bearer dates around 1147–49, when Beatrix II of Winzenburg was abbess. In 1167, a steward

58

Compare, for example, Stefanie Mamsch, Kommunikation in der Krise: Könige und Fürsten im deutschen Thronstreit (1198–1218) (Münster: Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2012). 59 Compare Karlotto Bogumil, Das Bistum Halberstadt im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zur Reichsund Reformpolitik des Bischofs Reinhard und zum Wirken der Augustiner-Chorherren (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1972), 233 and 246n214. 60 For her family origin see a charter issued by Pope Lucius III on November 5, 1184 and published in Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 104f., no. 32. 61 Weiland, ed., Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium 781–1209, 113. 62 Csendes, Philipp von Schwaben, 96.

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is mentioned, and from 1183 onwards—that is, from one year before Agnes II’s abbacy began—all court appointments are documented in the sources.63 Not only did Agnes II take a stand in higher politics, she also revived the remembrance of the Ottonian family and again recalled to mind the time when Quedlinburg Abbey was founded.64 The mural paintings in the crypt— the burial place of King Henry I and Queen Mathilde—date from the time of Agnes’s abbacy. They depict Biblical scenes, some of which, such as the Judgment of Solomon and some scenes depicting the false accusations against Susanna, visualize that most vital of rulership virtues, justice. Moreover, the columns in the eastern part of the crypt are ornamented with figures representing the early times of Quedlinburg Abbey: King Otto I, Otto’s wife Adelheid, and another female figure, maybe Queen Mathilde.65 Agnes used other genres to refer to the convent’s history, too. Together with the prioress Oderade, Agnes donated towards the renovation of the reliquary for the main patron, St. Servatius, and the relics of several other saints that were venerated in Quedlinburg either since the convent’s foundation, or at the latest since 1021.66 Furthermore, Agnes and the canonesses knotted a large carpet with an extraordinary iconographical program: an exegesis of the Late Antique didactic poem about the history of Mercury and Philology by Martianus Capella. While Martianus described how Mercury visited several gods to look for a bride and finally found Philology, a human whom he caused to ascend to the sphere of the gods, the canonesses adjusted the storyline to reflect contemporary scholarly discourse about the poem. In the iconographical program, Mercury serves as a 63

64

65 66

Marc von der Höh, “Der Hof der Äbtissinnen von Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter,” in Bley, ed., Kayserlich – frey – weltlich, 167–88 at 170f. For the first mention of the cup bearer, see ­Gustav Schmidt, ed., Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Halberstadt und seiner Bischöfe, vol. 1: Bis 1236, (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1883), 194ff., no. 227. This could be interpreted as reaction either to the surrounding reform measures that possibly threatened the way of life common for a canonesses’ house or as reaction to the insecure political situation. Women’s communities often referred to their founders in times of crisis. Compare Hedwig Röckelein, “Gründer, Stifter und Heilige – Patrone der Frauenkonvente,” in Krone und Schleier. Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, ed. Jutta Frings (Munich: Hirmer, 2005), 67–77 at 70. Katharina Ulrike Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und ­spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten: Stifte, Chorfrauenstifte und Klöster im ­Vergleich (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2012), 96ff. See also Bley, “Of Donors and Patrons” in this volume. Katharina Ulrike Mersch, “Stifterinnenbilder im Kontext gemeinschaftlicher ­Tradition. Essen und Quedlinburg im Vergleich,” in Pro remedio et salute anime peragemus: Totengedenken am Frauenstift Essen im Mittelalter, ed. Thomas Schilp (Essen: Klartext, 2008), 213–30, and Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen, 95f. See the essay in this volume by Eliza Garrison and Evan Gatti, “A Reliquary Revisited: The St. Servatius Casket and Its ­Contexts.”

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symbol for Christ, and Philology, who not only is learned but also seeks to live a virtuous life, serves as a role model for the sisters in Quedlinburg. The partially destroyed inscription on the upper part of the carpet that mentions the donation once read alme dei vates decus hoc (tibi contulit agnes gloria pontificum famularum suscipe votum), or “Benedictory seer of God, (Agnes is giving you) this ornament (glory of priests, receive this consecration gift from your maids).” The priest mentioned is likely to be St. Servatius, the main patron of Quedlinburg Abbey from its beginning in the Ottonian era.67 While the extant sources from the time of Agnes II’s abbacy shed light on a phase of renewal and aristocratic assertiveness that drew upon the memory of the Ottonian founders, the sources passed down from Sophia of Brehna’s abbacy (1203–23 and 1224–26) suggest that the first decades of the 13th ­century were more difficult. Even though both Sophia and the bishop of nearby ­Halberstadt, Konrad of Krosigk (1201–08/09), took the side of the Hohenstaufen in the ongoing throne dispute between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV,68 they argued over traditions. The bishops of Halberstadt indeed had little influence on the abbey, which was directly subject to the pope, but they were accustomed to celebrate Palm Sunday at St. Servatius. Over the course of time, the feast became increasingly expensive because the bishop of Halberstadt brought an ever larger retinue with him, with the attendant expenses borne by the abbey. Sophia sought to put the bishop in his place, but could not resolve the conflict. It continued up until the 1260s when it was finally decided in favor of the bishops of Halberstadt.69 The enduring throne dispute caused even more trouble. In 1213, when Frederick II was rival king to Otto IV, Otto was pushed back to his ancestral lands in Saxony and started to beset the canonesses of Quedlinburg.70 In 1213, he expelled the sisters and carried out modifications on the hill on which the 67 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen, 81–93. See also Johanna Flemming, “Der spätromanische Bildteppich der Quedlinburger Äbtissin Agnes,” in Festschrift für Ernst Schubert: Zur Kunst des 13. Jahrhunderts in Mitteldeutschland, ed. Hans-Joachim Krause (Weimar: Böhlau ­Verlag, 1997), 517–53. See also Bley, “Of Donors and Patrons” in this volume. 68 For Abbess Sophie of Brehna, compare Berent Schwineköper, “Eine unbekannte heraldische Quelle zur Geschichte Kaiser Ottos IV. und seiner Anhänger,” in Festschrift für ­Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte (­Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 959–1022 at 1008 and 1012, and for Bishop Conrad of ­Krosigk, compare Alfred John Andrea, “Conrad of Krosigk, Bishop of Halberstadt, ­Crusader and Monk of Sittichenbach: His Ecclesiastical Career, 1184–1225,” Analecta ­Cisterciensia 43 (1987): 11–91 at 20ff. 69 The beginning of the conflict is documented in Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 129ff., nos. 12f. Compare Schlenker, “Verhältnis,” 462f. 70 Compare Schwineköper, “Eine unbekannte heraldische Quelle,” 1008 and 1012.

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abbey was built in order to turn it into a fortification.71 This was a wrongdoing so serious that Otto IV was accused for it during the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, an occasion he had in fact wanted to take advantage of to get his excommunication lifted. He failed. Three years later, still excommunicated and in contemplation of his eventual death, he drew up his will. It included reparations for Quedlinburg Abbey to make amends and thereby to guarantee the salvation of his soul.72 In the course of the throne dispute, Quedlinburg’s status was, it seems, subject to change. In the beginning, the abbess was an assertive supporter of the claims of the house of Hohenstaufen, while in the end, the community fell victim to Otto IV’s struggle to regain importance—it was collateral damage of imperial politics, so to speak. In the course of the 13th century and then in the 14th century—a time period which is not very well investigated with regard to the women’s community in Quedlinburg—the conflicts the abbey was involved in were situated on an ever more regional, even local level. This shift from countrywide importance to the involvement in regional and local affairs is not really surprising. During the so-called Interregnum after Frederick II’s death in 1250, the two elected kings, Alfonso of Castile (elected 1257, renounced 1275) and Richard of Cornwall (reigned 1257–72), were not bound to the religious structure of the empire,73 while the succeeding kings came from noble houses that were rooted in regions other than Saxony. They therefore preferred religious houses in these regions or communities that were connected to their families respectively.74

71 72

73 74

Bloch, ed., Annales Marbacenses, 84f., and Janicke, ed., Magdeburger Schöppenchronik, 140. Karl Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Hildesheim und seiner Bischöfe. vol. 1, Bis 1221, (Leipzig: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1896), 675, no. 711. Compare Bernd Ulrich Hucker, Kaiser Otto IV. (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1990), 334, and Katharina Ulrike Mersch, Missachtung, Anerkennung und Kreativität: Exkommunizierte Laien im 13. Jahrhundert (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2020), 390. Schwineköper, “Eine unbekannte heraldische Quelle,” 1013, assumes that the abbey received a small box adorned with coats of arms representing Otto’s supporters in the context of the quarrels with him, but this assertion is contested. Compare Nathalie Kruppa, “Neue Gedanken zum Quedlinburger Wappenkästchen,” Concilium medii aevi 4 (2001): 153–77. Compare, for example, Martin Kaufhold, Deutsches Interregnum und europäische Politik: Konfliktlösungen und Entscheidungsstrukturen 1230–1280, (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2000), 27–47. To take a single example, King Louis IV (1282/86–1347) from the family of Wittelsbach favored the Cistercian house in Fürstenfeldbruck in Bavaria, a family monastery. ­Compare, for instance, Birgitta Klemenz, “‘Denkmal väterlicher Bußgesinnung’: Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer und Fürstenfeld,” in Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer, ed. Angelika Mundorff (Fürstenfeldbruck: Stadtmuseum, 1997), 34–52.

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On the regional and local level, at least two potential centers of conflict must be kept in mind. On the one hand, the reeves of Quedlinburg Abbey, local nobles who took care of its temporal matters, exerted more and more ­influence on the abbey’s destiny. In 1320, the bailiwick fell to the counts of Wittenberg, who later pawned it to the bishops of Halberstadt, a circumstance that weakened the abbey’s exemption from the local bishops, at least in temporal affairs.75 On the other hand, the abbesses were faced with the town of Quedlinburg, which was feoffed with the abbey’s bailiwick in 1396.76 This meant, in a sense, a reversal of the dependent relationship between the abbey and the town. The town had come into being in the late 10th century because of the abbesses who obtained charters with the rights to hold a market in Quedlinburg. The abbess had since been ruler of the town.77 During the 12th and 13th centuries, many towns in the German empire sought independence from their rulers. The citizens formed town councils and obtained rights that in former times belonged to the towns’ rulers.78 So too did the inhabitants of Quedlinburg, who in 1225 obtained the right to fortify the town and thereby took an important step towards self-administration. Since the end of the 13th century, the citizens even participated in the administration of the local hospitals and churches and gained the right to co-decide when a vacancy was to be filled. Written sources first tell us about conflicts between the town and the abbess during the abbacy of Jutta of Kranichfeld (1308–1347/48) in 1312. Since that time, struggles between the town and the town’s ruler, the abbess of Quedlinburg Abbey, are documented more frequently. One of the recurring problems concerned the 75

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Abbess Jutta enfeoffed Duke Rudolf I of Saxe-Wittenberg (1284–1356) with Quedlinburg’s bailiwick (Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 390f., no. 120). His son Rudolf II (c.1307–70) claimed the bailiwick, too (ibid., 523, no. 349). In 1358, Abbess Agnes III (1354–62) acknowledged the bishopric of Halberstadt as holder of the bailiwick (Karl Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, vol. 1 (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1873), 147, no. 172). Janicke, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, 1, 196–200, nos. 226–29. Compare Barbara Pätzold, “Stift und Stadt Quedlinburg. Zum Verhalten von Klerus und Bürgertum im Spätmittelalter,” in Hansische Stadtgeschichte – Brandenburgische Landesgeschichte: Eckhard Müller-Mertens zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Evamaria Engel et al. (Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1989), 171–92 at 175–87, and Michael Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg: Reichsstift und Stadt Quedlinburg am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder: Menschen im späten Mittelalter, ed. Werner Freitag (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002), 69–88, at 70. Michael Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Die Äbtissin von Quedlinburg als Stadt- und Landesherrin im Spätmittelalter,” in Bley, ed., Kayserlich – frey – weltlich, 105–119, at 107. Compare, for example, Gerold Bönnen, “Ratsherrschaft und Autorität – Zur Funktionsweise städtischer Herrschaftspraxis im 13. Jahrhundert,” in Autorität und Akzeptanz: Das Reich im Europa des 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hubertus Seibert et al. (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2013), 91–106.

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status and duties of the Jews living in town, as they were the citizens’ neighbors but legally were subject to the abbess, who in consequence was competent to decide to what extent they were accountable for the town’s affairs.79 Traditional rights and not royal traditions were at stake this time. 5

A Traditional Community in Times of Religious Upheaval

The abbey of Quedlinburg was still preoccupied with this kind of trouble when from the first decades of the 15th century onwards, ecclesiastical reform movements changed ideals and lifestyles in many religious communities considerably.80 Beginning in the second half of the 13th century, a branch within the Franciscan Order demanded a radical interpretation of the ideals of St. Francis, especially poverty. In the long term, this led to the development of an observant branch, which many communities of the Franciscan Order and the Poor Clares joined in the course of the 15th century.81 The ideal of poverty caused much discussion within the Dominican Order, too, and observant reform spread from the end of the 14th century, with the German province of Teutonia being one of the centers of renewal.82 The Council of Constance, which was in session from 1414 to 1418 to put an end to the long-lasting Great Occidental Schism, also resolved on a reform of conventual and spiritual life in the monasteries and canons’ houses. With regard to Germany, this inspired the development of reform circles among the Benedictines, the Bursfelde Congregation being important for the northern part of the country.83 Here, the canons regular of the Congregation of Windesheim had a great impact on female religious life, too, and helped reform not only canonesses’ houses but also monasteries under Benedictine and Cistercian rule, often commissioned by

79 80 81 82

83

Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin von Quedlinburg,” 107. Compare Gert Melville, Die Welt der mittelalterlichen Klöster: Geschichte und L­ ebensformen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2012), 247–66. Edeltraud Klueting, Monasteria semper reformanda: Kloster- und Ordensreformen im ­Mittelalter (Münster: Lit, 2005), 83ff. Eugen Hillenbrand, “Die Observantenbewegung in der deutschen Ordensprovinz der Dominikaner,” in Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 219–71, and ­Klueting, Monasteria semper reformanda, 92ff. Gudrun Gleba, Klosterleben im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004), 215.

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local bishops.84 Again, Quedlinburg Abbey did not participate in these reform movements, but remained a traditional canonesses’ house, as did the old communities of Essen and Gandersheim. They were relics of 10th-century religious life in a world that had undergone dramatic changes. To what extent contemporaries were aware of this fact is a topic that still awaits further investigation. Even though many charters concerning Quedlinburg Abbey have survived from late medieval times, and contemporary town clerks took note of the events of the day, few scholars have risen to the challenge of reconstructing the abbey’s history during the 15th and 16th centuries; Michael Vollmuth-Lindenthal and Jochen Vötsch are among these few.85 The manuscripts from the abbey’s library that canonesses brought with them from their families and those compiled by canons for the cura monialium at the end of the Middle Ages still await detailed analysis, as well.86 The image that can be drawn with the help of these sources and studies reflects the relationship between the abbess and other convent members and her relationship with the abbey’s reeves, with the local nobility, and especially with the town of Quedlinburg. However, works of art surviving from this period as well as the references abbesses made to the convent’s material and religious legacy proved that the abbey’s history was still cherished. The abbess and her convent members seem to have been economically independent from one another to a certain degree, and this could lead to conflicts. This was the case during Adelheid IV of Isenburg’s abbacy (1405– 34/35). The members of the community enriched themselves at the cost of the abbey’s properties several times. The abbess and the prioress, Mechthild of Hackeborn, for example, brought an action against the convent’s dean and treasurer in 1428, complaining that the two women had taken personal advantage when exercising their office.87 It should also be remembered that convent 84 85

86 87

Compare, for example, Wilhelm Kohl, “Die Windesheimer Kongregation,” in Elm, ed., Reformbemühungen, 83–106, and Bertram Lesser, Johannes Busch: Chronist der Devotio moderna: Werkstruktur, Überlieferung, Rezeption (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2005). Jochen Vötsch, “Die Äbtissin von Quedlinburg als Reichs- und Kreisstand,” in Bley, ed., ­Kayserlich – frey – weltlich, 120–29; Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg and Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Die Äbtissin von Quedlinburg” Studies from the early 20th century are also helpful. See Marita Kremer, “Die Äbtissinnen des Stifts Quedlinburg. Personal- und Amtsdaten,” PhD diss., Universität Leipzig, 1922, and Elisabeth Scheibe, “Studien zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Stifts und der Stadt Quedlinburg,” PhD diss., Universität Leipzig, 1938. Compare Sigrid Krämer, Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters. Teil 2: Köln-Zyfflich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989), 664f. Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 709, no. 107.

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members could enjoy their own personal budgets because they were not nuns but canonesses. The convent and the prioress may have had their own households independent from the abbess’s authority quite early, as it was common to differentiate between the properties of the abbess and the properties of the convent from the 12th century onwards. Marc von der Höh has found proof for this kind of budgetary management with regard to the court appointments.88 In the annual accounts of the priory, a minor chamberlain and a minor steward are mentioned for the year 1461, and von der Höh has argued that these office holders must have worked for the prioress. Furthermore, sources from the 16th century verify that the prioress had established her own courtly lifestyle by that point.89 Abbess Adelheid and Prioress Mechthild seem to have cooperated in other fields as well. The gilded shrine for the relics of St. Corona was likely donated by the two of them.90 The shrine has the form of a small, roofed building and is decorated with reliefs depicting saints on the walls. One short side depicts the martyrdom of Corona, crowned with the coat of arms of the family of Isenburg,91 and the other shows a king and a queen with a model of a church on a hill, crowned by the coat of arms of the family of Hackeborn. The other figures represent two holy bishops, St. Peter, St. Dionysius, St. Stephen, St. Paul, a bearded king, and a queen holding a sphere. The architectural design, which quotes the form of older house shrines, corresponds with the fact that the saints depicted had been venerated in Quedlinburg for centuries. Corona’s relics arrived in Quedlinburg in 964,92 and when a new church building was consecrated in 1021, sources tell of an altar dedicated to Corona and other saints situated in the northern part of the church.93 An altar dedicated to Corona is mentioned as well in 1344 and yet again around 1550.94 St. Peter, St. Stephen, St. Dionysius, and of course St. Servatius (who may be represented by one of the reliefs of a holy bishop) were venerated in Quedlinburg since early times 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

von der Höh, “Hof,” 173. Ibid., 174f. Compare Dietrich Kötzsche, Der Quedlinburger Schatz (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1999), 114–15, no. 53, and Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen, 394f. Compare Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 114–15, no. 53. Nass, ed., Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, ad a. 964, 201. Compare Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 114–15, no. 53. Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad a. 1021, 563ff. Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 465, no. 250; Kötzsche Quedlinburger Schatz, 114–15, no. 53; and Georg Adalbert von Mülverstedt, “Ueber den Kirchenschatz des Stifts Quedlinburg: Nebst einigen Nachrichten von den ehemals in den Stifts- und anderen Kirchen der Stadt befindlich gewesenen Altären und von einem dort her stammenden Italafragment,” Zeitschrift des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Alterthumskunde 6 (1874): 210–63 at 246.

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and were among the main patrons of the church in 1021.95 It is likely that the figures of the king and the queen with nimbus on the side wall of the shrine represent the canonized King Henry II and his wife Kunigunde,96 who resided in Quedlinburg when the church was consecrated in 1021.97 The reliefs on one of the short sides of the king and the queen without nimbus holding a model of the church certainly represent either King Henry I or King Otto I and Mathilde, wife of Henry and mother of Otto, and in this way recall the foundation of the convent. Considering the quarrels between the two donors, Abbess Adelheid and Prioress Mechthild, on the one hand, and other convent members on the other, the iconographical program of the shrine might have called to mind that the head of the abbey should be in a strong and powerful position due to the royal origins of the office. In times of conflict and crisis, many female religious houses revived the founders’ remembrance and the veneration of long-­ established saints.98 During Adelheid IV’s abbacy, yet another conflict loomed. The town of Quedlinburg gained autonomy,99 even though it should be remembered that it remained bound to its ruler in a multitude of ways: the citizens had to render homage to every newly elected abbess and were obliged to hand the town keys over to her. Furthermore, the inhabitants had to deliver a certain amount of beer, fish, and wood to the convent and were subject to the abbess’s court in certain law cases.100 It was the economic interests that caused several conflicts between Adelheid’s successor, Abbess Anna I of Plauen (1435–58), and representatives of the town.101 The convent members realized that they had to prepare themselves for future disputes, and when Anna I died, the canonesses elected an abbess from the high nobility, Hedwig of Saxony (1458–1511), even though she was only 13 years of age.102 Her father, Duke Frederick II of Saxony, was one of the seven electors of the king, and thus among the most powerful princes in the empire. He represented his daughter as abbess in temporal 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad. a. 1021, 563ff, and Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 114–15, no. 53. See for example Stefan Weinfurter, Heinrich II. (1002–1024): Herrscher am Ende der Zeiten (Regensburg: Pustet, 1999), 270ff. Giese, ed., Annales Quedlinburgenses, ad. a. 1021, 562. Compare Röckelein, “Gründer, Stifter und Heilige,” 70. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin von Quedlinburg,” 108. Ibid., 109. Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, 1, 377, nos. 382, 384, no. 387, and 416ff., nos. 407, 440–50, and nos. 424ff. Compare Scheibe, Studien, 102. For Anna I of Plauen see also Kremer, Äbtissinnen, 64ff. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg,” 72ff.

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affairs until she turned 20,103 and his sons, who continued to support her, had to weigh in on one of the most severe conflicts in which the abbess and the town ever engaged. The convent and the town had argued about fishing rights and rights of cutting timber for a long time. Negotiations had reached a deadlock in the 1470s.104 The sources shed light on the fact that those citizens striving for autonomy were discriminating against those siding with the abbess. Moreover, the town council had arrested a Jew (a procedure actually reserved for the abbess), tortured him, and thus forced him to confess that a fellow Jew favored by the abbess had asked him to abduct a Christian child and commit ritual murder. Abbess Hedwig was finally able to bring the case to her court. After an investigation, she acquitted the defendant, provoking the town council to blame her for protecting a Jew who wanted to kill Christians.105 At the same time, ­Hedwig fell out with the bishop of Halberstadt by demanding that he abdicate the bailiwick for Quedlinburg since the family of the hereditary title-bearers, the dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg, who had lent it to the bishops of Halberstadt, had died out in 1422.106 So when the dispute escalated in July 1477, the town fought side by side with the bishop of Halberstadt, facing an alliance of Hedwig’s brothers, Duke Ernst (1441–86) and Duke Albrecht (1443– 1500) with Landgrave Wilhelm III of Thuringia (1425–82).107 Fearing that the townsmen could cast out the abbess, the dukes of Saxony and the landgrave of Thuringia attacked the town on July 24, 1477.108 While the bishop soon gave up the bailiwick, the town bowed to the abbess (on August 9) under harsh conditions:109 the citizens had to pay reparations annually and lost their autonomy, i.e., their right to govern their own affairs, including jurisdiction in major matters and the right to decree statutes, for which they had fought for 103 104 105 106 107

108 109

Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 784f., no. 225, and 796f., no. 251. Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, 1, 474f., no. 456; 506, no. 494; and 508– 12, nos. 497–500. Compare Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg,” 75f. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin von Quedlinburg,” 112. Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, 1, 512–22, no. 501ff. Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, 1, 529f., nos. 510, 532–78, and nos. 512– 53, and Karl Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, vol. 2 (Halle: Verlag der ­Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1882), 21, no. 583. Compare Pätzold, “Stift und Stadt,” 188f.; Schlenker, “Verhältnis,” 461 and 465ff.; and Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg,” 78f. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin von Quedlinburg,” 112. Janicke, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, 1, 578–81, nos. 554, 588ff., and no. 561; ­Pätzold, “Stift und Stadt,” 190ff.; and Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von ­Quedlinburg,” 81f.

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centuries. While the town council was not abolished, newly elected aldermen had to be confirmed by the abbess. She was moreover declared rightful owner of every mill within the town and its hinterland and of all contested fishing rights.110 Hedwig additionally gained control over Quedlinburg’s bailiwick once again and appointed her brothers as reeves in 1479.111 In the long term, this decision seems not to have improved the relationship between the convent and its reeves, as Hedwig’s successor Magdalene, princess of Anhalt (1511–14), resigned after only three years, suggesting conflicts with Duke George of Saxony (1471–1539),112 who tried to impair the next election.113 However, the canonesses made use of their right of a free election and appointed Anna of Stolberg-Wernigerode abbess (1515–74). She was then only 11 years old.114 As she got older, she fancied the Reformation ideas that were agitating religious life in Germany from the 1520s onwards, and her decision to convert the community of Quedlinburg into a Protestant convent in 1539 led to fundamental changes that cannot be examined here.115 However, the transformation allowed for the survival of the convent up to its final dissolution in 1802, at the beginning of the process of mediatization and secularization in Germany.116 Anna’s decision ensured a longer lasting remembrance of the community’s medieval history, since many pieces of the convent’s treasure were not sold at once as was the case in monasteries dissolved in the course of the Reformation.117 When convent life came to an end in the wake of secularization, the abbey had survived 866 years of history. Its abbesses had coped with many political and religious challenges, some of which are discussed in the papers of this volume, but still ensured that the convent’s history was not forgotten, thus providing the ground for modern research.

110 111 112

Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin von Quedlinburg,” 113. Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 303, 822ff., and 836. Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 895, no. 18, and Winnigstedt, “Chronicon Quedlinburgenses,” 511. Compare Kremer, Äbtissinnen, 70ff. 113 Kremer, Äbtissinnen, 75. 114 Erath, ed., Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis, 895f., no. 18. 115 For the convent’s history in early modern times see Teresa Schröder-Stapper, Fürstäbtissinnen: Frühneuzeitliche Stiftsherrschaften zwischen Verwandtschaft, Lokalgewalten und Reichsverband (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2015). 116 Compare Kremer, Äbtissinnen, 77ff. 117 Compare Heimann, “‘Krämpel,’” 24f.

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Works Cited

Althoff, Gerd. “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg: Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Ü berlieferungszentren.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44. Althoff, Gerd. Heinrich IV. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006. Andrea, Alfred John. “Conrad of Krosigk, Bishop of Halberstadt, Crusader and Monk of Sittichenbach: His Ecclesiastical Career, 1184–1225.” Analecta Cisterciensia 43 (1987): 11–91. Behrenbeck, Sabine. “‘Heil.’” In Deutsche Erinnerungsorte. Vol. 3. Ed. Etienne François and Hagen Schulze. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001. 310–27. Bloch, Hermann, ed. Annales Marbacenses. MGH SS rer. Germ. 9. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1907 (repr. 2001). Blough, Karen. “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity ­Reconfigured.” Gesta 47/2 (2008): 147–69. Bodarwé, Katrinette. Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg. Münster: Aschendorff, 2004. Bönnen, Gerold. “Ratsherrschaft und Autorität – Zur Funktionsweise städtischer Herrschaftspraxis im 13. Jahrhundert.” In Autorität und Akzeptanz: Das Reich im Europa des 13. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Hubertus Seibert et al. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2013. 91–106. Bogumil, Karlotto. Das Bistum Halberstadt im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zur Reichs- und Reformpolitik des Bischofs Reinhard und zum Wirken der Augustiner-Chorherren. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1972. Bressler, Harry, and Paul Fridolin Kehr, eds. Die Urkunden Heinrichs III. MGH ­Diplomata 4, 5. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1926–31. Csendes, Peter. Philipp von Schwaben: Ein Staufer im Kampf um die Macht. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003. Ehlers, Casper. “Franken und Sachsen gründen Klöster. Beobachtungen zu Integrationsprozessen des 8. bis 10. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel von Essen, Gandersheim und Quedlinburg.” In Gandersheim und Essen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu sächsischen Frauenstiften. Ed. Hedwig Röckelein and Martin Hoernes. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006. 11–31. Ehlers, Joachim. Heinrich der Löwe: Eine Biographie. Munich: Siedler, 2008. Ehlers, Joachim. “Heinrich I. in Quedlinburg.” In Herrschaftsrepräsentation im ottonischen Sachsen. Ed. Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke Verlag, 1998. 235–66. Erath, Anton Ulrich von, ed. Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis. Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764.

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Fleckenstein, Josef. Pfalz und Stift Quedlinburg: Zum Problem ihrer Zuordnung unter den Ottonen. Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, philologisch-historische Klasse 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992. Flemming, Johanna. “Der spätromanische Bildteppich der Quedlinburger Äbtissin Agnes.” Sachsen und Anhalt 19 (1997): 517–53. Fößel, Amalie. Die Königin im mittelalterlichen Reich: Herrschaftsausübung, Herrschaftsrechte, Handlungsspielräume. Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000. Giese, Martina, ed. Die Annales Quedlinburgensis. MGH SS rer. Germ. 72. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004. Gleba, Gudrun. Klosterleben im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004. Gresser, Georg. Die Synoden und Konzilien in der Zeit des Reformpapsttums in Deutschland und Italien von Leo IX. bis Calixt II. 1049–1123. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006. Heimann, Heinz-Dieter. “Brandenburgische Zisterzienserklöster als ‘Erinnerungsorte’ heute: Bemerkungen und Perspektiven zum Umgang mit nicht nur mittelalterlicher Kloster-, Ordens- und Kirchengeschichte.” In Das geistliche Erbe: Wege und Perspektiven der Vermittlung, Studien zur Geschichte. Ed. Angelika Lozar. Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2003. 106–26. Heimann, Heinz-Dieter. “‘Geschätzter Krämpel’: Über Ansprüche der Memorialkultur und ihre Traditionsbrüche in der Geschichte des Servatiusstiftes.” In Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen ­Neuzeit. Ed. Clemens Bley. Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009. 14–29. Hengevoss-Dürkop, Kerstin. “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg.” In Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte. Ed. Otto Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998. 45–87. Hillenbrand, Eugen. “Die Observantenbewegung in der deutschen Ordensprovinz der Dominikaner.” In Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im ­spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen. Ed. Kaspar Elm. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989. 219–71. Höh, Marc von der. “Der Hof der Äbtissinnen von Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter.” In Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Clemens Bley. Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009. 167–88. Holder-Egger, Oswald, ed. Lampert of Hersfeld. Annales. MGH SS rer. Germ. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1894. Holder-Egger, Oswald, and Bernhard von Simson, eds. Die Chronik des Propstes Burchard von Ursberg. MGH SS rer. Germ. 16. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1916.

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Holtzmann, Robert, ed. Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre ­Korveier Überarbeitung. MGH SS rer. Germ. N. S. 9. Berlin: Weidmannsche ­Buchhandlung, 1935. Hucker, Bernd Ulrich. Kaiser Otto IV. Hannover: Hahnsche B ­ uchhandlung, 1990. Janicke, Karl, ed. Magdeburger Schöppenchronik. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1869. Janicke, Karl, ed. Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Hildesheim und seiner Bischöfe. Vol. 1. Bis 1221. Leipzig: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1896. Janicke, Karl, ed. Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg. 2 vols. Halle: Verlag der ­Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1873–82. Kasper, Peter. Das Reichsstift Quedlinburg (936–1810). Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2014. Kaufhold, Martin. Deutsches Interregnum und europäische Politik: Konfliktlösungen und Entscheidungsstrukturen 1230–1280. Hannover: Hahnsche B ­ uchhandlung, 2000. Kettner, Friedrich Ernst. Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des Kayserl. freyen ­weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg ... Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710. Klemenz, Birgitta. “‘Denkmal väterlicher Bußgesinnung’: Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer und Fürstenfeld.” In Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer. Ed. Angelika Mundorff. Fürstenfeldbruck: Stadtmuseum, 1997. 34–52. Klueting, Edeltraud. Monasteria semper reformanda: Kloster- und Ordensreformen im Mittelalter. Münster: Lit, 2005. Kötzsche, Dietrich. Der Quedlinburger Schatz. Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1999. Kohl, Wilhelm. “Die Windesheimer Kongregation.” In Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen. Ed. Kaspar Elm. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989. 83–106. Krämer, Sigrid. Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters. Teil 2: Köln-Zyfflich. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1989. Kremer, Marita. “Die Äbtissinnen des Stifts Quedlinburg. Personal- und Amtsdaten.” PhD diss., Universität Leipzig, 1922. Kroeschell, Karl. “Theophanu und Adelheid: Zum Problem der Vormundschaft über Otto III.” In Rechtsbegriffe im Mittelalter. Ed. Albrecht Cordes. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2002. 63–77. Kruppa, Nathalie. “Neue Gedanken zum Quedlinburger Wappenkästchen.” Concilium medii aevi 4 (2001): 153–77. Leopold, Gerhard. Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg. Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010. Lesser, Bertram. Johannes Busch: Chronist der Devotio moderna; Werkstruktur, ­Überlieferung, Rezeption. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2005. Lorentzen, Tim. Ideologische Usurpation: Die nationalsozialistische Umgestaltung der Stiftskirchen zu Braunschweig und Quedlinburg als Zeichenhandlung. Wolfenbüttel: Landeskirchenamt, 2005.

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Mamsch, Stefanie. Kommunikation in der Krise: Könige und Fürsten im deutschen Thronstreit (1198–1218). Münster: Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2012. Marlow, Christian. “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen im Hochmittelalter: Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137.” PhD diss., Otto-vonGuericke-­Universität, Magdeburg, 2017 (http://d-nb.info/1161462007/34). Melville, Gert. Die Welt der mittelalterlichen Klöster: Geschichte und Lebensformen. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2012. Mersch, Katharina Ulrike. Missachtung, Anerkennung und Kreativität: Exkommunizierte Laien im 13. Jahrhundert. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2020. Mersch, Katharina Ulrike. Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2012. Mersch, Katharina Ulrike. “Stifterinnenbilder im Kontext gemeinschaftlicher ­Tradition. Essen und Quedlinburg im Vergleich.” In Pro remedio et salute anime peragemus: Totengedenken am Frauenstift Essen im Mittelalter. Ed. Thomas Schilp. Essen: ­Klartext Verlag, 2008. 213–30. Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje. “’Die häßlichen Äbtissinen’: Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg.” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–47. Moddelmog, Claudia. Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012. Müller-Wiegand, Daniela. Vermitteln – beraten – erinnern: Funktionen und Aufgabenfelder von Frauen in der ottonischen Herrscherfamilie (919–1024). Kassel: Kassel ­University Press, 2005. Mülverstedt, Georg Adalbert von. “Ueber den Kirchenschatz des Stifts Quedlinburg: Nebst einigen Nachrichten von den ehemals in den Stifts- und anderen Kirchen der Stadt befindlich gewesenen Altären und von einem dort her stammenden Italafragment.” Zeitschrift des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Alterthumskunde 6 (1874): 210–63. Nass, Klaus, ed. Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo. MGH SS 37. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2006. Pätzold, Barbara. “Stift und Stadt Quedlinburg. Zum Verhalten von Klerus und ­Bürgertum im Spätmittelalter.” In Hansische Stadtgeschichte – Brandenburgische Landesgeschichte: Eckhard Müller-Mertens zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Evamaria Engel et al. Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1989. 171–92. Patzold, Steffen. “Die Lust des Herrschers. Zur Bedeutung und Verbreitung eines politischen Vorwurfs zur Zeit Heinrichs IV.” In Heinrich IV. Ed. Gerd Althoff. ­Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2009. 219–53.

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Schweizer, Stefan. ‘Unserer Weltanschauung sichtbaren Ausdruck geben’: Nationalsozialistische Geschichtsbilder in historischen Festzügen zum ‘Tag der Deutschen Kunst.’ Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007. Schwineköper, Berent. “Eine unbekannte heraldische Quelle zur Geschichte Kaiser Ottos IV. und seiner Anhänger.” In Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972. 959–1022. Sickel, Theodor, ed. Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I. MGH Diplomata 4, 1. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1879–84. Sickel, Theodor, ed. Die Urkunden Ottos des III. MGH Diplomata 4, 2, 2. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1893. Siebrecht, Adolf. Geschichte und Kultur des Bistums Halberstadt 804–1648: Symposium anläßlich 1200 Jahre Bistumsgründung Halberstadt, 24. bis 28. März 2004; Protokollband. Halberstadt: Halberstädter Druckhaus, 2006. Struve, Tilman. “War Heinrich IV. ein Wüstling?: Szenen einer Ehe am salischen Hofe.” In Scientia veritatis: Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Oliver Münsch. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2004. 273–88. Vötsch, Jochen. “Die Äbtissin von Quedlinburg als Reichs- und Kreisstand.” In Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Clemens Bley. Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009. 120–29. Vogtherr, Thomas. “Die salischen Äbtissinnen des Reichsstifts Quedlinburg.” In Von Sacerdotium und Regnum: Geistliche und weltliche Gewalt im frühen und hohen ­Mittelalter; Festschrift für Egon Boshof zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Franz-Reiner Erkens and Hartmut Wolff. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002. 405–20. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, Michael. “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg: Reichsstift und Stadt Quedlinburg am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts.” In Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder: Menschen im Spätmittelalter. Ed. Werner Freitag. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002. 69–88. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, Michael. “Die Äbtissin von Quedlinburg als Stadt- und Landesherrin im Spätmittelalter.” In Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Clemens Bley. Halle/ Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009. 105–19. Weiland, Ludwig, ed. Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium 781–1209. MGH SS 23. ­Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1874. 73–123. Weinfurter, Stefan. “Funktionalisierung und Gemeinschaftsmodell: Die Kanoniker in der Kirchenreform des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts.” In Die Stiftskirche in Südwestdeutschland: Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Forschung. Ed. Dieter R. Bauer et al. Leinfelden-Echterdingen: DRW-Verlag, 2003. 107–21. Weinfurter, Stefan. Heinrich II. (1002–1024): Herrscher am Ende der Zeiten. Regensburg: Pustet, 1999.

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Werminghoff, Albert, ed. “Institutio sanctimonialium Aquisgranensis, Concilio Aquisgranense.” Concilia aevi karolini 2,1. MGH Leges 3. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1906. 421–56. Winnigstedt, Johannes. “Chronicon Quedlinburgenses.” In Teutsche und Sächsische Alterthümer Theil 3: Sammlung Etlicher noch nicht gedruckten Alten Chronicken, als der Nieder-Sächsischen, Halberstädtschen, Quedlinburgischen, Ascherslebischen, und Ermslebischen. Ed. Caspar Abel. Hannover: Schröder, 1732. 479–524. Zey, Claudia. “Frauen und Töchter der salischen Herrscher. Zum Wandel salischer Heiratspolitik in der Krise.” In Die Salier, das Reich und der Niederrhein. Ed. Tilman Struve. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008. 47–98.

Chapter 2

Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th Centuries: An Archaeological View Tobias Gärtner The area around Quedlinburg was already heavily populated in the ­prehistoric period. Settlement remains from the Roman imperial era have been found within the present city limits, and there is no doubt that the Quedlinburg region continuously constituted an area of settlement from the Migration period into the early Middle Ages. Such continuity has not yet been verified, however, for the Altstadt and for the area around the Schlossberg. Medieval ­Quedlinburg comprises numerous settlement centers of varying age (­Figure 2.1). The church of St. Wiperti, located in the southwestern section of the city, is part of the ­oldest area of settlement. The Schlossberg is the most striking topographical element of Quedlinburg: its steep cliffs provided protection, and the area was used intensively in the prehistoric period. It is surrounded by a part of town called Westendorf, which was subject to the abbess of St. Servatius until the convent’s dissolution in 1802; citizens from other parts of the town could not boast a similar relationship. Whether or not the history of settlement on the S­ chlossberg and in Westendorf extends back into the Carolingian period, as it does at the church of St. Wiperti, has been a point of controversy.1 An additional architectural element is the convent for female monastics that was founded in 986 on the Münzenberg. The Altstadt, in the northern part of town, is located in the lowlands of the floodplain of the Bode river, which was always subject to inundation. Although this general area would not seem to be terribly propitious for habitation, it has been surmised that early settlements could be identified here that extend back to the foundation of the Markt by Emperor Otto III in 994. This issue is the subject of much debate that can only be resolved by consulting the archeological record. The same is true for the ­question of whether the 1 Adolf Brinkmann, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des ­Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg, vol. 1 (Berlin: Hendel, 1922), 12, 17–18, and 20; Erich Herzog, Die ottonische Stadt (Berlin: Mann, 1964), 41; Ulrich Reuling, “Quedlinburg. Königspfalz – ­Reichsstift – Markt,” in Pfalzen – Reichsgut – Königshöfe, ed. Lutz Fenske (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 184–247 at 192; Ulrich Reuling and Daniel Stracke, Quedlinburg (Münster: Ardey-Verlag, 2006), 3. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_004

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Figure 2.1 Core settlements of Quedlinburg including the course of the city walls of ­Westendorf, the Altstadt, and the Neustadt. Map after Ulrich Reuling and Daniel Stracke, Quedlinburg (Münster: Ardey-Verlag, 2006), 3, figure 3, with changes and modifications by Tobias Gärtner

Markt of 1000 was located on the site of the present-day Marktplatz, or in Westendorf, or near the church of St. Blaise.2 Quedlinburg’s Neustadt constitutes the most recent area of settlement. It was established in the second half of the 12th century or early in the 13th. Other small suburban areas of settlement outside the gates of the city date to the same time.

2 Brinkmann, Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler, 13; Paul Grimm, “Zu ottonischen Märkten im ­westlichen Mittelelbe- und Saalegebiet,” in Vor- und Frühformen der europäischen Stadt, vol. 1, ed. Herbert Jankuhn et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 332–37 at 334–35; ­Herzog, Die ottonische Stadt, 43. Reuling, “Quedlinburg,” 242–45. Berent Schwineköper, Königtum und Städte bis zum Ende des Investiturstreites (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1977), 98.

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There is a long history of archeological research in Quedlinburg.3 The “­Confessio” in the crypt of the abbatial church on the Schlossberg was discovered in the 19th century, and the excavations on the hill inside and outside the church reached an initial peak in the 1930s. Hermann Wäscher, who had trained as an architect, was tasked with excavating in the abbatial church in 1938/39. He summarized the results of that research in a small publication that appeared in 1959.4 Karl Schirwitz then published short individual summaries of the results of excavations at the Schlossberg and at the church of St. Wiperti in the early 1960s.5 In the era of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; 1949–90), very few archeological investigations were undertaken, and those that were have not been sufficiently documented, with the exception of the excavations and building research led by Reinhard Schmitt. During this time, research was only published in short preliminary reports that mainly focused on the Schlossberg.6 After the reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, archeological research in Quedlinburg experienced a marked upswing. With the establishment of a full-time archeologist position in the Landkreis Quedlinburg (today Landkreis Harz), the conservation of archeological monuments has been better integrated into the implementation of construction projects, meaning that many archeological findings and results can now be secured and appropriately documented. In this essay, I summarize the results of my research into the settlement ­history of Quedlinburg; these derive mainly from archeological findings from the 10th and 11th centuries.7 The find-sites for this period are concentrated in the Altstadt and on the Schlossberg, where in particular the early structures 3 Tobias Gärtner, “Stadtarchäologie in Quedlinburg,” Archäologie in Sachsen-Anhalt 9 (2018): 75–82. 4 Hermann Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942 (Berlin: ­Henschelverlag, 1959). 5 Karl Schirwitz, “Die Bodenfunde vom Gelände des Wiperti-Klostergutes zu Quedlinburg,” Harz-Zeitschrift 14 (1962): 1–14, and Karl Schirwitz, “Die Grabungen auf dem Schlossberg zu Quedlinburg,” Jahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 44 (1960): 9–50. 6 Reinhard Schmitt, “Schlossberg in Quedlinburg,” in Die Ottonen. Kunst – Architektur – ­Geschichte, ed. Klaus Gereon Beuckers et al. (Petersberg: Imhof, 2002), 267–72, and Reinhard Schmitt, “Der Schloßberg in Quedlinburg. Zum Stand der baugeschichtlichen Forschungen,” in Quedlinburg 994–1994: 1000 Jahre Markt-, Münz- und Zollrecht, ed. Stadt Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg: Rödiger, 1994), 121–33. 7 The propositions presented here derive from my postdoctoral dissertation. See Tobias ­Gärtner, Quedlinburg im frühen und hohen Mittelalter: Studien zu den Anfängen der Welterbestadt und zur Keramik des 7./8. bis 13. Jahrhunderts zwischen Harz und Elbe (­Langenweissbach: Beier & Beran, 2019).

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Figure 2.2 10th- and 11th-century find spots in Quedlinburg. Dots: finds. Circles: uncertain finds or scattered finds. 1 Church of St. Wiperti (FStNr. 44), 2 Schlossberg (ANr. 5070/FStNr. 18), 3 Schlossberg 11 (FStNr. 200), 4 Lange Gasse 10 (FStNr. 170), 5 Carl-Ritter-Platz (FStNr. 170), 6 Marktplatz (ANr. 5560), 7 Pölle 29/Jüdengasse (FStNr. 194), 8 Bockstraße 6/Klink 11 (FStNr. 175), 9 Klink 6 (FStNr. 175), 10 Schmale Straße 55–58 (ANr. 1009), 11 Schmale Straße 43–45/ Dovestraße (FStNr. 161). Map derived from Reuling, “Quedlinburg”

of the abbey church and a few other buildings and grave-finds are noteworthy (Figure 2.2). Numerous archeological interventions were also carried out in Westendorf, but only the early church has been excavated in the area of St. Wiperti. In the 9th century, the church of St. Wiperti was subject to the Abbey of Hersfeld and likely fell into the hands of the Liudolfings in the early 10th century. The presence of a related Carolingian settlement seems likely, but it has not yet been located. Scholars have often posited the existence of an early, 9th-century monastic house, possibly a mission, in the area around St. ­Wiperti.8 A turn of phrase in the “Relatio Geltmari” (c.940) seems to suggest as much: an episode in one of the miracle stories of St. Wigbert mentions a cleric in Quedlinburg. The prelude to the miracle story emphasizes that Quedlinburg 8 Adolf Gauert, “Zur Struktur und Topographie der Königspfalzen,” in Deutsche Königspfalzen, vol. 2, ed. Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965), 1–60 at 7; Peter Kasper, Das Reichsstift Quedlinburg (936–1810) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2014), 32; and Schwineköper, Königtum und Städte, 94.

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was a royal residence and was “once entrusted to the use of the cloister community [congregatio] … because it was in fact located within the property of holy Wigbert.”9 The term congregatio refers to the abbey at Hersfeld and not to a religious community in Quedlinburg.10 Thus, we can only be certain that, in the Carolingian period, Quedlinburg had a church and probably an associated manor. Primary sources do not reveal further constituent parts or the size of the site. A royal court in Quedlinburg must have existed at the time of the reign of King Henry I. In 922, the king issued an official document in “the place that is called Quitilingaburg” (“villa, quae dicitur Quitilingaburg”). We cannot be certain specifically where Henry I might have issued this document—whether in a court close to the church of St. Wiperti or even in a palace on the Schlossberg. In the subsequent period, Quedlinburg became an important residence for Ottonian rulers to such an extent that one can refer to it as an imperial palace, or Pfalz. Even though the word palatium does not appear in the written sources,11 the term applies in light of Quedlinburg’s significance for the political representation of the Ottonian rulers.12 The Pfalz played an important role for the Ottonians with regard to observance of the Easter feast, and Quedlinburg was also the preferred site for other important gatherings. For example, royal councils were repeatedly held here, in particular during the reign of Otto III (929, 966, 973, 984, 985, 991, 995, and 1000) and less frequently during that of Henry II (1003 and 1021).13 It is unclear whether Duke Henry I of Bavaria hatched his plans to murder his brother King Otto I at a royal council held at 9

10 11 12

13

Cited in Ernst Schubert, “Die Kirchen St. Wiperti und St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Eine Interpretation der literarischen Quellen zur Baugeschichte,” Sachsen und Anhalt 25 (2007): 31–80 at 33. “Quondam autem istius congregationis utilitati subditus, vedelicet quia sancti Wigberhti extitit proprius.” Michael Fleck, Leben und Wundertaten des Heiligen Wigbert (Marburg: Historische ­Kommission für Hessen, 2010), 22, and Herzog, Die ottonische Stadt, 38. The documented terms used for Quedlinburg in the Ottonian period are “villa,” “urbs,” “civitas,” “castellum,” “Curtis,” “locus celeber,” “metropolis,” “praedium regis,” and “sedes regalis.” Some scholars choose to use the term “Pfalz” only in cases where the primary sources refer to a “palatium” at a given location. See, for example, Caspar Ehlers, “Die Pfalz Werla im räumlichen Bezugssystem der Befestigungen des Nordharzvorlandes und des ­sogenannten Werla-Goslarer Reichsgutbezirks (9.–13. Jahrhundert),” in Werla 1 – Die Königspfalz: Ihre Geschichte und die Ausgrabungen 1875–1964, ed. Markus C. Blaich and Michael Geschwinde (Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2015) 161–84 at 166–67. I choose not to use this definition. Gerlinde Schlenker, “Auf den Spuren der Ottonen in Sachsen-Anhalt,” in Auf den Spuren der Ottonen, ed. Cornelia Kessler (Halle/Saale: Landesheimatbund Sachsen-Anhalt, 1999), 6–24 at 22–24.

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Easter 941 in Quedlinburg,14 for it is also possible that Easter was observed that year in Magdeburg.15 In 929, at the first recorded major council in Quedlinburg, Queen Mathilde’s dower was established, consisting principally, in addition to Quedlinburg, of towns close by including Pöhlde, Nordhausen, Grone, and Duderstadt.16 This charter notes that King Henry I wanted “to put his house in order with God’s help.” This initiative coincided with others, such as the marriage of Henry’s son Otto (the future King Otto I) to the Anglo-Saxon princess Edgith of Wessex in the same year. It has been speculated that the nuptials took place in Quedlinburg,17 but it has also been suggested that the marriage was celebrated somewhere in the Rhine region in 930. Memorial book entries from the abbeys of St. Gall and Reichenau, which were very clearly recorded in association with the royal family’s trip to Swabia in the spring of 930, argue against Quedlinburg as the site of Otto and Edgith’s marriage: since Edgith’s name is missing from these lists, it would appear that the marriage postdated this trip.18 At the Easter celebration in 966, King Otto I summoned all of the archbishops and bishops in the kingdom to Quedlinburg to participate in his daughter Mathilde’s ordination as abbess. It was also at this time that the elevation of Magdeburg to the status of an archbishopric was discussed. King Otto I’s residence in Quedlinburg for the feast of Easter in 973 occasioned another royal council, as Widukind of Corvey reported: “And so he left Italy with great honor … with his victorious host he traveled to Gallia in order to cross over to Germania to celebrate Easter in the famous town of Quedlinburg, where a great number of different peoples came together to celebrate with much joy

14

15

16 17 18

See Carlrichard Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium regis: Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Königtums im Frankenreich und in den fränkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1968), 159, and Johannes Laudage, Otto der Große: Eine Biographie (­Regensburg: Pustet, 2001), 212 and 242–43. King Otto I was in residence in Magdeburg on April 23, 941 (see Theodor von Sickel, Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., MGH Diplomata 4, 1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1879–84), 123). After that, the next official record puts him in Ingelheim in May (see Sickel, Die Urkunden Konrads I., Heinrichs I. und Ottos I., 124–26). Sickel, Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., 55–56: “domum nostram deo opitulante ordinaliter disponere.” Joachim Ehlers, “Die Königin aus England. Ottos des Großen erste Gemahlin, ­Magdeburg und das Reich,” in Sachsen und Anhalt 22 (1999/2000): 27–56 at 35, and Kasper, Das Reichsstift Quedlinburg, 37. Karl Schmid, “Die Thronfolge Ottos des Großen,” in Königswahl und Thronfolge in ­ottonisch-frühdeutscher Zeit, ed. Eduard Hlawitschka (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), 417–508 at 447 and 458.

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his and his son’s return to the homeland.”19 Here, Otto I gathered the leaders of the kingdom as well as representatives of the Danish king, who rendered tribute, thus confirming the subordination of their monarch, Harald Bluetooth, and the Polish duke’s son Boleslaw, who had been sent as a hostage by his own father. In addition, the Bohemian duke, Boleslav, 12 Hungarian and 12 Bulgarian emissaries, along with legates from Rome, Benevento, and Byzantium were in attendance. Arabian representatives had also been expected, but were delayed and could be received by Otto I only in Merseburg at the feast of the Ascension. Quedlinburg would not see such an international gathering again.20 The queen dowager Mathilde established St. Wiperti as a canonry between 961 and 964. This community may have consisted of clerics from the Schlossberg, who are mentioned in a document issued by Otto I in 936, or it could have also been an entirely new foundation.21 Mathilde provided the small community of two clerics with possessions from her own dower, and transferred ­control of the canonry to the abbatial church on the Schlossberg. Among other things, the canons of St. Wiperti were responsible for protecting the queen’s memoria.22 The canonry was dissolved in 1145/46, at which point the church fell under the control of the Premonstratensian Order. Up to this point, archeological investigations at St. Wiperti have been limited to the church itself. Initial non-professional excavations took place around 1900 and were then resumed in the National Socialist period. In 1936 and again in 1940/41, Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to search for the bones of King Henry I in St. Wiperti.23 Then, between 1955 and 1957, Gerhard ­Leopold 19

20 21 22

23

Widukind von Corvey, “Sachsengeschichte,” in Ausgewählte Quellen zur Deutschen G ­ eschichte des Mittelalters 8, ed. Albert Bauer and Reinhold Rau, 5th ed. (Darmstadt: ­Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 16–183 at 180, lines 13–18: “Egressus est itaque de Italia cum magna gloria … cum victricibus alis Galliam ingressus est, inde Germaniam transiturus et proximum pascha loco celibri Quidilingaburg celebraturus; ubi diversarum gentium multitudo conveniens, restitutum patriae cum filio cum magno gaudio celebrabant.” Gerd Althoff, “Otto der Große und die neue europäische Identität,” in Der Hoftag in Quedlinburg 973, ed. Andreas Ranft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006), 3–18 at 3–5. Josef Fleckenstein. “Pfalz und Stift Quedlinburg. Zum Problem ihrer Zuordnung unter den Ottonen,” in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, ­philologisch-historische Klasse 2 (1992): 3–21 at 17, and Reuling, “Quedlinburg,” 202–03. Thomas Zotz, “Klerikergemeinschaft und Königsdienst. Zu den Pfalzstiften der ­Karolinger, Ottonen und Salier,” in Frühformen von Stiftskirchen in Europa: Funktion und Wandel religiöser Gemeinschaften vom 6. bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts; Festgabe für Dieter ­Mertens zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Sönke Lorenz and Thomas Zotz (Leinfelden-­ Echterdingen: DRW-Verlag, 2005), 185–205 at 195. Andreas Stahl, “Königshof und Stiftsberg in Quedlinburg. Stätten des Heinrichskults der SS,” in Historische Bauforschung in Sachsen-Anhalt II, ed. Ulrike Wendland (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2013), 471–96 at 480–82.

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Figure 2.3 Church of St. Wiperti in Quedlinburg, construction phases of the church 1 10th century, 2 c.1000, 3 11th century, 4 middle to second half of the 12th century (Church of the Premonstratensians). After Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 190, figure 69, 201, figure 99, 208, figure 114, and 210, figure 120

­ ndertook excavations in the church.24 The oldest church structure was a hall u measuring roughly 11.5 × 22 m, which was outfitted with an apse or a square choir in the east (Figure 2.3.1). It has been dated to the 10th century.25 A completely new church was built in a second phase of construction (Figure 2.3.2). The three-aisled basilica with a transept and westwork was about 43 m long; its weakly constructed enclosed apse was square. The incorporation of the famous barrel-vaulted crypt took place in a later phase of construction: it was built around the year 1000, which is clear from the telltale yellow mortar used in its construction. This is the same kind of mortar used for the abbatial church and other 10th- and 11th-century buildings on the Schlossberg. The crypt contains

24 25

Gerhard Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010), 76. Ibid., 77–78.

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Figure 2.4 Attempted reconstruction of the building history of the Stiftskirche after ­Jacobsen and Leopold. See Jacobsen, “Frühgeschichte,” 64, figure 2–3, 66, ­figure 5, and 68, figure 6–7, and Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 166, figure 7, 179, figure 42, and 188, figure 64

so-called “mushroom capitals” that are typical of this period.26 The square choir of the church is its best-preserved element; parts of its original walls are preserved in heights of up to 4 m. The abbatial church on the Schlossberg has stood at the center of archeological interest (Figure 2.4); we know that royal residences were constructed here no later than 930, and the Stiftskirche was established in 936. Our understanding of the structures that preceded the church in its present appearance is based in large part on Wäscher’s excavations from 1938/39. Two attempted reconstructions of the church in the 10th and 11th centuries resulted from Wäscher’s findings (Figure 2.5). Werner Jacobsen surmised that a small, 12 m long, three-aisled basilica was the first structure and would have stood at the time of the death of King Henry I in 936; the king would have been interred before the altar of 26

Werner Jacobsen, Uwe Lobbedey, and Dethard von Winterfeld, “Ottonische Baukunst,” in Otto der Große, Magdeburg und Europa, vol. 2, ed. Matthias Puhle (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001), 251–82 at 274, and Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 83–87.

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Figure 2.5 Quedlinburg, Stiftskirche of St. Servatius. (a) Drawing of the west wall of the confessio, after 1877. After Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 72, figure 103. (b) Attempted reconstruction. After Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 183, figure 53

St. Peter. Jacobsen proposed that this simple structure stood until the late 10th century, at which point a construction report from 997 describes an expansion of the west end of the old church.27 For his part, ­Gerhard Leopold proposed an alternative sequence of construction: he proposed that a 12 × 27.5 m church stood on the site around 920; a small, three-aisled church that functioned as a funerary chapel for King Henry I was added on to this earlier structure.28 Leo27

Werner Jacobsen, “Zur Frühgeschichte der Quedlinburger Stiftskirche,” in Denkmalkunde und Denkmalpflege: Wissen und Wirken. Festschrift für Heinrich Magirius zum 60. ­Geburtstag am 1. Februar 1994, ed. Ute Reupert et al. (Dresden: Lipp, 1995), 63–72 at 64–67. 28 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 15–22.

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pold was not entirely sure if the Saalbau to the west was a profane structure or not. After a small expansion during the reign of Henry I, the Stiftskirche was renovated at some point during the tenure of the dowager queen Mathilde, who led the Stift until 966; this work included a marked westward extension of the church space to the level of the westernmost pair of columns in the nave of the present-day church. This church would have been a Saalbau measuring 50 m long by 10 m wide. The expansion of the nave to the west in the 10th century is confirmed by evidence in the foundations of the north and south arcades. Here, beneath the yellow mortar from around the year 1000, Leopold discovered a further, older foundation in 1986. Wäscher had documented this older foundation, but had not fully analysed it. Since the foundation stones with the yellow mortar are connected directly to the dedication of 997, those that lie beneath it could certainly be older. In light of the excavated findings and with respect to the preserved architectural remnants, it remains unclear which of these two models—Leopold’s or Jacobsen’s—is most accurate. Both solutions are definitely possible. The extent of the chronological gap between the foundation with yellow mortar under the nave arcades and the older foundation that lies beneath is unclear. If we assume a flurry of construction activity, an expansion of the church in the later 10th century is plausible. Nonetheless, Leopold’s interpretation, whereby the square element that was added on to the western end of the small threeaisled church from the first phase of construction was a religious structure, must be dismissed. After comparing this with other examples of religious and aristocratic architectural types from the 10th and 11th centuries, the structure must be a secular building that was closely related to the church. It is highly likely that this was Henry I’s living quarters. The combination of a noble residential structure and an adjacent church or chapel is familiar from such sites as the royal Pfalz in Werla (Lower Saxony), which has a round chapel, or Frauenberg near Weltenburg (Bavaria).29 By contrast, there are examples of hall-churches with an adjacent chapel in the east with different architectural features, and these are not comparable with the discoveries on the Schlossberg. With respect to the memorial concerns of the Ottonian royal family, as well as to issues of royal representation, the abbatial church had considerable 29

Markus C. Blaich and Michael Geschwinde, “Die Ausgrabungen auf der Königspfalz Werla 2007 bis 2011 – Vorbericht,” Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 81 (2012): 111–44 at 116 and figure 5, and Mathias Hensch and Michael M. Rind, “Ein monumentaler ­Steinbau unter der Weltenburger Frauenbergkirche,” Das Archäologische Jahr in Bayern 2007 (2008): 111–13 at 112 and figure 156.

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meaning, even though Otto I created a new center of power in Magdeburg that also played an important role in the memorial preservation of his family. Magdeburg’s significance for the execution of his power is especially clear in his repeated designation of the town as a “palatium” in his charters, whereas Quedlinburg never received this honorific. Nonetheless, by no later than the middle of the 10th century, once the bad blood between Otto I and his mother, Mathilde, had been put aside, nothing stood in the way of the construction of a prestigious expansion of the older church, which would be the finest of all of Saxony’s noble canonries. One special feature of the Stiftskirche in Quedlinburg is the “Confessio,” which was located beneath the apse of the oldest church structure (Figure 2.5). This recessed space, which was once covered with vaulting and resembles a crypt, was discovered in 1868. The flat west wall of the space is 2.9 m wide, while the length of the semicircle measures 3.7 m. The “Confessio” was once decorated with stucco, for which there are no known parallels. Both its precise date and its exact purpose are also unclear. The space

Figure 2.6 The Schlossberg at Quedlinburg. 1 Chapel from the time of King Henry I, 2 Square Saalbau, likely living quarters of King Henry I, 3 Vaulted cellar beneath the west wing, 4 South Wing, 5 North Wing, 6 Remains of 10th- and 11th-century walls, 7 10th- and 11th-century graves. Ground plan of the castle after Reinhard Schmitt, “Der Schlossberg in Quedlinburg,” in Die Ottonen. Kunst – Architektur – Geschichte, ed. Klaus Gereon Beuckers et al. (Petersberg: Imhof, 2002), 269, figure at bottom of page

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has primarily been connected to Henry I’s and Queen Mathilde’s memorial cults, as both were interred beneath the “Confessio’s” west wall; it has also been suggested that it functioned as a reliquary chamber.30 It is clear that this space played an important role in preserving King Henry I’s memoria, and it is possible that the “Confessio” was also used to store relics either temporarily or permanently. It might be understood as a private oratorium for the royal family that took the form of a crypt of unusually small dimensions to which the nuns also had access. After 999, Henry I’s grave was removed. The king’s remains must have been transferred to another location, which remains unknown to us, while the gravesites of his wife, Mathilde, beside her husband, and his granddaughter Abbess Mathilde, located at the head end of Henry’s grave, are still in their original place.31 The queen’s grave was opened already in 1756. A contemporary source speaks of supernumerary bones found in Mathilde’s sarcophagus that did not belong to her skeleton.32 In 1936, the National Socialists searched for the remains of Henry I in the crypt of the Stiftskirche, and the report from 1756 motivated them to open Mathilde’s sarcophagus one more time. They found only two extraneous long bones, which they presumably did not interpret as belonging to Henry I. This circumstance led Himmler to admit on July 2, 1936, on the occasion of the festivities in honor of the 1000-year anniversary of Henry I’s death, that “[t] he bones of the great German Führer no longer rest in their burial place. Where they are, we do not know.”33 Nevertheless, the National Socialists did not let it is go and rummaged around further beneath the crypt. In the fall of that year they found two skulls in another grave, one of which was arbitrarily assigned to the king. At the Heinrichsfeier in 1937, this skull was re-interred. The precise circumstances of this find were never published and the files related to this excavation contain no helpful details. The National Socialists

30

31 32 33

Edgar Lehmann, “Die ‘Confessio’ in der Servatiuskirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Skulptur des Mittelalters: Funktion und Gestalt, ed. Friedrich Möbius and Ernst Schubert (Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1987), 9–26 at 16 and 21; Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 49–52; and Schubert, “Die Kirchen St. Wiperti und St. Servatii in Quedlinburg,” 47. Heike Drechsler, “Zur Grablege Heinrichs I. in Quedlinburg,” Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- u. Wappenkunde 46 (2000): 155–79 at 155–58. Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 42 and 180. “Die Gebeine des großen deutschen Führers ruhen nicht mehr in ihrer Begräbnisstätte. Wo sie sind, wissen wir nicht.” See Stahl, “Königshof und Stiftsberg in Quedlinburg,” 480, and Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 42.

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let the issue fade into oblivion, probably because they themselves did not believe in the identification of the skull. We have minimal knowledge of the 10th- and 11th-century structures on the Schlossberg, aside from the Stiftskirche. Otto I’s foundation ­document for the Stift from 936 speaks of “curtilibus et cunctis aedificiis inibi ­constructis,”34 which stood on this hill and must have belonged to Henry I’s fortress. At that time, they were transferred to the Stift.35 This confirms yet again that we are not dealing with a rudimentary fortress without any kind of construction, but rather with a complex consisting of structures with multiple components. “Curtilia” suggest grounds inside the fortress that were separated from each other in unknown ways, and these were filled with buildings.36 The foundation document does not reveal any reasons for the partitioning of the grounds. It is possible that the structures were associated with the clerics who resided on the hill, but further speculation about this leads nowhere. The 3 by 6 m Chapel of St. Nicholas in Chains (in vinculis) is considered to be among the early religious structures on the Schlossberg that may date back as far as the Carolingian period. Its remains are located directly west of the southern transverse arm of the Stiftskirche and it lies at a level lower than that of the crypt (Figure 2.6). The subtle deviance of its axis vis-à-vis that of the Stiftskirche has given rise to the assumption that St. Nicholas is the older structure. Wäscher interpreted the chapel as a wayside or gate chapel that was part of an access route on the southern side of the hill fortress complex leading to the plateau level.37 Wäscher further suggested that the incluse mentioned in the “Relatio Geltmari” could have lived here.38 However, the chapel can only date from the late 10th century or from around the year 1000 because its walls boast the yellow gypsum mortar characteristic of this period. It is thus ­contemporary with the Stiftkirche’s Third Phase as suggested by Leopold.39 The question as to whether the main entrance to the Burg may have lain on the southern side of the hill must remain inconclusive. The remains of walls, which Wäscher understood as part of an enclosed path to the fortress and as a gate tower, could also be simple retaining walls or masonry remains of the supporting walls of the hill plateau. In the modern era, this was the location 34 The Schlossberg was given to the Stift with “courtyards/demarcated areas and all buildings erected there.” 35 Sickel, Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., 89–90. 36 Jan Frederik Niermeyer, Co van de Kieft, and W.J. Johannes Burgers, Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus, vol. 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 386. 37 Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, 28–29. 38 An incluse is a woman who lives alone in seclusion. 39 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 43.

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of a small ancillary route to the Burg. Wäscher’s fantastical reconstructions of the buildings on the Schlossberg are often unsupported by archeological evidence, as Reinhart Schmitt’s research has made clear.40 It is plausible that the approach to the Burg was always located in the north. The oldest sections of the tower gate do not predate the 12th century.41 A vaulted cellar that is among the oldest of its kind in Central Europe survives beneath the western wing of the castle; it originally measured c.10.7 × 25.5 m (Figure 2.6.3). The walls are between 1.2 and 1.5 m thick and are held together with the yellow mortar characteristic of the decades around the year 1000. With that in mind, one can cautiously assign a date to the cellar in the second half of the 10th century or the first half of the 11th. The basic structure that rises above the cellar space dates from the Gothic period or later, which means that we know nothing about the state of the ground floor or the putative upper floor in the Ottonian period. Comparable cellars date from the 12th century, and are found at the royal Pfalz in Gelnhausen (­Hessen) and at the Runneburg in Weißensee (Thuringia).42 Whether this building could have been intended as lodging for the king during his stays or whether it was reserved for the canonesses is unknown. When the palace buildings were moved to the valley is unclear. It is conceivable that this might have happened around the time of the foundation of the Stift in 936,43 but a later date for this move is also possible. The protective functions provided by the site’s natural characteristics, along with the persistent threat of invasion from the east,44 made it a logical location for a Pfalz. In the year 1000, of course, the location of the Pfalz in the valley next to the church of St. Wiperti was secure, as a note in the Quedlinburg Annals reports: “Having returned to the homeland, in order to celebrate the holy Easter feast days in Quedlinburg, and out of love for his beloved sister, the Abbess Adelheid, he [Otto III] spent the days on the hill on which the canonesses serve Christ after the spiritual prescriptions of their 40

Reinhard Schmitt, “Die Lauenburg im Harz und der frühe Burgenbau im ostfälischen Raum,” in Neue Forschungen zum frühen Burgenbau, ed. Hans-Heinrich Häffner (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006), 167–80 at 173. 41 Schmitt, “Die Lauenburg im Harz,” 173. 42 Thomas Biller, Kaiserpfalz Gelnhausen (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2000), 27, and Maike Kozok, “Ergebnisse der bauarchäologischen Forschung zur Runneburg. ­Baugeschichte und Bauphasenanalyse,” in Die Runneburg bei Weißensee: Baugeschichtliche Aufarbeitung der bisherigen Forschungsergebnisse, ed. Hermann Wirth (Bad Homburg: Verlag Ausbildung und Wissen, 1998), 146–206 at 171–77. 43 Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium regis, 123, and Ulrich v. Damaros and Thomas Wozniak, “St. Wiperti in Quedlinburg,” in Beuckers, Die Ottonen. Kunst – Architektur – Geschichte, 285–92 at 287. 44 The Hungarians raided Saxony several times in the first half of the 10th century.

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Rule. Early in the morning hours he returned from here to his court to satisfy the expectations of the ­senate and the people, spending those weeks doing the work of kings: ruling, forgiving, giving donations, and awarding honors.”45 A dormitory (dormitorium) was located in the southern wing of the Stift in the late Middle Ages (Figure 2.6.4). From the late medieval period at the very latest, the abbess’s quarters were located in the northern wing (Figure 2.6.5). In the period of the GDR, the remains of an apse were found just in front of the eastern gable of the north wing; this was likely the abbess’s private chapel, which is mentioned in a document dating to 1202.46 At the time of its initial excavation, it was understood to be the funerary chapel of Henry I,47 but it is clear that the structure dates to the 11th or 12th century. Just to the northeast of the apse two older portions of wall were discovered that date to the 10th or 11th century (­Figure 2.6.6). Buildings that may have been associated with these wall fragments could not be found; it is possible that they were retaining walls that would have lined the entrance to the fortress. Excavations carried out by members of Kreisarchäologie Harz in the fall of 2015 unearthed foundations adjacent to the inside of the retaining wall on the eastern side of the hill. At first glance, these appeared to date from the 10th or 11th century.48 It appears that large portions of the eastern end of the hill were used in the early Middle Ages. These signs of use in the early medieval period are visible in objects found in the deep pits dating from the prehistoric era that lie only a few meters from the present-day retaining wall. These landfills from the medieval and modern periods, which are many meters deep, leveled out this area and thus made it easier to build on. However, the total space gain appears not to have been all that substantial. What the construction of this area may have looked like in the 10th and 11th centuries is still unclear. One can speculate that the area in the eastern part of the hill was used for horticulture. Excavations in 1936 and 2011 in the castle courtyard to the north of the church uncovered graves that Karl Schirwitz initially dated to the Carolingian period (Figure 2.6.7).49 The bodies were buried along an east–west axis in accordance with Christian rites and few grave goods were discovered. One 45 46 47 48 49

Cited in Gerd Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg. Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Überlieferungszentrum,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44 at 127–28. Anton Ulrich von Erath, Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis (Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764), 122–23 at 123. Heinz A. Behrens, “Ein zweiter Kirchenbau auf dem Quedlinburger Schlossberg,” ­Nordharzer Jahrbuch 12 (1987): 5–12 at 11. At the time of this writing, the records of this dig have not been published. Schirwitz, “Grabungen auf dem Schlossberg,” 21 and 39–40.

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Figure 2.7 Kopfnischengrab found during the 2011 excavations in the castle yard. Photograph courtesy of Kreisarchäologie Harz

grave containing the skeletons of an adult and a child revealed a beaded necklace consisting of 40 small carnelian beads, ten simple glass beads, and five ribbed glass beads with gold foil. This kind of jewelry was fairly common in Slavic settlements and dates from the high Middle Ages. Another grave that had been covered by the Stiftskirche’s northeastern apsidal chapel and that dates from before 1129 contained a sword. Schirwitz dated it to the 9th century. However, the form of the grave suggests that the burial took place later. The grave pit includes an indentation made for the head, a type of grave referred to as a Kopfnischengrab (plural Kopfnischengräber; Figure 2.7). The excavator assumed that this grave type emerged as early as the Migration or Carolingian period,50 and indeed, this type of grave appears as early as the Merovingian period in former Roman provinces west of the Rhine and south of the ­Danube. It is traceable to Roman-era burial traditions. In addition to the burials, sarcophagi appear whose interior spaces contain elevated, bench-like stone forms intended to prop up the head of the deceased in its niche. Queen Mathilde’s sarcophagus, interred in the church next to that of Henry I, is of this type. Outside of the former Roman imperial provinces, Kopfnischengräber and sarcophagi with head-niches recur in the 10th century. Some examples include graves from Burg Sulzbach in the Oberpfalz (Bavaria) and the canonries of Freckenhorst and Herford (North Rhine-Westphalia). It should be noted that these 50

Karl Schirwitz, “Zur Frage der mittelalterlichen Bestattungen,” Germanien 10 (1938): 188–93 at 191.

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latter examples are Baumsärge, that is, sarcophagi made of hollowed-out tree trunks that include niches for the head.51 This form even became popular for episcopal grave sites.52 Kopfnischengräber become more common again in the 11th and 12th centuries, and one occasionally encounters them in 13th-century graves. For this reason, the “Sword Grave” from Quedlinburg cannot date from earlier than the 10th century. While the sword is surprising in this context, for we would more readily expect to find it in a 6th- to 8th-century grave, we also know that 11th- and 12th-century graves of the Slavic elite of central Europe often contained swords, a custom deriving in part from Scandinavian influence. It is furthermore noteworthy that Kopfnischengräber from the late Slavic period (11th and 12th centuries) also exist.53 One Kopfnischengrab from the excavations in 2011 was analysed using radiocarbon dating—which is 95.4 per cent accurate—and it revealed that the grave was between 714 and 982 years old. Given these findings, we cannot date the grave to the 8th or 9th century. Rather, it is one of the earliest Kopfnischengräber from the 10th century in central Germany. Other early graves of this type were found at Magdeburg and at the Burg Querfurt, for example.54 The question about the size of the cemetery in the castle courtyard is not easy to answer. The old excavation maps contain many contradictions, and we 51

52 53 54

Mathias Hensch, Burg Sulzbach in der Oberpfalz. Archäologisch-historische Forschungen zur Entwicklung eines Herrschaftszentrums des 8. bis 14. Jahrhunderts in Nordbayern (Büchenbach: Faustus, 2005), 82–86 and 247–61; Uwe Lobbedey, “Ausgrabung einer ­karolingischen Damenstiftskirche in Freckenhorst. Datierung eines zugehörigen ­Baumsargfriedhofs in das 10. Jahrhundert,” Kunstchronik 21 (1968): 154–59 at 157; and Uwe Lobbedey, “Die Ausgrabungen im Münster zu Herford 1965 und 1966. Vorbericht,” Westfalen 50 (1972): 110–18 at 114 and 116. Markus Sanke, Die Gräber geistlicher Eliten Europas von der Spätantike bis zur Neuzeit: Archäologische Studien zur materiellen Reflexion von Jenseitsvorstellungen und ihrem ­Wandel (Bonn: Habelt, 2012), 163–64. Eric Müller, “Slawische Bestattungssitten im Saalegebiet – die Gräberfelder von Niederwünsch und Oechlitz,” in Soziale Gruppen und Gesellschaftsstrukturen im westslawischen Raum, ed. Felix Biermann et al. (Langenweissbach: Beier und Beran, 2013), 129–83 at 161. Rainer Kuhn, “Die Forschungsgrabung 2006–2009 am Magdeburger Dom,” in Zusammengegraben – Kooperationsprojekte in Sachsen-Anhalt: Tagung vom 17. bis 20. Mai 2009 im Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale), ed. Harald Meller (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Archäologie, 2012), 159–72 at 161; Rainer Kuhn, “Die ‘Nikolaikirche’ westlich von den gotischen Domtürmen,” in Meller, Aufgedeckt II, 87–100 at 98–99; Rainer Kuhn, “Die Vorgängerbauten unter dem Magdeburger Dom,” in Aufgedeckt II. Forschungsgrabungen am Magdeburger Dom 2006–2009, ed. Harald Meller (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Archäologie, 2009), 31–86 at 35 and 37; and Reinhard Schmitt, “Burg Querfurt um 1000 – Zum ­baulichen Lebensumfeld des hl. Brun von Querfurt,” Burgen und Schlösser in Sachsen-­ Anhalt 20 (2011): 98–131 at 104–07.

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also have to reckon with numerous graves that have either been destroyed or that simply went unrecognized during the early dig. The excavations in the castle courtyard did not reveal where the ground level may have been located in the Middle Ages. The partially very low depth of the graves uncovered in the 2011 excavations points to extensive topsoil erosion. The excavators of the 1930s wrote of especially shallow graves, some so much so that they lay underneath only 0.3 m of rubble, which pointed to drastic changes in ground level from the Middle Ages onward. The graveyard is not so extensive as to suggest that it functioned as a parish cemetery. A large number of the people buried here were likely canonesses or canons. But laypeople were also laid to rest here, as we can see from the children’s graves. These were probably members of families who were especially closely connected to the Stift and who had secured for themselves the right to be buried in close proximity to the church. The large number of Kopfnischengräber would perhaps suggest that this graveyard had a certain amount of prestige, since this grave type was used only for the upper class. However, evidence from the area of central Germany in particular suggests that, while this grave form was not accessible to everyone, relatively wide swaths of certain urban areas could afford this type of burial. In Magdeburg and Königslutter (Lower Saxony), for example, we see a large number of Kopfnischengräber, not all of which could have been filled with bodies of deceased people from the uppermost classes.55 In general, there is no evidence that the Stiftskirche functioned as a parish church, nor has it been proven that parishioners were buried close to the church. By contrast, the church of St. Wiperti was the parish church for the Westendorf. Both the grave finds as well as the finds from the Schlossberg, the latter of which were first discovered on the hill’s eastern terrace in 1929, attest the hill’s repeated use only after the 10th century. There are few traces of settlement on the hill from the Carolingian period, for no finds of any type can be assigned to this period with certainty. For example, the oldest bits of pottery to have been found on the Schlossberg—a lightly fired kind of ceramic—are of a style dominant in the region in the 8th and 9th centuries, and yet such pots were also being made in this same manner in the early 10th century.56 This is true of the 55

56

Monika Bernatzky, “In den Fels gehauen. Kopfnischengräber in Königslutter,” Archäologie in Niedersachsen 12 (2009): 90–93, and Michael Krecher, “Archäologische Ausgrabungen in der Johanniskirche zu Magdeburg,” in Schaufenster Archäologie: Neues aus der archäologischen Forschung in Magdeburg, ed. Brigitta Kunz (Magdeburg: Landeshauptstadt ­Magdeburg, Büro für Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Protokoll, 2005), 184–90 at 189. Sonja König, … lütken Freden wisk … Die mittelalterliche Siedlung Klein Freden bei Salzgitter vom 9.–13. Jahrhundert: Siedlung – Fronhof – Pferdehaltung (Rahden/Westfalen: Leidorf, 2007), 74.

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Figure 2.8 Quedlinburg, Schlossberg. The oldest pottery finds. Drawing by Tobias Gärtner

small pot with a sharply angled shoulder and a flared opening found on the Schlossberg (Figure 2.8.1). Another early find, also lightly fired, is a fragment from a bulbous pot, likely a so-called Kugeltopf (Figure 2.8.2). The appearance of this type of vessel in the Harz region has been a source of controversy. It was assumed that Kugeltöpfe first emerged either in the 9th or 10th century.57 However, further to the northwest in the region around Brunswick, this type of pot appears before the year 900. The situation in Quedlinburg is different, though, for it is part of a region that was heavily influenced by cultural conditions along the Elbe and in Magdeburg. The Kugeltopf pot type is not known with certainty to have occurred in Quedlinburg, where finds can in general only be assigned to the 10th century. And yet the form of the Kugeltopf appears 57

Hansjürgen Brachmann, Slawische Stämme an Elbe und Saale: Zu ihrer Geschichte und ­ ultur im 6. bis 10. Jahrhundert auf Grund archäologischer Quellen (Berlin: Akademie-­ K Verlag, 1978), 123–28, and Paul Grimm, “Die Entwicklung der frühmittelalterlichen deutschen Keramik in den Bezirken Halle und Magdeburg,” Prähistorische Zeitschrift 37 (1959): 72–100 at 75–76.

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with great regularity in the decades around the year 1000. This suggests that the early Kugeltopf from the Schlossberg dates to the 10th century. In addition to this, much more heavily fired pottery has been excavated in Quedlinburg that could belong to the 10th century or even to the 11th or 12th; Slavic sherds from the later 10th or early 11th centuries are among the examples found (­Figure 2.8.6). Even though we do not have finds from the Schlossberg that date to the Carolingian period, we should not dismiss the theory that at that time this area was an unsettled fortress that served as a walled refuge (Fluchtburg) belonging to the settlement near the church of St. Wiperti. Remains of such a complex, however, have not been identified; in light of the constant use of this space into our own time, such remains would be nearly completely destroyed. This is also true of the fortress from the time of King Henry I. The excavations of the 1930s revealed remains of walls in the church and the surrounding area that could have belonged to a 10th-century castle. There are no archeological sources to confirm the existence of “curtain walls made of hewn stones, which surrounded the castle hill,”58 or a wall of “unhewn sandstone blocks” from the reign of Henry I.59 Such references in the scholarship obviously derive from a report authored by Hermann Giesau and Karl Schirwitz,60 whose remarks can only be described as fantastical. Unfortunately, these old finds cannot be verified without new excavations. Research on the eastern end of the hill in more recent times (1974, 1989/90, and 2002) detected the existence of numerous predecessors to the modern retaining wall, but these findings could not be dated. It is highly likely that the Schlossberg was expanded into a fortress during Henry I’s reign. In the first half of the 10th century, the kingdom of the East Franks was under threat by the Hungarians; they first invaded Bavaria in 900 and appeared in the center of Liudolfing territory in Saxony in 906. As a defensive measure, King Henry I is reported to have supported the creation of a so-called Burgenbauordnung (“Building Code for Castles”), which is the subject of hefty scholarly debate.61 Archeological scholarship, for example, 58 59 60 61

Herzog, Die ottonische Stadt, 38–41. Carl Erdmann, “Beiträge zur Geschichte Heinrichs I. (IV–VI),” Sachsen und Anhalt 17 (1941/43): 14–61 at 22. Hermann Giesau and Karl Schirwitz, “Die Grabungen auf dem Schlossberg in ­Quedlinburg,” Deutsche Kunst und Denkmalpflege 1939/40 (1944): 104–18 at 113. For example, see Caspar Ehlers, Die Integration Sachsens in das fränkische Reich (751– 1024) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 323–26; Christian Frey, Schutzort, ­Schauplatz, Statussymbol: Burgen als Handlungsorte in den nord- und ostdeutschen ­Grenzräumen des früheren Mittelalters (Braubach: Deutsche Burgenvereinigung e. V., 2014), 61–64; and Matthias Springer, “Agrarii milites,” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 66 (1994): 129–66 at 165.

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attempted from a very early date to identify the castles of King Henry I in its findings.62 Since then things have become more dispassionate. Thus far, it has not been possible to connect the construction or expansion of the castle complex with King Henry I without a measure of reasonable doubt. This is also true for the Steterburg near Salzgitter (Lower Saxony), which has been associated with Henry I but could also date to the late 9th century,63 and for the Ottersburg in the Altmark (Saxony-Anhalt), which, according to dendochronological analysis, was expanded in 923/24.64 It is also unclear whether this latter example might have been a Slavic fortress. It goes without saying that Burgen were erected or reinforced in the time of the Hungarian invasions. We have evidence of this in written sources, such as in the case of the Abbey of St. Gallen, which constructed the Waldburg near Häggenschwil (Canton St. Gallen, Switzerland) as a refuge for the monks; this is even identified as part of the complex.65 Many of the fortresses that are typically numbered among the Ungarnburgen (“­Hungarian fortresses”) date to the first half of the 10th century, but their more exact dates of construction are difficult to pinpoint.66 It is conceivable, for example, that the erection of many Burgen was related to skirmishes among members of the East Frankish nobility. The Schlossberg in Quedlinburg may have been fortified by King Henry I, but a fortress could have also been constructed decades before his time. There can be no doubt that by 930 a fortified palace complex stood on the Schlossberg. In order to learn more about the shape of the Schlossberg in the 10th century, Hans Kurt Schulze looked for recognizable images of specific locations in charters issued by King Otto I.67 Schulze’s considerations are plausible, since a number of these impressions of the Ottonian period are not purely fantastical; rather, 62 63 64 65 66

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Ernst Sprockhoff, “Die Ausgrabung auf der Hünenburg bei Emsbüren, Kr. Lingen,” ­ ermania 27 (1943): 168–83 at 180. G Michael Geschwinde, “Die Steterburg: Mythos, Geschichte und Archäologie einer ­Burganlage des 10. Jahrhunderts,” Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 77 (2008): 125–46 at 142 and 144. Felix Biermann, “Der früh- und hochmittelalterliche Burgwall von Ottersburg (Altmark),” in Meller, Zusammengegraben, 125–31 at 130. Hans-Wilhelm Heine, “Frühmittelalterliche Fluchtburgen,” Siedlungsforschung 21 (2003): 43–64 at 48. Peter Ettel, “Grundstrukturen adliger Zentralorte in Süddeutschland. Repräsentationsformen und Raumerschließung,” in Das lange 10. Jahrhundert: Struktureller Wandel zwischen Zentralisierung und Fragmentierung, äußerem Druck und innerer Krise, ed. Christine. A. Kleinjung and Stefan Albrecht (Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2014), 91–135 at 93–98. Hans Kurt Schulze, “Monasterium in monte constructum,” Sachsen und Anhalt 22 (1999/2000): 57–79 at 78–79.

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Figure 2.9 Two sketches from charters issued by King Otto I. A: Charter from August 24, 956 B: Charter from December 5, 956. After Schulze, “Monasterium in monte constructum,” 58, figures 1 and 2

they are intended to visualize a particular place in relatively realistic terms. Sketches in two charters that King Otto I issued on August 24 and December 5, 956 clearly show a hilly crag with a distinctive form that definitely recalls that of the Schlossberg in Quedlinburg (Figure 2.9). The representation of the architecture on the hill differs between the two sketches, but each shows a crenellated wall surrounding a building. The first charter was indeed issued in Quedlinburg, while the second stems from Memleben.68 In the text of both charters, Otto I transferred properties to the canonry on the Schlossberg in Quedlinburg.69 In the case of the second charter, in Schulze’s estimation, it is not the location of issue but rather the institution mentioned in the document that is represented in the accompanying sketch—yet this would be wholly remarkable, for it is a discrepancy not found in any other charter, meaning that the Burg in Memleben is referenced in the sketch in the second charter.70 68 69 70

Sickel, Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., 266 (no. 184) and 268–69 (no. 186). Schulze, “Monasterium in monte constructum,” 78–79. This raises the question of the appearance of the Burg in Memleben. Its location has still not been determined with absolute certainty. It has been suggested that it was

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With all of this in mind, it is possible to see the sketch in the charter from August 24, 956 as a representation of Quedlinburg. In that sketch, the church inside the walls must reference the Stiftskirche. This aspect of the drawing motivated Schulze to side with Jacobsen’s propositions about the order of construction on the Schlossberg and thus to assume that there was a small, mid 10th-century building located there at the time the charter was issued.71 The question remains if one should expect such attention to detail in a drawing like this, especially if one seeks to assign conclusive import to it. Moreover, in this image, it is the church that seems to overwhelm the hill, in which case a larger building could be possible, thus confirming Leopold’s hypothesis. The area of Westendorf has been the focus of less archeological research compared to the Schlossberg, but even here there are interesting finds from the early settlement period. For example, a number of pit houses from the ­Ottonian or early Salian period have been discovered at Lange Gasse 10. One of these structures was dated to the 10th century with the help of radiocarbon dating, while the rest likely date to the early 11th century. Remains of vessels of Slavic origin were found here, which is striking, for such objects are otherwise unknown in the area of the Altstadt. Among the discoveries here are other objects that could date from the Carolingian period, but just as easily from the 10th century. This is all to say that even in the Westendorf area one only finds evidence of settlement from the Ottonian period onward. In 1993 two moats that possibly date to the early fortification period of the Westendorf were found beneath the property located at Schlossberg 11. It is also possible that these moats belonged to a domestic fortification inside the settlement—something akin to a court for the local gentry (Adelshof ). The ditches are located in the middle of the premises of the modern-era “Vorwerk in der Vorburg,” as it appears on 18th-century maps. The older ditch lies beneath a V-shaped ditch. The excavator postulated that these moats could be dated to the Carolingian or Ottonian period,72 but these have been shown to belong to the 12th or 13th century.

71 72

located on the Wendelstein, whose craggy cliffs would certainly correspond to those in the sketch. See Matthias Hardt, “Memleben – ein königlicher Aufenthaltsort in ottonischer und ­frühsalischer Zeit,” in Memleben: Königspfalz – Reichskloster – Propstei, ed. Helge ­Wittmann (Petersberg: Imhof, 2001), 61–77 at 67–70. There are also good reasons to locate the Ottonian Burg on the Altenburg near Wangen. See Uwe Fiedler, “Die Altenburg bei Wangen, Burgenlandkreis – die liudolfingische Pfalz Memleben?,” Burgen und Schlösser in Sachsen-Anhalt 17 (2008): 7–37 at 25–27. Schulze, “Monasterium in monte constructum,” 79. Aurelia Dickers, “Ausgrabungen in Quedlinburg. Die Untersuchungen am Fuße des Schlossbergs,” Archäologische Berichte aus Sachsen-Anhalt 1994 (1996): 151–58 at 157.

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Almost nothing is known of the appearance of the cloister on the Münzenberg. The monastery was destroyed in the Great Peasants’ Revolt of 1524–25, and in the following years members of the lower classes settled here. Homes were built into the church on the site. Even today there are 17 housing units here, but a great deal of the medieval building fabric has survived. The Ottonian Klosterkirche was a three-aisled basilican structure measuring 16.5 × 35.5 m; its crypt was likewise three-aisled. Two adjoining rooms were added on to the crypt, while a three-aisled west wing was built onto the nave at an oblique angle to the crypt.73 The extent to which a reported fire in the year 1015 damaged the church structure is much debated. A renovation of the apse and the north transept is believed to have taken place around the year 1100, while later changes and additions had only a limited scope. A bell tower placed before the southern adjoining room dates to c.1200. The last recorded period of building activity took place in the years 1231–32. According to Leopold, it was at this point that galleries were added above the side aisles of the nave.74 Michael Scheftel, by contrast, assigned these galleries to the original late 10th-century structure.75 If Scheftel’s hypothesis is correct, this would be especially remarkable, for the galleries would thus parallel the nave galleries at the Stiftskirche in Gernrode, which is only slightly more recent in date than the former church on the Münzenberg. Archeological excavations on the Münzenberg have only been possible in a very limited scope. Since the 1990s there have been numerous small investigations in the area, but these have mainly been concerned with settlement remains from the modern period. The medieval finds have mostly been limited to graves, while meaningful clues as to the structure of the cloister have not yet been obtained. The more recent excavations in the Altstadt have enriched our knowledge of the early settlement history of this area considerably. The investigations at the Marktplatz are of special significance in this regard. In the course of the redesign of the surface of the square, the entire Marktplatz—from Hoken in the north to the junction of the stone bridge in the south—was uncovered. This area has thus been subject to thorough archeological investigation. At two points, a gravel layer above the alluvial clay layer, located roughly 1 m beneath the street level, was discovered; this appears to be an artificial deposit of gravel from the river Bode mixed with pieces of lime- and sandstone as well 73 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 110–17. 74 Ibid., 116–17. 75 Michael Scheftel, “Die ehemalige Klosterkirche St. Marien auf dem Münzenberg in Quedlinburg,” in Bauforschung: Eine kritische Revision, ed. Johannes Cramer et al. (Berlin: Lukas-Verlag, 2005), 116–36 at 126.

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Figure 2.10 Quedlinburg, Marktplatz. 1: The oldest market pavement from the Ottonian period. Photograph courtesy of Kreisarchäologie Harz. 2: Fibula found in the pavement. Drawing by Tobias Gärtner

as numerous animal bones. This layer was once about 8 to 10 cm thick; these remains, which measure 10 m in length by roughly 1.5 m in width, were found in front of the property at Markt 12 in the western part of the market square (Figure 2.10.1). The excessive damage from the modern era prevents us from knowing just how large this surface once was. Twenty meters further to the east, in front of the foundation for the Roland statue from 1460, is a very small

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fragment of another preserved gravel layer that has the same characteristics as the other and is most likely part of the same surface. The finds on and in this gravel layer, which one can interpret as the oldest pavement on the market square, are not terribly numerous. The few pieces of ceramics cannot help us with dating this layer. One very small fragment from this layer derives from the 12th or 13th century, but this could be material displaced by some kind of disruption. A round disk-fibula made of colored metal is one of the notable finds of this material (Figure 2.10.2). Its base is flat with integrated bowshaped ridges. Three of these ridges have survived and the fourth is missing. Together they once formed a slightly disorderly cross motif. The body of the fibula was once covered with enamel. Fibulae of this type—so-called Kreuzemailscheibenfibel mit Zellenschmelz—can be dated to the second half of the 9th ­century or to the 10th century.76 Let us recall that Otto III decreed in 994 that a market should be established in Quedlinburg (“mercatum erigere”).77 Could the pavement therefore be older than first assumed? This fibula alone does not constitute a sufficient basis upon which to make an argument to date the market pavement to the years before 994. The fibula could have been a late example of its type or it could have been worn for an extraordinarily long time. We therefore had to try to date the pavement using alternative methods. The numerous animal bones found in the pavement layer offered up a new way of addressing this question. The animal bones are not remains of food that was discarded on the market square. Rather, the bone fragments were deliberately mixed in with the gravel as a way of fortifying the pavement’s base. This is a feature found in many other medieval squares and roads (in Magdeburg, Bremen, Cologne, and Ulm, for example).78 In order to date the bones, three of them were subjected to radiocarbon dating. Only rough dates can be obtained with this method, and one cannot expect to determine an exact year. But there was a legitimate reason to hope that we could ascertain whether the pavement dated to the 10th, 11th, or 12th century. The measurements yielded the following results (with 95.4 per cent accuracy): one bone had a value of 777–990 calAD, another of 900–1022 calAD, and a third of 969–1029 calAD. Because of the familiar problems with radiocarbon dating, we cannot use the oldest date 76 77 78

Sven Spiong, Fibeln und Gewandnadeln des 8. bis 12. Jahrhunderts in Zentraleuropa (Bonn: Habelt, 2000), 54–59. Otto allowed the abbess to “establish a market.” Dieter Bischop, “Mit Knochen gepflastert. Die archäologischen Beobachtungen und Grabungen am historischen Bremer Markt,” Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters 34 (2006): 215–30 at 220–24; Thomas Höltken, “Heumarkt VI. Die mittelalterlichen Marktschichten vom Heumarkt in Köln,” Kölner Jahrbuch 41 (2008): 579–677 at 582–84; and Ernst Nickel, Der ‘Alte Markt’ in Magdeburg (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964), 12–13.

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suggested by the results to date the pavement prior to Otto III’s charter of 994. However, the measurements do reveal that there was a fortified surface at the Marktplatz that dates to no later than the decades around the year 1000. It is also possible that this surface dates to earlier in the 10th century. The bones were indeed used to fortify the pavement at street level, but need not all have been installed at the same time. The excavator of this site suggested that the pavement from the southern section of the preserved area may reveal two different phases of paving, but this is uncertain.79 We do thus encounter an Ottonian Marktplatz here, although unfortunately, the archeological results do not reveal whether it was constructed before or shortly after 994. Around the year 1000, the area of the market square must not have been as large as it was in later centuries (Figure 2.2). During the excavations of the Marktplatz, foundations of homes from the Renaissance period were unearthed at the market’s southern end. The oldest discovery in this area was found in a layer dating from the 11th or 12th century, which means that the market pavement from 1000 did not reach into this area. A fragment from a folding scale of a type used by merchants, categorized by Heiko Steuer as Type 8, was found in this layer.80 Discoveries of this kind are common in the ­market areas of medieval cities and highlight the existence of commercial enterprise in the high M ­ iddle Ages. The Rathaus stands at the northern border of the ­present-day market square in Quedlinburg. Small, narrow streets with small buildings are located between the Rathaus and the market church of St. ­Benedict. ­Comparison with other locations suggests the possibility that this area was open and filled with temporary structures and market stalls. Dendochronological analysis of the roof beams in the Quedlinburg Rathaus reveals 1289 as the oldest date. The configuration marketplace—Rathaus—market church and the vaguely triangular form of the Marktplatz can also be found in Magdeburg, although there the temporal relationship among these elements has not yet been determined.81 It is therefore possible to imagine that, in the high Middle Ages, the Quedlinburg Marktplatz was much larger than it is today. Nonetheless, the oldest pavement has only been ascertained for the central section of the present-day area of the market. Once again it is important to emphasize the profound changes this space has undergone in the modern era. Until the 19th century, two city streams (called Fleeten) flowed across the market from the south to the north, to either side of the Rathaus, and 79 80

Robert Brosch M.A., Quedlinburg. Heiko Steuer, Waagen und Gewichte aus dem mittelalterlichen Schleswig (Bonn: Habelt, 1997), 29–32. 81 Nickel, “‘Alte Markt,’” figure 1 (supplement).

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continued to the north along Schmale Straße and Breite Straße. In the middle of the 19th century, the market square was reconfigured and these streams were backfilled.82 The reconfiguration of the square must have caused the ground underneath the market to shift significantly. This could also explain why there are no remains of a market pavement from later parts of the Middle Ages. A well-preserved dark layer of up to 30 cm thick, deposited during the use of the marketplace, covers the pavement of the 10th century/c.1000. This type of layer is also ­evident in other market squares. Layers from the modern era, most likely from the 19th century, have been documented on top of this dark layer. It is nonetheless absolutely remarkable that we have a paved marketplace from the Ottonian period here. In the period leading up to the 11th and 12th ­centuries in what is now northern Germany, market areas tend to be aligned to the road and thus have a corresponding form. But the market areas of north German market towns of the 10th and 11th centuries have not yet been the subject of sustained archeological analysis. Among the market squares with gravel paving from the 12th and 13th centuries, there are occasionally traces of older use, such as numerous post holes, for example, which must stem from market stalls or tents. Such traces have not been easy to date, however. This is also the case in Magdeburg, for example, where the market church of St. Johannes must have stood in the Ottonian period. A grave was discovered beneath the church that was dated to the 9th or 10th century using radiocarbon analysis, which means that the existence of a church dating from this same period can also be assumed.83 It is possible that a marketplace adjacent to this church stood where Magdeburg’s present-day Alter Markt is located. In the episcopal city of Osnabrück (Lower Saxony), there is evidence of a street market. Traces of settlement in the form of large pits and storehouses dating from the 9th and 10th centuries were uncovered north of what is now Osnabrück’s Marktstraße; these may have belonged to an early settlement of tradespeople and/or merchants. At some point in the 11th century, these structures were abandoned and the market church with an adjacent graveyard was erected on the same site. The cemetery terminates in the south exactly at the spot where the structures belonging to the street market once stood, which has led researchers to assume that a road used for mercantile purposes existed here no later than the 82 83

Robert Brosch, “Zu den Grabungsergebnissen in Quedlinburg (Altstadt und Markt) 2011–2013,” in Königswege: Festschrift für Hans K. Schulze zum 80. Geburtstag und 50. ­Promotionsjubiläum, ed. Thomas Wozniak (Leipzig: Eudora-Verlag, 2014), 145–52 at 148. Michael Krecher, “Die Stadtkirche St. Johannis zu Magdeburg. Ausgrabungsergebnisse der Jahre 1997/98,” Archäologische Berichte aus Sachsen-Anhalt 1999/1 (2000): 121–38 at 125–34.

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11th century. Osnabrück’s present-day Marktplatz, which takes up space once occupied by some of the older 9th- and 10th-century structures as well as parts of the cemetery, was first constructed around the year 1500.84 We thus have evidence of paved market squares from the Ottonian period. For example, the Heumarkt in Cologne was built in 957 or shortly thereafter using a gravel surface placed over older development.85 Likewise, the pavement of Ulm’s marketplace—measuring 25 by 36 m—dates to the 10th century; this pavement was laid on top of older residential structures in the course of a reorganization of settlement patterns. Here, a layer of gravel was laid—often in a single deposit but sometimes in many—and analysis of its surface has revealed a dense concentration of animal bones. Even the adjacent streets in the area were paved in this way.86 This is how we determined the location of the market in Quedlinburg. This market was subject to the direct control of the abbess of the Quedlinburg Stift on the Schlossberg; Otto III transferred this control to her. It is difficult to say how quickly the market developed and at what point it began to turn profits of any note. However, a mint was established shortly after the market appeared.87 Nonetheless, we do not have detailed knowledge for the Ottonian period about mercantile activity in Quedlinburg. Aside from salt, which had also played an important role in neighboring Halberstadt from early on, wool, linen, and furs appear to have been especially important elements of mercantile traffic in high medieval Quedlinburg.88 In the 11th or 12th century, Quedlinburg merchants received additional privileges that secured their position in transregional trade.89 In a now lost charter, Emperor Conrad II strengthened the Quedlinburg merchants’ legal security by granting 84

85 86 87 88 89

Ellinor Fischer, “Vom Bischofssitz zur Stadt – Archäologische Erkenntnisse zur Entwicklung Osnabrücks im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert,” in Wandel der Stadt um 1200: Die bauliche und gesellschaftliche Transformation der Stadt im Hochmittelalter, ed. Karsten Igel et al. (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2013), 225–41 at 235–36, and Wolfgang Schlüter, “Die Siedlungsgeschichte vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum Beginn des Spätmittelalters,” in Geschichte der Stadt Osnabrück, ed. Gerd Steinwascher (Belm: Meinders & Elstermann, 2006), 15–60 at 43–49. Höltken, “Heumarkt VI,” 582–84. Marianne Dumitrache, Gabriele Kurz, Gabriele Legant, and Doris Schmid, Die Grabung Neue Straße 2001–2004 in Ulm (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2009), 237–38. See in this volume Manfred Mehl, “Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg: Romanesque Craftwork of Great Quality.” Klaus Militzer and Peter Przybilla, Stadtentstehung, Bürgertum und Rat: Halberstadt und Quedlinburg bis zur Mitte des 14. Jhs. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 37–38, 126, and 129. Reuling, “Quedlinburg,” 236–41, and Walter Schlesinger, Ausgewählte Aufsätze 1965–1979 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1987), 420–22.

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them royal protection as well as the rights of the merchants of Magdeburg and Goslar; Emperor Henry III reaffirmed these rights in 1042. What the “lex ac iustitia” of the Magdeburg and Goslar merchants might have been is unfortunately not known.90 What is noteworthy is that, already in the first half of the 11th century, Quedlinburg merchants constituted an association with legal rights, which can be understood as a nucleus of sorts for the later municipality. As a point of comparison, the merchants of Magdeburg were in possession of comparable rights in 965, which King Otto I confirmed in a charter that year.91 Merchants lived together with craftspeople and other residents of the town in the area of the market; textual sources about their situation from around the year 1000 do not reveal much to us. Archeology, however, can provide us with clues about the early market settlement. In 1996, on the eastern edge of the Altstadt north of the Jüdengasse at the property located at Pölle 29, construction on a new house had archeological accompaniment (Figure 2.2.7): the walls of the roughly 8.5 × 18 m excavation pit revealed numerous layers of settlement from the Middle Ages and the modern period. Two pit houses were located approximately 8 m from the Jüdengasse; these were the oldest in the excavation pit. Since the ceramic finds at the site were not terribly numerous and could only be roughly dated to the 10th or 11th century, it was necessary to collect animal bones from the site and date them using radiocarbon analysis. The results were as follows (again with reliability of 95.4 per cent): 889–994 calAD, 896–1020 calAD, and 970–1032 calAD. From these data, we can ascertain a date for these structures that is roughly contemporary with that of the market square. Finds dating to the same era were made at an adjacent property located just to the north on the other side of Bockstraße (Figure 2.2.8). Some of the finds from the property located at Klink 6 also belonged to this same time period, but might also be assigned to the 11th or 12th century (Figure 2.2.9). This shows that, around the year 1000 or shortly before, a settled area was located just in front of the future Osttor to the Altstadt, which should be considered as part of the market settlement, since the Marktplatz is located only 275 m from there. It is likely that the area between this settlement and the Marktplatz was also settled, even if only minimally. 90

91

Karl Kroeschell, “Bemerkungen zum ‘Kaufmannsrecht’ in den ottonisch-salischen Markturkunden,” in Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittel- und Nordeuropa, ed. Klaus Düwel et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 418–30 at 426–27. Jörg Oberste, “Formular und Funktionalität ottonischer Marktprivilegien. Rechtliche, wirtschaftliche und politische Aspekte,” in Anthropologies juridiques: Mélanges Pierre Braun, ed. Jacqueline Hoareau-Dodinau and Pascal Texier (Limoges: Presses Université de Limoges, 1998), 609–25 at 619.

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Further evidence of early settlement remains were also secured in the ­ orthern portion of the Altstadt. In 1995, in the course of construction work on n a residential house on the corner of Schmale Straße and Dovestraße, ­numerous pit houses or cellars from the 12th or 13th century were uncovered (­Figure 2.2.11). This area must have already been settled in the 10th or 11th century, even if there are fewer finds from this period. One of the more shallow pits at this site contained a range of pottery finds that resembled the earliest such finds at the Bockstraße location but that differed significantly from the oldest finds from the Lange Gasse in the Westendorf area of town. The animal bones removed from the Schmale Straße/Dovestraße location were dated using radiocarbon analysis. The results suggest that there was a settlement even in this part of the Altstadt around the year 1000. This raises the question of whether this early settlement, to which a predecessor of the present-day church of St. Giles (­Ägidienkirche) must have belonged, formed a contiguous area of settlement with that of the Marktplatz, or if it was separate. Pottery finds dating perhaps from the 10th or 11th century were also unearthed a bit farther to the south, at the property located at Schmale Straße 55–58 (Figure 2.2.10). These were mixed in with material from later periods. Other finds from the 10th and 11th centuries do not exist at this site. However, the density of archeological investigation here is not terribly high, and thus a settlement in this part of town in this period cannot be dismissed out of hand. The evolution of the Quedlinburg Stift and the associated settlement with a market can only be fully understood when we consider surrounding areas of settlement. The villages of Marsleben and Groß Orden are helpful in this regard, for they have each been the focus of intense archeological research. Groß Orden is located about 2 km from the Schlossberg at the edge of the floodplain of the river Bode. The town was first mentioned in 811 and was abandoned in 1477. The influential Saxon Billung family owned property here, and it has been suggested that their ancestral home was in this location. Archeological research into the settlement of Groß Orden goes as far back as the 19th century. Quedlinburg’s Oberbürgermeister Gustav Brecht (1830–1905) was the first to determine the exact location of the abandoned village.92 In 1878, he excavated an area close to the village church and discovered not only the f­oundations of the old church but also numerous graves belonging to the former cemetery on the site. Wooden coffins, children’s graves covered with hollow bricks, and ­Kopfnischensarkophage were uncovered here. In the 92

Gustav Brecht, “Über das Eingehen von Dörfern im Mittelalter und die Lage von Groß-­ Orden,” Zeitschrift des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 2/3 (1869): 1–10 and 179–82 at 4–9.

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1990s, further archeological investigations pointed to a much larger extension of the settlement than had previously been assumed.93 Indeed, it was shown that the settlement was a large village that was over 1.5 km in length. Thomas Küntzel has estimated that there were once between 1000 and 1500 pit houses located here, or between 130 and one 160 pit houses that could have stood here simultaneously at any given time.94 In all likelihood, these buildings were used primarily by craftspeople and could have served storage purposes. It is not known how many single-level residential structures may have stood here. The circumstances that might have allowed structures such as these to be recognized were not ideal, and thus we cannot gain a complete picture. Until the findings from the excavations here are evaluated, one will have to be cautious with statements about the structure of the settlement. It is interesting that we found evidence of manual labor that would exceed personal need. For example, we found that limestone spindle whorls were manufactured in one of the pit-houses. These were meant either for use in the production of textiles by people who were subject to a local nobleperson, or they were made to be sold.95 The deserted village of Marsleben lies north of Quedlinburg and spans an estimated 30 hectares, of which 4.5 hectares were excavated in the course of a road construction project. A nobleman named Hessi donated the town to the Abbey of Fulda in the year 800. The number of estates included in this gift point to a local population of between 200 and 300 or even as many as 400 inhabitants. Finds from the early medieval period were strewn across a stretch between 700 and 900 m in length.96 These figures thus place Marsleben among the ranks of other large rural settlements that are not uncommon in the fertile soils of the foothills of the Harz foreland. By unknown means, Marsleben became a possession of the Liudolfings; in 929, the village was included in Queen Mathilde’s dower. At the time of its foundation in 936, the Stift on the Schlossberg received a tithe in Marsleben; later, ownership of the entire 93

94

95 96

Wulf Holtmann, “Ausgrabungen im Bereich der Wüstung Groß Orden in Quedlinburg 1993/1994,” Archäologische Berichte aus Sachsen-Anhalt 1994 (1996): 141–50 at 146, and Manuela Sailer, “Ausgrabungen in Quedlinburg-Groß Orden, Ldkr. Quedlinburg, 1993 bis 1995, Vorbericht,” Jahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 79 (1997): 255–94 at 292. Thomas Küntzel, “Die merowingerzeitliche Filigranscheibenfibel aus der Wüstung Groß Orden bei Quedlinburg – Gedanken zu Datierung, Herkunft und Bedeutung,” J­ ahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 93 (2009 [2012]): 401–29 at 412, and Thomas Küntzel, “Quedlinburg und sein Umland,” Siedlungsforschung 26 (2008): 53–74 at 70. Oliver Schlegel and Kerstin Sonntag, “Eine Kalksteindrechslerei aus der Wüstung Groß Orden bei Quedlinburg mit einem Vorbericht zur Grabung von 1999,” Jahresschrift für ­Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 85 (2002): 121–47 at 123–27 and 130–34. Küntzel, “Quedlinburg und sein Umland,” 64.

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village was transferred to the abbey. In the year 1179, the church of St. Wiperti in Quedlinburg assumed the right of patronage over the church of St. Peter in Marsleben.97 Excavations in Marsleben have determined the existence of a manor house, which in the 10th or 11th century was made of stone and measured 7 × 9.5 m. Textual sources from the 12th century show that there were numerous Ministeriales in the village whom we cannot assign with certainty to the various ecclesiastical institutions—the Stift on the Schlossberg, the Premonstratensians of St. Wiperti, and the abbey of St. Mary on the Münzenberg—or to the Counts of Regenstein, who held property in ­Marsleben.98 As was the case in Groß Orden, manual production also played a role in ­Marsleben. ­Küntzel has assumed that early and high medieval Marsleben was possessed of “significant commercial potential.”99 What was the relationship to Quedlinburg of outlying large villages (Großdörfer) like Groß Orden and Marsleben, since both possessed a church and evidence of manual production and thus would be categorized as central sites (Zentralorte) of lower stature? It has been suggested that between the 7th and 9th centuries Groß Orden in particular was more important than Quedlinburg.100 The grave offering of a 7th-century gold-disk fibula (Goldscheibenfibel) found in the area near the church points to the existence of a graveyard for the settlement in the Merovingian period; this cemetery would have been used by members of the upper classes. Whether or not a church was already standing at this time is not entirely clear, for in this early period of Christianization (which could only be carried out in the eastern Harz region from the Carolingian era onward) burials were conducted on one’s own property, as is familiar from examples in southern Germany. There is a prehistoric burial mound called the Bockshornschanze just 500 m from the settlement of Groß Orden that was reused for burial purposes between the 6th and 8th or 9th centuries. Elites who likely resided in Groß Orden were interred here. These elite graves

97 98

99 100

Hans-Erich Weirauch, “Der Grundbesitz des Stiftes Quedlinburg im Mittelalter,” Sachsen und Anhalt 14 (1938): 203–95 at 248. André Schürger and Jürgen Pape, “Ein Kleinadelssitz in Marsleben – ministerialis, ­villicus oder dapifer,” in Archäologie XXL: Archäologie an der B6n im Landkreis Quedlinburg, ed. Harald Meller (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-­ Anhalt, 2006), 202–09, and Thomas Wozniak, “Die Wüstung Marsleben. Historischer Überblick anhand der schriftlichen Quellen,” in Meller, Archäologie XXL, 192–93. “erhebliches gewerbliches Potential”: Küntzel, “Quedlinburg und sein Umland,” 68. Berthold Schmidt and Hans-Georg Schiffer, “Untersuchungen in der frühgeschichtlichen und mittelalterlichen Wüstung Groß Orden, Gemarkung Quedlinburg,” Ausgrabungen und Funde 28 (1983): 200–04 at 201.

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have long been associated with the Billung family,101 but this ultimately cannot be proven. For example, the family of Hessi also owned property in Groß Orden. Babette Ludowici saw in the early medieval graves in the Bockshornschanze evidence for a family with traditions rooted in pagan beliefs, possibly rivals to the Billungs, who were loyal to Frankish rule.102 She has proposed that Henry I specifically selected Quedlinburg as one of his most important residences because Saxon elites had established their own centers of power in the immediate vicinity; Henry I’s royal authority needed to be visualized for them.103 On the Schlossberg, the king occupied the region’s most dominant topographical feature, and he could effectively put his power on display from this vantage point. In this way, from the date of King Henry I’s death into our own time, Quedlinburg became and persisted as a symbol for the royal power of the Liudolfings and the Ottonians in the northeastern foothills of the Harz mountains. The settlements in the region surrounding Quedlinburg had close economic ties to the town. The Pfalz and the canonry must have maintained themselves in large part through their possessions in neighboring settlements. As was common at this time, the properties of the canonry were spread across a large area, and they were densely concentrated in the eastern Harz and in the region that would later be taken up by the Stiftsterritorium.104 The details of these interdependencies are not clear. The remaining archeological finds in the deserted villages suggest that the manufacture of textiles could have had a certain importance. As far as the Stift is concerned, the written sources only give the vaguest indication that textile production in the early Middle Ages constituted an important part of its ability to maintain self-sufficiency. This is easier to grasp in the later, high medieval period, when the abbess laid out the Neustadt. According to Thomas Wozniak, textile manufacturing played an extremely important role in the new settlement.105 In addition to the influx of 101

102 103 104 105

Walther Schulz, “Die Begräbnisstätte der Karolingerzeit an der Boxhornschanze, Stadtkreis Quedlinburg,” in Bericht über die achte Tagung der Gesellschaft für deutsche ­Vorgeschichte Cöthen 10.–14. Juni 1924, ed. Gesellschaft für deutsche Vorgeschichte (Leipzig: Curt Kabitzsch, 1925), 157–69 at 168. Babette Ludowici, “Quedlinburg before the Ottonian Kings,” in Small Things, Wide ­Horizons: Studies in Honour of Birgitta Hårdh, ed. Lars Larsson et al. (Oxford: ­Archaeopress Publishing, 2015), 225–60 at 257. Ludowici, “Quedlinburg before the Ottonian Kings,” 258. Christian Warnke, “Der königsferne Norden Sachsen-Anhalts in ottonischer Zeit,” in ­Mittelalterliche Königspfalzen auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Sachsen-Anhalt, ed. Stephan Freund and Rainer Kuhn (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2014), 172–212 at 200 and figure 4. Thomas Wozniak, Quedlinburg im 14. und 16. Jahrhundert: Ein sozialtopographischer ­Vergleich (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013), 74–78.

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new residents from the Netherlands, perhaps a relocation of certain inhabitants outlying settlements who were subject to the Stift occurred at this time. The Stift and the neighboring villages must absolutely have been closely economically intertwined already in the 10th or 11th centuries. Works Cited Althoff, Gerd. “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg. Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschaftsund Überlieferungszentrum.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44. Althoff, Gerd. “Otto der Große und die neue europäische Identität.” In Der Hoftag in Quedlinburg 973. Ed. Andreas Ranft. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006. 3–18. Behrens, Heinz A. “Ein zweiter Kirchenbau auf dem Quedlinburger Schlossberg.” ­Nordharzer Jahrbuch 12 (1987): 5–12. Bernatzky, Monika. “In den Fels gehauen. Kopfnischengräber in Königslutter.” ­Archäologie in Niedersachsen 12 (2009): 90–93. Biermann, Felix. “Der früh- und hochmittelalterliche Burgwall von Ottersburg (­Altmark).” In Zusammengegraben – Kooperationsprojekte in Sachsen-Anhalt: Tagung vom 17. bis 20. Mai 2009 im Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale). Ed. Harald Meller. Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, 2012. 125–31. Biller, Thomas. Kaiserpfalz Gelnhausen. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2000. Bischop, Dieter. “Mit Knochen gepflastert. Die archäologischen Beobachtungen und Grabungen am historischen Bremer Markt.” Zeitschrift für Archäologie des ­Mittelalters 34 (2006): 215–30. Blaich, Markus C., and Michael Geschwinde. “Die Ausgrabungen auf der Königspfalz Werla 2007 bis 2011 – Vorbericht.” Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 81 (2012): 111–44. Brachmann, Hansjürgen. Slawische Stämme an Elbe und Saale: Zu ihrer Geschichte und Kultur im 6. bis 10. Jahrhundert auf Grund archäologischer Quellen. Berlin: ­Akademie-Verlag, 1978. Brecht, Gustav. “Über das Eingehen von Dörfern im Mittelalter und die Lage von Groß-Orden.” Zeitschrift des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 2/3 (1869): 1–10 and 179–82. Brinkmann, Adolf. Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg. Vol. 1. Berlin: Hendel, 1922. Brosch, Robert. “Zu den Grabungsergebnissen in Quedlinburg (Altstadt und Markt) 2011–2013.” In Königswege: Festschrift für Hans K. Schulze zum 80. Geburtstag und 50. Promotionsjubiläum. Ed. Thomas Wozniak. Leipzig: Eudora-Verlag, 2014. 145–52.

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Brühl, Carlrichard. Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium regis: Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Königtums im Frankenreich und in den fränkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1968. Damaros, Ulrich v., and Thomas Wozniak. “St. Wiperti in Quedlinburg.” In Die Ottonen: Kunst – Architektur – Geschichte. Ed. Klaus Gereon Beuckers et al. Petersberg: Imhof, 2002. 285–92. Dickers, Aurelia. “Ausgrabungen in Quedlinburg. Die Untersuchungen am Fuße des Schlossbergs.” Archäologische Berichte aus Sachsen-Anhalt 1994 (1996): 151–58. Drechsler, Heike. “Zur Grablege Heinrichs I. in Quedlinburg.” Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- u. Wappenkunde 46 (2000): 155–79. Dumitrache, Marianne, Gabriele Kurz, Gabriele Legant, and Doris Schmid. Die Grabung Neue Straße 2001–2004 in Ulm. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2009. Ehlers, Caspar. Die Integration Sachsens in das fränkische Reich (751–1024). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Ehlers, Caspar. “Die Pfalz Werla im räumlichen Bezugssystem der Befestigungen des Nordharzvorlandes und des sogenannten Werla-Goslarer Reichsgutbezirks (9.–13. Jahrhundert).” In Werla 1 – Die Königspfalz: Ihre Geschichte und die Ausgrabungen 1875–1964. Ed. Markus C. Blaich and Michael Geschwinde. Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2015. 161–84. Ehlers, Joachim. “Die Königin aus England. Ottos des Großen erste Gemahlin, Magdeburg und das Reich.” Sachsen und Anhalt 22 (1999/2000): 27–55. Erath, Anton Ulrich von. Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis. Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764. Erdmann, Carl. “Beiträge zur Geschichte Heinrichs I. (IV–VI).” Sachsen und Anhalt 17 (1941/43): 14–61. Ettel, Peter. “Grundstrukturen adliger Zentralorte in Süddeutschland. Repräsentationsformen und Raumerschließung.” In Das lange 10. Jahrhundert: Struktureller Wandel zwischen Zentralisierung und Fragmentierung, äußerem Druck und innerer Krise. Ed. Christine A. Kleinjung and Stefan Albrecht. Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2014. 91–135. Fiedler, Uwe. “Die Altenburg bei Wangen, Burgenlandkreis – die liudolfingische Pfalz Memleben?” Burgen und Schlösser in Sachsen-Anhalt 17 (2008): 7–37. Fischer, Ellinor. “Vom Bischofssitz zur Stadt – Archäologische Erkenntnisse zur Entwicklung Osnabrücks im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert.” In Wandel der Stadt um 1200: Die bauliche und gesellschaftliche Transformation der Stadt im Hochmittelalter. Ed. Karsten Igel et al. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2013. 225–41. Fleck, Michael. Leben und Wundertaten des Heiligen Wigbert. Marburg: Historische Kommission für Hessen, 2010

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Holtmann, Wulf. “Ausgrabungen im Bereich der Wüstung Groß Orden in Quedlinburg 1993/1994.” Archäologische Berichte aus Sachsen-Anhalt 1994 (1996): 141–50. Jacobsen, Werner. “Zur Frühgeschichte der Quedlinburger Stiftskirche.” In ­Denkmalkunde und Denkmalpflege: Wissen und Wirken. Festschrift für Heinrich Magirius zum 60. Geburtstag am 1. Februar 1994. Ed. Ute Reupert et al. Dresden: Lipp, 1995. 63–72. Jacobsen, Werner, Uwe Lobbedey, and Dethard von Winterfeld. “Ottonische Baukunst.” In Otto der Große, Magdeburg und Europa. Vol. 2. Ed. Matthias Puhle. Mainz: ­Philipp von Zabern, 2001. 251–82. Kasper, Peter. Das Reichsstift Quedlinburg (936–1810). Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2014. König, Sonja. … lütken Freden wisk … Die mittelalterliche Siedlung Klein Freden bei Salzgitter vom 9.–13. Jahrhundert: Siedlung – Fronhof – Pferdehaltung. Rahden/­ Westfalen: Leidorf, 2007. Kozok, Maike. “Ergebnisse der bauarchäologischen Forschung zur Runneburg. Baugeschichte und Bauphasenanalyse.” In Die Runneburg bei Weißensee: Baugeschichtliche Aufarbeitung der bisherigen Forschungsergebnisse. Ed. Hermann Wirth. Bad ­Homburg: Verlag Ausbildung und Wissen, 1998. 146–206. Krecher, Michael. “Archäologische Ausgrabungen in der Johanniskirche zu Magdeburg.” In Schaufenster Archäologie: Neues aus der archäologischen Forschung in Magdeburg. Ed. Brigitta Kunz. Magdeburg: Landeshauptstadt Magdeburg, Büro für Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Protokoll, 2005. 184–90. Krecher, Michael. “Die Stadtkirche St. Johannis zu Magdeburg. Ausgrabungsergebnisse der Jahre 1997/98.” Archäologische Berichte aus Sachsen-Anhalt 1999/1 (2000): 121–38. Kroeschell, Karl. “Bemerkungen zum ‘Kaufmannsrecht’ in den ottonisch-salischen Markturkunden.” In Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittel- und Nordeuropa. Ed. Klaus Düwel et al. Göttingen: ­Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985. 418–30. Küntzel, Thomas. “Die merowingerzeitliche Filigranscheibenfibel aus der Wüstung Groß Orden bei Quedlinburg – Gedanken zu Datierung, Herkunft und Bedeutung.” Jahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 93 (2009 [2012]): 401–29. Küntzel, Thomas. “Quedlinburg und sein Umland.” Siedlungsforschung 26 (2008): 53–74. Kuhn, Rainer. “Die Forschungsgrabung 2006–2009 am Magdeburger Dom.” In Zusammengegraben – Kooperationsprojekte in Sachsen-Anhalt: Tagung vom 17. bis 20. Mai 2009 im Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale). Ed. Harald Meller. Halle/ Saale: Landesamt für Archäologie, 2012. 159–72. Kuhn, Rainer. “Die ‘Nikolaikirche’ westlich von den gotischen Domtürmen.” In Aufgedeckt. Vol. 2. Forschungsgrabungen am Magdeburger Dom 2006–2009. Ed. Harald Meller. Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Archäologie, 2009. 87–100.

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Kuhn, Rainer. “Die Vorgängerbauten unter dem Magdeburger Dom.” In Aufgedeckt. Vol. 2. Forschungsgrabungen am Magdeburger Dom 2006–2009. Ed. Harald Meller. Halle/ Saale: Landesamt für Archäologie, 2009. 31–86. Laudage, Johannes. Otto der Große: Eine Biographie. Regensburg: Pustet, 2001. Lehmann, Edgar. “Die ‘Confessio’ in der Servatiuskirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Skulptur des Mittelalters: Funktion und Gestalt. Ed. Friedrich Möbius and Ernst Schubert. ­Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1987. 9–26. Leopold, Gerhard. Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg. Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010. Lobbedey, Uwe. “Ausgrabung einer karolingischen Damenstiftskirche in Freckenhorst. Datierung eines zugehörigen Baumsargfriedhofs in das 10. Jahrhundert.” ­Kunstchronik 21 (1968): 154–59. Lobbedey, Uwe. “Die Ausgrabungen im Münster zu Herford 1965 und 1966. Vorbericht.” Westfalen 50 (1972): 110–18. Ludowici, Babette. “Quedlinburg before the Ottonian Kings.” In Small Things, Wide Horizons: Studies in Honour of Birgitta Hårdh. Ed. Lars Larsson et al. Oxford: ­Archaeopress Publishing, 2015. 225–60. Militzer, Klaus, and Peter Przybilla. Stadtentstehung, Bürgertum und Rat: Halberstadt und Quedlinburg bis zur Mitte des 14. Jhs. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980. Müller, Eric. “Slawische Bestattungssitten im Saalegebiet – die Gräberfelder von ­Niederwünsch und Oechlitz.” In Soziale Gruppen und Gesellschaftsstrukturen im westslawischen Raum. Ed. Felix Biermann et al. Langenweissbach: Beier und Beran, 2013. 129–83. Nickel, Ernst. Der ‘Alte Markt’ in Magdeburg. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964. Niermeyer, Jan Frederik, Co van de Kieft, and W.J. Johannes Burgers. Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus. Vol. 1. Leiden: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002. Oberste, Jörg. “Formular und Funktionalität ottonischer Marktprivilegien. Rechtliche, wirtschaftliche und politische Aspekte.” In Anthropologies juridiques: mélanges Pierre Braun. Ed. Jacqueline Hoareau-Dodinau and Pascal Texier. Limoges: Presses Université de Limoges, 1998. 609–25. Reuling, Ulrich. “Quedlinburg Königspfalz – Reichsstifts – Markt.” In Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung. Vol. 4. Pfalzen – Reichsgut – Königshöfe. Ed. Lutz Fenske. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. 184–247. Reuling, Ulrich, and Daniel Stracke. Quedlinburg. Münster: Ardey-Verlag, 2006. Sailer, Manuela. “Ausgrabungen in Quedlinburg-Groß Orden, Ldkr. Quedlinburg, 1993 bis 1995, Vorbericht.” Jahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 79 (1997): 255–94. Sanke, Markus. Die Gräber geistlicher Eliten Europas von der Spätantike bis zur Neuzeit: Archäologische Studien zur materiellen Reflexion von Jenseitsvorstellungen und ihrem Wandel. Bonn: Habelt, 2012.

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Scheftel, Michael. “Die ehemalige Klosterkirche St. Marien auf dem Münzenberg in Quedlinburg.” In Bauforschung: eine kritische Revision. Ed. Johannes Cramer et al. Berlin: Lukas-Verlag, 2005. 116–36. Schirwitz, Karl. “Die Bodenfunde vom Gelände des Wiperti-Klostergutes zu Quedlinburg.” Harz-Zeitschrift 14 (1962): 1–14. Schirwitz, Karl. “Zur Frage der mittelalterlichen Bestattungen.” Germanien 10 (1938): 188–93. Schirwitz, Karl. “Die Grabungen auf dem Schlossberg zu Quedlinburg.” Jahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 44 (1960): 9–50. Schlegel, Oliver, and Kerstin Sonntag. “Eine Kalksteindrechslerei aus der Wüstung Groß Orden bei Quedlinburg mit einem Vorbericht zur Grabung von 1999.” Jahresschrift für Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte 85 (2002): 121–47. Schlenker, Gerlinde. “Auf den Spuren der Ottonen in Sachsen-Anhalt.” In Auf den Spuren der Ottonen. Ed. Cornelia Kessler. Halle/Saale: Landesheimatbund Sachsen-Anhalt, 1999. 6–24. Schlesinger, Walter. Ausgewählte Aufsätze 1965–1979. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1987. Schlüter, Wolfgang. “Die Siedlungsgeschichte vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum Beginn des Spätmittelalters.” In Geschichte der Stadt Osnabrück. Ed. Gerd Steinwascher. Belm: Meinders & Elstermann, 2006. 15–60. Schmid, Karl. “Die Thronfolge Ottos des Großen.” In Königswahl und Thronfolge in ottonisch-frühdeutscher Zeit. Ed. Eduard Hlawitschka. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971. 417–508. Schmidt, Berthold, and Hans-Georg Schiffer. “Untersuchungen in der frühgeschichtlichen und mittelalterlichen Wüstung Groß Orden, Gemarkung Quedlinburg.” ­Ausgrabungen und Funde 28 (1983). 200–04. Schmitt, Reinhard. “Burg Querfurt um 1000 – Zum baulichen Lebensumfeld des hl. Brun von Querfurt.” Burgen und Schlösser in Sachsen-Anhalt 20 (2011): 98–131. Schmitt, Reinhard. “Die Lauenburg im Harz und der frühe Burgenbau im ostfälischen Raum.” In Neue Forschungen zum frühen Burgenbau. Ed. Hans-Heinrich Häffner. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006. 167–80. Schmitt, Reinhard. “Der Schlossberg in Quedlinburg.” In Die Ottonen: Kunst – Architektur – Geschichte. Ed. Klaus Gereon Beuckers et al. Petersberg: Imhof, 2002. 267–72. Schmitt, Reinhard. “Der Schloßberg in Quedlinburg. Zum Stand der baugeschichtlichen Forschungen.” In Quedlinburg 994–1994: 1000 Jahre Markt-, Münz- und Z ­ ollrecht. Ed. Stadt Quedlinburg. Quedlinburg: Rödiger, 1994. 121–33. Schubert, Ernst. “Die Kirchen St. Wiperti und St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Eine Interpretation der literarischen Quellen zur Baugeschichte.” Sachsen und Anhalt 25 (2007): 31–80.

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Chapter 3

Quedlinburg: The Conventual Buildings from an Architectural History Perspective G. Ulrich Großmann Monasteries and other religious houses are frequently situated in verdant valleys or plains that offer space for conventual buildings, a reliable supply of fresh water, and abundant land for fields and gardens. Castles, by contrast, more commonly stand on narrow hilltops, accessed only by steep paths. Here the inhabitants had to rely on cisterns for their water supply, while meat, fish, and vegetables were brought in from dependent manor farms. Although there are of course exceptions to every rule, it is generally those who need to defend themselves who select an elevated location whenever possible. Quedlinburg Abbey’s position on top of a rocky cliff face thus reflects the classic choice of location for a castle, and immediately suggests that the house of canonesses replaced an earlier fortress on this site. Historical and archaeological sources both confirm this assumption.1 The name already suggests the existence of a castle (the word Burg means “castle” in German), and King Henry I is known to have visited the castle of Quedlinburg multiple times between 922 and 931.2 The oldest architectural evidence for this castle is found within the collegiate church, and no evidence survives of fortifications from before the 10th century. 1

The Monastic Complex (Figure 3.1)

The full monastic complex consists of the abbey church with its twin-­towered west facade on the south side of the hill, the three ranges of the former cloister surrounding a courtyard west of the church, and the structures on the north and northeast sides of the hill, including the gatehouse and the Stiftshauptmannei 1 See Tobias Gärtner, “Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th Centuries: An Archaeological View” in this volume. 2 Hermann Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ­ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942 (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1959), 10. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004527492_004

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Figure 3.1 Quedlinburg. Convent and convent church from the west. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

Figure 3.2 Quedlinburg. Convent church from the southeast. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

(the house of the Stiftshauptmann, the secular male representative of the estate of the house of canonesses). The former collegiate church is a three-aisled basilica with a narrow transept, a choir, and two side apses (Figure 3.2). The twin-towered west facade

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is a product of the 19th century, when the north tower was completely rebuilt and the south tower added. The nave and transept are Romanesque in form, while the choir is Gothic. Extensive renovations took place in the 19th century and again from 1936 to 1941, at which time the interior of the choir was reconstructed in a Romanesque style within the Gothic outer walls. The three ranges of the former cloister (the western complex) surround a roughly trapezoidal courtyard. The east end of the south range adjoins the narthex at the west end of the church. The west and south ranges stand on steeply sloping ground, as indicated by the plunging outer walls and deep cellars. The outer walls of these ranges are clearly built on an older perimeter wall, perhaps the curtain wall of the former castle. The steepness of the sloping site also means that the ends of the west and north ranges barely meet at an outer corner, precluding a direct connection between these buildings. The north range extends farther east than the south range, ending opposite the middle of the nave of the church. At this point a perpendicular wing abuts the north range, connecting it to the gatehouse to the north.3 Well into the 19th century a bridge supporting an enclosed passageway connected the north side of the nave with the north range, visually demarcating the boundary between the cloister and the spacious eastern court. The Propstei, or provost’s house, stood to the south and east of the church, although now only the lowest story survives. Further residential and utilitarian buildings surrounded the eastern court, connecting the Propstei in the southeast with the gatehouse in the north. 2

The Conventual Buildings

2.1 Chapel on the South Side of the Transept Based on older archaeological evidence, it was long assumed that the site was originally accessed from the southern slope.4 A path was believed to have ascended from the west to the abbey or castle grounds and to have ended level with the present nave in a narrow gateway on the south side of the church, between it and a rectangular structure. Newer research has found no evidence for this and therefore suggests the presence of a side chapel rather than a gate chapel.5 3 Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, fig. 62. 4 Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, fig. 20. 5 Robert Brosch, “Archäologische Untersuchungen in Quedlinburg 2010–2014,” Quedlinburger Annalen 16 (2014–15), 29–38.

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A vaulted passage survives between the nave and the transept (Figure 3.3), leading quite steeply from the west up to this point and ending at a set of steps leading up to the crypt of the south transept. Today it resembles an underground tunnel. Shortly before reaching the crypt, this path or vaulted passageway leads past a chapel, St. Nicholas in Vinculis, between the path and the south wall of the nave. It stands below the floor level of the collegiate church

Figure 3.3 Quedlinburg. Lower level side chapel on the south. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

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and is older than the present nave. Three arches open onto the passageway from this “wayside chapel,” with the central arch serving as the entrance. The chapel itself ends in an apse in the east, with a window that must once have received light, and was clearly walled in with the construction of the crypt under the south transept, thus providing evidence of the chapel’s antiquity. The walls of the chapel itself were built using a yellow mortar, which archaeologists date to the construction phase around 1000 (Phase III).6 This places the chapel in the same phase as the first collegiate church, but in my opinion it must have been built earlier. Although the steps next to the chapel now lead up into the right transept of the crypt, they are older, and most likely led into the castle before the crypt was built. Two low columns support the three arches that open from the wayside chapel onto the passageway, framing the central entrance. All three arches were reworked at a later date to allow for the insertion of grilles. Today the surviving upper section of the path that once led up to the castle ends just to the west of the chapel in a transverse passage, but it originally must have continued straight down the hill. The transverse passage, which gives access to two more recent vaults, lies directly beneath the eastern half of the south aisle of the nave. Five rectangular rooms, four barrel-vaulted and one now with a flat concrete ceiling, line the south side of the passageway leading up to the site. They form the basement story of the now-dismantled Propstei, and their current appearance probably reflects a late medieval phase of construction. The barrel vaults are built of broken ashlars, which does not suggest a particularly great age. Each room has a narrow window to the south. On the north side they were attached at a later date to the wall enclosing the former approach to the castle, which probably dates to the 10th century. Excavations within these rooms have revealed evidence of somewhat narrower rooms with different subdivisions belonging to an earlier phase of construction, indicating the presence of a building here during the high Middle Ages. 3

Gatehouse and Gate on the North (Figure 3.4)

A gateway stood on the north side of the castle hill most likely from the beginning. Because its existence could be demonstrated only beginning in the 11th or 12th century, it was long assumed that there was an older gateway on the south 6 Gerhard Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in ­Quedlinburg (Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010), 42.

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Figure 3.4 Quedlinburg. Northern gatehouse, west side. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

side of the hill. There is, however, no evidence for the latter. A round-arched gate, which dates to the 16th century along with the weather-worn double coat of arms above it, opens onto a gateway leading into a defensive outer bailey (Zwinger), a narrow passageway between two high walls pierced with arrow loops. The wall includes two stones bearing inscriptions from 1577, which were

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moved here in 1900 from the gate called the Gröpertor.7 Between them stand the remains of the staircase that once led to the battlements at the top of the Zwinger walls. A gate tower guarded the entrance. Today this gatehouse consists of a fourstory wing extending perpendicular to the residential north range (see description of the cloister, below) blocking the approach to the site. The gatehouse wing is built of ashlar masonry, with one small opening above the gateway, and two pairs of windows in each of the two uppermost stories. Irregular ­chamfered ashlars now frame the gateway itself. The arch dates to the 15th or 16th century, and was built following the construction of a new retaining wall that significantly encroached on the older entrance. The gateway is roughly set into the ashlar masonry, and despite being shifted to the north nonetheless appears severely constricted by the buttressing structure projecting out from the hillside in front of the gate. The arch itself is of more recent date than the surrounding masonry. To the left of the gate, the wall consists of relatively uniform masonry above a carefully sloped talus. A stone bearing three coats of arms— of the abbey, of Saxony, and of the town of Quedlinburg—is set into this wall at second-story height. Two of these coats of arms face the road approaching the gate, while the third faces the town. Abbess Hedwig ordered the placement of this stone sometime in the period between 1477 and 1485,8 along with the bishop’s statue next to it. In 1477 the monastic buildings had come under fire during a conflict between the abbey and the town of Quedlinburg, during which Saxon troops conquered the town on Abbess Hedwig’s behalf. In the course of the fighting, the gatehouse was damaged severely enough to require restoration. Contrary to Klaus Voigtländer’s suggestion,9 the uniform appearance of the masonry indicates that this part of the building can in fact be dated by the coats of arms. The entire section of the wall to the left of the gate, on the north side closest to the town, thus dates from the late 15th century. Approximately 1 m above the gateway five ashlar blocks from an older arch can still be seen (Figure 3.5), while the entire arch survives on the interior of the gateway. The apex of this arch is a bit closer to the hillside than that of the more recent gate. The voussoirs are not carved with any profile that would allow them to be dated stylistically. The stones were originally cut with great precision, as is especially typical for gates dating from the period around 1200. 7 Adolf Brinkmann, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des ­Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg, vol. 1 (Berlin: Otto Hendel, 1922), 24–25. 8 My thanks to Reinhard Schmitt of Halle for this information. 9 Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer ­Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 22.

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Figure 3.5 Quedlinburg. Northern gatehouse, detail: traces of ­Romanesque gate above the present gate arch. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

The inner faces of the stones on the north, within the passage of the gateway, reveal evidence of spalling, possibly caused by a fire. Wäscher therefore dates the core of the gate and tower to the period before the fire of 1070 recorded in the abbey chronicle.10 This date in the 11th century, particularly the early 11th 10

Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, 42.

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century, remains speculative. The irregularities on the inner face of the lower edge of the arch need not necessarily be traces of the fire of 1070. While we cannot completely reject the idea that a gatehouse may have been given such a facade of ashlar masonry at such an early date—before 1070—it would have been quite unusual. Instead, the overall appearance of the structure strongly suggests a construction date in the late 12th century. The only difference between the masonry above the older gateway arch and the 15th-century stonework is the somewhat smaller size of the ashlar blocks. A visible seam in the stone courses also clearly divides the two sections. The masonry adjoins the archway without a break, while all other openings have been cut at a later date. This older stonework above the gate extends upwards to the level of the third story, ending in an irregular seam running diagonally inwards (toward the south), where it ends at the jamb of a walled-up roundarched Romanesque opening. Whether this former doorway originally led to a wall walk or to a bretèche must remain an open question. The opening did not sit directly above the gate, as would be common for a bretèche, but slightly to the south of it. With the exception of the late 15th-century restoration mentioned above, most of the masonry probably dates from the period around 1200 rather than the 11th century. The paired windows in the upper two stories belong to an extensive rebuilding campaign carried out in 1613, which encompassed the uppermost story and the Alte Dechanei (Old Deanery) that adjoins the tower.11 A barrel vault (Figure 3.6), built partially of brick, spans the gateway, covering the two lower stories as one passageway. The blind arch above the opening on the interior stands in relation to the narrower gateway, and, along with the vault, dates from the period of reconstruction. The entrance to a guardhouse opens onto the left (north) side of the gateway, with a Renaissance-period coat of arms beside it. Two supporters frame a multi-part coat of arms of Abbess Anna II or Anna III zu Stolberg-Wernigerode (1515–74 or 1584–1601 respectively). Here again the masonry bears evidence of several phases of construction, and large portions of it certainly date back to the 12th century. A wicket gate is set into the wide main gate, which is secured at the top by a lintel beam. In the 12th century the surface of the roadway passing through the gate was approximately 1 m higher than it is today. It is a common phenomenon in castle architecture that the level of such passageways sinks over the course of time, as decades’ or centuries’ worth of rain gradually wash out the original roadway.

11

Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 22, citing Reinhard Schmitt.

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Figure 3.6 Quedlinburg. Northern gatehouse, detail: interior with view of the ­Romanesque arch. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

The Dechanei, or deanery, which directly adjoins the gatehouse, is built on a ground floor of continuous masonry, into which is set a round-arched door with a rebate. On the second floor a seam appears in the stonework, approximately in the middle of the building. There is no evidence to suggest that this ashlar masonry, which includes some reused older stones, was built before the 16th century. To the east stands the Stiftshauptmannei. The corbels help date this half-timbered building to the period around 1500. A half-timbered stairwell was added to the structure in the 18th or 19th century. On the courtyard side, the building known as the Jägerhaus, or hunting lodge, stands in front of the Stiftshauptmannei. The ground floor of this structure is built of ashlar masonry, while the upper floors are half-timbered and unornamented, and date from the 17th or 18th century. At the east end of the passageway between the Stiftshauptmannei and the Jägerhaus stands a reused wooden gateway arch from 1632. The east end of the Stiftshauptmannei has a small wooden veranda bearing a motto and Nazi-era decoration (from around 1940). 4

Former Cloister: Western Residential Complex (Figure 3.7)

The main buildings of the former abbey are situated to the north and west of the church. Three ranges surround a cloister, which is enclosed on the east by

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Figure 3.7 Quedlinburg. Convent buildings (castle), north and west wings. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

the facade of the abbey church. To the north of the church a wide passage gives access to the cloister from the east. Today the facades facing the courtyard are half-timbered, and date to the Baroque period. A cloister walk runs around the front of these buildings on the ground floor, open to the courtyard. Wooden posts and diagonal braces support the walls of a second story above the cloister walk. The half-timbered walls of this

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upper story date from the first half of the 18th century. The three ranges thus consist of somewhat narrower core buildings constructed in stone, behind a half-timbered two-story addition facing the central courtyard of the cloister, and open on the ground floor. Stone Renaissance gables of wall dormers, part of the older architectural fabric, crown the facade of the core structure of the north range, behind the half-timbered addition. Three of these gables survive on the north range facing the cloister, while a fourth crowns the north wall of the west range, in the open corner between the north and west ranges. These were constructed when the range was largely rebuilt in 1558. The north range was originally not connected to the other ranges. The south wall of the north range is aligned with the northern end-wall of the west range. The half-timbered cloister walk constructed in front of the buildings first connected these two ranges. Particularly striking is the central section of the north half-timbered addition with its high round-arched windows. The posts between the six windows are decorated with bases and capitals, suggesting a late 18th-century origin. The older masonry facades of the three ranges survive behind the half-timbered two-story cloister walk (Figure 3.8). A large walled-in opening ending in a shallow segmental arch appears in the ground-floor wall of the south range, suggesting that this building served a utilitarian purpose. Two rectangular doorways were also walled in at a later date. A late Gothic doorway divided

Figure 3.8 Quedlinburg. Convent buildings (castle), Renaissance portal underneath wooden arcades. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

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by mullions and topped by a shouldered arch dated to the 16th century gives access to the west range. In the north range a round-arched doorway located approximately in the center of the facade forms part of the older stone wall. Niches are carved into the jambs framing this doorway, and these end in corbels, the undersides of which are carved with busts: a man on the right (a mason’s mark appears below this figure) and two bearded men on the left. Two inscriptions above these busts give the date as “October 8,” “1558”—obviously the year in which the entire north range was largely rebuilt. A narrow intermediate building, essentially little more than a covered vestibule protecting the entrance from wind and rain, connects the south range of the cloister to the church. Its outer appearance dates from the 18th century. The residential north range ends in a stair tower placed roughly opposite and slightly to the east of the north tower of the church. The ground floor of this stair tower is rectangular, while the upper floors are octagonal. A recessed doorway ending in a basket-handled arch and surrounded by a rectangular frame gives access to the stair tower from the cloister walk. The arch overlaps the molding of the frame, combining Renaissance and late Gothic stylistic elements. The outer frame displays the same ornamentation seen on the doorway from 1558. The octagonal upper stories were probably added to the tower in the mid-16th century. A mullioned window in the upper story, its frame slanted to follow the course of the staircase, dates from this period. Curved saltires, also typical of the mid-16th century, appear in the timber framework of the top story, below the level of the windowsills. The north range has another wall dormer to the east of the stair tower. The south wall of the wing connecting the north range to the gatehouse also ends in a wall dormer crowned with a shaped gable whose sides form a series of S-curves. All of these gables can be dated to the late 16th century. The interior division of the three ranges also dates from the 16th century at the earliest. On the ground floor we can identify traces of early modern construction, especially in the eastern half of the north range, where the former kitchen was located near the stair tower, as labeled on the plan of 1821. A larger kitchen in the south range is equipped with a larger wood-fired stove and its own oven. In this period the south and west ranges were apparently used for extensive residential and administrative purposes. The division of rooms on the second floor, by contrast, can be dated to the late 18th century, and the decoration is primarily late Baroque and Neoclassical. The north range contains a row of five rooms. According to the plan of 1821, the easternmost of these was set apart as the chapter room. A pointed-arched doorway that once led to a now-dismantled annex is still recognizable in the east wall of this room. Moving west, the next room is a vestibule (labeled “Fluhr,” or hallway, on the plan)

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Figure 3.9 Quedlinburg. Convent buildings (castle), early medieval area in the cellar of the west wing. ­Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

adjoining the stair tower, followed by a large open hall, then the refectory with a cloakroom, and an audience chamber. An 18th-century annex adjoining the last two rooms houses a bedchamber and a parlor.12 While the spiral staircase and kitchen probably date from the 16th century, all the other interior divisions represent 18th-century alterations. Three vaulted rooms in the cellar below the west range are significantly older in date (Figure 3.9). A flight of stairs in the corner between the north and 12

Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, fig. 20.

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west ranges gives access to a room with two columns, followed by a central room with four columns, and a narrower L-shaped room without intermediary supports. The two columns of the northernmost room stand on high bases, and end in unadorned square capitals, a striking feature above the round columns. The groin vaults of the ceiling consist of irregular stonework. To the east, this room opens onto a vault carved into the cliff rock, probably created at an unknown date simply as a cold room. The columns topped with square capitals appear again in the central room, as do the vaults with irregular masonry, here with occasional bricks reused from some earlier construction. Previous scholars (particularly Hermann Wäscher) dated these rooms to the Ottonian or Salian period (10th or 11th century) and interpreted them as part of the castle or a western crypt. The rooms’ current appearance might date from a reconstruction of the 15th or even 16th century, but the core space dates in fact from the period around the year 1000. Whether the cellar rooms themselves date from the early or high Middle Ages or were added later, as was common, as extensions built over the edge of the steep slope remains an open question. 5

Abbey Church

The collegiate church has been the subject of extensive recent architectural and archaeological research,13 which also critically assesses and classifies ­earlier scholarship. Gerhard Leopold identifies four distinct phases of construction, beginning with the remains of the pre-Romanesque castle chapel (Phase I), followed by the earliest collegiate church (Phase II) and the expansion or alteration of the church between 997 and 1021 (Phase III). Traces of these three earliest phases are now only recognizable in the crypt. Construction of the current Romanesque collegiate church (Phase IV), a three-aisled basilica with a transept and a main apse flanked by two side apses, began after the former church was damaged by a fire in 1070. The new church was ­consecrated in 1129. In the second quarter of the 14th century the main apse was dismantled above the level of the crypt, and a new Gothic choir built (Phase V). In the 16th century parts of the south transept were renovated, and in the early 18th century large portions of the south wall of the nave were rebuilt. Finally, in the late 19th century the north tower was extensively ­renovated and the south tower added.

13 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen.

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Figure 3.10 Quedlinburg. Convent church, crypt, view into the pre-Romanesque crypt. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

6

The Oldest Church Buildings (in the Present Crypt) (Figure 3.10)

Traces of the first three churches survive in the crypt. The earliest structure is the castle chapel founded by Henry I, who was buried here in front of the altar (Phase I). The floor of the current, primarily Romanesque crypt stands at the same level as the floor of the nave of this original chapel. The excavated foundations reveal the existence of a nearly square choir occupying the eastern portion of what is now the crypt.14 The pre-Romanesque crypt (traces of which survive in the current apse) including the confessio adjoined this building to the east. This crypt, the only visible remnant of the first chapel, is recessed into the ground and today resembles a windowless basin, especially as it no longer has a ceiling. To the west stood a long single-aisled nave, extending over approximately two thirds of the current nave. The first collegiate church, founded by Queen Mathilde (Phase II), preserved the older choir and added an arcaded, three-aisled nave. A transept was also added, at least on the south. Four pillars of this arcade survive in the western room of the crypt, although now encased in later masonry. These older 14 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, fig. 5.

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pillars now form the central pillars of the western bay of the crypt and the western pillars at the transition between the crypt and the nave. The floor level of this church also corresponded to that of the current crypt. 7 The Collegiate Church in the Salian Period: Appearance and Alterations 7.1 The Exterior—Towers, Nave, Transept, and Choir As it stands today, the collegiate church is a basilica with a transept and a twin-towered west facade, largely dating to the high Romanesque (Salian) period, terminating in a Gothic choir. Large portions of the masonry, however, were rebuilt in later centuries. The Gothic sections are easily recognizable, because here pincer holes remain visible in the ashlars. Since the mid-13th ­century the curb lifter, a type of external lewis resembling a pair of calipers crossed with a pair of tongs, was commonly used to lift stones into place, even though this required small holes to be drilled into the external faces of the ashlars. This technique was not in use before the 13th century. 7.1.1 Apse and Choir (Figure 3.11) The choir terminus from the second quarter of the 14th century is the only recognizable Gothic element of the church. Buttresses, which originally ­supported a vault, articulate the exterior. A drip-course separates the choir into two horizontal registers. In the lower story, a large circular window at the east end illuminates the crypt, while lancet windows pierce the upper walls. ­Elements of the Romanesque masonry survive in the transitional bay between the two western buttresses and the transept. The treatment of the eaves cornice indicates that the walls of the choir are not aligned with those of the Romanesque building, but are shifted slightly outward. Evidently the Gothic choir was initially built around the Romanesque apse, which was not dismantled until the new construction was nearly complete. The Gothic stonework features pincer holes, as mentioned above. On the north side a new portal to the crypt was added, which can be dated by an inscription above it to the year 1320. The archivolted portal ends in a pointed arch over a glazed tympanum, and blind tracery divided by engaged pinnacles covers the wall above it to the level of the continuous window ledge. The Romanesque eaves cornice of the transept continues onto the walls of the choir for a short space at the same height, indicating that the walls of the Romanesque antechoir were as high as those of the transept. The Gothic masonry begins at the first buttress, where the eaves cornice abruptly ends.

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Figure 3.11 Quedlinburg. Convent church, choir and transept from the southeast. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

The eastern choir buttresses on the south side contain some ashlars with pincer holes. Some of the stones in these buttresses, however, have been replaced, and these have no pincer holes. The south wall of the choir also contains some ashlars with pincer holes, but the masonry here is quite irregular, primarily resulting from repairs. The westernmost buttress on the south wall of the choir has evidently been completely rebuilt, as none of the ashlars here have pincer holes.

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7.1.2 Transept and Side Apses Lesenes and moldings articulate each of the transept gable walls, setting off the pediment above and dividing the wall below it into two sections. The north wall contains two large round-arched windows above, and two small ones at the level of the crypt, as well as a rectangular window illuminating the Zitter (treasury). The two small western windows with filleted frames were inserted during the 16th century, and in the 16th or 17th century a rectangular window was first cut into the eastern room, then walled in soon after. The masonry is largely original only up to a height of roughly 1.5 m below the windows, while in the side apse much of the original stonework survives up to the eaves cornice. The upper portions of the wall including the eaves cornices are more recent, and what older stones do survive have been reused. The frames of the two large round-arched windows have also been rebuilt. The two large windows in the gable wall of the south transept have also been rebuilt. Here the upper wall is built of rubble and has been plastered, unlike the rest of the church. All the masonry between the corner lesenes has been rebuilt. The molding above the Lombardy frieze is ornamented above the lesenes, but this ornamentation does not extend over the plastered sections of the wall. Remnants of the original masonry survive in a few regular ashlars, but most of the lower wall of the south transept was rebuilt with broken ashlars after it collapsed in 1571, “due to neglect,” as the inscription states. The use of Romanesque forms in this reconstruction can be seen as an example of an early attempt at architectural preservation. A portal at ground level leads to the crypt. Two more recent rectangular windows were cut in at the level of the treasury built into the transept. The two side apses are somewhat shorter than the transept; the peaks of their roofs end just below the Romanesque Lombardy frieze running along the top of each transept wall.15 Slender engaged colonnettes ending in a Lombardy frieze crowned by a frieze of palmettes adorn the southern side apse. This decoration survives intact, including the profile at the base of the wall, even though some of the stones were replaced at a later date. The upper window here is also obviously original, despite its large size. The lintel of the lower window has been recut to make the arch pointed, but it was originally also round. The north side apse has neither engaged colonnettes nor Lombardy frieze, but only the palmette frieze above two courses of larger, renovated stones. Parts of the masonry of this apse course with the late Gothic buttress, while other portions course with the Romanesque lesenes at the corner of the transept wall. 15

Regarding the frieze, see in this volume Shirin Fozi, “The Quedlinburg Frieze and Its Romanesque Context.”

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Clearly much of this stonework was rebuilt in the 14th century. The somewhat smaller stones and rather irregular masonry also support this. The socle profile is also late Gothic. Despite this reconstruction, an attempt was clearly made to preserve the overall Romanesque appearance. 7.1.3 Nave (Figure 3.12) The walls of the nave are built of ashlar masonry. The clerestory has six windows on each side, but the south aisle only has five windows, while the north aisle has six windows and a round-arched portal.

Figure 3.12 Quedlinburg. Convent church, transept and nave from the north. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

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Irregularly arranged engaged colonnettes articulate the north aisle wall. One of them divides the easternmost bay from the rest of the wall, and the profiled socle also drops one course lower here. Colonnettes also frame the ­portal, which opens onto the western bay of the church, roughly between the ­second column and the first pillar of the nave. Two windows pierce the wall to the right of the portal and four to the left, although all published plans of the church only show three windows here, and leave out the window closest to the portal. This is based on a documentary photograph taken during construction work in 1939.16 The parts of this window above the sill clearly date from the 19th century. The plan from 1874 (recorded by Nagel, Natorp, and Dihm) shows four windows, as in the reconstructed plans.17 Before the renovation a bridge here supported a passageway connecting the church to the north range.18 This passageway was placed above the portal, occupying the space of the window. The window, however, had certainly been part of the original building and was therefore reconstructed after the passageway was dismantled. The round-arched portal is framed by a single archivolt and by colonnettes with eagle capitals, although only the left of these could perhaps be Romanesque. The north aisle wall ends in an eaves cornice decorated with palmettes and pairs of confronted animals and mythical creatures above a Lombardy frieze. Most of this masonry, including the frieze, is original. Only the windows were largely renewed from 1877 to 1882, except for a few stones in the jambs. In these areas the Lombardy frieze and the cornice to the left of the portal were also rebuilt. The masonry of the clerestory has been extensively renewed on the north wall, as indicated particularly clearly by the smoothness of many of the stones (Figure 3.13). Only certain sections of the wall between the windows are still Romanesque, recognizable by the holes left by the scaffolding. Where these still appear at uniform height and regular intervals, the masonry can be reliably dated to the Romanesque period. In the last phase of reconstruction many

16 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, figs. 2 and 5, and Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. ­Servatii zu Quedlinburg, fig. 160. 17 See, for example, the drawing at http://www.deutschefotothek.de/documents/obj /71085571/b_am_0000572, and Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, figs. 74–75. 18 Recorded by Pelizaeus in 1859 (Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 214) and by Alfred Hartmann in 1867 (“Die Abteikirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Die mittelalterlichen Baudenkmäler Niedersachsens, vol. 2, ed. Architekten- und Ingenieur-Verein zu ­Hannover [Hannover: Carl Rümpler, 1867], cols. 193–212 and pls. 49–52). See also ­Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, fig. 59.

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Figure 3.13 Quedlinburg. Convent church, south side, detail of ashlar masonry with Gothic pincer holes and Romanesque ornamentation. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

ashlar blocks between the windows were replaced, when the windows were enlarged during the Baroque period and then reconstructed in 1880.19 The south aisle wall is shifted markedly outward, with only the eastern quarter remaining in its original location. The newer section of the wall was built to repair structural damage. According to an inscription, construction began in 1708 and was completed in 1711. At first glance the masonry of the south clerestory wall appears quite ­homogeneous, and this wall has long been considered Romanesque. All the ashlars, however, are actually marked by pincer holes, indicating that the masonry of the clerestory must have been completely rebuilt in the 14th or 15th century, perhaps using some older, reworked ashlars. The eaves cornice was either copied or reused. 7.1.4 West Towers The westwork consists of two towers flanking a high central section that extends a full story above the nave. Both towers are entirely modern, built following plans from 1879. Only the central section between the towers preserves 19

See Pelizaeus’s 1859 documentary photograph as well as Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, fig. 59.

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some of the medieval masonry, which clearly extends higher on the exterior than on the interior. The north tower is known to have already been standing in the 12th century, but was torn down and rebuilt when the south tower was added. The latter had probably been part of the original design for the church, but was never built. In the 17th or 18th century the north tower was topped with a Baroque helm, replaced in the late 19th century by a Neo-Romanesque helm with two gables. The tent roofs now crowning both towers were built after the church was damaged during the Second World War. In the interior only the bottom of the spiral staircase in the north tower is still medieval. From the second story up the masonry dates from the late 19th century. Pencil marks on many ashlars indicate that Romanesque stones were reused. 7.2 The Interior The narthex between the towers was reconstructed in the late 19th century. A pillar supports two groin vaults, which in turn support a west gallery on the second floor. Most of the west wall separating the narthex from the passageway connecting the church to the former cloister is Romanesque, as is the west wall of the gallery. Framed by a single round-arched archivolt, the round-arched portal leading into the narthex stands in the north bay. The portal and the wall around it date to the early modern period (16th century?), but their location is Romanesque. The west entrance was undoubtedly not the main entrance to the collegiate church, but merely the entrance from the cloister. In fact, the portal on the north aisle instead served as the main entrance. The door leading from the narthex into the south tower was added at a later date. Since this tower was not built until the 19th century, no older entrance to it existed. 7.2.1 The Nave (Figure 3.14) The arcades of the three-aisled, flat-ceilinged nave follow the pattern known in German as “Saxon alternation,” with two columns alternating with one pillar. Here each arcade contains two pillars and six columns. Most of the capitals were either recarved or completely replaced in the 20th century, and the western column on the south has been completely replaced. Hartmann had already noted that this column was missing in 1867. Some of the impost blocks under the clerestory windows could be original, but the interior of the clerestory wall has largely been restored, leaving no significant traces of the Romanesque fabric. The western two thirds of the outer wall of the south aisle are shifted outward by approximately half a meter. This dates to a restoration campaign in the period 1708 to 1711, as stated in an inscription placed between the four windows

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Figure 3.14 Quedlinburg. Convent church to the west. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

of this section of wall. In the course of the reconstruction a Baroque vault was built over the aisle here, and a staircase added giving access to the crypt.20 7.2.2 Crossing and Transept (Figure 3.15) The transept is characterized by what is known as a “demarcated crossing,” with high arches visually dividing the crossing from the rest of the church. The floor of the crossing and transept is a full story higher than that of the nave. The aisles thus end in walls at the transept. Round-arched doors in these walls give access to the side arms of the crypt. Above the doors a pair of double arches in each aisle originally opened onto the arms of the transept, but these were later walled in when the treasuries were built. Two wide staircases framing a central platform lead from the nave up to the crossing. The crossing arches and the transept walls have been largely restored or rebuilt. The masonry of the west wall of the north transept has somewhat irregular courses and wide interstices between the stones on the interior, but the regular ashlar courses of the exterior indicate that large sections of this wall are still original. Large parts of the crossing arches (particularly the west and north arches) have been rebuilt, however. 20

Hartmann, “Abteikirche,” pl. 49.

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Figure 3.15 Quedlinburg. Convent church, north transept looking south. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

The upper rooms in the transept are raised several steps above the crossing. On the left the roughly square Zitter has been built into the north transept. Although not part of the original construction, the room and its vault are both old. The wall separating the Zitter from the crossing is also old, but the eastern continuation of this wall, with its rectangular double door, was probably only built in 1938–40, such that the north transept was not completely separated from the rest of the church before this date. Three rows of niches articulate the south wall of the Zitter facing the crossing: two rows of rectangular niches followed by an upper row of niches ending in basket-handled arches. Most of this wall

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decoration is original, and the rest has been accurately restored. By contrast, the east wall of the Zitter is smooth, pierced by a rectangular door and a small round-arched window. The sill of the window was rebuilt and decorated with a scallop shell, certainly not before the 15th century. A groin vault resting on four columns roofs the Zitter. The capitals are decorated with vines. The southeast capital has additional leaves, while the northwest capital is a cushion capital and the northeast capital is quite plain. The southwest capital is decorated with palmettes, and most of the consoles are rounded. Much of the masonry of the outer wall of the north transept is original, but with traces of extensive renovations for windows and doors (see the description of the exterior). An inscription on the gable wall of the south transept refers to its reconstruction following damage in 1571 (Figure 3.16). Most of the masonry of this

Figure 3.16 Quedlinburg. Convent church, building inscription of 1571 with reference to its ruined condition. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann

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wall thus dates to the 16th century. As on the north, a separate room was also built into the south transept, although it does not extend all the way up to the crossing arch, but is roughly 1 m shorter. An organ stands in front of this room. The remaining section of wall between the organ and the eastern crossing pier was reconstructed using retrieved pieces of Romanesque plaster, and thus looks original. The door frame, socle, and impost blocks are decorated with plaster, some of it ornamental (palmettes), some figural (two fish, the remains of a horse[?], a bird, and an animal with a horse-like tail). Stylistically, these elements probably can also be dated to the 12th century. The inner face of the south transept wall is of smooth ashlar blocks, without any clearly medieval masonry on the south and east above the socle of the apse. The 16th-century restoration inscription appears in the middle of the south wall, and obviously refers to a complete rebuilding of the south transept, while the treasury is a more recent addition. 7.3 Elevated Choir The masonry of the antechoir and apse in the elevated choir, which reconstructs the former Romanesque wall, dates from around 1938 and conceals the Gothic end of the choir from the inside. The Romanesque ornamentation was copied. 8

The Romanesque Crypt (Figure 3.17)

Under the choir and crossing stands a three-aisled hall crypt, with two-bay extensions under each transept arm, separated from the crossing by cruciform piers and columns. The crypt has three apses. By contrast to the upper story, in the crypt the main apse survives in its Romanesque form. The vault of the crypt rests on seven supports dividing the central vessel from the side aisles. The second pair from the west, in the middle of the crossing, are pillars; the rest are columns. Under the crossing the crypt has four bays, and its floor level is two steps lower than that of the transepts and the eastern section. Recent archaeological research indicates that the pair of pillars belongs to the 11th-century collegiate church,21 while the cores of the side piers in fact date from the first collegiate church, and were wrapped with new masonry in the 11th century. To the east and west of the pillars are two pairs of columns with Attic bases. The

21 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, figs. 2 and 26.

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Figure 3.17 Quedlinburg. Convent church, Romanesque crypt, view to the east. ­Photograph by Ulrich Großmann.

two western capitals are simple mushroom capitals; one of the eastern ones is a block capital, and the other is decorated with interlace volutes. Numerous irregularities are evident in the crossing. For example, the eastern bay has a barrel vault with lunettes resting on the central column (separating the central vessel from the side aisles), while the western bay has a groin vault. The central crypt is separated from the transepts here by an arcade framed by a larger arch. The framing arch is quite narrow on the north side, but much more prominent on the south. This is the primary difference between the western bay and the eastern. The joints in the masonry suggest that the arms of the crypt under the transept were built first: the profiles on the crossing side have been completely carved, then partially plastered over by the crossing vault. The interval between these two phases of construction, however, cannot have lasted very long. The appearance of the columns and capitals varies widely. It is possible that some of them were moved or reused in other locations in the course of the many phases of construction. The arcade leading into the north transept rests on an octagonal column with a block capital decorated with interlace ornament, and a round column with interlace volutes. This type of ornamentation also appears on the moldings at the tops of the pillars and at the corners of the rooms. The columns on the south side are round; the western column has a mushroom capital, and the eastern one a block capital decorated with interlace

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ornament like that on the north side. Again, this ornamentation is repeated on the corner moldings. Overall, the ornamentation of the crypt appears uniform; only the archaic mushroom capitals seem to have been reused. The slight stylistic changes in the crypt are therefore clearly the result of the sequence of construction, and do not represent fundamentally different building phases. The three bays of the main crypt and apse adjoin the crossing crypt without any recognizable break in construction, although the floor level is two steps higher. In the central bay a Gothic portal opens into the crypt on the north side, while on the south side a walled-in round arch is visible. Windows in the east bay were added during the Gothic period. The second pair of columns from the east stands out, as they have foliate capitals, decorated with leaves ending in points on their undersides. The two engaged pillars in the east apse (Romanesque church) have similar capitals. The columns at the transition to the apse are octagonal, and topped respectively with a block capital and a volute capital ornamented with interlace, as described above. The apse surrounds the oldest confessio (see Figure 3.10) which is also semi-circular in plan, but smaller. Since the confessio stands within the eastern apse, the oldest church must have extended this far. Round-arched blind niches decorate the walls of the sunken confessio. This space was accessed from the west, where a narrow staircase, now walled-in, stands beside three blind niches. What are thought to be imperial tombs stand in the easternmost bay of the main crypt, directly before the confessio. The primary tomb stands in the center, the second to the right, while a third tomb to the left actually covers the original entrance to the confessio. 9

Summary: The Castle (Figure 3.18)

The castle stood at least until 1218, when Otto IV ordered its destruction in his testament.22 Around 1200, historical accounts mention multiple sieges, l­ eading Wäscher to conclude that the castle must have been well fortified.23 Its location alone, however, guarantees a certain degree of security. In conjunction with a curtain wall, it would have made the castle essentially impregnable. The defensible location and the gatehouse are now the only surviving reminders of the site’s former military character.

22 23

Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, 13n72. Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, 13.

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Figure 3.18 Quedlinburg. Convent (castle), view to the southwest. Photograph by Ulrich Großmann.

We know very little more about the 10th- and 11th-century castle. The castle chapel apparently stood below the eastern portion of the current crypt, as its foundations were reused. A hall probably adjoined the small three-aisled church on the west, although this hypothesis is also based on comparison with nearby imperial residences like Tilleda. No other buildings belonging to the castle can be reliably identified. There is no evidence of secular use either for the rooms to the south of the wayside chapel or for the vaulted cellars under the west range, which in any case appear to be more recent. The castle apparently underwent a complete transformation when it became a monastic house. 10

Summary: The Abbey

The abbey and its church are described in art historical studies as Romanesque buildings with archaeologically identifiable predecessors that underwent multiple alterations. In point of fact the collegiate church is a building based on a plan dating from the decades around 1100 and is now partially Gothic (the choir and the south clerestory wall of the nave), but dates in large part from the 19th and 20th centuries. The entire westwork as it stands today, portions of the nave, and extensive portions of the transept date from this period, insofar

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as they were not already reconstructed in the 16th century. To that effect the phased plans published by Leopold must be corrected.24 The previous phases, remains of which can perhaps be found in the ­pillars and masonry of the crypt, or once stood in the same place, can only be ­identified through archaeological research. Of the conventual buildings, only three cellar rooms in the west and several cellar rooms in the south, including the wayside chapel, date to the high or even early Middle Ages, but, with the exception of the wayside chapel, these rooms were also all extensively ­renovated in the early modern period. Quedlinburg thus stands more as a monument to ­modern renovation and early efforts at what one could perhaps call architectural restoration, especially in the 16th to 19th century, followed by the interventions carried out by the SS under Heinrich Himmler in the years 1938 to 1940,25 than as a testament to the architectural history of the early and high Middle Ages. The collegiate church is an example of a three-aisled basilica with a ­transept and a crypt, and with pillars and columns arranged in the pattern known as “Saxon alternation” in the nave. The westwork has a twin-towered facade, but construction of the south tower took place centuries later than that of the north tower, a contradiction confirmed by the placement of the north tower, on the one hand, and the lack of any doorway into a planned but not constructed south tower, on the other. Only on the south, and there primarily in the “wayside chapel,” does any medieval architectural fabric survive in the conventual buildings. With the exception of the older but heavily rebuilt western cellar rooms, the core fabric of the buildings surrounding the former cloister dates from the 16th century, with 18th-century alterations. Quedlinburg Abbey thus reveals itself to be an architectural ensemble that has been repeatedly adapted to contemporary needs. The church is essentially historicist, retaining the style of the late 11th century, but the conventual buildings have been altered and renovated over the centuries to reflect prevailing fashions. Works Cited Brinkmann, Adolf. Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg. Vol. 1. Berlin: Hendel, 1922. 24 Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, fig. 5. 25 In this volume, see Annie Krieg, “Restored, Repurposed, Reassessed: The Abbey Church of Quedlinburg across Five Germanies.”

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Brosch, Robert. “Archäologische Untersuchungen in Quedlinburg 2010–2014.” Quedlinburger Annalen 16 (2014–15): 29–38. Hartmann, Alfred. “Die Abteikirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Die mittelalterlichen Baudenkmäler Niedersachsens. Vol. 2. Ed. Architekten- und Ingenieur-Verein zu Hannover. Hannover: Carl Rümpler, 1867. Cols. 193–212. Leopold, Gerhard. Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg. Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Wäscher, Hermann. Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942. Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1959.

Chapter 4

For the Living and the Dead: Memorial Prayers of the Quedlinburg Canonesses in the High Middle Ages Christian Popp In the year 1000 Emperor Otto III celebrated Easter in the abbey church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg. His journey to Aachen from Gniezno, where he had visited the tomb of the martyr Adalbert at the beginning of March, was timed so he could carry on the tradition of his three predecessors, all of whom had favored Quedlinburg as a place to mark the highest feast day of ­Christendom.1 According to the detailed description in the Annals of Quedlinburg, the emperor and his large entourage reached the site, on the Bode river in  the northern foothills of the Harz, no later than Maundy Thursday. Otto spent the  Easter vigil praying in St. Servatius, the canonesses’ church at the crest of a steep hill, before retiring to his royal court and remaining there an additional eight days—ruling, forgiving, gifting, and rewarding (regendo, indulgendo, largiendo ac remunerando), as the Annalist knew to report.2 The record of the imperial Easter visit was written down in the Annals of Quedlinburg a few years after the events took place, no earlier than 1008, and therefore during a time when Quedlinburg’s position as a seat of ­Ottonian power was gradually being lost. Nevertheless, the collegiate church in ­Quedlinburg was still and would remain the most important center of Ottonian memoria, which is to say memorial commemoration in the form of liturgical prayers 1 Henry I founded the tradition in 922 and celebrated Easter in Quedlinburg three times; Otto I followed suit at least five times, probably as many as eight, and Otto II twice. In the era of Theophanu’s regency, the royal family likewise spent Easter in Quedlinburg multiple times, in 986, 989, and 991. See Stephan Freund, “Symbolischer Ort – symbolische ­Handlungen. Quedlinburg als königlicher Aufenthaltsort (10. bis 12. Jahrhundert),” in Das dritte Stift: ­Forschungen zum Quedlinburger Frauenstift, ed. Stephan Freund and Thomas Labusiak (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2017), 59–85. 2 Martina Giese, ed., Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, MGH SS rer. Germ. 72 (Hannover: ­Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004), entry for Easter in the year 1000, 512–13. On the significance of this detailed report, see Ulrich Reuling, “Quedlinburg: Königspfalz – Reichsstift – Markt,” in Deutsche Königspfalzen, vol. 4: Pfalzen – Reichsgut – Königshöfe, ed. Lutz Fenske (­Göttingen: ­Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 184–247 at 210. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004527492_006

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for members of the ruling dynasty. This complemented the role of the abbey of Gandersheim, where memorial prayer for the Liudolfing family members who lived before their ascension to royal status was the focus until the end of the Middle Ages.3 In the Quedlinburg church Otto would have been faced with the graves of his ancestors: King Henry the Fowler and his wife Queen Mathilde had been buried here. Also resting in the church was Otto’s aunt, Abbess Mathilde, who had died just over one year earlier in February 999 and had been succeeded in her role by Otto’s own sister, Adelheid (I). Among the most significant tasks of the Quedlinburg abbesses and canonesses were keeping the memory of Henry and Mathilde alive and perpetually honoring liturgical celebrations for the salvation of the souls of the founders as well as their relatives and descendants, combined with charitable acts and also prayers for the members of the Liudolfing family who were still living. The fact that the canonesses were obliged not only to keep dead members of the ruling family in mind during the Divine Office, but also to accompany the living with their prayers, is attested by an impressive document, the creation of which probably goes back to the same Easter vigil that the emperor attended in the year 1000. This consists of a Consecratio cerei, a hymn of praise for the consecration of the Easter candle. The second part of this Consecratio cerei, a neumed liturgical preface, closes with an intercessory prayer in which Pope Sylvester II (999– 1003), Emperor Otto III, and his sister, Abbess Adelheid of Quedlinburg along with the convent entrusted to her care are all invoked directly by name.4 The intercession would probably also have been sung during the Easter vigil in an updated form in later years; another hand added the words et antistite nostro B. and Beatrice during the 11th century. Evidently this refers to the Quedlinburg Abbess Beatrix I, successor to Adelheid, and an 11th-century bishop of Halberstadt whose name began with B: the possibilities include Branthog (1023–36), Burchard I (1036–59), and Burchard II (1059–88). 3 On memorial practice in Gandersheim see most recently Christian Popp, “Totengedenken im spätmittelalterlichen Kanonissenstift: Das Gandersheimer Jüngere Necrolog,” in Alltag und Frömmigkeit am Vorabend der Reformation in Mitteldeutschland: Wissenschaftlicher Begleitband zur Ausstellung “Umsonst ist der Tod,” ed. Enno Bünz and Hartmut Kühne (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2015), 531–42 at 536–37. See also Gerd Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg: Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Überlieferungszentren,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44. 4 Precamur ergo te, Domine: ut nos famulos tuos omnem clerum et devotissimum populum una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro Silvestro et gloriosissimo imperatore nostro OTTONE et famula tua abbatissa nostra Athelheida nec non pia congregatione sibi commissa quiete temporum concessa, in his festis pascalibus conservare digneris. For the Consecratio cerei see Hartmut Möller, Das Quedlinburger Antiphonar (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Mus. ms. 40047), vol. 1 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1990), 193–210. For this excerpt, 262–63 at 263.

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The Consecratio cerei manuscript is bound as part of the so-called Otto-­ Adelheid Gospels in the treasury of the Quedlinburg abbey church. The quire, consisting of two folded sheets of parchment forming four leaves (a binion), was placed before the text of the Gospel Book itself, which was likewise produced around the turn of the millennium but was written by different hands from the chants for the consecration of the candle.5 On the first leaf of this binion—in yet another hand—21 names have been entered on the uppermost five lines. Since they form the beginning of a liturgical manuscript that was undoubtedly valuable and of particular significance for St. Servatius, this list of names should be viewed in its liturgical context, and in relation to the ongoing prayer obligations of the canonesses. The written specification of personal names for the purpose of commemorative prayer was essential for the dead so that the salvation of their souls would be ensured, but it was also common practice for the living—here we need only remember the evidence of early and high medieval fraternity books.6 The codified names certainly represent canonesses and members of the clergy who belonged to the abbey at Quedlinburg or had close ties to it. It thus seems clear the list should be interpreted as a necrology. And yet, a comparison of the 21 names with the deaths reported in the Annals of Quedlinburg does not give a clear picture of their identities, as only three names match and could potentially refer to the same people in both sources. Only one name in the list in the Gospel Book, Athilger, has been annotated with a (possibly later) cross; this may represent the provost of Halberstadt cathedral, whose death is recorded under the year 1018 in the Annals of Quedlinburg and whose name appears again on the date of December 23, presumably that of his death, in the calendar of the Quedlinburg Antiphonary.7 Hartmut Möller considers it conceivable that the list in the Gospel Book, apparently written before 1018, recorded the names of living canonesses and priests, perhaps the same ones who were present in the year

5 Quedlinburg Treasury, inv. no. 66. For a description of the manuscript see Katrinette Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg (Münster: Aschendorff, 2004), 457–58; Hartmut Hoffmann, “Otto-Adelheid-Evangeliar: Handschrift,” in Dietrich Kötzsche, ed., Der Quedlinburger Schatz (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993), 65–67, no. 8; and id., Schreibschulen und Buchmalerei: Handschriften und Texte des 9.–11. Jahrhunderts, MGH Schriften 65 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2012), 95–97. 6 See most recently the foundational study by Joachim Wollasch, “Formen und Inhalte ­mittelalterlicher memoria,” in Libri vitae: Gebetsgedenken in der Gesellschaft des Frühen ­Mittelalters, ed. Dieter Geuenich and Uwe Ludwig (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2015), 33–55. 7 Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1018, 552–53 and n. 1479.

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1000 for the sojourn of Otto III.8 This is a possible, but in no way conclusive interpretation.9 A closer look at the celebration of the Easter vigil in Quedlinburg in the year 1000, imperial participation in the ritual, and the related production of texts allows us to cast a raking light on this history and clarify important aspects of prayer obligations in the abbey. Ritual commemoration encompassed the living and the dead; both intercessory prayers for contemporaries and memorial services for the deceased anchored the liturgy. Among the people who would come to be lavished with prayers of remembrance, two groups should be mentioned first and foremost. The focal point of memoria in Quedlinburg was the royal couple Henry and Mathilde, who were buried in the abbey church, and all additional members of the Liudolfing family. This was made unmistakably clear in the wording of the first charter of King Otto I for the convent newly founded by his mother Mathilde on September 13, 936, which states that the most important task at Quedlinburg, alongside the praise of God, should be caring for the memoria of members of the royal family.10 Historiographical works likewise comment on the exemplary maintenance of memorial services at the abbey, initially through the tireless efforts of Mathilde as the king’s widow and then also through her granddaughter, Abbess Mathilde.11 The role of Quedlinburg as the most significant memorial site of the Ottonians, and the associated self-understanding of the canonesses, has been clearly worked out by recent research.12 Especially important is the recognition that the holy women at Quedlinburg—and other aristocratic women’s monastic foundations such as Gandersheim and Essen—could only fulfill their obligation to 8 9 10

11

12

Möller, Quedlinburger Antiphonar, 226–30. For more on this idea with further arguments in its favor, see the introduction by Martina Giese to her critical edition of the Annales Quedlinburgenses, 64–66n96. Theodor Sickel, ed., Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I, MGH Diplomata 4, 1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1879–84), 89–90. See also Wolfgang Wagner, “Das Gebetsgedenken der Liudolfinger im Spiegel der Königs- und Kaiserurkunden von Heinrich I. bis zu Otto III,” Archiv für Diplomatik 40 (1994): 1–78 at 35–36. It is worth recalling here the relevant passages in both Vitae of Mathilde as well as the Antapodosis of Liutprand of Cremona; see most recently Oliver Schliephacke, “Die ­Memoria Heinrichs I. in Quedlinburg,” in 919 – Plötzlich König: Heinrich I. und Quedlinburg, ed. Stephan Freund and Gabriele Köster (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019), 208–23 at 212–14. See most recently Schliephacke, “Memoria Heinrichs I.” as well as Doris Bulach, “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort der Ottonen: Von der Stiftsgründung bis zur Gegenwart,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 48 (2000): 101–18, and Claudia Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 19–64.

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care for the familial memorialization of the dead because of their proficiency in reading and writing: their mastery of written Latin put the high medieval convent in a position to set down the requisite liturgical texts, along with additions and changes, in writing.13 What is more, the imperial abbey must not be viewed in isolation if one wishes to properly grasp the full extent of the ­community’s memorial tasks. Clustered around the abbey of Quedlinburg was an array of monastic and collegiate institutions which had been founded by members of the Ottonian family and were subordinate to Quedlinburg’s abbess. The first that should be mentioned here are the collegiate church in Enger, the abbey of canonesses in Nordhausen, the Benedictine convent of St. Mary’s on the Münzenberg in Quedlinburg, and the Benedictine convent of Walbeck. All were entrusted with memorial tasks and ensured the steady flow of commemorative prayers for the Ottonian family.14 The longevity of Quedlinburg as a place of Ottonian remembrance is also remarkable: even after the family ties to the royal dynasty were lost, the canonesses of Quedlinburg remained true to the mandate of their foundation. To be sure, the horizon of memory c­ ontracted in the late Middle Ages, and the practice of memoria at Quedlinburg became concentrated on the royal couple Henry and Mathilde, as well as the two Ottonian abbesses Mathilde and Adelheid. Remembrance of Henry I in particular became detached from its liturgical form after the Reformation was introduced in 1540, transforming into a more generalized cultural memory that has been maintained to the present day.15 The second group of important individuals that emerges from written sources at the turn of the millennium consists of the monastic women themselves. They not only had to fulfill their foundational mandate and preserve the constant memory of the family of Henry and Mathilde in the liturgy, but—like every other medieval ecclesiastical institution—they also had to ensure that members of their own community would achieve salvation and eternal life. The act of preserving the names of the living and above all the dead members of the convent in writing was essential for this purpose. The list of names in a sacramentary from the convent at Essen constitutes an impressive early 13 14

15

See most recently the summary by Katrinette Bodarwé, “Glaube und Schriftlichkeit im l­ iturgischen Kontext des frühmittelalterlichen Quedlinburg,” in Freund and Labusiak, Das dritte Stift, 87–109. On this, see most recently Christian Marlow, “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen im ­Hochmittelalter: Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137,” PhD diss., Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2017, esp. 55–56. The thesis is available online: http://d-nb.info/1161462007/34 (accessed 10 September 2020). See Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 64, and Schliephacke, “Memoria Heinrichs I.,” 218–19.

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medieval witness to the urgency of memoria in a similar context. In this manuscript from c.800, the nomina vivorum and the nomina defunctorum, the names of the living and the dead members of the monastic community at Essen, were doubtlessly recorded for internal use in memorial rituals.16 A comparable function must be ascribed to the 21 names that were inscribed in the Otto-Adelheid Gospels at Quedlinburg. Against this background, it is easy to understand why the deaths of individual canonesses are carefully recorded in the Annals of Quedlinburg. Between 1005 and 1023, there are 13 instances where the Annalist names a woman from the convent on the occasion of her death.17 Most dramatic of all is the wave of canonesses who passed away in spring 1020. The annual entry for that year describes an unusually long, hard winter that had devastating effects on the weakened population of Quedlinburg, including the chapter of canonesses. As a result—according to the report—four of the monastic women died within a single hour: Emerita/Sisu, Othellulda, Thiedan, and the apparently still-young Hennikin. This came after the canoness Lucia, who had apparently been responsible for caring for the poor (devota pauperum ministra), had “advanced and was led by the grace of God to the harbor of blessed rest” on Good Friday.18 Naturally, a prominent position in the memorial prayers of the convent was given to the abbesses, who not only presided over the community of canonesses, but at the same time exercised jurisdiction over the male clergy who worked there as well as the priests in the monasteries and collegiate churches subordinate to Quedlinburg. Here, it is noteworthy that the first two abbesses, 16

17 18

Düsseldorf, Universitätsbibliothek, D 1. For a description see most recently Hoffmann, Schreibschulen, 47–49. On the list of names see Volkhard Huth, “Die Düsseldorfer Sakramentarhandschrift D 1 als Memorialzeugnis. Mit einer Wiedergabe der Namen und Namengruppen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 20 (1986): 213–98, and Thomas Schilp, “Überlegungen zur Sakramentarhandschrift D 1 als Liber vitae der Essener Frauenkommunität,” in Geuenich and Ludwig, Libri vitae, 203–20. For a summary, see the introduction by Martina Giese in the critical edition of the Annales Quedlinburgenses, 88–89. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1020, 555–56: Inter haec ergo communia ac ­metuenda dispendia metropolis nostra iudicio divino numquam iniusto gravi viscere tenus percutitur ulcere, quatuor sororibus – Emerita una, in famulitio Christi Sisu nominata, duabus caeteris, Othellulda, marchionis Thiedrici filia, et Thiedan, dignitatem generis morum probitate vincentibus, Hennikin quoque, quae minima aetate licet esset et ordine, optimae tamen indolis, una velut horula subtractis, ante quas ipsa sanctae parasceues illucente aurora Lucia, devota pauperum ministra, emenso mundi istius pelago portum ad usque beatae quietis dei gratia duce provehitur. On the noticeably plentiful descriptions of natural phenomena in the Annals of Quedlinburg see recently Thomas Wozniak, Naturereignisse im frühen Mittelalter: Das Zeugnis der Geschichtsschreibung vom 6. bis 11. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 49–50.

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Mathilde and Adelheid were both royal Ottonian daughters, and thus direct descendants of King Henry and Queen Mathilde; their memory was therefore especially strongly emphasized. Adelheid was succeeded by Beatrix I and Adelheid II, both daughters of the Salian king Henry III. After the death in 1125/26 of the last Salian abbess, Henry’s granddaughter Agnes I, the personal connection between the monarchy and Quedlinburg came to an end. The office of abbess would henceforward be occupied by members of the great noble families of Saxony instead.19 Of course, other people also enjoyed the benefits of intercessory prayers from the community at Quedlinburg. Even a brief look at the deaths recorded in the Annals of Quedlinburg shows that the writer took not only members of the royal family (including both close and distant relations) and of her own convent into account, but also a large number of reported deaths of bishops from across the empire as well as of additional clergymen and aristocratic lay people. We can safely assume that most of these individuals were also recorded in the calendar at Quedlinburg and liturgically commemorated by the canonesses on the anniversaries of their deaths. Unfortunately, the necrology that might reveal the memorial practices of the Ottonian convent in detail has not survived among the manuscripts from Quedlinburg. To a certain extent, this lost necrology can be reconstructed, however, because its contents have found their way into the so-called Merseburg Book of the Dead (Merseburger Totenbuch). Gerd Althoff has been able to demonstrate convincingly that some 400 names were entered between September 1017 and April 1018 as a supplementary layer in this Book of the Dead, and that this added text was almost certainly copied using a manuscript from Quedlinburg as a model.20 The evidence for this lies above all in the high rate of correspondence between the names in the Annals of Quedlinburg and those in the additions to the Merseburg manuscript, particularly in the period between 1008 and 1015, parallel to the years when the Annals were being written. In this respect, the Merseburg Book of the Dead allows some inferences to be drawn concerning the lost Quedlinburg necrology. However, a conclusive reconstruction of memorial practice at Quedlinburg on this basis alone would be impossible, because the additions incorporate texts from multiple manuscript sources.21 Clearly indebted to a 19 20

21

On the abbesses up to Gerburg of Cappenberg, see Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen.” Gerd Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen (Munich: W. Fink, 1984), esp. 179–200, and Gerd Althoff and Joachim Wollasch eds., Die Totenbücher von Merseburg, Magdeburg und Lüneburg, MGH Libri mem. N. S. 2 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1983), esp. XX–XXVII. Althoff himself refers to memorial traditions from the spheres of Henry II and Kunigunde, which can be found in the necrological entries from the additional layer in the ­Merseburg

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Quedlinburg model is the “complete review of deaths in the royal family and among their network of relations” that begins with the death of Henry I.22 Here again we find a reflection of the convent’s mandate to care for a memorial ­tradition, documented in the charter of Otto I from 936. Another striking feature of the Merseburg manuscript is the great number of imperial bishops who are represented among the additions. Above all, it should be noted here that all bishops of Halberstadt who died before 1017 are named in the Merseburg Book of the Dead.23 We have already encountered one Halberstadt bishop from the 11th century as the antistes noster in the additions to the intercessory prayer of the Consecratio cerei in the Otto-Adelheid Gospels. Strictly speaking, the designation as “our bishop” was not entirely correct; the convent at Quedlinburg had been placed under direct papal protection since at least 967, and possibly since its founding, and thus removed from the bishop’s jurisdiction.24 In 999 Pope Sylvester II would confirm the exemption and expand its terms, in keeping with contemporary norms.25 Nevertheless, the bishops of Halberstadt had a largely untroubled

22 23 24

25

Book of the Dead; Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien, 196–200. See ­Moddelmog, K ­ önigliche Stiftungen, 48–49. “vollständige Berücksichtigung der Todesfälle in der Königsfamilie und in ihrem ­Verwandtenkreis”. Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien, 161. Provided their date of death occurred after March 16, that is, given that the first two leaves of the necrology have been lost, and with them the names that were inscribed under the dates from January 1 to March 15. Hermann Jakobs, ed., Regesta pontificum Romanorum: Germania pontificia, vol. 5/2: ­Provincia Maguntinensis, vol. 6: Dioceses Hildesheimensis et Halberstadensis, appendix Saxonia (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 310–16, entries 1–6 and 9. Among the surviving manuscripts is a charter dated April 22, 967 (entry 4 from the present citation), in which Pope John XIII takes St. Servatius under papal protection upon the intervention of Emperor Otto I and his mother Mathilde. The wording of the document does not make clear whether or not the foundation had previously enjoyed this status. According to the later documentation (entries 1, 2, and 9) the convent had been under direct papal protection since the time of its founding. The exemption date of 947 that is often found in the literature (most recently also in Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 27) goes back to a charter from Pope Agapitus II mentioned in the Annals of Quedlinburg, the contents of which are actually not known (entry 3), but are nevertheless referenced in 1139 as part of the confirmation of the exemption that was issued by Pope Innocent II (entry 9). How this process of exemption unfolded in Quedlinburg, taking its legal development under canon law of the 10th and 11th centuries into account, demands its own ­investigation. Germania pontificia 5/2, 312–14, nr. 5. Compare Hermann Jakobs and Wolfgang Petke, Papsturkundenforschung und Historie: Aus der Germania Pontificia Halberstadt und Lüttich (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 89–90.

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relationship with the abbey at Quedlinburg.26 Within the context of the late Ottonian period in particular, the ties must be characterized as downright close. Thus, in 992, the Halberstadt bishop Hildeward appeared as petitioner for the royal gift of Walbeck as an endowment for St. Servatius.27 In 995, he carried out the investiture of Adelheid, daughter of the emperor and later abbess, as a canoness at Quedlinburg.28 Finally, Bishop Arnulf was present at Abbess Mathilde’s funeral in 999 and presided over Adelheid’s ­subsequent election and solemn consecration as abbess on September 29 in Halberstadt.29 The firm ties to the diocese of Halberstadt, which existed despite Quedlinburg’s exempt position, become most clearly evident when we examine the consecration festivals of churches. Bishop Arnulf consecrated St. Servatius itself on March 10, 997.30 He was present again to consecrate St. Mary’s on the Münzenberg in Quedlinburg, a Benedictine convent subordinated to the abbess of St. Servatius, on February 27, 1017.31 Most significant of all is his prominent role at the solemn rituals at St. Servatius on September 24, 1021 in the presence of the imperial couple Henry II and Kunigunde: this time, he consecrated the high altar, into which the relics of St. Servatius, among others, were translated.32 It is therefore hardly surprising that the deaths of all bishops of Halberstadt up to 1023 are indicated in the Annals of Quedlinburg, and that the Annalist herself used the historiography of the diocese of Halberstadt as an important source.33 26

27 28 29

30 31 32

33

An overview extending into the late Middle Ages is given in Gerlinde Schlenker, “Das Verhältnis der Halberstädter Bischöfe zum Quedlinburger Damenstift vom 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichte und Kultur des Bistums Halberstadt 804–1648: Symposium anlässlich 1200 Jahre Bistumsgründung Halberstadt, 24. bis 28. März 2004: Protokollband, ed. Adolf Siebrecht (Halberstadt: Eigenverlag Halberstädter Druckhaus, 2006), 459–68. Theodor Sickel, ed., Die Urkunden Ottos des III. MGH Diplomata 4, 2, 2 (Hannover: ­Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1893), 489–90, no. 81. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 995, 486–87. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 999, 505–07, and Robert Holtzmann, ed., Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre Korveier Überarbeitung, MGH SS rer. Germ. N. S. 9 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1935), 181, Book IV, chap. 43. On the election and consecration of Adelheid see Marlow, “Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen,” 61–62. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 997, 494. Holtzmann, Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, Book VII, chap. 53, 464; see also Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1017, 550 (in this case without any mention of Bishop Arnulf). Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1021, 563. On the consecration of 1021 see Christian Popp, “Die Quedlinburger Kirchweihe im Jahre 1021: Neue Überlegungen zum altbekannten Weihebericht in den Annales Quedlinburgenses,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 72 (2016): 469–99. See the introduction by Martina Giese to the critical edition of the Annales ­Quedlinburgenses, 200–13.

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This relationship also explains the appearance of a Halberstadt bishop among the memorialized people in the oldest textual source that comes directly out of Quedlinburg and can be clearly identified as a necrology. The manuscript in question is the Quedlinburg Antiphonary, which is now kept in the Staatsbibliothek (State Library) in Berlin. A calendar from Quedlinburg, probably created in the early 1020s, is bound at the front of the Antiphonary.34 Sixteen names from the 11th century have been entered in the calendar, written by the original scribe and also multiple later hands.35 Among these are three who held the office of bishop, namely Bishop Hildeward of Halberstadt as well as Archbishops Anno of Cologne (1056–75) and Werner of Magdeburg (1063– 78), the latter being the latest identifiable addition in the manuscript.36 From the royal family, Henry I and Queen Mathilde as well as Abbess Mathilde have been entered.37 Six additional male priests are named (Aethelger prepositus diaconus, Ben diac, Oda prb, Odda prb, Sifrith prb, Verger prb). Provost Aethelger, entered on December 23 by the original scribal hand, can probably be 34

35

36 37

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Mus.ms. 40047, fols. 1r-6r (January is missing); a digitized version of the manuscript is available on the website of the Berlin Staatsbibliothek: http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0001571300000000 (accessed September 10, 2020). The latest additions by the original hand are the memorial entry for the Halberstadt Provost Athelger (d. December 23 [1018]) and the consecration of the abbey church (September 24 [1021]). Concerning the date of the calendar see most recently Hoffmann, Schreibschulen, 88; Möller, Quedlinburger Antiphonar 1, 32–36, suggests a later date. See also Popp, “Quedlinburger Kirchweihe,” 484. Different opinions on this number are circulating in the scholarly literature. In his description of the calendar Möller speaks of 16 necrological entires (Quedlinburger Antiphonar 1, 35), as does Schliephacke, “Memoria Heinrichs I.,” 214. In contrast, the names of 19 deceased individuals are cited in Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 225, and Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 53. The latter number might possibly trace back to the alphabetical index of personal names in Möller, which lists 19 necrological entries from the calendar (Quedlinburger Antiphonar 1, 240–42). Three of these entries, however, are misread or misinterpreted. Mathelberte virg. appears in the calendar on September 7 and should therefore be identified as St. Madelberta, abbess of Maubeuge (d. c.705); see Arno Borst, ed., Der karolingische Reichskalender und seine Überlieferung bis ins 12. Jahrhundert, MGH Libri mem. 2, pt. 2 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2001), 1276 and note 20. Notberce d. on March 16 (fol. 1v) is probably a misreading of Post benedicamus, which is correct in the edition by Möller, Quedlinburger Antiphonar, 2, 334. Ibaren on April 1 (fol. 2r) is probably a misconstrual of Herenei, which is missing in Möller, Quedlinburger Antiphonar, 2, 335. Herenei should be interpreted as St. Irene of Thessalonica; see Borst, Reichskalender, 2, 748 and note 12. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Mus.ms. 40047, fol. 5v: Hilliuuardus ep. on November 26; fol. 6r: Anno archiep. on December 16; fol. 4r: Uirinheri archiep. on August 7. On this see most recently Schliephacke, “Memoria Heinrichs I.,” 214.

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equated with Athilger, provost of Halberstadt Cathedral, who died in the year 1018 according to the Annals of Quedlinburg, and is quite possibly identical to the person of the same name in the list of the Otto-Adelheid Gospels.38 Also recorded in the Annals as dying in 1018 is a presbiter Odda from Magdeburg; perhaps this is the same Odda prb who was entered under December 18 in the calendar of the Quedlinburg Antiphonary.39 This leaves only four names from the 16 in the calendar that can be assigned to monastic women. Three of these women have been marked with the term sanctimonialis and were therefore definitely members of the convent at Quedlinburg (Rouit, Liudgerd, Suanahild). Only the entry from April, 7—Gisla de uiscenb~ch—gives no indication whether the person in question may have been a canoness. It is beyond dispute that the calendar of the Quedlinburg Antiphonary, with its 16 necrological entries, does not reflect the full extent of memorial practice at St. Servatius. For the first half of the 11th century, a much better assessment can be derived from the deaths recorded in the Annals of Quedlinburg as well as the additions to the Merseburg Book of the Dead. Calendars in which only a more or less substantial portion of the full horizon of necrological information have been entered are hardly rare, however, among the surviving records from monastic and collegiate churches; to make this point we need only remember the comparable sources from the convents of canonesses at Essen and Gandersheim.40 A conclusive interpretation of this phenomenon is still lacking. It could potentially be explained by the sporadic use of these manuscripts by individual canonesses or priests, who entered the names of the deceased who were important to them personally.41 Whether this is really the case, or whether the choice of names resulted from liturgical practice, as would be expected for liturgical sources, cannot be distinguished with any confidence given the current state of the research. For example, one could imagine a priest or a group of

38 39 40

41

Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1018, 552–53 and note 1478. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1018, 552 and note 1477. An exemplary manuscript from 10th-century Essen to mention in this regard is Düsseldorf, Universitätsbibliothek, MS D 3, a missal and gradual with a calendar that contains only a few necrological entries. See Hoffmann, Schreibschulen, 52–54. From the 13th century, and thus from a substantially later period, an unbound fragment of a calendar that was filled with necrological entries at the abbey of Gandersheim has survived, Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv – Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, 7 B Hs 47. The pages for the months of July through October have been preserved and contain entries for 28 deaths, which is far from a complete picture of the full memorial practice of the convent at Gandersheim. For a brief description see Hans Goetting, Das Bistum Hildesheim, vol. 1: Das reichsunmittelbare Kanonissenstift Gandersheim (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973), 72. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 226, and Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 53.

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clerics who were responsible for the celebration of specific memorial services and therefore codified a certain list separately. We can, however, glean an impression of a fully preserved memorial tradition of this period from a surviving leaf from a necrology that was created before the middle of the 11th century either in Quedlinburg or the dependent convent of Wendhusen (southwest of Quedlinburg) and presumably filled out in Wendhusen.42 The fragment contains only half of the day for March 31 as well as the first six days of April.43 In spite of the brief time period of less than one week, the page contains 60 necrological entries. If extended over the whole year with a roughly consistent density of names, this results in a memorial horizon that would encompass over 3000 individuals. Our thin knowledge of the names of the canonesses and clergymen active at Quedlinburg in the 10th and 11th centuries precludes the secure correlation of specific entries in the fragment with individuals at St. Servatius. The sole exception is the final entry on April 5, which records a Burgarad sanctimonialis who can be identified with the canoness Burgareda, whose death in the year 1023 is reported in the Annals of Quedlinburg.44 None of the later necrological sources that have survived from Quedlinburg can offer a substantial expansion of our picture of the prayer obligations of the high medieval canonesses. The astonishing abundance of names in the Quedlinburg-Wendhusen necrology fragment suggests that reductions to the memorial obligations of the convent were probably inevitable as early as the middle of the 11th century because the human and economic resources that would be required to carry these out properly were limited.45 When exactly and to what extent such reductions took place cannot be described in greater detail due to the absence of written sources. A calendar produced around 1200 42

43

44 45

Particularly clear indications of the manuscript’s ties to Wendhausen are two entries, each emphasized with a cross, for Liuppirg inclusa and domna Gisle. The latter indicates the founder of the convent; Liuppirg refers to a certain anchoress whose saintly life is described in the late 9th-century Vita Liutbirgae; see most recently Frederick S. Paxton, Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxony: The Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009). Braunschweig, Stadtbibliothek, Fragment 62. Edited by Walther Grosse, “Das Kloster Wendhausen, sein Stiftergeschlecht und seine Klausnerin,” Sachsen und Anhalt 16 (1940): 45–76 at 47–48. See Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 169–70 and 372, and Hoffmann, Schreibschulen, 89–90. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgenses, entry for 1023, 570 and note 1604. On the phenomenon of the reduction of memorial practices in monasteries in the late Middle Ages see Rainer Hugener, Buchführung für die Ewigkeit: Totengedenken, Verschriftlichung und Traditionsbildung im Spätmittelalter (Zürich, Chronos Verlag, 2014), 105–06.

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in the diocese of Halberstadt or Hildesheim as part of a psalter with canticles (Psalterium cum canticis) is of little help with this question.46 The manuscript, which may well have been used at St. Servatius from time to time, was first linked to Quedlinburg by Bertram Lesser.47 The calendar, from which January is missing due to lost leaves and February is only partly decipherable because of its poor state of preservation, contains around 40 necrological entries by the original scribe and also by later hands, including a remarkable entry on July 26 in memory of those killed in the so-called Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184.48 Two names, added by different hands under April 2 (Beatrix abbatissa) and May 1 (Athelheit abbatissa), can be identified as the Quedlinburg Abbesses Beatrix II of Winzenburg (d. April 2, 1160) and Adelheid III of Sommerschenburg

46

47

48

The manuscript belongs to the collection of the former Universitätsbibliothek Helmstedt and is now kept in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Helmstedt, formerly ­Universitätsbibliothek, I Hs 1). A digitized version can be viewed on the website of the library: http://diglib.hab.de/mss/ed000037/start.htm (accessed September 9, 2020). See the description by Bertram Lesser in the manuscripts database of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel: http://diglib.hab.de/?db=mss&list=ms&id=he-exub-i-hs-1&cat alog=Lesser (accessed September 9, 2020). Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, and Schliephacke, “Memoria Heinrichs I.” do not mention the calendar in their listings of ­necrological sources. Memoria illorum qui Erpesfordie casu interfecti sunt (fol. 5v), written in the calendar’s original hand. At a diet convened by King Henry VI on July 25/26, 1184 in Erfurt, the floor of the assembly hall in the priory of the collegiate church of St. Marien broke during the proceedings, leading to the deaths of several attendees in the latrine shaft below. On this subject, with all relevant sources, see Michael Gockel (ed.), Die deutschen Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen, Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenthaltsorte der Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters, vol. 2: Thüringen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 127–31, no. 25. Also worthy of mention is the sole obituary notice for a bishop— or at least, the only one that can be discerned from consulting the digitized version of the manuscript—entered by the original hand on July 21: Bernhardus episcopus obiit (fol. 5v). This could only be Bishop Bernhard I of Hildesheim, who died on July 20, 1153; see Hans Goetting, Das Bistum Hildesheim 3: Die Hildesheimer Bischöfe von 815 bis 1221 (1227) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984), 379–80 (without mention of the necrological entries from the Helmstedt manuscript). There are also a few other deaths recorded by the original hand that point to the diocese of Hildesheim, such as the entry on July 18 (fol. 5v): Gunterus prepositus in Henigge (Gunter, provost of the foundation of Augustinian canonesses in Heiningen, documented 1140–59). In his description of the manuscript, Lesser proposes that the calendar may have been produced in the diocese of Halberstadt, but in light of these death notices a Hildesheim provenance is more likely; this would also account for the inclusion of two Hildesheim feast days in the calendar: Cantianorum adventus (April 1) and Cantianorum (May 31). The calendar and its additions require more precise investigation than is possible within the scope of this article.

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(d. May 1, 1184).49 The extent to which the recorded deaths of additional ecclesiastical men and women as well as some lay people actually refer to individuals at Quedlinburg and were added there remains to be discerned.50 In any case, the manuscript does not represent the memorial practice of the convent: the older memorial layer is completely missing and the memoria of the L­ iudolfing founders has left no trace in the calendar. We are on firmer ground concerning use in Quedlinburg if we turn to the so-called Golden Calendar of Hildesheim, a lavishly decorated manuscript that was produced at Saint Michael’s in Hildesheim in the mid-13th century.51 The codex would later arrive in Quedlinburg, where it was supplemented with about 70 new entries in the 14th century, written predominantly by a single hand, which added feast days and some 50 necrological entries.52 The ­Ottonian 49

50

51

52

See Birgit Hoffmann, “Beatrix II. von Winzenburg,” in Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 8. bis 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Horst-Rüdiger Jarck (Braunschweig: Appelhaus, 2006), 70–71, and for Adelheid III, Goetting, Kanonissenstift Gandersheim, 306. She had been abbess of Gandersheim since 1152/53 and also took on the role of abbess of Quedlinburg starting in 1161. She is among the total of seven Gandersheim abbesses honored with the titulus sancta in the later Gandersheim necrology (Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv – Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, 7 B Hs 46), probably because of her successful contributions to the reconstruction of the abbey church in Gandersheim after a major fire. See Christian Popp, Der Schatz der Kanonissen: Heilige und Reliquien im Frauenstift Gandersheim (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2010), 56. In his description of the manuscript, Bertram Lesser writes without further evidence that “likewise pointing to Quedlinburg are several added memorial entries for various canonesses” (“[e]benfalls nach Quedlinburg weisen mehrere nachgetragene Memorialeinträge für verschiedene Kanonissen”) “(among others, in red: March 27, Ermengardis monacha obiit; April 30, Margareta virgo obiit; June 23, Mechtildis obiit; July 28, Sophia virgo obiit; September 24, obiit Mactildis conversa), lay people (among others, in red: May 21, Eilart obiit; July 18, Meinfredus laicus obiit; September 7, Berterath laicus obiit), and priests (for example, October 18, Burchardus monachus obiit).” See: http://diglib.hab.de/?db=mss &list=ms&id=he-exub-i-hs-1&catalog=Lesser (accessed 9 September 2020). Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 13 Aug. 2°, fol. 2–6, published in full as Helmar Härtel, ed., Das goldene Hildesheimer Kalendarium: Limitierte Faksimile-Edition (Stuttgart: Müller und Schindler), 2003. For a detailed description of the calendar see Renate Kroos, “Kalendarium und zwei Bildseiten,” in Wolfenbütteler Cimelien: Das Evangeliar Heinrichs des Löwen in der Herzog August Bibliothek, ed. Peter F. Ganz (Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1989), 167–70, and Monika E. Müller, “Goldenes Hildesheimer ­Kalendarium,” in Schätze im Himmel – Bücher auf Erden: Mittelalterliche Handschriften aus Hildesheim ed., Monika E. Müller (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag in Kommission, 2010), 340–43. See Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 55. The entries for saints that were added at St. Servatius are published in Renate Kroos, Drei niedersächsische Bildhandschriften des 13. Jahrhunderts in Wien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 194–96. The necrological entries have been edited and published as the Necrologium Quedlinburgense

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rulers and their wives (with the exception of Theophanu) are fully represented, and the two first abbesses of Quedlinburg, who were also Ottonians, are likewise marked in the calendar. The Salian emperors and empresses, on the other hand, as well as the Salian abbesses are completely absent. The line of abbesses only begins again with Beatrix II of Winzenburg (d. 1160) and ends with Sophie of Brehna (d. 1226).53 Among the remaining entries, five female provosts, three female deacons, and five canonesses are found that can also be assigned to St. Servatius with certainty. This comparatively small inventory of names renews the question of what, exactly, the Calendar reveals about memorial practice at Quedlinburg. It is true that the necrology preserves the memory of the Ottonian founding family, who remained the focal point of memoria in Quedlinburg. However, given the fact that the Quedlinburg hands of the 14th century that were responsible for adding entries to the calendar only included abbesses from up to the first third of the 13th century, it is utterly impossible that this manuscript shows the complete liturgical memorial horizon of the convent at Quedlinburg. Claudia Moddelmog sees in this selection of names “the preservation and codification of one or more older traditions …, perhaps based on models that were no longer in use.”54 The diligent incorporation of special feast days from Quedlinburg into the calendar suggests that the codex was supplemented for liturgical use, so in this respect it is at least initially plausible that the rationale behind the selection of names may be related to liturgical practice. It may have been that the memorial liturgies observed for the deceased individuals in the calendar took on specific forms—perhaps involving, for example, processions inside or even outside the abbey church— or were held in the presence of specific people, such as the abbess. Because these liturgies did not apply to others, they were listed separately. One final necrological source from the late Middle Ages can be glimpsed through two early modern excerpts. It does not require further attention here, however, as it offers no additional insights for our questions.55

53 54 55

secundum in Ernst Friedrich Mooyer, “Ungedruckte Nekrologien und Erläuterungen,” Neue Mitteilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch-antiquarischer Forschungen 8 (1850): 46–87 at 70–83. Schliephacke, “Memoria Heinrichs I.,” 214, mistakenly describes the necrology published by Mooyer and the Hildesheim Calendar as two separate sources. See the careful evaluation of the evidence concerning these names in Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 55–56. “… die Bewahrung und Sichtung einer oder mehrerer älterer Traditionen …, vielleicht nach Vorlagen, die nicht mehr in Gebrauch waren,” Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 56. Anton Ulrich von Erath, Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis (Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764), 907–13, and Friedrich Ernst Kettner, Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des kayserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710), 106–09. The

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It remains important to establish that the surviving documentation from Quedlinburg does not allow for a complete picture of the convent’s high medieval memorial practice to be reconstructed. The evidence from charters and chronicles clearly shows, however, that the obligation to pray for the living and dead members of the Ottonian founding family was central to the convent’s mandate, and that the memory of the dead was probably already committed to text from its very beginnings. Thus, it seems that the widowed Queen Mathilde already kept a computarium in which the names of the distinguished dead were entered, and which she passed on to her granddaughter of the same name upon her own passing.56 Fixing names in writing was essential in order to secure commemoration through memorial prayers in the long term; this also applied to the canonesses and clergymen of the monastic community, as shown compellingly by the list of names in the Otto-Adelheid Gospels. The memorial horizon of the Quedlinburg convent in the late Ottonian period extended far beyond the circles of St. Servatius and the Liudolfing family, however, and included a great number of the major aristocratic and ecclesiastical figures of the empire. Admittedly, its contours can only be roughly and indirectly traced, using above all the added layer of entries in the Merseburg Book of the Dead and the deaths reported in the Annals of Quedlinburg. To support their memorial requirements, the Ottonian royal dynasty endowed the convent at Quedlinburg with great material wealth, continuously strengthened through further donations.57 We may assume a corresponding strength in the personnel of canonesses in the convent,58 and also among the group of priests assigned to them,59 who were required for the many liturgical practices

56 57 58

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excerpts in Erath and Kettner are evidently based on the same source. See the analysis in Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen, 56–57. This is recounted in the Vita Mathildis reginae antiquior (chap. 13); see Bernd Schütte, ed., Die Lebensbeschreibungen der Königin Mathilde, MGH SS rer. Germ. 66 (Hannover: ­Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1994), 138. For a summary of this see Reuling, “Quedlinburg,” 220–21. There are no sources that give a clear account of the numbers of canonesses in the ­Ottonian period. Gerd Althoff conjectures that the 12 names of women without titles that appear in the supplementary text of the Merseburg Book of the Dead, on September 19, may represent the first canonesses of Quedlinburg; see Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien, 188n200. Karl Heinrich Schäfer deduced a maximum number of 40 canonesses from a charter from 1250; see Schäfer, Die Kanonissenstifter im deutschen Mittelalter: Ihre Entwicklung und innere Einrichtung im Zusammenhang mit dem altchristlichen Sanktimonialentum (Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1907), 131. In order to perform the required number of masses, a group of clerics must have staffed St. Servatius from its founding date onwards, but we know nothing of their numbers. These were separate from the 12 canons of the collegiate church at the royal court. They were subordinated to the abbess of Quedlinburg, who also became responsible for their

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of the community, especially the celebration of masses. Last but not least, St. Servatius was also exceptionally well-furnished with high-ranking relics.60 The description of the consecration of 1021 in the Annals of Quedlinburg reveals how these precious treasures served above all to aid the canonesses in fulfilling their memorial obligations effectively, with intercession from the assembled saints—for the benefit of the living and the salvation of the dead. Works Cited Althoff, Gerd. Adels- und Königsfamilien im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: ­Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen. Munich: W. Fink, 1984. Althoff, Gerd. “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg: Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Überlieferungszentren.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44. Althoff, Gerd, and Joachim Wollasch, eds. Die Totenbücher von Merseburg, Magdeburg und Lüneburg. MGH Libri mem. N. S. 2. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1983. Bodarwé, Katrinette. “Glaube und Schriftlichkeit im liturgischen Kontext des frühmittelalterlichen Quedlinburg.” In Das dritte Stift: Forschungen zum Quedlinburger Frauenstift. Ed. Stephan Freund and Thomas Labusiak. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2017. 87–109. Bodarwé, Katrinette. Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg. Münster: Aschendorff, 2004. Borst, Arno, ed. Der karolingische Reichskalender und seine Überlieferung bis ins 12. Jahrhundert. MGH Libri mem. 2. 3 vols. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2001. Bulach, Doris. “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort der Ottonen: Von der Stiftsgründung bis zur Gegenwart.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 48 (2000): 101–18. Erath, Anton Ulrich von. Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis. Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764. Freund, Stephan. “Symbolischer Ort – symbolische Handlungen. Quedlinburg als königlicher Aufenthaltsort (10. bis 12. Jahrhundert).” In Das dritte Stift: Forschungen zum Quedlinburger Frauenstift. Ed. Stephan Freund and Thomas Labusiak. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2017. 59–85.

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maintenance, by Otto I in 961 at the consecration of the church of St. James (and Wiperti). See Sickel, Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., 312–13, no. 228. On the related charter see Wagner, “Gebetsgedenken,” 43–44. See Popp, “Quedlinburger Kirchweihe,” esp. 497–98. See also the compilation of records concerning the relics kept at Quedlinburg in Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 183–85.

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Giese, Martina, ed. Die Annales Quedlinburgenses. MGH SS rer. Germ. 72. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004. Gockel, Michael, ed. Die deutschen Königspfalzen. Repertorium der Pfalzen, Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenthaltsorte der Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters. Vol. 2. Thüringen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Goetting, Hans. Das Bistum Hildesheim. Vol. 1. Das reichsunmittelbare Kanonissenstift Gandersheim. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973. Grosse, Walther. “Das Kloster Wendhausen, sein Stiftergeschlecht und seine ­Klausnerin.” Sachsen und Anhalt 16 (1940): 45–76. Hoffmann, Birgit. “Beatrix II. von Winzenburg.” In Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 8. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Ed. Horst-Rüdiger Jarck. Braunschweig: Appelhans, 2006. 70–71. Hoffmann, Hartmut. “Otto-Adelheid-Evangeliar: Handschrift.” In Dietrich Kötzsche, ed., Der Quedlinburger Schatz. Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993. 65–67. Hoffmann, Hartmut. Schreibschulen und Buchmalerei: Handschriften und Texte des 9.–11. Jahrhunderts. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2012. Holtzmann, Robert, ed. Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre Korveier Überarbeitung. MGH SS rer. Germ. N. S. 9. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1935. Hugener, Rainer. Buchführung für die Ewigkeit: Totengedenken, Verschriftlichung und Traditionsbildung im Spätmittelalter. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2014. Huth, Volkhard. “Die Düsseldorfer Sakramentarhandschrift D 1 als Memorialzeugnis. Mit einer Wiedergabe der Namen und Namengruppen.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 20 (1986): 213–98. Jakobs, Hermann, ed. Regesta pontificum Romanorum: Germania pontificia. Vol. 5/2. Provincia Maguntinensis. Vol. 6: Dioceses Hildesheimensis et Halberstadensis, appendix Saxonia. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005. Jakobs, Hermann, and Wolfgang Petke. Papsturkundenforschung und Historie: Aus der Germania Pontificia Halberstadt und Lüttich. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008. Kettner, Friedrich Ernst. Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des Kayserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg ... Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710. Kroos, Renate. “Kalendarium und zwei Bildseiten.” In Wolfenbütteler Cimelien: Das Evangeliar Heinrichs des Löwen in der Herzog August Bibliothek. Weinheim: VCH, 1989. 167–70. Marlow, Christian. “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen im Hochmittelalter: Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137.” PhD diss., Otto-von-­ Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2017. Moddelmog, Claudia. Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012.

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Möller, Hartmut. Das Quedlinburger Antiphonar (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Mus. ms. 40047). 3 vols. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1990. Mooyer, Ernst Friedrich. “Ungedruckte Nekrologien und Erläuterungen.” Neue ­Mitteilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch-antiquarischer Forschungen 8/3–4 (1850): 48–87. Müller, Monika E. “Goldenes Hildesheimer Kalendarium.” In Schätze im Himmel – Bücher auf Erden: Mittelalterliche Handschriften aus Hildesheim. Ed. Monika E. Müller and Helga Schmidt-Glintzer. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag in Kommission, 2010. 340–43. Paxton, Frederick S. Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxony: The Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Popp, Christian. “Die Quedlinburger Kirchweihe im Jahre 1021: Neue Überlegungen zum altbekannten Weihebericht in den Annales Quedlinburgenses.” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 72 (2016): 469–99. Popp, Christian. Der Schatz der Kanonissen: Heilige und Reliquien im Frauenstift ­Gandersheim. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2010. Popp, Christian. “Totengedenken im spätmittelalterlichen Kanonissenstift: Das ­Gandersheimer Jüngere Necrolog.” In Alltag und Frömmigkeit am Vorabend der Reformation in Mitteldeutschland: Wissenschaftlicher Begleitband zur Ausstellung “Umsonst ist der Tod.” Ed. Enno Bünz and Hartmut Kühne. Leipzig: Leipziger ­Universitätsverlag, 2015. 531–42. Reuling, Ulrich. “Quedlinburg Königspfalz – Reichsstift – Markt.” In Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung. Vol. 4. Pfalzen – Reichsgut – Königshöfe. Ed. Lutz Fenske. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. 184–247. Schäfer, Karl Heinrich. Die Kanonissenstifter im deutschen Mittelalter: Ihre Entwicklung und innere Einrichtung im Zusammenhang mit dem altchristlichen Sanktimonialentum. Stuttgart, 1907. Schilp, Thomas. “Überlegungen zur Sakramentarhandschrift D 1 als Liber vitae der Essener Frauenkommunität.” In Libri vitae: Gebetsgedenken in der Gesellschaft des Frühen Mittelalters. Ed. Dieter Geuenich and Uwe Ludwig. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2015. 203–20. Schlenker, Gerlinde. “Das Verhältnis der Halberstädter Bischöfe zum Quedlinburger Damenstift vom 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert.” In Geschichte und Kultur des Bistums Halberstadt 804–1648: Symposium anlässlich 1200 Jahre Bistumsgründung Halberstadt, 24. bis 28. März 2004; Protokollband. Ed. Adolf Siebrecht. Halberstadt: Eigenverlag Halberstädter Druckhaus, 2006. 459–68.

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Schliephacke, Oliver. “Die Memoria Heinrichs I. in Quedlinburg.” In 919 – Plötzlich König: Heinrich I. und Quedlinburg. Ed. Stephan Freund and Gabriele Köster. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019. 208–23. Schütte, Bernd, ed. Die Lebensbeschreibungen der Königin Mathilde. MGH SS rer. Germ. 66. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1994. Sickel, Theodor, ed. Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I. MGH Diplomata 4, 1. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1879–84. Sickel, Theodor, ed., Die Urkunden Ottos des III. MGH Diplomata 4, 2, 2. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1893. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin Verlag: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Wagner, Wolfgang. “Das Gebetsgedenken der Liudolfinger im Spiegel der Königs- und Kaiserurkunden von Heinrich I. bis zu Otto III.” Archiv für Diplomatik 40 (1994): 1–78. Wollasch, Joachim. “Formen und Inhalte mittelalterlicher memoria.” In Libri vitae: Gebetsgedenken in der Gesellschaft des Frühen Mittelalters. Ed. Dieter Geuenich and Uwe Ludwig. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2015. 33–55. Wozniak, Thomas. Naturereignisse im frühen Mittelalter: Das Zeugnis der Geschichtsschreibung vom 6. bis 11. Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.

Chapter 5

Psallite sapienter: Psalms and Learning at Quedlinburg Helene Scheck Psallite Deo nostro, psallite; psallite regi nostro, psallite: quoniam rex omnis terrae Deus, psallite sapienter. (Biblia Sacra Vulgata, Psalm 46:7–8)1

∵ 1

Singing Psalms Wisely

The Hebrew songs of praise, lamentation, and wisdom so important to ­Judaism formed the core of Christian devotion as well from the earliest Church. ­Following practices already established in Byzantium and Egypt, Ambrose made them central to his celebration of the office. Indeed, he found the Psalms fundamental to all facets of life, sacred and profane: Historia instruit, lex docet, prophetia annuntiat, correptio castigat, moralitas suadet; in libro Psalmorum profectus est omnium et medicina quaedam salutis humanae. … si quis gesta studet recensere maiorum atque imitari uelit, intra unum Psalmum totam paternae historiae seriem accipit conprehensam, ut thesaurum memoriae conpendio lectionis adquirat. (History teaches, the Law instructs, prophecy proclaims, reproach chastens and moralizing persuades; in the Book of Psalms there is the successful accomplishment of all this along with a kind of balm of human salvation. … If one is eager to study the deeds of our forebears and wishes to imitate them, [one] finds contained within a single Psalm the entire 1 Sing psalms to our God, sing; sing to our king, sing: because God is king of the entire earth, sing psalms wisely. Translations are my own, unless indicated otherwise. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004527492_007

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range of ancestral history so that [one] gains a treasury of memories as a stipend for reading.)2 The Psalms formed the core of Christian spiritual practices from the earliest Church as well as intellectual development within the Church. Much ink was spent teasing out the nuances of the dense verses and explicating the warp and weft of Old Testament and New therein. Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, ­Origen, Isidore, and Bede all devoted time to explicating the Psalms. Perhaps more than anyone, Cassiodorus saw the Psalms as a font of all human knowledge, finding in them the foundations of not only history and law, but also astronomy and math, rhetoric and poetics. The Psalms as both vehicle and subject of learning are best understood, however, not as distinct from or preparation for ritual performance of them, but as agents of cross-fertilization between learning and liturgy, perusal and performance, intellect and spirit. Monastics were expected to commit them to memory, recite them regularly, and study their meaning so that they could “psallite sapienter.” For most medieval monastics, the Psalms would have been the first text learned and the last uttered. Mary Jane Toswell notes that for a memory culture such as that obtaining in early medieval Europe, “every monk and nun engaged in a process of rumination that would have every word of every Psalm always and habitually at the tip of the tongue.”3 Indeed, she continues, “the Psalms were almost a physical part of the monastic individual, ready to leap to mind and mouth, wholly comprehended and internalized.” The Benedictine Rule, which guided most monastics by this time in the early Middle Ages, details the practice of psalm recitation and the importance of doing it well: 3 Ideo semper memores simus quod ait propheta: Servite Domino in timore, 4 et iterum, Psallite sapienter, 5 et, In conspectu angelorum ­psallam tibi. 6 Ergo consideremus qualiter oporteat in conspectu ­divinitatis et angelorum eius esse, 7 et sic stemus ad psallendum ut mens nostra ­concordet voci nostrae. (3 We must always remember, therefore, what the Prophet says: Serve the Lord with fear (Ps 2:11), 4 and again, Sing praise wisely (Ps. 46:8) 5 and, in the presence of the angels I will sing to you. (Ps. 137:1). 6 Let us consider, then, how we ought to behave in the presence of God and his angels, 2 Explanatio Psalmi 1.7, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) 64, 6; trans. James McKinnon, with slight modification in brackets, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 126. 3 Mary Jane Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 4.

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7 and let us stand to sing the psalms in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices.)4 But what is it to sing psalms wisely, as opposed to, say, mindfully, attentively, knowingly, or sincerely? And why must the mind be in harmony with the voice? Tracing different experiences of and engagement with the Psalms at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg, from its founding through about 1050, I demonstrate that this community’s use of the Psalms allows us to recognize the interdependence of liturgical practices and intellectual activity and to begin to perceive the critical and creative impulses at work in both—stressing that not only is intellectual work crucial to spiritual devotion as Jean LeClercq has shown,5 but that spiritual devotion lends itself to intellectual work and, indeed, cannot be separated from it. Given that premise, this essay further asks how Benedict’s directive to instantiate psalms through performance might have affected the nature of intellectual activity if taken to heart by individual as well as communal bodies, especially at a community such as Quedlinburg, which was populated by royal women who were canonesses rather than Benedictine nuns. Let us assume that the canonesses were trained well enough to understand at a literal level what they were chanting, singing, and reciting; that they brought their full attention to the words as they recited them privately as well as communally; and that their devotions were enriched by a more sophisticated understanding cultivated by careful analysis and critical thinking. In that context and in concert with their devotional practice, the women must have experienced a rich intellectual life beyond the parameters outlined by the authoritative exegetical texts, sermons, and glosses that underpinned their study of the Psalms. Like their male counterparts, they did not simply absorb authoritative explications of the Psalms, but critiqued them and must have formed their own interpretations, discussing and debating their positions and perspectives within the community. How could they not? Following such lines of inquiry yields insights not only into the use of psalms in intellectual culture of the early Middle Ages but also modes of learning and registers in which women participated and contributed to intellectual culture. Before we can analyse how the practice of singing psalms wisely represents that contribution, however, we first should sketch a picture of this community of women with attention to their devotional and scholarly practices. And, 4 Chapter 19, “De disciplina psallendi,” RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English, ed. and trans. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1981), 282 and 350. Kindle. 5 Jean LeClercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982).

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finally, close attention to one particular codex allows us to glimpse responses by readers in the community as they strove to psallite sapienter. 2

Background on Quedlinburg

Founded as a memorial community by Queen Mathilde of Saxony to honor her late husband, Henry the Fowler, progenitor of the dynasty that would flourish under his son Otto and successors, Quedlinburg represents a particularly interesting opportunity to investigate the role of the Psalms in intellectual activity. It was Henry’s wish that such a community be founded on the site of his eastern outpost on the mount in Quedlinburg where he made his name by advancing the Saxon borders into Slav territories. The chief function of the community was to preserve the memory of the king and pray for the salvation of his soul, but it was a memorial foundation in its intellectual as well as spiritual work, as the community honored the dead through prayers and keeping a necrology while also chronicling the development of the dynasty that sprang from his ambitions.6 As a memorial community, St. Servatius would have offered liturgical services that were elaborate and consequential; as a royal community, the community received privileges and a budget that also allowed the canonesses to establish a scriptorium of some merit, to develop a sizeable library through acquisition as well as in-house production, and to participate in the cultivation of dynastic memory in their written accounts.7

6 The Quedlinburg Annals were most likely produced by the community of canonesses at St. Servatius. Martina Giese provides a succinct discussion of origin and authorship in her edition: Martina Giese, ed., Die Annales Quedlinburgensis. MGH SS rer. Germ. 72 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004), 41–47; the account of the community’s founding appears at s.a. 937 and following. 7 In addition to the Annals of Quedlinburg, at least one of two biographical accounts of Queen Mathilde was also likely produced at Quedlinburg. Much has been written on the memorial functions of royal and noble women in Ottonian culture; see, for example, Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Elisabeth van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Matthew Innes, “Keeping it in the Family: Women and Aristocratic Memory, 700–1200,” in Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300, ed. Elisabeth van Houts (New York: Longman, 2001), 17–35; Helene Scheck, “Queen Mathilda of Saxony and the Founding of Quedlinburg: Women, Memory, and Power,” Historical Reflections 35/3 (Winter 2009): 21–36. On the scriptorium at Quedlinburg and women‘s scriptoria in Ottonian and Salian Saxony, see especially Katrinette Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg (Münster: Aschendorff, 2004) and Hartmut Hoffmann,

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Indeed, by virtue of their class, royal women of early medieval England, F­ rancia, and Saxony enjoyed the same privilege, even duty, of becoming ­educated as their male counterparts. Some documentary evidence survives in the form of manuscripts, letters, and other writings attesting to the range and quality of education in women’s communities of the early Middle Ages, including a variety of manuscripts and fragments produced and/or used at women’s communities: luxury, study, classical, liturgical, devotional, epistolary, scriptural, and historiographical. Some of the texts held in those communities have been glossed extensively, others were marked more cryptically for reference, memorization, or compilation; some bear signatures attesting to women who copied or read them; others remain pristine or have been trimmed of any such traces. Although the nature of the survivals does not allow for precise ­mappings of period and region traversed by the respective codices, they nevertheless provide ample basis for thinking about women thinking. More specifically, manuscript survivals from royal Ottonian monasteries at Essen, Gandersheim, and Quedlinburg, certain or probable, include classical literature, encyclopedic texts and florilegia, grammar books, glossed scriptural texts, exegetical treatises, and letters of Augustine and Jerome as well as the Pauline and the so-called “Catholic” letters. Though most of these are ­typical early to intermediate school texts, epistolary, exegetical, and philosophical texts encourage more advanced philosophical thought. For example, the 6th-century epitome of Aristotle’s Categories at Gandersheim and Boethius’s epitome of Aristotle’s Periarchon at Quedlinburg, both heavily glossed, attest to deeper study. Classical literary texts and commentaries on them, including Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgics, Statius’s Thebaid, and Terence’s Comedies survive from the three major Ottonian royal women’s houses. But, again, at the center of it all are the Psalms, informing intellectual as well as spiritual development. The Psalms would have formed the core of personal and communal devotion at any monastery during the Middle Ages, but usage must have varied by region, period, and order, even by community. Evidence is derived from ­surviving manuscripts and fragments, other material artifacts, references in contemporary sources such as annals, and attestations in saints’ lives and other narratives emanating from the community and its members. In the case of Quedlinburg, although it was not a Benedictine foundation, all evidence suggests that the practice of psalms was as rigorous as anywhere. As canonesses of the Ottonian period, they would most likely have adhered to the so-called Anianian rule for canonesses approved at the Aachen Council of 816 under “Nonnenstudien,” in Schreibschulen und Buchmalerei: Handschriften und Texte des 9.-11. Jahrhunderts, MGH Schriften 65 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2012), 37–159.

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Louis the Pious. Based on rules produced by Caesarius and Pseudo-­Augustine as well as letters of Jerome, among other texts, the Rule for ­Canonesses urged diligent and regular learning and recitation of psalms, although it left the mode and manner up to individual communities.8 Though shorter and less programmatically detailed, the canonical rule is no less rigorous in its insistence on deep learning to activate and inform consummate devotions. Indeed, the Rule for Canonesses begins with Psalm 44 and Jerome’s exhortation to one of his female disciples to follow God and leave all worldly relations and status behind. Excerpts from this letter along with two others by Jerome, all heavily imbued with and rooted in readings from the Psalms, establish the core of monastic observance for canonesses.9 Moreover, chapter 22 of the rule urges rigorous education of girls in order to ensure proper and full devotion and prevent wayward tendencies and the development of dangerous habits or behaviors.10 Another one of Jerome’s letters forms the core of that chapter. Outlining the proper education of a young girl promised to the Church, the letter stresses that “The soul that would become a temple of God” must be educated in such a way as to foster fear of God and must eschew all worldly songs and encounters, and “moreover, the tender tongue should be imbued with sweet psalms.”11 The reading, ownership, and production of the Psalms seems to have been widespread among elite women and men, lay as well as religious in the early Middle Ages.12 As Mary Jane Toswell puts it, “There does not seem to be any specific association with a particular gender in the copying and ownership of 8 9

10 11 12

Albert Werminghoff, ed. Institutio sanctimonialium Aquisgranensis. MGH. Leges. Concilia aevi karolini 2 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1906), 421–56. Institutio sanctimonialium, 423, directly following the table of contents. The first three items listed in the table of contents for the Institutio sanctimonialium are Jerome’s letter 22, to Eustochium; his letter 130, to Demetrias; and letter 54, to the widow Furia (Isidore Hilberg, ed., Sancti Eusebii Hieronimi Epistulae, CSEL 54–56). Jerome’s heavy use of psalms attests his own immersion in the book as well as the importance of the Psalms even to lay devotion in the early Church. Whether or not the canonesses at Quedlinburg followed this particular iteration of the rule, they had access to the full versions of these letters in the comprehensive collection of Jerome’s correspondence contained in Halle, ­Universitätsund Landesbibliothek, MS Quedlinburg Codex 74. Those letters are heavily marked by 10th- and 11th-century Quedlinburg hands, attesting to active study of the letters at St. Servatius and assumed knowledge of the scriptural texts at their core, the Psalms chief among them. Insitutio sanctimonialium, chapter 22, “Ut erga puellas in monasteriis erudiendas magna adhibeatur diligentia” (“That great diligence is to be applied in educating girls in ­monasteries”), 452–54. “Sic erudienda est anima quae futura est templum dei … adhuc tenera lingua Psalmis dulcibus imbuatur.” Jerome, letter 107, to Laeta, edited CSEL 55, 290–305, at 293–94. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 19.

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psalters in the early medieval period …. The surviving psalters can be associated with Columba and Charlemagne as easily as they can be … with Christina of Markyate and Queen Margaret of Scotland.” We have examples for Carolingian Francia as well. In the 9th century, the Lothair Psalter seems to have been owned and quite possibly commissioned by a woman of the Carolingian royal house, based on the pronouns and the names of kin listed.13 The booklist in the will of ducal couple Eberhard and Gisela of Friuli attests three psalters, including one with gold lettering, as well as an exposition on the Psalms used specifically by Gisela, and a breviary.14 In the early 11th century, one wealthy Frankish community, perhaps Chelles, listed among its library holdings five psalters.15 Although psalters associated directly with Quedlinburg do not survive, we can assume that the community would have had a range of psalters comparable to those owned by lay and monastic women in the Carolingian and ­Ottonian periods. Indeed, given its status, its wealth, and its raison d’être, it would be remarkable if Quedlinburg did not have a variety of psalters for study and private as well as communal devotional practices from the time of its foundation, particularly since the canonesses had at least two authoritative commentaries on the Psalms available to them, by Ambrose and Cassiodorus, and perhaps by Augustine and Jerome as well.16 13 14

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London, British Library, Additional MS 37768. Duke Eberhard of Friuli (c.815–67) and his wife, Gisela (b. 821), daughter of Louis the Pious (778–840), amassed an impressive collection of books, which they left to their children in a will that survives, about which, see Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 245–48; and Paul J.E. ­Kershaw’s discussion of the will, ‘Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian Lay Intellectual,’ in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Patrick Wormald and Janet Nelson (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 77–105. The list is reproduced in French and Latin by Pierre Riché, “La Bibliothèque du Duc Evrard de Frioul,” Textes et documents d’histoire du Moyen âge 2 (1976): 414–16. As listed in a catalogue entered into the so-called Sherborne Pontifical, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 943, fols. 154v-155r. For a superb study of the booklist and its provenance, see Anne-Marie Turcan-Verkerk, “Ouvrages des Dames,” Scriptorium 61/2 (2007): 286–353. While the list does not identify the specific library, there are strong reasons for attribution to Chelles. For an argument in favor of Chelles, see Helene Scheck, “Future Perfect: Reading Temporalities at the Royal Women’s Monastery at Chelles, ca. 660–1050,” Mediaevalia 36/37 (2016): 9–50 at 11–16 and 48–50. Turcan-Verkerk finds Chelles to be a strong possibility, though she entertains other possibilities and leans toward Argenteuil in the end. A copy of Ambrose’s commentary was produced at Quedlinburg in the late 10th c. and survives as Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 4535. See Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales, 446–48; Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” 93–93 and 157. The third volume of Cassiodorus’s commentary survives as Halle, ULB, Quedlinburg Codex 76, fols. 34–329; an independent compilation that forms the first part of Qu. Cod. 76 draws heavily on commentaries by ­Augustine and Jerome

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Study of the Psalms required rather more than rote memorization of the verses, and in fact rote memorization alone would have been almost useless to establishing a common mindset and worldview without some interpretive framework. Early stages of education would have provided a controlled interpretation of the text, thereby imparting one clear sense of what and how the Psalms mean. Formal instruction clarified remote references and enigmatic verses, providing a basic template for understanding the text historically and spiritually. Such studies also laid the groundwork for more ambitious and less programmatic engagement with the scriptural text, preparing individuals to weigh for themselves various, sometimes conflicting, authoritative explications of the Psalms, and perhaps prompted a reassessment of the basic template they adopted as children. A range of evidence survives attesting different levels of psalm study among devout women, lay and religious. Among the laity, the 9th-century countess Dhuoda of Septimania (fl. 824–44) was well versed in scriptures and authoritative ecclesiastical writings; chapter 11 of the Handbook she wrote for her son is devoted to the importance and proper use of the Psalms.17 In addition, in women’s communities we have evidence for the production of study texts. In the 9th century, the scriptorium at Chelles produced a deluxe edition of an epitome of Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms in three volumes for Archbishop Hildebald of Cologne.18 They produced at least one other copy of that epitome, probably in preparation for the deluxe copy, which they likely kept for themselves.19 They also produced a three-volume set of Cassiodorus’s Explanatio psalmorum, two volumes of which survive.20 (about which, see below, pp. 161–75). On Qu. Cod. 76, see Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 185–88 and 421–22; Fliege, Handschriften, 49–50; Möller, Quedlinburger Antiphonar, vol. 1, 43. 17 Dhuoda (fl. 824–44), wife of Bernard of Septimania, a courtier of Louis the Pious (778–840), wrote a handbook for her son William, which demonstrates her high level of ­literacy. For an erudite discussion of her work in its historical context, see Janet Nelson, “Dhuoda,” in Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, ed. Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 106–20. Her Liber manualis has been translated into English most recently by Marcelle Thiébaux as Dhuoda: Handbook for Her Warrior Son; Liber manualis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 18 The copy of Augustine’s commentary exists as Cologne, Dombibliothek, MSS 63, 65, and 67. For attribution to Chelles, see Bernhard Bischoff, “Die kölner Nonnenhandschriften und das Skriptorium von Chelles,” originally published in Karolingische und ottonische Kunst: Werden, Wesen, Wirkung, ed. Hermann Schnitzler (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner ­Verlag, 1957), 395–411, an expanded version of which appeared in Bernhard Bischoff, ­Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1966), 16–34, esp. 21–22. 19 One volume of that set survives as Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS Phillips 1657. 20 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS Latin 12240 and 12241.

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Figure 5.1 Glossed Psalter from Essen. Jena, Thüringer Universitätsund Landesbibliothek, MS fragm. lat. 24, fols. 1v and 2r. Late 11th century. Photograph courtesy of Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena.

A glossed psalter owned by the royal women’s community at Essen—and perhaps produced there—provides useful illustration, despite its fragmentary and poor state (see Figure 5.1).21 Interpretive glosses surround the main 21

Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS fragm. lat. 24. Hartmut Hoffmann provides a detailed discussion of the fragment along with an edition of it in “Nonnenstudien,” 120–52.

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text on all sides in small print, using symbols for clear reference; explanatory glosses are set between the lines. Ownership of such an elaborately glossed psalter in itself suggests some level of active scholarly interest and activity rather than uncritical consumption of psalms along with a pat interpretation for each one. As noted above, the community owned a quadruplex psalter as well and seems also to have produced a psalm commentary in Old Saxon, which found its way to the women’s community at Gernrode.22 In addition, Hartmut Hoffmann believes that this elaborately glossed psalter was not only copied at Essen but composed there.23 Clearly, deep study of the Psalms was encouraged in this and associated communities. As Hoffmann notes in his conclusion, such endeavors appear to be fully in line with women’s interests: Vielleicht ist es nicht von ungefähr, dass sich die Glossenschreiberin gerade an den Psalter gewagt hat, denn an ihm scheinen die gebildeten Frauen besonders interessiert gewesen zu sein. Die Kaiserin Gisela erbat sich bekanntlich in St. Gallen eine Psalmenhandschrift, und das ist nur eines von vielen einschlägigen Zeugnissen. (Perhaps it is not by chance that the glossator ventured to work on the Psalter, since educated women seem to have been particularly interested in it. As is well known, Empress Gisela commissioned a manuscript of the Psalms from the scriptorium at St. Gall, and that is just one of many relevant testimonies.) (26) However exceptional Dhuoda and the Essen glossator may have been, therefore, their compositions should be perceived within rather than beyond the contours of women’s intellectual interests and activity: written tracks reflecting the type of critical and theological engagement characteristic of women of the ruling classes, but otherwise untraceable.

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The 11th-century quadruplex psalter remains at Essen in the Münster Schatzkammer. The Old Saxon translation was catalogued as Bernburg/Dessau, Herzogliche ­Gypskammer, MS Fragment s.n., unfortunately now lost. In addition to Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales ­litteratae, and Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” Rainer Kahsnitz provides a useful overview of 20 ­manuscripts owned and produced at Essen before the 11th century in his study, “The ­Gospel Book of Abbess Svanhild of Essen in the John Rylands Library,” The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 53 (1970/71): 121–66 and 390–96, esp. 131–47. “Nonnenstudien,” 118–26.

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Learning the Psalms: Orthodoxy, Univocality

Deep and early immersion in the Psalter should normalize spiritual as well as interpretive practices, creating a unitary understanding not only of the text and its performance—there being one correct way to recite the text, to sing it, and to interpret it—but of the world, their place in it, and their relationship with God. The book of Psalms provides the foundation for monastic corporatization, in other words. In the early years of study oblates and young ­novitiates would have been urged or required to memorize the Psalms,24 and it would have been through the Psalms that they also learned how to read and speak or recite Latin. In these formative years, when, according to cognition theory, “children use implicit theories to make sense of their experience” and are “absolutist in their approach to epistemology,” the Psalms would become a template for the creation of what Brian Stock calls the “personal institutionalization of learning.”25 They would have favored a single, linear interpretation of the Psalter, in other words, and woven that interpretation into their performance of the text to formulate for themselves a unitary devotional practice. Unification of practices and interpretation is necessarily localized. It would have been impossible to achieve throughout the early medieval Church, but certainly within the community or region that would have been the goal. We need to consider psalms and learning in at least two different developmental stages as well, however, to allow for marked changes in cognition from childhood to adolescence. According to Stock, following a modified version of Piaget, “children use implicit theories to make sense of their experience” and are “absolutist in their approach to epistemology” whereas adolescents begin to engage in argumentation.26 A unitary Christian consciousness formed early on, therefore, would likely become destabilized in adolescence as a ­matter of course. As the mind develops more complex logics and reasoning abilities, the adolescent engages in argumentation and questioning.27 While these insights are helpful in educating our youth, they also help us to understand how the mind of a child nurtured on the psalter a thousand years ago may

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For a useful discussion on memorization of the Psalms, see George Hardin Brown, “The Psalms as the Foundation of Anglo-Saxon Learning,” in The Place of the Psalms in the ­Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. Nancy van Deusen (Albany, NY: State ­University of New York Press, 1999), 1–24. Brian Stock, “Toward Interpretive Pluralism: Literary History and the History of Reading,” New Literary History 39/3 (Summer 2008): 389–413 at 405. Stock, “Toward Interpretive Pluralism,” 405. Stock, “Toward Interpretive Pluralism,” 404–05.

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grow into as well as out of the psalm text as their experiences, circumstances, and cognition shift. It is fair to say that the goal of Christian exegesis of later antiquity and the Middle Ages was to discover the “truth” of the text (mostly from scriptures) moving toward the unitarism of orthodoxy and indoctrinating members of the church into the corporate Christian body; nonetheless, the material ­reality— not least of which were the effects of manuscript culture—insisted on pluralism. Nobody could be sure they were reading the same text on which a particular premise was built or that error had not been introduced into ­primary or secondary text. Even the standardization of scripture was rooted ultimately in the impossibility of arriving at the unequivocal and univocal Word of God in any human language, or at least in any but the original language, whatever that may have been, given the necessity of relying on hand-written texts produced by variously trained scribes from different regional, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds for the dissemination of received wisdom and the imposition of authoritative knowledge or orthodoxy. Even if exact copying could have been guaranteed, reconciling discrepancies among the four orthodox gospels—the fundamental Christian scriptures—was a recurrent necessity because the answers supplied by one authority after another were insufficient for each subsequent generation, each new convert or community, each new reader. In addition, marginal annotations in all types of manuscripts from this period reveal a healthy skepticism and intellectual as well as theological curiosity (or intellectual curiosity about theological texts) on the part of the readers.28 In more advanced study of the text of the Psalms, and especially when more than one authoritative explanation was available, the adolescent mind is forced to reconcile conflicting views, to embrace some readings while eschewing others, to decide on the merit of the various arguments—in other words, to formulate a personal interpretation. As Stock points out, humans “are relentlessly pluralistic as interpreters: unfixed, unstable, and largely unconscious in their motivations, as they set forth on uncharted journeys within their minds.”29

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See, for example, Irene van Renswoude on apocrypha and the handling of controversial material in the early Middle Ages: “The Censor’s Rod. Textual Criticism, Judgment and Canon Formation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” as well as other essays in the collection edited by M.J. Teeuwen and Irene van Renswoude, The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 587–627. Stock, “Toward Interpretive Pluralism,” 407.

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Music and Movement—The Physicality of the Psalms

Mental odysseys may have been prompted as easily in devotional practices as in study, by new combinations of materials, texts, voices, and impressions. As with private and group study, communal and private recitation of psalms would have yielded even greater interpretive possibility, such that the seemingly straight and unitary “book” of Psalms becomes endlessly shifting and generative of a myriad spiritual, intellectual, and emotional experiences prompting individualistic interpretive acts based firmly, nonetheless, in a grounded, unitary understanding of the Psalms. Indeed, the point of monastic education was to ensure proper and effective devotional practices as well as spiritual enlightenment. But liturgy also influences and/or informs intellectual enlightenment. Some may be inspired to write songs, poems, or other devotional texts; others may find the spaces of contemplation allow resolution of intellectual problems. Certainly, associations may be made, if not consciously, between the subject of the morning’s lectio and the object of focus in classroom, library, or scriptorium. Music activates relationships, cognitive control of emotion, and other cognitive responses or connections, and assists memory. Liturgical performance requires the embodiment of psalms as the congregation breathes life into the text. If we are to understand intellectual engagement with the Psalms, therefore, we must imagine the performance of the liturgy. Consider for a moment the mystical experience of chant echoing throughout a stone church at nighttime. In the muted light of flickering flames within the calming coolness of stone walls, incense, tallow, and damp earth hang heavy in the air. Bodies resonate with vibrations of breath, solemn speech, and song reaching through the silence. Just as memorization and full understanding of the complete book of Psalms was necessary for private and communal devotions, those devotions are fundamental to psalm study not only by enhancing the pleasure of the text, but also assisting memory, producing a desire to understand what is daily sung and recited, and triggering new readings through association and intersectionality of psalms and other texts in ritual performance and private prayer. Scholarly appraisals of intellectual culture often artificially segregate ­liturgical texts from scholarly ones. But in the monastic context liturgical and exegetical texts and labor are mutually dependent.30 This is obvious in the case of exegetical treatises, but it is conceivable that other non-scriptural texts may 30

This point has been made about art and architecture as well. Eric Palazzo follows Paul Zumthor in considering liturgy as “a synthesis of the arts” to argue for art as an integral

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also creep into liturgical experience or expression, just as liturgical texts may color the experience of profane texts. Biblical quotations frequently appear in letters and hagiographical texts. That may be an expression of piety, and certainly those references appear in moments of exhortation, but if Mary Carruthers is right, they are also part of the individual’s mindset.31 The same would be true of any non-religious texts committed to memory, whether Virgil, Statius, Martianus Capellanus, or Terence. Finally, the psalm text itself has different functions and is constructed and used accordingly. Following Hraban Maur’s idea of the bible as sacred space that encapsulates sacred spaces, Palazzo argues that: … when sacred books [were] opened during their “activation” in the liturgy, a kind of unveiling, simultaneously symbolic and real, of the sacred Word, was effected, providing access to a ‘sacred space’—the space of revelation …. The book was necessary for the sacramental validity of the ritual, for the liturgical book is not only a practical, utilitarian, object, or an insignia of the liturgical function of the celebrant, but it is above all a ‘sacred space,’ the symbolical meaning of which added to the sacramental validity of the ritual and to the sacred dimension of the liturgy.32 I would argue that both the recitation of the text and the material form of the book produced this effect. In his introduction to The Place of Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, Grover Zinn calls the Divine Office “a thought-world shaped by Psalm texts.”33 Indeed, through priestly guidance interwoven with the familiar verses and vibrations of mystical chant and singing of hymns and punctuated by the repetition of rote affirmations, individuals are tuned to the community and their sacred space as well as to the godhead they beckon and celebrate. This thought-world is shared by all members of the Catholic Christian community as they participate in the sacrament, whereby they are incorporated—­ literally—into the body of Christ.

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part of liturgy rather than ornamental or merely functional. Eric Palazzo, “Art, Liturgy, and the Five Senses in the Early Middle Ages,” Viator 41/1 (2010): 25–56. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Palazzo, “Art, Liturgy, and the Five Senses,” 39. Palazzo cites Hraban’s De locis, in De ­universo (Patrologia Latina [PL] 111, 367–70), where Hraban describes the sacred book as a space in which sacred places are made present and God within them. Grover Zinn, “Introduction,” in van Deusen, The Place of the Psalms, xi-xv.

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If that thought-world is unifying, however, it is neither finite nor absolute in its determination of meaning and truth, but one facet of a complex system. While bodies and building resonate with vibrations of chant, the experience must be deeply personal as well as communally binding: dim lighting, even by day, invites introspection, and each verse must also resonate with private recitations of the Psalms and be informed by personal experience and attitude. And the book of Psalms more than, perhaps, any other scriptural text, invites multiple interpretations because of narratorial ambiguity.34 Is the individual assuming the role of Christ? Of King David? Such ambiguities can be managed through communal performance and textual study, since exegesis has worked to eradicate ambiguities and problems of identification, and the magistra may well have favored and imparted to her students and to the community at large a particular interpretation of any given section within the whole. But a library such as Quedlinburg would have owned and also had access to multiple Psalm commentaries, which means that competing interpretations were accessible to any with the ability and inclination to examine them. What of private study? And what about the individual’s private recitation? What is to prevent the searching adolescent or adult mind from journeying down other paths, entertaining other meanings and resisting a commonly imposed ­interpretation? Since Quedlinburg was a community of royal and noble women, we ought to acknowledge the possibility, at least, that some of those women would have identified with the lamentations of David as king—wronged by his son, anxious about facing an enemy faction, ruminating on wealth and power, seeking redress, while also seeking to please God. Psalms are constantly recontextualized in sacred, human, regional history and personal experience as well as by mode of recitation. Consider the ­difference in tone and effect of an internal thought compared to its utterance; the recounting of a verse of song or poetry silently as compared to a soft vocalization and then to a forceful, public rendition. Private recitation may allow room for rumination; public performance may force the speaker to decide on a particular meaning or interpretation, but it may also prompt unexpected nuances or emotional responses and is therefore not wholly predictable or containable, however much rehearsed or prescripted. Reading or mentally recounting written text must produce different mental and emotional effects 34

Monika Otter, “Entrances and Exits: Performing the Psalms in Goscelin’s Liber ­confortatorius,” Speculum 83 (2008): 283–301; Susan Boynton. “Latin Glosses on the Office Hymns in Eleventh-Century Continental Hymnaries,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001): 1–26; and Boynton, “Prayer as Liturgical Performance in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century ­Monastic Psalters,” Speculum 82/4 (2007): 896–931.

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than speaking that same text aloud; intoning the text rhythmically (chanting) or musically (singing) would offer still more cognitive and emotive variation. Additionally, the liturgical, festal, or personal occasion associated with the reading or recitation will provide different contexts within which to reassess the content. Intimately familiar and ostensibly stable scriptural texts are thus continually recontextualized and revised in a variety of private and public contexts and modes, perennially opening up space for new meanings and sensations to emerge. Communal singing of psalms in a new liturgical context—in relation to a particular feast day, for example, and the accompanying readings or sermon—may reveal a shade of meaning or elicit an emotion not discerned in previous iterations of the text, whether in study or recitation. Personal engagement with the Psalter on a daily basis may yield yet more questions and interpretive possibilities, particularly for those who “psalm wisely,” since they would be attending to both meaning and sensation, thinking, experiencing, reciting psalms fully with heart, mind, and body. And, because music assists memory, impressions formed in singing the liturgy may carry over to other contexts, all of which is more likely to encourage pluralistic rather than ­unitary logics. What we have in the Psalms, therefore, are not linear prescriptions for understanding; nor are they hierarchical. Rather, the multiplicity of exegetical readings together with communal and private recitation of psalms daily, with shifting of voice and multiple histories and allegorical levels produces a “polyphony” of thought, ideas, and images; opens up individual interpretive possibilities; and engenders creative, productive intellect even if individuals did not produce their own exegetical treatises. Indeed, the pluralistic experiences and reception of the Psalms may produce a cacophony or what Piaget would have called “disequilibrium,” which would have prompted accommodation and cognitive development.35 This process would have been intricate and ongoing for all predisposed to pluralistic tendencies. For those uncomfortable with states of cacophony, perhaps they would have heard only the pleasing melodies—focused only on views that coincided with rather than challenged their own—maintaining thereby their unitary world view.

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One of Piaget’s major contributions to the field of cognitive development is the idea of equilibration, an ongoing process of integration and calibration of mental schema in response to biological, experiential, and social factors, events, and stimuli. Jean Piaget, The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual ­Development, trans. Terrance Brown and Kishore Julian Thampy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); originally published as L’equilibration des structures cognitives (Paris: Presses ­universitaires de France, 1975).

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While any community, broadly speaking, would have been affected by the practice and performance of the Psalms, the extent and type of effects would vary according to conditions—gender and social class of the inmates, wealth of the monastery, network of connections, secular as well as monastic, availability of textual and musical resources, size of community, complexity of ritual practices, and so on. Though little evidence for the daily life and workings at St. Servatius exists for the early period, sources indicate that the community consisted of female inmates of social privilege, with children admitted for purposes of education; the women of the community would have been well educated and well connected ecclesiastically as well as politically, with a range of textual and musical resources at their disposal and pressures to maintain well-developed and perhaps even elaborate ritual practices, particularly during royal visitations.36 Active shaping of liturgy and musical forms is attested in surviving liturgical manuscripts that can be traced to St. Servatius.37 Seven lines of the Pentecost introit “Spiritus Domini” are inscribed and neumed on the flyleaf of a homiliary in a hand of the late 10th century, when the manuscript was likely to have been at Quedlinburg, alongside a depiction of Christ on the cross (Figure 5.2).38 Antiphons follow on the reverse, with verses honoring St. Pusinna, the appearance of which locates both manuscript and inscription to Quedlinburg by the turn of the 11th century (Figure 5.3).39 The hymn and antiphons, with slight 36

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Quedlinburg is attested in contemporary sources as a favored site of the Ottonians for matters of state as well as Easter celebration; we can assume a good amount of cross-­ fertilization of form and art, therefore, in the spirit of emulation as well as competition. The Annals of Quedlinburg, probably written at St. Servatius, register numerous royal ­visitations during the reign of Otto I and continuing under his successors, including, for example, a[nno] 991, when Empress Theophanu celebrates Easter at Quedlinburg with her son, Otto III, and foreign dignitaries, as well as in the years 1000; 1002; and 1019. Giese, Annales Quedlinburgensis, 471, 512, 521, and 553. A number of liturgical books owned by Quedlinburg survive, including a sacramentary, an antiphoner, missals, a calendar, and a necrology. Some of these books were annotated, occasionally with neumes, at Quedlinburg; others were produced there in the early to mid 11th century. See Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 287–89; Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” 86–99. Halle, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS Quedlinburg 216, Homiliarium ­Bavariense (Fulda, mid-10th century). Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 430; Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” 90–91. St. Pusinna was venerated at the royal Carolingian women’s community at Herford, which obtained her relics in 860 through the negotiations of the abbess Hadwig. The relics were later removed to the daughter house at Wendhausen and subsequently acquired by St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. The inscription of verses in her honor at the time of this later translation of the saint’s relics allows us to place the manuscript at Quedlinburg.

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Figure 5.2 Neumed hymn. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 216, fol. Ir. Late 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/content/titleinfo/2052423. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

variations, also appear in the Quedlinburg Antiphoner (Berlin, SBPK, MS Mus. 40047), which was produced at St. Servatius in the early to mid 11th century, For a cogent discussion of St. Pusinna, see Katrinette Bodarwé, “Pusinna: Ein Spiegel ­jungfräulichen Lebens,” in Heiliges Westfalen: Heilige, Reliquien, Wallfahrt und Wunder im ­Mittelalter, ed. Gabriele Signori (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2003), 32–44. See also Hartmut Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” 90–91.

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Figure 5.3 Verses honoring St. Pusinna. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 216, fol. Iv. Late 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/content/titleinfo/2052423. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

corroborating that identification and suggesting something of the process of composition by at least one cantrix.40 The antiphoner was produced for 40

The verses honoring St. Pusinna appear in lines 23–25. The verses also appear on folio 129r of the Quedlinburg Antiphonal (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer ­Kulturbesitz,

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the community’s own use and updated in subsequent generations to reflect changes in practice. The community also produced a gradual at the end of the 12th century (Berlin, SBPK, MS Mus. 40078), which indicates continuing scribal activity despite the downturn in the monastery’s fortunes with the rise of the Salian dynasty. 5

Singing Wisely: Study and Song in Quedlinburg Codex 76

Halle, Universitätsbibliothek, Quedlinburg Codex 76, though incomplete, is a hefty volume of 329 folios of psalm commentary that offers a glimpse of more complex noetic responses to the Psalms during study at early Quedlinburg. The manuscript is a composite, formed by attaching a short commentary on the middle psalms to the third volume of Cassiodorus’s Explanatio psalmorum. On the whole, the manuscript is utilitarian in form and style, offering little in the way of ornamentation and no rubrication. The low-quality vellum must have made for difficult writing, and perhaps also discouraged ornamentation. Because the first section (fols. 1–33), which I will call Qu. Cod. 76A, was bound with the third volume of Cassiodorus’s treatise and contains some of his readings of the middle psalms, it has been traditionally classified as an epitome of his second volume. Closer analysis, however, reveals that Qu. Cod. 76A, which treats Psalms 73 to 88, is actually a synthesis of various authorities on the Psalms, including Augustine, Jerome (and Pseudo-Jerome), Bede, and even Eucherius of Lyons, as well as Cassiodorus.41 It appears to be a unique compilation written entirely by one hand. Though the script is, on the whole, well formed and measured, verses are not typically distinguished in any way, and even the distinction between one psalm and the next is not always clearly indicated, which suggests it was intended for personal study, reference, and/or contemplation. It must have been left unprotected for some time before being bound with the Cassiodoran text, as it has suffered trauma from exposure: its opening is barely legible and some folios are missing from the beginning;42 it

41

42

MS Mus. 40047), about which, see Hartmut Möller, Das Quedlinburger Antiphonar (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Mus. ms. 40047), 3 vols. (Tutzing: Hans ­Schneider, 1990), esp. 1.21, 32–38. For descriptions of the manuscript, see Jutta Fliege, Die Handschriften der ehemaligen Stifts- und Gymnasialbibliothek Quedlinburg in Halle (Halle: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, 1982), 49–50; and, more recently, Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales ­litteratae, 421–22. Quire signatures have been trimmed, so it is not possible to guess how much has been lost at the beginning.

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may once have contained commentary addressing all, not just some, of the middle Psalms (51–100), though it seems to end naturally with discussion of Psalm 88, leaving a good amount of blank space on the page, so perhaps that was its original end point; the starting point remains an open question. The third volume of Cassiodorus’s commentary (Qu. Cod. 76B) begins on fol. 34r and continues through to his closing prayer on fol. 329, followed immediately by the beginning of the Vigil for the Ascension of the Lord in the same hand. Many hands have contributed to its production, most of which are ­neither graceful nor regular, and they switch quickly at times, perhaps to meet a tight deadline.43 Nevertheless, the scribes follow Cassiodorus’s commentary closely and retain the marginal symbols employed by him (though many have been lost to trimming), but without the ornamentation found in more deluxe copies, such as that produced at Chelles.44 All three volumes of his treatise were probably part of the St. Servatius collection at one point.45 That the ­volume was preserved in such a state and continued to be used indicates its continuing value to the community. I would like to suggest that both parts of the composite manuscript were produced by canonesses at St. Servatius and that the compilation was ­composed there as well by one of the canonesses. Based on script style and names inscribed in the margins of the manuscript, scholars are fairly certain that both parts originated in the same scriptorium somewhere in Saxony or southern Germany, though there is not enough evidence to locate them more precisely. Quedlinburg has not been ruled out, but there is nothing to secure that ascription, since both parts of the composite manuscript were copied in the 10th century, before any texts that can be certainly or probably ascribed to Quedlinburg were produced, so there is neither paleographic nor codicological basis for such a claim.46

43 44

45 46

Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales, 188. On the manuscript tradition, see James Halporn, “Methods of Reference in Cassiodorus,” Journal of Library History 16/1 (Winter 1981): 71–91, esp. 73–78 and plates 1 and 2, displaying the Weissenburg and Munich keys. See also Ursula Hahner, Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar: Sprachliche ­Untersuchungen (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1973). Loss of volumes is easier to imagine than a monastic library settling for commentary on just the last 50 psalms. The script is a Caroline minuscule consistent with what one might imagine for 10th-c. Quedlinburg, but we have no surviving documents with which to compare. In addition, the 11th-c. manuscripts attributed to Quedlinburg were assembled differently, with hair and flesh sides alternating. See Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales, 185.

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Nevertheless, the quality and nature of these manuscripts are enough to suggest a Quedlinburg origin.47 They seem to have been produced quickly using lower-quality vellum with many holes, unevenly ruled, and copied in irregular script shifting frequently among several hands, most of which are inexperienced and none of which is especially polished. It is difficult to imagine one manuscript of that quality being gifted to or commissioned by the community, let alone two or more. These are the kind of utility volumes that would be produced for use in-house, and there is no reason Quedlinburg could not or would not have produced such volumes in the decades after its founding, especially given the importance of Psalm commentaries to spiritual and intellectual development. That the method of assembly differed from 11th-century practice can be explained simply by the shift from insular to continental as the scriptorium developed a house style. Readers’ inscriptions attest usage of both parts of the manuscript long after their production or acquisition as a regular part of psalm study. Names as well as notes and corrections appear in the margins: a female name “uuendiburc” on folio 47r, and two male names, “Uualdulfus” (33v; see Figure 5.6) and “aobraht” (321v). The male names suggest that visitors used the library, or the book was lent out. Bodarwé believes the name “aobraht” (fol. 321v) is a scribal inscription, but I am not convinced.48 It does come at the end of a quire, and the letter forms resemble the main script of that section, but seven letters in very small script make for a skewed sample at best. While I can see similarities, the forms are not identical: the ‘o’ and ‘a’ are much rounder than in the main script; the ascenders are wedged at the top, not rounded; the top left and right strokes of the ‘r’ are symmetrical; and the ‘t’ has a very short crossbar. Even if it were a scribal signature, though, that would not preclude Quedlinburg origin of the manuscript, as Bodarwé also points out.49 What the male names do indicate is some sort of sharing between male and female communities, a reality of Ottonian Saxony that is increasingly apparent.50 A contemporary inscription is worth mentioning because it speaks to learning and book production. Between the titular lines of the frontispiece for the Cassiodoran volume (34r) is part of a verse: Vidi virginem fle[n]tem et 47 48 49

50

Fliege, Handschriften, 49; Hartmut Möller, Quedlinburger Antiphonar, vol. 1, 43. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales, 187–88. Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales, 188 and n. 548, where Bodarwé points to the example of Essen, about which, see Bodarwé, “Kontakte zweier Konvente: Essen und Werden im Spiegel ihrer Handschriften,” in Bücherschätze der rheinischen Kulturgeschichte, ed. Heinz ­Finger (Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press, 2001), 49–68, esp. 56–61. See also Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” 153–59. Hoffmann, “Nonnenstudien,” 153–59.

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Figure 5.4 Verse riddle, fol. 34r. Halle (Saale), Universitätsund Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn /urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

mur[murantem viae eius sunt semitae vitae (“I saw a girl crying and murmuring; [the paths of life are hers]”).51 (Figure 5.4). Like many pen trials, this is a ­familiar school verse, variants of which survive elsewhere.52 The inscription seems to have been penned by an experienced scribe. If this was, as I think, written by a woman, the riddle may be about more than a pen applying ink 51

52

From Pseudo-Bede, “Excerptiones patrum, collectanea, flores ex diversis, questiones et parabolae,” PL 94: 539D–560A at 546C. The collection has been recently edited and translated by Martha Bayless and Michael Lapidge: Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 14 (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, 1998). In St. Gall MS 196, for example, and among the Lorsch riddles in Rome, Biblioteca ­Apostolica Vaticana, MS Palatini latini 1753. See Frederick Tupper, Jr., “Riddles of the Bede Tradition. The ‘Flores’ of Pseudo-Bede,” in Modern Philology 2 (1904), 561–72, esp. 561–62 and 565.

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(shedding tears) to a page, scratching (murmuring) as it does so; it may also refer directly to the scribe, a virgin or nun weeping and murmuring as she labors to produce the script on the page. The words and sentences (paths of life) are hers. In short, this may be a coded claim of accomplishment (as well as frustration), a scribal signature of sorts. Since Qu. Cod. 76A appears to be unique, I’d like to consider more closely what its production and use might reveal about the community of canonesses at Quedlinburg. Form and content both suggest a compilation for individual or communal use rather than wide-spread dissemination (another reason I believe it was produced at St. Servatius, where it remained). Paucity of ornamentation, irregular titles, complete lack of a formal script hierarchy, rubrication, or other helpful visual cues, as well as a lack of even chapter numbering, offer little to guide an uninformed reader through the content. Scriptural quotations, whether from psalms or elsewhere, are indistinct, with the exception of the opening verse of a given psalm; the text, too, is sparse in contextualizing and signaling shifts between the interpretations it gathers together. There is no naming of authorities in text, title, or marginal abbreviation. It is clearly written for personal use or for an audience well versed in the scriptures, commentaries, and local idiom or concerns. The lack of formal convention should not suggest lax or indifferent composition: this is a carefully curated, fluent compilation of major authorities. Such compilations were not uncommon and served teacher and homilist as well as scholar. Bruno of Würzburg produced a similar compendium in the early 11th century, though that one probably was designed for dissemination and remained popular enough to have merited an early print edition with several reprints. And Cassiodorus’s Expositio Psalmorum, after all, is more a compilation than an original commentary. That a canoness of St. Servatius may have authored such a volume fits in with our current understanding of intellectual life at the community. Quedlinburg developed a sizeable library with advanced texts; by the turn of the 11th century it had developed a scriptorium capable of producing deluxe manuscripts, such as the Otto-Adelheid gospel book (c.1000), and liturgical books, including the Quedlinburg antiphoner (c.1025), which was not simply copied but composed at St. Servatius. The Annals of Quedlinburg and at least one of the two lives of Queen Mathilde was almost certainly composed there. And Hazecha, treasurer at St. Servatius during the second half of the 10th century, authored a life of St. Christopher in verse.53 53

We know this only through a letter from Walter of Speyer to Hazecha, where he laments the unfortunate loss of her poem, which she had sent to their mutual teacher, Balderich of Speyer. See Susann El Kholi, Lektüre in Frauenkonventen des ostfränkisch-deutschen

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I would suggest that the compiler of this text is a scholar on the order of the Essen glossator discussed above. In her selection, collation, and presentation of authoritative interpretations of psalm verses, she distills perspectives most pertinent to her interests and needs and those of her community. In terms of presentation, ornamentation is sparse, as in the Cassiodoran ­volume. Enlarged or embellished initials or titles therefore make certain psalms stand out more than they otherwise might if ornamentation were more prominent and presentation more formulaic: on folio 3r, for example, a large, winged V opens Psalm 76 “Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi”; a very large, stylized Q bursts into the margin on 14r as it marks the opening of Psalm 79, “Qui regis israhel intende”; and a Deus monogram appears on folio 19r, opening Psalm 90, “Deus, quis similis erit tibi.” The most striking example of ornamentation in the compilation (and the entire composite manuscript) appears on folio 21r, which marks the opening of Psalm 83, “Quam dilecta tabernacula tua domine uirtutum” [How beloved are your tabernacles, Lord of Virtues] with a large, ornate initial Q (see ­Figures 5.5 A and 5.5B). Here, the inked lines inside the circle of the Q transform the initial into a stained-glass window, appropriate to this particular psalm on the tabernacles and perhaps reflecting its use in the rite for the dedication of a church. It is tempting to imagine the design of the initial modeled on a church or abbey window familiar to the author and the readership—maybe even a window gracing St. Servatius. Fashioned thus, the ornate initial serves as a portal in at least two ways. Those who discern a stained-glass window in the initial may find themselves mentally drawn into their place of worship, even as they consider the meaning of this psalm from their seat in the library. There is, perhaps, some irony, however. While the Q recalls the beauty of the window in its material context, the excerpt from Jerome that follows rejects earthly wealth and glory—and he specifically names the glory that comes with building churches—in favor of divine prosperity through a wealth of virtues: Alii desiderant possessiones, alii saeculi istius diuitias, alii parare in hoc saeculo ecclesias et gloriam aliquam habere apud homines, mihi Reiches vom 8. Jahrhundert bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1997), 115 and n. 818. Some have taken Hazecha’s connection to Balderich as evidence that she attended the Cathedral school at Speyer, but El Kholi notes that, although the letter provides important evidence for women’s learning, literacy, and authorial activity, it is not evidence that Hazecha attended the cathedral school; it is, however, possible that Hazecha received private lessons from Balderich. Walther of ­Speyer’s letter is edited by Karl Strecker, MGH Poetae Latini Medii Aevi, 5, Die Ottonenzeit, pt. 1 (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1937; rpt. Munich, 1978), 63–64. St. Christopher was an important saint in the diocese of Halberstadt, to which Quedlinburg belonged.

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Figure 5.5a Ornate initial Q. Halle (Saale), Universitätsund Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76, fol. 21r. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/ urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

Figure 5.5b Ornate initial Q, detail. Halle (Saale), ­Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek SachsenAnhalt, Qu. Cod. 76, fol. 21r. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/ hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

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hoc solum desiderium est, uidere aeterna tabernacula. Illa mihi dilecta sunt tabernacula, ubi congregatio uirtutum est non uitiorum.54 (Some desire possessions, others, riches in the world, others prepare churches in this world so that they may have glory among humans; my sole desire is to see the eternal tabernacles. These are my favorite, where there is a collection of virtues, not vices.) The compiler seems not to be using Jerome to condemn the practice of building beautiful churches, but rather to keep the true function of the church in view and remind the reader of their common goal. Here, too, the initial provides a figurative portal as Jerome’s textual cue guides the reader to look up through the window of Psalm 83 and “uidere aeterna tabernacula” (to see the eternal tabernacles). The complexity of the compiler’s creative interpretive intervention becomes apparent when tracing the compiler’s treatment of the various sources. Rather than listing one authoritative statement after another on a given psalm or restricting commentary to one source for each psalm, the compiler blends sources naturally, paraphrasing or altering forms as needed to suture the observations together effectively, sometimes switching from one source to another mid-sentence. In her explication of Psalm 84, for example, the compiler of Qu. Cod. 76A draws just about equally on Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Jerome.55 In her first move in this sequence, the compiler transitions quietly and breathlessly from her treatment of Psalm 83 to Psalm 84. She ends the first with Cassiodorus’s list of beatitudes at the end of Psalm 83:13, but without any punctuation between the concluding beatitude and the opening clause (in this compilation) of Psalm 84 commentary and without even providing the titular verse.56 There is also no change of script style, size, or color to signal the shift in focus, effectively conjoining the two psalms: Beatus enim est quis peni suam in aeterna felicita te posuerit; beatus cuius bona non occidunt, sed postremo perfecte beatus est cuius spes in ­domino iugiter perseverat hoc tamen in summa commonitione ­sufficiat: hunc psalmum de illis dici qui iam domino saluator ­incraemente crediderunt. De cuius primo aduentu praesens psalmus tertius adprobatur. 54 55 56

fol. 21r–v. Hieronymus, Tractatus in Librum Psalmorum, ed. Germanus Morin, Anecdota Maredsolana 3/2 (1897): 87. Folio 23r, l. 9, to 24v, l. 1. About 268 words come from Jerome, Tractatus in Librum Psalmorum, ed. Morin, 92–97; 265 from Cassiodorus, Expositio Psalmorum, PL 70: 606–10; and 260 from Augustine, Enarrationes psalmorum, PL 37: 1069–81. “In finem filiis Core Psalmus” (Up to the end, a psalm for the sons of Korah).

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[(on Ps. 83:13) That person is blessed who has placed his hope in eternal happiness; he is blessed whose possessions do not fade; but finally he is perfectly blessed whose hope in the Lord continues unbroken. (Ps. 84:1) Let this brief intimation suffice: this psalm concerns those who have already put their belief with pure minds in the Lord Savior. This is known to be the third psalm concerning the first coming.]57 Commentary on Psalm 84 begins at “hoc tamen in summa commonitione sufficiat” (let this brief intimation suffice), though it could just as easily refer to the blessings with which the compiler concludes discussion of Psalm 83; “hunc psalmum” of the following statement is similarly ambiguous, since neither the psalm number nor the opening verse is given. The compiler of Qu. Cod. 76A is extremely efficient in her synthesis of the major sources, as her treatment of the subsequent verses show. Passing over Cassiodorus’s “Divisio psalmi,” as she usually does, the compiler finally signals the new psalm as she presents the second verse (the opening to the psalm itself) with a large initial B followed by Roman capitals for the first part of the verse: BENEDIXISTI DOMINE TERRAM TUAM. (Lord, you have blessed your land.) Her treatment of this psalm exemplifies the compiler’s method generally and demonstrates her facility with psalms and other scriptural texts, as well as the commentaries available to her as she moves fluently between different sources and scriptural verses, reworking as necessary to achieve a synthesis of sources. Rather than tracing her maneuvers verse by verse, two examples should suffice. Her treatment of verses 84:4–5 offers what appears to be an original reading sandwiched between a short statement by Jerome and a brief concluding observation by Augustine, eschewing once again all comment by Cassiodorus. In doing so, she omits the detailed biblical story of Adam and Eve in favor of the larger points that 1) God is merciful and 2) Jesus Christ did not sacrifice himself so that divine retribution could last eternally: “Deus salutaris noster,” quia “non est” nobis “in alio aliquo salus” nisi in te. “Ne in aeternum irasceris nobis”:58 optat propheta Christum uenisse 57

58

Qu cod 76, fol. 23r. I have provided some punctuation for the modern reader; the compiler’s use of punctuation is sparse and ambiguous at best. The last clause stands apart only because its first word is capitalized. Compare to commentary on Ps. 83:13–84:1 in Cassiodorus, Explanatio psalmorum, PL 70: 605–06. Trans. P.G. Walsh, Cassiodorus: ­Explanation of the Psalms (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), vol. 2, 320 and 321. In these first clauses, the compiler strings together snippets from a Gallican variant of Psalm 84:5, Acts 4:12, and an antiphonal recasting of the first clause of Psalm 84:6 [“­Numquid in aeternum irasceris nobis” (Will you be angry with us forever?]) into plea rather than question.

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ne super humanum genus in aeternum iusta mansisset uindicta quam uindicta irae nomine significauit.59 (God (you are) our salvation, because there is no salvation for us in anyone except in you. Be not angry with us forever: the prophet prayed that Christ would come, lest the just vendetta over the human race would persist into eternity, since “vendetta” signified in the name of anger.) A more subtle intervention illustrates the compiler’s delicacy of technique. She uses Augustine first to parse 84:10: “Misericordia et veritas obviaverunt sibi: iustitia et pax osculat[a]e sunt se,” but then offers the Old Latin version of the last clause, “… iustitia et pax conplexae sunt se,” before turning to Jerome’s reading of the verse, even though he uses the same version as Augustine. She deliberately offers, therefore, two different translations of the verse as well as two different perspectives on it. She may have been familiar with and partial to the Old Latin version through liturgical use, but then why not simply substitute it for Augustine’s? Her approach as compiler has been to streamline her selections and eliminate redundancy whenever possible, and there is, after all, little difference between “osculate sunt” (they kissed) and “complexae sunt” (they embraced). Her use of both must be intentional, therefore. The juxtaposition of the two versions, where peace and justice both kiss and embrace within a compressed treatment of the entire verse—not even half the length of Cassiodorus’s explication of it—amplifies the image and further adumbrates the importance of the union of peace and justice. Even if compiler and scribe are not the same person, the scribe, too, demonstrates creative intellectual engagement. An interesting paratextual example appears on folio 33v, where a scribal pen trial expresses utter devotion to God: super mensem [sic] meam et uuestem dominus deus meus (the Lord, my God, is at my table and over [my] garments) (Figure 5.6).60 The sentiment may have been prompted by the text she had just inscribed. On Psalm 88:49, “Quis est homo qui vivit et non videbit mortem?” (What person is there who lives 59 60

Qu Cod 76, fol. 23r–v. The final clause of the passage, “quam uindicta … significauit,” derives from Augustine, Enarrationes, Ps. 78, c.8 (on verse 78.5): “sed nomine irae ­intellegitur vindicta iniquitatis.” PL 36: 1014. Folio 33v, which had been left mostly blank after the conclusion of the discussion of Psalm 88:49, preserves a male signature, Uualdulfus, as well, which Fliege thought was a scribal signature. On the basis of script style and ink color, however, Bodarwé points out that the name was entered later. Fliege, Handschriften, 49; Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae, 175–76. The signature therefore records the later use of the book by a male reader, perhaps a confessor or canon serving the community or simply someone who borrowed the book.

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Figure 5.6 Pen trial, fol. 33v. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital .bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn /urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

and does not see death?), Pseudo-Jerome says Scio quia nullus homo carneus evadit mortem neque animam suam servabit ab inferis sed novi quia deus sub velamento carnis latebat (I know that no mortal human escapes death, and I know that the soul would not be saved from hell had God not concealed himself under the veil of flesh).61 In her verse, the scribe captures the mystery of the ­Eucharist whereby the soul sacrifices itself to God and, in service to God receives the body and blood of Christ, so the Lord is literally at her table, and she dons the divinity as her garment, just as God veiled divinity in human flesh. In this way, she not only takes God into her body and her heart, as the mystical union is typically expressed, but receives an external component as well, a shield of divine protection.

61

Ps.-Jerome, Breviarium in Psalmos, PL 26: 821D–1270B, at 1091B.

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While meaningful in itself, the verse also brings together two biblical verses and moments, intentionally or not: Luke 22:30, “Ut edatis et bibatis super mensam meam in regno meo” (… So that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom) and Psalm 21:19: “Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea, et super vestem meam miserunt sortem” (They divided my garments, and on my garments cast lots), which also appears in both Matthew 27:35 and John 19:24. In this strange coupling, the scribe underscores the connection between the Psalms and the Gospels, demonstrating how thoroughly immersed she is in both. The economy with which she does so heightens the drama of the divine Christian mystery: the generosity of God’s mercy contrasting the utter lack of compassion displayed by his ignorant tormentors, in the very moment he makes the greatest sacrifice for their salvation. 6 Reception Whether or not the compilation was composed and/or copied at Quedlinburg, its use there for generations after its first appearance reveals something about the complex use of psalms in the community and the importance of psalms to women’s intellectual and spiritual development in early medieval Europe more generally. Marks to guide oral recitation appear throughout, for example; corrections, pen trials, annotations, and a few names still can be found in the body of the text and in the margins, despite long and active use and harshly trimmed margins. Although not as plentiful as they once were due to fading, erasure, or trimming, marginal markings reveal points of especial interest: an X on folio 2v singles out a passage by Augustine on Psalm 76, for example; marginal “scapulis” at the top of 19v and 20r may connect the psalm under discussion (Ps. 82) to Psalm 90:4 or a chant or response based on that verse;62 Jerome’s discussion of Psalm 84 on folio 24r is marked by three symbols: a large cross, a double X, and an “rq” (“require”) in the right-hand margin; and near the top of folio 29v, exposition by Pseudo-Jerome on Psalm 88:2 is marked for recitation or memorization with a marginal ς. One example may serve to illustrate the sort of cross-fertilization generated by an encounter with the study text. On folio 23v a marginal A appears alongside Psalm 84:8, “Non in aeternum irascaris nobis ….” (Will you be angry with us forever?) (Figure 5.7). Just a little lower on the page, a cross marks the verse “Audiam quid loquatur in me dominus deus” (Let me hear what the Lord God 62

Psalm 90:4, “Scapulis suis obumbrabit tibi, et sub pennis ejus sperabis.” (He shall defend you with his wings, and you will be safe under his feathers.)

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Figure 5.7 Fol. 23v. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://­ digital.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

speaks in me). The A may be an affective response to the question at hand or to a brief passage from Augustine’s remarks on that verse, which concludes just above that place and informs the discussion of verses 84:8–10 on this

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Figure 5.8 Marginal detail, fol. 9r. Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek.uni -halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

page.63 It could, therefore, mark something the reader wished to commit to memory or to copy into her own personal florilegium. Alternatively, the A may denote “Antiphon” or a liturgical feast like “Adventus” or “Assumptio” rather than “Augustine,” marking verse 84:8 for inclusion in a liturgical book, like the 11th-century Quedlinburg Antiphonal or the gradual produced there toward the end of the 12th century.64 The cross is similarly ambiguous: it may inspire personal resolve, prompt private rumination, or single out the verse for inclusion in a florilegium, sermon, lesson, or chant. Affective responses are voiced most audibly in two places. On folio 9r a reader exclaims “amen, amen, amen” at Psalm 77:35–37, “Et rememorati sunt quia Deus adiutor est eorum · et Deus excelsus redemptor eorum est” (And they remembered that God was their helper and the most high God their redeemer) and Pseudo-Jerome’s commentary on those verses (Figure 5.8).65 On folio 29r, 63 64 65

“Fuit prima generatio mortalis de ira tua; erit altera generatio immortalis de misericordia tua.” (The first generation was made mortal through your anger; the second generation will be made immortal through your mercy.) Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Mus. 40047 and MS Mus. 40048, respectively. Pseudo-Jerome, Breviarium PL 26:1051B.

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Figure 5.9 Marginal detail, fol. 29r. Halle (Saale), Universitätsund Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 76. 10th century. Photograph at https://digital.bibliothek .uni-halle.de/hd/urn/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:3-53456. Open access: Creative Commons, 3.0 Deutschland

the reader virtually bursts out in song as Pseudo-Jerome’s explication of Psalm 87:16 cues the reader, perhaps, to sing Psalm 11:8, “Tu, Domini,” at least in her mind, marking both the words and music in the right-hand margin just as Jerome is explaining that that psalm prefigures Christ, who was exalted on the cross, humiliated in the sepulcher, and troubled in death (Figure 5.9).66 Even if the annotation reflects liturgical planning or composition rather than an emotive response, the affect remains as a prompt to subsequent readers, who may associate “Tu domini” with any number of verses, hymns, or prayers. The liturgy is also invoked, albeit in a different way, as “Tu Domini” begins Cassiodorus’s final Oratio at the end of the manuscript on folio 329r, with text on the Vigil for the Ascension of the Lord following immediately for a few lines before the manuscript ends. 66

Pseudo-Jerome, Breviarium PL 26:1086D.

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7 Coda The compilation preserved as the first part of Quedlinburg Codex 76 (Qu. Cod. 76A) provides a material witness to some of the hermeneutic activity ­regularly performed by the canonesses at Quedlinburg in the early Middle Ages. Here, we find evidence of personal institutionalization as well as individualized thinking encouraged by advanced study, life experience, exposure to and immersion in competing interpretations offered in homiletic forms of explication and exhortation, as well as scripted exegetical analysis. Both aspects of development—communal and individual—are enhanced by personal contemplation, rumination, and recitation in a perpetually shifting context and in dialogue with communal performances and both the mystical and social experiences they produce. In its composition, Qu. Cod. 76A reveals one individual’s mapping of the psalms and authoritative interpretations of them. If I am correct that the compilation was composed by a woman, this example attests that, although women may have been discouraged from composing exegetical treatises, their training nonetheless permitted and even prompted them to perform their own personal and communal interpretive acts. The material object, however, is not necessary to imagine that women—especially those well connected and well educated—must have composed mentally and, probably, orally, their own explications as a matter of course and especially when their views—conditioned by personal and social experience—differed from or enlarged those of the Fathers and contemporary male authorities—confessor, priest, bishop.67 This particular codex reveals one possible combination of sources and begins to offer a glimpse into one individual’s mapping of the Psalms, but it remains only a framework of a partial perspective, an approach to the Psalms that is, like other such products, necessarily static and finite, based as it is in one person’s experience and intellectual capacity and inclinations at a particular moment in the history of that community. The majority of interpretive work was performed off-page and individually by each member of the community (to different degrees, of course), and therefore remains largely private, ­irretrievable, and exponentially richer.

67

Stock, “Toward Interpretive Pluralism,” 406: “The way in which we learn to read … and, in particular, whether our reading favors diversity of interpretation or its opposite, will act as a model for the patterning of behavior in other areas. Also, there may be a combined cognitive and historical foundation for aberrant social behaviors that are associated with ethnic, religious, and geographical communities at variance with accepted norms.”

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Internally, the community may have continued developing like-minded thinking about portions of the Psalms, and they may have brought their understanding of the wisdom of the Psalms to other texts, other practices, other endeavors. Individual interpretations, even if they never left written traces, must have informed discussion and debate within the community as well. Discursive hermeneutics would have helped build communal identity. And if only indirectly, individual and communal insights and perspectives may well have shaped further, more formal interpretive acts by their male counterparts, whether to address deviations from an accepted and acceptable norm, to adjust that norm and shift interpretive patterns, or even to adopt a compelling interpretation. Although intellectual culture is typically construed as work performed in library or classroom and generally excludes liturgical books and practice, Benedict and the Psalmist’s exhortation, psallite sapienter! reminds us that intellectual pursuits are enmeshed with spiritual ones, and that the life of the monastery cannot be filtered out of the life of the mind. Indeed, intellectual and spiritual practices amplify one another. While the goal of study—in monastic communities at least—was clearly to enhance spiritual engagement and ensure correct observance and thereby a steady course toward salvation, meaningful devotional acts, such as personal recitation and communal chanting of psalms, enriched intellectual pursuits and activated individual creative intellects and critical perspectives. Diligent study and musical practice and performance open different avenues of charismatic and creative thinking as well as sensory and emotional response—forms of cognition rarely verbalized or rendered into any sort of coherent narrative, but an integral part of intellectual culture, nonetheless. Even if we have no record of those cognitive reflexes and cannot find named authors and original compositions—typically the mark of intellectual culture—in the leaves of Qu. Cod. 76A, recognizing traces of liturgical, performative, and other aspects of monastic life and space in those leaves reminds us that those intangibles are vital aspects of intellectual development and allows us to sense those critical and creative impulses as they resonate on the membranes of the codex. Works Cited Ambrose. Explanatio psalmi. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) 64. Ed. Michael Petschenig. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1919. Augustine. Enarrationes psalmorum. Patrologia cursus completus. Series Latina (PL) 36. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris, 1845.

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Benedict of Nursia. RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English. Ed. and trans. Timothy Fry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1981. Kindle edition. Bischoff, Bernhard. “Die kölner Nonnenhandschriften und das Skriptorium von Chelles.” In Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte. Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1966. 16–34. Originally published in Karolingische und ottonische Kunst: Werden, Wesen, Wirkung. Ed. Hermann Schnitzler. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1957. 395–411. Bodarwé, Katrinette. “Kontakte zweier Konvente: Essen und Werden im Spiegel ihrer Handschriften.” In Bücherschätze der rheinischen Kulturgeschichte. Ed. Heinz Finger. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press, 2001. 49–68. Bodarwé, Katrinette. “Pusinna: Ein Spiegel jungfräulichen Lebens.” In Heiliges Westfalen: Heilige, Reliquien, Wallfahrt und Wunder im Mittelalter. Ed. Gabriele Signori. Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2003. 32–44. Bodarwé, Katrinette. Sanctimoniales litteratae: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg. Münster: Aschendorff, 2004. Boynton. Susan. “Latin Glosses on the Office Hymns in Eleventh-Century Continental Hymnaries.” The Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001): 1–26. Boynton. Susan. “Prayer as Liturgical Performance in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastic Psalters.” Speculum 82/4 (2007): 896–931. Brown, George Hardin. “The Psalms as the Foundation of Anglo-Saxon Learning.” In The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages. Ed. Nancy van Deusen. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 1–24. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cassiodorus. Explanatio psalmorum. Patrologia cursus completus, Series Latina (PL) 70. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris, 1844. Cols. 9–1056. Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms. Trans. P.G. Walsh. 3 vols. New York: Paulist Press, 1991. Deusen, Nancy van, ed. The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. Dhuoda. Handbook for Her Warrior Son: Liber manualis. Trans. Marcelle Thiébaux. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. El Kholi, Susann. Lektüre in Frauenkonventen des ostfränkisch-deutschen Reiches vom 8. Jahrhundert bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts. Würzburg: Königshausen & ­Neumann, 1997. Fliege, Jutta. Die Handschriften der ehemaligen Stifts- und Gymnasialbibliothek Quedlinburg in Halle. Halle: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, 1982. Geary, Patrick. Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

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Giese, Martina, ed. Die Annales Quedlinburgensis. MGH SS rer. Germ. 72. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004. Hahner, Ursula. Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar: Sprachliche Untersuchungen. Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik- und Renaissance-Forschung 13 (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1973). Halporn, James. “Methods of Reference in Cassiodorus.” Journal of Library History 16/1 (Winter 1981): 71–91. Hieronymus. Tractatus in Librum Psalmorum, ed. Germanus Morin, Anecdota Maredsolana 3/2 (Maredsoli: Apud Editorem, 1897). Hieronymus. Epistulae. CSEL 54–56. Ed. Isidore Hilberg. 1910. 2nd ed. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Science, 1996. Hoffmann, Hartmut. “Nonnenstudien.” In Harrmut Hoffmann. Schreibschulen und Buchmalerei: Handschriften und Texte des 11. Jahrhunderts. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2012. 37–159. Houts, Elisabeth van. Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Hraban Maur. “De Locis.” In De universo. PL 111. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1852. Cols. 367–70. Innes, Matthew. “Keeping It in the Family: Women and Aristocratic Memory, 700–1200.” In Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300. Ed. Elisabeth van Houts. New York: Longman, 2001. 17–35. Kahsnitz, Rainer. “The Gospel Book of Abbess Svanhild of Essen in the John Rylands Library.” The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 53 (1970/71): 121–66 and 390–96. Kershaw, Paul J. E. “Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian Lay Intellectual.” In Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World. Ed. Francis Wormald and Janet Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 77–105. LeClerq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. Trans. Catharine Misrahi. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. Originally published as L’Amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: initiation aux auteurs monastiques du moyen âge. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1957. McKinnon, James. Music in Early Christian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. McKitterick, Rosamond. The Carolingians and the Written Word. Cambridge: C ­ ambridge University Press, 1989. Möller, Hartmut. Das Quedlinburger Antiphonar (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Mus. ms. 40047). 3 vols. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1990. Nelson, Janet. “Dhuoda.” In Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World. Ed. Francis Wormald and Janet Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 106–20.

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Otter, Monika. “Entrances and Exits: Performing the Psalms in Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius.” Speculum 83 (2008): 283–301. Palazzo, Eric. “Art, Liturgy, and the Five Senses in the Early Middle Ages.” Viator 41/1 (2010): 25–56. Piaget, Jean. The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of I­ ntellectual Development. Trans. Terrance Brown and Kishore Julian Thampy. ­Chicago: ­University of Chicago Press, 1985. Originally published as L’equilibration des structures ­cognitives. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975. Pseudo-Bede. Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae. Ed and trans. Martha Bayless and Michael Lapidge. Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 14. Dublin: Dublin Institute of Advanced S­ tudies, 1998. Pseudo-Bede. “Excerptiones patrum, collectanea, flores ex diversis, questiones et parabolae.” PL 94. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1850. Cols. 539D–560A. Ps.-Jerome. Breviarium in Psalmos. PL 26. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1850. Cols. 821D–1270B. Renswoude, Irene van. “The Censor’s Rod. Textual Criticism, Judgment and Canon Formation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.” In The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages. Practices of Reading and Writing. Ed. M. J. Teeuwen and Irene van Renswoude. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018. 587–627. Riché, Pierre. “La Bibliothèque du Duc Evrard de Frioul.” Textes et documents d’histoire du Moyen âge 2 (1976): 414–16. Scheck, Helene. “Future Perfect: Reading Temporalities at the Royal Women’s Monastery at Chelles, ca. 660–1050.” Mediaevalia 36/37 (2016): 9–50. Scheck, Helene. “Queen Mathilda of Saxony and the Founding of Quedlinburg: Women, Memory, and Power.” Historical Reflections 35 (Winter 2009): 21–36. Stock, Brian. “Toward Interpretive Pluralism: Literary History and the History of Reading.” New Literary History 39/3 (Summer 2008): 389–413. Strunk, Oliver, ed. Source Readings in Music History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. Toswell, Mary Jane. The Anglo-Saxon Psalter. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Tupper, Jr., Frederick. “Riddles of the Bede Tradition. The ‘Flores’ of Pseudo-Bede.” Modern Philology 2 (1904): 561–72. Turcan-Verkerk, Anne-Marie. “Ouvrages des Dames.” Scriptorium 61/2 (2007): 286–353. Walther of Speyer. Letter to Hazecha. MGH Poetae Latini Medii Aevi 5. Die ­Ottonenzeit, pt. 1. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1937. 63–64 (repr. Munich, 1978). Werminghoff, Albert, ed. Institutio sanctimonialium Aquisgranensis. MGH Leges. Concilia aevi karolini 2. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1906. 421–56. Wormald, Patrick, and Janet Nelson, eds. Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Zinn, Grover. “Introduction.” In The Place of Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages. Ed. Nancy van Deusen. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. xi–xv.

Chapter 6

Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. Servatius, Quedlinburg Karen Blough In August of 1858, Ferdinand von Quast, then conservator of historical ­monuments in Prussia, visited the church of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg, where he decried the late medieval and early modern modifications to what he described as the “magnificent Romanesque architecture [that is] rightly considered one of the most significant monuments of [the convent’s] early history.”1 Under Quast’s direction, a renovation of the convent church was undertaken in the course of which, in 1863, eight effigial memorials arranged in a grid formation were revealed under the floor in the center of the nave.2 Six were legibly inscribed with the names of medieval abbesses of St. Servatius. In the western row from north to south and separated by an empty space were the slabs of Adelheid I and Beatrix I. To the east of Adelheid I lay three slabs commemorating Anna I, Adelheid II, and a nameless individual whom Quast believed to be Abbess Sophia of Brehna.3 Immediately to the south was a severely deteriorated and thus unidentifiable slab, followed by that of Gertrud of Ampfurth. A brass marker with the incised effigy of Adelheid IV was in the middle of the southern row. None of these slabs marked a grave, nor was any of

1 This essay evolved from papers read at Medieval Institute (Western Michigan ­University, Kalamazoo, MI) in 2005, 2014, and 2016, and at Medieval Academy (Boston, MA) in 2016. “… ihre großartige romanische Architektur … welche … mit Recht als eins der bedeutendsten Monumente seiner Frühzeit anerkannt ist.” Cited in Hermann Wäscher, Der ­Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den E­ rgebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942 (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1959), 74n113. 2 For a discussion of Quast’s discovery and the subsequent fate of the memorials, see Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 148–50. 3 Ferdinand v. Quast, “Die Gräber der Aebtissinen in der Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Die Gräber der Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg, ed. Konrad Wilhelm Hase and Ferdinand v. Quast (Quedlinburg: Verlag des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1877), 5–16 at 14. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_008

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them in its original location.4 They had apparently been configured as a group around 1540 when the Quedlinburg community’s conversion to Protestantism mandated changes to the organization and furnishings of the nave.5 In 1676, the effigy group was covered by paving stones in order to accommodate a new bank of pews in this location.6 In this way, these medieval abbatial memorials were lost to view and, ultimately, memory. However, the effigies of Agnes II in the eastern bay of the south aisle and Hedwig of Saxony, located between the stairs leading to the eastern choir, had never been obscured. For aesthetic reasons, Quast directed Agnes II’s tomb-marker to be placed in the empty space between Adelheid I and Beatrix II. He then caused the nine slabs to be separated by slate tiles and enclosed within a brass grate.7 The local congregation voiced displeasure at the resultant displacement of pews, however, and in 1907 the effigies were removed to the crypt, where they remain today.8 Throughout most of the Middle Ages, effigies of secular and regular religious typically represented the deceased in a post-resurrection state: whether standing upright or recumbent, their eyes are wide open, and they are garbed in clothing and hold attributes that reflect their societal role and status in life. Until the later medieval period, such portraits are not physical likenesses of individuals, but instead conform to the representational standards of the community to which the deceased belonged. For example, at Quedlinburg, only the early 16th-century effigy of Abbess Hedwig of Saxony is (apparently) a physiognomic portrait, but all of the surviving abbatial memorials share commonalities that convey an identity specific to the convent of St. Servatius. The abbatial monuments of St. Servatius served as mnemonic devices and potent visual foci within the liturgically performed commemorative culture of the

4 The correlation between burial sites and associated memorials in this early period is ­ambiguous. On this point, see Shirin Fozi, “Reconstructing Ita at Schaffhausen,” Medieval Feminist Forum 57/1 (Summer 2021): 195–235 at 210, 211n22, and 230n59. On the location of the medieval tombs in St. Servatius, see Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg, throughout and fig. 110, and Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 143–52 and fig. 159. 5 See the report issued in the wake of a visitation to Quedlinburg by representatives of Duke Henry of Saxony on September 18, 1540 that ordered the removal from the convent church of “altars and other useless items” (“alle altar und guter, so nicht von noten”) in order to better accommodate the congregation. See Karl Janicke, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Quedlinburg, vol. 2 (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1882), 143, no. 684. 6 See Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 29n33 and 147. 7 Quast, “Die Gräber der Aebtissinen,” 12–13. See in this volume Annie Krieg, “Restored, ­Repurposed, Reassessed: The Abbey Church of Quedlinburg across Five Germanies,” Fig. 12.1. 8 Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 150.

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Middle Ages,9 and in this, they are not unusual. But this extensive series of ­effigies furthermore collectively comprises a conventual history, often reflecting ­critical periods characterized by external strife as well as internecine rivalry, the negotiation of which by Quedlinburg’s abbesses defined the character of the medieval monastic community and reasserted the principles of the Quedlinburg abbatiate, inscribed on the abbatial bodies. It is probably for this reason that the abbatial effigies from St. Servatius are inherently conservative: while some modernisms were introduced over the centuries, the fundamental composition remains the same throughout the sequence. Repeatedly, the commemorative plaques honoring Quedlinburg’s abbesses respond formally and iconographically to the earliest effigies that visualized the abbatiate during the Ottonian and Salian era.10 The abbatial effigial format was established initially by the group of three stucco memorials that commemorate the Ottonian and Salian princesses who ruled St. Servatius collectively from 999 until 1096; these may well be the 9

10

The seminal studies of liturgical commemoration of the dead in medieval Germany are Otto Oexle: “Die Gegenwart der Lebenden und der Toten: Gedanken über Memoria,” in Gedächtnis, das Gemeinschaft stiftet, ed. Karl Schmid (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1985), 74–107; “Memoria und Memorialbild,” in Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch (Munich: W. Fink, 1984), 384–440; and “Memoria und Memorialüberlieferung im früheren Mittelalter,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976): 70–95. For Quedlinburg specifically, see Gerd Althoff, “Beobachtungen zum liudolfingisch-ottonischen Gedenkwesen,” in Schmid and Wollasch, Memoria, 649–65, and Claudia Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 19–64. See also Cynthia Hahn, “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning, with Particular Attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. Robert Maxwell (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 133–47; Jennifer Kingsley, The Bernward Gospels: Art, Memory and the Episcopate in Medieval Germany (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014); and Harald Winkel, Herrschaft und Memoria: Die Wettiner und ihre Hausklöster im Mittelalter (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2010). Katharina Ulrike Mersch asserted that the Quedlinburg community referred in artistic commissions issued in times of crisis to its royal founders in contrast to the royal convent at Essen, where its illustrious Ottonian abbesses were the principal touchstone for communal identity over the centuries (Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten [Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2012], 400). The conservatism of the sequence of effigies at Quedlinburg that responded to the memorial of the Ottonian and Salian abbesses argues against a clearcut distinction between the two convents in this regard. Furthermore, as a significative group, the effigies participate in the practice of strategic object grouping that is evident in the treatment of treasury holdings, especially reliquaries, at Quedlinburg. See in this volume Adam Stead, “Matter and Spirit: Reliquaries at St. Servatius in the 13th Century,” esp. 398–99.

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Figure 6.1 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigies of Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II of Quedlinburg. C.1125–30. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

earliest surviving effigies of medieval women and are also among the very ­earliest group funerary monuments (Figure 6.1).11 Formal analysis, in conjunction with the history of the convent, indicates a date in the first three decades of the 12th century for the triple monument. Adelheid I, daughter of the Ottonian emperor Otto II and sister of Otto III, was the last abbess to belong to Quedlinburg’s founding dynasty, while Beatrix I and Adelheid II were both daughters of the Salian Henry III and sisters of Henry IV. During their collective abbatial tenure, Quedlinburg enjoyed considerable prominence on the German political landscape and accrued immense wealth. Over the course of the Ottonian and Salian eras, rulership was exercised by the peripatetic monarch from a variety of locations visited by the court. Throughout the 11th century, St. Servatius was often honored by such visits on important feast days. 11

On the emergence of the medieval effigy, see Kurt Bauch, Das mittelalterliche Grabbild: Figürliche Grabmäler des 11. bis 15. Jahrhunderts in Europa (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976); Xavier Dectot, Pierres tombales médiévales: sculptures de l’au-delà (Paris: Rempart, 2006); Hans Körner, Grabmonumente des Mittelalters (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997); and Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture (New York: Abrams, 1964). The Nellenburg monument at Schaffhausen, cautiously dated by Shirin Fozi to c.1125 (“Reconstructing Ita at Schaffhausen,” 195n1 but see also 213 and 213n31), is at least contemporary with and may even slightly predate the Quedlinburg effigies. However, with the exception of Ita’s (?) head, nothing remains of the Nellenburg female figures.

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Ottonian and Salian monarchs frequently celebrated Easter at Quedlinburg, for instance, and in this way, like many cathedral cities, monasteries, and convents where bishops, abbots, and abbesses were members of the royal family, St. Servatius was established as a potent site of monarchical representation.12 The expectation is therefore that the memorials of Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II would reflect the imperial identities of the deceased. This, however, they fail to do, raising intriguing questions about the monument that would be emulated prolifically at Quedlinburg in subsequent centuries. The memorials of Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II share a long, relatively narrow format and their height is uniform, although Adelheid I’s slab is significantly wider than those of her successors,13 because of her Ottonian identity (Figure 6.2). Her effigy is likely to have been installed in a somewhat elevated position between those of the Salian princesses (Figures 6.3 and 6.4). The outer border of Adelheid I’s memorial slopes slightly away from the inner frame, thus enabling legibility of the inscription when the plaque was raised between two others. In contrast, the inner and outer frames of Beatrix and Adelheid II’s markers are flush.14 Each effigy is frontally and symmetrically accommodated in a sunken cavity, standing upon a small support; in the case of Adelheid I alone, this is clearly in the form of an arch. The figures are so alike to one another that they would be indistinguishable were it not for variations 12

13

14

For Quedlinburg‘s status as an “Easter palace” for the Ottonian and Salian rulers, see Ulrich Reuling, “Quedlinburg Königspfalz – Reichsstifts – Markt,” in Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, vol. 4, Pfalzen – Reichsgut – Königshöfe, ed. Lutz Fenske (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 211–19, as well as Ulrich Reuling, “Von der ottonischen ‘Osterpfalz’ zur ‘Welfenfestung’: Die Geschichte der Quedlinburger Königspfalz,” Quedlinburger Annalen 3 (2000): 14–28. Christian Marlow emphasized the importance of the imperial association with St. ­Servatius in “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen im Hochmittelalter. Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137,” PhD diss., Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2017. All three tomb markers are 2.14 m (7.34 ft.) long. Adelheid I’s slab is 1.07 m (3.51 ft.) wide, while those of Beatrix I and Adelheid II are slightly narrower, at 0.83-.084 m (2.72–2.75 ft.). The depth of the cavities that accommodate the figures measures 0.15 m (0.49 ft.; Adelheid I), 0.11 m (0.36 ft.; Beatrix), and 0.09 m (0.29 ft.; Adelheid II) respectively. For these measurements, see Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, “‘Die häßlichen Äbtissinen’: ­Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für ­Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–47 at 15. Manfred Mosel suggested that the Quedlinburg monument was configured like the ­Nellenberg memorial in Schaffhausen (“Die Anfänge des plastischen Figurengrabmales in Deutschland,” PhD diss., Universität Würzburg, 1970, 16). The treatment of the frame on Adelheid’s memorial argues against the likelihood that the effigies were placed ­vertically against a wall. See the discussion of memorial placement in Shirin Fozi, “From the ‘­Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque’: Two Romanesque Effigies and the Problem of Plastic Form,” in Revisiting the Monument: Fifty Years since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture, ed. Ann Adams and Jessica Barker (London: The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2016), 30–48 at 44.

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Figure 6.2 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Adelheid I. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg

of gesture and clothing details. The bodies are elongated, with slightly protruding stomachs and tubular limbs. Their projection from the cavities that surround them suggests a volumetric quality that is, however, suppressed by the abstract, linear patterning of their drapery. The two extant heads are eggshaped, with youthful faces distinguished by large, wide-open eyes. All three women wear the choir habit of an aristocratic canoness,15 consisting of an 15

For medieval religious women’s garb, see Désirée Koslin, “The Dress of Monastic and Religious Women as Seen in Art from the Early Middle Ages to the Reformation,” PhD diss., New York University, 1999. Eva Schlotheuber emphasized late medieval nuns’ ­clothing

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Figure 6.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Beatrix I. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg

undertunic, just visible at Adelheid I’s and Beatrix’s wrists, and a belted outer tunic whose long sleeves are decorated to suggest gem embellishment and fur in “Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Medieval Nuns” (in Fashion and Clothing in Late Medieval Europe: Mode und Kleidung im Europa des späten Mittelalters, ed. Rainer Schwinges and Regula Schorta [Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2010], 139–54), but her observation that the societal expectation of status-appropriate clothing as a tool of maintaining social order did not disappear at the convent door applies equally to the early and central Middle Ages (140–41).

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Figure 6.4 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Adelheid II. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg

trim. Each figure also wears a hood under which a veil is visible and shoes with pointed toes and jewel decoration. All three women carry a book, a male and female monastic attribute of which examples abound, among them the mid 11th-century reliefs depicting 12 seated religious women holding books and discoursing in pairs at the monastery of St. Liudger in Werden. These figures embody the intellectual attainments of the canonesses living in the neighboring royal convent at Essen,16 16

Karen Blough, “Implications for Female Monastic Literacy in the Reliefs from St. Liudger’s at Werden,” in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue, ed. Virginia Blanton et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 151–69 and figures 16–17.

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ruled, like St. Servatius, by Ottonian princesses in the 10th and 11th centuries. The quinquepartite design the Quedlinburg book-covers share, with a petal or circle in each corner in addition to a cross-inscribed medallion in the center (obscured in Beatrix’s case by her hands), indicates a Gospel book; a similar design is easily visible on the shrine of St. Godehard of c.1132 in the cathedral treasury at Hildesheim.17 Adelheid I alone raises her right hand in a gesture of blessing that since at least the late 10th century signified abbatial rank, occurring already in the portrait of Abbess Uta of Niedermünster (990/94-after 1025) in the Niedermünster Rule Book (Regensburg, c.990; Bamberg, Staatsbibiothek, MS Msc. lit. 142, fol. 58v). Closer to the date of Adelheid’s memorial is the image of Abbess Walburga of Heidenheim in the Stuttgart Passional (­Zwiefalten, 1120–35; Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, MS Bibl. fol. 57, fol. 242v).18 Like the larger size of her memorial, the application of this iconography solely to Adelheid I reflects her identity as a member of Quedlinburg’s founding family. The cavities occupied by the effigies are surrounded by a double frame, the outer portion of which is embellished by varied but aesthetically consistent foliate ornamentation, while an inscription in large, clear uncials appears on the inner frame. Each inscription records the abbatial title and the deceased’s name and date of death, followed by a Psalm verse. The imperial status of the deceased is not acknowledged; on the contrary, the three quotations from the Psalms were evidently chosen specifically to underscore the feeble and transient nature of all human life and to encourage personal humility. Adelheid I’s inscription is taken from Psalm 143, in which verse 4 warns that “Man is like to vanity: his days pass away like a shadow.” Beatrix is accompanied by Psalm 48:18: “For when [man] shall die he shall take nothing away; nor shall his glory descend with him,” and Adelheid II by Psalm 102:15: “Man’s days are as grass, as the flower of the field so shall he flourish.” Joan Holladay has plausibly suggested that, in addition to referring to the fleeting 17

18

Peter Lasko, Ars Sacra 800–1200, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), fig. 279. Monastic women are depicted holding Gospel books, Rule books, and Psalters. Other scholars have asserted that the books held by the Quedlinburg abbesses are Psalters, which is suggested by the fact that Psalm verses are inscribed on the effigies’ frames. See, for example, Fozi, “Reconstructing Ita,” 226n50. However, a similar embellishment distinguishes the book held by Agnes II on her monument, which does not include a quotation from the Psalms. See below, 195–97 and Fig. 6.5. Furthermore, the design on the ­Gospel book held by St. Matthew on the Godehard Shrine is nearly identical to that seen on ­Adelheid’s memorial. The portraits of Abbesses Uta and Walburga are reproduced in Karen Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity Reconfigured,” Gesta 47/2 (2008): 147–69, figures 7 and 8.

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nature of the abbesses’ and the viewers’ lives, these verses refer as well to the life of the conventual community.19 While some scholars have attempted to establish the date of the Quedlinburg effigies through formal and compositional comparison with the figure of Mary Magdalene from the Holy Sepulcher at Gernrode, built between 1060 and 1080 with modifications around 1130,20 more convincing in terms of the approach to the figure and its drapery is the comparison with sculptures of the apostles from the abbey at Clus, a daughter house of the royal convent of Gandersheim, that date to c.1130.21 Iconographical comparanda, while more numerous, are, however, not terribly informative. As we have seen, the Quedlinburg effigies are consistent with female abbatial portraits that survive in other media from the late 10th century forward. To the extent that formal and iconographical parallels are useful, then, they indicate that the effigies were created in the first third of the 12th century, with the monument probably in place when the Romanesque church was consecrated in 1129. 19 20

21

Joan Holladay, Genealogy and the Politics of Representation in the High and Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 217. Compositional similarities between the Gernrode and Quedlinburg monuments have suggested to some viewers that the effigies similarly reflected liturgical performance of Easter by the abbesses of St. Servatius. See, for example, Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400-circa 1204 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 194–95, and Kerstin Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg,” in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte, ed. Otto Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 45–87 at 78–81. There is no surviving evidence for liturgical drama performed at Easter by canonesses at Quedlinburg, although it can certainly not be ruled out, not least because of the connection between the imperial families to which the three abbesses belonged and their practice of celebrating Easter at St. Servatius. Furthermore, such performances were a common practice among German religious in the Middle Ages in general, and are codicologically attested for the imperial convents of Essen and Gandersheim. See, for example, the late 14th- and 15th-century copies of the ordo prescribed for Essen in Franz Arens, Der Liber ordinarius der Essener Stiftskirche (Paderborn: Jungfermannschen Buchhandlung, 1908). For female monastic liturgical performance at Easter in German convents, see June Mecham, Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany, ed. Alison Beach et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 25–56. Dunbar Ogden discussed Gernrode in detail in The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 54–60. For formal analyses, see Kosegarten, “Die ‘häßlichen Äbtissinen’,” 25–29 and fig. 19. The canoness community at Gandersheim was founded in 856 by the Saxon duke Liudolf and his wife Oda as the original site of Liudolfing burial and commemoration. With the exception of Eilika, all of the 11th-century abbesses of Quedlinburg as well as Agnes I simultaneously served as abbess of Gandersheim. The Benedictine abbey at Clus was founded around 1124 with Agnes’s support. See Marlow, “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen,” 151–52.

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As effigies, the Quedlinburg sculptures have few predecessors, and such as do exist commemorate individuals with very different priorities from those of the Ottonian and Salian princess-abbesses of St. Servatius. The earliest known medieval effigy, dated to roughly 1090, is that of Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia, in Merseburg Cathedral.22 Although initially an ally of the Salian dynasty, Rudolf opposed Henry IV in the Investiture Controversy that pitted the Salians against the popes, who advocated for ecclesiastical reforms, and the Saxon aristocracy, who elected Rudolf antiking in 1077.23 He perished in 1080 as a result of injuries suffered during a confrontation with Henry’s troops. The format and composition of Rudolf’s memorial closely resemble those of the Quedlinburg tombs. Rudolf stands frontally, staring out at the viewer, crowned and prominently holding the flowering staff and cross-surmounted orb, insignia of rulership that he in fact never received. The surrounding inscription emphasizes the deceased’s kingship as well as his self-sacrifice, naming him “war’s sacred victim [who] died for the church.”24 Rudolf of Rheinfelden’s tomb monument thus introduces the effigial format as a vehicle of partisan propaganda on the part of the Saxon aristocracy that opposed Salian rule and supported church reform. The sole effigial group monument that is contemporary with the Quedlinburg tombs, the Nellenburg memorial in the monastery of Allerheiligen at Schaffhausen, celebrates the founder and reformer, in accordance with the Hirsau Rule, of the monastery, and (originally) three female family members.25

22

23

24 25

See Thomas Dale’s analysis of this monument in “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” Speculum 77/3 (July 2002): 707–43, as well as the discussion in Sally Badham and Sophie Oosterwijk, “‘Monumentum aere perennius’? Precious-Metal Effigial Tomb Monuments in Europe 1080–1430,” Church History 30 (2015): 7–105 at 6–7, and Fozi, “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque,’” 39–41. On the convoluted history of the Investiture Controversy, see Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century, trans. Uta-Renate Blumenthal (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), and Horst Fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages c.1050–1200, trans. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; repr. 2001). “… sacra victima belli … ecclesiae cecidit.” Translated by Thomas Dale in “The Individual,” 715–16. For the Nellenburg memorial, see Fozi, “Reconstructing Ita.” Older sources for Schaffenburg include Hans Lieb and R. Jenny, “Das Stifterdenkmal im Münster zu Schaffhausen,” Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 17 (1957): 121–27, and Hans Seeliger, Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg and die Nellenburger Memorialtafel im Museum Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen (Schaffhausen: Museum zu Allerheiligen, 1972).

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In light of the emergence of the effigial tomb in the anti-Salian, reform context, it is surprising that this format should have been chosen at St. ­Servatius, with its strong imperial history and unreformed, canonical status, for three princess-abbesses, two of them Salians. While it is true that Adelheid II ­initially supported the reform agenda of Pope Gregory VII and the Saxon aristocracy and with this the excommunication in 1085 of her brother Henry IV, she appears to have reconciled with Henry by 1088, when Henry’s wife, Eupraxia of Kyiv, was in the abbess’s care at Quedlinburg. Adelheid was succeeded in the Quedlinburg abbatiate by a shadowy figure named Eilika, apparently a member of the Saxon ducal Billung clan, with whom no cultural activity whatsoever can be associated. She seems to have been a laywoman provisionally entrusted with the Quedlinburg abbatiate until a more appropriate, Salian candidate emerged, underscoring the urgency of maintaining the familial association between the convent and the ruling dynasty.26 Such a candidate was Agnes, Adelheid’s niece and cousin of the new emperor, Henry V. Agnes I of Quedlinburg loyally supported the imperial cause throughout her reign, during which she endured a period of excommunication that entailed absence from followed by a triumphant return to Quedlinburg. She apparently died in 1125 or 1126. Agnes oversaw the rebuilding of the convent church, consecrated in 1129.27 A committed Salian partisan, she was doubtless familiar with the dynastic pantheon at Speyer, where familial memoria was preserved and propagated. The Salian tomb complex, completed in 1111 with the addition of Henry IV’s sarcophagus,28 might well have suggested to Agnes the advisability 26

27

28

Marlow assumed that Eilika surrendered her post at Quedlinburg upon her marriage in or shortly before 1100 and the birth of a child in that year. He accordingly surmised that the abbatiate was thereafter vacant until Agnes I’s accession in 1110 (“Die Quedlinburg Äbtissinen,” 132–36). However, it was not unusual for the Ottonian and Salian abbesses of St. Servatius to be absent from Quedlinburg for considerable periods at a time, not only because of their appointments to multiple abbatiates, but also because of their political role as imperial princesses. And while it is assuredly unusual for an abbess to be a wife and mother, the appointment of a laywoman as abbess of Quedlinburg was in and of itself highly anomalous. The precise duration and all other circumstances of Eilika’s tenure at Quedlinburg remain entirely unclear. This structure may have been initiated by Adelheid II shortly after the fire of 1070, but the interval from then until the consecration is so lengthy as to suggest that it was, rather, Agnes herself who commissioned the Romanesque building. See Philipp Jahn, “Zur Baugeschichte der Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg bis zum Jahr 1129 und ihrer architekturhistorischen Einordnung,” in 919 – Plötzlich König: Heinrich I und Quedlinburg, ed. Stephan Freund und Gabriele Köster (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019), 224–41 at 233. For the Salian tombs at Speyer, see Hartmut Jericke, “Der Speyerer Dom und seine Bedeutung als zentrale Grablege des abendländischen Kaisertums im 12. Jahrhundert,”

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of a monument honoring her Ottonian and Salian predecessors. Other evidence supporting Agnes as the original patron of the Quedlinburg monument includes the steadily growing popularity of the effigial format during Agnes’s reign in the first quarter of the 12th century, and the style and iconography of the Quedlinburg figures, which are in keeping with norms of that period. However, certain features of the sculptures argue against Agnes’s sole oversight of the commission and suggest an active role as well on the part of her successor, Gerburg of Cappenberg.29 Gerburg was a Saxon noblewoman and the first abbess of St. Servatius with no familial ties to the ruling dynasty. When she was elected abbess of Quedlinburg, she had for about a decade already served in that position at St. Mary’s Überwasser, near Münster.30 She was a close friend of Lothar of Supplinburg, the Saxon nobleman who succeeded Henry VI in 1125 as German king and in 1133 became Holy Roman Emperor Lothar III. Lothar’s presence at Quedlinburg is attested several times beginning in 1129 and continuing through 1137, when he died.31 Gerburg was renowned for her piety and appears to have rejected the

29 30 31

Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 154=N.F. 115 (2006): 77–110, and Karl Schmid, “Die Sorge der Salier um ihre Memoria. ­Zeugnisse, Erwägungen und Fragen,” in Schmid and Wollasch, Memoria, 666–726, esp. 716–25. Joan Holladay interpreted the triple tomb monument of the 11th-century abbesses as a reflection of the likewise threefold burial of King Henry I, his widow, Queen Mathilde, and their granddaughter, Abbess Mathilde in or, in the abbess’s case, adjacent to a purpose-built space, often called the confessio, in the 10th-century church, which served as the crypt of the Romanesque structure begun after the fire of 1070 (Genealogy and the Politics of Representation, 216). While I agree with Holladay’s political reading of the abbatial effigies, I am not convinced that the triple configuration of the monument commemorating Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II was motivated by the 10th-century burial triplet. Adelheid I initiated an early 11th-century building campaign at St. Servatius that amplified the Ottonian church erected under her predecessor, Abbess Mathilde. In the course of this endeavor, she removed King Henry’s sarcophagus from the crypt and reinstalled it, most likely in front of the high altar, in the new church. While the original location of Henry’s burial was never forgotten, the visual and haptic disruption occasioned by the removal of his sarcophagus renders it unlikely that the triad configuration of the 10th-century burials was a meaningful commemorative model during the reign of Adelheid II or thereafter. The earliest documentation of Gerburg as abbess of Quedlinburg dates to 1134. However, the historical circumstances support her immediate succession upon Agnes’s death. See Marlow, “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen,” 156–57. See Edeltraud Balzer, Studien zur Geschichte des Bistums Münster im 11. Jahrhundert (­Münster: Aschendorff, 2006), 180. See Wolfgang Petke, ed., Die Regesten des Kaiserreiches unter Lothar III. und Konrad III. (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), nos. 193, 236, 394, 423, 436, and 485, and Marlow, “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen,” 158–62, with additional primary sources.

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less austere lifestyle of the canoness.32 On her abbatial seal of 1137, she stands frontally, a book in the crook of her arm and wearing the garb of a Benedictine nun, in significant contrast with the more hieratic sigillographic and numismatic iconography adopted by other Quedlinburg abbesses.33 It was probably Gerburg who introduced Premonstratensianism to Quedlinburg. Her cousin, Gottfried II of Cappenberg, founded the first German Premonstratensian community at Cappenberg,34 and the monastery of St. Wiperti, which was under the control of the abbess of St. Servatius, became a Premonstratensian community in 1145/46, during the reign of Gerburg’s successor, Beatrix II. In light of Gerburg’s aristocratic Saxon origin, her adoption of a comparatively modest abbatial identity, and her probable interest in monastic reform, it seems highly unlikely that this abbess would have conceived a tomb monument that ostentatiously celebrated three of her royal abbatial predecessors. It is, however, a project that Gerburg might well have inherited from Agnes I, a more plausible original patron, upon the latter’s death in 1125/26. The tomb monument had the potential to visualize Gerburg’s own ideas about the role of abbess of St. Servatius and the nature of the monastic community while at the same time celebrating the illustrious history of her convent.35 This commission indeed appears to negotiate the problematic space between the imperial context in which St. Servatius had so magnificently flourished and the reform-oriented, anti-Salian, partisan Saxon priorities Gerburg herself embodied. The 11th-­ century abbesses are commemorated in this monument not for their dynastic identities, but as devout and humble religious women whose sartorial display of wealth is somewhat restrained. The iconography used for their effigies was also employed by Gerburg herself on her seal of 1137, indicating that she considered

32 33 34

35

Gottfried Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1786), 166. Gerburg’s abbatial seal is reproduced in Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” fig. 13. For comparanda, see the catalogue of seals and coins from medieval Quedlinburg in Manfred Mehl, Die Münzen des Stiftes Quedlinburg (Hamburg: Mehl, 2006). See Balzer, Studien, 180; Johannes Bauermann, “Die Anfänge der Prämonstratenserklöster Scheda und St. Wiperti-Quedlinburg,” Sachsen und Anhalt 7 (1931): 237–52; and Andreas Leistikow, Die Geschichte der Grafen von Cappenberg und ihrer Stiftsgründungen: Cappenberg, Varlar und Ilbenstadt (Hamburg: Kovac, 2000), 24–31. Scholarship on the relationship between the group and the individuals who comprise it in the Middle Ages is relevant in this regard. See Caroline Walker Bynum, “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?,” in Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 84–109. Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture,” addresses the issue specifically with regard to effigies.

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it appropriate visual language with which to represent St. Servatius.36 The triple monument, then, conveys the conventual identity to which Abbess Gerburg aspired and her concept of the Quedlinburg abbatiate; it serves as the pictorialization of a foundational abbatial idea that would be reasserted on abbesses’ tombs for centuries to come. No effigies of Quedlinburg abbesses are known to have been executed after the triple monument of c.1129 until the stucco memorial of Agnes II of Meißen (Figure 6.5), who died in 1203.37 Formal analysis of the monument indicates a date of origin towards the beginning of the 13th century, indicating that Agnes’s effigy was commissioned by Agnes herself or by her immediate successor, Sophia of Brehna. Agnes’s effigy is similar in composition and the style of the body and drapery to the late 12th- or early 13th-century effigy of Abbot Guido of Chamouzey (d. 1182/87),38 while the idealizing treatment of the generic facial features is seen as well in the approximately contemporary effigies of Archbishops Friedrich von Wettin (d. 1152) and Wichmann (d. 1192) in Magdeburg Cathedral.39 Furthermore, Agnes’s effigy, like that of Abbot Guido, introduces a square cushion into which the deceased’s head is inserted. This motif appears in funerary sculpture beginning only around 1200.40 Like her 11th-century predecessors, Agnes stands frontally—on what is unclear because of damage to the bottom of the slab—within a shallow, rectangular basin whose double frame bears an inscription but lacks the vegetal design seen in the triple monument. Agnes’s garb, like that of the earlier abbesses, conforms to the conventions of her time for aristocratic canonesses: she wears a mantle with fur-trimmed lapels over a fashionably wide-sleeved 36

The iconography applied especially to Adelheid I also appears on an incised plaque from Gerburg’s former convent of St. Mary’s Überwasser near Münster. See Blough, “Abbatial Effigies,” 161–62, 169nn 115–16, and fig. 14. Hans Thümmler believed that the Münster effigy predated the Quedlinburg monument, but he assigned the late date of c.1160 to the latter (Zur Architektur und Skulptur des Mittelalters: Gesammelte Aufsätze [Münster: Rhema, 1998], 365–72 at 371–72). For Magdalene Magirius, the Münster slab followed Quedlinburg precedent (Figürliche Grabmäler in Sachsen und Thüringen von 1080 bis um 1400 [Esens: Verlag Ed. Rust, 2002], 59). In any event, the connection between St. Servatius and St. Mary’s Überwasser is established by Gerburg’s abbatial status in both communities. 37 The plaque in its current state measures 187 cm (6.13 ft.) in height by 88 cm (2.88 ft.) in width. Its original height was probably about 215–20 cm (7.05–21 ft.). See Klaus Niehr, Die mitteldeutsche Skulptur der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Weinheim: VCH, 1992), 334. 38 See Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 37 and fig. 40 and 313n108. 39 Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 28–30 and figures 26, 28, and 29. 40 Christiane Greska believed the memorial of Agnes II to be the earliest surviving example of the square cushion for a female effigy (“Der Got Genad: Studien zu Form und Funktion figürlicher Frauengrabmäler des Mittelalters in Deutschland,” PhD diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 1996, 37n104).

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Figure 6.5 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Agnes II of Meißen. Early 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

tunic, and the ends of the veil that covers her entire head are draped elegantly over her shoulders. While there is no sense of a volumetric, dynamic body underneath the drapery, a comparison of Agnes’s mantle with those of her 11th-century predecessors indicates a formal evolution away from an abstract interpretation of drapery folds and towards greater naturalism. Like the earlier abbesses, Agnes carries a book, though she holds it in her left hand in a more relaxed, practical fashion, and the fingers of her right hand rest simply on her left lapel as they peek out from within her mantle rather than

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clutching the book or, like Adelheid I, making a gesture of abbatial blessing. On the cover of Agnes’s book, intertwined leafy vines form a quadripartite design intended to designate a Gospel book. The inscription must have originally specified the deceased’s abbatial rank and the date of her death on the bottom of the frame, now lost. The surviving text, read from the top frame down the right and up the left, implores: “May the soul of Agnes have a secure place of peace, may she fear nothing, may she rest in divine peace.”41 The sentiment differs from that of the earlier memorials in its expressed hope for the posthumous peace and security of one specific individual rather than the humility and transience of all mortal life. However, the chosen verse similarly emphasizes human mortality and the desire for salvation. There is no consensus regarding the identity of the deceased abbess depicted on the very deteriorated plaque without surviving inscription that Quast discovered next to the monument to Gertrud of Ampfurth (Figure 6.6).42 The memorial strongly recalls the 12th-century model but includes the modernisms seen on Agnes’s plaque. The frontal, symmetrical, and static figure, enveloped in robes and a heavy veil that largely obscure the body and head, stands within a basin-like enclosure that is surrounded by a frame whose vegetal decoration closely emulates the design encircling the effigies of Adelheid I, Beatrix, and Adelheid II. It is likely that the figure holds a book against her breast, too. Even in its current state of decrepitude, the formal and iconographical innovations seen in Agnes’s effigy are recognizable here, too. The body appears more volumetric than the 12th-century effigies, for example, and the drapery falls more naturalistically. The figure stands on what appears to be a vegetal console, a motif that became common in tomb sculpture in the 13th 41

42

The inscription reads +SP(IRITV)S.AGNETIS.TENEAT.LOCA.CERTA.QVIET[IS NIL] P(ER) HORRESCAT.I(N).PACE.DIV(A). REQVIESCAT. The letters IS NIL were destroyed but originally appeared on the lower frame of the memorial. See Ernst Schubert, “Inschrift und Darstellung auf Quedlinburger Äbtissinengrabsteinen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Deutsche Inschriften: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik Worms 1986: Vorträge und Berichte, ed. Harald Keller (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1987), 131–51 at 146–47. Schubert’s assertion that the effigy exudes the sense of a “self-contained, good-natured, friendly personality” (“einer in sich ruhenden, gütigen, freundlichen Persönlichkeit”) is, however, anachronistically psychoanalytical (147). The whereabouts of this plaque were unknown for quite some time. As of this writing, it stands against the crypt wall in St. Servatius next to the effigy of Gertrud of Ampfurth. Having apparently only seen the reproduction in Quast, “Die Gräber der Aebtissinen,” plate 4, and believing it still to be missing, Holladay suggested that it “fit stylistically between the tomb of Agnes and that of about 1240” (Genealogy and the Politics of Representation, 220). In fact, this heavily damaged effigy shows no formal progression beyond Agnes’s monument and its vegetal decoration is strongly archaizing.

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Figure 6.6 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Sophia of Brehna (?). Early 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

century and that may have appeared on Agnes’s tomb as well, before the lower frame was destroyed.43 Finally, the cushion on which the head rests is a motif 43

Blessed Berta of Biburg (d. 1151) stands atop a stylized organic hillock on her late 12th-­ century memorial (Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 285 and fig. 423). A projecting

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that makes its appearance only around 1200, firmly situating this effigy chronologically. I suggest that this memorial honors Agnes II’s niece and successor, Sophia of Brehna,44 the most plausible patron of both her own and Agnes’s memorial. The similarity between the two plaques both in their emulation of the 12th-century monument and in the modernization of the figure and drapery style they share argues for a single patron. Furthermore, the cushion that appears on both memorials became a common motif in sepulchral sculpture only during Sophia’s reign. It is just possible, too, that a 13th-century abbess, wishing to honor the patron of the triple tomb monument that visualized the community’s extraordinarily prestigious origins, conceived this plaque as a much-posthumous tribute to Abbess Gerburg. This would explain the remarkable similarity in the vegetal ornamentation of the frame to the 12th-century memorials.45 The history of Quedlinburg during Agnes’s and Sophia’s reigns reveals numerous reasons for the early 13th-century abbesses to recall and visually assert the historically honorable status of the convent by reviving the effigial format associated at Quedlinburg with the Ottonian and Salian abbesses. Agnes’s tenure coincided with the civil war that devastated Germany after the death of the Hohenstaufen emperor Henry VI in 1197. There were then three claimants to the German throne: Henry’s brother, Philip of Swabia; Henry’s son, Frederick II, still a young child; and Otto IV, son of the Welf Duke Henry the Lion. Frederick II was packed off to his mother in Sicily, while Philip and Otto were both elected German king in 1198 by rival camps; military conflict ensued. After the death by assassination of Philip in 1208, hostilities continued between Otto IV and supporters of Frederick II until Otto died in 1218. The situation was aggravated by partisan interference and manipulation on the part of the kings of France

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triangular console, decorated with organic motifs, is often seen on commemorative monuments of the mid 13th century forward, including that of Mathilde (d. 1189), wife of Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony, in Braunschweig. Her effigy has been dated to c.1235–40 (Bauch, ­Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 107–08 and fig. 165). See also the contemporary tombslab of Count Dedo of Wettin (d. 1190) and his wife Mechthild (d. 1189) in Wechselburg (Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 110 and fig. 167). August Fink was the first to assign the damaged plaque to Sophia in 1915 in Die figürliche Grabplastik in Sachsen von den Anfängen bis zur zweiten Hälfte des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Wolfenbüttel: Angermann), 43. See also Greska, “Der Got Gnad,” 38n110, who ­correctly insisted on a 13th-century date because of the appearance of the cushion on the memorial. This possibility was suggested to me in an email exchange in September/October 2021 with Elmar Egner of Quedlinburg, whom I thank for the conversation.

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and England as well as by Pope Innocent III.46 Agnes of Quedlinburg actively supported Philip of Swabia in this conflict, attending his court at Magdeburg in the company of his wife shortly after his election,47 and for several years, Quedlinburg was a site of hostilities between the imperial aspirants. Sophia of Brehna succeeded her aunt as abbess of Quedlinburg immediately upon the latter’s death in 1203.48 Sophia’s tenure was characterized by significant hostilities with the bishops of Halberstadt, who since the time of Adelheid I had celebrated Palm Sunday at St. Servatius and thereafter enjoyed a feast to which the abbess invited them. The costs of this hospitality had grown over the years along with the retinue that accompanied the bishop. In 1204, Sophia refused Bishop Konrad von Krosigk entry to the church for the usual festivities, in response to which Krosigk banned her. The animosity continued throughout Sophia’s reign and also that of Krosgik’s successor, Friedrich von Kirchberg (1209–36).49 Sophia also became entangled in the ongoing contest between Frederick II Hohenstaufen and Otto IV. Initially like Agnes a supporter of Philip of Swabia, after his death in 1208, Sophia switched her allegiance to Otto and recognized the authority of Cesarius and Burchard von Wolfenbüttel, whom Otto had appointed as reeves of Quedlinburg.50 Hoyer von Falkenstein, a Hohenstaufen partisan, forcibly clashed with her and the Wolfenbüttels. His victory 46

The history of late 12th- and early 13th-century Germany is summarized by Michael Toth in “Welfs, Hohenstaufen and Habsburgs,” in the New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, ed. David Abulafia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 375–404 at 375–82. 47 Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg, vol. 1, 314, citing Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. Scriptorumrerum Brunsvicensium illustrationi inservientes, vol. 2 (Hannover: Nicolai Foerster, 1710), 140–41. 48 For the circumstances of Abbess Sophia‘s reign at Quedlinburg, see Bernd Ulrich Hucker, “Äbtissin Sophia von Brehna (1203–26): Quedlinburg im Spannungsfeld des Kampfes zwischen Staufern und Welfen,” Heimatkundliches Jahrbuch für Stadt und Region Quedlinburg 10 (2007): 35–50. 49 A full discussion of the usually contentious relations between the Halberstadt episcopacy and St. Servatius appears in Gerlinde Schlenker, “Das Verhältnis der Halberstädter Bischöfe zum Quedlinburger Damenstift vom 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichte und Kultur des Bistums Halberstadt 804–1648, ed. Adolf Siebrecht (Halberstadt: Eigenverlag Halberstädter Druckhaus, 2006), 459–68 at 462–64. 50 Sophia’s support for Otto IV is possibly reflected in the presence in the treasury of St. Servatius of a small woven box, probably of 12th-century North African origin and subsequently embellished with heraldic imagery associated with Otto’s allies. The iconographical program of the box dates it to c.1209 and seems to reflect a tournament held in Braunschweig at Pentecost in that year. Admittedly, the box was found in the Quedlinburg town hall and no association with the convent of St. Servatius can be demonstrated. See the review of previous scholarship and analysis in Nathalie Kruppa, “Neue Gedanken zum Quedlinburger Wappenkästchen,” Concilium medii aevi 4 (2001): 153–77, and Dietrich Kötzsche, Der Quedlinburger Schatz (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1999), 81–84.

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in these hostilities in 1223 contributed to Sophia’s ouster from the Quedlinburg abbatiate and her replacement with Bertradis, Countess of Krosigk, the sister of the Halberstadt bishop. Although Pope Honorius III restored Sophia to her position, she died a mere two years thereafter, in 1226, at which point Bertradis resumed the position of abbess. Sophia’s posthumous reputation suffered the usual charges against women who anger powerful men, particularly a lack of chastity.51 In light of the antagonistic relationship between Sophia and at least some of the canonesses of St. Servatius revealed by this history, and the historical reputation to which it gave rise, it is entirely plausible that her tomb monument was subjected to neglect and even abuse. The poor state of preservation of the plaque also argues against its assignment to, and in honor of, Gerburg. Of course, damage over time is not always the result of overt enmity. On the other hand, in light of the relatively good condition of other, even older effigies from St. Servatius, it seems unlikely that a memorial conceived as a posthumous tribute would have been allowed to suffer such extensive harm.52 The campaign to recall the magnificent historical circumstances of St. ­Servatius was initiated by Agnes with two commissions of c.1200 that involved, significantly, the restoration and renewal of a space—the crypt—and an object—the so-called Reliquary of St. Servatius—that were strongly associated with her Ottonian predecessors. In the former, she commissioned frescoes depicting Ottonian rulers, saints, and biblical narratives in a space dedicated to the liturgical commemoration of Henry I and Queen Mathilde, the convent’s first royal patrons.53 The latter is a Carolingian ivory box that had been presented to Quedlinburg already in the middle of the 10th century, most likely by Otto I. Agnes appears here on the silver niello base of the reliquary, together with her prioress and co-patron, Oderade, kneeling before the enthroned Christ of the Second Coming and surrounded by a prestigious company of saints.54

51 52

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See, for instance, the account of Sophia’s character in Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg, vol. 1, 334 and 336 and the discussion in Hucker, “Äbtissin Sophia von Brehna,” 43–44. Fozi, “Reconstructing Ita,” 210 notes that “Romanesque effigies that were displaced and later recovered often emerge intact, as if those who removed them from church interiors had been reluctant to destroy them.” An absence of such reluctance in the case of this memorial again argues against its assignment to Abbess Gerburg. The frescoes are discussed in Doris Bulach, “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort der Ottonen,” Zeitschrift für Geisteswissenschaft 48 (2000): 101–18 at 111, and Mersch, Soziologische Dimensionen, 96–100. In this volume, see also Clemens Bley, “Of Donors and Patrons: The Abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg as a Site of Remembrance, Distinction, and Representation,” 296–302. Eliza Garrison, “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” Gesta 49/1 (2010): 17–29, and Mersch, Soziologische Dimensionen, 95–96. See also Eliza

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Both the activity of patronage and the resulting commissions were powerful reminders of Quedlinburg’s august imperial history in a time of crisis within the empire at large that had a significant impact on the convent.55 Katharina Ulrike Mersch has argued convincingly that one important audience for this message was the Halberstadt bishopric from whose authority the Quedlinburg community was exempt: the history of St. Servatius routinely reveals incursions on that autonomy on the part of Halberstadt’s bishops.56 Evidence for similar patronal activity on Sophia’s part is not unequivocal. It is possible, though not probable, that she commissioned the sumptuous cover of the Otto-Adelheid Gospel Book, a manuscript written at Quedlinburg around 1000, that is, during the reign of Adelheid I. The wooden cover includes four ivory plaques of 10th-century, Constantinopolitan origin, surrounded by gilded filigree, gems, and pearls.57 A strong association with the Ottonian royal house is engendered by the manuscript as well as the ivories, perhaps part of the still elusive dowry of Theophanu, the Byzantine wife of Otto II and mother of Otto III and Abbess Adelheid I.58 If she commissioned this book cover, Sophia must have intended, in the times of strife that marred her abbatial tenure, to visually recall the convent’s first, glorious century, much as had Agnes II with the crypt frescoes and the refurbishing of the Servatius Reliquary. However, the date of the cover’s metalwork and embellishment, roughly 1220–30, does not allow a secure assignment to Sophia, who died in 1226. And the very similar commission of the book cover for the 9th-century Samuhel Gospels, dated to 1225–30, is more plausibly linked to Sophia’s successor, Bertradis of Krosigk, because of its close relationship to objects commissioned around this time by her brother at Halberstadt.59 The configuration of both of these book covers, however, equally demonstrates the same commitment to the memory of the founding family of St. Servatius. Whether or not Sophia herself commissioned work that explicitly Garrison and Evan Gatti’s chapter in this volume, “A Reliquary Revisited: The Reliquary of St. Servatius and Its Contexts.” 55 Agnes’s commission of a carpet depicting the wedding of Philology and Mercury, derived from Martianus Capella’s early 5th-century De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, had a ­similar purpose. See Bley, “Of Founders and Patrons,” 286–94, and Mersch, Soziologische Dimensionen, 80–95. 56 Mersch, Soziologische Dimensionen, 95–96. 57 See Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 62–65. 58 German monastic treasuries display a plethora of ancient and medieval objects of Near Eastern origin and the manner in which they reached the West is obscure. In 1971, Hans Wentzel proposed Theophanu’s dowry as the conduit for these works (“Das ­byzantinische Erbe der ottonischen Kaiser: Hypothesen über den Brautschatz der Theophanu,” Aachener Kunstblätter 40 [1971]: 15–39). While the theory is plausible, no single object has ever been unequivocally connected with the dowry. 59 See Stead, “Matter and Spirit,” 374, and Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 44–49.

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recalled Quedlinburg’s Ottonian era, she cannot have been ignorant of Agnes’s activity in that respect, and its import. Similarly, in conceiving her own and quite possibly her predecessor’s memorial, Sophia looked back to the effigies of the Ottonian and Salian abbesses because they still conveyed important principles and priorities of the convent and its abbesses that seemed particularly worth remembering in the chaotic early 13th-century environment. By visually recalling the convent’s illustrious past, Agnes and Sophia’s effigies placed these later abbesses in an abbatial continuum capable of weathering the winds of misfortune that buffeted St. Servatius during their reigns. The nameless stucco plaque that Quast discovered in the northeast corner of the effigy grid continues in the tradition established by the triple monument of c.1130 in that the deceased stands frontally within a narrow rectangular basin that is surrounded by a double frame, the outer bearing a vegetal design and the inner an inscription (Figure 6.7).60 This unidentified individual stands upon an elaborate vegetal console and rests her head against a rectangular cushion. She does not hold a book; rather, her hands are pressed together before her breast, fingers together and pointing upward, securing between them a fold of her drapery. The absence of a book and the hand gesture that replaces it, in addition to the drapery style, with its heavy, voluminous, somewhat fanciful folds, are motifs seen also in the effigy of Mathilde, wife of Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony, in Braunschweig, traditionally dated to c.1235–40. It is probable that the Quedlinburg sculptor knew the Braunschweig monument and incorporated what he would have understood as refined innovations appropriate for a noblewoman. The identity of the deceased represented with this effigy is unknown, since her name is—unusually—not mentioned in the inscription. This was configured in an anomalous fashion, as it begins—with the word QVI—and rises from the cross in the lower left-hand corner to cross the top of the slab, ending with SPERNE, and then resumes to the right of the aforementioned cross— with the word MVNDI—scrolling to the right and up the right-hand side of the slab. In its entirety, it reads: QVI TRANSIS CERNE QVID ERA[M] QVID SI[M] VAGA SPERNE / MVNDI NAMQVE LEVIS SIC TRANSSIT GLORIA QVEVIS, or “You who pass by, look here, see what I was, what I am, in spite of the transience of the world, for it is fickle, thus every fame fades.” While it is surprising that the name of the deceased as well as her date of death is not recorded in this inscription, the emphasis on the fleeting nature of human life and the futility of worldly endeavors seen on the 12th-century effigies as well as that of 60

The plaque measures 217 cm (7.11 ft.) in height by 92 cm (3.01 ft.) in width. See Dietrich Schubert, Von Halberstadt nach Meißen: Bildwerke des 13. Jahrhunderts in Thüringen, Sachsen und Anhalt (Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg, 1974), 264.

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Figure 6.7 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of an unknown abbess. Middle of the 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

Agnes II is retained. Because of this, as well as of the adoption of the fundamental composition of earlier abbatial monuments at Quedlinburg, it seems probable that here, too, an abbess is visually commemorated. But which one? Some scholars have assigned this memorial to Sophia of Brehna, but her date

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of death—1226—seems too early for the adoption of the clothing and figure style seen here and her evident unpopularity among her peers argues against a posthumous monument in her honor. Three abbesses who succeeded Sophia, however, are all candidates for this plaque. These are Bertradis I, Baroness of Krosigk, Kunigunde, Countess of Kranichfeld and Kirchberg, and Osterlindis, Countess of Falkenstein. The historical evidence fails to disclose which of these abbesses is more likely than the others to have been commemorated with an effigy. The brief period—1226–33—during which these three women successively reigned at St. Servatius was largely uneventful. It was initially characterized by ongoing animosity against Sophia. Bertradis’s reelection upon Sophia’s death indicates significant partisanship amongst the canonesses in the latter half of the 1220s. When Bertradis confirmed an agreement with the monastery at Michaelstein concerning a salt tariff in the city of Quedlinburg that had been arranged by Sophia, she claimed that her predecessor had carelessly and illegally failed to arrange for witnesses to her edict. However, the original document of 1222 does bear witness signatures, including that of Bertradis herself,61 suggesting continuing hostility towards Sophia on the part of Bertradis and no doubt the chapter members who had elected her (twice). Kunigunde’s year-long reign seems to have been free of significant events.62 That of her successor, Osterlindis, a relative of Count Hoyer of Falkenstein, then reeve of Quedlinburg, was marked by a papally mandated clerical visitation. While the resulting report praised the current circumstances, the reverend gentlemen issued warnings against various failings that they foresaw as future possibilities. Clearly, they were chiefly concerned with “fleischliche[s] Verbrechen[]” (“sins of the flesh”) for which various monetary fines are suggested in their report. They also emphasized the importance of wearing appropriate garb of the Augustinian order and prescribed that any canoness wearing colorful clothing or embroidered gloves should be put on a regimen of bread and water for three days. The report was to be read three times in chapter over the course of the year so that the visitors’ warnings would really sink in.63 This event suggests external concern about conventual behavior and an unprecedented desire to m ­ onitor it that must have engendered some discomfort among the St. ­Servatius community. 61

See Erath, Codex diplomaticus, 138, and the account in Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts ­Quedlinburg, vol. 1, 345–46. 62 See Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg, vol. 1, 348–49, and Friedrich Ernst Kettner, ­Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des Kayserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710), 52. 63 Erath, Codex diplomaticus, 155; Kettner, Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, 55; and Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg, vol. 1, 351–54.

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In the absence of any other evidence concerning the identity of the deceased on the anonymous memorial, August Fink assigned the effigy to Abbess ­Kunigunde on the basis of Friedrich Ernst Kettner’s assertion in his Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie that unspecified “alte Chroniken” (“old chronicles”) told of two epitaphial burials in the middle of the church that belonged to Sophia von Hadmerleben and Elisabeth von Kirchberg.64 Fink pointed out that no abbesses by those names ever ruled St. Servatius and he believed Kettner’s information to constitute a corrupt reference to Sophia of Brehna on the one hand and Kunigunde of Kranichfeld and Kirchberg on the other. Since Fink assigned the archaizing plaque to Sophia, he identified this more modern but still largely traditional effigy as that of Abbess Kunigunde.65 However, this onomastic evidence is far from definitive, and the identity of the individual commemorated with this plaque may never be known. The next memorial in the chronological series of Quedlinburg abbesses is that of Gertrud of Ampfurth, whose lengthy reign commenced in 1233 and ended with her death in 1270 (Figure 6.8). As in the burials of Agnes II, Sophia, and one of her immediate successors, the correlation between Gertrud’s monument and the triple memorial of 1125–30 is obvious. The inscription names the deceased, indicates the date of her death, and expresses the hope that she may rest in heaven with the company of saints.66 On this plaque, the abbess stands within a long basin, her head supported by a rectangular cushion. She is frontal and symmetrical, the two halves of her body reinforced by the scroll descending from her right hand, towards which two fingers of her left hand point. The very slight turn of her body to the right and tilt of her head to the left enlivens the effigy. Gertrud wears a tunic under a mantle. Her head is encased in a veil and wimple. On either side of Gertrud’s head is a vigorously censing angel,67 ascending on the left and descending on the right, and five beasts appear beneath her feet. Only one of these—the lion on the lower left of the plaque—is easily identifiable. The abbess’s feet rest on a feathered creature with webbed, taloned feet. Its small, rather bovine face glares down towards its companions below. One of its feet rests on the hind quarters of the lion and the other on a serpentine creature with front paws. Both the lion and the serpent in their turn grasp prey, but the precise nature of these beasts is impossible 64 Kettner, Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, 291. 65 Fink, Figürliche Grabplastik, 43–44. 66 For a transcription, see Mehl, Münzen, 159–60. 67 This motif is uncommon in German sepulchral iconography but occurs for example on the memorial of Archbishop Konrad von Daun (d. 1434) in the cathedral at Mainz. See Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 273 and fig. 405.

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Figure 6.8 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Gertrud of Ampfurth. Late 13th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

to determine: the lion’s victim is severely abraded, while that of the serpent appears to be a composite of a human being and perhaps a duck. Scholars have linked these animals to Psalm 91:13, which reads “you will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent,” in this way

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suggesting the deceased’s victory over evil, though the lion in particular was a multivalent symbol in the Middle Ages.68 By 1270, the beast motif was well established in German tomb sculpture, appearing for example on the memorials of Archbishop Siegfried III von Eppstein (d. 1249) in the cathedral at Mainz and of Henry III von Sayn (d. 1246), now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.69 But the number of beasts that accompany Gertrud as well as their formal idiosyncracy show an unusual level of fantasy. Gertrud’s tenure at St. Servatius, while largely peaceful, was characterized by a multitude of complex financial transactions involving the convent and its dependencies, the reeves, and, increasingly, townsmen. The abbess was a stickler for documentation, insisting on written records that would protect her from accusations that she had abused her position or not acted in the best interests of her convent.70 Gertrud resumed the altercation with the bishop of Halberstadt concerning Palm Sunday privileges, which her three immediate predecessors had permitted him. Thus, in 1251, she again refused permission for Bishop Meinhard von Kranichfeld to enter St. Servatius on that occasion. The dispute was ended during Gertrud’s tenure when, in 1259, Bishop Volrad von Kranichfeld accepted payment of 200 silver marks from the convent at Quedlinburg and in consequence relinquished Halberstadt’s rights to any involvement at St. Servatius on Palm Sunday. Gertrud thus followed in Sophia’s footsteps with regard to the Halberstadt relationship. She also continued the practices of her predecessors Agnes II and Sophia in using the visual arts as a vehicle with which to recall St. Servatius’s Ottonian origins. During her reign, several 10th-century Near Eastern rock crystals, probably gifts from one of the Ottonian emperors, were encased in gilded silver mounts in order to serve as relic ostensories.71 A positive relationship with a more recent German ruler is likely reflected in the presence at Quedlinburg of one of a series of wooden boxes of late 12th- or early 13th-century Sicilian origin that appear in several German treasuries, including the imperial convents of Essen and Gandersheim.72 One of the Hohenstaufen rulers, with their strong Sicilian connections, is the likeliest donor. It is probable that the German copy of the Quedlinburg box, also in the treasury at St. Servatius, was made during 68 69 70 71 72

See Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 73–74 and, with specific reference to Gertrud, Fink, Figürliche Grabplastik, 54–56, and Greska, “Der Gott Gnad,” 39. See Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 94–95 and figs. 143 and 144. Gertrud’s reign was described in extensive detail in Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts ­Quedlinburg, vol. 1, 355–62 and 407–25. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 72–76 and 123–24. Georg Himmelheber, “Mittelalterliche Holzmosaikarbeiten,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 36 (1994): 65–91, and Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 80–81.

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Figure 6.9 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of ­Adelheid IV. Photo courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Domschatz, Quedlinburg

Gertrud’s reign.73 The choice to emulate the Sicilian model is likely to have been motivated by the latter’s association with an imperial donor. An imperial association similarly characterizes Gertrud’s memorial, which is in keeping with effigial norms at St. Servatius in its emulation of the basic format of the 12th-century monument at the same time as it introduces modernisms, such as the censing angels and the beasts. Quast found a large brass marker with a poorly preserved incised effigy of Adelheid IV, Countess of Isenburg to the east of Beatrix’s memorial (Figure 6.9). 73

Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 80–81.

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Adelheid was provost of St. Servatius under Abbess Ermgard and succeeded her in the abbatiate in 1405. Because of the severe abrasion of the plaque, very little detail can be made out.74 However, in accordance with long-­established Quedlinburg practice, the rectangular pictorial field is surrounded by an inscribed frame. The surviving portion of the inscription, in Gothic minuscule, reads “In the year of the Lord 1441 on Tuesday after the feast of St. Gregory the excellent mistress, mistress [] abbess, died. May her soul rest in peace.” The effigy stands frontally under an ogee arch whose apogee is flanked by small windows in a generic Gothic style. The fact that the deceased is veiled is evident, but no other details of clothing or other appearance are still identifiable. Adelheid’s tenure at Quedlinburg was far from smooth. Voigt called her a termagant and, indeed, she was routinely involved in squabbles with other members of the community as well as outsiders. She often sought papal assistance against secular authorities across—apparently—the entire spectrum of society who attempted to contravene her authority and generally meddle in Quedlinburg’s affairs and with its properties. Unusually, Adelheid retired from her abbatial position in 1434/35. She died in 1441.75 The presence of her imposing tomb marker at St. Servatius suggests that she remained an honored member of her convent after her retirement. One reason for this may have been Adelheid’s utilization of the visual arts in a manner similar to that of, most notably, Agnes II. Together with her provost, Mechthild von Hackeborn (1406– 32), Adelheid commissioned a reliquary for the remains of St. Corona that had been presented to Quedlinburg by Otto I in 964. The representation of saints, including St. Servatius, and royalty, including Otto I, in addition to the conservative style of the reliquary suggest to Mersch that the intent of the commission was, yet again, to recall the convent’s august foundational circumstances.76 The difficulties Adelheid encountered as abbess of St. Servatius, while different in context from those Agnes II faced, could easily have suggested to her the wisdom of a commission that visually reasserted her convent’s history and status. Adelheid IV was succeeded by Anna of Plauen, whose effigy of c.1458 includes elements already familiar at St. Servatius; it is strikingly similar to 74

The deterioration of her memorial may be attributed to its placement against the ­exterior south wall of the convent church for a 25- to 30-year period in the late 20th and early 21st century (Elmar Egner, curator of St. Servatius, in a personal communication with the author on September 3, 2020). 75 Voigt described Adelheid and discussed her reign in Gottfried Voigt, Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1787), 338–61. 76 Mersch, Soziologische Dimensionen, 394–98, and in this volume Mersch, “Quedlinburg Abbey’s Medieval History in Ever-Changing Political and Religious Frameworks: A ­Survey,” 36–37.

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Figure 6.10 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Anna of Plauen. Middle of the 15th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

that of Agnes II (Figure 6.10). Anna’s full-length, frontal figure, garbed in a belted tunic under a capacious mantle, is accommodated in a shallow basin whose frame is inscribed in Gothic minuscule with the words “In the year of the Lord 1458, on the Sabbath, the 14th of the month of January, the venerable mistress Anna of Plauen died, the abbess of this convent. May her soul rest

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in peace. Amen.”77 The abbess’s head, decorously enclosed within a veil and wimple, is set within a rectangular cushion. Her smooth, youthful face with its wide-open eyes, very similar to Agnes’s, is surely idealized: Anna’s date of birth is unknown, but she entered St. Servatius already in 1416. Anna raises her left hand and presses her palm against her breast while she lightly grasps the drapery across her stomach with her right. Beneath the copious hem of her gown, which conceals her feet, stretches a lion, its head adjacent to the shield with rampant lion in the lower left corner of the slab. While the outstretched lion is a much more accomplished version of the beast at the bottom left of Gertrud’s effigy, the heraldic motif, a reference to the coat of arms used by the Plauen family from 1288, makes its first appearance on an abbatial monument at Quedlinburg.78 The trapezoidal frame, however, is unusual. Although the shape is seen from time to time from the earliest period of the medieval effigy, it is elsewhere achieved through a slight tapering downwards, mimicking the sarcophagal accommodation of a corpse, and not by means of the abrupt transition seen at the top of Anna’s monument. The shape was perhaps intended to create a sort of canopy over Anna’s head, a common device during this period, although usually accomplished with Gothic architectural embellishment.79 Relations between the town of Quedlinburg and the convent of St. Servatius had deteriorated significantly after Gertrud of Ampfurth’s reign, with increasing defiance against abbatial overlordship on the part of the town’s government. While the town fathers swore homage to the abbess on numerous documented occasions throughout the Middle Ages, the town’s relative autonomy from the convent is reflected in the fact that, from 1426, it belonged to both the Saxon Städtebund, or confederation, and the Hanseatic league. Abbatial authority in secular Quedlinburg’s affairs was thus diminished. Anna of Plauen quarreled with the town government about numerous issues, including ownership and usage of the mills, minting of coins, appointment of the town school’s rector, 77 78

79

For a transcription of the Latin inscription, see Mehl, Münzen, 168. Heraldic imagery was quite common on German effigial memorials of both men and women already in the 14th century. See, for example, the effigy of Zinna of Vargula (d. 1371) in Erfurt (Bauch, Mittelalterliche Grabbild, 239–40 and fig. 358), among many others. For the heraldry of the Saxon aristocracy in the Middle Ages, see Karlheinz Blaschke, Siegel und Wappen in Sachsen (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1960). It is possible that heraldry accompanied Adelheid IV’s effigy, but its state of abrasion disallows even conjecture on this point. The simplest type of Gothic canopy is seen on the effigy of Abbess Barbara von Absberg (d. 1456) at Obermünster, Regensburg. The trapezoidal upper zone of Anna of Quedlinburg’s memorial is similar to that created by the drapery behind the standing figure of Abbess Kunigunde von Eglofstein (d. 1479). For images, see Bildarchiv Foto Marburg at https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/fotomarburg.

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and jurisdiction over the Jewish population. However, her tenure was not without accomplishments, most notably the reestablishment of an architectural workshop that was intended to improve and beautify the conventual buildings. Nevertheless, the conventual chapter must have concluded that it would be to their benefit to elect an abbess who brought with her significant political clout.80 For this reason, shortly before Anna’s death, the St. Servatius community elected as abbess Hedwig, daughter of the Saxon Elector Duke Friedrich II of the Wettin dynasty. The last in the sequence of medieval abbatial effigies from Quedlinburg is that of Abbess Hedwig, who ruled the convent from 1458 until her death in 1511 (Figure 6.11). Hedwig was consecrated abbess of Quedlinburg in 1458 at the extremely tender age of 12. Her appointment at this young age, occurring only a year after she had entered the convent as a canoness, suggests that Hedwig was a pawn in the political chess game in which her male relatives were currently engaged: at this time, the Saxon Wettin dynasty vied for supremacy in eastern Germany with the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, and control over Quedlinburg was a significant prize in this competition. With Hedwig on the abbatial throne, the Wettins were well placed to prevail in this skirmish, and likewise to assert themselves against the aggressive bishop of neighboring Halberstadt, who was at that time the town reeve, in spite of centuries of hostility between the Quedlinburg abbesses and the Halberstadt episcopate. In 1477, the town and the convent fell into a particularly nasty disagreement involving the accusation against a town Jew of the ritual murder of a Christian child. As the local judicial authority, Abbess Hedwig examined the circumstances, determined their falsehood, and released the accused, but she was then forced to flee for sanctuary to her mother at Grimme as the town militia, supported by forces of the bishop of Halberstadt, prepared to assault the convent. Hedwig’s brothers, the Saxon dukes Ernst and Albrecht, responded with their own, superior forces and the battle was engaged on the night of July 24. The town government was quickly forced to throw itself on Hedwig’s mercy. Ultimately, the peace treaty concluded on August 10 was entirely to the benefit of the abbess of St. Servatius, and the town of Quedlinburg lost the autonomy for which it had struggled for centuries. Furthermore, the position of reeve fell in the aftermath of this conflict to the Wettin Duke Albrecht, Hedwig’s brother, and, from 1500 forward, her nephew, Georg, both of whom proved to be intensely meddlesome. In consequence, the decades between 1477 and 80

Michael Vollmuth-Lindenthal, “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg: Reichsstift und Stadt Quedlinburg am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder: Menschen im Spätmittelalter, ed. Werner Freitag (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002), 69–88 at 72.

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Figure 6.11 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Effigy of Hedwig of Saxony. Early 16th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

1511, when Hedwig died, were characterized by a delicate balancing act on the abbess’s part among the demands of the town, her male relatives’ thirst for power, and the integrity of her convent. Hedwig’s monument is a stone slab comprising a central effigial field surrounded by a frame.81 The inscription in Gothic minuscule advises the viewer 81

The slab measures 1.89 m (6.2 ft.) in height by 0.95 m (3.11 ft.) in width.

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that “In the year of the Lord 1511, on the 13th day of the month of June, the eminently respectable mistress Hedwig from the house of the dukes of Saxony, abbess of this convent, died” and expresses the wish that she might rest in peace.82 A shield bearing an armorial device appears in each corner of the frame. Hedwig of Saxony stands frontally in the center of the pictorial field under a round-headed arch with a modest amount of Gothic tracery to either side. She stands firmly on a plinth, her right foot projecting slightly forward. Her hands are pressed together in prayer before her breast, and a rosary is looped around her right wrist. Her eyes are wide open, the wrinkles and sagging beneath them acknowledging Hedwig’s age—66—at the time of her death. The abbess wears a voluminous mantle pinned below the throat over a fitted tunic whose bodice and cuffs are visible. Hedwig’s unusually flamboyant headdress appears to consist of a single piece folded in such a way as to peak above the wearer’s forehead and again on either side of her head with folds hanging down. Hedwig’s slab continues Quedlinburg tradition in retaining the basic format of the frontally standing female figure surrounded by an inscribed frame and also in being quite conservative for its time. While the drapery, headdress, and rosary are in keeping with the preferences of the early 16th century, most elements of the composition correlate with standard practice at St. Servatius. The conservatism of Hedwig’s monument is especially evident when it is compared to the nearly precisely contemporary, but considerably more formally progressive, memorials at Meißen to her sister Amalia, who died in 1502, and her sister-in-law Zdena, the Bohemian wife of Hedwig’s brother Albrecht, deceased in 1510.83 Both are brass carvings that surmount a sandstone base. They have been assigned to the prominent workshop of the Vischer family in Nuremberg, and the design of Amalia’s slab has been attributed to no less an artist than Albrecht Dürer.84 The commonalities that link the brasses suggest that they were conceived as a pair, representing into eternity the women of the Wettin dynasty. In each case, the figure wears a mantle with long vertical folds, although they are somewhat more decorative on the earlier memorial. Both women also wear a soft cap of slightly different profile and a wimple in one case covering the entire lower face and upper throat and in the other reaching only to the bottom lip. Amalia and Zdena stand on patterned tile and turn ever so slightly to the left. Heads bowed, they hold rosaries between the fingers of their praying 82 83

For a transcription of the original inscription in Latin see Mehl, Münzen, 170. See Matthias Donath, Die Grabmonumente im Dom zu Meissen (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2004), and Sven Hauschke, Die Grabmäler der Nürnberger Vischer-Werkstatt (1453–1544) (Fulda: M. Imhof, 2006). 84 Donath, Grabmonumente, 372.

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hands. Brocaded tapestries hang behind them. In the upper or lower corners are two shields with coats of arms. Both ­monuments reveal interest in illusionistic space. A room extends behind Amalia, conveyed by the half columns that flank her lower body and the perspectival ­treatment of the tiles, though it is then closed off by the tapestry and the intertwined branches and vines in the upper half of the composition. Zdena is not ­represented in perspectival space—the tiles seem rather to tilt up—but the three-dimensionality of the room behind her head betrays the artist’s desire to try out an illusionistic environment. In light of these comparanda, it seems clear that most aspects of Hedwig’s tomb are intentionally conservative and programmatically correlate with the historical standards of abbatial portraiture at Quedlinburg. Over the centuries, the basic format, a vehicle of the convent’s identity, had not changed. Most innovations were slow to appear; only a contemporary style of dress was deemed an essential modernism. In preserving a compositional type that had, by this point, been synonymous with Quedlinburg’s identity for three and a half centuries, Hedwig placed herself unequivocally within the continuum of St. Servatius’s leadership. There are, however, two elements on Hedwig’s memorial that suggest a deliberate departure from Quedlinburg norms in a manner intended to underscore an important aspect of Hedwig’s abbatial identity. One is her headdress, which differs ostentatiously from the modest veil and wimple worn by her abbatial predecessors. This style of headdress evolved already by the middle of the 15th century and was particularly popular between roughly 1480 and 1510.85 The headdress completely covers the wearer’s head and neck, and may be combined with a wimple or veil for greater modesty but Hedwig’s throat and collarbone are bare. This type of headdress does not appear on contemporary or earlier monuments commemorating religious women. Rather, it suggests the assertion of a secular persona within the abbatial body. Hedwig’s very position as abbess had always resulted from her secular nobility and her abbatial tenure was characterized by both dependance on her aristocratic family and her need to uphold the prerogatives of her convent against her male relatives. I suggest that the distinctive departure from Quedlinburg practice in Hedwig’s headdress was intended to affirm her identity within the hierarchical social structure of aristocratic Germany. This priority is further underscored by the extent and prominence of the heraldic imagery on Hedwig’s ­memorial, 85

Margaret Scott, Late Gothic Europe, 1400–1500 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980), 194. See the headdress on an older woman adoring the Virgin and Child in a diptych of 1486 by the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula in Antwerp and Dürer’s drawing of a Nuremberg woman dressed for church now in Vienna’s Albertina Museum (Scott, Late Gothic Europe, 194 and 233 and figs. 130 and 166).

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a second departure from Quedlinburg norms. On the viewer’s left, the top shield bears the coat-of-arms of the Saxon dukes; its counterpart on the right is the Austrian coat-of-arms, a reference to Hedwig’s maternal grandfather. On the bottom left are the arms of Braunschweig, the dynasty to which Hedwig’s paternal grandmother belonged; and on the bottom right is the Polish eagle, a reference to her maternal grandmother. Hedwig is thus cocooned within an explicit pictorial statement of her identity as a member of several particularly eminent secular aristocracies. The inclusion of heraldic imagery is quite common at this point in German funerary monuments, but the incorporation of four shields with such an extensive statement of lineage occurs most commonly on the memorials of high-born bishops and secular rulers.86 A comparison to Hedwig’s tomb may be found on the brass commemorating her sister-in-law, Zdena, on which the quadrapartite shield on the lower left correlates with the titles held by herself and her husband, Hedwig’s brother, Albrecht, whose own brass in the Meißen cathedral is replete with armorial devices. Startling as it is in the context of Quedlinburg commemorative tradition, Hedwig’s memorial relates in this respect closely to those of her near relatives. Hedwig’s reign as abbess of Quedlinburg endured for 53 years. For more than five decades, this Saxon princess balanced in high winds on a wire that stretched between her familial identity and obligations and the integrity of the ancient and illustrious convent for whose well-being she was responsible. Her choice of tomb imagery was intended to reflect both these vital aspects of Hedwig’s experience, not only in order to guide the commemoration of the abbess herself after death, but likewise to instruct conventual inhabitants and visitors alike in their interpretation of the history of St. Servatius. Collectively, the effigial memorials of the abbesses of St. Servatius, surviving from the 12th, 13th, 15th, and 16th centuries, represent the identity of the convent throughout the Middle Ages. The immediate catalysts for these commissions varied. The reigns of Agnes II and Sophia of Brehna were marked by significant external threat to St. Servatius, for example, while no comparable menace can be detected, on the basis of the surviving historical record, at least, during the tenure of Gertrud of Ampfurth. But the medieval monuments all prioritize the inscription on the abbatial bodies of the principles that guided the Quedlinburg community over the course of several centuries. Of great importance with regard to conventual identity was access to and beneficence from 86

See, for example, Tilman Riemenschneider’s memorial of 1499 for Rudolf von Scherenberg in Würzburg Cathedral, which is the subject of Hartmut Krohm, “Rudolphus de Scherenberg, Episcopus herbipolensis, Franciaeque orientalis Dux: Effigy and Rhetoric,” Studies in the History of Art 65 (2004): 28–37.

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the highest secular authority. The founding of the convent by the widow of the first Ottonian ruler, Henry I, with the blessing of her son, the first Ottonian emperor, Otto I, established an imperial identity for Quedlinburg that would always play a major role in the community’s sense of its own identity. The decision to commemorate the last Ottonian and the two Salian abbesses in the first, triple memorial was surely intended to visualize that imperial history, even as the non-royal abbess who oversaw the monument’s completion rejected overt imperial iconography. Although apparently a close friend of the new emperor, Lothar III, Gerburg was not his kin, nor were her successors members of the ruling dynasty and so the association with imperial rulership weakened. But the abbesses of later centuries would draw on the memory of Quedlinburg’s Ottonian origins in their commissions, not least in their emulation of the monument to Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II. The very activity of arts patronage as well as the choice of objects and their content recalled the convent’s magnificent first century. The consistency in the format of the effigies and their conservatism in comparison with contemporary comparanda likewise underscore the extent to which the effigial format chosen in the early 12th century continued to define the identity of St. Servatius throughout the Middle Ages. Works Cited Althoff, Gerd. “Beobachtungen zum liudolfingisch-ottonischen Gedenkwesen.” In Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter. Ed. Karl Schmidt and Joachim Wollasch. Munich: W. Fink, 1984. 649–65. Arens, Franz. Der Liber ordinarius der Essener Stiftskirche. Paderborn: Jungfermannschen Buchhandlung, 1908. Badham, Sally, and Sophie Oosterwijk. “‘Monumentum aere perennius’? Precious-Metal Tomb Monuments in Europe 1080–1430.” Church History 30 (2015): 7–105. Balzer, Edeltraud. Studien zur Geschichte des Bistums Münster im 11. Jahrhundert. ­Münster: Aschendorff, 2006. Bauch, Kurt. Das mittelalterliche Grabbild: Figürliche Grabmäler des 11. bis 15. Jahrhunderts in Europa. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976. Bauermann, Johannes. “Die Anfänge der Prämonstratenserklöster Scheda und St. ­Wiperti-Quedlinburg.” Sachsen und Anhalt 7 (1931): 237–52. Blaschke, Karlheinz. Siegel und Wappen in Sachsen. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1960. Blough, Karen. “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity Reconfigured.” Gesta 47/2 (2008): 147–69. Blough, Karen. “Implications for Female Monastic Literacy in the Reliefs from St. ­Liudger’s at Werden.” In Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City ­Dialogue. Ed. Virginia Blanton et al. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. 151–69.

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Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. Trans. Uta-Renate Blumenthal. Philadelphia: ­University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Bulach, Doris. “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort der Ottonen.” Zeitschrift für Geisteswissenschaft 48 (2000): 101–18. Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?”. In Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 84–109. Dale, Thomas. “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture.” Speculum 77/3 (July 2002): 707–43. Dectot, Xavier. Pierres tombales médiévales: sculptures de l’au-delà. Paris: Rempart, 2006. Donath, Matthias. Die Grabmonumente im Dom zu Meissen. Leipzig: Leipziger ­Universitätsverlag, 2004. Erath, Anton Ulrich von. Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis. Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764. Fink, August. Die figürliche Grabplastik in Sachsen von den Anfängen bis zur zweiten Hälfte des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts. Wolfenbüttel: Angermann, 1915. Fozi, Shirin. “From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque’: Two Romanesque Effigies and the Problem of Plastic Form.” In Revisiting the Monument: Fifty Years since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture. Ed. Ann Adams and Jessica Barker. London: The Courtauld ­Institute of Art, 2016. 30–48. Fozi, Shirin. “Reconstructing Ita at Schaffhausen.” Medieval Feminist Forum 57/1 (­Summer 2021): 195–235. Fuhrmann, Horst. Germany in the High Middle Ages c. 1050–1200. Trans. Timothy ­Reuter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 (repr. 2001). Garrison, Eliza. “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in ­Quedlinburg.” Gesta 49/1 (2010): 17–29. Greska, Christiane. “Der Got Genad: Studien zu Form und Funktion figürlicher Frauengrabmäler des Mittelalters in Deutschland.” PhD diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-­ Universität, Munich, 1996. Hahn, Cynthia. “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning, with Particular Attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg.” In Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History. Ed. Robert Maxwell. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 133–47. Hahn, Cynthia. Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400circa 1204. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Hauschke, Sven. Die Grabmäler der Nürnberger Vischer-Werkstatt (1453–1544). Fulda: M. Imhof, 2006. Hengevoss-Dürkop, Kerstin. “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg.” In Die Repräsentation der Gruppen:

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Marlow, Christian. “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen im Hochmittelalter. Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137.” PhD diss., Otto-von-­ Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2017 (http://d-nb.info/1161462007/34). Mecham, June. Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany. Ed. Alison Beach et al. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Mehl, Manfred. Die Münzen des Stiftes Quedlinburg. Hamburg: Mehl, 2006. Mersch, Katharina Ulrike. Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2012. Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje. “‘Die häßlichen Äbtissinen’: Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–47. Moddelmog, Claudia. Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012. Mosel, Manfred. “Die Anfänge des plastischen Figurengrabmales in Deutschland.” PhD diss., Universität Würzburg, 1970. Niehr, Klaus. Die mitteldeutsche Skulptur der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts. ­Weinheim: VCH, 1992. Oexle, Otto. “Die Gegenwart der Lebenden und der Toten: Gedanken über Memoria.” In Gedächtnis, das Gemeinschaft stiftet. Ed. Karl Schmid. Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1985. 74–107. Oexle, Otto. “Memoria und Memorialbild.” In Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter. Ed. Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch. Munich: W. Fink, 1984. 384–440. Oexle, Otto. “Memoria und Memorialüberlieferung im früheren Mittelalter.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976): 70–95. Ogden, Dunbar. The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002. Panofsky, Erwin. Tomb Sculpture. New York: Abrams, 1964. Petke, Wolfgang, ed. Die Regesten des Kaiserreiches unter Lothar III. und Konrad III. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008. Quast, Ferdinand v. “Die Gräber der Aebtissinen in der Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Die Gräber der Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg. Ed. Konrad Wilhelm Hase and ­Ferdinand v. Quast. Quedlinburg: Verlag des Harzvereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1877. 5–16. Reuling, Ulrich. “Quedlinburg Königspfalz – Reichsstifts – Markt.” In Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung. Vol. 4. Pfalzen – Reichsgut – Königshöfe. Ed. Lutz Fenske. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. 184–247. Reuling, Ulrich. “Von der ottonischen ‘Osterpfalz’ zur ‘Welfenfestung’: Die Geschichte der Quedlinburger Königspfalz.” Quedlinburger Annalen 3 (2000): 14–28.

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Schlenker, Gerlinde. “Das Verhältnis der Halberstädter Bischöfe zum Quedlinburger Damenstift vom 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert.” In Geschichte und Kultur des Bistums Halberstadt 804–1648: Symposium anlässlich 1200 Jahre Bistumsgründung Halberstadt, 24. bis 28. März 2004; Protokollband. Ed. Adolf Siebrecht. Halberstadt: Eigenverlag Halberstädter Druckhaus, 2006. 459–68. Schlotheuber, Eva. “Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Medieval Nuns.” In Fashion and Clothing in Late Medieval Europe: Mode und Kleidung im Europa des späten Mittelalters. Ed. Rainer Schwinges and Regula Schorta. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2010. 139–54. Schmid, Karl. “Die Sorge der Salier um ihre Memoria. Zeugnisse, Erwägungen und Fragen.” In Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter. Ed. Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch. Munich: W. Fink, 1984. 666–726. Schubert, Dietrich. Von Halberstadt nach Meißen: Bildwerke des 13. Jahrhunderts in Thüringen, Sachsen und Anhalt. Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg, 1974. Schubert, Ernst. “Inschrift und Darstellung auf Quedlinburger Äbtissinengrabsteinen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts.” In Deutsche Inschriften: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik Worms 1986; Vorträge und Berichte. Ed. Harald Keller. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1987. 131–51. Scott, Margaret. Late Gothic Europe, 1400–1500. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980. Seeliger, Hans. Die Grabplatten der Grafen von Nellenburg and die Nellenburger Memorialtafel im Museum Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen. Schaffhausen: Museum zu Allerheiligen, 1972. Thümmler, Hans. Zur Architektur und Skulptur des Mittelalters: Gesammelte Aufsätze. Münster: Rhema, 1998. Toth, Michael. “Welfs, Hohenstaufen and Habsburgs.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 5. Ed. David Abulafia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 375–404. Voigt, Gottfried. Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg. 3 vols. Leipzig: Schwickert, 1786–91. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Vollmuth-Lindenthal, Michael. “Äbtissin Hedwig von Quedlinburg: Reichsstift und Stadt Quedlinburg am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts.” In Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder: Menschen im Spätmittelalter. Ed. Werner Freitag. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002. 69–88. Wäscher, Hermann. Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942. Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1959. Wentzel, Hans. “Das byzantinische Erbe der ottonischen Kaiser: Hypothesen über den Brautschatz der Theophano.” Aachener Kunstblätter 40 (1971): 15–39. Winkel, Harald. Herrschaft und Memoria: Die Wettiner und ihre Hausklöster im Mittelalter. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2010.

Chapter 7

Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg: Romanesque Craftwork of Great Quality Manfred Mehl Initially in the Middle Ages, the sole known monetary unit was the penny (Latin: denarius; in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries: penny, Pfennig, Penig, penning, penningr, etc.). It was originally based on Roman coins called denarii, and was two-sided with a diameter of about 18 to 22 mm. For unknown reasons, in some parts of central Europe in 1150, the coin underwent changes such that pennies were issued in significantly larger size, with regionally varying diameters between 25 and 45 mm, whereby the total weight as well as the amount of silver—the real measure of the coin’s value—were not increased. The planchet had therefore to be rolled significantly thinner, to a paper-thin silver sheet, and thus could only be minted on one side in order not to break during the minting process. It achieved the stability required for a coin by means of a bowl-like shape around the face design, with the silver sheet bulging up to a bead ring of greater or lesser height. These coins were just pennies but scholars in the late 17th century coined the term Bracteati for this particular type of coin, derived from the Latin word bractea (brattea), meaning “thin plate.” The term bracteates for this particular species of coin has continued into the present day, sometimes giving rise to the impression that the users were unaware of the original meaning of the term and understood it to designate a nominal value. The minting of bracteates began during the first half of the 12th century in the region of the Harz Mountains and in Thuringia and thence spread rapidly over the Marquisate of Meissen, Lusatia, Anhalt, Brandenburg, and Brunswick and throughout Upper and Lower ­Saxony—almost throughout Germany, in fact, with the exception of Westphalia, the Rhineland, and northern and eastern Bavaria. Outside ­Germany, bracteates were found in Switzerland, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Scandinavia. Bracteates were usually recalled with regularity about once or twice a year and replaced with new coins with a deduction (Renovatio Monetae). At a settled date of the year, the pennies in circulation were recalled, invalidated, and replaced with new ones, albeit not at a philanthropic ratio of one to one, but rather at a considerable loss for the holder, whereby it was usually of no consequence whether that individual was a foreign merchant or a local citizen. This © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_009

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practice occurred already during the Carolingian era, but it was much more pronounced at the time of the regional penny currencies, that is, by and large around the beginning of the minting of bracteates. In Magdeburg, this mandatory exchange was carried out twice a year, on the market days in spring and autumn, whereas in Quedlinburg it happened only once annually. For 12 old pennies (equalling one shilling) handed in, only nine new ones were received in return. The entire difference flowed into the cash box of the sovereign, who in Quedlinburg was of course the reigning abbess. Since any new issue led to an exchange loss, and the silver content was ­additionally decreased, holders only exchanged the amount of pennies needed for a current purchase on the market. Other coins were retained in order to make a profit at a later sale due to the higher silver content of the earlier issues. This is the reason that, in each find of coins, we do not only encounter the most recently issued pennies. Hoards also contained coins from earlier issues by the same minting authorities which should, according to regulation, have been melted down. In a stroke of numismatic luck, the finds of coins during fieldwork in 1860 in the village of Freckleben near Aschersleben (Saxony-Anhalt) brought several thousand bracteates to light. A total of 3666 pieces of the treasure, which had been buried around 1175, have been recognized, many of them representing heretofore unknown types. Approximately three quarters of these—over 2700 pieces—originated in the Diocese of Halberstadt, while the remaining quarter were minted by the Count of Anhalt, the Counts of Arnstein, Quedlinburg Abbey, Helmstedt Abbey, and the Counts of Falkenstein. Further, individual pieces originated in Magdeburg, Brunswick and other mints of the eastern Harz foreland that have yet to be identified. However, this find share confirms that, in the 12th century, Halberstadt was the site of the most important mint in the eastern Harz foreland, surpassing all other mint authorities. The Freckleben find includes light bracteates that represent the culmination of the art of minting, both in their outstanding artistic design and their technically accomplished embossing. Neither in the years before their ­discovery in 1860, nor subsequently up to the present day, has anything comparable come to light. The clearly uniform style is recognizable on almost all coins within the hoard, which soon was identified as “a stamp-cutting school of the ­Northern Harz Mountains” or even more specifically as a “Workshop of ­Halberstadt.” Today’s opinion, represented especially by Bernd Kluge, ­Emeritus Director of the Numismatic Collection in Berlin, is that all of these coins are from the hand of a single outstanding artist, the “Master of Halberstadt.” All coins of the find of Freckleben were made between 1150/55 and 1170/75, which is quite consistent with the career of a single individual over a period of 20 years. This Master of Halberstadt worked not only for the bishops of Halberstadt, but also for Margrave Albrecht “the Bear” of Anhalt, the noble lords of Arnstein

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and Falkenstein, and the abbesses of Quedlinburg. It is quite likely that not only were the stamps for the mints of other commissioners manufactured in ­Halberstadt, but the minting itself could have taken place there as well. Lesser nobility could scarcely have managed to maintain their own mint with appropriate tools and the necessary staff for minting throughout the year, as their low output of coins suggests. Only when the old pennies were recalled and the new coins issued did new money flow into their respective markets. In the catalogue that follows, bracteates in Figures 7.1.3 through 7.2.19 originated most certainly with the Master of Halberstadt. The coins in Figures 7.1.3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 12, and Figures 7.2.13, 16, 17, and 19 were found in ­Freckleben. The bracteates shown in Figures 7.1.1 and 2 and Figures 7.2.20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 had a different origin. Figures 7.1.1 and 2 belong to the early minting of Quedlinburg bracteates and exhibit less sophisticated craftsmanship, while Figures 7.2. 20 to 24 date to a period when the Master of Halberstadt was no longer active. The style of this last coin (Figure 7.2.24) is significantly different and does not approach the quality of the others. Although the number of Quedlinburg coins in the find of Freckleben is not very large, it is abundantly evident that the Master of Halberstadt designed them with special devotion. The depicted abbess sits centrally in a dignified attitude, not with humility, but in almost worldly pomp, although her veil designates her as a spiritual person. Her richly pleated gown is adorned with several ornate borders and is held together by a clasp on her chest. Sometimes she sits on a folding chair (faldistorium) typical for the time. Its feet are shaped like animal claws and its armrests end in animal heads (principally apparently dogs’ heads). Alternatively, she sits on a wall ledge amid architecture that is often richly decorated. It is intended to document her territory and bears no relation to existing buildings of the place and time of the coin’s issue. She often holds various objects with Christian symbolism, or her hands are raised in a gesture of benediction: Book: Figures 7.1.11, 2, 3, 5, and 10 and Figures 7.2.13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23. Bible, Gospels. Cross staff: Figures 7.33, 4, and 8 and Figures 7.2.19, 20, 21, and 24. The cross of Christ. Lily (lily staff, lily scepter): Figures 7.1.2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 and Figures 7.2.13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, and 23. The lily plays a major role in the devotion to the Virgin Mary and is a sign of purity. Palm branch: Figure 7.1.1, and Figures 7.2.15, 22, and 24. The sign of victory over death and entry into Paradise. Blessing hands: Figures 7.1.6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 and Figures 7.2.14 and 18. The unused interstices beside the individuals holding attributes, the seating, and the entire architectural framework were filled by the engraver with small motifs intended to address horror vacui, that is, the “fear of the void” so

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common in medieval art that demands the entire space be somehow filled. In our bracteates, the motifs are balls, simple ringlets, ringlets or squares with a dot in the middle, and the so-called arrowhead crosses composed of four triangular tips: ✠. These are a specialty of the Master of Halberstadt’s style, his trademark, so to speak, and are found not exclusively on the bracteates of Quedlinburg. See Figures 7.1.3, 4, 6, and 10 and Figures 7.2.15, 17, and 19, but also on the coins made for other commissioners in the neighborhood as well. Most bracteates are without circumscription and when there is one, it is orthographically correct only on occasion. The name of the abbess is usually quite easily recognized, as well as the name Quedlinburg, although the latter is variously spelled. Many other sequences of letters, however, cannot be interpreted. The inscription on the coin in Figure 7.2.22 is particularly striking in this regard because it absolutely defies interpretation. The abbess and her advisors might have given the engraver the correct version for transcription, but while he was clearly a good craftsman, even an artist, he may have been unable to read and write and interpreted the signs as he thought he understood them. That was no problem, though, because the citizens who got these coins in their hands could not read either. They were hardly interested in what was written on the coin; what mattered was that the coin was genuine and of full value. 1

Abbess Beatrix II, Countess of Winzenburg, 1138–60

Figure 7.1.1 and Figure 7.3—The veiled abbess is seated on a flat folding chair below an archway carrying three small towers and supported by two slender domed towers. A desk with a book is in front of her. Circumscription: S•CSERV®TNIÏVD›HS The name of the patron St. Servatius is identifiable, but the other letters are uninterpretable. Berlin, Münzkabinett (33 mm; 0.88 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 57.1 Figure 7.1.2—The veiled abbess sits enthroned on a folding chair (­faldistorium) ornamented with dog-heads and -paws, holding a lily staff and a (Gospel) book. Circumscription: +BIåTRIX•DIßRå•QVIDELßEBVR (BIATRIX D[E]I GRA[TIA] [ABBATISSA] QVIDELBVR[GENSIS] Private Collection (32 mm; 0.85 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 58. Figure 7.1.3—The veiled abbess sits enthroned on a folding chair (faldistorium) ornamented with dog-heads and -paws, holding a (Gospel) book and a processional cross. 1 See Manfred Mehl, Die Münzen des Stiftes Quedlinburg (Hamburg: Mehl, 2006).

MEHL

Figure 7.1.1 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.2 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.3 Hannover, Museum August Kestner. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.4 Hannover, Museum August Kestner. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.5 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.6 Frankfurt a.M., Bundesbank. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.7 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.8 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.9 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1407. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.10 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.11 Find of Freckleben Cahn 95. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. Figure 7.1.12 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg

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Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg

Circumscription: BåTRISI=V=å=BISå•HNR The name BEATRIX and her official title ABBATISSA are identifiable, the sequence HNR is not. Hannover, Museum August Kestner (31 mm; 0.75 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 59. Figure 7.1.4—The veiled abbess sits enthroned between two domed towers ornamented with dog-heads and -paws, holding a processional cross and a lily scepter. Hannover, Museum August Kestner (34 mm; 0.71 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 61. Figure 7.1.5—The veiled abbess sits enthroned on an arcaded wall, holding a lily and a (Gospel) book. To her left and the right is the bust of a canoness. Circumscription: Beå-T-RI-X and at her right shoulder AB• (BEATRIX AB[BATISSA]) Private Collection (30 mm; 0.78 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 62. Figure 7.1.6—A building with several towers and three window arches rises from a wall ledge. The veiled abbess sits below the middle arch holding a lily in her right hand, the left raised in blessing. Below the other two arches are two canonesses. At the feet of the abbess on the left is a canoness and on the right, a monk, perhaps a father confessor. Circumscription: BåT-T-IRBI/åCI-Rå (The name BEATRIX is detectible). Frankfurt a.M., Bundesbank (33 mm; 0.87 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 64. Figure 7.1.7—The veiled abbess sits on an arch holding a lily in her right hand, the left raised in blessing. At her feet are the busts of two canonesses. Outside to her right and left is an arc with rays representing stylized clouds. Private Collection (31 mm; 0.83 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 70. Figure 7.1.8 and Figure 0.1—Below an archway surmounted by five multi-­ storeyed towers, the bust-length image of the veiled abbess appears, her right hand raised in blessing while she holds a processional cross in her left hand. Berlin, Münzkabinett (27 mm; 0.874 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 72. Figure 7.1.9—Triple-turreted architecture rises above three arcades that surmount a further, double row of arcades. Below the large central arch sits the veiled abbess, a lily in her right hand, her left hand raised in blessing. Below the arch on the right is the bust of a canoness and on the left the bust of a monk. Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1407 (31 mm; 0.90 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 73. Figure 7.1.10 and Figure 7.4—The busts of the veiled abbess and a bishop appear under a large arch surmounted by a two-storyed structure. The upper

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story comprises two arches between two domed towers. The busts of two saints atop a Romanesque reliquary appear below these arches. This bracteate was certainly coined on the occasion of a special event in the history of Quedlinburg Abbey, possibly the reestablishment of the abbey of Michaelstein at Blankenburg/Harz, carried out under Abbess Beatrix. Construction began in 1139 and in 1146 the first monks moved in with their abbot, Roger of Altencampen. The inauguration probably took place in the years shortly thereafter. Thus, the bishop shown in the bottom row could be Rudolf I of Halberstadt, who consecrated the monastery as spiritual leader. The two holy figures in the top row could be the patron saints of Quedlinburg and Michaelstein, St. Servatius and St. Michael. Berlin, Münzkabinett (30 mm; 0.97 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 74. Figure 7.1.11—The half-length portrait of the veiled abbess appears within a triple arcade between two crenellated towers against a rich architectural backdrop surmounted by towers. Below the portrait, an arch enframes a palmette. Find of Freckleben Cahn 95 (27 mm; 0.868 g) / Mehl, Quedlinberg, No. 76. Figure 7.1.12 and Figure 7.5—The image of this bracteate correlates with Figure 7.1.6 except that the person shown under the central arch has a curlyhaired, masculine head and holds a sword, while the robe corresponds to that of one of the abbesses. The reeve of the chapter, who held secular power in Quedlinburg, is identifiable by his sword. The medalist simplified things by changing only part of the central figure. Circumscription: BåI=T=IRåB (The name BEATRIX and her official title ABBATISSA are to be surmised.) Berlin, Münzkabinett (31 mm; 0.84 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 79. 2

Abbess Meregart, 1160–61 (?)

Figure 7.2.13—Half-length portrait of the veiled abbess with cross-staff and lily-staff. The emergence of this bracteate was a sensation because the abbess named on the coin was unknown from primary sources. After detailed analysis, the period 1160/61 was established for her tenure. However, she cannot have served long as abbess. Circumscription: +MeReßåRT•åBBåTISSå•QVITeL• (The name of the abbess and the town name are clearly discernible). Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1414 (29.5 mm; 0.78 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 82.

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Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg

Figure 7.2.13 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1414. Coin of Abbess Meregart. Figure 7.2.14 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. Figure 7.2.15 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1425. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. Figure 7.2.16 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1421. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. Figure 7.2.17 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1408. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. Figure 7.2.18 Berlin, Münzkabinett. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. Figure 7.2.19 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1426. Coin of Abbess Adelheid III. Figure 7.2.20 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen. Figure 7.2.21 Quedlinburg, Castle Museum. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen. Figure 7.2.22 Hannover, Museum August Kestner 1432. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen. Figure 7.2.23 Private collection. Coin of Abbess Agnes II of Meissen. Figure 7.2.24 Quedlinburg, Castle Museum. Coin of Abbess Sophia of Brehna

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Abbess Adelheid III, 1161–84

Figure 7.2.14—The veiled abbess sits on a folding chair in the archway of the ramparts, flanked by two domed towers. Her chair is ornamented with animal-heads and -claws. She holds a book in her right hand while her left is raised in blessing. Private Collection (29 mm; 0.74 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 87. Figure 7.2.15—The veiled abbess is enthroned on a wall ledge between two large and two small domed towers. She holds a lily stalk in her right hand and a palm branch in her left. Under the ledge are an ornamented arch and six arrow-head crosses. Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1425 (28 mm; 0.81 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 91. Figure 7.2.16—The veiled abbess perches in the midst of a crenellated castle between two round high towers, holding a lily in right hand and an open book in her left. Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1421 (31 mm; 0.89 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 94. Figure 7.2.17—The veiled abbess sits on a wall ledge between two church buildings with a choir and double towers. She holds a lily staff in her right hand, in her left an open book. To the left and to the right of her feet is a medallion with the bust of a canoness. Both canonesses are depicted with their inner hand raised up towards the abbess, while their outer hand points to a church building below the abbess’s feet. Like Figure 7.1.10, this bracteate seems to have been coined to mark a special event reflected in the iconography whereby the canonesses lift one hand to the abbess and the other to a small church b­ uilding below their feet. Whether the upper half of the two-tower church building mirrored on the coin is intended to represent St. Servatius in Quedlinburg remains an open question. Abbess Adelheid III of Quedlinburg was likewise abbess of Gandersheim. She rebuilt and reconsecrated a collegiate church in Gandersheim in 1172 that had been destroyed by fire. The coin could refer to this ceremony. Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1408 (32.5 mm; 0.89 g) / Mehl, ­Quedlinburg, No. 97. Figure 7.2.18 and Figure 7.6—The veiled abbess sits with her hands raised in blessing. She is surrounded by a triple arcade surmounted by towers; to her left and right, two people carry swords while the towers are flanked by two trumpeters. A spiritual ruler needed a reeve for her protection and to handle her worldly affairs. At this time, the Count Palatine of Saxony of the Sommerschenburg dynasty inhabited this role. The sword-bearing figure should therefore be

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interpreted as the reeve, for compositional reasons complemented by a mirror image. (See similarly the church representation in Figure 7.2.17.) The two trumpet-blowing figures on the upper part of the coin seem to announce something to the people, but what, we cannot know—this coin retains its mystery. Berlin, Münzkabinett (32 mm; 0.876 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 100. Figure 7.2.19—On a wall ledge, the veiled abbess sits between two domed towers, a lily staff in her right hand and in her left a processional cross with an arrowhead cross. The legs of the abbess are surrounded by a ring composed of several lines. Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1426 (28 mm; 0.84 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 105. 4

Abbess Agnes II of Meissen, 1184–1203

Figure 7.2.20—The veiled abbess sits on an arch between two small domed towers holding a processional cross in her right hand and a lily in her left. Circumscription: +åßNeS•åBåTISå•INCVDDeLLIIe–O (The name and the title are clearly recognizable but the name of the town seems to be garbled.) Private Collection (44 mm; 0.65 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 126. Figure 7.2.21—The veiled abbess is sitting on a bench supported by a row of arches between two domed towers. She hold a processional cross in her right hand and a semi-open book in her left. On the outer edge are six floral crosses with a dot in between. Circumscription: +åßNeS•åBBåTISSå•De•CVITceLI• (The name and the title are clearly recognizable but the name of the town seems to be garbled.) Quedlinburg, Castle Museum (45 mm; 0.73 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 129. Figure 7.2.22—The veiled abbess is seated within an enframement composed of arcs and triangles, a palm branch in her right hand, an open book in her left. On the outer edge are four crosses composed of balls. Circumscription (abstruse): ICVN√L = IDåCIV•Q Hannover, Museum August Kestner, 1432 (44 mm; 0.80 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 139. Figure 7.2.23—The veiled abbess stands on a flattened arch between two small domed towers holding an open book in her right hand and a lily staff in her left. On the outer edge are four ringlets with a dot in the middle. Private Collection (40 mm; 0.79 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 144.

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5

Abbess Sophia of Brehna, 1203–26

Figure 7.2.24—The veiled abbess sits on an arch within an irregular cinquefoil; a processional cross is held in her right hand, a palm branch in her left. On the outer edge are four ringlets with a dot in each. Circumscription: +SOPHIå=QVIDeLICe=V=V (The name and the name of the town are clearly recognizable). Quedlinburg, Castle Museum (41.5 mm; 0.65 g) / Mehl, Quedlinburg, No. 157.

Figure 7.3 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18205000. Bracteate of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. 1138–60. Photograph by Lutz-Jürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann)

Figure 7.4 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18205143. Bracteate of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. 1138–60. Photograph by Lutz-Jürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann)

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Bracteates of the Abbesses of Quedlinburg

Figure 7.5 Berlin, Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 1820144. Bracteate of Abbess Beatrix II of Winzenburg. 1138–60. Photograph by Lutz-Jürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann)

Figure 7.6 Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18201075. Bracteate of Abbess Adelheid III. 1161–84. Photograph by Lutz-Jürgen Lübke (Lübke & Wiedemann)

Chapter 8

The Quedlinburg Frieze and Its Romanesque Context Shirin Fozi “We will never understand the language and the message of ­Romanesque sculpture if we fail to take note of the different audiences to which it was addressed.” Willibald Sauerländer (1992)

∵ Given the rich array of artworks that survive at the abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg, one of the most lavishly endowed imperial convents of the ­Ottonian era, it is not entirely surprising that its sculptural frieze has received scant scholarly attention (Figure 8.1). Though the dazzling collection of extant reliquaries, manuscripts, wall paintings, tomb sculptures, and textiles represents only a fraction of Quedlinburg’s medieval holdings, many are well-known examples of their type and have been studied as foundational evidence for the spiritual and intellectual experiences of elite medieval women.1 Much of this research has emphasized relationships between their visual programs and the abbey’s shifting fortunes, with a focus on the heyday of the princess-abbesses in the 10th through early 12th centuries and their mandate to guard the living

1 See Thomas Labusiak, Kostbarer als Gold: Der Domschatz in der Stiftskirche St. Servatii in Quedlinburg (Wettin-Löbejün: Janos Stekovics, 2015); Dietrich Kötzsche, ed., Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint (Berlin: Nicolai, 1992); for a comparative lens, see Andreas Bräm, “Schatz und Schatzkammer: Zur Interdipendenz um 1200,” in Lucas Burkart et al., Le trésor au Moyen Âge: discours, pratiques et objets (Florence: SISMEL, 2010), 345–65, and Cynthia J. Hahn, “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning, with Particular Attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. Robert A. Maxwell (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 133–47. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_010

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Figure 8.1 Exterior north wall of the nave with modern west end towers. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

­ emory of Quedlinburg’s Ottonian founders.2 Though the lush 12th-century m frieze that lines the walls of St. Servatius is occasionally noted in this context as yet another luxurious element in an environment saturated with art and

2 Examples include Eliza Garrison, “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” Gesta 49/1 (2010): 17–30; Christof L. Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte: Zum so genannten Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. im Schatz der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Licht, Glanz, Blendung: Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte des Leuchtenden, ed. Christina Lechtermann and Haiko Wandhoff (Bern: Lang, 2008), 121–50; Karen Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity Reconfigured,” Gesta 47/2 (2009): 147–69.

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prestige, and evidence for the far-flung artistic networks of its day, it has only rarely attracted scholarly attention beyond a passing glance.3 This oversight is hardly limited to Quedlinburg: friezes that can be loosely described as “decorative” or “ornamental” were carved across Europe in the Romanesque and Gothic eras; they are regularly mined for hallmarks of style but seldom subjected to sustained inquiry.4 It is only in recent years that this has begun to change, as the fraught categories of “decorative” and “ornamental” have received ever-increasing attention, and figural or geometric schemes that seem ambiguous in content, haphazard in arrangement, and archaizing in style have been reclaimed as sites of signification in their own right.5 The challenge, therefore, is not to ask whether programs of architectural ornament could carry meaning, but rather to define such meanings with clarity, articulating connections between form and content in the absence of text or narrative. In this line of inquiry, the Quedlinburg frieze proves evocative for its purposeful excesses and many small delights: grinning lions in heraldic poses, extravagantly plumed birds that drink from delicate fountains, and fantastical mermaids with upswept tails, alternating rhythmically with ­geometric foliage. These motifs enliven the fanciful string courses that line the upper walls of St. Servatius, both interior and exterior (Figures 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3). The 3 The most significant recent study is Philipp Jahn, “Die Bauornamentik der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg,” M.A. thesis, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 2014; I am grateful to the author for access to his work at an early date. See also Jahn, “Zur Baugeschichte der Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg bis zum Jahr 1129 und ihrer architekturhistorischen Einordnung,” in 919 – Plötzlich König: Heinrich I. und Quedlinburg, Stephan Freund and ­Gabriele Köster, eds. (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019), 224–41. 4 Narrative friezes have received relatively rich attention; see Timothy J. Hunter, “‘Quid milites pugnantes?’: An Early Representation of Chanson de Geste on the Romanesque Frieze of Angoulême Cathedral Reexamined,” Studies in Iconography 34 (2013): 133–74; Judy F. Scott, St.-Gilles-du-Gard: The West Façade Figured Frieze; Irregularities and Relative Chronology (Frankfurt: Lang, 1981); Elisabeth Schmidt, “Die Relieffriese des südlichen Ostquerhauses des Paderborner Doms,” in Gotik: Der Paderborner Dom und die Baukultur des 13. Jahrhunderts in Europa, ed. Christoph Stiegemann (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2018), 170–83; and Whitney S. Stoddard, The Façade of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard: Its Influence on French Sculpture (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973). See also Mailan S. Doquang, The Lithic Garden: Nature and the Transformation of the Medieval Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), and Deborah Kahn, ed., The Romanesque Frieze and Its Spectator: The Lincoln Symposium Papers (London: Miller, 1992). 5 In many recent studies a transformative debt is owed to Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) and Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion, 1992). For added context on Grabar’s work see Robert Hillenbrand, “Oleg Grabar: The Scholarly Legacy,” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–35 at 29–30.

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Figure 8.2 Interior north wall of the nave. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

Figure 8.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, view of frieze. 12th century. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

general contribution of such forms to the atmosphere of refinement that pervades the site can hardly be disputed; nevertheless, a precise reading of the frieze in relation to the abbey’s imperial networks and eschatological

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Figure 8.4 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, sections that are likely 12th-century. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

aspirations has yet to be established. The present essay offers an early foray towards this desideratum by bringing scholarship on the Romanesque frieze— which has mostly centered on French traditions and male patrons—to bear on St. Servatius, a German site primarily inhabited by monastic women. The Quedlinburg frieze has been fragmented over time. The stone is badly weathered; much of its length is also heavily restored, with entire sections replaced or added in renovation campaigns during the 19th century. A full technical analysis to clarify which elements are medieval and which are modern is still lacking, making precise arguments about the arrangement of specific ­components all but impossible.6 For the present essay, the visibly weathered sections are considered as most likely “authentic,” and the fresher-­ looking blocks presumed to be modern restorations (Figures 8.4 and 8.5). This loose approach is admittedly less than satisfying, but its limits have shaped my methods. Instead of attempting to trace the visual genealogies of specific details or argue about sources in a narrow sense, I turn instead to the place of the frieze within St. Servatius and emphasize its thematic rather than stylistic points of inspiration. I have long been vexed by the frieze’s geographic 6 Personal communication with staff at the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, Halle, July 2018.

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Figure 8.5 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, sections that are likely twentieth-century. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

ambiguities: though usually attributed to a “northern” workshop, its most immediate models are conversely Mediterranean. Already in the early 1900s it had been cited in discussions of imperial German churches whose sculptural programs echo earlier monuments in Lombardy; the relationship of Quedlinburg to this group has most recently been investigated by Philip Jahn.7 As Jahn’s research confirms, the workshop responsible for the Quedlinburg frieze had clear knowledge of the 11th-century basilica of Sant’Abbondio in Como or a similar source (Figures 8.6 and 8.7), but worked in a distinctively hybrid mode that reflects northern training. While these findings are convincing, a more fine-grained understanding of this relationship must wait until thorough technical analysis has been conducted and a clearer delineation between the medieval and modern sections of the frieze is achieved. For the time being, 7 Jahn, “Die Bauornamentik,” esp. 53–58; see also Erwin Kluckhohn and Walter Paatz, “Die Bedeutung Italiens für die romanische Baukunst und Bauornamentik in Deutschland,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 16 (1955): 1–120; and Heinz Wilke-Waldbröl, “Die Ornamentik im Dom zu Quedlinburg,” Harz-Zeitschrift 2 (1950): 73–94. Though credited as co-author, Paatz’s role was to edit Kluckhohn’s work after his death in World War II.

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Figure 8.6 Como, Basilica of Sant’Abbondio. Exterior from southeast. 11th century. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons, https://com mons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lombardia_Como1_tango7174.jpg

Figure 8.7 Como, Basilica of Sant’Abbondio, detail of main portal. 11th century. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons, https://com mons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Como,_basilica_di_sant%27ab bondio,_esterno_12.JPG

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however, we might still ask how such a frieze shaped monastic experience at St. Servatius, and how its overall type compares to sculptural programs outside the relatively small circle of German Romanesque sites that share formal affinities to Lombardy. In other words, even as Jahn and others have sought to define Quedlinburg’s links to sculptural programs like Como, Speyer, and Königslutter with ever-greater precision, I wish to consider the frieze in terms of diffusion: turning outward rather than inward, and focused on the experiences of its audiences rather than the origins of its artists.8 It is hardly controversial, in the end, to argue that a certain Mediterranean aura would be attractive at a site steeped in Ottonian tradition. The difficulty lies in determining the limits of the claim, distinguishing between a general appreciation for exotic forms, or a vague aesthetics of luxury, and specific arguments concerning the environment at Quedlinburg.9 Such an inquiry also touches on one of the great paradoxes of medieval monastic art, which is that those who laid greatest claim to withdrawal from the world often seem to have been surrounded with the most lavish of worldly goods. The foundational scholarship on this topos has traditionally centered on Benedictine men, especially the rich legacies of Cluniac and Cistercian art, and the writings of such individuals as Suger of St. Denis (1081–1151) and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153).10 More recent work has allotted an ever-greater share of attention to female monasticism, but such scholarship has more often attended to late medieval Andachtsbilder, or—as is largely the case with St. Servatius—the role 8 9

10

On “diffusion” in the study of the cross-cultural transmission of art see especially Alicia Walker, “Patterns of Flight: Middle Byzantine Adoptions of the Chinese Feng Huang Bird,” Ars Orientalis 38 (2010): 188–216. This distinction is similar in many ways to the idea of the “second user” in Anthony Cutler, “Reuse or Use? Theoretical and Practical Attitudes toward Objects in the Early Middle Ages,” in Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 46.1998, 2, Ideologie e pratiche del reimpiego nell’alto medioevo (1999): 1055–79. Erwin Panofsky, ed., On the Abbey Church of St-Denis and Its Art Treasures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948); and Meyer Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art,” in Art and Thought: Issued in Honor of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. K. Bharatha Iyer (London: Luzac and Company, 1947), 130–50; repr. Romanesque Art (New York: George Braziller, 1977), 1–27; see also Martin Büchsel, “Materialpracht und die Kunst für ‘Litterari’: Suger gegen Bernhard von Clairvaux,” in Intellektualisierung und Mystifizierung mittelalterlicher Kunst, ed. Martin Büchsel and Rebecca Müller (Berlin: Mann, 2010), 155–82; Conrad Rudolph, The “Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Apologia” and the Medieval Attitude toward Art (­Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); and Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Bernhard von Clairvaux und das Bild- und Kunstverständnis bei den ­Zisterziensern,” in Die Zisterzienser: Das Europa der Klöster, ed. Gabriele Uelsberg et al. (Darmstadt: Konrad Theiss, 2017), 101–13.

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of memorial and liturgical practice, as well as the individual agendas of patrons and abbesses. The Quedlinburg frieze offers a significant confluence of these threads, echoing the fantastical imagery of Bernard’s Apologia in a space for women, and also reflecting an enduring appetite for foreign luxury that had been whetted by the textiles, ivories, and rock crystals that flowed steadily up over the Alps and into Saxony from an early date. An idiosyncratic band of fabulous beasts and abstract foliage, the Quedlinburg frieze adds an opulent lining to the “white mantle” of the church and invites viewers to gaze beyond the immediate confines of its walls.11 To better understand these forms, this essay approaches the frieze first in relation to its institutional context, then in light of its Mediterranean sources, and finally against some relevant historiography. I avoid settling neatly on a unified reading of the various motifs, as these capacious designs were surely also somewhat open-ended in their own time. Still there is a distinction between fluid meanings and no meaning at all, and this modest proposition is in the end a critical point: the sumptuous qualities of the frieze framed ritual activity at Quedlinburg, not merely by decorating the spaces in which the canonesses worshiped, but also by linking their collective identities and cultural memories to distant horizons stretching far beyond the foothills of the medieval Harz. 1

Imperial Environments

The fragmentary condition of the Quedlinburg frieze and its long history of restorations make it difficult to know if it once contained a tightly orchestrated program, but from what remains this seems unlikely. Even so, an overall emphasis on birds, foliage, and maritime monsters emerges; it is possible these once connected programmatically to further architectural sculpture on portals or the like, though if that is so, hardly anything survives. The nave arcade capitals are in many ways very similar to the frieze sculptures, both in their general style and theme and also in the fact that many elements are modern replacements; the most that can be said at present is that they seem to extend and amplify the same themes as the frieze itself. The medieval façade was lost amid later rebuilding campaigns that resulted in a Baroque westwork that is

11

The phrase is from Rodulfus Glaber (985–1047); see Nigel Hiscock, “The Ottonian Revival: Church Expansion and Monastic Reform,” in The White Mantle of Churches, ed. Nigel ­Hiscock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 1–28.

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documented in early prints and photographs.12 This was dismantled in turn in 1877–82, when the current neo-Romanesque façade with imposing and mostly modern towers was constructed.13 In the 20th century, the central apse in the basilica’s east end—which had been updated during the Gothic period—was redesigned first in the Nazi era to feature a stained-glass roundel in the shape of a Reichsadler, and changed again postwar to its current form, an austere space with blank walls.14 Thus, at both its east and west ends St. Servatius is a modern structure, and the portions of the frieze that now extend into these regions— especially its continuation on the exterior of the westwork—are likewise new. It is only along the axial walls where large portions seem well-preserved from the medieval period, especially the north wall of the nave and the south transept apse, though signs of restoration appear throughout (Figure 8.8). Despite these many losses, enough fragments remain to support a thematic analysis of the frieze, albeit through a glass darkly. The frieze belongs to the 12th-century fabric of St. Servatius, which is to say it was carved as part of the long building campaign that culminated in the consecration of 1129.15 The convent had first been established two ­centuries 12 13

14

15

Some examples are reproduced in Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1989), 22. “St.-Servatii-Schloβkirche in Quedlinburg: Über die Restaurierungsarbeiten in den 1870er Jahren,” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 31 (October 29, 1881): 270–72, with line drawings of the façade before reconstruction (270) and the new design (271). Note that the frieze does not appear in the latter drawing. The towers were also damaged during World War II and restored again after 1945; see Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii, 32–37. On changes made to St. Servatius before and after World War II see William Diebold, “The Nazi Middle Ages,” in Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past, ed. Andrew Albin et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), 104–15, and Annah ­Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed: The SS Past at the Collegiate Church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” in Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past, ed. Gavriel Rosenfeld and Paul Jaskot (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 209–27. The foundational study of the building of St. Servatius, richly illustrated with archival images, is Voigtländer, Stiftskirche St. Servatii. See also Clarissa von der Forst, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatius in Quedlinburg: Zum Stand der Forschungsdiskussion der ottonischen Vorgängerbauten (Weimar: VDG, 2008); Gerhard Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg: Zusammenfassende Darstellung der archäologischen und baugeschichtlichen Forschung von 1936 bis 2001 (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2011), 13–74; Ernst Schubert, “Die Kirchen St. Wiperti und St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Eine Interpretation der literarischen Quellen zur Baugeschichte,” Sachsen und Anhalt 25 (2007): 31–80; and Hermann Wäscher, Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942 (Berlin: Henschel, 1959). For the early history of the site see Tobias

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Figure 8.8 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Interior north wall, detail of a fresh-cut replacement in the stone. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

earlier when King Henry the Fowler designated the steep, rocky hill upon which the church is perched as his intended burial site; his widow and their granddaughter, both named Mathilde, led the original community of canonesses in the 10th century. The building had been enlarged and expanded at least twice before a fire destroyed much of the structure and necessitated a major reconstruction campaign. In the nearly six decades that passed between the fire in 1070 and the rededication in 1129, St. Servatius also experienced a series of political changes that were as dramatic as its physical transformation. The canonesses had enjoyed substantial political clout during the Ottonian era thanks to their close familial ties with the ruling house. Queen Mathilde acquired a saintly reputation during the reign of her son Otto the Great; her Vita survives in two versions written shortly after her death that reflect the great veneration with which she was remembered among her family’s supporters.16 Upon her death she was buried alongside Henry in Quedlinburg’s crypt,

16

­ ärtner, “Die Anfänge Quedlinburgs,” in Eine königsferne Landschaft? Der Norden des G heutigen Sachsen-Anhalt vom 9. bis ins 12. Jahrhundert, ed. Stephan ­Freund and ­Christian Warnke (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner), 215–36, and Babette Ludowici, “Quedlinburg vor den Ottonen: Versuch einer frühen Topographie der Macht,” F­ rühmittelalterliche ­Studien 49 (2016): 91–104. See Sean Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of ­Adelheid (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), with ­introduction

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and the abbey would be ruled by five of their direct descendants—sisters and daughters of subsequent emperors—for more than a century. These included the Ottonian abbesses Mathilde and Adelheid I and their Salian successors Beatrix and Adelheid II. After the brief tenure of Eilica, about whom curiously little is known, Agnes I was the last “imperial” abbess, albeit a granddaughter rather than daughter of Henry III. Their leadership extends across the imperial phase of Quedlinburg’s history, when the abbey was a favored place for the Ottonian rulers to celebrate major feast days, especially Easter.17 The fortunes of St. Servatius dimmed somewhat in the late 11th century, ­however, as is evident in the slow pace of reconstruction after the fire. There is also an archival gap between the comparatively rich documentation from the decidedly more glamorous Ottonian period, when key sources such as the Annales Quedlinburgensis were written, and the thinner written record in the decades around 1129.18 The 59 years spent rebuilding may not seem ­prolonged compared to the notoriously slow construction of Gothic cathedrals in later centuries, but is still notable given Quedlinburg’s relatively modest scale. It is also striking that these years spanned the Investiture Controversy, the tumultuous era that began as a spat between the Salian King (not yet emperor) Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII and escalated with Henry’s excommunication in 1077. The subsequent civil war, called the Great Saxon Revolt, was only fully resolved with an uneasy truce in 1122.19 In other words, the Empire was in crisis precisely when St. Servatius was under construction. The chaos of these

17

18 19

and extensive notes. On Mathilda’s role as founder and recipient of memorial prayers, see Helene Scheck, “Queen Mathilda of Saxony and the Founding of Quedlinburg: Women, Memory, and Power,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 35/3 (Winter 2009): 21–36. A classic study of the abbey in this era is Gerd Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg: Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Überlieferungszentren,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44; see also Horst Fuhrmann, “Vom einstigen Glanze Quedlinburgs,” in Das Quedlinburger Evangeliar: Das Samuhel-Evageliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom, ed. Florentine Mütherich and Karl Dachs (Munich: Prestel, 1991), 13–22; David Warner, trans., Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), including the Introduction (1–64, esp. 43–46); and David Warner, “Ritual and Memory in the Ottonian Reich: The Ceremony of Adventus,” Speculum 76/2 (2001): 255–83. See Martina Giese, ed., Die Annales Quedlinburgenses, MGH SS rer. Germ. 72 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung), 2006. A classic study of this history is Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); see recently Thomas Kohl, ed., Konflikt und Wandel um 1100: Europa im Zeitalter von Feudalgesellschaft und Investiturstreit (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), with extensive bibliography.

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times signaled a waning of the old Ottonian power structures, and with it the weakening of the lavish systems of patronage that Quedlinburg had formerly enjoyed. To imagine the conceptualization of the frieze during this period is to see its forms in relation to a disordered world, when the German aristocracy was grappling with internal divides and relitigating its connection to a distant pontiff, whose own center of power had shifted away from Rome, capital of the ancient empire and traditional seat of the papacy. The complexity of Italian politics can be glimpsed in Gregory’s movements, first to northern Italian strongholds like Canossa, site of Henry’s humiliation in 1077, and later to the southern territories of his Norman allies, where Gregory retreated after Henry had seized control of the Eternal City itself.20 With the Empire embroiled in civil war and ongoing rebellions, it hardly seems surprising that rebuilding moved slowly, and that the abbey’s power would weaken. The reconsecration of 1129 may be read as a moment of resistance or acquiescence to these upheavals, depending on which factors are emphasized. Particularly provocative in this regard are the effigies of Adelheid I, Beatrix, and Adelheid II, which were very likely also completed and unveiled at this time (Figure 6.1).21 Karen Blough and Joan Holladay have offered persuasive readings of the effigies in their historical context, arguing respectively that the monuments reflect opposition to political change and extend genealogical ties between the bodies of the abbesses and their royal ancestors, the founders Henry and Mathilde.22 While such readings are convincing overall, they raise fresh questions about intended audiences and the ways in which monumental sculpture could be used to disentangle immediate political concerns from 20

21

22

On the clash between king and pope see most recently Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Gregor VII. und Heinrich IV. in Canossa 1077: Paenitentia – Absolutio – Honor (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019); for the art-historical context of this moment see ­Christoph Stiegemann and Matthias Wemhoff, eds., Canossa 1077: Erschütterung der Welt; Geschichte, Kunst und Kultur am Aufgang der Romanik, 2 vols. (Munich: Hirmer, 2006). On the close stylistic links between the Quedlinburg effigies and other stucco ­sculptural fragments from 1129, see especially Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, “‘Die häβlichen ­Äbtissinnen’: Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–47. Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies,” 147–69; Joan Holladay, Genealogy and the Politics of ­Representation in the High and Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 210–21. See also the recent dissertation by Christian Marlow, which contains many invaluable insights regarding the political history of the abbey but also asserts some less than convincing numerological interpretations of the palmette borders; see Marlow, “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinnen im Hochmittelalter: Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137,” PhD diss., Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2017.

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long-term spiritual aspirations. Further, they hinge on contextual clues in the inscriptions, which identify the women and frame them with Psalm verses; no such texts are associated with the frieze. Nevertheless, surely the frieze and effigies were aligned in their aims, using different materials and visual strategies but appearing together as components of a shared sculptural program during a pivotal time for both the abbey and the empire. What I wish to add here, therefore, are some further notes on this relationship. In a sense, the effigies present a perfect inverse to the frieze: whereas the latter is still in situ but fragmented, the former are intact but completely lacking in context. They were buried under the floor of the nave in the early modern period and forgotten until their rediscovery and excavation in the 1860s.23 No firm evidence concerning their original placement is known, only loose assumptions that they were probably installed prominently together, before or behind the altar of the cross. They are the earliest surviving women’s effigies and conceptualized as three repeating bodies, nearly indistinguishable variations on a single type, with no attempt to invent “individual” or personal attributes. The center figure occupies a somewhat thicker slab and is identified as Adelheid I in the inscription; her gesture of greeting reflects her seniority, but her face, body, and clothes are largely the same as those of her companions. Though the inscription makes no mention of her parents, Otto II and his Byzantine wife Theophanu, these details would have been well-known to later canonesses. They likewise would have recognized the daughters of the Salian Emperor Henry III in the figures of the two flanking effigies: on the left Beatrix, from his marriage to Gunhilda of Denmark, and on the right Adelheid II, Henry’s daughter from a second wife, Agnes of Poitou. The composition unites the Ottonian dynasty and its cadet Salian successors through the bodies of three abbesses who held office consecutively from 999 to 1095. If indeed completed shortly before the reconsecration of 1129, the effigies were made some 30 years after the last of the women had died. Still, the generation that saw them unveiled likely still preserved living memory of the tumultuous final decades of the tenure of Adelheid II, when St. Servatius endured an unsuccessful siege during a local revolt against her brother, Henry IV, before her death in 1095. Agnes I, the granddaughter of Henry III, niece of Adelheid II and Henry IV, and last imperial abbess, also witnessed the ongoing civil war; she was even briefly excommunicated in 1119 for loyalty to her cousin, Henry V. Agnes and Henry both died in 1125, and it was then that everything changed: for the first 23

For the excavation history of the effigies see Konrad Wilhelm Hase and Ferdinand von Quast, Die Gräber in der Schlosskirche zu Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg: Harzverein für ­Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 1877), 5–9; Voigtländer, Stiftskirche St. Servatii, 146–50; and Wäscher, Burgberg in Quedlinburg, 27–47.

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Figure 8.9 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Details of plaster choir decorations. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

time, Quedlinburg found itself subject to a king not directly descended from its founders. It continued housing aristocratic women until its dissolution in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, but never quite recovered its old proximity to imperial power. And yet—crucially, paradoxically—nothing changed, not in a place endowed with papal immunity and dedicated to keeping Ottonian memory resolutely alive. Both the effigies and the frieze were linked to this decade of simultaneous transition and preservation, ensconcing imperial prestige even as the tides turned. The historiography, however, is curiously divided: the effigies are primarily examined in studies of medieval tomb sculpture, the frieze exclusively in studies of architectural history and as evidence of artistic interactions between Italian Lombardy and German Saxony. There are indeed important differences between the effigies and the frieze; the two are notably distinct in materials, style, subject matter, and presumably their intended placement. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue against the idea that they were ultimately meant to be viewed in tandem, particularly when a third set of sculptures mediates between the tombs and the walls: the delicate remnants of plaster decorations that line the choir, whose details echo the borders of the effigies and the birds of the frieze, perhaps signaling their thematic intersection (­Figure 8.9).24 24

See especially Middeldorf Kosegarten, “‘Die häβlichen Äbtissinnen,’” for a detailed a­ nalysis of the choir walls.

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Ending this estrangement and interpreting effigies and frieze together does not require an exact reconstruction of where the effigies were installed; it is enough to imagine they were all highly visible elements of the new church. The connection recalls another ecclesiastical site that similarly echoes the sculptures of Sant’Abbondio in Como: Speyer Cathedral, necropolis of the Salian rulers.25 Surely this is another indication of Quedlinburg’s imperial status, as others have noted, but a tighter link can be made with the specifically funerary functions of both sites: the shared recourse to a single model, or a common aesthetic mode, underscored the kinship between Emperor Henry IV (buried in Speyer in 1106), his half-sister Beatrix, his sister Adelheid II, and their niece Agnes, abbess in the 1120s. The imperializing effect is not unique to Quedlinburg—a similar decorative scheme appears at Mainz, for example, where Bishop Adalbert was chancellor to Henry V after 1106; patterns of architectural ornament derived from both Speyer and Como also appear at further sites with imperial ties or aspirations, such as Goslar and Goseck. Among this group, however, the Quedlinburg frieze is particularly rich: though none of these programs survive intact, the remaining evidence suggests that Quedlinburg and Speyer had by far the most extensive ornamental schemes, reflecting their rank as sites of memory and commemoration for key members of the Ottonian and Salian imperial dynasties. Emphasizing the connection between frieze and effigies strengthens the case for seeking parallels not only among the Italian sculptures of the south, or even contemporaneous sculptural programs in the north, but also major monuments from the Ottonian past. For example, the horizontal bands of the frieze recall the so-called textile pages of 11th-century manuscripts, a resonance that takes on greater weight when we remember that Henry III, father of Beatrix and Adelheid II and grandfather of Agnes, once admired the Codex Aureus of Echternach (Figure 8.10) and commissioned his own Gospel book, now in the Escorial, from the same scriptorium.26 It is unknown if any Quedlinburg 25

26

On the relationships between Como, Speyer, and Quedlinburg see Jahn, “Die Bauornamentik,” 68–72. Early scholarship attributed Quedlinburg and Speyer to a single Salian workshop; Jahn’s review of the evidence reflects that their similarities are more likely the result of complex networks in which parallel workshops used Como and related sites as models and were also operating with some knowledge of one another’s activities. On the Codex Aureus of Echternach (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 156142) and its textile pages see most recently Anna Bücheler, Ornament as Argument: Textile Pages and Textile Metaphors in Early Medieval Manuscripts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 123–44, as well as Bücheler, “Textile Ornament and Scripture Embodied in the Echternach ­Gospel Books,” in Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form, and Metaphor, ed. Mateusz Kapustka and Warren T. Woodfin (Berlin: Imorde, 2015), 147–72; and Anja Grebe, Codex

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Figure 8.10 Nuremberg, GNM Hs. 156142, Codex Aureus of Echternach, fol. 52r. c.1030. Photograph by the GNM, licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 License

canonesses had also examined Echternach manuscripts—or, for that matter, if Adelheid I ever glimpsed her mother’s celebrated marriage charter, its parchment painted by Ottonian artists to emulate Byzantine textiles—but access to Mediterranean art at Quedlinburg is still witnessed in the surviving highlights Aureus: Das Goldene Evangelienbuch von Echternach (Darmstadt: Primus, 2007). On the Golden Gospels of Henry III (El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, Cod. Vitrinas 17) see Jesús Rodríguez Viejo, “El Codex Aureus de El Escorial y el culto mariano en la corte Sálica,” Románico 27 (December 2018): 8–15.

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of its treasury.27 This point is taken up below, not to propose direct model-andcopy relationships, but rather to approach the string course as part of a larger visual tradition, one that is also bound up with its purportedly Italian style. Filtering Mediterranean motifs through a northern aesthetic, the frieze activated allusions to glamor and authority, and helped bridge the long centuries in between the imperial past and the expected eschatological future. 2

Mediterranean Pathways

The frieze features three bands of sculpture that encircle the building, two running along its outer walls and a third that lines the interior. Its forms are weathered and difficult to see; given their position high on the walls, it takes close looking before the linear flourishes, leafy shapes, and darting animals that enliven the surface come into focus. Two birds stand to either side of a graceful vase, as if about to drink from an ancient vessel (Figure 8.11). Further sections show more mirrored birds, geometric palmettes, and long-snouted dragons (Figure 8.12). Among the lapidarium blocks in the current entry hall are snakes that bite their tails like Ouroboros, their circular bodies looped together to form a chain (Figure 8.13). Such animals had been common in Mediterranean art since Late Antiquity, with varied associations: drinking birds commonly signified gardens and paradise; the grinning reptiles could perhaps be apotropaic.28 Tantalizingly, the best-preserved birds and finest ornamental fragments also evoke a distantly Byzantine or Italianate flavor in their stylized poses (Figure 8.14) and rosette-like patterns (Figure 8.15). On the southern slopes of the Alps, similar forms reflect the currency of Mediterranean motifs; transposed to the north, they evoke the atmosphere of distant 27

28

On the charter, see Anthony Cutler, “Word over Image: On the Making, Uses, and Destiny of the Marriage Charter of Otto II and Theophanu,” in Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 167–87; Eliza Garrison, “Mimetic Bodies: Repetition, Replication, and Simulation in the Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu,” Word & Image 32/2 (April–June 2017): 212–32; Die Heiratsurkunde der Kaiserin Theophanu: 972 April 14, Rom: Eine Ausstellung des Niedersächsischen Staatsarchivs in Wolfenbüttel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); and Hans Goetting and Hermann Kühn, “Die sogenannte Heiratsurkunde der Kaiserin Theophanu (DOII.21), ihre Untersuchung und Konservierung,” Archivalische Zeitschrift 64, special issue (1968): 12–24. The connection between birds, gardens, and paradise is commonly cited but rarely investigated in depth; see for example Walker, “Patterns of Flight,” 205. On dragons and griffins see C. Tuczay, “Drache und Greif – Symbole der Ambivalenz,” Mediaevistik 19 (2006): 169–211, with a section on Ouroboros, 179–81.

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Figure 8.11 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Exterior north wall, with detail of birds drinking from a fountain. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

Figure 8.12 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Interior north wall, with detail of dragons. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

and largely inaccessible shores. We have seen how this visual strategy aligned Quedlinburg with other imperial programs; now we return to the question of how, exactly, such imagery arrived at St. Servatius. Two modes of transmission, intertwined but not identical, require consideration: the migration of artists and the circulation of artworks.

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Figure 8.13 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, entry hall lapidarium. Detail of snake biting its own tail. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

Figure 8.14 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, entry hall lapidarium. Detail of finely carved birds. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

As already noted, the former mode has dominated discussion of the frieze since the early 20th century and has been reevaluated by recent scholarship. What interests me most about the relationships between Quedlinburg, Como, and the larger group of 12th-century German sites that bear Italian-inspired sculptures is not merely the use of Lombard sources but also the apparent willingness of northern artists to diverge from their models, resulting in forms that

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Figure 8.15 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, entry hall lapidarium. Detail of finely carved interlace rosettes. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

are neither fully local, nor entirely foreign. This same hybridity was a source of consternation for earlier scholars, however, who implicitly or explicitly saw the slippage between models and copies as evidence of inferior skills. Erwin Kluckhohn in the 1940s drew important distinctions between Quedlinburg and Como, noting that the Como sculptures appear only on the exterior of the church, while the Quedlinburg frieze extends to both exterior and interior, and also use a far greater degree of abstraction in the overall design. Significantly, Kluckhohn approached these differences not as an indication of innovations at Quedlinburg, but rather as clues regarding the origins of the anonymous artists: With [these observations] a determination has entered the question, whether we are dealing with the activities of German or Italian stonemasons in Quedlinburg. At most the decoration of the southern apse [i.e., the interior of the apse of the southern transept arm] could have been the work of a few Italian stonemasons, with whom in this case the other stonemasons of Quedlinburg would have worked as apprentices. It is more probable, however, that German stonemasons made notes in their pattern books as they traveled through upper Italy, and that these were utilized more or less precisely in Quedlinburg. … Some of their pupils repeated these motifs, for examples, in the borders that line the entire church …29 29

“Damit ist bereits eine Entscheidung in der Frage gegeben, ob wir es in Quedlinburg mit der Tätigkeit deutscher oder italienischer Steinmetzen zu tun haben. Höchstens an

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In 1950, in between Kluckhohn’s death in World War II and the 1955 publication of his work, Heinz Wilke-Waldbröl advanced similar observations and also attributed the frieze to German sculptors. The current of racialized thinking derived from 19th-century ideologies is more obvious here, as Wilke-Waldbröl alludes directly to the agency of an ill-defined northern “spirit” that prompted not only the import but the adaptation of Italian art in its new Germanic context.30 Particularly noteworthy is Wilke-Waldbröl’s closing statement: Perhaps the Church tolerated these representations – which were surely often viewed by the stone masons or their spectators as still in their old mythical world of ideas – in the House of the Lord at Quedlinburg because it also hoped to fill the old mythical material of the cosmic natural religions with new concepts of Christian learning and symbols, and thus be able to gradually reconfigure the thought-world of the Saxons in its meaning!31 The presuppositions that inform this line of argument have long since been dismissed: surely the Saxons, already forced to give up their pagan “thoughtworld” in the 8th century, considered themselves thoroughly Christian by the 12th.32 Even if some shadowy memory of paganism lingered on in the

30

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32

der Dekoration der südlichen Apsis könnten einige italienische Steinmetzen gearbeitet haben, bei denen dann die anderen Steinmetzen von Quedlinburg in die Lehre gegangen wären. Wahrscheinlicher aber ist es, daß deutsche Steinmetzen während ihrer Wanderschaft durch Oberitalien in ihren Musterbüchern Notizen gemacht und diese dann in Quedlinburg mehr oder weniger genau verwertet haben. … Einiger ihrer Schüler wiederholten ihre Motive etwa in den die ganze Kirche umziehenden Ranken …” Kluckhohn and Paatz, “Die Bedeutung Italiens,” 41–42. Heinz Wilke-Waldbröl, “Die Ornamentik im Dom zu Quedlinburg,” Harz Zeitschrift 2 (1950): 73–94. For the view that the sculptors were Italian, see for example Wera von ­Blankenburg, Heilige und Dämonische Tiere: Die Symbolsprache der deutschen Ornamentik im frühen Mittelalter (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1943), 67. “Vielleicht duldete die Kirche in ihrem Gotteshaus in Quedlinburg diese Darstellungen, die vom Steinmetzen oder dem Beschauer sicher vielfach noch in ihrer alten mythischen Vorstellungswelt erlebt worden sind, weil sie auch hoffte, den alten mythischen Stoff kosmischer Naturreligionen mit neuen Vorstellungen christlicher Lehre und Symbolik ­erfüllen und damit allmählich die Gedankenwelt der Sachsen in ihrem Sinne umgestalten zu können!” Wilke-Waldbröl, “Die Ornamentik,” 94. Another notable and highly problematic example of this strand of 20th-century ­thinking is Blankenburg, Heilige und Dämonische Tiere. For an updated perspective on the ­persistence of pre-Christian culture in this region see Ittai Weinryb, “Hildesheim AvantGarde: Bronze, Columns, and Colonialism,” Speculum 93/3 (July 2018): 728–82, with the caveat that the Quedlinburg frieze postdates the focus of Weinryb’s study by a full century.

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Harz, the vague “spectators” invoked as avatars of imagined folkish identity still seem a far cry from the specific audiences at Quedlinburg, for whom ties to the Empire and claims to romanitas necessitated an outright rejection of paganism. Nevertheless, the underlying problem of localization lurks behind the frieze’s relative neglect in later studies, as classifications of art along national lines pushed aside the “Italian” monuments of Romanesque Germany as odd stylistic outliers. The problem was only compounded by the tendency of postwar scholarship to focus on figural or narrative monuments: even as the effigies have received relatively robust discussion, the frieze has been almost entirely overlooked.33 The essentializing impulse to assign ethnic or national identities to medieval artists is a historiographic problem that remains widely acknowledged but rarely addressed.34 With the passage of time, reducing migratory workshops to singular national identities is increasingly untenable; it is difficult to insist their memberships were homogenous groups, each operating with no “­foreigners” in its midst. The geographic names that appear in the sources for architects—examples include “William of Sens” at Canterbury, or “Jacopo Tedesco” at Assisi—do suggest that a master’s origins were noted, but also conversely offer evidence that these circles were fluid and multicultural.35 No such names are linked to Quedlinburg, but regardless it would hardly be acceptable to follow Kluckhohn in attributing the south transept apse to an “Italian” hand. It is far more convincing, and ultimately more suggestive, to note that the workshop as a whole was able to calibrate faithfulness to Italian sources, 33

34 35

A parallel situation is the Holy Sepulcher of St. Cyriakus in Gernrode, a frequent comparison for Quedlinburg; while there is a great deal of scholarship on the Gernrode relief figures, the comparatively abstract designs framing the composition are usually ignored. See, for example, Kurt Bauch, Das Mittelalterliche Grabbild: Figürliche Grabmäler des 11. bis 15. Jahrhunderts in Europa (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976), 23, and Kerstin Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg,” in Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte, Bilder, Objekte, ed. Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 45–87 (esp. 78n77). For more on the Holy Sepulcher see Hans-Joachim Krause, ed., Das Heilige Grab in Gernrode: Bestandsdokumentation und Bestandsforschung (Berlin: Deutscher ­Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2007). The most eloquent statement on this point is still Willibald Sauerländer, “The Naumburg Master,” The Burlington Magazine 153/1304 (November 2011): 763–64. The name “Maestro Jacopo Tedesco” as architect of the basilica of St. Francis in Assisi appears in Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1568); see Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, translated with an introduction and notes by J.C. and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). On William of Sens see Peter Draper, “William of Sens and the Original Design of the Choir Termination of ­Canterbury Cathedral, 1175–1179,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42 (1983): 238–48.

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and the decision was made to appropriate Mediterranean styles most closely for the south transept, and to conversely accommodate the greatest experimentation in the nave. The same stylistic qualities that once sparked debates about artistic identity can thus be brought to bear on patronage and purpose, focusing on the apparent desire for an Italianate style rather than the origins of the artists that were employed. By “patronage” I do not mean here the singular desires of any specific abbess or reeve, no more than I use “workshop” for the hand of a singular master. Instead, it reflects the matrix of competing agendas that shaped the environment at Quedlinburg writ large, binding together Ottonian memory, the veneration of objects in the treasury, and the deliberate intertwining of political and spiritual goals. These factors determined the aesthetics of the frieze, its monstrous and paradisiacal forms, its Mediterranean allusions, and its rich mixture of exotic and prestigious forms. The architectural sculpture of Quedlinburg framed not only the bodies of the canonesses as they moved through liturgical space, but also the treasury objects that were surely focal points of their rituals.36 The surviving collection includes notable possessions from the Mediterranean world that appear together with its Carolingian and Ottonian highlights.37 These include an ancient Roman alabaster jug that was believed to derive from the Wedding at Cana, its sacred provenance made all the more precious through the jug’s (likely anachronistic) association with an imperial donor, Otto the Great (­Figure 8.16). More recent in date but equally prestigious are the “five crystals” that were already recorded in an early inventory from the 11th century; these almost certainly refer to 10th-century Fatimid rock crystal phials, highly prized by the Ottonians for their fine carvings and occasionally repurposed as Christian reliquaries in elite treasuries.38 Of 36

37

38

See especially Cynthia Hahn, “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning, with Particular Attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. Robert A. Maxwell (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 137. On the impact of portable luxury goods in disseminating visual culture, see foundationally Eva Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Art History 24 (2001): 17–50; see also Oleg Grabar, “About a Bronze Bird,” in Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002), 117–25. On Islamic rock crystal in European treasuries see especially Avinoam Shalem, “Histories of Belonging and George Kubler’s Prime Object,” Getty Research Journal 3 (2011): 1–14; also, more generally Cynthia Hahn and Avinoam Shalem, eds., Seeking Transparency: Rock Crystals across the Medieval Mediterranean (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2020). Concerning historical Islamic presence in Quedlinburg specifically is also an important glass beaker (probably Mamluk, early 14th century) in the Schlossmuseum, but this likely arrived in

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Figure 8.16 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. So-called “Cana Jug.” 1st century. ­Photograph by Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg

the three that still survive at St. Servatius, one represents a highly abstracted fish and another bears heraldic parrots (Figure 8.17). Perhaps these foreign treasures offered a measure of inspiration for the frieze: but much like the model of Como, which the Quedlinburg artists emulated for its content but not its style, the relationship is an echo, not a copy. There is certainly no attempt in the birds of the south transept apse to imitate Fatimid art directly (Figure 8.18), and yet their the town post-Reformation; see Ingeborg Krueger, “Der Quedlinburger ‘Lutherbecher’ und die Gruppe der Goldemail-Riesenbecher,” Journal of Glass Studies 57 (2015): 147–65.

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Figure 8.17  Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Rock crystal phial in the shape of two parrots. 10th century with 13th- and 14th-century additions. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

shared Mediterranean aesthetic establishes a sense of place that helped anchor foreign luxuries in local spaces. What emerges from these Ottonian manuscripts, Islamic rock crystals, and programs of Lombard sculpture is not a “source” for the Quedlinburg frieze, but a network of associations that informed, enriched, and complicated its contents. The value of the Cana jug as witness to a miracle cannot be disentangled from its status as an artifact of Roman antiquity, with alabaster material and smoothly carved surfaces offering tangible witness to its authenticity; its purported donation also signaled the authority of the giver, Otto the Great, and his family. Likewise, the technique of carving rock crystal was so laborious, the craftsmanship so specialized, that this art was experienced as something almost miraculous.39 Desired for its purity, rock crystals also carried the prestige of their origins, spatially rather than temporally distant. Their southern 39

See most recently Elise Morero et al., “Relief Carving on Medieval Islamic Glass and Rock Crystal Vessels: A Comparative Approach to Techniques of Manufacture,” in Hahn and Shalem, Seeking Transparency, 51–66.

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Figure 8.18 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Southern transept pier, detail of birds. 12th century. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

Mediterranean provenance echoed a cosmopolitan presence that was literally embodied in Abbess Adelheid I, daughter of Theophanu, the Byzantine princess whom Otto negotiated as a bride for his son Otto II in 972.40 The multiple imperial layers of her genealogy paralleled objects like the Servatius Reliquary, which displayed Roman amethyst and Carolingian ivory together in a single Ottonian donation.41 It has been suggested that the gifts of Otto III to the treasury at Aachen represented the unification of his Ottonian and Byzantine 40

41

Theophanu’s roles, both active and passive, in Ottonian efforts to cement their imperial image through contact with Byzantium, has a long historiography; see especially Cutler, “Word over Image,” 167–87; Garrison, “Mimetic Bodies,” 212–32; Henry Mayr-­ Harting, “Liudprand of Cremona’s Account of His Legation to Constantinople (968) and ­Ottonian Imperial Strategy,” English Historical Review 116, 467 (June 2001): 539–56; ­Rosamond ­McKitterick, “Ottonian Intellectual Culture in the Tenth Century and the Role of ­Theophanu,” Early Medieval Europe 2/1 (1993): 53–74; Laura Wangerin, “Empress Theophanu, Sanctity, and Memory in Early Medieval Saxony,” Central European History 47/4 (­December 2014): 716–36; and Hans Wentzel, “Das byzantinische Erbe der ottonischen Kaiser: Hypothesen über den Brautschatz der Theophano,” Aachener Kunstblätter 40 (1971): 15–39, with Part II of the same title, Aachener Kunstblätter 43 (1972): 11–96. See Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 17–29; Thomas Labusiak, “Kostbarer als Gold: ­Reliquien und Reliquiare der Domschätze Halberstadt und Quedlinburg,” Das Münster 63, special issue (2010): 347–56; Michael Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen im Schatz der Quedlinburger Stiftskirche,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 52/53.1998/99 (2001): 53–92.

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heritage; surely the parallel was true for Adelheid, his sister at Quedlinburg, whether the objects were donated by her directly or by others in her immediate family. Such associations extend to the frieze as well, though thematically and atmospherically. These imperial motifs are also intertwined with echoes of paradise; some of the imagery seems to derive from the same traditions that had produced the ‘Fountain of Life’ pages in Carolingian manuscripts.42 In this vein the plants of the frieze seem to resonate with the Psalm verses that are cited along the borders of the abbess effigies, which compare the shortness of human life to “the flower in the field.”43 I have argued elsewhere that these inscriptions were deeply informed by Augustinian theology and intended to urge the canonesses to greet the fading imperial status of St. Servatius with dispassion, potentially reforming their eschatological mandate with a new form of monastic humility.44 The point was not to forget imperial identity, but rather to let go of the present in order to maintain a vigilant focus on salvation for all bodies housed in the church, the living and the dead. The frieze was likewise implicated in this process, presenting paradoxes of its own: luxurious and yet detached, distant and yet present, worldly and yet divine. 3

Historiographic Interventions

About 30 years have passed since the 1992 publication of three landmark books with major implications for the present study: Oleg Grabar’s Mediation of Ornament, arguing passionately for the agency of meaningful decoration; Michael Camille’s Image on the Edge, opening new readings of “marginalia” as communicative beyond the confines of traditional iconography; and The Romanesque Frieze and Its Spectator, edited by Deborah Kahn with widely read essays by Walter Cahn and Willibald Sauerländer, emphasizing the ­audiences and contexts of architectural sculpture.45 Though the last is the most o­ bviously related to the Quedlinburg frieze, its chapters notably focus on narratives, ­pilgrims, 42 43 44 45

Paul A. Underwood, “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Gospels,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950): 41–138. Psalm 102:15; see Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies,” 155. Shirin Fozi, Romanesque Tomb Effigies: Death and Redemption in Northern Europe, 1000–1200 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021), 128–33. Walter Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator,” in Kahn, Romanesque Frieze, 45–60 and 194–96; Grabar, Mediation of Ornament; Camille, Image on the Edge; and ­Willibald Sauerländer, “Romanesque Sculpture in Its Architectural Context,” in Kahn, Romanesque Frieze, 17–44 and 193–94.

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and the strategic use of images on portals—categories that exclude St. Servatius with remarkable precision. Decades of feminist work has rendered this gap dramatically visible; amid the significant wave of scholarship on women’s monastic institutions, Quedlinburg in particular has enjoyed renewed attention since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany.46 And yet, despite these welcome changes, examinations of medieval architectural sculpture still focus persistently on western regions and masculine institutions.47 It therefore seems urgent to conclude the present essay with a brief historiographic review, from the early 1990s to the present, and some considerations of how this literature can challenge and complicate interpretations of the Quedlinburg frieze, and vice versa. Oleg Grabar’s Mediation of Ornament originated as a lecture series and has many of the flaws associated with the genre, as it was meant primarily for a general audience and sometimes skates lightly over material that deserves to be probed in depth.48 Nevertheless, the main strokes of his argument have proven so widely influential that they can scarcely go unmentioned; Grabar reinvigorated approaches to ornament by appealing to its capacity to engage directly with audiences, even across deep cultural divides.49 Though claiming a global scope, the book is grounded in Grabar’s own expertise in Islamic art, and points to the ways in which ornament can appeal beyond the insiders who understand its nuances, conveying themes to the outsiders who experience its forms without the requisite cultural conditioning. Islamic art is not referenced directly by the Quedlinburg frieze, and yet its forms belong to a hermeneutic 46

47

48 49

See Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Art and Architecture of Female Monasticism,” 823–56, and Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, “Gender and Medieval Art,” 195–220, both in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, 2nd ed., ed. Conrad Rudolph (Wiley, 2019), with further bibliography; Madeline H. Caviness, “Hildegard of Bingen: Some Recent Books,” Speculum 77/1 (2002): 113–20; ); Jutta Frings and Jan Gerchow eds., Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern (Munich: Hirmer, 2005); and Jeffrey F. Hamburger, ed., Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), An important recent corrective is Therese Martin, ed., Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2012); in the introduction Martin also contends that scholars still approach medieval art as “masculine in origin and intent” ( 1–2). Grabar, Mediation of Ornament; see also the incisive review by Margaret Olin, Art Bulletin 75/4 (1993): 728–31. Recent discussions of ornament that have invoked Grabar fruitfully to discuss smallscale sculpture in medieval Europe include Sarah Guérin, “Meaningful Spectacles: Gothic ­Ivories Staging the Divine,” Art Bulletin 95/1 (March 2013): 53–77, and Ittai Weinryb, “­Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages,” Gesta 52/2 (September 13): 113–32.

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chain that traces back to the Mediterranean, and ultimately the Islamic world. The underlying point of Grabar’s meditations—that ornament can move fluidly and imbue new environments with meaningful associations—thus applies quite well. Part of Grabar’s universalizing agenda involves imagining a measure of ­neutrality in his viewers, suggesting that “anyone” could understand the ­associations at hand. In hindsight this approach is both frustrating in its vagueness—surely truly “neutral” viewers don’t exist, then or now—and yet welcome in its openness, not least because its ideas extend to a female gaze. The opposite effect emerges in Image on the Edge, which is surprising given Camille’s contributions to gender studies.50 Unfortunately, women only appear in Image on the Edge as foils for male experience, with little use of feminine voices as counterweights to misogynistic sources. Ailred of Rievaulx (1110–67) is quoted to describe “how in ‘the monastic cloister we see cranes and hares, deers, stags, magpies and crows’, which he thinks do not accord with monastic spirituality but are more like ‘the amusements of women’ … these clerical pronouncements suggest that such carvings were, as well as being ‘effeminate’ in their excess and superficiality, the sole inspiration of the sculptor.”51 The evident sexism is not challenged; Camille asks instead whether creativity in Romanesque sculpture is attributable to “itinerant artists” or erudite patrons.52 Readers are left to conclude that the stakeholders—at least, in the case of meaningful programs, not the trivial ones—were all men. Indeed, there is every likelihood that Ailred, had he seen the Quedlinburg frieze, would have dismissed it as excessive and superficial. This, however, only underscores the need to disentangle the effeminate from the feminist and recognize the perspectives of women like those at St. Servatius, who clearly valued architectural ornament even if certain English monks disagreed. The tendency to represent medieval women through the testimonies of men remains a regrettable thread through much of Image on the Edge. Caesarius of Heisterbach (1180–1240) is cited to relate “how an anchoress saw demons in the form of monkeys and cats sitting on the backs of monks in choir mocking their gestures, how bears materialized in the presbytery crying with a human voice, 50

For example, Michael Camille, “Bodies, Names and Gender in a Gothic Psalter (Paris, BNF, MS Lat. 10435),” in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images, ed. F. O. Büttner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 377–86 and 557–58; Camille, “Seductions of the Flesh: Meister Francke’s Female ‘Man’ of Sorrows,” in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-Soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Munich: Fink, 2002), 243–69. 51 Camille, Image on the Edge, 68. 52 Ibid., 69.

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and how grunting pigs scurried around a monk who fell asleep during mass.”53 The anchoress is only the medium here; it is the monks who heed the warning. Further on, a pregnant nun is mentioned to tell the story of her lover’s brutal castration; even though the outcome is horrific for both, it is the lover whose disfigurement is lamented.54 Women do appear, but the audience and the anxieties are invariably projected as male. Even Christina of Markyate (c.1096–1155) is mentioned not as the owner of the St. Albans Psalter, a famously sumptuous manuscript, but because her male biographer disparaged art as a potential spiritual distraction.55 The lack of agency afforded to Christina herself reflects how little enthusiasm Camille mustered for women’s artistic patronage and spiritual experiences. To be sure, the 12th-century St. Albans Psalter may seem restrained compared to its later counterparts, like the 14th-century Luttrell Psalter, that are the real focus of the book. Still, the rich pages of Christina’s manuscript—many with dazzling decorated borders, some featuring dainty birds—would seem to be a primary source of equal importance to biographical texts for mapping the use of medieval art among women.56 This emphasis on a male gaze is paralleled by Camille’s tendency towards logocentrism, as seen for example in his interpretation of the jongleurs on the impost of the Transfiguration capital at La Daurade in relation to verses from Matthew 17.57 The marginal musicians become legible through the reclaimed scriptural narrative; it is the restoration of text, not its absence, that guides Camille’s reading. In this his methods are not so far from the more traditional approaches to iconography that Image on the Edge elsewhere rejects.58 He is also almost conventional in defining Romanesque sculpture as an art comprised “of entrances, doorways, westworks, narthexes, porches, capitals and 53 54 55

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 72–73. On the St. Albans Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek HS St. Godehard 1) see most recently Jochen Bepler, ed., Der Albani-Psalter: Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung (Hildesheim: Olms, 2013), and Kristen M. Collins, The St. Albans Psalter: Painting and Prayer in Medieval England (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013). 56 The manuscript is paginated rather than foliated; see the Nativity on page 21 and the Flight into Egypt on page 29. 57 Camille, Image on the Edge, 57–59. 58 See, for example, the image-text analyses in Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “Iconography and Ideology: Uncovering Social Meanings in Western Medieval Christian Art,” Studies in Iconography 15 (1993): 1–44, and Lucy Freeman Sandler, “A Bawdy Betrothal in the Ormesby Psalter,” in Tribute to Lotte Brand Philip: Art Historian and Detective, ed. William W. Clark et al. (New York: Abaris Books, 1985), 155–59; and a generation earlier in Lilian M. C. ­Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).

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cornices.”59 This may be true of scholarship on architectural sculpture, which has long prioritized entrances, but the surviving programs themselves can hardly be summed up so neatly.60 We might recall the comparatively messy arrangement at Quedlinburg, where there is little distinction between interior and exterior forms, and the sculpture weaves its motifs against the building with neither a sense of programmatic hierarchy, nor any relationship to an easily uncovered text. These patterns also emerge in the essays by Walter Cahn and Willibald Sauerländer in The Romanesque Frieze. Cahn’s chapter offers a wide-­ranging reflection on the “spectator,” but never explicitly considers female audiences. Women are present among his examples, but much like Image on the Edge they facilitate male experience rather than taking center stage. Even the ­Virgin Mary, who appears in a dream to examine the wall-paintings of Prüfening, serves mainly to soothe the conscience of a worried monk.61 Cahn also turns to women as subjects of sculpture, such as the “Woman with a Skull” on the Puerta de las Platerías at Santiago de Compostela and the “Woman with Lion” and “Woman with Ram” from St. Sernin in Toulouse.62 We might ask how male and female pilgrims experienced these iconographies differently; Cahn does not. Sauerländer, like Grabar, is less explicit in his invocation of specific audiences, focusing instead on portals and placement, yet in his choice of examples he relies on abbots and bishops, such as Gumpert of Abdinghof and Girardus of Angoulême.63 Sauerländer’s evocative closing note on loss and displacement reflects an inevitable reason why men are over-represented in studies of sculpture: they are also over-represented among the known texts and monuments.64 Nevertheless, I would contend that the lower survival rates of evidence concerning women is hardly reason to ignore sites like Quedlinburg, but rather an impetus to emphasize them all the more. With this in mind, I turn to two recent books here not to offer criticism, but rather to ask how their terms can be expanded usefully to address the ­sculptures at St. Servatius. The first is Kirk Ambrose’s The Marvellous and the 59 Camille, Image on the Edge, 56. 60 For instance, the phrase overlooks sculptural programs on buttresses, recently explored as “transitional” spaces but still quite distinct from entrances; see Maile S. Hutterer. F­ raming the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic ­Architecture (­University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020), 89–124. 61 Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture,” 45. 62 Ibid., 58–60. 63 Sauerländer, “Romanesque Sculpture,” 17 and 32. 64 Ibid., 43.

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Monstrous (2013), which takes up seemingly irrational imagery and proposes, “if nineteenth- and twentieth-­century scholars often cast monsters in art as embodying or mitigating the fears that were seen to characterize the Dark Ages, I likewise consider an alternative scenario: in what ways did monsters help medieval audiences envision, perhaps even achieve, various ambitions?”65 This reframing is apt for the Quedlinburg frieze, whose monsters also seem to act as prestigious rather than vaguely superstitious or apotropaic signs. Ambrose goes on to note how “physical or formal aspect of monsters profoundly shaped their reception”; here too there is an apt application to Quedlinburg, where the playful renderings of looped-tail dragons and grinning lions suggest interpretations of the animals as lively, but not fierce. Such formalism, however, is not central to Ambrose’s project, which turns “exclusively to representations of imaginary creatures and not judgments about, say, the aesthetics or functions of works of art.”66 It would be difficult to say much about even the most conventional monsters at Quedlinburg—the mermaids or dragons, for instance—without recourse to their aesthetics; further, though their “function” can be hazily defined as decorative, it is in their use to cultivate an atmosphere of refinement that their appearance is best defined. Instead of marginal sea creatures, however, Ambrose directs attention towards the monsters that show greatest fidelity to classical antiquity—particularly male nudes from Greco-Roman statuary.67 Drawn primarily from Cluniac sites and analysed in relation to authors from Jerome to Bernard of Clairvaux, the book gravitates once more towards French monks as archetypal Romanesque viewers, their apprehensions of the monstrous operating in tension with their lingering desires to emulate the ideals of Mediterranean antiquity. Following the geography of Cluny, Ambrose focuses on southern France and Iberia; like Camille, he emphasizes portals and capitals, with attention to the dynamics of entrance and procession. These elements play a conversely small role at Quedlinburg because of the total loss of its Romanesque portals and the ambiguity of its capitals. From the latter group, even if some are not modern replacements, they echo the frieze so closely in form that it seems unlikely that their content was site-specific. Whether on capitals or on the walls, the Quedlinburg sculptures are drastically different from the works discussed by Ambrose in their apparent indifference to Greco-Roman sources. It would be 65 66 67

Kirk Ambrose, The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 13. Ibid., 17. Ibid., esp. chap. 2, “Ideal Bodies,” 40–63.

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incorrect to presume this choice reflects an absence of classical education at Quedlinburg; the knotted carpet with allegorical scenes from The Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella (active c.410–20) offers a potent counter-example from the late 12th century, reflecting a deep engagement with Latin poetry and an intellectual tradition shared with the likes of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim.68 Quedlinburg thus avoids narratives or the heroics of antiquestyle statuary not out of an overall insensitivity to the classical past, but rather due to the distinct functions of its sculpture. Mailan Doquang’s eloquent Lithic Garden (2018) likewise looks to contexts that diverge usefully from Quedlinburg. Taking the spectacular foliate string course of Amiens cathedral as a central example, Doquang argues that “the frieze was not simply an extravagant embellishment, devoid of meaning and purpose, but rather, a semantically charged component that was of demonstrable importance to the cathedral’s medieval builders and users.”69 The book centers on France, extending to sites “as diverse as Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, the Île-de-France, and the Loire,” and considers relationships between the consecrated church and the outside world, as articulated by the plants of the frieze as an image of continuous vegetation.70 Where Ambrose’s implied audiences are largely monastic men, Doquang’s are the inhabitants of French wine country, the “beholders whose daily experiences revolved around agricultural endeavors and whose imaginary was filled with paradisiacal visions and aspirations.”71 The book is grounded in medieval experiences of nature, emphasizing how sculptors drew “plant life into sanctified space” and the binaries that existed “not between church and nature … but rather, between the ritually consecrated and the unconsecrated.”72 These arguments resonate deeply with not only the visual traditions, but also the concerns of local economies. Doquang’s lithic garden examples mediate between the church and the world beyond it, their forms emphasizing the sanctity of their walls. At Quedlinburg, however, the dynamics are different because the distinctions of 68

69 70 71 72

Hrotsvitha’s 10th-century plays reveal knowledge of Terence, suggesting the access to literacy and education that was available to Ottonian convents; note that Gandersheim and Quedlinburg often shared abbesses in the Ottonian period. See Katrinette Bodarwé, “Hrotsvit zwischen Vorbild und Phantom,” in Gandersheim und Essen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu sächsischen Frauenstiften, ed. Martin Hoernes and Hedwig Röckelein (Essen: Klartext, 2006), 191–212. Doquang, Lithic Garden, 1. Ibid. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 9.

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interior and exterior were less fully charged: unlike urban cathedrals whose portals open onto busy city squares, St. Servatius was set apart, perched on the plateau of the Burgberg. Indeed, its architecture developed in response to this fact; long before the structures that dominate today’s hilltop were built, the site was self-contained and separate from the town below and bustling commercial districts like the neighboring Münzenberg.73 Thus, the vivid contrasts between sacred spaces and agricultural fields that Doquang conjures for Amiens were absent at Quedlinburg, and the binaries irrelevant. It is unclear to what extent the canonesses practiced enclosure in a strict sense: nevertheless, the topography of St. Servatius denoted removal and created the sense of worldly withdrawal that defined cloistered life.74 The fact that the terms of withdrawal itself shifted over time also matters: Quedlinburg’s frieze dates not only to the decades when the abbey’s political role faded, but also to a time of increasing enforcement of enclosure for women’s communities brought on by monastic reform elsewhere in the region.75 Despite the emphasis on Quedlinburg’s imperial status, its monastic status must not be overlooked: indeed, it is in comparison to cloisters that the contents of the frieze seem most at home. Despite their distance from French Benedictine discourse, the fantastical details of the St. Servatius frieze resonate 73

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Note that a dependency of St. Servatius was located here alongside a modest residential enclave, indicating close contact but also a hierarchical relationship between the two hilltops; see Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen, 109–17; Christa Rienäcker, Münzenberg: UNESCO Welterbe Quedlinburg (Lindenberg: Fink, 2001); Michael Scheftel, “Die ehemalige Klosterkirche St. Maria auf dem Münzenberg in Quedlinburg: zur Baugeschichte, Gestalt und Nutzung einer ottonischen Klosterkirche,” in Bericht über die 43. Tagung für Ausgrabungswissenschaft und Bauforschung: von 19. bis 23. Mai 2004 in Dresden (Bonn: Habelt, 2006), 171–80; and Michael Scheftel, “Die ehemalige Klosterkirche St. Marien auf dem Münzenberg in Quedlinburg: Zwischenbericht zu Bauuntersuchung und ­vorläufige Chronologie der Bauphasen,” in Bauforschung: Eine kritische Revision, ed. Johannes ­Cramer et al. (Berlin: Lukas, 2005), 116–36. On enclosure see especially Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Art, Enclosure and the Cura ­Monialium: Prolegomena in the Guise of a Postscript,” Gesta 31/2, Monastic Architecture for Women (1992): 108–34; Gisela Muschiol, “Von Benedikt bis Bernhard: Klausur zwischen Regula und Realität,” in Regulae Benedicti Studia 19 (1997): 27–42; Gisela Muschiol, “Liturgie und Klausur: Zu den liturgischen Voraussetzungen von Nonnenemporen,” in Studien zum Kanonissenstift, ed. Irene Crusius (Göttingen: Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 2001), 129–48; and Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Women’s Monastic Communities, 500–1100: ­Patterns of Expansion and Decline,” Signs 14/2, Working Together in the Middle Ages: ­Perspectives on Women’s Communities (Winter 1989): 261–92. See the discussion of monastic reform in Katharina Mersch, “Quedlinburg Abbey’s ­Medieval History in Ever-changing Political and Religious Frameworks: A Survey,” in this volume.

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Figure 8.19 Southern transept arm apse, frieze. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

with the excesses described in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia.76 The monsters at Quedlinburg are somewhat sedate, however, and even the dragons and lions are far outnumbered by paradisiacal birds that appear alongside fountains and grapevines. Kluckhohn attributed the bird-and-grape panels in the arch over the south transept apse as the most likely to have been made by Italian artists, but perhaps its delicate style reflects the greater sanctity of the space relative to the walls of the nave (Figures 8.19 and 8.20). A deliberate shift from the livelier, more chaotic nave to the elegant birds and grapes of the south transept apse would compare beautifully with Doquang’s arguments about augmenting sacred space. The catch is that such hierarchies may also have appealed to the modern restorers whose clever handiwork has cast so much doubt on the frieze. I am inclined to accept these forms as original but am haunted by uncertainties. I have offered a brief reckoning with ways in which Quedlinburg, made for women who withdrew from the world and yet entered an 76

Thomas E.A. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms in the Cloister of St-Michel-de-Cuxa,” Art Bulletin 83/3 (September 2001): 402–36 at 402–03, and Schapiro, “Aesthetic Attitude,” 6–11.

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Figure 8.20 Southern transept arm apse, frieze. Photograph by Shirin Fozi

environment constructed around worldly memories, contributes to the discourses of architectural sculpture and loosens the grip of France and Cluny as the defining paradigm of medieval European architectural sculpture. Its key characteristics—non-narrative content, non-classical sources of inspiration, and a non-masculine audience—sharpen and extend understanding of the Romanesque frieze. Nor can we dismiss St. Servatius as some quirky geographic outlier. Its 12th-century women certainly never saw themselves as obscure or peripheral; they looked outward from a center that laid claim to the Ottonian past, and through it to the old networks once cultivated by their founders, stretching to Lombardy, the Mediterranean, and Byzantium far away. The Quedlinburg frieze is anchored deeply not only in a visual culture that extended beyond Europe, but also in its own autonomous localities: the imperial geographies, dynastic ambitions, and eschatological aims that had been the lifeblood of St. Servatius in its heyday. 4 Conclusions By 1129, when the rebuilt convent was consecrated, Quedlinburg no longer boasted the presence of an abbess from the imperial family, and yet the imperial past was eternally present: buried in the crypt, embedded in the treasury, memorialized in the liturgy, and monumentalized in the fabric of the building

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itself. The mingling of material and spiritual value in treasury objects paralleled their blurred associations with imperial and divine aura; secular and sacred were not merely interwoven at St. Servatius, but wholly united. In the end, the Italian qualities of the Quedlinburg frieze are significant not because they invite fantasies about the national identities of medieval a­ rtists, but because they evoke a foreign environment. Even lacking a full understanding of the transmission of style that produced these ambitious images, we can still resist facile assertions that certain stylistic features associated with Italy define these sculptures as the product of ‘Italian’ hands. Without written records, the issue of artistic identity remains murky. I am much more ­comfortable, therefore, with the suggestion that these sculptures produce a southern aesthetic at Quedlinburg. This has its own implications, quite separately from the unclear origins of its makers. The frieze and its vivid animals were no passive trace left by wandering stonemasons, but rather deliberate constructions designed to suit the women of the convent and their mandate as wardens of Ottonian memory. Like the treasury objects passed on from an earlier time, the frieze evoked the expansive frontiers of imperial identity not only as reminders of that prestigious era, but also as an acknowledgement of the deeper pasts of biblical time, and the evergreen hope of a future in paradise. Works Cited Alexander, Jonathan J. G. “Iconography and Ideology: Uncovering Social Meanings in Western Medieval Christian Art.” Studies in Iconography 15 (1993): 1–44. Althoff, Gerd. “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg. Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschaftsund Überlieferungszentrum.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 123–44. Ambrose, Kirk. The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013. Bauch, Kurt. Das mittelalterliche Grabbild: Figürliche Grabmäler des 11. bis 15. Jahrhunderts in Europa. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976. Bepler, Jochen, ed. Der Albani-Psalter: Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung. Hildesheim: Olms, 2013. Blankenburg, Wera von. Heilige und Dämonische Tiere: Die Symbolsprache der deutschen Ornamentik im frühen Mittelalter. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1943. Blough, Karen. “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity Reconfigured.” Gesta 47/2 (2008): 147–69. Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. Trans. Uta-Renate Blumenthal. Philadelphia: ­University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

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Bodarwé, Katrinette. “Hrotsvit zwischen Vorbild und Phantom.” In Gandersheim und Essen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu sächsischen Frauenstiften. Ed. Martin Hoernes and Hedwig Röckelein. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006. 191–212. Bräm, Andreas. “Schatz und Schatzkammer: Zur Interdipendenz um 1200.” In Le trésor au Moyen Âge: discours, pratiques et objets. Ed. Lucas Burkart et al. Florence: ­S ISMEL, 2010. 345–65. Bücheler, Anna. Ornament as Argument: Textile Pages and Textile Metaphors in Early Medieval Manuscripts. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. Bücheler, Anna. “Textile Ornament and Scripture Embodied in the Echternach Gospel Books.” In Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form, and Metaphor. Ed. Mateusz Kapustka and Warren T. Woodfin. Berlin: Imorde, 2015. 147–72. Büchsel, Martin. “Materialpracht und die Kunst für ‘Litterari’: Suger gegen Bernhard von Clairvaux.” In Intellektualisierung und Mystifizierung mittelalterlicher Kunst. Ed. Martin Büchsel and Rebecca Müller. Berlin: Mann, 2010. 155–82. Cahn, Walter. “Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator.” In Romanesque Frieze. Ed. Cynthia Kahn. London: Harvey Miller, 1992. 45–60. Camille, Michael. “Bodies, Names and Gender in a Gothic Psalter (Paris, BNF, MS Lat. 10435).” In The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images. Ed. F. O. Büttner. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. 377–86. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion, 1992. Camille, Michael. “Seductions of the Flesh: Meister Francke’s Female ‘Man’ of Sorrows.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-Soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen. Ed. Klaus Schreiner. Munich: Fink, 2002. 243–69. Collins, Kristen M. The St. Albans Psalter: Painting and Prayer in Medieval England. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013. Cutler, Anthony. “Reuse or Use? Theoretical and Practical Attitudes toward Objects in the Early Middle Ages.” In Ideologie e pratiche del reimpiego nell’alto medioevo. Ed. Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1999. 1055–79. Cutler, Anthony. “Word over Image: On the Making, Uses, and Destiny of the Marriage Charter of Otto II and Theophanu.” In Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period. Ed. Colum Hourihane. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 167–87. Dale, Thomas E.A. “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms in the Cloister of St-Michel-de-Cuxa.” Art Bulletin 83/3 (September 2001): 402–36. Diebold, William. “The Nazi Middle Ages.” In Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past. Ed. Andrew Albin et al. New York: Fordham University, 2019. 104–15. Diedrichs, Christof L. “Glänzende Geschichte: Zum so genannten Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. im Schatz der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Licht, Glanz, Blendung:

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Quedlinburg.” In Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History. Ed. Robert Maxwell. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 133–47. Hahn, Cynthia, and Avinoam Shalem, eds. Seeking Transparency: Rock Crystals across the Medieval Mediterranean. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2020. Hamburger, Jeffrey F. “The Art and Architecture of Female Monasticism.” In A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe. 2nd ed. Ed. Conrad Rudolph. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019. 823–56. Hamburger, Jeffrey F. “Art, Enclosure and the Cura Monialium: Prolegomena in the Guise of a Postscript.” Gesta 31/2, Monastic Architecture for Women (1992): 108–34. Hamburger, Jeffrey F., ed. Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the ­Fifteenth Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Hase, Konrad Wilhelm and Quast, Ferdinand von. Die Gräber in der Schlosskirche zu Quedlinburg. Quedlinburg: Harzverein für Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 1877. Hehl, Ernst-Dieter. Gregor VII. und Heinrich IV. in Canossa 1077: Paenitentia – Absolutio – Honor. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019. Hengevoss-Dürkop, Kerstin. “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg.” In Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte. Ed. Otto Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998. 45–87. Hillenbrand, Robert. “Oleg Grabar: The Scholarly Legacy.” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–35. Hiscock, Nigel. “The Ottonian Revival: Church Expansion and Monastic Reform.” In The White Mantle of Churches. Ed. Nigel Hiscock. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. 1–28. Hoffman, Eva. “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century.” Art History 24 (2001): 17–50. Holladay, Joan. Genealogy and the Politics of Representation in the High and Late Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Hunter, Timothy J. “‘Quid milites pugnantes?’: An Early Representation of Chanson de Geste on the Romanesque Frieze of Angoulême Cathedral Reexamined.” Studies in Iconography 34 (2013): 133–74. Hutterer, Maile S. Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. Jahn, Philipp. “Die Bauornamentik der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg.” MA thesis. ­Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 2014. Jahn, Philipp. “Zur Baugeschichte der Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg bis zum Jahr 1129 und ihrer architekturhistorischen Einordnung.” In 919 – Plötzlich König: Heinrich I. und Quedlinburg. Ed. Stephan Freund und Gabriele Köster. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019. 224–41. Kahn, Deborah, ed. The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator: The Lincoln Symposium Papers. London: Miller, 1992.

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Kellog-Krieg, Annah. “Restored Reassessed, Redeemed: The SS Past at the Collegiate Church of St Servatius in Quedlinburg.” In Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities ­Confront the Nazi Past. Ed. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot. Ann Arbor: ­University of Michigan Press, 2011. 209–27. Kluckhohn, Erwin, and Walter Paatz. “Die Bedeutung Italiens für die romanische Baukunst und Bauornamentik in Deutschland.” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 16 (1955): 1–120. Kötzsche, Dietrich. Der Quedlinburger Schatz. Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung Beuermann, 1999. Kohl, Thomas, ed. Konflikt und Wandel um 1100: Europa im Zeitalter von Feudalgesellschaft und Investiturstreit. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Krause, Hans-Joachim, ed. Das Heilige Grab in Gernrode: Bestandsdokumentation und Bestandsforschung. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2007. Krueger, Ingeborg. “Der Quedlinburger ‘Lutherbecher’ und die Gruppe der ­Goldemail-Riesenbecher.” Journal of Glass Studies 57 (2015): 147–65. Kurmann-Schwarz, Brigitte. “Gender and Medieval Art.” In A Companion to ­Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe. 2nd ed. Ed. Conrad Rudolph. ­Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019. 195–220. Labusiak, Thomas. Kostbarer als Gold: Der Domschatz in der Stiftskirche St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Wettin-Löbejün: Verlag Janos Stekovics, 2015. Leopold, Gerhard. Die ottonischen Kirchen St. Servatii, St. Wiperti und St. Marien in Quedlinburg. Halle/Saale: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, 2010. Ludowici, Babette. “Quedlinburg vor den Ottonen: Versuch einer frühen Topographie der Macht.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 49 (2016): 91–104. Marlow, Christian. “Die Quedlinburger Äbtissinen im Hochmittelalter: Das Stift Quedlinburg in Zeiten der Krise und des Wandels bis 1137.” PhD diss., Otto-vonGuericke-­Universität, Magdeburg, 2017 (http://d-nb.info/1161462007/34). Martin, Therese, ed. Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Mayr-Harting, Henry. “Liudprand of Cremona’s Account of His Legation to Constantinople (968) and Ottonian Imperial Strategy.” English Historical Review 116/467 (June 2001): 539–56. McKitterick, Rosamond. “Ottonian Intellectual Culture in the Tenth Century and the Role of Theophanu.” Early Medieval Europe 2/1 (1993): 53–74. Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje. “’Die häßlichen Äbtissinen’: Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg.” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002–03): 9–47. Morero, Elise, et al. “Relief Carving on Medieval Islamic Glass and Rock Crystal Vessels: A Comparative Approach to Techniques of Manufacture.” In Seeking Transparency. Ed. Cynthia Hahn and Avinoam Shalem. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2020. 51–66.

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Muschiol, Gisela. “Liturgie und Klausur: Zu den liturgischen Voraussetzungen von Nonnenemporen.” In Studien zum Kanonissenstift. Ed. Irene Crusius. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001. 129–48. Muschiol, Gisela. “Von Benedikt bis Bernhard: Klausur zwischen Regula und Realität.” In Regula Benedicti studia. Ed. Makarios Hebler. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1997. 27–42. Olin, Margaret. Review of Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament. Art Bulletin 75/4 (1993): 728–31. Panofsky, Erwin, ed. On the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948. Peter, Michael. “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen im Schatz der Quedlinburger Stiftskirche.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 52–53 (1998–99): 53–92. Randall, Lilian M. C. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Rienäcker, Christa. Münzenberg: UNESCO Welterbe Quedlinburg. Lindenberg: Fink, 2001. Rudolph, Conrad. The ‘Things of Greater Importance’: Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Apologia” and the Medieval Attitude toward Art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. “A Bawdy Betrothal in the Ormesby Psalter.” In Tribute to Lotte Brand Philip. Ed. William W. Clark et al. New York: Abaris Books, 1985. 155–59. Sauerländer, Willibald. “Romanesque Sculpture in Its Architectural Context.” In Romanesque Frieze. Ed. Deborah Kahn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 17–44. Sauerländer, Willibald. “The Naumburg Master.” The Burlington Magazine 153/1304 (November 2011): 763–64. Schapiro, Meyer. “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art.” In Art and Thought: Issued in Honor of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy on the Occasion of His 70th B ­ irthday. Ed. K. Bharatha Iyer. London: Luzac and Company, 1947. 130–50. Scheck, Helene. “Queen Mathilda of Saxony and the Founding of Quedlinburg: Women, Memory, and Power.” Historical Reflections 35 (Winter 2009): 21–36. Scheftel, Michael. “Die ehemalige Klosterkirche St. Marien auf dem Münzenberg in Quedlinburg.” In Bauforschung- eine kritische Revision. Ed. Johannes Cramer et al. Berlin: Lukas-Verlag, 2005. 116–36. Schmidt, Elisabeth. “Die Relieffriese des südlichen Ostquerhauses des Paderborner Doms.” In Gotik: Der Paderborner Dom und die Baukultur des 13. Jahrhunderts in Europa. Ed. Christoph Stiegemann. Petersberg: Imhof, 2018. 170–83. Schubert, Ernst. “Die Kirchen St. Wiperti und St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Eine Interpretation der literarischen Quellen zur Baugeschichte.” Sachsen und Anhalt 25 (2007): 31–80.

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Schulenburg, Jane Tibbetts. “Women’s Monastic Communities, 500–1100: Patterns of Expansion and Decline.” Signs 14/2 (Working Together in the Middle Ages: Perspectives on Women’s Communities; Winter 1989): 261–92. Scott, Judy F. St.-Gilles-du-Gard: The West Façade Figured Frieze; Irregularities and Relative Chronology. Frankfurt: Lang, 1981. Shalem, Avinoam. “Histories of Belonging and George Kubler’s Prime Object.” Getty Research Journal 3 (2011): 1–14. Stiegemann, Christoph, and Matthias Wemhoff, eds. Canossa 1077: Erschütterung der Welt; Geschichte, Kunst und Kultur am Aufgang der Romanik. 2 vols. Munich: Hirmer, 2006. Stoddard, Whitney S. The Façade of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard: Its Influence on French Sculpture. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Tuczay, C. “Drache und Greif – Symbole der Ambivalenz.” Mediaevistik 19 (2006): 169–211. Underwood, Paul A. “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Gospels.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950): 41–138. Viejo, Jesús Rodríguez. “El Codex Aureus de El Escorial y el culto mariano en la corte Sálica.” Románico 27 (December 2018): 8–15. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Wäscher, Hermann. Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942. Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1959. Walker, Alicia. “Patterns of Flight: Middle Byzantine Adoptions of the Chinese Feng Huang Bird.” Ars Orientalis 38 (2010): 188–216. Wangerin, Laura. “Empress Theophanu, Sanctity, and Memory in Early Medieval Saxony.” Central European History 47/4 (December 2014): 716–36. Warner, David. “Ritual and Memory in the Ottonian Reich: The Ceremony of Adventus.” Speculum 76/2 (2001): 255–83. Warner, David, trans. Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Weinryb, Ittai. “Hildesheim Avant-Garde: Bronze, Columns, and Colonialism.” Speculum 93/3 (July 2018): 728–82. Weinryb, Ittai. “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages.” Gesta 52/2 (Fall 2013): 113–32. Wentzel, Hans. “Das byzantinische Erbe der ottonischen Kaiser: Hypothesen über den Brautschatz der Theophano.” Aachener Kunstblätter 40 (1971): 15–39. Wilke-Waldbröl, Heinz. “Die Ornamentik im Dom zu Quedlinburg.” Harz-Zeitschrift 2 (1950): 73–94. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Harald. “Bernhard von Clairvaux und das Bild- und Kunstverständnis bei den Zisterziensern.” In Die Zisterzienser: Das Europa der Klöster. Ed. Gabriele Uelsberg et al. Darmstadt: Konrad Theiss, 2017. 101–13.

Chapter 9

Of Donors and Patrons: The Abbey of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg as a Site of Remembrance, Distinction, and Representation Clemens Bley 1 The abbey church of St. Servatius rises from a sandstone promontory high above the city of Quedlinburg, a stone shrine visible from afar to mark the location of the grave of King Henry I (Figure 3.1). A three-aisled cruciform basilica, it is the fourth church built on this site. In spite of several significant interventions and restorations, it is considered to be one of the best-preserved examples of high Romanesque architecture in Germany. The previous building, consecrated in 1021, was severely damaged or even destroyed by fire in 1070. The structure was rebuilt and rededicated in 1129 in the presence of Emperor Lothar III. The question arises as to whether a 60-year construction window is plausible. In fact, it is possible that construction only began in 1090, ending around 1120, as suggested by formal comparison with precursors and subsequent buildings.1 In its basic concept, the church follows Saxon tradition. The cruciform basilica has a flat roof. Its transept arms extend only just beyond the aisles. The east end, built high above the crypt, consists of a square choir with an apse, a separate crossing, and the two transept arms, each also with an apse. Adjacent to this to the west is a three-bay nave with Saxon alternating supports: column— column—pier. A two-towered westwork with a gallery comprises the west end. What made this new church building so modern and special at the time were elements of the wall structure, especially the sculpture decorating the building and capitals (Figure 8.3). The decorative figurative relief bands that run under the eaves on the exterior, the cornice in the nave under the clerestory, and the ornamental friezes on the interior above the two side apses show north Italian influences (compare, for instance, S. Abbondio in Como and S. Ambrogio in 1 Philipp Jahn, “Zur Baugeschichte der Stiftskirche St. Servatius zu Quedlinburg bis zum Jahr 1129 und ihrer architekturhistorischen Einordnung,” in 919 – Plötzlich König: Henry I. und Q ­ uedlinburg, ed. Stephan Freund and Gabriele Köster (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019), 224–41 at 237. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_011

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Milan).2 For the first time in Saxony, north Italian forms were introduced and incorporated into Saxon building traditions; they were also thence transmitted to the monastery church of Our Lady in Magdeburg, the monastery church in Gröningen, and to St. Ulrich at Sangerhausen.3 The recourse to north Italian, specifically Lombard forms was motivated not only by aesthetic considerations, but also by political and historical circumstances: (northern) Italy was a metaphor for empire. As a royal foundation and burial site, Quedlinburg was closely associated with the Ottonian and Salian emperors. Quedlinburg Abbey acted as a guarantor of salvation for the ruling family, but also of the welfare of the empire.4 This new church building and its furnishings represent the ambition to be exceptional, as well as the need for self-demarcation. At the same time, the convent community responsible for the building project had to take into account anti-royal—that is, anti-Salian—sentiment. Ever since the Saxons had ceased to be kings and emperors—that is, since 1024—the east Saxon nobility had stood in opposition to the Salian emperors. Eastern Saxony, with its core lands around the Harz, was the heartland of the Ottonian rulers.5 As a result, a special feeling of pride, a sense of individual identity even, had developed here. The new abbey paid homage to both by following Saxon traditions in its architecture. This synthesis must have been exemplary for Emperor Lothar, for he too commissioned Lombard stonemasons for his own representational burial place not far away in Königslutter. Their work seems to have been absolutely obligatory for royal and imperial burial sites (as we also see at Speyer) and its significance is comparable with that of ancient spolia.6 For structural reasons, the main entrance to the abbey is in the west of the north side aisle, a placement that conforms with the significance of the 2 On these reliefs, see in this volume Shirin Fozi, “The Quedlinburg Frieze and Its Romanesque Context.” 3 Walter Wulf, Romanik in der Königslandschaft Sachsen (Würzburg: Zodiaque-Echter, 1996), 360–61. 4 Claudia Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im Historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 30. 5 Caspar Ehlers, “Stolz und Vorurteil: Reichsnähe und Königsferne Sachsens bis in das 13. Jahrhundert,” in Aufbruch in die Gotik: Der Magdeburger Dom und die späte Stauferzeit: Landesausstellung Sachsen-Anhalt aus Anlass des 800. Domjubiläums vom 31. August bis zum 6. Dezember 2009, im Kulturhistorischen Museum Magdeburg, vol. 1, Essays, ed. Matthias Puhle (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2009), 362–69 at 366. 6 Bruno Klein, “Die ehemalige Abteikirche von Königslutter. Die Grablege eines sächsischen Kaisers am Beginn der Stauferzeit,” in Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit, vol. 2, Essays, ed. Franz Niehoff and Jochen Luckhardt (Munich: Hirmer, 1995), 105–19 at 117.

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Figure 9.1 Quedlinburg, Collegiate Church, portal. c.1100. Photograph of c.1960 from the archive of Clemens Bley

building (Figure 9.1). The portal, set into the wall, is closed at the top by a ­tympanum and a roundheaded arch and flanked by two engaged columns. It is considered to be one of the earliest portals of this type in Germany, perhaps even the first.7 Its models can be found in northern Italy.8 Both engaged 7 Ernst Schubert, “Quedlinburg, Stadt und Stätte deutscher Geschichte,” in Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, ed. Dietrich Kötzsche (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1992), 3–20 at 11. 8 Hans-Joachim Mrusek, Drei Deutsche Dome: [Quedlinburg, Magdeburg, Halberstadt] (­Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1963), 11 and 24.

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Figure 9.2 Quedlinburg, Collegiate Church, nave, capital with eagles. c.1100. Photograph by Clemens Bley

c­ olumns have finely crafted eagle capitals, which are unlikely to symbolize exclusively secular rule, for the motif continues in the nave: almost in line with the main portal, two columns in each of the two arcades also carry eagle capitals (­Figure 9.2), although, like all capitals there, they are more stylized and schematic in accordance with the size of the room. 2 The design of the capitals in the crypt, the historical and cultic center of the convent, is quite different. While the upper church is distinguished by a dignified

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Figure 9.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt. Capital with masks. c.1100. Photograph by Clemens Bley

intensity and monumentality, the crypt—despite its ­spaciousness—appears dignified in a completely different way, through intimacy and lightness. This is especially true of the three-aisled groin-vaulted hall under the high choir. Ten slender pillars support the vaults. Here, too, the capitals are influenced by Lombardy, but they are more sculptural and molded than in the upper church (Figure 9.3). The latter also reflect Lombard influence and, like the volute and acanthus capitals, are based on ancient models. In the crypt alone, much effort was made to create an appropriate setting for the graves of King Henry I, his wife Mathilde, and their eponymous granddaughter, the convent’s first abbess (Figure 9.4). While it can be assumed that the king’s remains were no longer present there at the time of the new building campaign, this fact does not seem

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Figure 9.4 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt. Tombs of King Henry I (center) and Queen Mathilde. 10th century. Photograph by Clemens Bley

to have been critical for the success of Quedlinburg Abbey. The crucial factor was that it was always known throughout the empire that Quedlinburg was the site of Henry I’s burial.9 Nordhausen Abbey, founded in 961 by Henry’s widow, Mathilde, could not boast of such a prominent burial site, and it consequently enjoyed much less attention, care, and success.10 In Quedlinburg itself, memoria and remembrance have focused increasingly on Henry alone since the 12th century. Ultimately, he was considered the sole founder of Quedlinburg Abbey, even though it was his son Otto I who issued the foundation charter.11 It is therefore all the more astonishing that there is no evidence of a memorial or any other grave monument for Henry from this or any later period. ­Compared with other endowments, this would be both remarkable and 9

Joachim Ehlers, “Heinrich I. in Quedlinburg,” in Herrschaftsrepräsentation im ottonischen Sachsen, ed. Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1998), 235–66 at 238. 10 Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel, 36. 11 Carl Erdmann, “Beiträge zur Geschichte Henry I. (I–III),” in Sachsen und Anhalt 16 (1940): 77–106 at 95.

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confusing, if indeed it was intentional. The three stucco tombstones commemorating Abbesses Adelheid I, Beatrix, and Adelheid II are certainly highly intentional (Figure 6.1).12 These memorial images are among the most important works of Romanesque sculpture in Germany.13 They depict the Ottonian and Salian princesses in life size and strict frontality. The three plaques most likely come from a single workshop and were made for the new church. As a triadic composition, they lay on the abbesses’ graves in front of the cross altar between the stairs to the high choir, Adelheid I in the middle, Beatrix on her right, and Adelheid II on her left. This use of the figural tomb format, depicting neither saints nor donors, is unusual for the early 12th century and requires explanation. It could show the connection between the Easter liturgy and the abbatial office. Beginning with King Henry I, Quedlinburg was the traditional site where the Ottonian and Salian rulers celebrated Easter—the greatest Christian festival—as did two rival kings in 1079 and 1085. Perhaps the three grave slabs derived their pictorial intentions and legitimation from the representation of the abbatial office as it was celebrated on such occasions.14 3 The choice of abbey patron can also be linked to King Henry. In his Servatius legend from the end of the 11th century, Bishop Jocundus of Maastricht reported that Henry was already devoted to the cult of St. Servatius as duke of Saxony. Although he did not take possession of the saint’s body, Henry did receive his staff and stole.15 Servatius is mentioned as Quedlinburg patron for the first time in 937. In 1021 he was one of eight patrons of the main altar. His patronage was firmly established with the consecration of the new building in

12 13 14

15

See in this volume Karen Blough, “Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. S­ ervatius, Quedlinburg.” Wulf, Romanik, 359. Kerstin Hengevoss-Dürkop, “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg,” in Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte, ed. Otto Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998): 45–87 at 85–87. See also Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, “‘Die häßlichen Äbtissinnen’: Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg,” in Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–47 at 15–17 and 42–43. Erdmann, “Beiträge,” 95.

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1129, when he became the main patron.16 Since that time at the latest, Quedlinburg became the second center of Servatius veneration in the empire, alongside Maastricht.17 In this way, the Bishop of Tongeren prevailed as a “super saint,” once again emphasizing the exclusivity of Quedlinburg Abbey. The highest celestial authority has bestowed on Servatius the grace whereby all of his requests will be fulfilled, even at the Last Judgment, where he will be especially honored. In addition, Jocundus and others write, Servatius like Peter has the power to bring eternal life to those who believe in him. The key given to him is the sign of his power to open and close heaven. Furthermore, he is related in this way to Christ.18 4 One of the greatest textile works of art of the High Middle Ages, of which five large fragments have survived (Figure 9.5), is dedicated to the abbey’s patron, St. Servatius. While only about a third of its original size is preserved, its measurements can still be reconstructed at 7 m × 5.70 m. Its size, its massive weight of at least 250 kilograms, its dedication, and a source of c.1200 all suggest that it was made as a floor carpet to be spread out in front of the main altar in the high choir of the Abbey of St. Servatius, a space measuring 8.50 m × 8.50 m (Figure 9.6). The carpet originally consisted of five horizontal rows of images, which were supplemented by and described in inscriptions running between them. Very little of this text has survived. The dedicatory inscription, which named the donor, the purpose of the commission, and the beneficiary, once surrounded all of the panels. Remnants of this have been preserved on fragments I, II, and V. The text that begins in the middle of the first panel is incomplete but can be completed using an early modern source: “ALME DEI VATES DECUS HOC tibi contulit Agnes gloria pontificum famularum suscipe votum” (“Blessed herald of God, Agnes gives you this ornament. You glory of the priests, accept [this] gift from your servants”).19

16 17 18 19

Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 164. Renate Kroos, Der Schrein des Heiligen Servatius in Maastricht und die vier zugehörigen Reliquiare in Brüssel (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1985), 241. Kroos, “Schrein,” 11 and 16–17. Friedrich Ernst Kettner, Kirchen- und Reformations: Historie des Käyserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg ... (Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710), 48.

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Figure 9.5 Reconstruction of the wedding carpet following Julius Lessing (1903) and Johanna Flemming (1997). c.1200. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt / Preuß/Ulrich. Montage by Wolfgang Fischer, concept by Clemens Bley

According to unanimous opinion, only Abbess Agnes II of Quedlinburg (1184–1203) can have been the carpet’s donor. An undated document from the end of the 12th century has been preserved in which she states that she donated, among other furnishings for the abbey, a tapete ante summum altare,20 which is generally understood to be the large floor carpet in question. That 20

Aloys Schmidt, ed., Urkundenbuch des Eichsfeldes. T. 1: Anfang saec. IX bis 1300 (Magdeburg: Historische Kommission, 1933), 96, no. 165, and Anton Ulrich von Erath, Codex Diplomaticus Qvedlinburgensis (Frankfurt a.M., Moeller, 1764), 110, no. XL. The original

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Figure 9.6 Reconstructed wedding carpet in the high choir (­reconstructed 1938–40) in front of the high altar in the abbey church of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg. Photograph: montage by Wolfgang Fischer, concept by Clemens Bley

it was given to a saint and not to a living person follows from the fact that a votum, as a consecration gift, requires a god or a saint as recipient.21 It can be dated to around 1200 on stylistic grounds, not least because of Byzantine influence, which was characteristic of Saxon art at the time. Together with the solemn salutation, this speaks very much in favor of Servatius as the recipient of this gift.

21

document is in the Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg: Rep. U 9, A IX Nr. 5. Johanna Flemming, “Der spätromanische Bildteppich der Quedlinburger Äbtissin Agnes,” Sachsen und Anhalt 19 (1997): 517–53 at 522.

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The carpet is based on the first two books of the Late Antique didactic poem “De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii” (“The Marriage of Philology and Mercury”) by Martianus Capella. This voluminous work was the most important introduction to the septem artes liberales—the seven liberal arts—in the Middle Ages; it was widely distributed and of philosophical interest. The first two volumes, describing the wedding and its preparations, were particularly popular. The text begins with a poem to Hymenaeus, who is presented, among other things, as sponsor of marriage between the gods, of whom Mercury is still unmarried. Virtus advises him to turn to Apollo about this; he in turn recommends the highly learned virgin Philologia, who commands all knowledge. Virtus, Mercury, and Apollo ascend through the celestial spheres to the palace of Jupiter, accompanied by the muses. There, an assembly of gods approves Mercury’s wish and decides to deify Philologia, as well as, henceforth, all other deserving mortals. Phronesis adorns her daughter Philologia, who is greeted by the four cardinal virtues and three graces. At the request of Athanasia, she is obliged to regurgitate a multitude of books in order to become worthy of immortality. She then ascends to heaven in a palanquin carried by the youths Labor and Cupid and two maids. In heaven, Juno, the protector of marriage, meets her and instructs her about the inhabitants of Olympus. The bride receives the seven liberal arts as a wedding gift. In the Middle Ages, this story met with great interest not only because of its learned content, but also because of the rich use of allegorical figures, which could be understood in a Christian sense, not least because of the motif of the heavenly journey.22 The fragmentary survival of the Quedlinburg wedding carpet makes it difficult to clarify what purpose it once served and how the text and images relate to one another. On the other hand, the paucity of additional written sources opens it up to numerous interpretive possibilities. For Leonie von Wilckens, for example, the marriage of Mercury with Philologia represents that of sponsus and sponsa in the Song of Solomon, an interpretation derived from Alexander Neckam (1157–1217), as well as of the conjugal union of Christ with ecclesia/ Maria.23 The wedding carpet thus represents the wedding of the women in the abbey with Christ.24 Wilckens thus attempts to establish a connection to the reality of conventual life.

22 23 24

Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 39. Leonie von Wilckens, “Der Hochzeitsteppich in Quedlinburg,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 34 (1995): 27–41 at 33. Wilckens, “Hochzeitsteppich,” 34.

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In her extensive and clever analysis of the structure, composition, and ­ ictorial program of the carpet, Johanna Flemming also queries its relationp ship to the real life of the women in the abbey. For her, the key to interpreting the program and the heart of the entire work is the central scene in the middle register depicting the delivery of the bride and the bride’s gifts. Philologia’s mother, Phronesis, hands her a veil and her bridegroom, Mercury, a pen. For Flemming, Philologia represents the consecrated virgin in Quedlinburg Abbey, who entered there as a young domicella, completed her studies, and was accepted into the convent as a domina.25 The intent of the wedding imagery on this consecration gift was to show deep devotion to St. Servatius as patron of the abbey and to propitiate his protection for the study and communal convent life that took place there.26 Katharina Ulrike Mersch sees a very similar purpose in the carpet, which reflects the educational paradigm of the Quedlinburg convent around 1200, presenting the canonesses with ambitious educational ideals and contributing to conventual identity.27 It is also of political significance. Together with other furnishings from the end of the 12th century, the wedding carpet aimed to preserve the special position of the abbey in the empire during that unstable period and to ward off claims of the neighboring bishops of Halberstadt. Dedicated to St. Servatius, the carpet recalls Quedlinburg’s status as an Ottonian foundation.28 The real meaning for Mersch, however, lies in the admonition that learned knowledge can only be attained by those who subscribe to chaste love and the practice of virtue. This is what Philologia does by submitting to the heavenly court and entering into a union with Mercury, who in medieval interpretation embodies Christ. References to the septem artes liberales would have encouraged the viewer to acquire worldly knowledge. In agreement with Flemming, for Mersch, Philologia served as a means of identification for the members of the convent. Her apotheosis promised the canonesses participation in the kingdom of heaven.29 The composition and execution of the top pictorial register of the carpet are especially intriguing (Figure 9.7). At first glance, these images have nothing to do with the rest of the story, so there are some issues with their interpretation 25 26 27 28 29

Flemming, “Bildteppich,“ 541. Ibid., 552. Katharina Ulrike Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und ­spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten: Stifte, Chorfrauenstifte und Klöster im ­Vergleich (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2012), 80. Ibid., 77–78. Ibid., 90.

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Figure 9.7 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Carpet, first panel, fragments I+II. c.1200. ­Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und ­Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt

and intent. Wilckens interprets this register rather traditionally, asserting that it reveals the unification of empire and sacerdotium in the mortal, terrestrial world, together with the cardinal virtues. She sees here an illustration of the doctrine of the two powers, the worldly and the spiritual. The thrones of different heights, with that of the empire being higher than that of the sacerdotium, do not refer to a dispute regarding rank or investiture. These two entities are represented not as adversaries, but rather as related and complementary powers. The virtues of Pietas and Justitia, embracing each other in the center of the scene, suggest this. This interpretation is based on the difficult political situation experienced within the empire in the 12th century. In contrast, Flemming sees a doctrine of rulership virtues here. She queries its relationship to education at Quedlinburg Abbey. The carpet might have served as a vehicle with which to instruct the young women at Quedlinburg, for whom both a worldly and a spiritual life path were possible, about rulership virtues, in this way providing the convent with a speculum morale. According to Flemming, the core message of the image can be found in the intimately embracing virtues of Pietas and Justitia. In addition to medieval mirrors of princes (Fürstenspiegel) and songs of praise, she cites the most influential handbook of knowledge in the Middle Ages, the Etymology of Isidore of Seville. According to this text, mercy and justice are the chief virtues of a king. Mercy is a special mark of kings because justice alone is too harsh. Or, Flemming asks, does this imagery in fact refer to the secular and spiritual aspect of conventual government?30 30

Flemming, “Bildteppich,” 549.

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Mersch’s interpretation is somewhat more convincing, whereby all of the ­ ictorial representations on the carpet are directly related to Martianus’s p De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, though only the second and third rows follow the narrative model.31 Accordingly, she does not interpret the first row of images as the reconciliation of worldly and spiritual powers. Rather, for Mersch, empire and sacerdotium stand for the antique celestial rulers Jupiter and Juno and the virtues personifications (Fortitudo, Pietas, Justitia, and ­Temperantia) for Mercury’s companion Virtus. In her opinion, the ancient Roman celestial court of justice of the literary model is connected with Christian concepts.32 Therefore, the protagonists have been rearranged in order to illustrate the interdependencies of these various concepts. Celestial council is placed above earthly events. The virtues are assigned to the council as advocates for Philologia and characterized as components of true love. This wedding carpet, Mersch concludes, represents an iconographically unique Christian exegesis of the Late Antique didactic poem.33 Like Flemming, Mersch traces the adaptation of the narrative as it is revealed in the images on the carpet back to the tradition and circumstances at Quedlinburg Abbey.34 The reception of commentaries on Martianus’s didactic poem was equally important.35 She briefly refers in this respect to the commentaries of Notker Labeo (d. 1022) and Alexander Neckam, according to whom Jupiter represents God the Father, Mercury the Christ-Logos, and Philologia the bride of Christ, but these sources prove to be irrelevant to her further interpretation, as is that of Remigius (d. 908), for whom Juno is the matchmaker.36 Five themes are thus seen on the tapestry: chaste, pure love (illustrated by CASTUS AMOR on fragment IV in the middle panel), conjugal union, erudition, and virtue, as well as heavenly journey and immortality (of the soul). Both are also shown on fragment IV in the moment when, from heaven, Urania takes hold of Philologia’s arm and pulls her out of her bridal bed, towards Urania herself. In their interpretations of the pictorial program, both Flemming and Mersch focus excessively on the septem artes liberales, on education and scholarship. Flemming in particular rejects an ecclesiological-allegorical interpretation of the imagery.37 She does not address the relationship between the canonesses 31 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 81 and 86. 32 Ibid., 84–85. 33 Ibid., 86. 34 Flemming, “Bildteppich,” 532. 35 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 87 and 90. 36 Ibid., 88–89. 37 Flemming, “Bildteppich,” 550–53.

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and Mercury/Christ. She sees in this wedding the union of rhetoric (Mercury) and erudition (Philologia).38 Mersch at least considers how Martianus’s work was related to life in the convent, whereby the union of Mercury and Philologia alluded to chaste union with Christ. Ultimately, however, for her, the iconography constitutes a call to virtue and scholarship.39 Education, learning, and the arts were not, however, ends in themselves. Usually only the trivium, comprising rhetoric, grammar, and logic, was taught because it was a prerequisite for reading and understanding the Bible and its commentary. They fulfilled solely a preparatory function—in the sense of soteriological history, as well. The ultimate goal was to know God.40 The relationship between the patron and the recipient of the carpet has also barely been discussed. What did Agnes and her convent expect from Servatius for the votum? Or was she keeping a promise with this gift? Whatever the case, a gift demands a counter-gift. So what was the real purpose of the wedding carpet? I believe that Mersch provides the key with her interpretation of the first row of images.41 As mentioned above, she sees Jupiter and Juno in empire and ­sacerdotium. She interprets the entire scene as the celestial court, to which Philologia submits herself. I will be so bold as to turn the key further and attempt a synthesis of the interpretations discussed thus far: I suggest that the image represents the Last Judgment, with St. Servatius as advocate for Abbess Agnes and her virgins. Clad in splendidly appointed episcopal vestments and insignia, sacerdotium/St. Servatius mediates with his gaze and gesture between the viewer/supplicant and empire/world judge and points to the latter’s scroll with the appeal IUSTE IUDICA (“judge justly”) as well as to the two ruler virtues, Pietas and Justitia. Agnes presents herself to her intercessor as Philologia: chaste and virtuous, loving and seeking Christ/Mercury. In doing so, she also shows him how, as abbess, she cares for the virgins entrusted to her, following 38 Ibid., 531. 39 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommnikation, 104. 40 Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 40–42, and Peter Schulthess and Ruedi Imbach, Die Philosophie im lateinischen Mittelalter: Ein Handbuch mit einem bio-bibliographischen Repertorium (Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 1996), 143. That Philologia, in order to become immortal, must first regurgitate a large part of her knowledge, is indicated on the wedding carpet. Flemming, “Bildteppich,” 530–31, explicitly describes it. On fragment II of the first row of images, an enlarged stomach emerges from under her robe. In the scene on fragment III, middle panel, in which the wedding presents are given to her, she is slim again. 41 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 84, cites as evidence that, according to Martianus, Juno sits somewhat lower than Jupiter. On the carpet, this applies to empire and sacerdotium.

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her/Philologia’s example. This precious gift is connected with the concern for personal memory and salvation, whereby the saint is propitiated to help lead the petitioner to eternal life with Christ. While this interpretation cannot be proven, the following observation suggests that Agnes was concerned with her soul’s salvation and memory; that the gift’s intent was as atonement for a sin can be safely ruled out. The predominant reason for charitable activity in the Middle Ages was concern for the salvation of one’s soul, as can be seen elsewhere in portraits and inscriptions. This is also the reason why donors did not remain anonymous at the time. The name of the donor would remain associated with the commission in order to ensure the donor would be remembered and receive prayers for their soul in perpetuity.42 Another treasure of Quedlinburg Abbey certainly served this same purpose: a Carolingian ivory reliquary to which a magnificent mount made entirely of gold was added around 1200, as well as a large antique cameo, precious stones, and enamel work (Figures 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3). This old and highly valued shrine was renovated with great effort. Nothing comparable has survived from this period.43 What is pivotal and most informative, however, is the silver baseplate, measuring about 25 by 12 cm, which was also newly assembled at the time (Figure 9.8). Portraits and inscriptions provide information about the donor, patron, and purpose of this treasure. The composition is symmetrical. In its center is a tall rectangular area that shows Christ as the judge of the world at the end of times in a four-lobed mandorla, flanked by the letters Alpha and Omega. The text within the mandorla reads QUODCUNQUE PETIERITIS I NOMINE MEO HOC FATIAM (“Anything you ask in my name will be done”).44 At Christ’s feet are two adoring women with an altar between them. The inscription in the center, TEMPORE AGNETIS ABBE ET ORADE PPE FACTA EST HEC CAPSA, identifies them as Abbess Agnes and Provost Oderade. Finally, the inscription around the outside shows that the reliquary was newly created in honor of St. Servatius: “IN HAC CAPSA AD HONORE[M] 42

43 44

Ulrike Bergmann, “PRIOR OMNIBUS AUTOR—an höchster Stelle aber steht der Stifter,” in Ornamenta Ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik; Katalog zur Ausstellung des Schnütgen-Museums in der Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, vol. 1 (Cologne: Schnütgen-­Museum, 1985), 117–70 at 145. Dietrich Kötzsche, ed., Der Quedlinburger Schatz (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993), 56–57. See also in this volume Eliza Garrison and Evan Gatti, “A Reliquary Revisited: The St. Servatius Casket and Its Contexts.” All inscriptions after Adolf Brinkmann, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg. T. 1, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Sachsen, H. 33 (Berlin: Hendel, 1922), 124–25.

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Figure 9.8 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Bottom plaque from the Reliquary of St. Servatius. c.1200. Domschatz Quedlinburg Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley

BEATI SERVATII E[ST] RECONDITU[M] …” Inside it were precious relics of Christ’s crucifixion, in addition to those of Servatius himself. To the right and left of the middle area, three half-length portraits of saints can be seen in each of three registers under arcades. St. Servatius with his attribute, the heavenly key, is placed very prominently at the beginning of the sequence. The iconography is clear: the two donors Agnes and Oderade dedicate this work to ­Servatius, present themselves humbly to Christ and the saints, hope for eternal life, and ask Servatius for intercession. But is it really the donors we see here? Thomas Labusiak claimed not, because the figures have nothing in their hands that could be offered to Christ and the saints. The inscription supplies no further information either.45 Was there perhaps another, anonymous donor? But Labusiak recognized an innovation in the iconography of the central field. Up to this point, canonesses and nuns in donor and devotional images did not address Christ. The depiction of Agnes and Oderade is by and large in the tradition of Ottonian-Salian donor and devotional representation, but with is a striking difference. As a rule, it is male rulers and bishops, sometimes accompanied by their female relatives, who worship Christ. Agnes and Oderade thus adopted this masculine iconography for their own representation and to secure their lasting presence in the liturgy of the abbey. In this way, it attests their particular self-image.46 45

Thomas Labusiak, “Der Servatiusschrein im Wandel,” in Das dritte Stift: Forschungen zum Quedlinburger Frauenstift (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2017), 165–88 at 186. 46 Labusiak, Servatiusschrein, 185–86.

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Agnes honored Quedlinburg’s patron saint not only with works of art but also with business acumen to ensure his help. A document from 1195 testifies that goods were exchanged between Quedlinburg Abbey and Pforte Monastery (near Naumburg/Saale). Agnes stated that this took place pro remedio anime nostre, that is, for the salvation of her soul. The deal is said to have been very advantageous for Quedlinburg Abbey; Agnes represented its business interests well. It was this material aspect, and not her concern for the salvation of her soul, that is the real reason for such an endeavor,47 although the one resulted from the other. Everything Agnes did on behalf of the abbey, she ultimately always did on behalf of the patron saint, the pater familias. He was the lord; it was his abbey, and she was his servant who managed his earthly possessions. To secure his favor and help meant protection and shelter—also in the afterlife.48 In the above-mentioned document listing the tapete ante summum altare, Agnes gives an account of herself in its first sentences: she always strove to restore the possessions of her church. It was therefore important to her that she and her work were not forgotten, and that is why she made arrangements for her memoria. The inscription on her tombstone reads: “SPIRITUS AGNETIS TENEAT LOCA CERTA QUIET [IS, NIL] PERHOSCAT, IN PACE DIVA REEQUIESCAT” (“May the soul of Agnes inhabit the safe places of rest; let nothing fill her with a shudder; may she rest in divine peace!”); (Figure 6.5). This inscription consists exclusively of wishes for salvation. Spiritual peace is requested for Agnes, as well as acceptance of her soul into heaven.49 5 The vault frescoes with Biblical themes in the eastern part of the crypt, measuring 10 m × 9.30 m, where the graves of Henry I, his wife Mathilde, and their granddaughter Mathilde are located, are somewhat older than the wedding carpet but similar in content and intention. The work was probably executed toward the end of the 12th century. Like the carpet, this work of art has only 47 48 49

Hans-Erich Weirauch, “Die Güterpolitik des Stiftes Quedlinburg im Mittelalter,” in Sachsen und Anhalt 13 (1937): 117–81 at 141. Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien: Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994), 193–97. Ernst Schubert, “Inschrift und Darstellung auf Quedlinburger Äbtissinengrabsteinen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Dies diem docet: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur mittelalterlichen Kunst und Geschichte in Mitteldeutschland; Festgabe zum 75. Geburtstag (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 290–302 at 299.

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survived in fragments. This applies particularly to the two easternmost bays and the areas adjacent to the walls. The pictorial program can no longer be determined in its entirety, but individual scenes and figures are recognizable. Some scenes and portraits, such as Emperor Otto I (OTTO MAGNUS IMPERAT[OR]) and his second wife Adelheid (ADELHE[ID] IT[ALIAE] REG[INA]), can be clearly identified. With the exception of John the Baptist, none of the saints and bishops depicted around the graves can be named with certainty due to their poor condition: inscriptions or the content of their scrolls were lost, or clear attributes are missing. This makes it much more difficult to determine who the donor is. The same is true of the patron saint, St. Servatius. In the two bays above the column that stands directly to the west of Queen Mathilde’s grave (Figure 9.9), a high church dignitary is depicted on his throne in the

Figure 9.9 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt fresco. Archbishop (St. ­Servatius?) and unknown donor (right). Last quarter of the 12th century. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley

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northern panel, his right hand raised in a gesture of blessing. His elaborate official attire, consisting of a conical miter, amice, white alb, dalmatic, bell chasuble, pallium, maniple, and a scepter-like staff, suggest that an archbishop is intended.50 Mersch unequivocally identifies him as St. Servatius.51 Thomas Foerster initially also considered this interpretation but had doubts because of the absence of a nimbus,52 ultimately suggesting that this image represents Archbishop Bruno of Cologne, Otto I’s youngest brother.53 In the adjoining western panel, a woman can be seen in an elaborate, tower-rich architectural frame. She is shown in profile, kneeling in a prayerful pose and wearing an alb with prominent hanging sleeves and a gray-blue mantle. Only a few contours of her head and face, turned towards the viewer, have survived. In her hands she is holding an—unfortunately—empty scroll. It seems likely that this is a female monastic. She is usually assumed to be the donor of the painting, either Abbess Adelheid III (1161–84),54 or her successor, Agnes II.55 However, Foerster and Mersch do not associate this figure with the fresco commission, but instead with the founding of the abbey. Mersch contends that she is King Henry’s widow, Mathilde, a theory supported by the nature of the representation. Additionally, the Vita Mathildis antiquior, in which Mathilde is described several times as pious and holy, records that she was venerated at the abbey, which she headed until 966.56 Foerster, in contrast, advocates for Abbess Mathilde, Queen Mathilde’s granddaughter and first abbess of St. Servatius. He connects the elaborate design of this scene with the equally magnificent depiction of her father, Otto I, to its north and sees the entirety as a reminiscence of her splendid introduction in 966. In this way, the importance of the role of the Quedlinburg abbesses on the one hand and the leading

50 Brinkmann, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg. T. 1, 113. 51 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 97. 52 Thomas Foerster, Bildprogramme hochmittelalterlicher Wandmalereien: Die bildlichen Argumentationsstrategien in Hildesheim, Quedlinburg und Kloster Gröningen (Bucha bei Jena: Quartus-Verlag, 2011), 73. 53 Foerster, Bildprogramme hochmittelalterlicher Wandmalereien, 307. 54 Georg Troescher, “Die Gewölbemalereien der Krypta der Schloßkirche in Quedlinburg,” Sachsen und Anhalt 5 (1929): 347–65 at 357. 55 Brinkmann, Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des K ­ reises Stadt Quedlinburg. T. 1, 113; Ernst Schubert, Stätten sächsischer Kaiser: Quedlinburg, ­Memleben, Magdeburg, Hildesheim, Merseburg, Goslar, Königslutter, Meissen (Leipzig: Urania-Verlag, 1990), 57; and Troescher, “Die Gewölbemalereien der Krypta,” 364. 56 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 97.

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Figure 9.10 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt fresco. Susanna in the bath. Last quarter of the 12th century. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley

position of the Ottonian dynasty on the other are emphasized.57 As in the wedding carpet, as soon as the meaningful connection between verse and image is disrupted, resulting interpretive problems become apparent. This is especially true if the image in question is not based on a known classical or biblical text. It is therefore very fortunate that the painting in the western portion of the crypt has been well preserved and the textual bases are clear. For example, the resurrection of Lazarus and the feeding of the 5000 from the New Testament are extant, as are scenes from the Passion of Christ. The greatest attention has always focused, however, on two series of scenes depicting Old Testament subjects: the judgment of Solomon and the story of Susanna and the judges from the Book of Daniel. The latter is by far the most detailed. It ­covers ten panels and terminates or—from a different perspective—begins the ­ceiling painting to the west (Figure 9.10). Foerster has undertaken the most comprehensive investigation to date of the entire pictorial program and therefore also of the story of Susanna. His 57

Foerster, Bildprogramme hochmittelalterlicher Wandmalereien, 303 and 504.

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analysis is based on the typological and allegorical thinking of the time when the pictorial program was conceived and implemented, which allows him to recognize “pictorial strategies of argumentation” and their purpose. The “­salvation-historical axis of meaning” thus revealed can therefore be regarded as his central thesis. For him, it forms the backbone and nerve of the visual program. In his reconstruction, symbolic representations are aligned from east to west, and are flanked by representative carriers of meaning and narrative scenes. The program starts in the apse area with the mandorla. To its west is (presumably) the royal couple Henry I and Mathilde. Then, in the center of the second bay, the circle with the four evangelist symbols and presumably the Lamb of God appears, flanked by John the Baptist and the archbishop mentioned above. In front of them are Otto I and Abbess Mathilde, followed in the third bay by the floating figure with a nimbus (the Virgin Mary?) together with Christ and two disciples, and, finally, in the fourth bay, the oppressed Susanna.58 Susanna is given the choice of surrendering herself to the two judges or being charged with adultery and stoned. A central scene of this cycle shows her in the custody of the two judges (Figure 9.11). Her supplication to God appears on a scroll and reads: ANGUSTIE M[IHI] SU[N]T [U]NDIQUIE (“Affliction surrounds me on all sides”). This drama is prefigured in another scene that, according to Foerster, has neither a recognizable textual basis nor any comparanda and is thus a compositional innovation. This scene particularly emphasizes that Susanna is Joachim’s wife and highlights her loyalty and virtue: in front of a group of people, the couple walks to their bath in their own garden.59 Susanna’s plea is heard by God. Daniel (“God made it right”) intervenes and questions the two elders separately. Their statements do not match. In the end, it is not Susanna who is stoned, but the two oppressors and slanderers. Without a doubt, the story of Susanna and her husband Joachim was chosen to be painted on the ceiling for its educational value and as an exemplar. For Foerster, the significance of the innovative scene in the garden lies in the fact that it emphasizes the role of the canonesses as virginal “brides of Christ.” Referring to the speculum virginum (Jungfrauenspiegel, c.1140), he theorizes that the Quedlinburg canonesses mirrored and staged their high values, chastity, and marital fidelity through the figure of Susanna.60 They would have found in her a better model for strength of faith and faithfulness than in New Testament

58 59 60

Ibid., 269. Ibid., 254. Ibid., 267.

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Figure 9.11 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, crypt fresco. Susanna with the judges. Last quarter of the 12th century. Photograph from the archive of Clemens Bley

witnesses of faith.61 According to the speculum virginum, Foerster states, Christ leads the virgins. As his followers, they must strive for a pure and chaste heart. Yet they cannot boast of their virginity alone, but rather of the fact that they have made the vow of purity in the flesh and spirit of Christ, the Lamb of God.62 The presumed depiction of the Lamb of God, the agnus dei, above the graves has a central function in Foerster’s reconstruction of the pictorial program and its interpretation: to the extent that the canonesses understood themselves as the followers of the Lamb/Christ in the sense of the speculum virginum, that idea would be permanently before their eyes in this cycle.63 In the Quedlinburg Susanna cycle, Foerster concludes, Susanna is depicted in front of the court of the two elders and, at the same time, in the promising presence of her husband Joachim and the approaching “savior” Daniel. The selection and unusually detailed staging of her story is explained not least by 61 62 63

Ibid., 277. Ibid., 268. Ibid., 269.

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its eschatological and sepulchral significance as a prefiguration of the personal judgment of the dead and as a representation of the deceased in the afterlife, whether anticipated or attained.64 The convent, which had to care for the memoria of the donor family, included its own memoria, related to union with Christ, in that practice. The motif of sponsus and sponsa is again evident here.65 Mersch, however, rejects the moral-typological interpretation defended by Foerster. Neither the exemplarity of modesty and chastity nor the religious aspect undergirds her classification, but rather secular justice, whereby the story of Susanna warns against false accusations and exhorts a fair trial.66 In spite of these differences, according to both Foerster and Mersch’s points of view, the paintings in the crypt have a memorial character. They are reminders of the Ottonians and their founding of the Quedlinburg Abbey and thus of its superior position in the church and empire.67 The purpose of the images of the donor family—who with the exception of Otto I and Adelheid are not securely identifiable—was to make the canonesses and visitors aware of these historical figures.68 But Foerster goes further, arguing that the viewer is presented with a pictorial program that attests the integration of these famous and/or holy personalities, portrayed alongside selected events from biblical history, into the history of salvation.69 Foerster identifies Abbess Adelheid III as patron and author of the entire visual program, not for stylistic reasons, but because of her alleged special admiration for Empress Adelheid and the fact that they shared the same name.70 Much more convincing is the theory whereby Old and New Testament scenes were chosen quite intentionally for the decoration of the crypt in such a way as to apply specifically to the convent’s concrete situation. The imagery was, then, chosen for its correlation with the status and situation of the canonesses and their daily and feast-day liturgical practice. In this way, the furtherance of the canonesses’ virtue and especially the maintenance of their chastity are connected.71 These are the things an abbess needed to pay special attention to. The honor of the patron saint, of the abbey, and of the noble families depended on 64 65

Ibid., 336. See also Gabriele Unger, “Aquarellkopie der Gewölbemalerei in der Krypta des Servatiusstifts, Quedlinburg,” in Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, ed. Jutta Frings and Jan Gerchow (Munich: Hirmer, 2005), 203, no. 46. 66 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 97–98. 67 Ibid., 97. 68 Foerster, Bildprogramme hochmittelalterlicher Wandmalereien, 307–08 and 312–13. 69 Ibid., 310. 70 Ibid., 307. 71 Ibid., 310.

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it. The nobility sent their young daughters to such exclusive abbeys not only for reasons of prestige, but also to protect their virginitas. Virginity equated with the value of the bride, whether in the worldly or spiritual realm. Virginity was especially valuable for cultic acts. Virgins’ prayer was more efficacious than others’. From a negative standpoint, touching the impure, and sexuality, too, adulterated and disabled cultic activity.72 In any case, in the 12th century the east Saxon canonical abbeys, in particular, found themselves exposed to the pressure of monastic reformers who rejected their freer, unregulated way of life.73 Women’s abbeys were under great pressure to justify themselves and had to defend themselves against the (topical) accusation of being undisciplined and immoral.74 In east Saxony, this was only achieved by the imperial convents of Quedlinburg, Gandersheim, Gernrode, and Nordhausen, as well as Eschwege.75 At these institutions, the traditional way of life continued. However, the reform movement was not without consequences even there. With the pictorial program, the convent of St. Servatius—and especially the abbess—was able to show everyone that the obligation to memorialize the donor family was being fulfilled.76 Mersch also sees an indirect reaction to the reform movement in the painting of the crypt and the execution of the wedding carpet whereby an internal reform of the convent took place, reviving intellectual standards and securing the legal ­status of the abbey.77 72 Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien, 91. 73 Nathalie Kruppa, “Die Klosterlandschaft im Bistum Hildesheim im frühen und hohen Mittelalter im Vergleich zu ihren Nachbarbistümern Paderborn, Minden, Verden und Halberstadt,” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 85 (2013): 135–90 at 180. 74 A concrete example has been handed down at Quedlinburg: presumably because of a dispute with the reeve, Abbess Sophie was expelled from her monastery in 1222/23. The Chronicon montis sereni therefore casts her in a very bad light. The author accuses her, among other things, of squandering, carnal sin, and neglect of the religious rule. In 1225 she was rehabilitated and reinstated in her office. Bernd Ulrich Hucker, “Äbtissin Sophie von Brehna (1203–1226): Quedlinburg im Spannungsfeld des Kampfes zwischen Staufern und Welfen,” in Quedlinburger Annalen 10 (2007): 35–50 at 43–44. 75 Michel Parisse, “Die Frauenstifte und Frauenklöster in Sachsen vom 10. bis zur Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Die Salier und das Reich: Beiträge zur Geschichte des salischen Jahrhunderts 1024–1125, vol. 2: Die Reichskirche in der Salierzeit, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1991): 465–502 at 496. 76 Foerster, Bildprogramme hochmittelalterlicher Wandmalereien, 313; in her brief overview, Doris Bulach assumes that the Quedlinburg convent neglected its obligations toward the donor family in the 12th century. Doris Bulach, “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort der Ottonen: Von der Stiftsgründung bis zur Gegenwart,” in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 48/2 (2000): 101–18 at 110. 77 Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 105.

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6 The foregoing remarks and considerations are to be understood as a sketch, but in spite of all the gaps and problems of transmission, a preliminary conclusion can be advanced. The connection among memory, distinction, and representation should be investigated, with regard to the ways in which art was used as a medium and carrier of meaning. How do the works of art discussed reflect their donors’ understanding of the world? Reciprocal relationships existed among the Ottonian patrons of Quedlinburg Abbey, the convent, and its patrons, most importantly St. Servatius. Their social relationship extended beyond death. They formed a community of the living and the dead. Fame and honor are reflected in each other. This mutually beneficial relationship was based on the principle of gift and counter-gift—do ut des. It was therefore absolutely in the interest of the abbey and, above all, of its abbesses to promote and increase the fame of the Ottonian donors and especially of Servatius, who was associated with them. This fame was that of the abbey itself and determined the significance—including the political significance—of the Quedlinburg abbatiate, because donations can also be politically motivated and become a medium of politics. Sufficient means and opportunities existed for a targeted politics of art. Certain saints and their veneration were specifically promoted through the dissemination of their images and reliquaries, and certain types and forms of image were consciously adopted for donor imagery.78 In Quedlinburg at the end of the 12th century, this particularly applied to St. Servatius, whereby the abbey emphasized its position as the second center of his veneration in the empire. But the size and stately ornamentation of the church itself, dedicated in his honor in 1129, testifies to the prominence of the site. Together with the convent’s liturgical furnishings, the memoria and renown of the donor family and of the patron saint together with the abbesses’ agenda of securing their own salvation are all connected. The canonesses of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg presented themselves to the world and the heavenly powers as pious, virtuous, chaste, and worthy to fulfill their memorial obligations to the founders, as well as faithful earthly guardians of the patron saint, all in the hope of eternal life with Christ. The wedding carpet and the paintings in the crypt of the abbey can be understood as encouragement to resist temptation and as a guide for a life as the bride of Christ.

78

Bergmann, “PRIOR OMNIBUS AUTOR,” 146.

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Philologia and Susanna served, in their own ways, as role models and for the self-affirmation of the community. I could leave it at that. But, in conclusion, my theses and interpretations, like many others, are not built on solid ground. They are based more on construction than on reconstruction of historical reality. Medieval works of art cannot be explained in isolation. Without precise knowledge of the context of their original religious use and without further detailed historical, art historical, theological, and liturgical studies, etc., a historical rapprochement with the objects of interest is not possible.79 But these things are still largely outstanding for the Abbey of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg. Works Cited Angenendt, Arnold. Heilige und Reliquien: Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen ­Christentum bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994. Bergmann, Ulrike. “PRIOR OMNIBUS AUTOR—an höchster Stelle aber steht der Stifter.” In Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik; Katalog zur A ­ usstellung des Schnütgen-Museums in der Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle. Vol. 1. Cologne: ­Schnütgen Museum, 1985. 117–70. Brinkmann, Adolf. Beschreibende Darstellung der älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Stadt Quedlinburg. Vol. 1. Berlin: Hendel, 1922. Bulach, Doris. “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort der Ottonen.” Zeitschrift für Geisteswissenschaft 48 (2000): 101–18. Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Ehlers, Caspar. “Stolz und Vorurteil: Reichsnähe und Königsferne Sachsens bis in das 13. Jahrhundert.” In Aufbruch in die Gotik: Der Magdeburger Dom und die späte Stauferzeit; Landesausstellung Sachsen-Anhalt aus Anlass des 800. Domjubiläums vom 31. August bis zum 6. Dezember 2009, im Kulturhistorischen Museum Magdeburg. Vol. 1. Essays. Ed. Matthias Puhle. Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2009. 362–69. Ehlers, Joachim. “Heinrich I. in Quedlinburg.” In Herrschaftsrepräsentation im ottonischen Sachsen. Ed. Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke ­Verlag, 1998. 235–66. Erath, Anton Ulrich von. Codex diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis. Frankfurt am Main: Moeller, 1764.

79 Kroos, Schrein, X, and Susanne Wittekind, Altar – Reliquiar – Retabel: Kunst und Liturgie bei Wibald von Stablo (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004), 45.

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Erdmann, Carl. “Beiträge zur Geschichte Henry I. (I–III).” Sachsen und Anhalt 16 (1940): 77–106. Flemming, Johanna. “Der spätromanische Bildteppich der Quedlinburger Äbtissin Agnes.” Sachsen und Anhalt 19 (1997): 517–53. Foerster, Thomas. Bildprogramme hochmittelalterlicher Wandmalereien: Die bildlichen Argumentationsstrategien in Hildesheim, Quedlinburg und Kloster Gröningen. Bucha bei Jena: Quartus-Verlag, 2011. Hengevoss-Dürkop, Kerstin. “Äbtissinnengrabmäler als Repräsentationsbilder: Die romanischen Grabplatten in Quedlinburg.” In Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte – Bilder – Objekte. Ed. Otto Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998: 45–87. Hucker, Bernd Ulrich. “Äbtissin Sophia von Brehna (1203–1226): Quedlinburg im Spannungsfeld des Kampfes zwischen Staufern und Welfen.” Heimatkundliches Jahrbuch für Stadt und Region Quedlinburg 10 (2007): 35–50. Jahn, Philipp. “Zur Baugeschichte der Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg bis zum Jahr 1129 und ihrer architekturhistorischen Einordnung.” In 919 – Plötzlich König: Heinrich I. und Quedlinburg. Ed. Stephan Freund und Gabriele Köster. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2019. 224–41. Kettner, Friedrich Ernst. Kirchen- und Reformations-Historie, des Kayserl. freyen weltlichen Stiffts Quedlinburg ... Quedlinburg: Schwan, 1710. Klein, Bruno. “Die ehemalige Abteikirche von Königslutter. Die Grablege eines sächsischen Kaisers am Beginn der Stauferzeit.” In Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit. Vol. 2. Essays. Ed. Franz Niehoff and Jochen Luckhardt. Munich: Hirmer, 1995. 105–19. Kötzsche, Dietrich, ed. Der Quedlinburger Schatz. Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993. Kroos, Renate. Der Schrein des Heiligen Servatius in Maastricht und die vier zugehörigen Reliquiare in Brüssel. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1985. Kruppa, Nathalie. “Die Klosterlandschaft im Bistum Hildesheim im frühen und hohen Mittelalter im Vergleich zu ihren Nachbarbistümern Paderborn, Minden, Verden und Halberstadt.” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 85 (2013): 135–90. Labusiak, Thomas. “Der Servatiusschrein im Wandel.” In Das dritte Stift: Forschungen zum Quedlinburger Frauenstift. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2017. Mersch, Katharina Ulrike. Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2012. Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje. “‘Die häßlichen Äbtissinen’: Versuch über die frühen Grabmäler in Quedlinburg.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 56/57 (2002/03): 9–47 Moddelmog, Claudia. Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel: Quedlinburg und Speyer, Königsfelden, Wiener Neustadt und Andernach. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012.

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Mrusek, Hans-Joachim. Drei Deutsche Dome: [Quedlinburg, Magdeburg, Halberstadt]. Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1963. Parisse, Michel. “In Die Frauenstifte und Frauenklöster in Sachsen vom 10. bis zur Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts.” In Die Salier und das Reich: Beiträge zur Geschichte des salischen Jahrhunderts 1024–1125. Vol. 2. Die Reichskirche in der Salierzeit. Ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1991). 465–502. Schmidt, Aloys, ed. Urkundenbuch des Eichsfeldes. Vol. 1. Anfang saec. IX bis 1300. ­Magdeburg: Historische Kommission, 1933. Schubert, Ernst. “Quedlinburg, Stadt und Stätte Deutscher Geschichte.” In Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint. Ed. Dietrich Kötzsche. Berlin: ­Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1992. Schubert, Ernst. “Inschrift und Darstellung auf Quedlinburger Äbtissinengrabsteinen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts.” In Dies diem docet: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur mittelalterlichen Kunst und Geschichte in Mitteldeutschland; Festgabe zum 75. Geburtstag. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2003. 290–302. Schubert, Ernst. Stätten sächsischer Kaiser: Quedlinburg, Memleben, Magdeburg, Hildesheim, Merseburg, Goslar, Königslutter, Meissen. Leipzig: Urania-Verlag, 1990. Schulthess, Peter, and Ruedi Imbach. Die Philosophie im lateinischen Mittelalter: Ein Handbuch mit einem bio-bibliographischen Repertorium. Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 1996. Troescher, Georg. “Die Gewölbemalereien der Krypta der Schloßkirche in Quedlinburg.” Sachsen und Anhalt 5 (1929): 347–65. Unger, Gabriele. “Aquarellkopie der Gewölbemalerei in der Krypta des Servatiusstifts, Quedlinburg [46].” In Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern. Ed. Jutta Frings and Jan Gerchow. Munich: Hirmer, 2005. 203. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Weirauch, Hans-Erich. “Die Güterpolitik des Stiftes Quedlinburg im Mittelalter.” Sachsen und Anhalt 13 (1937): 117–81. Wilckens, Leonie von. “Der Hochzeitsteppich in Quedlinburg.” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 34 (1995): 27–41. Wittekind, Susanne. Altar – Reliquiar – Retabel: Kunst und Liturgie bei Wibald von Stablo. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Wulf, Walter. Romanik in der Königslandschaft Sachsen. Würzburg: Zodiaque-Echter, 1996.

Chapter 10

A Reliquary Revisited: The Reliquary of St. Servatius and Its Contexts Eliza Garrison and Evan A. Gatti Due in no small part to its unusual beauty, the Reliquary of St. Servatius has become the poster child for the Quedlinburg treasury, and in some cases it has come to stand in synecdochically for the fate of the Quedlinburg treasury during and after World War II (Figure 10.1).1 In separate studies, Cynthia Hahn and Eliza Garrison have spoken of the narratival aspects of medieval treasuries.2 Hahn has specifically discussed the foundation of the Quedlinburg ­treasury in relation to the political and memorial aspirations of the Saxon line of kings and emperors that began with Henry I (r. 919–36).3 Indeed, the ­Reliquary of St. Servatius, itself an object that visually invokes numerous spiritual narratives on its own, is also deeply imbricated in the entire history of the treasury, from its 9th-century beginnings into the present day. 1 The authors would like to thank Elmar Egner for his willingness to share photographs of the Domschatz, the Confessio, and the Zitter. We dedicate this essay to our fellow Ottonianist Thomas Labusiak (April 7, 1970–July 22, 2017), who left this life much too early, and whose collegiality and thoughtfulness will be greatly missed. The Quedlinburg Domschatz calls this object the Servatius-Schrein but, as both Eliza Garrison and Cynthia Hahn have noted, the casket is sometimes called the Relic Casket of Otto I or the Reliquary Casket of Otto I. See ­Garrison, “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of Saint Servatius in Quedlinburg,” Gesta 49/1 (2010): 17–29, at 17; Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400-circa 1204 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), xi. While we use the Quedlinburg Treasury’s nomenclature for this object and will generally refer to it as the Reliquary of Saint Servatius, we will also use a few other titles interchangeably because we are attempting to illuminate the many contexts in which this particular object has functioned. When discussing the formal qualities of the object, we will refer to it simply as a box. Sometimes we will follow its medieval designation of capsa, or casket, and at other times we will use more specific, function-focused terminology, such as reliquary or portable altar. 2 Cynthia J. Hahn, Strange Beauty, 161–98; Eliza Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012). Cynthia J. Hahn, “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning, with particular attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. Robert Maxwell (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 133–47. 3 Hahn, Strange Beauty, 188n162.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004527492_012

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Figure 10.1 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Servatius, front, ivory core, c. 870, gold, gems, and jewels added c.1200. 13.6 × 24.9 × 12.4 cm. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

About the size of a shoebox, the Reliquary of St. Servatius boasts delicately carved ivory panels and gemstones, including an antique amethyst relief head that stands in place of a lock.4 It is encased in a golden envelope and rests on a beautifully engraved silver base, which is not visible in its current display in the Quedlinburg treasury (Figures 10.2 and 9.8) It is not hard to ­imagine why the reliquary was chosen to be the image on the pastedown for Ars Sacra by Peter Lasko, or why it has stood in as a referent for the objects that were ­stolen from the Quedlinburg treasury by American serviceman Joe Tom Meador, even though the reliquary itself remained safely behind.5 4 The dimensions of the Reliquary of St. Servatius are: H 13.6 cm, W 24.9 cm, D 12.4 cm. See Dietrich Kötzsche’s entry on the reliquary in Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, ed. Dietrich Kötzsche (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1992), 52–57. 5 Klaus Voigtländer’s magisterial study of the abbey church of Quedlinburg, which appeared in 1989, brought together all of the relevant historical documents relating to the church and its treasury. After the outbreak of the Second World War, the entire treasury was packed into 16 boxes. The Servatius Reliquary was included in what the inventory refers to as “Kasten 5,” along with two rock crystal reliquaries, the so-called “Comb of Henry I,” four small tower-shaped reliquaries, a heart-shaped silver reliquary, and a commemorative coin of Kaiser

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Figure 10.2 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Servatius, back. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz





Wilhelm II. Joe Tom Meador managed to steal objects from this box and boxes 2, 3, and 4, but he left many valuable things behind, including the Servatius Reliquary. See Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 173–74, and 173–74n131. For a discussion of the theft and its eventual return, see Siegfried Kogelfranz and Willi A. Korte, Quedlinburg-Texas und zurück: Schwarzhandel mit geraubter Kunst (Munich: ­Droemer Knaur, 1994); Willi Korte, “Search for the Treasures,” in The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath; The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property, ed. Elizabeth ­Simpson (New York: H.N. Abrams in association with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the ­Decorative Arts, 1997), 150–52; and William H. Honan, Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard (New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1997). In spite of the fact that the Servatius Reliquary was spared, later scholarship on this object nonetheless used it in promotional materials and on book covers related to the treasury’s reunification in 1992. The following books about the Quedlinburg Treasury theft used the Servatius Reliquary as a cover image: Reinhard Heydenreuter, Kunstraub: Die Geschichte des Quedlinburger Stiftsschatzes (Munich: Bechtle, 1993) and id., Geraubt von Anfang an: Die abenteuerliche Geschichte des Quedlinburger Domschatzes (Frankfurt.M.: Ullstein, 1995). ­Heydenreuter’s book offers a longer history of the Kunstraub (art theft) that could be associated with the treasury beginning with the relics of St. Servatius in the early Middle Ages, but the title is also clearly evocative of the treasury’s 20th-century fame, especially given the book’s 1993 publication date. Discussion of the Servatius Reliquary itself is limited to a few paragraphs on page 54.

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The visual and material richness of the reliquary can be read in relation to the various functions it has performed over time. The gems, gold, and silver that have served as a precious husk since the early 13th century testify to its ­significance in Quedlinburg’s treasury at a particularly tense historical moment. At the same time, the imagery of the work’s 9th-century ivory core embodies an aesthetic sensibility in which post-Easter iconography could allude to the order of the royal court and the authority and integrity of the Church. The box’s multivalent iconography parallels the many unresolved questions it raises: among other things, we shall never know where and for whom it was originally made, and exactly when it arrived in 10th-century Quedlinburg and how it was used. In this essay, we will examine the ways in which the uncertainties of the Reliquary of St. Servatius’s story in the 9th through early 13th centuries seem to parallel the work’s resistance to a single line of interpretation. We, the authors of this essay, each fell under the spell of the so-called ­Reliquary of St. Servatius more than two decades ago. Both of us discovered much later, in fact, that we were likely conducting our preliminary research on this box—one of us in Chapel Hill, the other in Chicago—at the same time. Our shared love of this reliquary has allowed us to come to know each other as colleagues and friends.6



Additionally, a ZDF documentary, Jäger verlorener Schätze: Der Jahrhundertraub von Quedlinburg used the Servatius Reliquary as a background image during discussions of the theft. Although the documentary is clear that the reliquary that was stolen was the so-called ­Reliquary Casket of Henry I, details of the Servatius Reliquary are often used as illustration of the value of the objects included in the treasury. The documentary was broadcast for the first time on August 12, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9frm6YUQ1A Other studies have simply been drawn to the Servatius Reliquary’s arresting beauty, and their authors chose to feature the object as a cover image. See Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, ed. Dietrich Kötzsche (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1992). The use of the ­Servatius Reliquary on this guide to the exhibition of the treasury in Berlin following the return of most of the stolen works is understandable—it is beautiful—but it was also ­misleading. Peter Lasko used high resolution color reproductions of the Servatius Reliquary for the pastedowns of the second edition of Ars Sacra, 800–1200, second revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). The erroneous association between the Servatius Reliquary and the Quedlinburg Treasury theft was pervasive enough that the very first footnote to Eliza Garrison’s essay on the ­Reliquary of St. Servatius, discussed its “theft.” See Garrison, “A Curious Commission,” 17n1. 6 Each of us has published on the reliquary of St. Servatius. See Evan Gatti, “Reviving the Relic: An Investigation of the Form and Function of the Reliquary of St Servatius,”

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Evan Gatti first encountered the box in the black and white pages of Adolph Goldschmidt’s Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sächsischen Kaiser.7 The full-color photographs published in Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, a catalog that celebrated the reunification of the Quedlinburg Treasury after the looted objects returned from Dallas, Texas sealed the deal. Struck by its seemingly odd decorative program depicting 11 apostles and Christ paired with the 12 signs of the zodiac, Gatti argued that the box depicts the Mission to the Apostles and suggested that it may have functioned as a portable altar. Gatti’s attribution drew a connection to the liturgical rites for the sick and the dead, wherein a portable altar might be required, the role of the priest as an intercessor, and the eschatological program of carving. Gatti also suggested that the box exhibited a strong connection to the monastery at Fulda and more specifically to a group of manuscripts authored by its famous abbot Hrabanus Maurus.8 Eliza Garrison, too, first encountered the box in Goldschmidt’s Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, and it became the focus of a research paper project in a graduate seminar with Michael Camille on “Medieval Art and Magic.” She was drawn both to the unusual iconography of the work’s Carolingian core and to the exquisite array of gems and gold on its exterior. The original paper for that course looked to the dynamic representation of the zodiac in relation to Christ and 11 apostles, and saw in this relationship a theme of borders and liminality that was connected to Quedlinburg’s situation close to a flexible geographical border in the Ottonian Empire. Over time, the shape of the argument evolved and expanded to consider more closely the work’s iconography and the metaphorical meanings of its materials, in which the later additions to the object around 1200 can be considered responses to the Carolingian iconography of its core and to its importance as a part of Quedlinburg’s Ottonian treasury. As is fitting for a companion volume to medieval Quedlinburg, in this essay we will look at the long histories of the Reliquary of St. Servatius. Each episode highlights the place of this enigmatic object in the broader landscapes of medieval and modern Europe. This essay will examine the layered and powerful Athanor 18 (2000): 7–15; Eliza Garrison, “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St Servatius in Quedlinburg,” Gesta 49/1 (2010): 17–29. 7 Adolph Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sächsischen Kaiser, VIII.–XI. Jahrhundert, vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1914), 32–33, no. 58, with figures 16–18, and plate XXIV, 58a–d. 8 Gatti, “Reviving the Relic,” 10.

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history of the Servatius Reliquary, from its origins as one of a pair of boxes crafted during the Carolingian period, to its donation to Quedlinburg in the ­Ottonian era, to its restoration in the 13th century. We will also examine the work’s “rediscovery” in 19th-century scholarship and consider the position of “our box” in the 20th century, when, along with other works in the treasury, it served as an extension of Himmler’s selection of Quedlinburg as a sanctuary site for the SS. Lastly, we will discuss how the Servatius Reliquary and the other objects in the treasury bolstered the rationale for Quedlinburg’s designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. 1

Before Quedlinburg: The Servatius Reliquary’s Carolingian Core

The Reliquary of St. Servatius is a box composed of five ivory panels and a silver base that was added around the year 1200 (Figures 10.1–10.3 and 9.8).9 The four panels that make up the walls of the box depict 11 apostles and Christ, walking and gesticulating beneath rounded arcades. The 12 signs of the zodiac occupy the tympana above the figures of Christ and the apostles. Each of the holy figures holds a scroll in his left hand and gesticulates differently with his right, variously indicating blessing, reception, and speech. The alternating columns and piers of the arcade lend a rhythm to the box’s architectonic form, a rhythm that is also visible in the comportment of the 11 apostles and Christ: each man addresses one of his neighbors, and places one foot in front of the other as if they were walking or moving in unison. Close scrutiny of the composition reveals that Christ’s figure is highlighted in subtle but powerful ways: the apostles on the short sides face inward, toward the center of the panel, and those on the long rear side of the box appear in ­discursive pairs where each turns inward to face the other. The composition of the figures on the front of the box reveals a modification to the order: here, the two figures on the left and those on the right turn toward the center. The resulting visual effect is that Christ’s companions on the work’s front all turn toward him. Each of the 12 figures is placed on a rounded mound of earth, indicating that the scene we see takes place outdoors. And yet the 9 Michael Peter states the original base is now lost but that it would have fit into the side panels from the inside. See Michael Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen im Schatz der Quedlinburger Stiftskirche,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 52–53 (1998): 53–92 at 59.

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Figure 10.3 Reliquary of St. Servatius, top. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

architectonic nature of the arcades and the long veils casually wrapped around the structure’s piers and columns seem to fix this moment in a particular place and time. Christ’s figure is located just to the right of center on the box’s front, and the zodiacal sign of Leo rests in the arch above.10 The astrological calendar, which begins with Aries, thus begins on the box’s short left side, and the signs progress in order from that point. Aries is followed by Taurus on the left side, moving to the left of the box’s front, with Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and so on. Just like their apostolic counterparts below, the signs of the zodiac are placed in oppositional pairs and often a sign will interact with its partner: for example, on the left side panel, the ram of Aries and the Taurean bull face one another as the bull moves to charge its neighbor. On the back of the box, the archer-­ centaur of Sagittarius appears to take aim at the fish-tailed goat of Capricorn, while the seated water-bearer of Aquarius pours out his vessel for the paired fish of Pisces. These dynamic pairings imbue the signs with a shared source of movement and spirit (Figure 10.2). 10

Michael Peter’s investigation of the Servatius Reliquary indicated that the nimbi of the apostles were each covered with a layer of gold from the very start. See Michael Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen im Schatz der Quedlinburger Stiftskirche,” 60–61 and 61n25.

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Figure 10.4 Plate number 31a in Wilhelm Steuerwaldt and Carl Virgen, Die mittelalterlichen Kunstschätze im Zittergewölbe der Schlosskirche zu Quedlinburg. Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Ornamentstichsammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photograph by Dietmar Katz

The box’s intricate ornamental borders are now obscured by an elaborate gold, gem, and cloisonné frame that was added around 1200. (Compare ­Figures 10.1–10.3 and 10.16). There is reason to believe that these patterns once included colored inlays, but none of this is apparent in the most recent restoration photos. The artist Wilhelm Steuerwaldt’s careful sketches of the objects in the Quedlinburg treasury from 1855 include drawings of the Servatius Reliquary without the materials added around the year 1200, and these seem to record traces of polychromy and glass paste (Figure 10.4).11 Bands of vegetal, floral, and ­geometric ornamentation frame the arcades; a series of three rosettes and star-shaped forms placed at the apex of each arch were likely also filled with 11

Wilhelm Steuerwaldt and Carl Virgen, Die mittelalterlichen Kunstschätze im Zittergewölbe der Schlosskirche zu Quedlinburg: Nebst mehreren äusseren und inneren Ansichten des vormaligen Kaiserl. freien weltl. Stifts, nach der Natur gezeichnet (Quedlinburg: Huch, 1855). Steuerwaldt (1815–71), who was a Quedlinburg native and a landscape and architectural painter of some renown, created this portfolio to present to the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. This fascinating portfolio is now part of the Ornamentstichsammlung at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin. The authors are grateful to the librarians at the Kunstbibliothek at the Kulturforum in Berlin for granting us access to this series of drawings.

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glass paste. Snakes slither down the sides of each arch, and hiss at each other at the points where they meet. The snakes located at the outer edges of this frame hiss into the ­distance, unmet by a partner to mirror them. Groupings of geometrical foliate and starlike forms wrap around and enclose the border of this front panel (and the lid); these groupings of “flowers” and “stars” seem to have been filled with colored glass paste that would have simulated precious stones.12 This richly decorated border area creates a contrast between an outer world that is barely tamed and a space inside the arcades that is governed by an order that Christ’s figure seems to radiate. Each of the serpentine-inhabited branches culminates in a rosette motif. These flank another floral or acanthus motif. Four groupings can be found along the top and bottom borders and two on each side. At the center of each rosette is a hole that may have been filled with paste or pigment and the central floral motif is marked by five holes in an even-armed cross shape. The space between each grouping is also marked by two holes, which were either filled with glass, or could have secured a gem. We assume these motifs continue along all four sides of the box, but restoration photos available to us only show the front and top of the box without the golden frame added in 1200. While these decorative borders surely alluded to any number of ideas, at the very least they evoke the creation of humankind and its eventual fall as well as ideas of a paradise untainted by human sin. In many ways, these forms seem to anticipate some of the functions of medieval ornament that Ittai Weinryb has discussed in his studies of Ottonian bronzes and manuscript illumination.13 As Weinryb has pointed out, Ottonian book painters and metalsmiths drew from Calcidian concepts of a kind of ur-matter, Silva, which lies at the heart of Creation. It is possible that the Carolingian artists who created this ivory casket may have intended for these forms to evoke such matter in a space that suggested a time before Christ’s Incarnation.

12 13

Michael Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen,” 53–92 at 60–62. Ittai Weinryb, “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages,” Gesta 52/2 (Fall 2013), 113–32. See also id., The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 55–73.

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Figure 10.5 Relief (fragment): four apostles with the zodiac signs of Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo. Inv.-Nr. MA 174, Foto Nr. D70109 © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München. Photograph by Bastian Krack

2 From Metz to Fulda and Everywhere in between: The Question of Workshops Most experts believe the Servatius Reliquary was made around the year 870 and that it is part of a pair; its identical twin, which we will occasionally refer to as the “Bamberg box,” has survived only in fragments and is now housed at the Schatzkammer der Residenz in Munich (Figure 10.5).14 Whether one sees them in pictures or in person, it is clear that both boxes were carved by extremely skilled hands. The dynamic iconography chosen for both works also represents an intellectually vibrant and artistically ambitious workshop, which experts have generally assigned to the Court School of Charles the Bald, and which was located either at Metz or Fulda, depending on whose work one is reading.15 The casket’s original place of production will likely never 14

15

The twin exists today only in fragments, which are on view at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich. Another fragment, which was housed at the Kaiser-Friedrich-­Museum in Berlin, was lost and is assumed to have been destroyed in a fire during World War II. Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, 33–34, Nr. 59–62, XXV. To get a sense of the terms of the discussion, see: Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, 38–59; Kurt Weitzmann, “Eine Fuldaer Elfenbeingruppe,” in Adolph Goldschmidt zu seinem siebenzigsten Geburtstag am 15. Januar 1933 (Berlin: Würfel Verlag, 1935), 14–18, reprinted in Weitzmann, Art in the Medieval West and its Contacts with Byzantium (­London: ­Variorum Reprints, 1982), 14–18. Weitzmann continued to make a case for Metz

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be known for sure.16 At the very least, we can say with some certainty that the reliquary was produced in the atmosphere of the Court School of Charles the Bald around the year 870, and it seems clear that the person or people who made the box and related works were clearly sought after for their ability

16







in his study of the Herakles plaques on the Cathedra Petri, which reveal striking stylistic similarities to the Servatius Reliquary. See Weitzmann, “The Heracles Plaques of St Peter’s Cathedra,” Art Bulletin 55/1 (1973): 1–37. In her 1999 dissertation, Melanie Holcomb offered a fascinating examination of the scope of this debate. See Melanie Holcomb, “The Function and Status of Carved Ivory in Carolingian Culture” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1999), passim, esp. 1–30. In 1935 Kurt Weitzmann redated the ivory to the late 9th century and suggested a ­workshop at Fulda. He compared the ivory carving with manuscripts attributed to Fulda, particularly the Aschaffenburg Lectionary (Aschaffenburg. Schloßbibliothek Nr. 2), which he linked to the court school of Charles the Bald. Kurt Weitzmann, “Eine ­Fuldaer ­Elfenbeingruppe,” 14–18. After examining the Cathedra Petri in 1969, Weitzmann made the crucial link between it and the Quedlinburg casket. Weitzmann, “The Herakles Plaques,” 21. Though the ivory throne is a problematic comparison for dating the casket, it is a stylistically convincing comparison and could be important for evaluating the types of commissions both objects may be. In his monograph on the Cathedra Petri, Lawrence Nees followed Weitzmann. Nees also assigned it to the school of Charles the Bald and dated it to c.870. See Lawrence Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (­Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 154 and 200. We have also accepted a date of c.870, and we strongly suspect that artists at the workshop in Fulda or artists with an intimate familiarity with the Fulda workshop created the reliquary. Peter Lasko offers a summary of the problems with dating and locating the provenance of the casket in the 1994 edition of Ars Sacra. Ultimately, Lasko placed the Servatius ­Reliquary in the transitional period between the Carolingian and Ottonian styles and dated the carving to c.930. He derived the date from comparison with the Brunswick ­Casket of Metz, the Folchard Psalter of St Gall, and the Victoria and Albert Comb (hereafter V&A Comb). Although all of his comparanda date to the 9th century, Lasko insisted on a date of the 10th century because the alternating piers and columns that appear in the carved arcade on the casket first appeared in the architectural space at St. Cyriacus in Gernrode in 961. This is an unconvincing argument, especially since Lasko himself doubted whether carved representations of architectural systems had to follow real architectural archetypes. Lasko, Ars Sacra, 77–80. Michael Peter follows Weitzmann and Gaborit-Chopin and dates the casket to c.870 and to the workshop of Charles the Bald at Metz. Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen,” 71–77. In the most recent catalog of the treasury, Thomas Labusiak dates the cloisonné panels to c.840, noting similarities to the Golden Altar of Sant’Ambrogio but uses c.870 as the date for the ivory panels and attributes the carving to the workshop of Charles the Bald. Thomas Labusiak and Janos Stekovics, “Servatius-Schrein,” in Kostbarer als Gold: Der ­Domschatz in der Stiftskirche St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Thesauri 2. (­Wettin-Löbejün: Verlag Janos Stekovics, 2016), 38–41 at 39.

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Figure 10.6 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, comb, ivory, for liturgical and ceremonial use, depicting Sagittarius shooting at Capricorn. Court School of Charles the Bald, possibly made in Metz. c.875. Accession Number A.544–1910. Photograph courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

to bring together classical motifs and Christian iconography, and to imbue their images with a narratival force. A handful of other Carolingian ivories that have also been attributed to the Court School of Charles the Bald survive in European and US collections. Much of the recent scholarship on individual works has tended to suggest that this court workshop was based in Metz, although close scrutiny of the grounds on which these attributions were made indicates that these affiliations are shaky at best. In his catalogue entry for a liturgical comb from 875, which was likely a product of the same workshop as the Servatius Reliquary, Paul ­Williamson suggests obliquely that the Metz workshop—here identical with the Court School of Charles the Bald—was peripatetic (Figure 10.6).17 In 17

With reference to the V&A Comb, the Servatius Reliquary, and the Hercules Plaques on the Cathedra Petri, Williamson writes: “It is likely, therefore, that these ivories were produced

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our prior publications on the Servatius Reliquary, each of us suggested that the makers of the object were clearly familiar with the intellectual culture of Fulda. For us, it was the conceptual connections and the stylistic Nachleben (afterlife) of the box’s forms in 10th-century manuscript illumination at Fulda that seemed most convincing.18 In this, we were looking to a short but influential essay by Kurt Weitzmann, in which he assigned the Servatius Reliquary and stylistically closely related works to Fulda.19 Indeed, even cursory scrutiny of the cycle of illumination in the Fulda Sacramentary (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim.), which was painted at Fulda in 975, roughly a century after the creation of the Servatius Reliquary, reveals striking stylistic parallels to the various figures on the Quedlinburg reliquary and its identical partner.20 While the style of the squat, animated figures included throughout the manuscript are similar to those of the Apostles and Christ carved on the reliquary, more compelling are





18 19 20

in an imperial workshop, probably trained in Metz but perhaps peripatetic, especially as other objects of Metz origin—such as the ivory casket of Metz origin (­Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, pls XLIV–XLV)—also have similar decorative patterns in the borders that demonstrate common stylistic features.” See Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque (London: V&A Publishing, 2010), 177. Williamson does not provide any references for this proposition. He could have been drawing from scholarship on Carolingian manuscript illumination, Byzantine ivories, and Carolingian gemstone carving. See, for example: Lawrence Nees, “The Ottoboni Gospels and its Transfiguration Master,” Art Bulletin 83/2 (2001): 209–39, esp. 225–27; Anthony Cutler, The Hand of the Master: Craftsmanship, Ivory and Society in Byzantium (9th–11th Centuries) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); and Genevra Kornbluth, Engraved Gems of the Carolingian Empire (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). The descriptive line for the online object file at the Victoria and Albert Museum contains a similar text: “Comb, ivory, for liturgical and ceremonial use, depicting Sagittarius shooting at Capricorn, Court School of Charles the Bald, possibly made in Metz, ca. 875.” See: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O96285/comb-unknown/. On the V&A Comb, see Victor H. Elbern, “Ein ottonischer Elfenbeinkamm aus Pavia,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 23 (1969): 1–7. In the first volume of Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, Adolph Goldschmidt published a ­photograph of the liturgical comb that is now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum alongside an identical twin, which was for private sale in 1914. See Die Elfenbeinskulpturen, fig. 64 a–b, plate XXVI. This second comb is now understood to be a very fine 19th-century forgery. See Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 177–79 at 179. See Evan Gatti, “Reviving the Relic,” 7–15, and Eliza Garrison, “A Curious Commission,” 17–29, at 21–22. Kurt Weitzmann, “Eine Fuldaer Elfenbeingruppe,” 14–18. For reproductions of the full cycle of illumination in the Fulda Sacramentary, see ­Christoph Winterer, Das Fuldaer Sakramentar in Göttingen: Benediktinische Observanz und römische Liturgie (Petersberg: Imhoff, 2009).

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Figure 10.7 Animal sign for Capricorn (fol. 256v), Fulda Sacramentary. Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim. c.975. Photograph courtesy of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen

comparisons to the signs of the zodiac that accompany the calendar pages at the end of the Fulda codex, especially the animal sign for Capricorn (fol. 256v) and the drapery on the female personifications of Libra (fol. 255r) and Virgo (fol. 254v; Figures 10.7–10.9).21 21

The plates depicting the calendar page for D ­ ecember (Capricorn) and August (Virgo) in Winterer, Das Fuldaer Sakramentar are switched. Plate 50, which depicts ­December, comes before plate 53, which depicts Virgo. The folio number for each image is correct—plate 50 is identified as folio 256v while plate 53 is identified as folio 254v—but the identification

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Figure 10.8 Drapery on the female personification of Libra (fol. 255r), Fulda Sacramentary. Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim. c.975. Photograph courtesy of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen

of the month and the zodiac signs is reversed. The “Kalenderseite August mit Tierkreiszeichen Virgo” is paired with plate 50, the image of the folio for December, and depicts the sign for Capricorn and vice versa. The “Kalenderseite ­Dezember mit Tierkreiszeichen

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Figure 10.9 Drapery on the female personification of Virgo (fol. 254v), Fulda Sacramentary. Niedersächsische Staats und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 2° Cod. Ms. theol. 231 Cim.). c.975. Photograph courtesy of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen

Weitzmann’s essay implicitly acknowledged the visible lack of stylistic unity in ivories assigned to the Metz Court School. That is, while some works were clearly made by the same artist or group of artists—for example the liturgical Capricornus” is paired with the plate 53, the image for August, and depicts the sign for Libra.

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comb in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Reliquary of St. Servatius— other works assigned to Metz in the years around 870 seem very clearly to have been made by different workshops.22 Indeed, a perusal of the first volume of Adolph Goldschmidt’s four-volume Die Elfenbeinskulpturen (published in 1914) and a brief consideration of Danielle Gaborit-Chopin’s Ivoires médiévaux (published in 2003), makes clear that “Metz” can stand in for ivories made by workshops that were perhaps looking to similar models but were operating separately from one another. In her 1999 dissertation, Melanie Holcomb drew attention to the relative instability of the groupings or schools of Carolingian ivory carving that Adolph Goldschmidt first established.23 More recent scholarship on Carolingian manuscripts by Lawrence Nees and Eric Ramírez-Weaver has similarly bolstered a conception of traveling artists working alone or in small workshops as opposed to distinct schools with a style that can be directly tied to a single location.24 In his examination of the Handbook of 809 (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 3307), Ramírez-Weaver has ­proposed that the scholarly tendency to discuss Carolingian manuscript illumination in relation to specific schools tied to places such as Reims and Metz is erroneous:

22



23 24

Compare, for example, the ivories variously ascribed to a Court School of Charles the Bald and made c.870 in Metz in Paul Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings, nos. 42, 44, and 49. For examinations of the ivory liturgical comb, see: Margaret H. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory. Part I. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, (London: Board of Education, 1927), 66; Paul Williamson, ed., The Medieval Treasury: The Art of the Middle Ages in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986), 72–73; Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires Médiévaux, V–XV siècle (Paris: É ditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003), 156–57, no. 41a; Paul Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque, 176–79, cat. no. 42; Gabriele Köster and Matthias Puhle, ed., Otto der Grosse und das römische Reich: Kaisertum von der Antike zum Mittelalter (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2012), 496, fig. IV. 47 a b. The text describing the comb’s object history on the Victoria and Albert’s website reads: “From the Salting bequest. The comb is recorded in a life-size watercolour drawing of about 1832 when in the treasury of Pavia Cathedral. The comb is clearly a product of the workshop which produced a casket in Quedlinburg and a second casket, now fragmentary, once in Bamberg. The figures of Sagittarius and Capricorn appear in closely similar form in both caskets, and the distinctive engraved and spotted serpents on the back of the comb are identical to those on the caskets.” http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O96285 /comb-unknown/. Melanie Holcomb, “The Function and Status of Carved Ivory in Carolingian Culture,” 1–30. Eric Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017); Lawrence Nees, “The Ottoboni Gospels and Its Transfiguration Master,” Art Bulletin 83/2 (2001): 209–39, esp. 225–27.

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building upon Charlotte Denoël’s work on the school of Reims, he suggests instead that itinerant painters made the Handbook of 809.25 While there is no argument known to us that lays out a similar case in specific and pointed terms for ivory carvers affiliated with patrons at Carolingian courts, the conception of Carolingian sculptors and painters as creative agents as opposed to rote copyists is surely supported by the evidence we have from ivories attributed to “Metz” and “Fulda.”26 What if the person or people who made the Servatius Reliquary and its double were neither bound strictly to one abbey workshop or another? Given their creation in duplicate, the extraordinary nature of their imagery, and the preciousness of their materials, it seems safe to propose that the Reliquary of St. Servatius and its twin in Munich were made for people—likely clerics, as we suggest below—employed in the innermost orbits at the Court of Charles the Bald. We will never know for certain whether the people who made these stunning objects were based in Metz, or Fulda, or both places, or neither. In our own discussions of this work and its twin, and after over two decades of returning to the Servatius Reliquary over and over again, what seems crystal clear is that the people who made it and the people for whom this box and its twin were made were deeply familiar with the intellectual culture of the ­Carolingian court. Indeed, the people who made and first used the Servatius Reliquary and the “Bamberg box” would have seen in the zodiac and in the figures of the apostles and Christ visual extensions of their study of the heavens and its applications to conceptions of time, both cosmic and eternal, and kingship, both earthly and divine. 3

The Carolingian Casket: Iconographies of Liminality and Duality

More revealing of its originary contexts might be the box’s unusual iconography, and especially the combination of the signs of the zodiac, 11 25

26

Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science, 168–69, and 168n96. See also Marie-Pierre Lafitte and Charlotte Denoël, Trésors carolingiens: livres manuscrits de Charlemagne à Charles le Chauve (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2007), 167. On page 168 of A Saving Science, Ramírez-Weaver writes: “[Charlotte Denoël has proposed] that there was no established scriptorium at Reims, but multiple workshops in and around Reims where manuscripts could be made as the need arose, when funds were available and when there were artists on hand to be paid.” Danielle Gaborit-Chopin has briefly noted the tenuous nature of assigning a specific location to the artists of the “Liuthard Group,” which is a start. See Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux Ve–XVe siècle, 132–34, esp. 134.

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apostles, and Christ. In the pages below, we will discuss the significance of the cycle of the zodiac and the register of apostles with Christ beneath an arcade not in an attempt to solve what was intended in the box’s design, but rather to look with the box at the rich Carolingian contexts that fostered its creation and reception. After that, we will follow these iconographies into the Ottonian period, when both the Servatius Reliquary and the box that was eventually donated to Bamberg arrived in Quedlinburg, and into the Romanesque period, when the Servatius Reliquary was encased in gold, gems, and filigree. The body of the box is dominated by two registers of decoration: the cycle of the zodiac and 11 apostles and Christ standing under an arcade. Each of these motifs is unique as presented on the box, and more so in combination, but each also refers to well-established traditions of meaning making. We have always agreed that the iconography of the Reliquary of St. Servatius is possessed of a narrative force that might at first glance belie its telescoped imagery. We have also argued that the 11 apostles and Christ included around the sides of the box were not simply 12 bodies intended to match an arcade decorated with 12 signs of the zodiac, but that the lower register represented a narrative scene from the Gospels after the betrayal of Judas. Gatti suggested the box aligned with Matthew’s account of the Mission to the Apostles (­Matthew 28:16–20), thus drawing a connection between the recognition of “eleven disciples” noted in the text and Christ’s proclamation that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:16–20)27 Garrison proposed that the scene that wraps around the four sides of the box refers to a moment described in Luke that occurs after the walk to Emmaus and before Christ’s ascension. The passage reads:

27

All biblical texts are from the Douay-Rheims translation. Any additional emphasis is ours.

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And rising up, the same hour, they went back to Jerusalem: and they found the eleven gathered together, and those that were staying with them, saying: The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way; and how they knew him in the breaking of the bread. Now whilst they were speaking these things, Jesus stood in the midst of them, and saith to them: Peace be to you; it is I, fear not. But they being troubled and frightened, supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. (Luke 24:33–39) This scene, in which we are to understand that Christ appears to 11 of the apostles by surprise, combined with the signs of the zodiac, unites a depiction of an event that takes place outside of the historical city of Jerusalem with figures that denote the heavenly city-to-come. Both of these passages seem to be critical in coming to terms with the Servatius Reliquary’s iconography, for both describe biblical moments that include only 11 apostles and elaborate on Christ’s significance at points where he is in between body and spirit, at once post-Resurrection and pre-Ascension. Close consideration of these passages indicates that Luke emphasizes Christ’s physicality, where Matthew is concerned with his divinity and his kingly spiritual authority. The makers and ­viewers of this object would have been uniquely able to understand this, and would have been able to apprehend the miraculousness of these ­stories and the significance of their representation on the box. As Garrison was able to show in her article on the Servatius Reliquary, ­Revelation’s famous litany of the precious gems (in Revelation 21:18–20) that will comprise the 12 gates of the heavenly city aligns exactly with the cycle of the astrological year.28 The passage in Revelation begins with jasper and ends with amethyst, and the order in which the stones of the gates are relayed “corresponds exactly to the cycle of the astrological year, [which] begins with Aries and ends with Pisces.”29 Jasper is the stone for the sign of Aries, sapphire correlates to Taurus, agate with Gemini, and so on. Revelation’s list of stones is therefore equivalent to a list of the signs of the zodiac. 28

29

Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 19. This litany, found in verses 19 and 20 of Revelation 21, reads in its entirety: “The first foundation was jasper: the second, sapphire: the third, a chalcedony: the fourth, an emerald: the fifth, sardonyx: the sixth, sardius: the seventh, chrysolite: the eighth, beryl: the ninth, a topaz: the tenth, a chrysoprasus: the eleventh, a jacinth: the twelfth, an amethyst.” Garrison, “A Curious Commission,” 19.

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Images of the zodiac and the constellations abound in Carolingian art, and Garrison’s study of the Servatius Reliquary looked to two Carolingian images with which it shares important conceptual connections. The earlier of these two examples, a simple drawing in an edition of Isidore of Seville’s De natura rerum that was copied and used around 800 at Fulda, contained the abbey’s oldest known book inventory (Basel, Universitätsbibliothek MS F III 15a, fol. 23r; Figure 10.10). The signs here appear at the outer edges of a circle, which is divided into 12 sections. Moving from the outside of the circle inward, each of the signs is associated with a Roman god, one of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob’s sons, and, finally, with the name of an apostle.30 The drawing, which appears as the penultimate image in a series of astrological computistical diagrams, was intended to visualize the relationship between the signs of the zodiac and the human body, and thus between the macrocosm and the microcosm. As Ramírez-Weaver has noted, in such Isidorean diagrams, “the universe, temporality, and human beings were all composed of a related, ordered configuration of parts that displayed the created symmetry of God’s handiwork in need of renewal.”31 Accepting Fulda as the location of the workshop that created the Servatius Reliquary, Garrison’s study suggested that this drawing could provide us with a preliminary identification of the apostles based on the signs that accompany them.32 While more recent scholarship has rightly called into question the fixed nature of court workshops, we would argue that it appears clear that the intellectual traditions practiced and popularized at Fulda were known to the person or people who designed the Servatius ­Reliquary and its twin.33 30



31 32 33

If the coordination between each apostle and a sign of the zodiac on the Servatius Reliquary is in line with the Fulda image, then the identifications of the apostles would be: John—Aries; James [the Greater?]—Taurus; Thomas—Gemini; Bartholomew—Cancer; Christ—Leo; James [the Lesser?]—Virgo; Andrew—Libra; Peter—Scorpio; Paul—Sagittarius; Matthew—Capricorn; Matthias—Aquarius; Thaddeus—Pisces See also Gatti, “Reviving the Relic,” 9n13; Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 22; and Barbara Obrist, “La représentation carolingienne du zodiaque. À propos du manuscrit du Bâle, Universitätsbibliothek, F III 15a,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 44 (2001) 3–33, esp. 12–14. Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science, 224, and 224n171. Here Ramírez-Weaver is looking to Bianca Kühnel’s The End of Time in the Order of Things: Science and Eschatology in Early Medieval Art (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2003), 133–34. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 21–22. Of particular note here are the encyclopedic and computational texts composed by ­Hrabanus Maurus, inspired by Isidorus’s Etymologiae, such as De rerum naturis. While no illustrated Carolingian copies of this text survive, later versions, such as an 11th-­century copy preserved in Monte Cassino (Cod. Casinensis 132), include an illustration for De Anno (the year) that links the animal sign for the zodiac with the bust of a man wearing

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Figure 10.10 Representation of the zodiac with names and corresponding months, twelve sons of Jacob, the twelve apostles, and various deities (fol. 23r). Isidorus Hispalensis, Register of Books of the Monastery of Fulda, Recipes, Blessings, Astronomic Tables, Jerome. Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F III 15a. c. 8th or 9th century. Photograph at https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/ubb /F-III-0015a/23r



a crown and a star sign. The text of De Anno is concerned with “notions of time and holy days.” Diane O. le Berrurier, The Pictorial Sources of Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Maurus’ De rerum naturis (New York: Garland Publishing, 1978), 93n1. For a discussion of the relationship between illustrated copies of De rerum naturis and Isidorus’s Etymologiae, as well as the relationship between the latter copies of Hrabanus’s text, antique models, and the Carolingian original, see Paul Lehmann, “Illustrierte Hrabanuscodices,” in Fuldaer Studien Neue Folge 2 (1927): 13–46; Erwin Panofsky, “Hercules Agricola: A Further Complication in the Problem of Illustrated Hrabanus Manuscripts,” in

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In both the Gospel excerpts from Matthew and Luke, Judas, assigned in the 9th-century drawing to the sign of Leo, had already betrayed Christ, which allowed for Christ to stand in for Judas on the casket. The substitution of Christ for Judas was also one focus of Asterius the Sophist’s 4th-century commentary on Psalm 11:2. Quoting Asterius, Mary Charles Murray argues that Judas’s betrayal broke the clock of the apostles, shifting the “apostolic twelve hour day” to 11, and thus depriving “the lord’s year of one month.”34 The clock can only be healed by the addition of another hour—that is, by the inclusion of Christ—just as the sacrifice of the Crucifixion can only be fulfilled by Christ’s Resurrection. At this instant shortly before the Mission to the Apostles, the originary constellation of the Church appears here newly shed of corrupting influence and filled with a forward-moving force. Gatti also noted the significance of the pairing of Christ/Leo in her examination of the Servatius Reliquary. She connected this pairing to Revelation 5:5, in which Christ is referred to as the Lion of Judah, who “hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.”35 This comparison is elaborated upon in the Carolingian Physiologus: First, when he perceives that the hunters are pursuing him, he erases his foot-prints with his tail, so that he cannot be traced to his lair. In like manner of our Savior, the lion of the tribe of Judah, (who) concealed all





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Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. Rudolf Wittkower et al. (New York: Phaidon, 1967), 20–28. Beyond the illustrations of the zodiac, Hrabanus authored a variety of texts dedicated to the computation of time and its liturgical and theological implications. See Maria ­Rissel, “Hrabans ‘Liber de computo’ als Quelle der Fuldaer Unterrichtspraxis in den Artes Arithmatik und Astronomie,” in Hrabanus Maurus und Seine Schule: Festschrift der Rabanus-Maurus-Schule 1980, ed. Winfried Böhne (Fulda: Rabanus Maurus Schule, 1980), 138– 55, esp. 153, fig. 11, and John McCulloh and Wesley M. Stevens, “Introduction: De computo,” in Rabani Mauri Martyrologium; De computo (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), 166–97. Hrabanus was interested in both the philosophical (or theological) and practical aspects of clerical education, as can be seen in De institutione clericorum libri tres. Hrabanus’s interest in clerical conduct is also evidenced in the vast secondary scholarship such as Hraban Maur, De institutione clericorum, ed. Detlev Zimpel (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1996); Raymund Kottje and ­Harald Zimmermann, Hrabanus Maurus: Lehrer, Abt und Bischof (Mainz: Akademie der ­Wissenschaft und der Literatur, 1982). See Marcel Richard, ed., Asterii Sophistae Commentatorium in Psalmos quea supersunt: accedunt aliquot homiliae anonymae (Oslo: A.W. Brøgger, 1956), also cited in Mary Charles Murray, “The Christian Zodiac on a Font at Hook Norton: Theology, Church, and Art,” in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 87–97, esp. 91n11. Gatti, “Reviving the Relic,” 9.

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traces of his Godhead, when he descended to the earth and entered the womb of the Virgin Mary. Secondly, the lion always sleeps with his eyes open; so our Lord slept with His body on the cross, but awoke at the right hand of the Father. Thirdly, the lioness brings forth her whelps dead and watches over them until, after three days, the lion comes and howls over them and vivifies them by his breath; so the Almighty Father recalled to life His only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the third day was thus raised from the dead, and will likewise raise us all up to eternal life.36 Additionally, Carol Neuman de Vegvar’s examination of the Lion of Mark in the Echternach Gospels looks to Gregory the Great’s Homilies on Ezekiel, which contains this comparison: For the only-born Son of God was himself truly made man, and himself considered it worthy to die as a calf for our redemption, and himself rose up as a lion by virtue of his strength. The lion is also said to sleep with its eyes open; thus in the same death in which through his humanity our Redeemer was able to sleep, he was awake through being infused with his immortal divinity.37 All of these texts concern themselves with Christ’s dual nature. The placement of Leo above an image of Christ, therefore, was an additional reminder of his duality, and it is indeed central to the messages of both Matthew and Luke’s Gospels that wrap around the reliquary’s four sides. What seems also to be especially significant about the selection of this event is that it takes place outside the city of Jerusalem and after the walk to Emmaus. It thus transpires at an in between place. The designers of the casket were extraordinarily deft in carving this scene, in which liminality and forward motion—understood here to be both physical and also eschatological—are at issue. If the figures in the arcades appear to move and interact, the signs perched in the “tympana” of the little temple seem to stabilize this scene. At the same 36

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Edward Payson Evans, Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture (Detroit: Gale Research, 1969), 81. The earliest Latin edition of the Physiologus (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod.233) is most often associated with Ebo of Reims and thus the manuscript should be considered part of the intellectual atmosphere that could have influenced the program of the Quedlinburg casket. Leslie Brubaker, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 4, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New York: Scribner, 1982), 368. As cited in Carol Neuman de Vegvar, “The Echternach Lion: A Leap of Faith,” in The ­Insular Tradition, ed. Catherine Karkov et al. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 167–88 at 175–176n47.

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time, the signs, seen here to be active and alive, also point to a future event. Can we suppose that clerical users of this casket and its twin could have understood this slippage as somehow referencing their own ideal spiritual path, guided by the imminent presence of the heavenly city to come and the promise that it would one day be possible to see Christ appear as if out of thin air? 4

Tradition and Traditio Legis: Accounting for Apostles and Arcades

Beyond seeing Christ as both Leo and as the Lion of Judah, we should also note that the figure of Christ depicted beneath the arcade follows a specific type, Christ Logos, an image tradition associated with the Traditio Legis or the “giving of the law.” In this tradition, Christ is represented as the embodiment and source of the Word. Twelve apostles and Christ (or other religious figures modeled on the apostles or Christ) are regularly depicted in an arcade, suggestive of both the architectural space of a church or the ideological space of the body of the Church. Well-known examples of this iconographic tradition can be found on Early Christian sarcophagi and apse mosaics, such as the Chapel of Sant’Aquilino in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Milan. (Figure 10.11). The variety of ­Christian spaces in which this iconography could be found makes clear its liturgical significance. On Late Antique sarcophagi, for example, the Traditio Legis is often set against city gates, with Christ standing at the center and flanked by the apostles on both sides (Figure 10.12). Edmund Thomas has suggested that the use of architectonic forms in relation to scenes of the Traditio Legis on Early Christian sarcophagi was a way to suggest permanence in the face of death.38 Indeed, the use of an architectonic framework on such sarcophagi allowed for the sacralization of the space inside the sarcophagus, and we would suggest that we see a similar artistic device in use in the Servatius ­Reliquary and its twin. 38

Edmund Thomas, “Houses of the Dead? Columnar Sarcophagi as ‘Micro-Architecture,’” in Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, ed. Janet ­Huskinson and Jas Elsner (New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 387–436. Additionally, Edward Schoolman has argued that the early medieval bishops of Ravenna desired for their burial sarcophagi to be located as close to the altar as possible so that they could continue to participate in the liturgy after death. While Schoolman’s essay goes on to establish a variety of specific functions for sarcophagi depending on when, where, and by whom they were commissioned, his argument extends Thomas’s notion that the architectonic frames referenced the permanence after death in a way that is also evocative of the architecture space of the apse or presbytery. Edward Schoolman, “Reassessing the Sarcophagi of Ravenna,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 67 (2013): 49–74 at 73–74.

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Figure 10.11 Milan, Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore, Chapel of Sant’Aquilino, apse mosaic. Traditio Legis. c. late 4th century. Photograph by Giovanni Dall’Orto at Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /File:1398_-_Milano_-_S._Lorenzo_-_Cappella_S._Aqui lino_-_Traditio_Legis_-_Dall%27Orto_-_18-May-2007.jpg

Figure 10.12 Side panel of the Sarcophagus of Stilicho, c.387 and 390, from at least the 10th century used as the pulpit in the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio in Milan. Photograph by Sailko at Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Sarcofago_detto_di_stilicone,_IV_secolo,_05.jpg

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Beyond representing the Law on Earth, the image of Christ on the casket should also be linked to those of Christ Cosmocrator in which the signs of the zodiac are seen to indicate both the strength and the extent of his dominion: it is universal, tied to and yet beyond the bounds of earthly time. In her early study of the casket, Gatti noted that the circle of the zodiac, which appeared often on rings as well as around the imago clipeata of ancient sarcophagi, was deemed to be both prophylactic and apotropaic. Rings with zodiac imagery were intended to protect the wearer in this world.39 When used on the sarcophagus it was intended to represent and ensure eternal life. The conception of the zodiac circle as apotropaic is also visualized in the illumination for Psalm 65 (64) on folio 36 recto of the Utrecht Psalter, which was likely painted around 840 and predates the Servatius Reliquary and its twin by roughly 30 years (Figure 10.13). In this image, the signs of the zodiac encircle a walled city that contains a temple whose structure appears as a smaller-scale rendering of the architectonic structure of the Servatius Reliquary. Small figures armed with spears stand outside of the walls at the lower left edge of the city. Perched on a hilltop with a view down to the walled city, Christ gestures to the figures below. Verse nine of the Psalm explains the presence of the signs in this way: “And they that dwell in the uttermost borders shall be afraid at thy signs: thou shalt make the outgoings of the morning and of the evening to be joyful.” In the corresponding Psalter illumination, the signs of the zodiac are protective. The signs delimit two spaces: an interior space inside that is protected, and an outside, exterior space that is unprotected by their power. In her article on the Servatius Reliquary, Garrison proposed that the signs on the box also protected the space “of the biblical and heavenly cities of Jerusalem.”40 There is something especially significant about the focus of the iconography of both boxes on the duality of Christ, whose figure we see as he has just moved from being pure spirit to a tangible physical body. Indeed, we should recall that this biblical moment involves the return of a resurrected Christ, whose appearance at the Pentecost anticipates his appearance at the end of time. Such a transformation is central to the celebration of the mass, and the viewers of the Servatius Reliquary and its identical partner in Bamberg were included as witnesses to this particularly sacred event. In addition to the abstract eschatological references that the iconography invokes, the clerical viewers of the Servatius Reliquary and the Bamberg box 39 40

Evan Gatti, “Reading the Heavens: An Eschatological Interpretation of the Signs of the Zodiac and the Ascension of Christ on the Quedlinburg Portable Altar” (M.A. Thesis, ­University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1998), 20–23. Garrison, “A Curious Commission,” 23.

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Figure 10.13 Psalm 65(64) (fol. 36r), Utrecht Psalter. Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MSB ibi. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr32. c.830. Photograph courtesy of Utrecht Universiteitsbibliotheek (https:// psalter.library.uu.nl/page/79)

would perhaps have also been reminded of Carolingian handbooks containing computistical charts for the calculation of the Easter feast as well as star pictures used in the clerical study of Astronomy, which Ramírez-Weaver has examined.41 His illuminating study makes clear that familiarity with the signs

41

Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science, 38–43.

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of the zodiac and the movements of the stars was required knowledge for clerics employed at Carolingian courts. The iconography of the Servatius Reliquary and its twin was created by and for people who would have been intimately familiar with the multivalent meanings of the combination of the signs of the zodiac with the figure of Christ and 11 apostles. In short, the viewers and users of both boxes would have understood these images in relation to bodies of knowledge that were rich with symbolic significance. On the Servatius Reliquary and its twin, the signs of the zodiac stand by each of the holy figures below, as if they simultaneously protect and identify them, and here they do so during a moment just before the Mission to the Apostles and the founding of the Church. The purported purity of this originary moment was ideally to suffuse the life and mission of medieval churchmen.42 5 The Servatius Reliquary in a Carolingian Context We can only make educated guesses about the context—or contexts—for which the Servatius Reliquary and the Bamberg box were created. First of all, it is significant and rare that the two works were not only made in duplicate but it is also extraordinary that both objects have survived, albeit in hugely divergent states of preservation. With these points in mind, it seems safe to suggest that the boxes were made for two clerics working at—or in any case connected to—the court of Charles the Bald. In our conversations about the works’ manufacture and use in the Carolingian period, we have tended to speak about these personages as bishops or abbots, and we strongly suspect that the two boxes were created as portable altars. Like so much associated with the Servatius Reliquary, this attribution remains speculative, but in returning to this issue to decades later—and after Cynthia Hahn has also suggested that at some point the Quedlinburg casket functioned as a portable altar—we are more convinced that it is probable, 42

Certainly by the Ottonian period, post-Easter iconography such as that gracing the four sides of the Servatius Reliquary invoked the ruler and his court. See Michael McCormick, “The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies, and the Carolingian Monarchy,” Viator 15 (1984): 1–23; and Hans-Martin Schaller, “Der heilige Tag als Termin mittelalterlicher Staatsakte,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 30 (1974): 1–24. On one example of how the iconographies of Easter and ­Pentecost were deployed in the Ottonian period, see Eliza Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: Artistic Patronage of Otto II and Henry II (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 39–86.

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Figure 10.14 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius, Confessio. View toward the west and of King Henry I and Queen Mathilde’s graves. 10th century. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

especially given recent attention to the use of the zodiac as an ecclesiastical tool and given our belief that the casket may have been displayed and used in the Confessio in Quedlinburg (Figure 10.14).43 On the other hand, we are also less sure that the specificity of this function really matters. There can be little doubt that the Servatius Reliquary always functioned as a kind of reliquary, and the early 13th-century addition of a silver niello base containing a visual “table of contents” for the relics it held would seem to make this clear (Figure 9.8). It is also likely that, at the very least, it always contained relics and, if this is the case, it would have always been used in a liturgical context. Whether the casket was, in fact, the altar on which the liturgy depended or an object that depended on the liturgy is significant, but in either case the casket would have served as a conduit between the “heavens” and earth. The meaning 43

Hahn, Strange Beauty, 193. See also Cynthia Hahn, “Portable Altars (and The Rationale): Liturgical Objects and Personal Devotion,” in Image and Altar 800–1300, ed. Poul Grinder-Hansen (Copenhagen: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2014), 45–59. In this latter essay, Hahn proposes that we have may been missing the point in arguing about what is and is not a portable altar. She writes: “In the end portable altars are not ‘practical’ objects at all. Their portability allowed them first to create a bond with their owners and last to become part of the movable display of the treasure of the church.” Cynthia Hahn, “Portable Altars (and the Rationale),” 59.

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of its use would have been facilitated by a cleric and its transfer from casket to an altar table, or from box to the Body of the Church, would have animated the space around it, be that within or beyond the walls of the church. Even as we acknowledge that we cannot know specifically how the box was used in the Carolingian period, it is still important to recognize the parallels that exist between the Carolingian box and the advent of the use of portable altars, as well as later, the resurgence in portable altars as reflections of episcopal prestige at the time of the box’s restoration.44 At the very least, the shape, size and form of the Servatius Reliquary as well as the rectangular reserved area on its lid, which is now covered by a large piece of green glass likely meant to simulate an emerald, is evocative of portable altars. Additionally, busts or groups of standing apostles or saints beneath an arcade is a standard iconography for a portable altar (Figure 10.15).45 In fact, box-shaped reliquaries depicting figures standing beneath an arcade are often described as “portable altars,” even in cases where they may not have an inscription defining them as such, nor a top panel that includes an altar stone.46 44

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Hahn suggests that the funerary reliefs added to the Confessio reflect the luxurious reworking of the altar and celebrate the liturgical role of the abbesses during Easter, when “the bishop of Halberstadt visited the monastery and the riches of the monastery were displayed.” Hahn, Strange Beauty, 195. See page 200 in this volume for Karen Blough’s analysis of the complicated relationship between Quedlinburg and Halberstadt in this period. Examples include three portable altars from the Cleveland Museum of Art: the Portable Altar of Countess Gertrude, c.1045, a champlevé enamel casket, c.1100–50, and a walrus ivory Portable Altar, c.1200–20. Two examples are included in the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin: the Portable Altar of Eilbertus of Cologne, c.1150, and the Portable Altar with the Cardinal Virtues, c.1160. Other notable examples include the Portable Altar of St Mauritius, c.1160, in the Schatzkammer, Cologne, and a Portable Altar from Hildesheim, second half of the 12th century in the Dommuseum Hildesheim. The regularity of the shape, size, and iconography of the portable alar is also evident in the extremely useful database of portable altars created and maintained by Sarah Luginbill: “The Medieval Portable Altar Database,” https://medievalportablealtars.com/the-database/; for an introduction to the database see Luginbill, “The Medieval Portable Altar Database,” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 16/5 (2020): 683–85; and for a broader study of the context and use of portable altars see Luginbill, “Portable Altars, Devotion, and Memory in German Lands, 1050–1190 CE” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1999). Examples include Walrus Ivory Plaques from a Portable Altar, 1050–1100 AD in the ­Cleveland Museum of Art and an 11th- or 12th-century ivory panel depicting Christ of Apocalypse in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. According to Goldschmidt, the latter example, however, does include an inscription: [H]oc altare dedicatum est in [h]onore domini Salvatoris et victoriossime crucis. Adolph Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der romanischen Zeit, 11.–13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft,

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Figure 10.15 Cleveland Museum of Art. Portable altar of Countess Gertrude depicting the Archangel Michael and other angels, and Christ and Apostles, gold, gems, and enamel on wood core, with porphyry altar stone. c.1045. CMA 1931.462. Photograph by Genevra Kornbluth

The enigma presented by the Quedlinburg box is that the green glass “gem” included on the top panel is almost certainly not original to the box, but was added around 1200. Conservation photographs taken in the 1980s, when the box was temporarily stripped of its gold filigree and gemstone frame, reveal a rather large rectangular space on the box’s lid. This space, which is set apart by foliate decoration and darker than the surrounding ivory in color, could have accommodated an earlier altar stone or could have been painted to simulate precious stone (Figure 10.16).47 It is impossible to know if the discoloration predates or postdates the 12th-century restoration. There are 12th-century examples of portable altars that do not include separate altar stones, but, like the Reliquary of St. Servatius, contain an area on the lid that is visually demarcated as sacred or blessed (Figure 10.17).48 Similarities in the decoration of these later portable altars and the Quedlinburg example go beyond these formal qualities. There is also a remarkable continuity in the types of scenes that are present on portable altars. Special

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1975), Nr 159, 46. Elizabeth Okasha and Jennifer O’Reilly have also argued that the traditional iconography for a portable altar is characterized by “figural decoration, ­commonly apostles, saints or prophets beneath arcading or between columns.” Elizabeth Okasha and Jennifer O’Reilly, “An Anglo-Saxon Portable Altar: Inscription and Iconography,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1984): 35–52 at 36. Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, 53. See Anton Legner, ed., Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik in Köln, vol. 2 (Cologne: Schnütgen Museum, 1985), 410, fig. 51.

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Figure 10.16 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Servatius, top panel without mounts. c.870. 24.9 cm × 12.4 cm. Photograph courtesy of Domschatz Quedlinburg

Figure 10.17 Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. Wolbero Portable Altar (Inv.-Nr. Kg 54:231). c.1176–1200 and 1701–1800. Photograph courtesy of Rheinisches Bildarchiv, rba c 003883

emphasis is placed on scenes of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost, thereby making the same references to the risen Christ—and to the Second Coming—as on the Quedlinburg box. There are no other examples of portable altars known to us whose decorative program includes 11 apostles and Christ, although there are a great many portable altars whose programs substitute Matthias for Judas. Indeed, in some cases, the altars’ creators were able

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to incorporate both figures. Much like the Quedlinburg casket, these examples refer to moments after Christ’s Crucifixion, to that liminal space between the human and the divine, thus making reference to Christ’s dual nature and to the promise of the Second Coming. The emphasis on liminality is appropriate for an altar on which the Transfiguration will take place. Later examples of portable altars include either an image of the priest (often a bishop) or a type for the celebrant (figures such as Abel, Abraham, or Melchizedek abound); all of these figures are invoked in the Supra Quae prayer, in which the celebrant offers a plea to be counted as worthy to enact the sacrifice.49 The self-referential nature of these kinds of images and the focus on the cleric as part of an ecclesiastical legacy can also be seen in the narrative evoked by the eleven apostles. After the apostles are assured that Christ appears to them in the flesh, and before he ascends to take his place as king of all the heavens and the earth, they are called to serve in his place. The Servatius Reliquary’s visual emphasis on the establishment of an earthly community that reflects a heavenly order indeed proved to be a critical point of visual reference in the silver niello base, which Abbess Agnes and Prioress Oderade added in the early 13th century. Although Cynthia Hahn has suggested that it was at this moment around 1200 when the casket was transformed into an altar, the work’s Carolingian post-Easter iconography would seem to suggest that it had always been intimately connected to liturgical ritual and could therefore evoke ideas of the origins of the Church and represent a spiritually potent liminal space.50 49

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For a discussion of the Supra Quae prayer and liturgical imagery see Evan A. Gatti, “The Ordo missae of Warmund of Ivrea: A Bishop’s ‘Two Bodies’ and the Image in Between,” in Envisioning the Bishop: Images and the Episcopacy in the Middle Ages, ed. Sigrid Danielson and Evan Gatti (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 181–214. Hahn sees the restoration of the objects in the treasury by the monastery as a way “to stage its own prestige.” While the objects at the center of the restoration project may have had imperial origins, their continued care, argues Hahn, reflects “the canonesses’ duty to pray at their graves,” which she argues, “became the monastery’s true treasures.” Hahn, Strange Beauty, 195n191. In addition to the points about the form and function of the casket having always been appropriate for a portable altar, it is notable that the 12th-century inscription informs us that the reliquary contained a consecrated host. It also seems possible that the addition of the amethyst relief head would have made it difficult to use the box in the same manner in which it had been used up to that point. Associations can also be made between the amethyst cameo and the rite of Communion, where the wine becomes the blood of Christ. In Antiquity as in the Middle Ages, amethysts were connected with the god Dionysos, who spilled red wine on a young woman named Amethyst, whom the goddess Diana had already turned to quartz. Since the base of the amethyst retained the whiteness of quartz,

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Before moving to a discussion of the casket’s arrival in Quedlinburg and the Ottonian contexts for its reuse, we would like to offer one more observation. In the Carolingian period, the signs of the zodiac and their antique contexts were understood as concomitantly imperial and ecclesiastical. In A Tainted Mantle, for example, Nees concludes “that the Herakles ivories of the Cathedra Petri were produced at the instigation of Archbishop Hincmar of Reims” in response to the coronation of Charles the Bald.51 More recently, Benjamin Anderson has argued that the cathedra was not a gift to Charles, but from the emperor to Rome and that it worked as an extension of the imperial portraits, inscriptions, and epitaphs already in place by the 9th century.52 In this way, the cathedra “celebrate[s] the apotheosis not of an individual but of a humanity redeemed by a bishop’s guidance.”53 As we have suggested above, it is to this last point—“of a humanity redeemed by a bishop’s guidance”—that we want to draw attention. A product of Fulda—or the Court School more broadly— the casket represents the fullness of the monastic study of the liberal arts, it was believed that it could protect people from the ill effects of alcohol. Other, more straightforward Christian associations also existed for amethysts: their deep purple color evoked the wine of the mass and the blood of Christ. Purple had long had additional imperial associations as well. See Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 26. For the significance of purple in the Ottonian period, see Garrison, “Mimetic Bodies: Repetition, Replication, and Simulation in the Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu,” Word & Image 33/2 (2017): 212–32. 51 Nees argued: “Taken as a whole, the cosmological ivories of the gable present the starry realm above the earth. Whether or not they suggest eventual royal apotheosis, as some scholars have suggested, or imply an identification of the Carolingian ruler with the cosmocrator, an issue that need not be addressed here, the cosmological ivories present the apex of a vertical hierarchy in the decoration and assert the universality of the conception of rulership embodied therein.” Nees, A Tainted Mantle, 154. Nees additionally argues that a sophisticated understanding of these classical motifs was readily understood as a potent ecclesiastical tool, one that might even be used to warn “that Christian principles and duty far outweigh the values of a pagan Roman tradition.” See A Tainted Mantle, 235. In the pages that follow, Nees suggests that the Cathedra Petri should be considered alongside other works that might be attributed to Hincmar’s patronage. This includes a number of manuscripts produced at Reims, as well as ivories that include decorative motifs, such as the rosette and vine scrolls included on the Servatius Reliquary and its twin. While it has not been our intention to identify a specific patron for the caskets, Archbishop Hincmar of Reims is exactly the kind of patron, or intended recipient, we would imagine is appropriate for at least one of these two boxes. More recently, Benjamin Anderson argues that the Cathedra Petri may not have been intended as a gift from a cleric to Charles, but rather from Charles to Rome. Benjamin Anderson, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 40–42. 52 Anderson, Cosmos and Community, 41. 53 Anderson, Cosmos and Community, 41.

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where the study of heavenly and earthly phenomena are inherently scientific, unapologetically apocalyptic, and deeply theological. While we cannot know if the box’s patron was a cleric or a king, we can know that the casket combined deep learning associated with astronomy and exegesis. These examples illuminate the intellectual and spiritual contexts that animated the casket at the time of its creation as connotative of apotheosis, but in this specific case, harnessed it to work as a tool for the church in the hands of a cleric. The interdependence of these iconographies continued to evolve once the casket was donated to Quedlinburg. 6

Arrival in St. Servatius: Quedlinburg and Post-Easter Politics

Little is known about the circumstances of the Servatius Reliquary’s arrival in Quedlinburg, but it is fairly certain that it was among the “tria eburnea scrina cum reliquaris sanctorum” mentioned in an inventory from 1021 that is contained in the so-called Otto-Adelheid Gospels.54 By the time this inventory was created, Henry II had only recently donated the work’s twin to the treasury of St. Stephen in Bamberg. It is unclear how he came into possession of the casket, and it is of course tempting to assume that he removed it—or otherwise procured it—from the Quedlinburg treasury. As is the case with so many questions related to the Servatius Reliquary, we will never know for certain. The Servatius Reliquary’s post-Easter iconography was well-suited to the town’s function as an Easter palace in the Ottonian period, and discussions of the box’s arrival in Ottonian Quedlinburg have tended implicitly to posit a male imperial (or at least royal) donor for the work.55 While this detail will never be clarified with absolute certainty, it is important to remember that the object could also have been a donation by any number of women— abbesses and canonesses—who lived at the abbey and whose family members 54 55



Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse: Von der Zeit Karls des Grossen bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1967), no. 75. See also Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, 52. See Garrison, “A Curious Commission,” 17–29; Gerald Beyreuther, “Die Osterfeier als Akt königlicher Repräsentanz und Herrschaftsausübung unter Heinrich II. (1002–1024),” in Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter, ed. Detlef Altenburg et al. (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1991), 245–53; Michael McCormick, “The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages,” 1–23; and Hans Martin Schaller, “Der heilige Tag als Termin mittelalterlicher Staatsakte,” 15–19. Voigtländer writes: “Der Reliquienschrein mit dem Smaragd und römischer Dionysos-­ Kamee könnte aus kaiserlichem Besitz stammen, was besonders die Kamee nahelegt.” See Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 168.

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were buried and commemorated there.56 For example, Queen Mathilde, who ­initiated the abbey’s function as a site devoted to the commemoration of her husband, King Henry I, and his descendants, could plausibly have donated the ivory box—perhaps along with its twin—to the site’s incipient treasury in the wake of her husband’s death in 936.57 From a theological standpoint, the work’s iconography reminded the faithful of Christ’s dual nature, and indeed of his constant presence even when he could not be seen. This kind of iconography lent a theological force to the military planning and maneuvering that was a firm part of the Easter and post-Easter agenda in the Ottonian period. The abbey of Quedlinburg was used as an Easter palace shortly after its establishment. In 973, for example, Otto I observed the Easter feast there, and it was during this residency that he met with the Polish dukes Mieszko and Boleslaw, as well as Greek, Beneventan, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Danish diplomatic envoys.58 Here, at a relatively remote site on the eastern border of his realm, the emperor received political guests from all corners of Europe, indeed from people who, as Psalm 65 proclaims, dwelled “at the uttermost borders.” The confluence of military activity during the Easter and post-Easter feasts and the invocation of zodiac iconography is especially clear in the example of Henry II’s residence at Bamberg in 1020. When Henry II presented the ­Servatius Reliquary’s twin to the treasury of the church of St. Stephen in 56 57

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Queen Mathilde donated works to the treasury on the occasion of Henry I’s death. See Die Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg: Eine Führung durch den romanischen Sakralbau und den Domschatz, ed. Friedemann Gosslau (Quedlinburg: Convent, 2003), 26. The various terms used to describe the roles of the noblewomen who resided at the secular imperial abbey of Quedlinburg (Reichsstift) are often tricky. Here, we use the term “abbess” to describe the role of the women who were responsible for governing the Stift and the canonesses who lived there. Indeed, as we know from the inscription on the base of the Reliquary of St. Servatius and from the inscriptions on the 12th-century tomb reliefs in the crypt, the female heads of the abbey referred to themselves as abbatissa. Although they did lead lives of pious devotion, the canonesses at Quedlinburg were not nuns. They did not follow a monastic rule, nor did they pledge themselves to lives of chastity and poverty. Indeed, the canonesses at Quedlinburg were free to leave the abbey in order to marry. Likewise, Quedlinburg became a place where widowed noblewomen could choose to live their lives in partial but not complete seclusion. For young noblewomen, the life of a secular canoness offered a rigorous education and protection from amorous distractions that might compromise their reputation as potential wives and mothers. Ernst Schubert, “Quedlinburg, Stadt und Stätte deutscher Geschichte,” in Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, 3–19 at 6. Here Schubert quotes from Book 2, Chapter 31 of Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicon. See Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, ed. and trans. David Warner (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2001), 115.

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Bamberg at that church’s dedication on 24 April in conjunction with his observation of the Easter feast there, it was none other than Pope Benedict VIII himself (r. 1012–24) who performed the dedication ceremony.59 Reports of Benedict VIII’s arrival in Bamberg are replete with apostolic comparisons that would perhaps have seemed to further parallel many of the ideals visualized on the box. According to reports, the Pope and his entourage arrived in Bamberg on Maundy Thursday. A certain deacon of Bamberg cathedral named Bebo recorded the manner in which this adventus was staged so as to create clear and significant parallels between the papal court and Christ and the 12 apostles. As Bebo reported, Pope Benedict VIII was received by four choirs who guided him to Bamberg Cathedral, where he led the mass. His assistants were drawn from the very highest ranks of the imperial archiepiscopate and episcopate: the Patriarch Poppo of Aquileia, Archbishop Heribert of Ravenna, and ten other bishops made the trip to Bamberg from near and far. The Pope’s journey from Rome to Bamberg was prompted by failed papal and imperial military expeditions against the army of the Byzantine empire in Apulia. At this meeting in Bamberg in 1020 and at Otto I’s observance of the Easter feast at Quedlinburg in 973, we can see how the liturgical and the political were often one and the same for Ottonian rulers. Of the three extant artworks donated in conjunction with Henry II’s Easter residency in 1020, it is extremely suggestive that two contain zodiacal ­imagery: the “twin” of the Servatius Reliquary and Henry II’s Star Cloak, which the emperor received as a gift from Duke Melos of Bari. Henry II’s Star Cloak was intended to symbolically clothe the Emperor in the universe; Roman ­emperors traditionally received such cloaks in recognition of significant military ­successes.60 Elsewhere, Garrison has argued that zodiac iconography “­visually endorsed imperial claims to an empire whose borders were impenetrable and ultimately destined to encompass the known world in its entirety (Figure 10.18).”61 At Quedlinburg as at Bamberg, the iconography of the zodiac did precisely this, and the imagery on the Servatius Reliquary in particular gave visual form to the promise of the heavenly kingdom and the possibility of ­resurrection. At both sites, these promises were directed at their royal and imperial patrons. 59

60 61

Much of the information in this paragraph is derived from Eliza Garrison, Ottonian I­ mperial Art and Portraiture, 121–23. It should be noted that Easter fell on April 17 in 1020, which means that the dedication of the church of St. Stephen transpired exactly one week later. Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture, 122–24. Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture, 124. See also Benjamin Anderson, Cosmos and Community, 45–54.

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Figure 10.18 Diözesanmuseum Bamberg. Star Cloak of Emperor Henry II, created in Regensburg between 1018 and 1020. Photograph by Uwe Gaasch.

Although so much of the 10th-century story of the twin caskets is uncertain, we have found one particular theoretical scenario especially tempting. In crafting this scenario—which is ultimately an educated guess—we have been drawn to the creation of the works as a pair, and the fact that Queen Mathilde, the first abbess of Quedlinburg, constructed the first church above her husband’s grave on the Burgberg; construction on this memorial church began around 936, the year of Henry I’s death. It was at this spot, next to her husband, where she too was buried upon her death in 968. Mathilde and Henry’s graves formed the cultic core of the abbey complex on the hill, and the architectural remains of the Confessio adjacent to their graves at the far eastern end of the present-day crypt appear to date to the 10th-century structure. The semicircular space of the Confessio (1.5 m deep × 3.0 m long × 3.8 m wide; ­Figure 10.14) allowed for access to the royal graves; Mathilde and Henry’s tombs were located just beyond the flat end of this semicircular space.62 Rounded stucco arcades surrounding recessed niches and decorated with geometric and vegetal designs allowed for the display of reliquaries.63 Indeed, the dimensions 62

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See Gerhard Leopold, Die ottonischen Kirchen St Servatii, St Wipertii und St Marien in Quedlinburg: Zusammenfassende Darstellung der archäologischen und baugeschichtlichen Forschungen von 1936 bis 2001 (Halle: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, 2010), 27, and 26–31 for a full archaeological analysis of the Confessio. Schubert, “Quedlinburg, Stadt und Stätte deutscher Geschichte,” 6.

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of these recessed niches measure between 61 and 66 cm in width by roughly 36 cm in depth by approximately 1 m in height, which means that any of these spaces could have easily accommodated liturgical objects of the scale of the Servatius Reliquary and its identical partner.64 The Confessio, which is among the only extant parts of the first 10th-century church, reveals striking formal similarities to the architectonic space suggested on the Servatius Reliquary. In our conversations about the casket, we have often spoken of its potential use in this liturgical space in the 10th century. While experts are not in full agreement about how precisely the Confessio was used, it seems fairly clear that it served the memorial needs of the abbey in its early years. Edgar Lehmann’s 1987 study of the Confessio suggested that this space was constructed as a memorial oratory chapel for Mathilde, the dowager queen and Quedlinburg abbess, to access her husband’s grave, which, Lehmann notes, she may have been able to view through the arcades on the flat western end of the semicircular room.65 Mathilde and her successors at the abbey would have entered the space of the Confessio using a small set of stairs located on its northwestern side. It is tempting, then, to imagine that Mathilde and her successors would have offered up prayers to the royal dead while surrounded on all sides by reliquaries containing the sacred remains of holy figures most important to the protection of the royal family.66 Both the structure and the memorial function of the Confessio match well the forms of the Servatius Reliquary, whose Carolingian designers borrowed certain aspects of its composition from Early Christian sarcophagi, and whose iconography assured the promise of resurrection after death. This is all to say that the casket’s iconography and its evocation of Late Antique sarcophagi would have aligned especially well with the immediate memorial needs of the Quedlinburg abbey in the years immediately following Henry I’s death. Could Mathilde, with her courtly connections, have received this box (and possibly its twin) as a gift or procured it on her own? Or might the box (perhaps with its identical twin) have arrived in Quedlinburg as a gift from the Emperor Otto I, following his mother, Mathilde’s, death in 968? Surely Otto I’s daughter Mathilde, who assumed the office of abbess at the abbey in the years before her grandmother’s death, could have also had a hand in acquiring the casket. 64 65 66

See Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 103. Edgar Lehmann, “Die ‘confessio’ in der Servatiuskirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Skulptur des Mittelalters, Funktion und Gestalt, ed. Friedrich Möbius und Ernst Schubert (Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1987), 8–26, esp. 19 and 22–26. Lehmann’s study suggested this as a possibility, and here he was building upon propositions by Hase and Quast that this space served as a “Reliquary Chamber” (­Reliquienkammer). See Lehmann, “Die ‘confessio’ in der Servatiuskirche zu Quedlinburg,” 18–20.

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7 Romanesque Renovations: A Capsa Remade, An Abbess Remembered The present appearance of the Reliquary of St. Servatius is due to a renovation sponsored by Abbess Agnes II of Meißen (1184–1203) and a certain Prioress Oderade, and the lavishness of this renovation would seem to suggest that, by the turn of the 13th century, this object was among the most precious in the treasury. It was at this time that the casket was sheathed in a precious husk of gold, gems, reused enamels, and a stunning amethyst relief head of Dionysos, and was provided with a silver base with an elaborate niello engraving. The renewal of the casket went hand in hand with the renovation of the crypt and with the construction of a space on the north side of the altar called the Zitter, which was built to house the abbey’s treasury (Figure 10. 19). If the structure of the 10th-century Confessio recalled the structure and form of the e­ xterior of the Reliquary of St. Servatius, the exterior decoration of the Zitter—a grid of 21 recessed niches—could also be understood as an elaboration on those forms. In both the Confessio and the Zitter, the very practice of encapsulation and enshrinement seems to be given visual and architectural form; that is, through its very shape, each space seems to announce its function as a precious container for reliquaries and other sacred objects. The silver base that Abbess Agnes and Prioress Oderade added in 1200 provides visual and textual inventories of the Servatius Reliquary’s contents at the time of the casket’s renovation (Figure 9.8). Three separate inscriptions relay not only the box’s contents, but they also highlight Agnes and Oderade’s roles in having the casket “made.”67 Like the arcades in the Confessio, and like the 67







In addition to the saints depicted on this plaque, the inscription informs us that the r­ eliquary contained a consecrated host, a piece of the True Cross, and relics of the Virgin and John the Baptist. The longest inscription, which frames the entire scene on the base, reads: In hac capsa ad honore(m) beati Servatii facta e(st) reconditu(m) corp(us) et lign(um) D(omi)nicu(m) et de vestib[us] S[ancte] Marie mat[r]is d[omi]ni et ioh[ann]is bap[tista] et femur et de spina dorsi S[ancti] S[er]vatii et infula de casula de sarcophago ipse et reli[gi] o[n]e s[an]c[t]oru[m] quorum nomina arcu scripta sunt In this box [container for the host] devoted to the holy Servatius the body [i.e. the Host] and the cross of the Lord are contained and the garments of St. Mary mother of the Lord and John the Baptist and the thigh and a spinal bone [i.e. vertebra] of St. Servatius and a fillet from his cloak [which was found in] his sarcophagus and the sanctity of the saints whose names are written on the arches. The inscription surrounding the donor image reads: Gl[ori]a Tibi D[omi]ne Temp[or]e Agnetis Abb[atiss]e et oderadis Pr[ae]posite facta e[st] hec capsa

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Figure 10.19 St. Servatius, Quedlinburg. Exterior of the Zitter. Photograph courtesy of Elmar Egner, M.A., Quedlinburg, Domschatz

seven rounded square niches on the Zitter, which seem to be recalled in very self-conscious terms here, the space evoked on the bottom of the casket is also reminiscent of the composition of the scene on the body of the box. The busts of 18 saints, which are divided into two groups of nine and are identified by name, flank a central scene of Christ in Majesty enthroned in a quatrefoil mandorla; here we see clearly that the saints in these silver arcades indeed carry forth the work of the apostles above.68 Abbess Agnes and Prioress Oderade kneel on either side of an altar at the bottom of this central scene; their gazes are directed upward toward Christ and they raise their hands in acclamation. The women are framed by tree branches and the altar before which they pray is located on a clump of ground that closely resembles the mounds of earth 68

Glory be to You [O] Lord In the time of Abbess Agnes and Prioress Oderade this box was made. The inscription that forms Christ’s mandorla reads: Quodcumque peti critis i[n] nomine meo hoc fatiam Whosoever appeals to the judge in my name [to him] it will be revealed The saints included in this visual roster are: From left to right: (top): S. Servatius, S. Iohnes Bapt, Sca Maria / Christ Enthroned / Scs Petrus, S Andreas, S Bartholomew. From left to Right (middle): S. Vigilius, S. Remigius, S. Martinus, / Christ Enthroned / S. Stephanus, S. Mauritus, S. Geor[g]ius II., From left to right (Bottom): S. Nicolas, S. Pusinna, S. Ursula / Christ Enthroned / S. Ciriacus, Pancratius, Cristoforus.

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beneath the feet of Christ and the apostles above. This opposition between an untamed and pure natural world and the ordering world of architecture would appear to have been inspired by the similar contrast on the body of the box, in which edenic flora and fauna tumble across the arcades that frame the zodiac, the apostles, and Christ. Agnes and Oderade, surrounded here by a heavenly host of saints whose remains this reliquary once contained, witness and behold Christ, and they do so without the intervention of a priest. Garrison’s study of the Servatius Reliquary noted the contrast between the relative plainness of the silver base and the richness of the materials added to the lid and four sides.69 In Garrison’s analysis, the preciousness of the materials added around 1200 drew special attention to the liminality of the scene carved into its 9th-­century Carolingian core, and the “Ottonian” appearance of these additions testified to the patronesses’ allegiance to the imperial house at a time when it was under threat.70 The death of the emperor Henry VI in 1197 unleashed a long struggle for succession, and during this period Abbess Agnes of Meißen incited the ire of the Welf king Otto IV. Indeed, at a ceremony at Magdeburg Cathedral on Christmas Day 1198, the abbess had formally pledged her political support of the Hohenstaufen king Philip of Swabia, the youngest son of Frederick Barbarossa and the brother of Henry VI.71 In 1199, Otto IV and his troops responded to Agnes’s oath of support for Philip by invading and occupying Quedlinburg and other nearby towns.72 Agnes was able to buy back control over Quedlinburg and numerous surrounding towns and territories that same year; this precarious situation also moved her to provide funds for the establishment of an annual memorial celebration in her own honor at the church of St. Servatius.73 It is in celebration of the establishment of these memorial masses that Abbess Agnes sponsored both the renovation of works in the abbey’s treasury and the renovation of the abbey church’s Ottonian crypt, which she had decorated with a series of frescoes containing images of Ottonian rulers, bishops, and saints situated amid scenes from the Bible.74 Abbess Agnes’s renovations 69 70 71 72 73 74

Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 18. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 23. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 23, and Johann Heinrich Fritsch, Geschichte des vormaligen Reichsstifts und der Stadt Quedlinburg (Quedlinburg: G. Basse, 1828), 119. Fritsch, Geschichte des vormaligen Reichsstifts und der Stadt Quedlinburg, 119 n2. Fritsch, Geschichte des vormaligen Reichsstifts und der Stadt Quedlinburg, 120. Doris Bulach, “Quedlinburg als Gedächtnisort. Von der Stiftsgründung bis zur ­Gegenwart,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 48/2 (2000), 101–18 at 111 and nn. 98 and 99. See also Fritsch, Geschichte des vormaligen Reichsstifts und der Stadt Quedlinburg, 120–21. Karen

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of the abbey church and its treasury were programmatic responses to the abbey’s earlier glory. In particular, the “Ottonian” appearance of the additions to the reliquary expresses the patronesses’ renewed and reinvigorated support of imperial tradition. On the Servatius Reliquary, references to the city of the Heavenly Jerusalem on the box’s 9th-century core appear to have materialized here in a wealth of gold, gems, and filigree. It could also be argued that the casket’s possible early life as a portable altar was one of the many allusions made by the materials added in the renovation. The smooth rectangle of green glass on the lid of the casket replicates the size and shape of a rectangle of bare ivory bordered by a slanted meander pattern on the work’s Carolingian core (Figures 10.16 and 10.3).75 The choice of a green “stone” evokes the use of polished green porphyry, marble, or granite on the lids of portable altars. This green segment is surrounded by a veritable forest of leafy gold acanthus filigree filled with garnets, sapphires, and amethysts; when viewed from an oblique angle, it becomes clear that this leafy filigree is supported by small golden gates that respond to the arcades that enclose Christ and the apostles below.76 The golden filigree edges of the lid are also filled with red, blue, green, and purple stones, the most arresting of which are perhaps the six large cabochons (one of which is now missing) placed at the lid’s four corners and in the middle of the two longest sides. The front of the casket offers an equally dazzling array of gold and gems, with the addition of reused 9th-century, northern Italian cloisonné enamel plaques and a most striking late antique amethyst relief head of Dionysos.77 The rich purple hue of the stone carried with it imperial allusions, and it also referenced St. Dionysos (also known as St. Denis), one of the most important patron saints of the imperial family, whose memory the Quedlinburg canonesses were tasked with protecting in perpetuity.78 It is unclear if this

75

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Blough has offered a nuanced analysis of the memorial culture at Quedlinburg. See Blough, “The Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg: A Convent’s Identity Reconfigured,” Gesta 47/2 (2008), 147–69. Michael Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen im Schatz der Quedlinburger ­Stiftskirche,” 55. See also Adolph Goldschmidt’s description of this part of the box in Die ­Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sächsischen Kaiser, vol. 1, 32–33 at 33, no. 58. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 24. For the most recent dating of the enamel plaques, see Labusiak and ­Stekovics, Kostbarer als Gold, 38, full entry at 38–41. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 26 and 26n46. St. Dionysos (d. c.250) was an early ­Christian martyr upon whose grave the royal abbey church of St. Denis was later built. Famously, of course, this St. Dionysos/Denis was conflated with St. Dionysos the

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repurposed image of Dionysos pointed to additional saintly remains contained in the reliquary but listed neither in text nor image on the silver base, but surely the relief head in some sense coordinated with a no-longer extant reliquary containing a fragment of the hand of St. Dionysos, which Henry I had received from the Carolingian king Charles the Simple and around which the Quedlinburg treasury was built.79 In short, the additions made to the box around the year 1200 respond to and elaborate on the meanings contained in its 9th-century core, and they thus also visualize what we might refer to as an historicizing tendency.80 8 From Reliquary to Propaganda: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in the Modern Era From the time of Quedlinburg’s establishment as a royal abbey in the 10th century, its treasury has had to serve political functions. In 1803, during the last days of the Holy Roman Empire, parts of modern-day Germany were reorganized and a number of abbeys, churches, and their treasuries were secularized.81 At this time the Abbey of Quedlinburg and its dependent properties and treasures were absorbed into the Kingdom of Prussia. Several decades later, in an attempt to catalogue Prussian holdings, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia (1840–61), commissioned a series of watercolors from Quedlinburg-born artist Wilhelm Steuerwaldt.82 More than a simple inventory, the watercolors were part of an imperial project intended to document this treasury (and others) for the king, once again aligning these precious objects with political objectives.

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­ reopagite, who had been converted by St. Paul himself (Acts 17:34). St. Dionysos’s most A marked characteristic is perhaps his headlessness and his significance as a cephalophore; part of his vita relates how, after a Roman soldier had severed his head with an axe, the saint’s body rose, picked up his head, and walked to the site of his grave outside of Paris. Representations of St. Dionysos thus often show him cradling his severed head in his arms. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 26. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 17–29. Willi Korte, “Search for the Treasures,” in The Spoils of War: World War II and Its A ­ ftermath; The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property, ed. Elizabeth Simpson (New York: H.N. Abrams in Association with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the ­Decorative Arts, 1997), 150–52. Steuerwaldt and Virgen, Die mittelalterlichen Kunstschätze.

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The rise of National Socialism meant that the political potency of the Quedlinburg treasury took an inauspicious turn. Heinrich Himmler’s use and eventual deconsecration of the church in 1938 will be discussed elsewhere in this volume, but the specific history of the casket and the church treasury during this period remains worthy of discussion here.83 The box’s association with Henry I would have made it an important object in Himmler’s obsession with Quedlinburg. In fact, in a manner eerily familiar to the medieval contexts for the casket’s creation and reuse, a letter written by Himmler in 1935 to a ­Brigadenführer-SS Reischle (director of the Race Office) states “If Heinrich I must be emphasized by us as the first German king, then the propagandistic potential” of the millennial anniversary of Henry I’s death in 936 “is virtually a gift from heaven.”84 Himmler’s quote echoes the medieval traditions of the zodiac signs as evocative of a heavenly imprimatur as well as the martial connotations associated with the use of these boxes in the Ottonian period. The quote also reveals the calculated approach Himmler took to manipulating both space and memory at Quedlinburg, all in an effort to align the “First Reich” of Henry I with Himmler’s hopes for the Third. In addition to Himmler’s rhetoric, significant architectural changes were made to the abbey church during the war, first in response to its deconsecration as a Christian church and second, to enhance or accommodate National Socialist rites. As Annie Krieg has noted, little specific documentation of these architectural changes has survived, in part because before committing suicide, Quedlinburg’s mayor destroyed “documents and photographs related to the SS occupation of the site.”85 This physical loss is only part of the problem, however, as there were (and are) other intentional acts of repression, forgetting, and omissions.86 Many of these omissions are connected to the ways that the National Socialists instrumentalized Quedlinburg and the Abbey Church’s treasury in their rites and rituals, practices that were deliberately modeled on or adapted from 83 84

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See Annie Krieg’s chapter in this volume “Restored, Repurposed, Reassessed: The Abbey Church of Quedlinburg Across Five Germanys.” Annah Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed: The SS Past at the Collegiate Church of St Servatius in Quedlinburg,” in Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities ­Confront the Nazi Past, ed. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot (Ann Arbor: University of ­Michigan Press, 2011), 209–27, at 210n3. Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed: The SS Past at the Collegiate Church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” 212. Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 211.

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medieval concepts. For example, the “cosmic” symbolism attributed to the millennial anniversary of Henry I went hand in hand with a desire to revive an empire that might dominate Europe. The last Mass to be celebrated in the church before it was deconsecrated in 1938 took place at Easter.87 And even after the deconsecration, the treasury objects continued to represent the significance of the site. First, as objects of monetary value, they were removed to a local savings-and-loan. And second, letters from the conservator in charge of the treasury, Hermann Giesau, record that “sacred objects” were used by the SS “for its own propagandistic purposes.”88 The letters attest that Giesau was “anxious” about the reuse of these objects by the SS, but his concerns were those of a conservator, not a priest; he did not like that the objects would be removed from their “original” contexts.89 But in the end, Giesau went along with the SS requests, noting that the integration of these objects into Himmler’s plans was “a considerable win for the entire undertaking,” which, for Giesau, meant the restoration of the church to its Ottonian architectural origins—no matter the reason.90 At the end of the war, church and state officials turned their attention to accounting for what had been repurposed as well as what had been hidden in an attempt to offer protection from air raids and looting.91 In June 1945, church officials from Quedlinburg noticed that items were missing from the mineshaft just outside of town, in which the church treasury had been placed 87 88 89

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Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 212, and Korte, “Search for the ­ reasures,” 150. T Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 221. “The medieval treasury was of particular concern for him. In spring 1938, he described to Heicke his deep disappointment with the removal of treasury objects from the church, noting, ‘I must say that this mere thought deeply disturbs me, that these things could move from their location.’” As quoted in Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 221n27. Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 221n28. Krieg describes the ethos of the restoration under Giesau as the “Hallerian Way,” which followed a unified aesthetic. Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 219. Isolating objects in a singular historical moment—a Carolingian casket, an Ottonian donation, a Romanesque reliquary—can lead us to overlook the fact that the casket is a product of historical encrustation. We have endeavored to work differently here and to keep in mind the ways the histories of the casket might bleed into one another. Korte, “Search for the Treasures,” 150. Here, Korte writes: “On September 1, 1939, the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland, the SS packed up the treasure and removed it to the vault of the local savings-and-loan association. In October 1943, out of fear of the air raids, the SS took the treasure to Altenburg cave, not far from the church.”

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for safekeeping. An official complaint was made to the United States Army, but nothing came of it; it was subsumed by any number of questions surrounding misplaced works, some looted by the Nazis, some destroyed, and others, held in the former East Germany, were taken to the USSR.92 In 1958, Dietrich Kötzsche was placed in charge of the treasuries at Quedlinburg and Halberstadt; he immediately began to search for missing artworks in both collections in an effort to restore the reputations of these prestigious houses. By the early 1990s, reunification relaxed some of the old tensions between East and West Germany; German museum professionals and church officials in Saxony-Anhalt sought to reconnect related art objects that had been separated from one another and to make them accessible, once again, to scholarly inquiry.93 Krieg argues that reunification brought attention to a new narrative for former East German art institutions, one that emphasized loss and retribution and stories of “German victimhood.”94 Quedlinburg became the perfect poster child for this new narrative. The town and its residents had suffered a great “loss” at the hands of a US soldier and then survived “neglect” at the hands of the government of the GDR.95 While the Reliquary of St. Servatius was never removed from the Harz mountains, it has often been pictured in discussions about the theft and it could 92

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See Anne R. Bromberg, The Quedlinburg Treasury (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1991); Jeremy Leggatt, “A Looter’s Legacy,” D Magazine, December 1990; New York Times, June 14, 16, and 19, 1990, and September 2, 2000; and Dana Rubin, “A Soldier’s Secret,” Texas Monthly, August 1990. In the Handbook of Texas Online, Emily J. Sano, who served as Deputy Director of the ­Dallas Museum of Art during the time that the objects from the Quedlinburg treasury were being held there, notes: “The objects [removed from the caves] included the Samuhel Gospels, a 9th-century illuminated Latin manuscript with a jewel-encrusted cover; the Evangelistar, a printed manuscript with jeweled cover dating to 1513; five crystal reliquary flasks with gilded and jeweled mounts; a small silver reliquary box; a carved ivory comb; and a reliquary casket decorated with jewels, gilt copper repousse plaques, and carved ivory inlays that belonged to Henry I, the first Saxon king who unified the German states in the early tenth century.” Emily J. Sano, “Quedlinburg Art Affair,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kjqem. A renewed focus on the prestige of the treasury coincided with the opening of the borders and the fact that the Quedlinburg Teppich and the Reliquary of Katherine (Katharinenreliquiar) “zur Staufer Ausstellung nach Stuttgart kommen konnten.” See Kötzsche, Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, xii, fig. 18. Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 223n35. “The mysterious disappearance of a collection of medieval manuscripts and reliquaries from St. Servatius’s treasury at the end of the war also expressed a narrative of ­German victimhood. The miraculous return of these treasures has diverted scholarly focus away from a reconsideration of the SS activity at St. Servatius until only very recently.” ­Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed,” 223.

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be argued that interest in the theft may have helped secure the funding and expertise necessary for the casket’s restoration between 1987 and 1989.96 In October of 1988, an attempt was made to sell the Samuhel Gospels, suggesting the lost treasures might soon emerge on the market.97 By November 1989 the Berlin Wall had come down and a concerted—and cooperative—effort was made to find the missing treasures.98 In 1992, the Servatius Reliquary emerged in media coverage associated with the return of objects stolen from the Quedlinburg treasury. The stolen artworks were the focus of an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art innocuously titled “The Quedlinburg Treasury.” Curiously, neither the Dallas Museum nor the exhibition catalog mentioned why these artworks found themselves in Texas in the first place.99 Once back in Germany, the restituted objects were first exhibited at the ­Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin, reunited with those objects that had remained in Quedlinburg since the war. A catalog of the full treasury was commissioned as part of this exhibition, which included photographs of the Reliquary of St. Servatius during and after its recent restoration. This glossy catalog, Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint—The Quedlinburg Treasury Reunited—became a critical publication for both authors of this essay. Its glossy, full-color photos introduced a new generation of scholars to these objects, offering a pretty picture, wrapped in a compelling crime story, with a happy ending. 96 97 98 99

Peter, “Das karolingische Elfenbeinkästchen,” 58n22: Christine Wendt and Christian Neelmeijer, “Das Servatius-Reliquienkästchen aus dem Quedlinburger Schatz,” Restauro 2 (1993): 93–98. Korte, “Search for the Treasures,” 151: “In October 1988, Sam Fogg, a London dealer, offered the Samuhel Gospels … for $9 million to the Foundation for Prussian Cultural Heritage (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz) in Berlin.” Korte, “Search for the Treasures,” 151. Here Korte describes being able to plead his case in Berlin because the Wall was open, making it possible to meet with authorities in Quedlinburg and seek financing for the endeavor. The objects stolen from the treasury were exhibited in the Dallas Museum of Art from March 7, 1992 to April 26, 1992. This is discussed very briefly in Kötzsche, Der Quedlinburger Schatz wieder vereint, xii. See also Bromberg, The Quedlinburg Treasury. However, as William Honan noted in his review of the exhibition for the New York Times: “Neither any of the speakers at the museum’s opening on Saturday, nor the parchment-like, 32-page catalogue on sale for $10, so much as mentioned that the treasures were here because they had been stolen. The closest the museum came to acknowledging foul play was an oblique reference in an introduction to the catalogue by Richard Brettell, the director of the museum, that the name Quedlinburg had provoked ‘an intense debate about the ownership of works of art, about war “booty,” and about cultural patrimony.’” William H. Honan. “Quedlinburg Treasures Are on View in Dallas,” New York Times, March 9, 1992 http://www.nytimes .com/1992/03/09/arts/quedlinburg-treasures-are-on-view-in-dallas.html.

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On September 9, 1993, most of the stolen objects were returned to the Quedlinburg Treasury. The reunification of the treasury offered up a local version of the national narrative. The General Secretary of Kulturstiftung der Länder, Klaus Maurice, drew on the same themes sought by Henry, Mathilde, and Agnes: ‘[T]he treasure is unified again with the place, which is connected to the foundation of the German Empire of 1,150 years ago. There the return of the treasure becomes a sign of the unity of this state.’”100 The reunification of the treasury was not seen simply as a boon to Quedlinburg or to Germany as a whole: it became part of the combined evidence needed to declare Quedlinburg as having “outstanding universal value.”101 The Church of St. Servatius, Castle, and “Old Town” of Quedlinburg were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1994.102 The “Advisory Board Evaluation” and the subsequent inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage Centre list ignore the restoration and deconsecration of the church in World 100

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While beyond the scope of this essay, it seems relevant to today’s Germany that ­Maurice drew parallels between the disappearance of the treasures and the forced expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe following the Nazi defeat: “In contrast to the unending throngs of people, who in the process of German history were driven out and failed to receive acknowledgment of their forced foreign status after involuntary emigration, the treasure returns.’” Kellogg-Krieg, 223–24. Similarly, the catalog for the exhibition held at the Dallas Museum of Art notes “… the American public can actually see the objects from the Quedlinburg treasury before their return home to a newly united Germany. The powerful reliquary box and comb of Henry I, the first among several unifying rulers of Germany, can themselves communicate messages of piety and power of a divine king. The carved crystal can reflect the lights of a public museum and the faces of American onlookers. The silver heart can touch us in its simplicity and strength.” ­Brettel, “Introduction,” The Quedlinburg Treasury. “To be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one out of ten selection criteria.” http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/. ICOMOS, “Advisory Body Evaluation,” UNESCO World Heritage List, NO ref. 535rev. (1994), 22–26. http://whc.unesco.org/document/153696. The evaluation is included under the document tab on the web page for UNESCO World Heritage List, ref. 535rev. “Collegiate Church, Castle and Old Town of Quedlinburg,” http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/535/. For ease of reference, all of the citations below refer to the web page rather than the original proposal. While the language for the webpage is based on the Advisory Board Evaluation, they are not identical. “At its 14th Meeting in Paris in June 1990 the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee recommended that ‘the examination of this nomination be deferred until the authorities of the German Democratic Republic have decided to nominate either the Collegial Church and the whole of the Burgberg, or the whole town … In the latter case, it would be necessary to have elements of comparison, in the light of the global study.’ The revised nomination, submitted by the Federal Republic of Germany, has adopted the second alternative proposed by the Bureau.” UNESCO Withdrawn Notifications, 14COM VII.16 http://whc .unesco.org/en/decisions/3551.

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War II, focusing instead on the medieval origins of the town and its unique preservation as an intact “medieval townscape” despite some destruction and neglect in the GDR.103 According to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) the “authenticity of place in Quedlinburg is irrefutable.”104 The ­inclusion of Quedlinburg in the World Heritage list echoes our reasons for looking at the long histories of the Reliquary of St. Servatius in the first place: The extraordinary and worldwide cultural importance of Quedlinburg is based on the close link between its history and architecture, which is intertwined with that of the Saxonian-Ottonian ruling dynasty. Following the coronation of Henry I (876 to 936), the first German King from the Saxonian dynasty, the royal residence of Quedlinburg became the capital of the East Franconian German Empire, the “metropolis of the Reich” of the first German state.105 And this it certainly does. From its beginnings until today, the Quedlinburg treasury has embodied narratives of political unity as part of the “metropolis of [a] Reich.” If in the Middle Ages this political unity was tethered to the Quedlinburg canonesses’ spiritual care of the Saxon imperial line, by the modern period this was tied to foundation myths. For medieval art historians, the Reliquary of St. Servatius can help us stay attuned to the manner in which images, materials, and the contexts of their use are full of meaning. While this essay takes as its object the luxurious carved and encrusted ivory box known as the Reliquary of St. Servatius, our greater subject has been the variable landscapes with which the box intersects. These contexts have offered up as many questions as they have answers. Yet it is within the myriad of possibilities regarding how it was used, for whom it was made (or remade), and with what objects it was to be associated that we have come to best understand this box as a palimpsest of its pasts and its presents.

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UNESCO, “Advisory Board Evaluation.” UNESCO, “Advisory Board Evaluation.” UNESCO, “Advisory Board Evaluation.”

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Ansichten des vormaligen Kaiserl. freien weltl. Stifts, nach der Natur gezeichnet. Quedlinburg: Huch, 1855. Thomas, Edmund. “Houses of the Dead? Columnar Sarcophagi as ‘Micro-architecture.’” In Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi. Ed. Janet Huskinson and Jas Elsner. New York: De Gruyter, 2011. 387–436. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Warner, David, trans. Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Weinryb, Ittai. “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages.” Gesta 52/2 (Fall 2013): 113–32. Weinryb, Ittai. The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Weitzmann, Kurt. Art in the Medieval West and its Contacts with Byzantium. London: Variorum Reprints, 1982. Weitzmann, Kurt. “Eine Fuldaer Elfenbeingruppe.” In Adolph Goldschmidt zu seinem siebenzigsten Geburtstag am 15. Januar 1933. Berlin: Würfel Verlag, 1935. 14–18. Weitzmann, Kurt. “The Heracles Plaques of St Peter’s Cathedra.” Art Bulletin 55/1 (1973): 1–37. Wendt, Christine, and Christian Neelmeijer. “Das Servatius-Reliquienkästchen aus dem Quedlinburger Schatz: Externe PIXE-Untersuchung von Metallen auf Elfenbein.” Restauro: Zeitschrift für Kunsttechniken, Restaurierung und Museumsfragen 99 (1993): 93–98. Williamson, Paul. Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque. London: V&A Publishing, 2010. Williamson, Paul, ed. The Medieval Treasury: The Art of the Middle Ages in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1986. Winterer, Christoph. Das Fuldaer Sakramentar in Göttingen: Benediktinische Observanz und römische Liturgie. Petersberg: Imhoff, 2009.

Chapter 11

Matter and Spirit: Reliquaries at St. Servatius in the 13th Century Adam Stead St. Servatius’s corpus of reliquaries counts among the most impressive extant ensembles in the German-speaking lands. Despite the losses it has suffered in both the early modern era and more recently, the former convent’s treasury preserves a wide array of reliquaries and relics, ranging—among other things—from caskets clad in gold and gems and intricately carved Islamic rock crystals to relics of the stole and crozier of St. Servatius, the church’s patron saint.1 The significance of the convent’s gathering of reliquaries was recognized as early as the 18th century, when the first “guided tours” of the treasury were instituted and an antiquarian description of its holdings was composed.2 The Quedlinburg treasury not only offers a representative cross-section of its make-up from the time of the convent’s foundation through to the late Middle Ages; owing to the theft of several objects in 1945 by the American soldier Joe Tom Meador and the return of most of them in the early 1990s, it also boasts a spectacular modern narrative of dispersal, regathering, and restitution. This multifaceted history is matched by the reliquaries’ complexity as objects, a subject which has increasingly come into focus over the past 1 Parts of this chapter were presented in two conference papers, “Associative Assemblage: Spolia and Spiritual Seeing in Some Thirteenth-Century German Reliquaries” (35th Annual Conference of the Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians, Montreal, 2015) and “Die Kunst des Kompositums. Überlegungen zur Spolienverwendung am sogenannten Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. in Quedlinburg” (37th meeting of the “Forschungskreis Kunst des Mittelalters,” Museum Schnütgen, Cologne, 2016). I wish to thank the participants of both conferences for their insights and suggestions. The treasury’s holdings are surveyed in a corpus-style catalog: Dietrich Kötzsche, Der Quedlinburger Schatz (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993). For recent bibliography on individual objects, see the catalog of select works by Thomas Labusiak, Kostbarer als Gold: Der Domschatz in der Stiftskirche St. Servatii in Quedlinburg (Wettin-Löbejün: Verlag Janos Stekovics, 2015). 2 Hans-Joachim Krause, “Zur Geschichte von Schatz und Schatzkammer der Stiftskirche St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” in Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 21–36 at 29–30. Led by a ­deacon, the tours were introduced in 1767 under abbess Anna Amalia of Prussia. The description, entitled “Abhandlung von den schäzbaren Alterthümern zu Quedlinburg,” was written in 1776 by Johannes Andreas Wallmann. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004527492_013

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decade. In the case of the 13th century, attention has centered primarily on the reuse of spolia from the time of the convent’s foundation and the illustrious period of favor under the Ottonians to fashion reliquaries that maintain ­memory of this prestigious heritage.3 In a similar vein, single reliquaries or types of reliquaries—in all cases, ones featuring spolia—have also been the subject of focused investigation.4 In looking beyond traditional issues of chronology and typology to the messages of the objects as such, these studies have begun to uncover the reliquaries’ multiple levels of meaning. At the same time, this focus on reliquaries that incorporate spolia has meant that other, new reliquaries have generally been omitted from assessments of the convent’s treasury in the 13th century, despite their significance for understanding its overarching rhetoric at this time. Building on the foundation of this recent work, this chapter examines the multilayered registers of meaning in St. Servatius’s 13th-century reliquaries, both “old” and new. It does not seek to offer a comprehensive survey of the 3 See in particular the key studies of Cynthia Hahn, “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning with Particular Attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg,” in Representing History: Art, Music, History, 900–1300, ed. Robert Maxwell (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 133–47, and ead., Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 187–95. Both here and in the following, I employ the term spolia in the broad sense as defined by Dale Kinney to denote “any artifact incorporated into a setting culturally or chronologically different from that of its creation”; Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 233–52 at 233. 4 See, e.g., Eliza Garrison, “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” Gesta 49 (2010): 17–29, and Evan Gatti, “Reviving the Relic: An Investigation of the Form and Function of the Reliquary of St. Servatius, Quedlinburg,” Athanor 18 (2000): 7–15, both on the Reliquary of St. Servatius. The so-called “Reliquary of Henry I” was the focus of two studies by Christof L. Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte. Zum sogenannten Reliquienkasten Henrichs I. im Schatz der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Licht, Glanz, Blendung: Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte des Leuchtenden, ed. Christina Lechtermann and Haiko Wandhoff (Bern: Lang, 2008), 121–50, and id., “Der sogenannte Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. im Schatz der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg,” in Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte im Harz und Harzvorland um 1200, ed. Ulrike Wendland (Halle: Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, 2008), 315–35. The Islamic rock crystals have recently been examined in several publications: Thomas Labusiak, “Islamische Pracht an christlichen Heiltümern. Bergkristallgefäße und Reliquien,” in Frauen bauen Europa, ed. Thomas Schilp (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2011), 227–47; Marcus Pilz, Transparente Schätze: Der abbasidische und fatimidische Bergkristallschnitt und seine Werke (Darmstadt: WBG, 2021), 105–07, 120, 141, 145, 151, 159; and Gia Toussaint, “Blut oder Blendwerk? Orientalische Kristallflakons in mittelalterlichen Kirchenschätzen,” in ‘…das Heilige sichtbar machen’: Domschätze in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft, ed. Ulrike Wendland (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2010), 107–20.

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church’s reliquary holdings in this period, but rather focuses on objects that illustrate particularly well the range of issues involved. It begins with a consideration of the reuse of older artifacts and relics as a means of reasserting the imperial past. It then examines how both reliquaries incorporating spolia and new objects intersected with paradigms of relic devotion current in the 13th century. Particular emphasis is placed here on the ways that individual reliquaries mobilized imagery and materials to shape reception of their sacred contents. The chapter then concludes with an examination of issues bearing on the patronage and display of the reliquaries—topics which reveal the reliquaries’ critical role in the convent’s claims to status, its memorial culture, and the canonesses’ devotional life. 1

The Past and Prestige

Of the various aspects of St. Servatius’s treasury in the 13th century, the role of the Ottonian past and its restaging in renewed treasury objects has garnered the most attention. Indeed, Cynthia Hahn has aptly spoken of two “versions” of St. Servatius’s treasury, the first being its formation under the Ottonians and the second being the artistic reframing of parts of the treasury beginning around 1200.5 In part, this focus is suggested by certain objects, such as a 10th-century Islamic rock crystal in the shape of a fish, a donation whose provenance as a gift of Otto III is delineated in an inscription on a new mount added around 1230–50 (Figure 11.1).6 Other works—foremost among them the celebrated ­Reliquary of St. Servatius with its Carolingian ivory casket and amethyst head of the god Dionysius of the 1st century A.D.—parade precious spolia from the convent’s foundational era in a new setting and call for explanations of such conspicuous reuse in a 13th-century context (Figures 10.1–3). Examined in detail in this volume by Eliza Garrison and Evan Gatti, the St. Servatius reliquary is a pivotal object. It can be seen as establishing a paradigm both for the reframing of spolia and for the reactivation of relics at the convent. Produced c.870, the ivory casket with Christ and 11 apostles under arcades was surely donated to St. Servatius by a member of the Ottonian

5 Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 136–37, and ead., Strange Beauty, 187–88. 6 The inscription reads: CAPILL(U)S S(ANCTE) MARIE OTTO. T(ERCIUS). IMP(ERATO)R (“A hair of the Virgin Mary. Emperor Otto III”). On the object generally, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 74–75, no. 11. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in the following are mine.

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Figure 11.1 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Fish-shaped rock crystal. 10th century with fitting c.1230–50. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

imperial family, possibly by Otto I.7 Already at this time, the object pointed to the imperial present, but also, via the Carolingians as the Ottonians’ precursors, to a lengthy and illustrious imperial past, of which the newly founded convent was now a part. Around 1200, Abbess Agnes II of Meißen (1184–1203) initiated a reworking of the casket, which already served as a reliquary.8 Under 7 Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 17; Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 138; ead., Strange Beauty, 188; and Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 56. 8 The object may have originally functioned as a reliquary and portable altar; see Gatti, “­Reviving the Relic.” It is usually (and plausibly) assumed that the casket is one of three “ivory shrines with relics” (“tria eburnea scrinia cum reliquis sanctorum”) mentioned in an inventory of the convent’s treasury compiled in the second quarter of the 11th century, which suggests a function as a reliquary by this point. The inventory is printed in

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her, the ivory arcades were transformed into a gilded, celestial architecture through the application of gold filigree to the sides of the casket’s panels and arches, and of gold leaf to the capitals and bases of the columns; the haloes and scrolls of Christ and the apostles were also gilded.9 Among the new additions was a silver base showing Agnes and Oderade, prioress of St. Servatius, supplicating Christ as apocalyptic judge, with this central group flanked by three registers of saints whose relics are contained in the chest (Figure 9.8). Possibly a donation of Empress Theophanu, the imposing amethyst head of Dionysius also constitutes a new addition and forms the focal point of the chest’s front face (featuring the figure of Christ), which was clearly conceived as the principal viewing side in the reworking.10 This side features further spolia in the form of eight Carolingian enamel plaques from an unidentified treasury object.11 Agnes’s project enhanced the reliquary both aesthetically and materially— and simultaneously converted it into an even more assertive vehicle of memory bearing witness to the convent’s illustrious past. That past is compounded in an object featuring several spolia from the time of the convent’s foundation, which form a synthetic whole that puts St. Servatius’s imperial heritage on display. In this, Agnes appears to have been responding to current political contingencies: Garrison convincingly connects the reworking of the casket to events in 1199, which saw Otto IV occupy Quedlinburg in response to Agnes’s declaration of support for Philip of Swabia, Otto’s opponent for the

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­Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse: Von der Zeit Karls des Großen bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1967), 82, no. 75. On the association of the chest with the “shrines,” see Klaus Gereon Beuckers, “Das älteste Gandersheimer Schatzverzeichnis und der Gandersheimer Kirchenschatz des 10./11. Jahrhunderts,” in Gandersheim und Essen. Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu sächsischen Frauenstiften, ed. Martin Hoernes and Hedwig Röckelein (Essen: Klartext, 2006), 97–129 at 106, and Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 52. Beuckers also offers a detailed assessment of the inventory vis-à-vis that of Gandersheim. On the metalwork in general, with a date of c.1200 on the basis of style, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 56–57. On the application of gold to the haloes, bases, and capitals, see Christine Wendt and Christian Neelmeijer, “Das Servatius-Reliquienkästchen aus dem Quedlinburger Schatz: Externe PIXE-Untersuchung von Metallen auf Elfenbein,” Restauro: Zeitschrift für Kunsttechniken, Restaurierung und Museumsfragen 99 (1993): 93–98 at 98. A potential provenance from Theophanu (or one of her descendants) was first posited by Hans Wentzel, “Das byzantinische Erbe der ottonischen Kaiser. Hypothesen über den Brautschatz der Theophano,” Aachener Kunstblätter 40 (1971): 15–39 at 16 and 19, but this supposition ultimately remains speculative. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 57, dates the plaques to the mid-9th century.

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Crown.12 A materialized manifestation of the convent’s imperial beginnings, the ­reliquary buttressed Agnes’s claims to present authority. Her reworking of the casket, however, entailed not just a reactivation of the object but also of the convent’s relic holdings, which are as central to the reliquary’s claims as is its reuse of spolia. As Hahn notes, several of the relics identified on the base were of ­particular institutional significance, and either pointed to the convent’s past (Servatius as patron saint with relics stemming from the initial foundation), or possessed distinctly imperial overtones (as with Maurice, a key Ottonian imperial saint, and Remigius, associated with Reims and royalty).13 Here, container and contained are placed in a mutually-reinforcing dialogue that testifies to the convent’s proud past. These readings of the St. Servatius reliquary find reinforcement in the so-called Reliquary of Henry I (Figure 11.2). Like the former, this box-shaped reliquary is a synthesis of old and new components. The gilt silver reliefs and filigree adorning the chest’s wooden core suggest a date of c.1230–40 and manufacture in a Quedlinburg workshop.14 These components serve as a frame for four ivory plaques with Christological scenes on the chest’s lid and ends, which are now usually regarded as north Italian works of the late 10th century.15 The front and rear faces feature walrus ivory panels with enthroned apostles from a Lower Rhenish portable altar of the second half of the 11th century.16 It is not clear how these ivories entered St. Servatius’s treasury. Given their provenance and date, the Christological ivories may have been given to the convent by one of the Ottos, all of whom had extensive ties to northern Italy. It has sometimes been supposed that the panels may be identical with one of the “ivory shrines” listed in the 11th-century inventory.17 Their form, however, is hardly reconcilable with an original function as a chest, and the Christological cycle is

12 13 14 15

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Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 23. Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 143, and ead., Strange Beauty, 193–94. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68–70, no. 9. For this dating, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68, and Labusiak, Domschatz, 52. For his part, Adolf Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sächsischen Kaiser, VIII.–XI. Jahrhundert, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für ­Kunstwissenschaft, 1914–18), 71–72, no. 147, dated the plaques to the early 10th century and discerned loose stylistic and iconographic ties with the Metz group of ivories. As first adduced by Goldschmidt, Elfenbeinskulpturen, vol. 2, 41, no. 120; see, further, Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68–70, and Labusiak, Domschatz, 52–55. See, e.g., Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68. On the inventory, see above, n. 8.

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Figure 11.2 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of Henry I. c.1230. Photograph ©bpk/ Ann Münchow

obviously incomplete; an initial function as part of a liturgical furnishing, such as an antependium or pulpit, seems likely.18 Perhaps the panels had already been remounted on a reliquary casket prior to the composition of the inventory, or they stem from a different object that was disassembled before the early 13th century. For their part, the walrus ivories seemingly point to the existence of a Lower Rhenish portable altar at St. Servatius from the late 11th century onwards.19 In its reframing of these earlier ivories, the Henry I reliquary clearly follows the precedent of the St. Servatius reliquary. Other points of intersection, however, suggest that it may have been expressly conceived as a later pendant to that object.20 Formally, this is suggested by the reliquary’s unusual chest form, which mirrors that of the earlier casket; the haloes of the apostles in the walrus 18

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Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte,” 124, and id., “Reliquienkasten,” 315, points in this c­ onnection to the extensive and contemporaneous Christological cycle of the so-called Magdeburg Antependium (c.970), whose function as an antependium, however, is not certain. These panels provide important evidence that not all earlier objects in St. Servatius’s ­treasury necessarily stem from Ottonian donors. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 57, observes that the renovated St. Servatius reliquary “scheint … für den sog. Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. … in vielem vorbildhaft geworden zu

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ivories and of Christ in the Christological ivories also display gold applications reminiscent of those added to the St. Servatius chest.21 The chest, moreover, may have contained relics that pointed back to the convent’s imperial origins.22 Christof Diedrichs has suggested that an “ivory chest of St. Arnulf with gilded reliefs and many stones” mentioned in a 1544 inventory may be identical with the Henry I reliquary.23 Additional support for his thesis seemingly comes in a 15th-century text recording how, during a consecration ceremony, “the people sang the All Saints’ litany and the monks carried a chest [Sarg] filled with the relics of Sts. Dionysius, Arnulf, and Corona and many other sacred things [­Heiligthümer, i.e., relics] into the church.”24 Given the presence of Arnulf’s relics, this chest may well be the Arnulf reliquary mentioned in 1544 (and thus the Henry I reliquary), which accordingly may have originally contained not only Arnulf’s relics but also relics of Corona and Denis (Dionysius). The potential connection with St. Denis is significant, both on its own and vis-à-vis the St. Servatius reliquary, for Denis was co-patron of the convent alongside Servatius from the time of the foundation, and was likewise a key Ottonian saint.25 St. Denis’s relics stand at the very origins of the convent’s treasury: in 923 (or 925), Henry I acquired a relic of the saint’s hand from the west Frankish king Charles III, which he ultimately donated to Quedlinburg along with Servatius’s stole

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sein” (“seems … to have served in many ways as model for the so-called reliquary chest of Henry I”) but does not specify further. The apostles’ haloes consist of gilded plates fixed with nails, whereas Christ’s nimbus displays gold leaf. The haloes on this reliquary have yet to be analyzed with respect to their material composition and chronology, but the attempt to align the object formally with the St. Servatius reliquary nonetheless seems clear. The association of the object with Henry I is first attested in 1776 and is surely part of the increasing interest in the convent’s origins that blossomed in the late 18th century; for a detailed account, see Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte,” 143, and id., “Reliquienkasten,” 327–28. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, the designation “Henry I reliquary” is employed in the following. Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte,” 143–45, and id., “Reliquienkasten,” 328–29. The text is printed in Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 195, no. 329: “Sanct ­Alnolvus ellfeme beinene kestgen met vergulten blechen und stein beschlagen.” Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 181, no. 42: “sang das Volck die Litaney aller Heiligen und die Münche trugen einen Sarg in die Kirche, der mit Reliqvien von H. Dionysio, Arnulpho, Corona und viel anderen erdichten Heiligthümern angefüllt war.” For his part, Voigtländer (at 195, no. 326) suggests that this text refers to a lost Kastenreliquiar. On St. Denis’s significance for the Ottonians as a “royal saint,” see Karl Heinrich Krüger, “Dionysius und Vitus als frühottonische Königsheilige. Zu Widukind 1,33,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974): 131–54 at 135 and 140–41. Servatius and Denis are named in 968 as co-patrons of the convent. The high altar of the church was also dedicated to them; see Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 182, no. 51.

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and crozier.26 A fragment of this relic or another relic of Denis may have been kept in the chest, just as relics of Servatius (a thigh and vertebra) were kept in his reliquary, supplementing the contact relics of his crozier and stole.27 A function of the reliquary as a chest for relics of Denis and other saints would accord fully with Denis’s status as co-patron.28 It would also explain the otherwise striking absence of a relic of Denis among the contents of the St. Servatius reliquary (Corona and Arnulf, it should be noted, are also absent from the list on the base, but were demonstrably venerated at the convent prior to the 13th century).29 Notably, the Henry I reliquary also displays close artistic ties with another imperially-inflected object in St. Servatius’s treasury—namely, the luxury ­binding added around 1225–30 to the 9th-century Samuhel Gospels, an ­Ottonian donation that can be regarded as the “foundational” Gospel book of the convent (Figure 11.3).30 Though one is half-length and the other full-length, 26

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Krüger, “Dionysius und Vitus,” 135 and 140–41; Horst Fuhrmann, “Vom einstigen Glanze Quedlinburgs,” in Das Quedlinburger Evangeliar: Das Samuhel-Evangeliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom, ed. Florentine Mütherich and Karl Dachs (Munich: Prestel, 1991), 13–22 at 15. By 1544, the relic of Denis’s hand was kept in a hand reliquary, but it may have been divided to produce multiple relics, for a thumb of Denis is mentioned at the turn of the 15th century. See Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 196, no. 354: “Sanct Dionisius hant met etzlichen stein inn golt gefast”; the record concerning the thumb relic dates from 1397–1405: “S. Dionysii Daumen.” This status was very much alive in the centuries following the foundation: coins of the 12th century from Quedlinburg, for instance, show the abbess and convent with Denis and Servatius; a variant presents the abbess flanked by Denis and Servatius and surrounded by the town’s other churches, underscoring the convent’s exalted identity and authority as rooted in the two patron saints. See Heinz-Dieter Heimann, “‘Geschätzter Krämpel’: Über Ansprüche der Memorialkultur und ihre Traditionsbrüche in der Geschichte des Servatiusstiftes,” in Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Clemens Bley (Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009), 14–29 at 23. Thus, Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 143, and ead., Strange Beauty, 193, notes: “Dionysius is inexplicably absent.” Corona’s name is listed in the calendar of a 12th-century necrology with 13th-century additions from the convent (Ernst Mooyer, “Ungedruckte Nekrologien mit Erläuterungen,” Neue Mitteilungen aus dem Gebiete historisch-antiquarischer Forschungen 8 (1850): 46–58 and 70–85 at 78), indicating that her feast was celebrated; Arnulf’s name occurs among the patrons of one of the altars dedicated in 1021 in the western reaches of the church (see Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 182, no. 51). On the book, see Florentine Mütherich and Karl Dachs, eds., Das Quedlinburger ­Evangeliar: Das Samuhel-Evangeliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom (Munich, Prestel, 1991); on the binding, with a dating of c.1225–30 on stylistic grounds, see Dietrich Kötzsche, “Der Buchdeckel des Quedlinburger Evangeliars,” in Mütherich, Samuhel-Evangeliar, 43–50, and id., Quedlinburger Schatz, 44–47, no. 4. On the role of the Samuhel Gospels as “­foundational” book, see Beuckers, “Schatzverzeichnis,” 121.

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Figure 11.3 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Cover of Samuhel Gospels. c.1225–30. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

the repoussé figures of the Virgin and Child on the chest and book cover are nearly identical, suggesting production of the works in the same workshop.31 The figures’ gem-studded haloes are also directly comparable. These commonalities suggest not only contemporaneous production but also close conceptual coordination of the two works. This is significant given that the binding shows two standing bishop figures below the Virgin who are surely meant as representations of Sts. Servatius and Denis as co-patrons of the convent.32 It 31

32

See Kötzsche, “Buchdeckel,” 47, as well as Susanne Heidemann, “Iohannes me fudit. Drei Goldschmiedearbeiten im Quedlinburger Schatz und das Taufbecken in Altenkrempe/ Ostholstein,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 35 (1996): 25–41 at 33–37, who argues convincingly for immediate workshop connections. Kötzsche, “Buchdeckel,” 43, and id., Quedlinburger Schatz, 44.

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is thus worth asking whether the Henry I reliquary and the book cover were conceived as an ensemble—one that further, and retroactively, completed the work begun by the St. Servatius reliquary, linking the caskets with relics of the patron saints with a codex that likewise bore direct witness to the imperial foundation. Indeed, just as the St. Servatius reliquary mobilizes relics associated with the imperial past in an ivory casket that points to the convent’s origins, the conception of the Henry I reliquary seems equally predicated on a display of earlier ivories as witnesses to the convent’s prestigious heritage. Here, however, that display takes on an almost theatrical dimension through kinetic activation of the object. As Dietrich Kötzsche first noted, the chest’s lid is unusually hinged at the front. When opened, the front side of the object forms what he aptly called a Schauwand—an impressive, panel-like composition measuring some 30 by 30 cm (Figure 11.4).33 In this way, the ivories as historically-inflected spolia testifying to the convent’s origins and prestige were rather literally put on display.34 The general dating of the object to c.1230 on stylistic grounds does not allow for a firm attribution to a particular abbess, though the points of formal and conceptual overlap with the cover of the Samuhel Gospels may suggest that both were sponsored by Abbess Bertradis of Krosigk (1225–29/30), sister of the bishop of Halberstadt.35 In addition to objects in ivory, Islamic rock crystals constituted a core component of the Ottonian treasury. Six such vessels survive in whole or as fragments at St. Servatius (Figures 8.17, 11.1, and 11.11 provide examples).36 It is not certain how these objects came into the convent’s possession, but it seems clear 33

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See Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 70, who observes that this arrangement is original. That the front was conceived as the “display side” and the chest meant to be seen open is also evident in the lack of filigree on the other sides of the chest and in the identical width and alignment of the filigree bands on the lid and front face, which form a continuous frame when the lid is opened. On this point, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68, and, on the filigree frame in particular, Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte,” 130, and id., “­Reliquienkasten,” 322–25. As first argued by Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 70. For an in-depth consideration of this aspect of the reliquary, see, too, Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte,” and id., “­Reliquienkasten.” As Diedrichs (“Glänzende Geschichte,” 146–47, and id., “Reliquienkasten,” 329–30) observes, three additional abbesses whose tenures fall in the period around 1230 may also come into question as patronesses of the project: Kunigunde of Kranichsfeld and ­Kirchberg (1230–31), Osterlindis of Falkenstein (1231–33), and Gertrud of Ampfurt (1233–70). In my opinion, however, the ties with the book cover argue most strongly for ­Bertradis’s patronage of both objects. For an overview, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 72–76; another vessel, stolen by Meador, remains lost (123–24). The 11th-century inventory mentions five crystals

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Figure 11.4 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of Henry I with lid open (photomontage). Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

that not all of them are to be associated with Theophanu, as earlier supposed.37 Multiple channels—including diplomacy, pilgrimage, and trade—may stand behind the circulation of rock crystals in the West at this time; in view of the Ottonians’ ties with Byzantium and Italy, such vessels also need not have come directly from the Near East.38 It is an open question whether relics were placed in the crystals upon their arrival in the West or, in certain instances (as with relics associated with Christ, Mary, or holy sites), relics were already added in

37 38

(“­quinque cristalle”), which may well refer to some of the extant and known examples; see Labusiak, “Bergkristalle,” 243. For this thesis, see Wentzel, “Brautschatz,” esp. 22. See Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 72, and—on the various routes of circulation in ­particular—Avinoam Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996), 37–55.

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the East.39 In the 10th and 11th centuries, at any rate, carved rock crystals were valued in the West for numerous reasons, not least for their exoticism, which evoked the East and thereby underscored the authenticity of the relics contained inside (whether they were already present or added).40 Other factors include the translucent crystals’ sheer materiality—an aspect stressed in the Quedlinburg inventory, which makes no mention of their contents—and their complicated aesthetic and workmanship, particularly given the lack of a major tradition of rock crystal carving in the West prior to the 12th century.41 In the 13th century, at least four of these rock crystals were given new mounts, some of which explicitly engage the convent’s past in a manner analogous to the ivory chests. The salient example is the aforementioned crystal in the shape of a fish (Figure 11.1). Originally conceived in an eastern context to be displayed flat or suspended, the crystal was provided with a pedestal-like gold foot and mounted upright with a gilded band that names the relic and Otto III.42 This association (of the vessel or the relic, or both?) with the imperial house and Otto III in particular maintains or, perhaps, creates a tradition— one which may or may not be truthful.43 The new foot and orientation of the vessel theatrically put this past on display, but also align the old crystal with 13th-century reliquary types, such as transparent ostensoria.44 Overt references to imperial provenance, however, are lacking on the mounts added to the other crystals (which is not to say that this was not known to the canonesses). This raises the question as to what extent the restaging of the Islamic crystals was motivated solely by a desire to reassert the past. The ostensorium-like Otto III

39 40 41 42 43

44

Shalem, Islam Christianized, 17–36; see, too, Labusiak, “Bergkristalle,” 244–45, and ­Christof L. Diedrichs, Vom Glauben zum Sehen: Die Sichtbarkeit der Reliquie im Reliquiar; Ein ­Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sehens (Berlin: Weissensee, 2001), 45. On this dimension of rock crystals, see Diedrichs, Vom Glauben zum Sehen, 46; Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 72; Labusiak, “Bergkristalle,” 246; and Shalem, Islam Christianized, 129–30. On the focus on materials in the inventory, see Labusiak, “Bergkristalle,” 243, as well as Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 137 and 142, and ead., Strange Beauty, 188. On issues of ­aesthetics and workmanship, see Shalem, Islam Christianized, 130–33 and 144–47. On the original contingencies of display, see Shalem, Islam Christianized, 25–29; on the dating of the new fitting, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 74–75, no. 11. For the inscription, see n. 6. On the rhetoric of this gesture, see Labusiak, “Bergkristalle,” 233–34, as well as Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 139, and ead., Strange Beauty, 189. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 75, and Shalem, Islam Christianized, 193, no. 29, point to Otto III’s documented visit in Quedlinburg on Easter in the year 1000 as a potential occasion for the donation of the crystal. Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 139, and ead., Strange Beauty, 189–90.

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reliquary suggests that other factors—in this case, alignment of the rock crystal with current patterns of devotion centered on relics—were equally operative. 2

Messages, Materials, Meanings

Replete with objects from the Ottonian foundation, St. Servatius’s treasury can easily be classified as an “imperial treasury.”45 By its very nature, this designation emphasizes a pointed reuse of spolia from the treasury in the 13th century for historicist ends as opposed to a potential, and perhaps just as pointed, use of spolia in response to current needs (on account of the objects’ iconography or material constitution, for example).46 Reuse and use need not be mutually exclusive criteria for interpreting spolia, however, and several of St. Servatius’s reliquaries straddle the divide between these poles (as intimated by the fish-shaped rock crystal). Just as they reclaim the Ottonian past through reuse of earlier artifacts, several of the convent’s 13th-century reliquaries also used these artifacts, integrating them into contemporary economies of vision centered on relics. This combined reuse and use of spolia, in turn, prompted new solutions, informing other, newly-fashioned objects that intersected in their own ways with current paradigms for staging and framing relics. In these respects, the St. Servatius reliquary again seems to mark a ­beginning. As Garrison demonstrates, Abbess Agnes’s reconfiguration of the Carolingian ivory casket with new metalwork and gemstones both reframed the convent’s imperial past and expanded on the chest’s iconography (Figures 10.1–3).47 The latter centers on Christ’s Commission of the Apostles as recounted in Luke 24:33–37, in which Christ appears post mortem before his disciples in Jerusalem.48 As Garrison argued, this event represents a sort of “first coming” after the Resurrection and turns on Christ’s dual nature as man and divinity, and thereby points ahead to his return as divine judge at the end of time—an idea also encoded in the signs of the zodiac above the figures, which medieval exegesis associated with the gems in the foundation of the Heavenly Jerusalem 45 46

47 48

Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 136–37, and ead., Strange Beauty, 187–88. Here I follow Anthony Cutler’s important problematization of these terms in studies of spolia; see Anthony Cutler, “Reuse or Use? Theoretical and Practical Attitudes toward Objects in the Early Middle Ages,” in Ideologie e pratiche del reimpiego nell’alto medioevo, ed. Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1999), 1055–79. See, too, Kinney, “Concept of Spolia,” 247. Garrison, “A Curious Commission.” Ibid., 19. Compare Gatti, “Reviving the Relic,” 9–10, who proposes that the casket ­represents the Ascension.

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to come.49 The base added by Agnes picks up where the casket leaves off by showing Christ’s Second Coming among the ranks of saints whose relics are in the chest, and who reside with Christ in heaven (Figure 9.8).50 Accordingly, the reworking meaningfully extended the temporal framework of the chest’s iconography and highlighted its core message—namely, Christ’s dual essence as physical man and immaterial spirit. For its part, the Henry I reliquary not only follows the St. Servatius reliquary in the use of the distinctive chest form and in the incorporation of older ivories; it too displays a reelaboration of the ivories’ iconography to flesh out this same theme of Christ’s nature as man and divinity. When opened, the hinged lid affords access to the casket’s contents while forming the Schauwand described above (Figure 11.4). When activated in this way, the object makes a series of statements on Christ’s dual essence. These statements are made through a close networking of the subject matter of the ivories and their new frame of metalwork and precious stones. Thus, the opened lid creates a central axis with the Virgin and Child at the base, the Crucifixion in the middle, and the figure of Christ in Majesty on the lid.51 This vertical axis synoptically traces God’s descent to earth in the Incarnation, the sacrifice of his physical body, and, finally, his return to, and eternal existence in, heaven. The central axis provides an anchor for reading the rest of the reliquary’s imagery. A clear temporal divide is found between the chest proper and the lid: whereas the metalwork and ivory scenes on the sides of the chest precede, and culminate in, the Crucifixion, the scenes on the lid come after it. This suggests that the placement of the Christological ivories on the object was considered and meaningful. The imagery on the casket’s sides opens a narrative that focuses on Christ’s body as human flesh and blood and immaterial spirit, and presents the apostles as witnesses to this fact. The chest’s front side pointedly constructs Christ’s body as the place where flesh and spirit coalesce. The Virgin and Child group points to the central moment when Christ assumed flesh and blood, which culminates in the Crucifixion above. Strings of red coral beads and white pearls emblazon this part of the reliquary, alternating directly below the crucified Christ and providing a material allusion to his blood and body.52 49 50 51 52

Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 19–23. Ibid., 23. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 70, aptly compares the effect of the front face with the opened lid to an apse composition en miniature. This axis is also noted by Labusiak, ­Domschatz, 55. On red gemstones as a material metaphor for Christ’s blood and Passion generally, see Christel Meier, Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: W. Fink, 1977), 148 and 234. An

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Narrative scenes of Christ washing the disciples’ feet and the Transfiguration in the ivories on the chest’s ends show how the apostles saw Christ both as a humble, physical man, as in the Foot Washing, and as a divinity, as in the Transfiguration. As in the narrative ivories, the enthroned apostles in the walrus ivory panels on the chest’s front and rear faces likewise offer themselves as witnesses of Christ’s dual nature. The ivories on the lid extend this narrative with two post-Crucifixion events that equally revolve around Christ’s physical and spiritual essence. With its depiction of the Three Maries encountering the angel at the empty Sepulcher, the left-hand ivory figures Christ’s triumph over death and points simultaneously to the absence of his miraculously resurrected body. The right-hand ivory, in turn, presents an appearance of that same body after the Resurrection. Sometimes read as a representation of “Christ blessing the apostles,” this scene aligns more closely with the account in John 20:19–31 of Christ’s posthumous appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem (the same event recorded in slightly different terms in Luke 24:33–37 and figured on the Reliquary of St. Servatius).53 Frightened by Christ’s sudden, supernatural appearance through a closed door, the assembled apostles were quickly reassured when Christ showed them his wounded hands and side, which allowed them to recognize him. Exegetes in particular saw in this episode a pivotal moment in which Christ’s divine and human natures were revealed to the apostles.54 In short, the panel’s imagery hinges on notions of Christ’s body as both material and spiritual. That spiritual body, finally, is presented in the central figure of the maiestas Domini, which simultaneously figures Christ’s spiritual existence in heaven and, by virtue of

53

54

a­ nalogous use of alternating red and white stones—in this case rubies and pearls—in the context of the Crucifixion occurs in the late 11th-century Erpho Cross, where the ­association with Christ’s body and blood also seems evident; see Gia Toussaint, “Heiliges Gebein und edler Stein. Der Edelsteinschmuck von Reliquiaren im Spiegel mittelalterlicher Wahrnehmung,” Das Mittelalter 8 (2003): 1–66 at 47–48. For a reading of this scene as “Christ blessing the disciples,” see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68, and Labusiak, Domschatz, 52. Diedrichs, “Glänzende Geschichte,” 124, and id., “Reliquienkasten,” 315, by contrast, suggests that the scene represents Pentecost (a dove and/or flames are absent, however, and Christ is present, which argues against this identification). An identification as a representation of Christ’s appearance to the disciples following John’s Gospel finds support in contemporaneous north Italian ivory carving, in which this episode seems to have enjoyed currency. Compare, for instance, the closely-related rendering with the frontal Christ, arms raised, on the Basilewsky Situla of c.980: Paul Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque (London: V&A Publishing, 2010), 213 with the illustration opposite 214. For a survey of exegetical approaches and artistic responses to this scene around 1200, see Adam Stead, “Seeing Christ: The Groß St. Martin Evangelistary and Monastic Image-­Making in Thirteenth-Century Cologne,” Studies in Iconography 37 (2016): 181–228 at 207–09.

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the apocalyptic evangelist symbols, alludes to his impending judgment. Materials again work here to locate Christ in heaven and to simulate his spiritual state as luminescent spirit: it is likely no accident that 12 gemstones decorate Christ’s mandorla, evoking the 12 gems that adorn the foundation of heaven in Revelation 21:19–20.55 Now despoiled, the mounts along the inner rim of the mandorla likely contained strings of pearls, as on the front of the chest but here uniformly white—in effect creating a material analogy for Christ’s divine radiance, like the brilliant gold of the relief figure.56 Rather than standing as isolated curios of the past, then, the ivories are fully integrated into the casket’s larger message about Christ’s dual nature. This message is, moreover, closely allied with the object’s function as a reliquary. In its fusion of matter and spirit, Christ’s body provided the ultimate authorization for relics—and reliquaries. In his defence of reliquaries, one of the few medieval textual justifications of this type of object, Thiofrid of Echternach (d. 1110) compares the reliquary as a container to the Eucharist, suggesting that both function to cloak unsightly matter (bones, body, and blood) in an appealing form.57 The synergy between Christ’s body and relics also found expression in forms of devotion accorded to the Eucharistic species and relics, which display several points of overlap.58 An immediate juxtaposition of the two already occurs in the Reliquary of St. Servatius, in which a Host was included among (and leads the list of) the relics.59 Given the other intersections with the St. Servatius casket, this strategy may also have been adopted for the Henry I reliquary. The reliquary’s Christological program comments on the nature of the relics inside as the physical remains of human, and now spiritual, beings who commune with Christ in heaven. This reading offers a framework for understanding the presence of 26 gilded, bust-length, and haloed figures on all sides of the reliquary, most of which were fashioned using the same matrices. In their sheer multitude they evoke the heavenly assembly of saints and cast the 55 56 57 58 59

On this association and its interpretation in exegesis, see Meier, Gemma spiritalis, 83–89. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 68, reconstructs pearls in this position. Martina Bagnoli, “The Stuff of Heaven: Materials and Craftsmanship in Medieval ­Reliquaries,” in Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, ed. Martina Bagnoli et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 137–47 at 137. For detailed analysis of this aspect of the medieval cult of relics, see Godefridus J. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 1995). The inscription on the base reads: RECONDITV(M) CORP(VS) … D(OMI)NICV(M). As ­Garrison (“Curious Commission,” 23) notes, the reliquary contains both the Host and a relic of the True Cross, and thus effectively unites Christ’s body with the instrument of his sacrifice.

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Figure 11.5 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Katherine. c.1230–40. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

reliquary as a storehouse of a legion of holy bodies.60 Both before and especially when the lid is opened, the object unfolds a program of imagery that prepares the viewer to experience and understand its sacred contents, with Christ serving as paradigm. In its lack of spolia from the Ottonian treasury, a third box-shaped reliquary, the so-called Reliquary of St. Katherine (c.1230–40; Figure 11.5), seemingly breaks with the pattern established by the St. Servatius and Henry I reliquaries.61 In many respects, however, the object displays points of intersection with the other two, particularly with the Reliquary of Henry I. These include the adoption, yet again, of the chest form (here, however, larger and shallower), and also details of fabrication. Pierced with arches and crowned with alternating pegs and spheres, the backs of the thrones of the apostles on the sides of the reliquary, for instance, accord closely with the throne of the figure of the

60

61

A figure with keys (surely Peter) appears three times, which suggests that the figures may not have been intended to evoke specific saints but rather a large and general assembly of holy personages; see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 70, as well as Labusiak, Domschatz, 55, who reads the figures generally as saints in heaven. On the object, with a general date of c.1230–40 on stylistic grounds, see Kötzsche, ­Quedlinburger Schatz, 84–87, no. 18.

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Figure 11.6 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Katherine, detail: Christ in Majesty. c.1230–40. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

Virgin on the Henry I reliquary and the Samuhel Gospels cover; the filigree also displays overlap with that on the book cover.62 These commonalities suggest production of the reliquary in a Quedlinburg workshop, in all likelihood that responsible for the Henry I reliquary and the binding.63 The reliquary’s imagery, moreover, seems to have been prompted in immediate ways by the paradigm of the Henry I reliquary, which may well be slightly earlier.64 For all the stylistic differences, the reliefs with ranks of codex-clutching apostles seated on continuous, bench-like thrones on the reliquary’s sides recall the precedent of the enthroned apostles in the walrus ivory panels on the latter object. The motif of the maiestas Domini with the blessing Christ surrounded by the symbols of the evangelists on the lid of the Henry I reliquary also recurs on the St. Katherine reliquary, here on one of the ends (Figure 11.6). Located on 62 63 64

On these relationships, see Heidemann, “Drei Goldschmiedearbeiten,” 35–37. Though the form of the filigree is different, the motif of filigreed arches over the apostles on the sides of the St. Katherine reliquary also directly recalls the St. Servatius reliquary. The reliquary has often been regarded generally as a Saxon product, but these ties strongly suggest manufacture in Quedlinburg; see Heidemann, “Drei Goldschmiedearbeiten,” 37. The closest formal parallels for the St. Katherine reliquary (particularly for the rendering of the Crucifixion on the lid and the Zackenstil of the figures in general) are found in Saxon illuminated manuscripts produced towards 1240, such as the Semeke Missal (c.1241–45) and the Goslar Gospels (c.1240); see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 87.

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Figure 11.7 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary of St. Katherine, detail: Crucifixion. c.1230–40. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

the central axis of the Henry I reliquary’s front face, the Crucifixion, finally, is equally central to the St. Katherine reliquary’s message (Figure 11.7). There it is substantially expanded and, by virtue of its positioning on the lid, made into the linchpin of the reliquary’s program of imagery. Indeed, Christ is again figured on this object as the paradigm for approaching and understanding relics. In the upper left and right corners of the lid, respectively, half-length figures of Job and Ezra with inscribed banderoles signal the foretelling of Christ’s sacrifice in the Old Testament and style the Crucifixion as the consummation of the New Covenant as rooted in Christ’s sacrificed body.65 That sacrifice is rendered in traditional fashion in the central Crucifixion group with Christ on the cross between Mary and John. This pairing is expanded, ahistorically, to include flanking figures of Peter (left) and

65

Their banderoles read: HIC PASSUS EST ABSQ(VE) INIQVITATE MAN(VS) SVE, a third-person rendering of Job 16:18: “These things I have suffered without iniquity of my hand,” and SVSPENS(VS) IN LIGNO MORTI TRADIT(VS) EST (“The one suspended on the cross is delivered to death”), based on the foretelling of the Crucifixion in Ezra 6:11, “And I have made a decree: That if any whosoever shall alter this commandment, a beam be taken from his house, and set up, and he be nailed upon it.” The tituli are transcribed in Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 84.

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Andrew (right), who turn and gesture to the cross. On the one hand, their presence accords with their status as the first two disciples called by Christ, and also with the fact that both were, like Christ, put to death on a cross (albeit in vastly different manners).66 In the context of the reliquary, however, Peter and Andrew’s appearance beside the crucified Christ engages them as witnesses whose martyrdom provides testimony to Christ’s initial sacrifice, and thereby to the power of relics as remains of individuals whose sacrifice was effected on the model of Christ’s own. The inscriptions on their banderoles revolve around precisely these themes: drawn from 1 Peter 2:24, Peter’s points to the deletion of sin through Christ’s sacrifice (“Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree”); derived from the Passio Andreae (chap. 4), Andrew’s figures his martyrdom as testimony of Christ’s (“Had I feared the arms of the cross, I would not have proclaimed its glory”).67 Peter and Andrew are also found together on one of the chest’s ends.68 Under their lead, the college of apostles is enthroned on the reliquary’s sides as “witnesses and followers in martyrdom.”69 Simultaneously, this assembly figures the apostles as members of the Court of Heaven who can offer intercession and will also appear with Christ at the end of time. This aspect is directly suggested by the representation of Christ as apocalyptic judge in majesty on the chest’s other end.70 66 As noted by Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 84. 67 Peter: XPC PECCATA NOSTRA P(ER)TVLIT SVP(ER) LIGNVM; Andreas: EGO SI CRVCIS PATIBVLV(M) EXPAVESC(ER)EM CRVCIS GLORIA(M) N(ON) P(RAE)DICARE(M). The tituli are transcribed and translated into German by Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 84. 68 Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 84–86, observes that Peter is identified by his keys, and that the facial features of the apostle beside him display similarity with the figure of Andrew on the lid. Though the object is often referred to as the “Reliquary of St. Katherine,” it is not certain if it contained her relics. The association with Katherine stems from a mention of a “gilded reliquary chest of St. Katherine” in the inventory of 1544; see Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 195, no. 327: “Sancta Katarina vergulte kestgen.” As with the St. Servatius reliquary, however, the chest may have contained relics of numerous saints, or the reference in the inventory may be to a different, lost object. In view of the imagery, Labusiak, Domschatz, 59, suggests that the reliquary may have been conceived for use at an altar of Peter and Andrew (attested at the church from 1021 onwards), but he leaves open the question whether the object may have contained their relics (relics of Peter and Andrew were certainly present at the convent, for both saints are listed on the base of the St. Servatius chest). The emphasis accorded the Crucifixion led Anatole Frolow, La relique de la Vraie Croix: Recherche sur le développement d’un culte (Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 1961), 483, no. 660, to suppose the presence of a relic of the True Cross in the chest, which is not implausible given the precedent of the combination of a True Cross relic and many other relics in the St. Servatius reliquary. These suppositions, however, must remain speculation. 69 As suggested by Labusiak, Domschatz, 59: “Zeugen und Nachfolger im Martyrium.” 70 Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 86, suggests that this panel represents the conclusion of the reliquary’s imagery: “wird das Bildprogramm mit einer Darstellung des

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Figure 11.8 Freiburg, Augustinermuseum. Chest (so-called Brieflade). Second third of the 13th century. Photograph by Sebastian Polixa

As with the Henry I reliquary, this reliquary displays a distinct temporal ­progression, here proceeding from the object’s lid to its sides. With this ­imagery, the relics in the chest are presented as material witnesses to Christ’s central sacrifice and as a salvific instrument in the grand scheme of Christian eschatology. Christ’s sacrifice is foretold and consummated, and authorizes later martyrdoms; the relics that issue from these martyrdoms, in turn, offer assistance in view of the impending End and Last Judgment. Whereas the reliquary’s imagery is rooted in the earlier chests, the object ­differs sharply in its materiality. Its glistening panels of gold framed with ­filigree are devoid of gemstone encrustation and contrast with the ­sensuous combination of gold, ivory, and gems found on the other caskets. A different strategy appears to have been operative here. In addition to the model ­provided by the earlier chests, the reliquary’s form looks closely to contemporaneous secular chests, as exemplified by a casket in Freiburg (Figure 11.8).71

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a­ pokalyptischen Christus … abgeschlossen” (“the pictorial program concludes with the representation of the apocalyptic Christ”). As noted by Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 84–86. The similarity with such secular objects would have been even more evident with the original feet, which are now lost

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This similarity seems to be more than a simple adoption of a current casket form for the reliquary. Rather, it seems predicated on a deliberate inversion of expectations designed to shape reception of the reliquary’s contents. The reliquary functions to contain, just like the secular Freiburg casket; but its resplendent gold sheathing as the “stuff of heaven” works, in its substance and coruscating gleam, to associate the contents with the heavenly sphere, thereby transforming the mundane into the celestial, the fragmented relics inside into a potent assembly of heaven dwellers.72 Ornate and impressive, the reliquary caskets constitute one of the ­central attractions of St. Servatius’s treasury—and surely did so even in the 13th ­century. Other objects, however, demonstrate in their own ways how the canonesses’ ensemble of reliquaries intersected with current paradigms of vision and devotion. Of these, a small reliquary cross generally dated to the early 13th century and attributed to a workshop active in Quedlinburg or nearby Halberstadt appears unspectacular at first glance (Figure 11.9).73 Made of cast silver and gilded, the cross features a corpus whose striking plasticity belies the object’s small size. The cross itself is conceived as an Astkreuz with ragged edges recalling hewn tree branches; by virtue of a narrower second arm in the position of the absent INRI titulus, it also recalls a Byzantine cross. This part of the cross features an open compartment framed by filigree and gemstones, which likely housed a relic of the True Cross.74 The cross’s form as a combined Astkreuz and Byzantine cross is unusual.75 Precedents for a corpus on an Astkreuz can nonetheless be found in gilded bronze crosses of the late 12th century, such as the Mosan Soltikoff Cross, which likewise contains a

72

73 74

75

(holes in each of the four corner posts on the reliquary’s base indicate their presence). On the Freiburg casket, see Rainer Haussherr, ed., Die Zeit der Staufer, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1977–79), 387–88, no. 529, where the object is dated to the second third of the 13th century. I borrow the expression here from Bagnoli, “Stuff of Heaven,” who (esp. at 137–40) offers a succinct and accessible overview of the series of inversions performed by the materiality of reliquaries in general. For thoughts on the way that coruscating metalwork might function to suggest matter animated by divine spirit, see Bissera Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), chap. 4. On the dating and style of the cross, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 88, no. 19, and Labusiak, Domschatz, 60. A function as a reliquary for a relic of the True Cross was already supposed by Frolow, La relique, 358, no. 398; see, too, Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 88, who likewise presumes display of a True Cross relic in the compartment, which now contains an unidentified relic wrapped in red cloth. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 88.

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Figure 11.9  Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Reliquary cross. Early 13th century. Photograph ©bpk/ Ann Münchow

True Cross relic (Figure 11.10).76 Like it, the Quedlinburg cross likely possessed a base, allowing it to be displayed on an altar for veneration.77 The decision to replace the titulus with a second arm on the model of a Byzantine cross

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On the Soltikoff Cross, see Peter Bloch, Romanische Bronzekruzifixe (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1992), 289, no. VII D 12, and 293–94, no. VII D 12, and Peter Springer, Kreuzfüße: Ikonographie und Typologie eines hochmittelalterlichen Gerätes (­Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1981), 169–73, no. 41. The relic is ­contained in a compartment in the back side of the corpus behind a panel with an inscription reading LIGNVM DOMINI. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 88; Labusiak, Domschatz, 60.

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Figure 11.10  London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Soltikoff Cross. Second half of 12th century. Photograph courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum

seemingly represents a creative response to eastern objects circulating in the West in greater numbers after the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.78 The Soltikoff Cross offers a useful foil not only for the Quedlinburg cross’s form but also for assessing its multilayered rhetorical strategy. Whereas the relic in the former remains hidden, in the latter it is visible, appearing above the crucified Christ. This placement invites the viewer to contemplate Christ’s suffering on the cross with a simultaneous view of a relic that testifies to the 78

Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 88.

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historical place and reality of the event, and which also came into contact with the body depicted below.79 The rendering of the cross as an Astkreuz comments on the nature of the visible relic, and on the salvific significance of Christ’s sacrifice. In figuring the cross as the Tree of Life, this form presents Christ’s death on the cross as the moment in which eternal life, lost in paradise, was regained; indeed, medieval legend held that the cross was composed of wood from the Tree of Life.80 The cross’s Byzantine form, in turn, broadcasts the relic’s authenticity. In suggesting a provenance from the East, the ­double-armed cross functioned as a virtual stamp of authenticity for relics of the True Cross in the West in the wake of the Sack of Constantinople.81 Not least, the cross functions here as an authorizing sign for all relics. The object’s tube-shaped vertical arm appears to have contained other relics, which were thus gathered, even if invisibly, under the cross as relic and sign (and under Christ’s sacrificed body).82 In this regard, the reliquary aligns with early 13th-century practices in which relics of the True Cross were frequently grouped with other relics in a larger gathering of Christ and his saints.83 A convergence of issues of vision and authenticity is also detectable in the creation of new mounts for rock crystals from the Ottonian treasury. As ­suggested above, at the time of their acquisition these vessels were prized for multiple reasons, particularly for their exoticism, which underscored the eastern provenance and thus authenticity of the relics contained within. This 79

80 81 82 83

See Labusiak, Domschatz, 60, who observes: “Die formale Konzeption des Kreuzes … verfolgte offenbar die Absicht, der wirkungsmächtigen (und sichtbaren) Reliquie, sicher eine Herrenreliquie, die Verbildlichung des Gekreuzigten in entsprechender Wertigkeit an die Seite zu stellen” (“The formal conception of the cross … was evidently intended to place the representation of the crucified Christ with corresponding value at the side of the powerful (and visible) relic, which was certainly a relic of Christ”). On this legend, see the classic study by Romuald Bauerreiss, Arbor vitae: Der ‘Lebensbaum’ und seine Verwendung in Liturgie, Kunst und Brauchtum des Abendlandes (Munich: Neuer Filser-Verlag, 1938), 4–13. On this phenomenon, see Holger Klein, Byzanz, der Westen und das “wahre” Kreuz: Die Geschichte einer Reliquie und ihrer künstlerischen Fassung in Byzanz und im Abendland (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004), 264–65. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 88, points to the presence of further relics inside the object. This strategy is generally observable not only in the Quedlinburg caskets (e.g., the St. ­Servatius reliquary, where the True Cross leads the listing of the relics) but also in True Cross reliquaries produced under Byzantine influence. Examples include a panel reliquary from Quedlinburg itself (from the Church of St. Mary on the Münzenberg; Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 89, no. 20) and the well-known True Cross reliquaries from St. Matthias in Trier and Mettlach; for illustrations and discussion of the latter, see Klein, Byzanz, der Westen und das ‘wahre’ Kreuz, 254–66.

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may still have been the case in the 13th century, especially given the flood of new objects from the East into western treasuries in the context of the Fourth Crusade, which sharpened sensitivities in this regard. By this point, the rock crystals were exotic and authorizing, but also old. The staging of some of them in new fittings seized on precisely this aspect, as with the fish-shaped crystal with the inscription styling it as a gift of Otto III (Figure 11.1). At the same time, however, these mounts presented opportunities to assimilate these earlier objects into contemporary developments in relic devotion. Since 1200, this was increasingly predicated on seeing relics, which were now frequently housed in ostensoria behind transparent rock crystals.84 We have already seen how the reliquary of Otto III presents the old vessel as if on a pedestal and simultaneously transforms it into a reliquary giving visual access to the relics inside.85 Another fish-shaped Islamic rock crystal indicates that these framings were part of a larger, and deliberate, strategy (Figure 11.11). Partly fragmented, this example rests on a silver foot and is held in place by golden bands adorned with glass beads; a silver lid, originally with a small cross, caps the vessel, which still contains a relic.86 While this mount works to re-present the crystal as a precious object from the past, it also co-opts the artifact unequivocally into the new genre of the ostensorium. Indeed, at the same time, the canonesses commissioned a new ostensorium with an identical silver foot, gold bands with glass pearls, and a silver lid topped with a cross (Figure 11.12).87 Here, one sees how rock crystals—one of the factors that led to the emergence of ostensoria in the first place—could easily be reclaimed for this new economy of visionbased veneration of relics.88 This instance also reveals how, through a process 84

85 86 87 88

This is not the place to examine the larger cause of the appearance of rock crystal ostensoria and rock crystal oculi on reliquaries from c.1200 onwards, which has been tied, among other things, to proscriptions against showing relics outside containers (Lateran IV, 1215), the increased traffic in Byzantine relics after 1204 (which often came as bare bones), and an increasing emphasis on seeing holy things (such as the elevated Host). Overviews of the debate can be found in Diedrichs, Vom Glauben zum Sehen, passim; Hahn, Strange Beauty, 231–33; and Gia Toussaint, Kreuz und Knochen: Reliquien zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge (Berlin: Reimer, 2011), 12–22 and 139–91. Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 139, and ead., Strange Beauty, 189–90. On the object, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 75–76, no. 12, who dates the fitting to the mid-13th century. An early 19th-century source indicates that the relic was a hair of Mary Magdalene; see Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 196, no. 349. On this object, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 91, no. 22, who posits production of both objects in the same workshop. For an assessment of the role of rock crystals in the development of the ostensorium, see Diedrichs, Vom Glauben zum Sehen, 45–48. Toussaint (“Blut oder Blendwerk,” 110) suggests that the new ostensorium looks to the reframed rock crystal as a kind of “copy.” Given the existence of rock crystal ostensoria already around 1200, however, I prefer to

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Figure 11.11 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Fish-shaped rock crystal set as ostensorium, crystal 10th century, mount c.1250. Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

of formal assimilation, older objects from the treasury became part of new, functionally and visually coherent object groups. A third Islamic rock crystal, the largest and most formally complex in St. Servatius’s treasury, is also the most complex in the way that it meets and merges with contemporary devotional currents (Figure 8.17). Usually dated to the 10th century, it features a central core in the form of a tree with palmette decoration see the ­framing of the Islamic crystal around mid-century as a response to this new type of object.

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Figure 11.12 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Ostensorium. c.1250. ­Photograph ©bpk/Ann Münchow

that is flanked by two addorsed birds; each of these parts possesses a recess.89 The central recess is now empty, but the outer recesses contain relics wrapped in red linen—likely, according to an early 19th-century source, Christ’s diapers and garments.90 In the mid-13th century, the outer recesses were provided with 89

90

On the crystal, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 74, no. 10; Labusiak, “Bergkristalle,” 234–35; and Labusiak, Domschatz, 48, who all suggest Fatimid production. Shalem, Islam Christianized, 216–17, no. 63, posits that the crystal may be either Ikhshidid or early Fatimid, and notes that its original function is not certain. Most recently, Pilz, ­Transparente Schätze, 145, has argued for an Abbasid origin. Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 74. For the source, see Voigtländer, Stiftskirche, 196, no. 349. Shalem (Islam Christianized, 216–17) cites an early 20th-century source according to which the reliquary may also have contained milk of the Virgin.

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Figure 11.13 Quedlinburg, Domschatz. Rock crystal phial in the shape of two parrots, detail: Veronica. Middle of the 13th century. Photograph by Janos Stekovics

identical medallion-shaped silver covers impressed with images of Christ’s face (Figure 11.13).91 It is uncertain whether the relics were already in the crystal or were placed in it when the medallions were added.92 Whatever the case, the addition of the silver covers meaningfully inflects and expands on the messages communicated by the relics themselves and the object’s transparent material. By virtue of their association with Christ’s birth (diapers and possibly the Virgin’s milk) and contact with his body (garments), the relics in the crystal bear witness to the Incarnation. In this, they mesh ­perfectly with the reliquary’s materiality: glass and gemstones were broadly associated with the Incarnation, with their light-absorbing transparency offering a material analogy for the Virgin’s womb—an idea that applies particularly well to rock crystal.93 Evoking blood-stained cloth, the red linen covering the 91 92

93

Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 74. The current fitting on the middle of the vessel (­consisting of a thin silver band and a lid with a ring) was added in the 14th century. Most scholars presume that the relics were already in the crystal prior to the 13th century (see n. 89); Toussaint, “Blut oder Blendwerk,” 109, points to the absence of a relic in the central recess and suggests that the relics were added to the outer recesses in the 13th century. On this tradition in the Middle Ages and its relevance for rock crystal, see Shalem, Islam Christianized, 150–51. The connection is vividly demonstrated by the well-known

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relics intimates the later sacrifice of Christ’s body in the Passion.94 The relics therefore offer joint testimony of God’s Incarnation and sacrifice, and, by means of the transparent container, open these material witnesses to contemplation and veneration. The covers, in turn, “seal” not only the recesses but also the central message of the reliquary as a vessel that offers visual access to relics attesting to the reality of the Word made flesh. With their disembodied visages of Christ, they recall the Veronica, the sudarium bearing the imprint of Christ’s face. This image was not only a contact relic of Christ (like the relics in the vessel), but, owing to its authenticity as a veritable likeness of Jesus, increasingly served from the early 13th century to authorize image-making and vision, particularly in female monastic contexts.95 In the context of the crystal, the Veronicas comment on the potential of physical vision of relics as a means of salvation. Just as the vera icon enables viewers to see Christ “face to face” in an authentic image, and thereby asserts the power of vision, the relics on display in the crystal under the covers provide access to Christ by means of the bodily eye. Contents, materials, and images align here in a fundamentally new way. 3

Patronage, Production, Presentation

The sophisticated coordination of imagery, materials, and relics in St. ­Servatius’s 13th-century reliquaries implies considerable levels of agency. Though of ­obvious importance, the question as to what extent the canonesses were involved in conceiving these objects is difficult to answer in detail. In almost all cases the objects themselves constitute our primary source of information. Much the same may be said about the presentation and reception of the reliquaries at the convent. Issues of patronage and presentation

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s­culptural group of the Visitation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (c.1310–20), in which large rock crystal cabochons stand for the wombs of Mary and Elizabeth. On red cloth as a material evocation of Christ’s blood, see Toussaint, “Blut oder ­Blendwerk,” 110–13. As she notes, rock crystals appear to have been privileged as containers for relics of the Holy Blood. With this reliquary, however, the red linen is better understood as an evocation of blood and not as an attempt to create a substitute for a relic of Christ’s blood. Another Islamic crystal in the Quedlinburg treasury (lost through theft by Meador but documented in photographs), which was also set in a mount around the mid-13th century, definitely contained Christ’s blood, as its inscription proclaimed: DE SA[N]G[V]I[N] E D[OMI]NI; on this reliquary, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 123–24, no. 57. Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late ­Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 317–82. The covers seemingly constitute a further example of the early reception of, and devotion to, the Veronica in a female monastic milieu, which, as Hamburger demonstrates, was trailblazing in this regard.

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are nonetheless critical: it is here that the pivotal role of the reliquaries in the canonesses’ devotional life and claims to prestige emerges. By way of a conclusion, both topics are examined here. The St. Servatius reliquary again occupies a central place: as the only 13th-century reliquary from the convent with a donor image, it alone provides insight into the full complexity of the canonesses’ agency (Figures 9.8 and 10.1–3). As several scholars have shown, the image of Agnes and Oderade on the base is far more than a visual document recording their patronage. It works to insert the canonesses into the narrative of salvation history depicted on the chest and into the company of the saints whose relics are contained within.96 By presenting themselves below Christ as apocalyptic judge, the patronesses situate their deed in the eschatological framework established by the chest’s imagery, which begins on the sides with Christ’s “first” post-Resurrection coming and culminates in his Second Coming on the base.97 Their patronage, then, is geared towards the impending End, with a view towards gaining access to heaven. Accordingly, the saints gathered under arcades not only illustrate the casket’s relic contents but also evoke the Court of Heaven—a celestial assembly of intercessors whose aid is here invoked by the canonesses through their act of refashioning the object (thus, the inscription notes that this was done “in Servatius’s honor”).98 Comprising numerous saints associated with the ­Ottonian past, this particular Court of Heaven is also intimately linked to the conventual community’s illustrious history. Relics and a casket embodying the convent’s past are here updated and made into a vehicle attesting to its present identity and prestige; simultaneously, the object serves as an instrument to secure Agnes and Oderade’s salvation in the future. In this instance, the canonesses’ agency has both an institutional and a personal dimension. The other reliquaries, by contrast, are effectively anonymous creations. This fact notwithstanding, they attest in different ways to the canonesses’ ­involvement in their conception. The coordination of the older ivories and new metalwork in the Henry I reliquary (Figure 11.2), for instance, suggests that the canonesses may have been intimately involved in determining not 96

97 98

Heimann (“‘Geschätzter Krämpel,’” 22) aptly summarizes the object’s strategy thus: “­Materialität und Ikonographie lassen eine ineinander verschnittene heilsgeschichtliche und historische Bildthematik erkennen, in die hinein sich die Stifterinnen selbst setzen” (“The materiality and iconography display an intermingling of salvific and historical ­pictorial themes within which the patrons place themselves”). On this aspect, see Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 23, who notes that the representation of the donors effectively depicts them having a vision of the End. For a reading of the saints as an image of the Court of Heaven, see Hahn, “Imperial ­Memory,” 143–44, and ead., Strange Beauty, 193.

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only which spolia should be reframed, but how (much as with the St. Servatius reliquary). From the late 10th century onwards, one of the canonesses served as custodian of the convent’s treasury and in this capacity was perhaps responsible for overseeing projects in consultation with the rest of the community.99 The objects, moreover, testify to close relationships at the level of production. The three major works executed in a local workshop in the years around 1230—the Henry I reliquary, the cover of the Samuhel Gospels, and the St. Katherine reliquary (Figures 11.2, 11.3, and 11.5)—display formal, conceptual, and iconographic links that suggest close coordination on the part of their patrons.100 The same applies to the modernization of the fish-shaped Islamic rock crystal and the creation of a new ostensorium as a pendant (Figures 11.11 and 11.12). Such relationships point beyond the workshops that executed the works to patronesses who mobilized local resources and closely coordinated projects in an effort to update and expand their treasure. Beyond questions about agency, another fundamental issue concerns the ways, and occasions on which, the canonesses displayed their reliquaries. The early and later inventories provide valuable indications concerning the treasury’s contents, but these sources offer little insight concerning the presentation or use of the objects in the convent church. We are nonetheless well-informed about where the reliquaries were stored—namely, in a secure, vaulted treasury room installed in the late 12th century in the church’s north transept.101 As Hahn suggests, this space may have been used to display objects to elite visitors outside a liturgical framework.102 Liturgical celebrations, however, surely provided the principal context for the display of the reliquaries, both as a group and individually. Hahn has ­identified a procession on Palm Sunday as one such occasion on which the convent demonstrably—and demonstratively—displayed its ­assembly of treasury objects (and the prestigious past they emblematized), in this instance with the bishop of Halberstadt present.103 Discussed above in the context of the Henry I reliquary (Figure 11.2), a text of the 15th century suggests that individual reliquaries occupied center-stage in certain ceremonies, in this case a consecration.104 The relics 99 100 101 102 103 104

On the keeper of the treasury, see Krause, “Schatz und Schatzkammer,” 24–25. On the formal relationships, see Heidemann, “Drei Goldschmiedearbeiten,” 33–37. On this space, see Krause, “Schatz und Schatzkammer,” 25–26; it is uncertain whether this structure was erected under Abbess Adelheid III (1161–84) or Agnes II. See Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 142, and ead., Strange Beauty, 192 and 206–08, who ­supposes that the reliquaries may have been displayed on tables. Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 144, and ead., Strange Beauty, 195. She suggests that ­canonesses may have carried treasury objects during this event, which appears to have been ­established in the late 12th century under Abbess Adelheid III. See n. 24.

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of Denis, Corona, and Arnulf in the reliquary ensured the saints’ presence at the event, lending it the stamp of divine authority and approbation. In some cases, an object’s form provides ­indications of exhibition strategies. The two largest Islamic rock crystals (e.g., Figure 8.17) were given rings for suspension (possibly above altars), while the others were provided with bases enabling them to stand on altars as ostensoria (Figures 11.1 and 11.11).105 Now lacking its base, the reliquary cross was also intended to stand on an altar (Figure 11.9). Other objects attest to theatrical modes of exhibition. This is the certainly the case with the Henry I reliquary, which was designed to be seen with the lid open, as the hinged lid and display side indicate (Figure 11.4). The caskets containing relics of the patron saints Servatius and Denis (­Figures 10.1–3 and 11.2) may have occupied a central place in the dramaturgy of the convent’s liturgical year. The calendar of the 12th-century necrology (which was still in use in the 13th century) indicates that feasts commemorating the translation of their relics were celebrated at the convent.106 The reliquaries must have stood at the center of these celebrations, perhaps as a focal point on the convent church’s main altar. In this context, the objects not only ensured the presence of the saint whose relics and role in the community’s devotional life were being celebrated but also documented the convent’s illustrious origins in the Ottonian era (as embodied in the relics and spolia). In like manner, the liturgical commemoration of an individual’s memoria may have been coupled with display of reliquaries, thereby strengthening that memory. Otto III is listed in the necrology, and it is easy to imagine display of the fishshaped crystal bearing his name on such an occasion (Figure 11.1).107 Abbess Agnes and Prioress Oderade were also commemorated.108 These moments surely provided an additional context for display of the reworked Reliquary of

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107 108

Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 139, and ead., Strange Beauty, 190; see, too, Labusiak, ­ omschatz, 48. The ring on the bird-shaped vessel (Fig. 8.17) was added slightly later, in D the 14th ­century; that on the lost heart-shaped vessel with the relic of the Holy Blood is also likely a later (15th-century) addition that perhaps replaced an earlier mount (see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 124). The “Translatio Dionisij” was commemorated on April 23; the movement of relics associated with Servatius was celebrated three times annually: the “Adventus reliquiarum Seruatij” on April 25, the “Translatio Servatij” on June 7, and the “Adventus Servatij” on July 3. See Mooyer, “Nekrologien,” 75, 76, 80, and 81. The celebration of two feasts for the arrival of relics associated with Servatius likely relates to the arrival of his stole and crozier, donated by Henry I, and to the arrival of the saint’s body from Maastricht, which Otto I had removed from the church there but which was later returned (but apparently only after fragments had been removed—hence, the relics of Servatius in the casket). Mooyer, “Nekrologien,” 73. Ibid., 72 (Agnes) and 77 (Oderade).

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St. Servatius—and perhaps even for showing the otherwise invisible base with its image of the patronesses (Figures 9.8 and 10.1–3). The contingencies of display may also account in part for the striking formal similarity of many of St. Servatius’s reliquaries. Alongside the reliquary caskets with their manifold interrelationships, one finds nearly identical pairs of objects, as with the ostensoria (Figures 11.11 and 11.12), or objects whose materials and contents display close overlap (the rock crystal with two birds with its relics associated with Christ (Figure 8.17), for instance, had a direct parallel in the second, heart-shaped crystal with Christ’s blood).109 Series of objects are typical for the convent, and are already found in the 12th century with the group of retrospective abbatial tombs, whose formal uniformity expresses both the continuity within, and identity of, the abbesses as a group.110 In the case of the reliquaries, this formal cohesion creates object groups that may have been intended to be displayed together, with their cumulative force ­testifying to the compounded and potent sanctity of the convent’s treasure (be it relics of the patron saints, other saints, or Christ). While the precise degree of physical access to the reliquaries remains difficult to assess, display of the objects was likely directed at several communities of viewers. In some cases, the reliquaries may have been mobilized in the context of conflicts to remind distinguished guests of the convent’s privileged, imperial pedigree. Such elite viewers may have included Otto IV and the bishop of Halberstadt, with whom the convent quarreled in different contexts at the turn and over the course of the 13th century, respectively.111 The role of the laity as audience, however, should not be underestimated. The aforementioned text recording the consecration ceremony explicitly mentions lay participants, with their invocation of the saints in the litany (“Das Volck sang die Litanei”) serving to activate the relics in the reliquary chest.112 Other reliquaries may have been of particularly popular appeal. Rock crystals with relics centering on Christ, for instance, were demonstrably a focus of popular ­devotion at monasteries at this time, as an account of the intense lay veneration of the relic of

109 110 111

112

For an illustration of the latter crystal, see Kötzsche, Quedlinburger Schatz, 173. On the tombs, see Karen Blough, “Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. ­Servatius, Quedlinburg,” in this volume. Garrison, “Curious Commission,” 23, places the creation of the St. Servatius reliquary in the context of the convent’s conflict with Otto IV; on the role of the reliquaries as a demonstration of the convent’s status in the general context of disputes with the bishop of Halberstadt and other parties over the course of the late 12th and 13th centuries, see Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 142 and 144–47, and ead., Strange Beauty, 191 and 195. See n. 24.

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the Holy Blood in an Islamic rock crystal in Weissenau suggests.113 The addition of rings to the convent’s two large rock crystals with their relics associated with Christ (including his blood) shortly after the refitting of the objects in the mid-13th century may reflect an attempt to enhance them for more effective presentation in the context of lay veneration. At the most fundamental level, however, the reliquaries’ messages were directed inwards, at the community of canonesses itself. These objects exemplify in paradigmatic fashion the medieval treasury’s function as a “site of mediation” between present and past, and earth and heaven.114 The convent’s reliquaries enabled the canonesses to participate in history and to commune with the divine. On the one hand, that history was site-specific, encompassing memory of the convent’s imperial beginnings. But it was also universal— intimately linked to the overarching narrative of salvation history as rooted in Christ, his central sacrifice, and the saints that bore witness to him. The reliquaries unified these different strands in objects that possessed multiple registers of meaning. In these works, the canonesses fused materials and imagery in sophisticated ways and aligned objects old and new with current modes of devotion centered on relics. Both on their own and together, the reliquaries functioned as a portal—one that allowed the convent to enter into the world of sanctity, prestige, and salvation embodied in these spectacular vessels. Works Cited Bagnoli, Martina. “The Stuff of Heaven: Materials and Craftsmanship in Medieval ­Reliquaries.” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe. Ed. Martina Bagnoli et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. 137–47. 113 114

Shalem, Islam Christianized, 151. The nature of this veneration is recorded in the 14th-­century Lohengrinlied (cited after the translation by Shalem): At Ravensburg there is a convent. It is called Aue (meadow). There the blood (of Christ) can be seen through a crystal. He who cannot see it (so the saying goes) will be overcome by death within a year. See Pierre-Alain Mariaux, “Collecting (and Display),” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 213–32, esp. 221–25, where he develops the notion of the treasury as a “site of mediation.” See, too, Hahn, “Imperial Memory,” 147, who emphasizes the way that the Quedlinburg treasury objects as a whole “work … to bring the imperial past into the ongoing medieval present, legitimating the claims of the monastery through a created history and evocative ‘memory.’”

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Bauerreiss, Romuald. Arbor vitae: Der ‘Lebensbaum’ und seine Verwendung in Liturgie, Kunst und Brauchtum des Abendlandes. Munich: Neuer Filser-Verlag, 1938. Beuckers, Klaus Gereon. “Das älteste Gandersheimer Schatzverzeichnis und der ­Gandersheimer Kirchenschatz des 10./11. Jahrhunderts.” In Gandersheim und Essen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zu sächsischen Frauenstiften. Ed. Martin Hoernes and Hedwig Röckelein. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006. 97–129. Bernhard Bischoff. Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse: Von der Zeit Karls des Großen bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1967. Bloch, Peter. Romanische Bronzekruzifixe. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1992. Cutler, Anthony. “Reuse or Use? Theoretical and Practical Attitudes toward Objects in the Early Middle Ages.” In Ideologie e pratiche del reimpiego nell’alto medioevo. Ed. Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1999. 1055–79. Diedrichs, Christof L. “Glänzende Geschichte: Zum sogenannten Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. im Schatz der Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Licht, Glanz, Blendung: Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte des Leuchtenden. Ed. Christina Lechtermann and Haiko Wandhoff. Bern: Lang, 2008. 121–50. Diedrichs, Christof L. Vom Glauben zum Sehen: Die Sichtbarkeit der Reliquie im ­Reliquiar; Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sehens. Berlin: Weissensee, 2001. Diedrichs, Christof L. “Der sogenannte Reliquienkasten Heinrichs I. im Schatz der ­Stiftskirche zu Quedlinburg.” In Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte im Harz und ­Harzvorland um 1200. Ed. Ulrike Wendland. Halle: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, 2008. 315–35. Frolow, Anatole. La relique de la Vraie Croix: Recherche sur le développement d’un culte. Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 1961. Fuhrmann, Horst. “Vom einstigen Glanze Quedlinburgs.” In Das Quedlinburger ­Evangeliar: Das Samuhel-Evangeliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom. Ed. Florentine Mütherich and Karl Dachs. Munich: Prestel, 1991. 13–22. Garrison, Eliza. “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in ­Quedlinburg.” Gesta 49/1 (2010): 17–29. Gatti, Evan A. “Reviving the Relic: An Investigation of the Form and Function of the Reliquary of St. Servatius.” Athanor 18 (2000): 7–15. Goldschmidt, Adolph. Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und ­sächsischen Kaiser, VIII.–XI. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1914–18. Hahn, Cynthia. “Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial Memory and Meaning, with Particular Attention to Treasuries at Conques, Aachen, and Quedlinburg.” In Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History. Ed. Robert Maxwell. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 133–47.

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Hahn, Cynthia. Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400circa 1204. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Hamburger, Jeffrey. “Vision and the Veronica.” In The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. Ed. Jeffrey Hamburger. New York: Zone Books, 1998. 317–82. Haussherr, Reiner, ed. Die Zeit der Staufer. 5 vols. Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1977–79. Heidemann, Susanne. “Iohannes me fudit. Drei Goldschmiedearbeiten im Quedlinburger Schatz und das Taufbecken in Altenkrempe/Ostholstein.” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 35 (1996): 25–41. Heimann, Heinz-Dieter. “‘Geschätzter Krämpel’: Über Ansprüche der Memorialkultur und ihre Traditionsbrüche in der Geschichte des Servatiusstiftes.” In Kayserlich – frey – weltlich: Das Reichstift Quedlinburg im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Clemens Bley. Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009. 14–29. Kinney, Dale. “The Concept of Spolia.” In A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe. Ed. Conard Rudolph. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. 233–52. Klein, Holger. Byzanz, der Westen und das “wahre” Kreuz: Die Geschichte einer Reliquie und ihrer künstlerischen Fassung in Byzanz und im Abendland. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004. Kötzsche, Dietrich. “Der Buchdeckel des Quedlinburger Evangeliars.” In Das Quedlinburger Evangeliar: Das Samuhel-Evangeliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom. Ed. ­Florentine Mütherich and Karl Dachs. Munich: Prestel, 1991. 43–50. Kötzsche, Dietrich, ed. Der Quedlinburger Schatz. Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993. Krause, Hans-Joachim. “Zur Geschichte von Schatz und Schatzkammer der Stiftskirche St. Servatius in Quedlinburg.” In Der Quedlinburger Schatz. Ed. Dietrich Kötzsche. Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1993. 21–36. Krüger, Karl Heinrich. “Dionysius und Vitus als frühottonische Königsheilige. Zu Widukind 1,33.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974): 131–54. Labusiak, Thomas. “Islamische Pracht an christlichen Heiltümern. Bergkristallgefäße und Reliquien.” In Frauen bauen Europa. Ed. Thomas Schilp. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2011. 227–47. Labusiak, Thomas. Kostbarer als Gold: Der Domschatz in der Stiftskirche St. Servatii in Quedlinburg. Wettin-Löbejün: Verlag Janos Stekovics, 2015. Mariaux, Pierre-Alain. “Collecting (and Display).” In A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe. Ed. Conrad Rudolph. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. 213–32. Meier, Christel. Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: W. Fink, 1977.

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Mooyer, Ernst Friedrich. “Ungedruckte Nekrologien und Erläuterungen.” Neue ­Mitteilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch-antiquarischer Forschungen 8/3–4 (1850): 48–87. Mütherich, Florentine, and Karl Dachs, eds. Das Quedlinburger Evangeliar: Das Samuhel-Evangeliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom. Munich: Prestel, 1991. Pentcheva, Bissera. The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium. ­University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Pilz, Marcus. Transparente Schätze: Der abbasidische und fatimidische Bergkristallschnitt und seine Werke. Darmstadt: WBG, 2021. Shalem, Avinoam. Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996. Snoek, Godefridus J. Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Springer, Peter. Kreuzfüße: Ikonographie und Typologie eines hochmittelalterlichen Gerätes. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1981. Stead, Adam. “Seeing Christ: The Groß St. Martin Evangelistary and Monastic Image-Making in Thirteenth-Century Cologne.” Studies in Iconography 37 (2016): 181–228. Toussaint, Gia. “Heiliges Gebein und edler Stein. Der Edelsteinschmuck von Reliquiaren im Spiegel mittelalterlicher Wahrnehmung.” Das Mittelalter 8 (2003): 1–66. Toussaint, Gia. “Blut oder Blendwerk? Orientalische Kristallflakons in mittelalterlichen Kirchenschätzen.” In “...das Heilige sichtbar machen”: Domschätze in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Ed. Ulrike Wendland. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2010. 107–20. Toussaint, Gia. Kreuz und Knochen: Reliquien zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge. Berlin: Reimer, 2011. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Wendt, Christine, and Christian Neelmeijer. “Das Servatius-Reliquienkästchen aus dem Quedlinburger Schatz: Externe PIXE-Untersuchung von Metallen auf Elfenbein.” Restauro: Zeitschrift für Kunsttechniken, Restaurierung und Museumsfragen 99 (1993): 93–98. Wentzel, Hans. “Das byzantinische Erbe der ottonischen Kaiser. Hypothesen über den Brautschatz der Theophano.” Aachener Kunstblätter 40 (1971): 15–39. Williamson, Paul. Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque. London: V&A Publishing, 2010.

Chapter 12

Restored, Repurposed, Reassessed: The Abbey Church of Quedlinburg across Five Germanies Annie Krieg 1 Introduction Situated at the foothills of the Harz Mountains along the Bode River, the town of Quedlinburg appears as a medieval time capsule, as if it had sidestepped the last six or seven centuries of advancements in building technology and urban planning. The charm of the half-timbered town and the castle hill draw thousands of tourists, mainly Germans, to Quedlinburg each year.1 However, recent times have not been the first instance of mass pilgrimage to the site in the modern era. Heinrich Himmler was the first of the 20th century to capitalize on Quedlinburg’s important role in early German history and its stunning architecture, specifically St. Servatius. Himmler transformed Quedlinburg into a National Socialist Camelot, with St. Servatius as the focal point for SS ceremonies and memorials dedicated to the first ruler who ostensibly unified the Germans, King Henry I.2 1 Portions of this research have been previously published under Annah Kellogg-Krieg, “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed: The SS Past at the Collegiate Church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” in Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past, ed. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 209–30. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Romanesque Road, a circuit of medieval points of interest within Saxony-Anhalt, established Quedlinburg as one of the most important medieval sites of interest. Both Rose-Marie Knape, Strasse der Romanik, ed. Christian Antz (Halle: Verlag Janos Stekovics, 2001) and Margit Boeckh, Die Strasse der Romanik (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2001) were recently published as guides to the route. They include brief histories and art historical information for monuments along the route. 2 In the case of Quedlinburg the sparse recent literature on the SS appropriation of the church situates St. Servatius as a site of Protestant resistance to the Nazi regime. The only art historical analysis of the renovations of St. Servatius and the Heinrich celebrations conducted by the SS is Katharine Ruf’s article from 1984. However, her visual analysis remains a dispassionate account of the pragmatic physical alterations instigated by the SS and does not explore the aesthetic issues of the renovation, namely the Nazi preference for the Romanesque style over the Gothic tradition. See Franz Hildebrandt, “Die Gewaltsame Inbesitznahme der Stiftskirche in Quedlinburg,” in Ich glaube eine heilige Kirche: Festschrift für D. Hans Asmussen zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Walter Bauer et al. (Stuttgart: Evangelische Verlagswerk, 1963), © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004527492_014

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The expropriation and radical transformation of the abbey church during the National Socialist period stands as the linchpin of my chronological study. I will begin with the 19th-century building projects in the abbey church, then focus on SS-led renovations in the 1930s and 1940s, and finally investigate its resanctification and renovations of the post-World War II era. The diachronic overview reveals how the architectural significance of St. Servatius was ­positioned within larger debates concerning national identity in the various manifestations of the modern German state. 2

Formulating a German Aesthetic in the 19th Century

Goethe, Schinkel, and others believed Gothic to be the truly Germanic building style.3 Further research on the medieval period ushered in a more nuanced ­history of architecture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.4 ­Philosopher Karl Schnaase (1798–1875) compiled a seven-volume history of the visual arts and declared St. Servatius to be the best and earliest example of the Romanesque.5 As a newly reassessed monument of national heritage St. Servatius underwent major renovations under the direction of Prussian conservator Ferdinand von Quast in this same period.6 Quast first inspected St. Servatius on 12 August 1858. He noted the importance of the church not only as a site of early German history but also as an exquisite example of Romanesque architecture. “The collegiate church

3 4

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105–14; Katharine Ruf, “Der Quedlinburger Dom im Dritten Reich,” Kritische Berichte 12/1 (1984): 47–59; and Willi Schultze, “Der Quedlinburger Dom als Kultstätte der SS,” in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte Teil IV (­Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966), 215–34. See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Von deutscher Baukunst (1773; reprint, Rudelstadt: Hain ­Verlag, 1997), and Michael J. Lewis, The Politics of German Gothic Revival: August ­Reichensperger (New York: Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press, 1993). The following discussion of German medieval revival draws heavily from Barbara Miller Lane, National Romanticism and Modern Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Barbara Miller Lane, “National Romanticism in Modern German Architecture,” in Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 29, Symposium Papers XIII: Nationalism in the Visual Arts, ed. Richard Etlin (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 110–47. Karl Julius Ferdinand Schnaase et al., Geschichte der bildenden Künste, 7 vols. (Düsseldorf: Buddeus, 1843–61), cited in Lane, “National Romanticism in Modern German Architecture,” 50–51. The most substantial discussion of the 19th-century renovations at St. Servatius is in Klaus Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 32–37.

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of Quedlinburg, once the nexus of a royal chapter of nuns, is likewise noteworthy for its origin as an act of King Henry I and Queen Mathilde who are interred in the crypt, as well as for its outstanding Romanesque architecture.”7 Yet ­centuries of imprudent alterations and neglect required immediate repair and ­renovation. By 1862 Quast had secured funding from the ministry in ­Berlin and construction began to restore the 14th-century appearance of the nave and choir. Reconstitution of the clerestory window openings and frieze and the north aisle were the first tasks. During this initial work stage Quast discovered a Romanesque portal underneath the Renaissance portal on the north exterior wall. Work on the interior also uncovered the graves of early abbesses in the middle of the nave. Quast’s preservation philosophy was fairly conservative. In conjunction with continual financial difficulties, he focused only on the most necessary renovations and restricted the project to the nave and choir (although the heavily dilapidated west end was finally repaired a few years later; Figure 12.1). Some of his conservation decisions, however, led to confrontation with his Baumeister Johann Gottfried Werner, who advocated for a more radical removal of later additions. During Quast’s frequent absences Werner convinced the Prussian crown prince to approve the reinstallation of a Romanesque conch in the choir. While Quast eventually rejected this suggestion, the Nazis would resuscitate the 11th-century Romanesque aesthetic of the church 70 years later. 3 The Heinrich Celebrations and the Renovation of “King Henry’s Cathedral” under National Socialism German scholars had long understood the Gothic as French in origin, hence part of the reason for the preference for the Romanesque as a natural style. In the minds of nationalist ideologues under the Third Reich, the Gothic became further tainted by its association with the avant-garde during the rise of Expressionism and through the Weimar era. The interwar avant-garde’s appropriation of the Gothic contributed to Nazi preference for the Romanesque over the Gothic in the regime’s understanding of the medieval. Stylistically the solid, severe Romanesque aesthetic also offered more correlation with the monumental building of contemporary Nazi architects such as Albert Speer and 7 “Die Schloßkirche zu Quedlinburg, einst der Mittelpunkt des hohen fürstlichen Damenstiftes, ist ebenso durch den hohen Ursprung als Stiftung König Henry I. und der Königin Mathilde, welche in der Krypta ruhen, als durch ihre großartige romanische Architektur ­ausgezeichnet, …” Quoted in Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 32.

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Figure 12.1 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. 12th-century nave with Gothic east choir. Photograph from the early 20th century courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

Wilhelm Kreis. Although it is unclear if Speer and Kreis saw or were even aware of renovations at St. Servatius, the similar preferences for bulky masonry and flat, streamlined expanses of space is noteworthy. Kreis’s Soldiers’ Hall, specifically, reveals striking similarities with the crypt of St. Servatius in its matrix of rounded arches framing the focal point at the end of an axial hall. When Heinrich Himmler first saw St. Servatius he saw in it the past and future of the German empire. King Henry and St. Servatius were not simply tools of propaganda for the leader of the SS; rather, Himmler developed a

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deeply personal link with Henry and his rulership. He fancied himself a modern embodiment of the long forgotten Germanic feudal lord, for which King Henry was the standard. In the first German king Himmler found the historical underpinnings for his elitist SS ideology. Himmler even began to believe he could conjure up the spirit of King Henry, who would share with him advice about the organization and operation of the empire.8 He would often begin meetings with SS leaders by stating, “In this case King Henry would have done the following.”9 He soon began to consider himself the reincarnation of Henry I and within the SS was frequently called König Heinrich,10 highlighting what was for Himmler a fortuitous coincidence of matching names. Therefore, St. Servatius also began to be known simply by the SS as King Henry’s Cathedral (König Heinrichs Dom).11 Himmler found Henry’s ruthless military campaigns against eastern Untermenschen to be the most inspiring. During his relatively short reign Henry was almost constantly at war with eastern peoples, especially the Magyars. After a string of invasions and a nine-year truce early in his reign, Henry built a line of fortifications in the area around Quedlinburg to put a definitive halt to their marauding ventures into Saxony. Henry’s forces triumphantly defeated the Magyars in the battle of Riade on March 14, 933 when the Hungarians refused to fight.12 Henry’s aggressive campaigns against Slavic groups and the reestablishment of Saxon overlordship in Bohemia in 929 piqued the interest of Himmler as well. The Nazi historian Alfred Thoss, who wrote a biography of King Henry I published in 1936, noted a similar societal focus on race and farming in the first and third German empires.13 Thus, the Nazis were able to find historical underpinnings for their military advancements into Poland, Czechoslovakia, and beyond. The acquisition of land in the east for the virtuous German farmer in the 10th century vindicated the invasion of this territory in the 20th century. Thoss was utterly unambiguous in the historical picture he painted of the Germans’ right to eastern territory.14 Himmler was also aware of

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Reinhard Heydenreuter, Kunstraub: Die Geschichte des Quedlinburgers Stiftsschatzes (Munich: Bechtle, 1993), 186. “König Heinrich hätte in diesem Fall folgendes getan” (ibid.). Josef Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1970), 60, and Heydenreuter, Kunstraub, 186. Heydenreuter, Kunstraub, 187. Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Middle Ages: 800–1056 (London: Longman, 1991), 142–44. Alfred Thoss, Heinrich I., 919–936: Der Gründer des ersten Deutschen Volkreiches (Goslar: Blut und Boden Verlag, 1936; Bremen: Faksimile-Verlag-Versand, 1984), 8. Ibid., 98 and 100.

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King Henry’s policy in the East and used it to propagate the enduring importance of Lebensraum for the Volk. Himmler fashioned King Henry I into the medieval forerunner of the Nazis because of Henry’s ostensible unification of the Germans under his rule. Although the unification of the German Volk in the 10th century is a radically different concept than the modern nation-state, the Nazis capitalized on the notion of King Henry I as the original unifier of the Germans. Parallels to the current reunifiers of Germany, Hitler and Himmler, wedded the ideology of the Third Reich to a glorious German history. Thoss ended his account of Henry’s life assuring the rebirth of the empire under the new imperial leadership of the Führer. “The empire of honor and freedom that Henry created … it is resurrected in the third empire of Adolf Hitler and it will never again perish, because all Germans have become one people through strife and infamy!”15 However, provincial Quedlinburg would never have become the center for one of the most powerful leaders of the Nazi regime had it not been for another fortuitous coincidence. In 1935 an SS official discovered the plans of the city government of Quedlinburg to celebrate the one thousandth anniversary of Henry’s death in the following year. A letter to Himmler from ­Brigadenführer-SS Reischle, director of the Race Office (a division of the Race and Settlement Office), expressed the excitement within the SS about the propagandistic potential of the event: “If we present Henry I as the first German king, then the fact is that the millennium celebration next year would propagandistically be a literal gift from heaven.”16 Mid-ranking SS officials were assigned to the organization of the July 2 ceremonies and set up office in Quedlinburg, working in conjunction with a sympathetic city government to plan the festivities. A letter from Brigadenführer-SS Wolf to the Race and Settlement Office in December 1935 confirms the approval of the millennial celebration as a specifically SS celebration.17 Thus, the thousandth anniversary of the death of the primogenitor of the original German Reich at St. Servatius on July 2, 1936 became a spectacle of National Socialist pomp and propaganda. The SS transformed King Henry’s Cathedral into a medieval king’s hall for the momentous occasion; the pews were removed and royal blue velvet and the coats of arms from the regions 15 16 17

“Das Reich der Ehre und Freiheit, das [Heinrich] als erster erschaffen … es ist neu erstanden im Dritten Reich Adolf Hitlers, und es wird nie mehr untergehen können, weil alle Deutschen nach Zerrissenheit und Schmach ein Volk geworden sind !” (ibid., 185). “Wenn von uns Heinrich I. als erster deutscher König … herausgestellt werden muss, dann ist die Tatsache der Tausendjahrfeier im nächsten Jahr für uns propagandistisch geradezu ein Geschenk des Himmels” (Stadtarchiv Quedlinburg, XI 363 V 1–3). Stadtarchiv Quedlinburg, XI 363 V 5.

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of Henry’s empire adorned the walls of the nave.18 At the eastern end of the crossing a long black cloth embellished with the SS insignia covered the 14th-­ century Gothic choir.19 Das Schwarze Korps, the primary SS periodical, covered the Heinrich celebration with a short article and a stark image of the black cloth and SS lightning bolts towering over the empty nave.20 In the photograph of the exterior of the church published with Himmler’s speech from the 1936 Heinrich celebration, darkness shrouds the eastern choir and floodlights focus on the more purely Romanesque elements of the structure such as the rough cut masonry of the crossing and the imposing westwork. On July 2, 1936 1200 men from every party rank filled the nave of the church; Himmler entered shortly before midnight with other party dignitaries. The list of officials in attendance reads as a Who’s Who list of Nazi leaders: Darré, Frick, Bormann, Bouhler, Rust, Rosenberg, and Schirach, along with various police and provincial officials.21 When speaking to the solemn audience in the nave, Himmler emphasized the connectedness of St. Servatius to the glorious ­German past and its importance as a shrine.22 He praised St. Servatius as a “hall of God created with an assured Germanic sense.”23 Himmler reserved the pinnacle of the mystical July 2 ceremony for his personal tribute to Henry. At midnight he entered the darkened crypt with a select group of SS officials to lay a wreath of oak leaves, another symbol of German national identity, on Henry’s tomb. Numerous party publications which detailed the events also included tributes from Himmler to King Henry I.24 Local and regional newspapers, including the Quedlinburger Kreisblatt, Hallesche

18 19 20

Heydenreuter, Kunstraub, 181. Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 53. Das Schwarze Korps, 27 (July 8, 1936), in Facsimile Querschnitt durch das Schwarze Korps, ed. Helmut Heiber and Hildegard von Kotze (Munich: Scherz Verlag, 1968), 115. 21 Positions of the attendees were: Darré, Reich farmers’ leader and food minister; Frick, interior minister; Bormann, chief of the cabinet of the office of deputy Führer Rudolf Hess; Bouhler, head of the Hitler’s chancellery; Rust, education minister; Rosenberg, leader of the völkisch movement, head of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture), Reichstag delegate, and Reichsleiter; Schirach, head of the Hitler Jugend. 22 Heinrich Himmler, Rede des Reichsführers SS im Dom zu Quedlinburg am 2. Juli 1936 (­Berlin: Nordland Verlag, 1936), 20. 23 “aus sicherem germanischen Gefühl heraus geschaffenen Gotteshalle” (ibid.). 24 Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe, 61. A special edition of Germanien, the official journal of the Ahnenerbes e. V., from June 1936 included a forward from Himmler. Ackermann also notes at this point the popularity of questions about Henry I on SS entrance examinations, for example, “The importance of King Henry I to the Third Reich.”

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Nachrichten, and Der Mitteldeutsche, also devoted large features to the celebrations.25 The Heinrich celebration was overtly militaristic and highly ordered, like all other large-scale Nazi events. Everything from the minute-by-minute schedule of the day and the order of the procession to the musical selections was meticulously orchestrated and regimented. However, unlike Nuremberg party rallies or May Day celebrations, the Heinrich celebrations and the later “everyday” use of St. Servatius were intended chiefly for SS elites. Although the church was open for tourists throughout the year, with SS officers acting as guides, a continual problem becomes evident in the archive materials: how to direct visitor traffic within the church and control where the public can and cannot go.26 The primary concern was making sure no one got too close to Henry’s tomb, preserving sacred space within the church, and keeping the Volk ­separate from it. Not only was the formation of spectacle at Quedlinburg militaristic, elitist, and hierarchical, but it was also sexist and hyper-masculine. Although Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the Reichsfrauenführerin, appears on the VIP list, she does not appear in any of the published photographs. A notice also appeared in the Quedlinburger Kreisblatt shortly before July 2, 1936 forbidding the presence of women in St. Servatius for the celebration.27 No woman or girl is depicted in any of the photographs documenting the event. Mathilde’s role in her husband’s rule and the patronage of St. Servatius was also significantly downplayed in the celebrations. Her status as a Christian saint ultimately proved to be antithetical to Nazi rhetoric. Himmler detested Christianity and admired Henry’s political distance from the Church. Himmler resented Charlemagne’s violent Christianization of the Saxons, although Hitler saw the Carolingian as the true unifier of the empire.28 In a SS-Leitheft from 1937 Himmler explains in a very Nietzschean manner why the pure Germanic Volk was not naturally receptive to early medieval Christianization: “What is Christian, is not Germanic; what is Germanic, is not Christian! Masculine pride, valor, and loyalty are Germanic, not meekness, remorse, misery over

25

See Das Quedlinburger Kreisblatt, July 1, 1936; July 3, 1936. On later Heinrich celebrations see Der Mitteldeutsche July 3, 1941; Das Quedlinburger Kreisblatt, July 3, 1939; July 3, 1941; and Hallesche Nachrichten, July 3, 1940. 26 Stadtarchiv Quedlinburg, XI 363. 27 Das Quedlinburger Kreisblatt, July 1, 1936. 28 Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe, 56–57. Hitler forbade Himmler to remove Charlemagne’s title of “der Große” (“the Great”) and replace it with “Sachsenschlächter” (Saxon slaughterer). Because of the official National Socialist policy on Christianity Hitler simply had to forgive Charlemagne for his religious stance.

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sins, and a hereafter with prayer and psalms.”29 In seeking ties to King Henry, Himmler sought to restore the true will of the Germans, who had been subjugated to Christian ideology for an entire millennium.30 Mathilde also complicated the image of Henry as an independent, unconstrained ruler. The SS was not able to erase her existence since she is buried next to Henry. She is mentioned, therefore, in the celebration only as a model for modern German women because she was a wife who stood by her husband. In his address Himmler stated, “We lay a wreath on the stone sarcophagus of Queen Mathilde, who for over nine and a half centuries has been interred next to her spouse, the great king. We believe we also honor the great king when we elevate Queen Mathilde as a role model for German women.”31 Although Himmler liked to refer to King Henry as a Saxon Bauer, the spectacle also excluded the German workers and essentially disenfranchised the Volk. In his speech to the gathered dignitaries in St. Servatius, Himmler referred to Henry as a “a noble farmer of his people” and “the true son of his Saxon peasant home.”32 While the party elites gathered in the church, an alternative program was offered for the general public. Originally plans called for an elaborate medieval fair outside of town. The festivities were streamlined, however, to focus on displays of SS men’s strength and athleticism in the form of equestrian competitions and obstacle races.33 On the evening of 4 July a Volksfest should have been held at the market square, but had to be cancelled because of rain. The last official activity of the weekend was a sport demonstration by members of the Hitler Youth and Bund Deutscher Mädels.

29

“Was christlich ist, ist nicht germanisch; was germanisch ist, ist nicht christlich! Germanisch sind Mannesstolz, Heldenmut und Treue – nicht Sanftmut, Zerknirschung, ­Sündenelend und ein Jenseits mit Gebet und Psalmen.” SS-Leitheft, August 3, 1937, 12, quoted in Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe, 56. 30 Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe, 62. Within Himmler’s configuration of the relationship between the German Volk and Christianity not only is Henry featured as a Germanic hero, but other medieval rulers such as Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Duke Henry the Lion of Brunswick. Also, oddly enough, persecuted witches in early ­modern Germany, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were revered by Himmler. 31 “Wir legen auch einen Kranz auf dem Steinsarg der vor mehr als neuneinhalb Jahrhunderten neben ihrem Gatten bestatteten Königin Mathilde, des großen Königs großer Lebensgefährtin, nieder. Wir glauben auch damit den großen König zu ehren, wenn wir in seinem Sinn der Königin Mathilde, diesem Vorbild höchsten deutschen Frauentums, gedacht haben.” Himmler, Rede des Reichsführers, 19. 32 “ein edler Bauer seines Volkes”/ “der echte Sohn seiner sächsischen bäuerlichen Heimat.” Himmler, Rede des Reichsführers, 16; 8. 33 Stadtarchiv Quedlinburg XI 363 I 1; XI 362 I 6; Das Quedlinburger Kreisblatt, July 1, 1936.

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The elitist, restricted nature of the Heinrich celebrations at Quedlinburg becomes even more apparent when juxtaposed with the contemporary Nuremberg party rallies. The Nuremberg rallies ostensibly represented the entire Germanic nation and its traditions. The spectacle was not designed for a select few but in fact necessitated mass movement and mass formation. To borrow from Siegfried Kracauer, the Volk was transformed into mass ornament at Nuremberg.34 The imagined community was markedly different in Nuremberg than in Quedlinburg. There were no Arbeitsdienst parades and no throngs of adoring women dressed in traditional folk costumes to greet Himmler. The photographs published with Himmler’s speech exhibit an intimate quality not present in the dramatic panoramas of the Nuremberg party rallies. The self-consciously orchestrated aesthetic of these propaganda photos focused on small groups of staged SS dignitaries in various locations and always with Himmler as the focus. In the photographs of Himmler’s ascent of the castle hill and the ceremony in the nave, SS dignitaries frame Himmler. They walk alongside him and they gather around him to worship their medieval king. These images construct Himmler not as an exalted, distant leader, but the pater familias of the chosen few. Here, the intimate elitism of Himmler’s SS replaces the Volkgemeinschaft envisioned in Nuremberg. After the initial Heinrich celebration in 1936, a team of state architectural preservationists, historians, and SS leaders, all under the direction of Himmler, instigated a series of renovations in the church. These were intended to make the structure better conform to Himmler’s notion of early German history and his plans for the role of the SS in the new 1000-year Reich. Untersturmführer-SS Schmidt oversaw the Quedlinburg SS Arbeitsstab and needed to have all decisions and actions approved by the architecture scholars. Dr. Robert Hiecke, the federal conservator from Berlin, oversaw the renovations with Dr. Hermann Giesau, the provincial conservator from Halle. Historian Alfred Thoss from the Race and Settlement Office consulted on the project while working on a biography of Henry I published in time for the celebrations in 1936.35 SS Untersturmführer Schmidt directed the SS office in Quedlinburg and acted as the mediator between the preservationists and Himmler. One of the most apparent adjustments in the nave was the removal of overtly Christian elements—the pews, the altars, the pulpit, and the tombs of the abbesses which had filled the center of the main nave aisle. While these 34 35

Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament,” in Art in Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 462–65. Alfred Thoss, Heinrich I.

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elements clearly clashed with SS ideology, the Lutheran congregation, whose legal ownership of the church building had been confirmed in a contract from the Prussian king in 1854, was at first able to continue to hold services at St. Servatius. But in 1938 they were forced to turn over their keys to the SS.36 The chairs which replaced the pews were built in the workshops of Dachau concentration camp. SS Obersturmführer Dr. Höhne, who was also heavily involved in the renovations at St. Servatius, noted in a letter to Giesau the economical advantage of ordering the chairs from Dachau, a chilling calculation when considering the fate of the majority of those carpenters at the camp.37 There are also more subtle renovations in the nave. which were nevertheless crucial to SS ritual and ideology. Militaristic processions required wider stairs leading up to the choir. The decorative stone banisters were removed in order to streamline the ascent to the choir. The platform between the stairs and above the entrance to the crypt provided a speaking stand for Himmler and other leaders to address assembled SS men in the nave during rituals. Himmler’s taste for the Romanesque also necessitated the removal of the ­electric lighting system and its replacement by wrought iron light fixtures. These wrought iron fixtures designed for St. Servatius later became key elements in designs elsewhere, such as for the camp headquarters at ­Auschwitz-Birkenau.38 After German chemical giant IG Farben agreed to build a large plant in Auschwitz using forced labor and building materials from the nearby concentration camp, the SS commissioned designs for the expansion of the camp. Developed over the early years of the 1940s, the monumental plan was never fully realized, but it reflects SS anticipation of wealth from the slave labor of the prisoners contracted out to IG Farben. The SS headquarters was to be divided into five sections and serve as the main façade of the entire concentration camp. It was a complex multi-functional space including 36

37 38

Archival materials reveal a complex relationship between SS and church officials in which the Nazis often made extensive compromises to appease the congregation, although in the end the church did bow to SS demands. Hein, one of the pastors at St. Servatius, had been active in the resistance organization, Bekennende Kirche, which staged active resistance within the Protestant Church against the Nazi regime and its national religious movement, Die Deutschen Christen, from its inception in 1934 to the end of the war. Its well-known leader was the Lutheran pastor and concentration camp survivor, Martin Niemöller. For a more detailed account of the congregation’s relationship with the SS, see Hildebrandt, “Die Gewaltsame Inbesitznahme der Stiftskirche,” and Schultze, “Der Quedlinburger Dom.” Stadtarchiv Quedlinburg, XI 363 I 192. The following discussion is drawn from Debόrah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, ­Auschwitz: 1270 to Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), chap. seven, “IG Farben.”

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offices, observation towers, living quarters for SS men and their families, and a ceremonial hall. In drawings for the great hall and Himmler’s private suite, wrought iron torch holders and candelabras adorn otherwise severe, streamlined interiors. While some drawings were not completed until 1942, long after the ­renovations at St. Servatius were completed, this choice of light fixture in both instances illustrates strikingly how the seemingly purely aesthetic-based decision in actuality reveals motives connected to notions of German empire and medieval heritage. Auschwitz had been founded originally in 1270 as a German settlement. The Nazi selection of Auschwitz for the site of its largest work and extermination camp was not a coincidence but bound to a notion of recapturing the German East. The SS appropriation of the castle of Wewelsburg also speaks to alignment of the SS with medieval monuments signifying domination and power. The SS renovated the structure to use as an officers’ training school. Although it was built in the 17th century, archaeological excavations conducted in the 1920s revealed Saxon fortifications from the time of Henry I’s campaigns against the Magyars.39 The image of Quedlinburg as a bastion of the glory days of German imperialism was not lost on Himmler. Thus, the use of a premodern lighting system harkens to the Nazi quest to restore Henry’s conquests in the east. The largest architectural modification was the removal of the Gothic vaulting and lancet windows in the choir in favor of a highly-simplified smaller apse with a round stained-glass window depicting the German eagle perched atop a swastika.40 At Himmler’s request a dividing wall spatially separated the apse from the choir.41 The flat wooden ceiling of this addition emulated the ­Ottonian building tradition (Figure 12.2). The exterior of the choir retained the lancet windows and buttresses of the vaulting, creating a disruptive stylistic juxtaposition between interior and exterior. In the crypt the most significant renovation was the removal of the circular Gothic stained-glass window and the addition of a neoromanesque secular eagle window. Here as well, wrought iron candlesticks replaced the electric

39

40 41

Paul Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the Nazi Monumental Building Economy (New York: Routledge, 200), 124. For a more thorough account of the importance of Wewelsburg to Himmler and the SS see: Heinz Höhne, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf: Die Geschichte der SS (Munich: G. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1967), 143, and Heinrich Fraenkel and Roger Manvell, Himmler: Kleinbürger und Massenmörder (New York: Putnam, 1965), 55. Heydenreuter, Kunstraub, 187. Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 54.

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Figure 12.2 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Nave after SS-led reconstructions. 1938. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

lighting.42 The planks across the confessio, the smaller niche of the crypt that contains the sunken tombs, were also removed and an iron grate was installed over the top of the opening in order to draw attention to the tombs of Henry and Mathilde. However, the addition of chains separated the confessio from the rest of the crypt, indicating its sanctity. Five stone wreath holders ­positioned around the back of the confessio signified the ceremonial function of the space. 42

Ibid., 39.

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Although Himmler never returned to Quedlinburg after the outbreak of war and support for the development of the shrine diminished as more SS men were sent to the front, Hiecke continued to devise plans for future renovations. His drawings from 1944 reveal his peculiar vision for the shrine. The drawings express a juxtaposition of medieval and Christian elements with modern Nazi symbolism and austerity. This odd introduction of overt Christian symbolism such as the cross suspended in the crossing and Chi Rho symbol on the altar in the nave would have been blasphemous to Himmler. At this late stage in the war, though, he was never able to see these drawings.43 For Hiecke, however, there was no contradiction inherent in this mixture of symbolism, for he anticipated the reintroduction of Christian worship services at St. Servatius after the war.44 The twin towers of the westwork illustrated his diametrically opposed ideology: throughout the Third Reich one tower was adorned with a cross while the other was outfitted with the Nazi eagle. In Hiecke’s redesign of the choir the eagle window retained its prominent position. Underneath the window is the insignia of Henry I: a large “H” with the rest of the letters placed around it. Hiecke also added the Heinrichsmal, a small altar in front of the apse as the focus of rituals. On the side wall were to be the inscriptions of the places in Germany that shared a connection to King Henry I and were part of the foundation Himmler established for the memorialization of the medieval ­German ruler.45 Himmler’s medievalism and his patronage of art, as well as his role in ­cultural policy, are not typically discussed.46 For obvious reasons historical scholarship focuses on his ruthless calculation of the transport and extermination of those who did not fit into the Nazi Weltanschauung. Art historians have not taken much interest in Himmler; he was not an ardent collector like other Nazi elite such as Göring. My research has demonstrated that Himmler was heavily involved in cultural policy at Quedlinburg. He and his staff based design decisions on Himmler’s conception of early German medieval history and specifically the importance of the figure of King Henry I in constructing SS identity. When considering Himmler’s orchestration of the Heinrich celebrations and St. Servatius renovations with the slaughter of millions in concentration camps, an unsettling dichotomy emerges between a patron of the arts and mass executioner, festivity and brutality, the occult and the banality of evil. 43 44 45 46

Ibid., 57. Ibid., 57–58. Ibid., 55, 55n146, and 57. The exception is Jonathon Petropoulos’s brief section on Himmler in Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 212–20.

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Postwar Reckoning

Zero hour in Quedlinburg looked very different than the utter destruction of similar-sized historical centers in the Harz region. The town was spared the instruments of modern warfare that decimated other nearby historical ­monuments in Halberstadt, Hildesheim, and Magdeburg. Artillery fire slightly damaged the roofs of the tower and the westwork, the only destruction done to the church as a direct result of war. The mayor had committed suicide after destroying many photographs and documents, and the SS officials stationed in Quedlinburg to oversee activities at the church moved out in the spring. As late as May 1945 documents from the Quedlinburg city archives reveal correspondence between SS officials, the mayor, and the utilities company about paying the church’s electric bill.47 American troops reached Quedlinburg first on April 19, 1945. On July 1, along with the entire province of Saxony, Quedlinburg became part of the Soviet sector. On June 3, 1945 the congregation of St. Servatius decided to resanctify the structure and held their first service since Easter 1938. They had spent the ­intermittent years in the Blasii Church also in Quedlinburg. While the sparse literature on the SS appropriation of the church situates St. ­Servatius as a site of Protestant resistance to the Nazi regime, the church’s staffing choices after the war reveal a much more complicated narrative.48 Specifically, the ­Protestant church’s provincial building office in Magdeburg commissioned Robert Hiecke as advisor for the rebuilding and renovation project immediately after the war.49 The congregation and church officials saw the choice of Hiecke as the choice of a professional with decades of experience and firsthand knowledge of the church. However, his intimate familiarity with St. Servatius came while working on the SS-led alterations. As the chief ­Prussian conservator of monuments from 1918 to 1945, leader of the monuments division of 47 48

49

Stadtarchiv Quedlinburg, XI 364 X. After the dissolution of the original community of canonesses in 1803, the Lutheran congregation’s legal ownership of the church building had been confirmed in a contract from the Prussian king in 1854. For a further discussion of the congregation and their confrontation with the SS, see Franz Hildebrandt, “Die Gewaltsame Inbesitznahme der Stiftskirche in Quedlinburg,” and Willi Schultze, “Der Quedlinburger Dom als Kultstätte der SS.” The following discussion of the conservation process after the war comes primarily from Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche, 1945–53 and AA337, Quedlinburg Stiftskirche, 1953–60 and Hans Berger, “Die denkmalpflegerischen Maßnahmen seit 1945,” in Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 136–40.

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Figure 12.3 Quedlinburg, St. Servatius. Nave after first wave of postwar renovations. Photograph courtesy of Halle, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Archiv

the Reichsbund Volkstum und Heimat until its dissolution in 1935, and NSDAP member, Hiecke formed the crucial link between the SS and architectural preservation.50 Hiecke oversaw a group of middle managers from various organizations during the reconstruction (Figure 12.3). A certain Untersturmführer-SS Schmidt 50

There is no mention of Hiecke’s past political involvements in Voigtländer’s Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii and a critical investigation of Hiecke’s career is still absent from the scholarly literature.

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oversaw the Quedlinburg SS Arbeitsstab and needed to have all decisions and actions approved by Hiecke. Schmidt often acted as the mediator between the preservationists and Himmler. Dr. Hermann Giesau, the provincial conservator from Halle from 1930 to 1945, coordinated a lot of the work with Hiecke and often represented him at on-site meetings. In contrast to Hiecke, Giesau expressed a certain amount of reservation and criticism regarding the SS-­ instigated renovations. Although he had been a member of the NSDAP since 1937, Giesau remained unconvinced by the alterations and often withdrew himself from public events at the church. He was not able to continue working under Hiecke after the war, however, as he was sent to an internment camp for a year, after which he received a Berufsverbot in 1946.51 As is the case with the SS-dictated renovation of St. Servatius in which the vision of a cohesive Romanesque monument necessitated the removal of historical elements from other periods, general trends in postwar architectural preservation practices also called for a unified aesthetic in a structure, even if it meant the demolition of building material. The so-called “Hallerian Way” in architectural preservation was a name granted after 1945 for Giesau, the provincial conservator in Halle, and his influential role in the development of this mode of thinking.52 This shift in attitude in the Hallerian Way favored early medieval architecture of the Ottonians and Salians and allowed for the guiltless removal of later additions to such structures, especially 19th-century renovations. While preservationists saw little artistic value in Baroque and 19th-century altars, frescoes, and ornamentations, they nevertheless sought to complete historically significant buildings with their own modern alterations and supplements to create an entirely unified early medieval aesthetic. Unlike Giesau who began to reflect on the moral implications of the alterations even before 1945, his superior Hiecke never exhibited any similar self-criticism or inner struggles with his own Nazi past. Hiecke transitioned seamlessly into postwar plans for St. Servatius. Perhaps because he had escaped the indictment and imprisonment that Giesau had endured, Hiecke was never forced to confront his involvement in the Nazi regime. Yet there were many professionals in cultural fields who managed to avoid any loss of position or overt denazification procedures. What is different about Hiecke’s stance is not only the continuity in his involvement at St. Servatius but also the practice of architectural preservation itself. The principles of the Hallerian 51 52

Andreas Stahl, “Der Provinzialkonservator Hermann Giesau,” in “Es thvn iher viel Fragen . . .”: Kunstgeschichte in Mitteldeutschland, Hans-Joachim Krause gewidmet (Petersburg: Michael Imhoff Verlag, 2001), 263. Stahl, “Der Provinzialkonservator Hermann Giesau,” 249–51.

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Way encouraged free license with the destruction and recreation of historical building material, which adhered to the skewed perspective of German history promoted not only by the SS but also later by the party officials in the German Democratic Republic. In the postwar era the Hallerian Way easily adhered to the larger post-1945 phenomenon of repression of recent history and the desire for a politically neutral collective national identity. The unwillingness or inability on the local level to confront St. Servatius’s unsavory past exemplifies the silence surrounding the crimes of the Third Reich on the larger East German political stage. When the Federal Republic declared itself to be the heir of the Nazi regime, East Germany declared itself the anti-fascist state and focused on the persecution of communists in its Nazi-era narratives.53 The Holocaust was subsumed under party rhetoric and ideology as the GDR refused to pay reparations to Israel or survivors, purged party members who sought to give Jewish persecution greater prominence, and supported Israel’s enemies. East Germany distinguished between fighters of fascism and victims of fascism, creating a hierarchy of survivors, elevating the communists and marginalizing the Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, and homosexuals. The suppression of the Holocaust in East German historical narratives ultimately transformed Germans into the victims of a fascist regime. In turn government officials legitimated their own rule, since the socialist path was seen as the only viable alternative to western capitalism and imperialism which had spawned fascist rule in Germany. The medieval masonry of St. Servatius, as a remnant of a more distant, less painful past, was used to construct a new brand of national identity in the wake of the Third Reich and to circumvent a direct confrontation with East ­Germany’s recent traumatic past. The cultural and historical amnesia that befell both Germanys in the immediate postwar years was not a complete turning away from history, but instead the selective highlighting of particular histories that involved less painful soul-searching. Compared to other like-sized towns in the area, Quedlinburg was a gleaming bastion of German medieval heritage. The Gothic cathedral and half dozen Romanesque churches of the former bishopric of Halberstadt, 10 km down the road from Quedlinburg, lay almost entirely in ruins. Not only had Quedlinburg’s Gothic town hall and marketplace survived the bombardments, but there were also no major Nazi military compounds or concentration camps in the vicinity to complicate the historical erasure. In addition, in contrast to the large orthodox population 53

The following discussion is drawn from the most comprehensive investigation of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

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in Halberstadt, only a handful of Jewish families inhabited Quedlinburg. ­Consequently, the preservation of St. Servatius could be used as an important project for national identity rooted in a whitewashed, distant past. Because these other centers of early medieval German history had been completely leveled (Halberstadt, Magdeburg), the significance of the medieval material culture of Quedlinburg was heightened and this material culture became the ­symbol of the past grandeur of the early medieval empire for a wider audience of G ­ erman scholars and architectural preservationists. After the removal of the eagle and swastika tracery of the east choir window and other SS cult objects, the first goal of postwar priority of St. Servatius was the condition of the westwork towers. Not only did both spires succumb to direct artillery hits, but also the southwest tower proved especially problematic for the structural integrity of the entire building. Prussian conservator of monuments Ferdinand von Quast meant for this tower, built 1872–82, to complete the westwork ensemble, but two decades later it had already separated itself from the church because of the unstable foundation on the sandstone cliffs. Originally discussions centered around dismantling the tower not simply for structural concerns but also because the tower represented what Hiecke and others still saw as a 19th-century blemish on the medieval façade.54 While the tower remained, the spires, in need of repair, were redesigned significantly. Instead of the taller, narrower spires, constructed by von Quast’s team and more characteristic of medieval tower terminations from the Rhineland, squatter tetrahedron roofs capped both towers modeled after the oldest surviving visual representation of St. Servatius done by Braun and Hogenberg in 1582.55 This was not the first time Hiecke raised this suggestion; in 1941 he also pushed for the removal of the 19th-century spires and their replacement with the local, Lower Saxon tradition of tetrahedron roofs.56 On the surface it appears as if there is nothing inherently intertwined with Nazi ideology in this decision. Because Hiecke had thought about the jarring stylistic disjunction in 1941 and again in 1946 does not immediately reveal a lingering SS agenda at St. Servatius. 54 55

56

File notes from Hermann Wäscher, June 13, 1946 (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 1945–53, 12). Hiecke’s drawing from December 1944 illustrates the shorter spires which were realized a few years later (Henry’s Cathedral in Quedlinburg, View from the east, December 1944, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 1945–53, 190). For the Braun and Hogenberg drawing see Voigtländer, Die Stifskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, plate 1, and Berger, “Die denkmalpflegerischen Maßnahmen,” in ibid., 136. LHASA, MG, Rep C 28 II, 8813, 37-front; quoted in Voigtländer, Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg, 135.

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Yet this emphasis on using local building materials and local building t­ raditions spawns from a very völkisch mode of thinking in which building materials reflect the very attributes of the German civilization which ­Weimar and Nazi-era ideologues believed to make them superior to other cultures.57 Combined with the Hallerian Way of architectural preservation, which destroyed as much historical material as it created in the name of stylistic unity, it served the needs of not only the Third Reich but also the fledgling German Democratic Republic. The dedication festivities for the southeast tower on June 11, 1948 also expose the East German public’s inability to work through the larger implications of the SS appropriation of St. Servatius. The speech of city council chairman Stolze is particularly unnerving in its aggressive nationalism at what was presented as the dedication of a reconstruction project at a resanctified Lutheran house of worship. Besides using this opportunity to call for a single German unity a few months before the founding of the German Democratic Republic in October, Stolze also stressed the erasure of St. Servatius’s dark past “in order to create good from the old and design the necessary new.”58 He concluded by proclaiming, “I thank the Lord, who predetermined me to be German, I thank the mother, who delivered me German, I thank the ground, which radiates German, I thank the people, who raised me German! Germany, my Fatherland!”59 After structural work was finished on the westwork and spires, reconstruction of the interior of the choir, an ideologically more complicated task, started in the early 1950s. Already in 1945 the eagle and swastika masonry had been removed from the choir window before the first postwar Lutheran service in St. Servatius. In 1953 the eagle and swastika window in the choir was completely removed and walled over, but the masonry of the now bare apse reveals clearly the outline of where it once was. Pulpit and altars restored the Christian appearance of the interior. The altars served not only liturgical functions, but also were strategically placed to diminish the monumentality of the 57 58

59

For a comprehensive analysis of political and cultural implications of building material in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich see Christian Fuhrmeister, Beton, Klinker, Granit, Material, Macht, Politik: Eine Materialikonographie (Berlin: Verlag Bauwesen, 2001). “um aus dem Alten das Gute zu schöpfen und das notwendige Neue zu gestalten.” Part of the “Ansprache” by Quedlinburg city council chairman Stolze at the dedication of the second westwork tower of St. Servatius on June 11, 1948 (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 1945–53, 114). Emphasis mine. “Ich danke dem Herrgott, der deutsch mich erkoren, Ich danke der Mutter, die deutsch mich geboren, Ich danke dem Boden, der deutsche mich durchglüht, Ich danke dem Volke, das deutsche mich erzieht! Deutschland, mein Vaterland!” (Landesamt für ­Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 1945–53, 114).

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streamlined Romanesque interior. In 1953 one altar was placed in the apse specifically to divert attention away from the bareness. A late 16th-century triptych altarpiece from St. Jacobs in Sangershausen added in the mid 1970s contributed to this effect. Another altar and crucifix were placed in front of the crypt entrance in the late 1950s to remove some of the visual focus from the crypt, which had been the nexus of SS rituals. Other Nazi alterations, such as the staircases to the choir, were retained after the war. Partially due to the dire economic situation in the eastern sector in the early years after the war or what appeared to be the minor, purely formal nature of some of the Nazi renovations, they were allowed to remain. The rebuilding of the Gothic choir came into debate after World War II when reconstruction of the westwork towers began. After German reunification in 1990 the question of rebuilding the Gothic choir arose again, but inspectors expressed concern about the structural integrity of the church.60 Officials declared the project unnecessary in both historical moments when demand for housing and the rebuilding of urban infrastructure overrode most other building concerns. After World War II conservators also decided the neoromanesque ­better suited a unified aesthetic in the church. In 1989 Berger even commended the SS-led renovations: “The suggestion of a partial de-restoration contradicts the desire for a building of appropriate and unified bearing and coherence of the aesthetic impressions for which the historic preservationists have worked for thirty years and with questionable means have achieved.”61 Thus, the political connections between Himmler’s choice of the Romanesque aesthetic and SS ideology were ignored blatantly in the name of a unified style. Giesau seems to have been the lone voice of dissent when writing in 1946 that the removal of the SS additions should be considered.62 St. Servatius is not the only example of this overlooking of less overt ideological renovations. Most did not view the severe, streamlined aesthetic, which resulted from Nazi reconstructions, as problematic after the war because they did not perceive any deeper connection to SS ideology, but instead saw a parallel to sleek modern design.63 60 61

62 63

I am grateful to Friedemann Goßlau for providing me with this information. “Der Vorschlag einer teilweisen Entrestaurierung … widersprach den auch dem Wunsch nach der dem Bau gebührenden einheitlichen Haltung und Geschlossenheit des künsterlischen Eindrucks, den die Denkmalpflege der dreissiger Jahre angestrebt und – wenn auch mit fragwürdigen Mittelen – erreicht hatte.” Berger, “Die denkmalpflegerischen Maßnahmen,” 138. Stadtbauamt Gernrode, Sammlung Gernrode, quoted in Andreas Stahl, “Provinzialkonservator Hermann Giesau,” 258. The other most well-known example of a Nazi renovation of a medieval church is the cathedral of Brunswick. See James A. van Dyke and Christian Fuhrmeister, “Zeitlose

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Indeed, even Giesau, the official most conflicted about the SS-instigated reconstruction, used the medieval masonry of St. Servatius, as a remnant of a less fraught past, to construct a new brand of East German national identity which avoided direct confrontation with National Socialism. His desire to “cleanse” Third Reich events is a prime example of the cultural and historical amnesia that befell both Germanys in the immediate postwar years. Instead of a complete turning away from history it represents an orchestrated selection of particular histories that involved less painful soul-searching, similar to the selective preservationist practices of the Hallerian Way. From the beginning Giesau expressed major reservations about the SS appropriation of a sacred object for their own propagandistic purposes in the church. The medieval treasury was of particular concern for him. In spring 1938 he described to Hiecke his deep disappointment with the removal of the treasury objects from the church; however, he also admits that he was able to follow along and see the potential in this building project with the SS.64 While it is clear that Giesau was not unequivocally executing the will of Himmler or Hiecke, anyone who joined the SA in 1933 and the NSDAP in 1937, and went along with the profanation, destruction, and reconstruction of an almost 800 year old church is a far cry from a resistance fighter. It is especially unclear if Andreas Stahl’s claim that Giesau belonged to the resistance group centered around Theodor Lieser in Halle is grounded in a trusted source.65 The only definitive conclusion we can find for Giesau’s position is the one he provides in which he labels himself as “an onlooker and aesthetic complainer.”66

64 65 66

Kunst und moderne(s) Gestalten im Braunschweiger Dom,” in Deutsche Kunst 1933–1945 in Braunschweig: Kunst im Nationalsozialismus, Katalog zur Ausstellung, ed. Eyke Isensee (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000). Van Dyke and Fuhrmeister assert how people after 1945 no longer saw the politically motivated elements of the Nazi-led renovation as controversial or problematic, but instead connected their monumentality and austerity to the tenets of modernist architecture. Letter from Giesau to Hiecke, May 2, 1938, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 1935–38, 65. Stahl’s own textual source for this information is a letter from Professor Günther Schmid of the University of Halle. Writing in 1946, perhaps as a way to retrofit a less complicated narrative on to the past, his description of Giesau’s work is full of hyperbole. “Zuschauer und ästhetischer Meckerer” (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 1945–53, 60). Giesau did not slip through the cracks of postwar denazification processes as Hiecke had. When he received a Berufsverbot in 1946, scholars from the west zones found him a position as an instructor for architectural preservation at the Technical School of Aachen beginning in 1949. Giesau only survived his new appointment by six months. For more on the careers of art professionals during and after the Third Reich see Jonathan Petropoulos, The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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As the crimes of the Nazi past faded ever more in light of Cold War concerns in the divided Germanys, conservators on both sides of the Iron Curtain mobilized the medieval grandeur of St. Servatius to couch resentment and sorrow over the break-up of the German state. Hans Berger, a trained architect and Giesau’s ideological successor in the provincial preservation office, reminded the county commission in Halle of the significance of St. Servatius not only for all of Germany but for European art and architectural history.67 City councilwoman Ilse Günther’s article in the October 16, 1957 Neues Deutschland exploits the medieval history of St. Servatius both to fan the flames of Cold War rhetoric and give an open plea for building materials: Many ancient cities have lost their buildings through imperialist wars, while Quedlinburg was spared except for minimal damages. In the years of the “thousand-year empire” the city was granted little care …. In order to prevent the threat of continued decline we require expedited material support. We know that the costs for these repairs for our thousand-year city are large. In the interest of the residents there is only one possibility—quickly begin with the restoration work.68 By claiming the city received no attention between 1933 and 1945 Günther is not acknowledging the annual Heinrich celebrations between 1936 and 1945 and the SS involvement previously laid out here. In both of these instances the authors reference the medieval history of St. Servatius to counter the crimes of the present, which are not only those committed by the Nazi regime but the allies’ division of Germany as well. In 1962 West German conservators toured major sites of reconstruction in the GDR, establishing solidarity with their eastern compatriots. In ­Heinrich Kreisel’s report on the excursion he praises conservation efforts in East ­Germany and notes how the preservation of monuments draws both ­Germanys spiritually and culturally closer. Kreisel notes how this struggle on both sides 67 68

Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 337 1953–60. “Viele altertümliche Städte haben durch den imperialistischen Raubkrieg ihre Bauwerke verloren, Quedlinburg ist bis auf kleinere Schäden vor der Zerstörung bewahrt geblieben. In den Jahren des ‘tausendjährigen Reiches’ hat man der Stadt wenig Pflege angedeihen lassen …. Um den drohenden weiteren Verfall aufzuhalten, benötigen wir schnelle materielle Hilfe. Wir wissen, dass die Kosten für die Erhaltung unserer tausendjährigen Stadt gross sind. Im Interesse ihrer Einwohner gibt es aber nur eine Möglichkeit – bald mit den Restaurierungsarbeiten anzufangen.” Ilse Günther, “Stadtbild bleibt erhalten,” Neues Deutschland, October 16, 1957, no. 245 (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie AA Quedlinburg Schlosskirche 337 1953–60.).

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of the wall to rebuild from the near complete annihilation draws conservators together in their demanding task.69 When describing the stay in Quedlinburg, Kreisel becomes perceptibly emotional in his description of the city’s medieval architecture. He expresses grief knowing that St. Servatius is separated from nearby medieval monuments in West German towns such as Hildesheim or Goslar, but no grief concerning the crimes that led to the division of Germany. Besides sidestepping Quedlinburg’s conspicuous connection to the SS and the Third Reich, Kreisel does not acknowledge the connection between the destruction of these medieval monuments in World War II and the cause of that war.70 When the Federal Republic of Germany officially reunited with the ­German Democratic Republic in 1990 another narrative of loss and retribution took precedence in Quedlinburg. The mysterious disappearance of a collection of medieval manuscripts and reliquaries from St. Servatius’s treasury at the end of the war also accented a narrative of German victimhood. The miraculous return of these treasures has diverted scholarly focus away from a reconsideration of the SS activity at St. Servatius until recently. The priceless goldscripted medieval manuscripts and ivory reliquaries had been transferred from the church to a cave in the nearby foothills of the Harz mountains during the war.71 In the chaos and confusion in the spring and summer of 1945, a few of the carefully inventoried boxes went missing without drawing much attention. The culprit, Lieutenant Joe Tom Meador of the U.S. Army’s Eighty-seventh Armored Field Artillery Battalion, remained unidentified for the rest of his life, quietly enjoying the treasures as a dilettantish art aficionado in northern Texas. After his death in 1980, his siblings first tried to sell the precious works at a garage sale, completely unaware of their value and provenance. After coming into contact with an art dealer in Dallas, however, he helped them sell the 9th-century Samuhel Gospels in Switzerland in 1982. Although scholars and buyers easily recognized the piece as one of the missing Quedlinburg manuscripts, they were only able to sit by and observe. In 1990 the West German 69 70 71

Heinrich Kreisel, “Die Tagung und Besichtigungsfahrten der Denkmalpfleger im Juni 1962 in Niedersachsen und Mitteldeutschland,” Kunstchronik 15 (September 1962): 234–46 at 242. Ibid.: 244. Here I am only able to provide a rudimentary overview of this fascinating story as it specifically relates to Nazi memory in Quedlinburg. For fuller accounts see, Friedemann Goßlau, Verloren, Gefunden, Heimgeholt: Die Wiedervereinigung des Quedlinburger Domschatzes (Quedlinburg: Quedlinburg Druck, 1996), and William H. Honan, Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard (New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1997).

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governmental organization, Kultur Stiftung der Länder, was able to purchase the Samuhel Gospels for a finder’s fee of three million dollars and the treasures’ journey back to Quedlinburg followed in rapid succession. As Germans tore down the Berlin Wall with pick axes and sledge hammers, the Meador family was uncovered in northern Texas by a West German lawyer and a New York Times reporter and the remaining medieval treasures were found. For various legal reasons the treasures were displayed publicly for the first time in almost 50 years at the Dallas Museum of Art. Shockingly, the accompanying catalogue mentions nothing of the dubious context for the exhibition.72 The congregation of St. Servatius, the rightful owners, received the manuscripts and treasures in an official ceremony in St. Servatius on ­September 19, 1993. In the speech of Klaus Maurice, general secretary of Kultur Stiftung der Länder, the reunification of the treasury objects with St. Servatius becomes a parallel to the fledgling reunified German republic. Maurice states, “The treasury is again reunited with the place, with which the founding of the German empire 1150 years ago is also connected. The return of the treasury works has become a symbol of the unification of the state.”73 Maurice also goes on to draw parallels between the disappearance of the treasures and the forced expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe following the Nazi defeat. “In contrast to the infinite number of people, who in the course of German history have been expelled and for whom the acknowledgement of their imposed foreignness persists in their involuntary emigration, this treasure is returning.”74 Here, Maurice’s reference to Germans driven from their homes throughout the course of history is a thinly veiled allusion to a specific group of expellees (Vertriebene)—the ethnic Germans in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and elsewhere forcibly removed from their homes in the quest to create purely ethnically homogeneous states after World War II. The celebration of the return of key pieces of the St. Servatius treasury after an almost 50-year absence becomes a stage on which to reflect on other injustices done to Germans after World War II.

72 73

74

See Anne Bromberg, ed., The Quedlinburg Treasury (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1991). “[D]er Schatz ist wieder vereint an einem Ort, mit dem die Gründung des Deutschen Reiches vor 1150 Jahren verbunden ist. Die Rückkehr dieses Schatzes wurde deshalb auch zu einem Zeichen der Einheit dieses Staates.” Klaus Maurice, September 19, 1993, Quedlinburg. Quoted in Goßlau, Verloren, Gefunden, Heimgeholt, 70. “Im Gegensatz zu unendlich vielen Menschen, die der Lauf der deutschen Geschichte vertrieb und denen nach unfreiwilliger Emigration der Anerkennung ihrer aufgezwungenen Fremde versagt blieb, kehrt der Schatz zurück.” Maurice. Quoted in Goßlau, ­Verloren, Gefunden, Heimgeholt, 68.

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While Vertriebene organizations are not active in the region around Quedlinburg, other forms of right-wing extremism exploded in the former East Germany in the early 1990s and Neonazi visits to St. Servatius demonstrate how these groups continue to capitalize on the history of the building in their self-definition. In July 1991 a group of 12 men dressed in boots and black leather bomber jackets carrying a flag with the imperial eagle arrived at St. Servatius for a guided tour with the deacon, Werner Bley.75 They rolled up the flag in the church and attentively listened to Bley’s tour. The incident took place in the crypt, at the grave of King Henry I, when they photographed the interior, despite the restriction on photography due to the delicate condition of the Romanesque frescoes. While the visit remained an isolated occurrence that year, it represents one of many confrontations between right-wing extremists, repressed history, and difficult transitions in Quedlinburg in the early 1990s.76 Given the socio-political situation a confrontation with the SS past at St. ­Servatius has been slow to develop in Quedlinburg. When I first visited the church as a tourist in 2001 there was only the most cursory mention of the Heinrich celebrations and no indication of what parts of the building were remnants of the SS-instigated alterations. With a 2003 symposium and the 2004 opening of a permanent exhibition on the propagandistic abuse of medieval history and architecture in Quedlinburg there has been a productive start to serious memory work. Co-sponsored by the Heinrich-Böll Foundation of Sachsen-Anhalt, the castle museum of Quedlinburg, and the Museum ­Association of Sachsen-Anhalt, the symposium assembled a group of interdisciplinary scholars to discuss publicly the Nazi past of St. Servatius for the first time ever. As Antje Vollmer, vice president of the Bundestag, declared in her opening words, “The reprocessing of the Quedlinburg National Socialist ­history, which has hitherto hardly occurred, presents a blank spot in German historiography.”77 Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt explains in his contribution detailing 75 76

77

“‘Hier herrscht seit ’33 Diktatur,’” Der Spiegel, no. 46, 1992. At that time the National German Party (NPD) and Republicans garnered 15 to 20 per cent of the votes in local elections. Within a few years Neonazi youth attacked a home for handicapped children, beat refugees and leftist peace protesters at the asylum home, and created a general atmosphere of hopelessness and unease in an area that has struggled since reunification. At the publication of the Spiegel article, the official unemployment rate of Quedlinburg was 18 per cent, while up to 44 per cent of the 27,000 residents were deemed “without an occupation.” “Die Auferarbeitung der Quedlinburger NS-Geschichte stellt, da bislang kaum geschehen, einen ‘weissen Fleck’ in der deutschen Historiographie dar.” Antje Vollmer, “Grußwort,” in Geschichte und Propaganda: Die Ottonen im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus, ed. ­Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt (Halle: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen-Anhalt, 2005), 9–10.

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the exhibition concept that some in Quedlinburg felt the musealization of the topic would lead to further visits to the site by right-wing extremist groups.78 However, the exhibit “History and Propaganda: The Ottonians in the Shadow of National Socialism” (“Geschichte und Propaganda: Die Ottonen im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus”) opened without incident and is now a component to the castle museum’s permanent exhibit. As part of the exhibit area, “On the Trail of the Ottonians” (“Auf den Spuren der Ottonen”), it is contained in one of the smallest rooms in the entire exhibit, a cellar of about 36 m2. An interactive CD-ROM provides more in-depth information on various topics from the reception of Henry I in the 19th century to the texts of Himmler’s speeches given at St. Servatius, thus more fully utilizing the cramped space. But perhaps the final panel of the display, which chronicles the persecution, deportation, and murder of a Roma girl from Quedlinburg, is the most effective element of the exhibit. In a small town that had no large Jewish population and was far removed from the death camps further east, drawing this connection between the SS appropriation and alteration of St. Servatius and the brutal genocidal policies of the Nazi regime elevates this exhibit to a deeper, more significant confrontation with the past. However, Quedlinburg is a rural town left physically unscathed in the war and now consists of an aging, dwindling population. Working through the city’s unsavory history remains on this more restrained level in the form of small exhibitions and brief allusions in tourist-oriented texts on city history. The most indelible marks of the Third Reich remain confined to St. Servatius, although the SS also expropriated the 11th-century St. Wiperti crypt chapel to use it as a shrine.79 Hence, the broader geography of memory in Quedlinburg remains sparse and barren, with only the occasional Neonazi demonstration or World War II commemoration bubbling up to the surface of the public consciousness. Yet St. Servatius still stands on the castle hill looking down on the winding cobblestone lanes and half-timbered facades. Thus, the challenge of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, coming to terms with the past, in Quedlinburg means incorporating the complicated historical layers of St. Servatius into the city’s larger fairytale image of medieval German building traditions (preserved in the city since 1994 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The inclusion of new exhibitions 78 79

Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt, “Die Ausstellungskonzeption von ‘Geschichte und Propoganda’ im Quedlinburger Schlossmuseum,” in Geschichte und Propaganda, 11–18 at 11. I am also grateful to Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt for personal correspondence on these topics. St. Wiperti was often a part of the earlier Heinrich celebrations in the 1930s. The SS led minor renovations on the chapel at the same time as the St. Servatius project and planned for an entire SS agrarian community centered on the farm which owned the chapel at the time. A comprehensive study has yet to be conducted.

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in the castle museum points towards this direction of an informed awareness of the processes of renovation, reassessment, and redemption in St. Servatius. Works Cited Ackermann, Josef. Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1970. Berger, Hans. “Die denkmalpflegerischen Maßnahmen seit 1945.” In Klaus Voigtländer. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. 136–40. Boeckh, Margit. Die Strasse der Romanik. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2001. Bromberg, Anne, ed. The Quedlinburg Treasury. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1991. Dwork, Debórah, and Jan van Pelt. Auschwitz: 1270 to Present. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. Dyke, James A. van, and Christian Fuhrmeister. “Zeitlose Kunst und moderne(s) Gestalten im Braunschweiger Dom.” In Deutsche Kunst 1933–1945 in Braunschweig: Kunst im Nationalsozialismus, Katalog zur Ausstellung. Ed. Eyke Isensee. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000. Findeisen, Peter. Geschichte der Denkmalpflege Sachsen-Anhalt von den Anfängen bis in das erste Drittel des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1990. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Von deutscher Baukunst. 1773. Rudelstadt: Hain ­Verlag, 1997 (repr.). Goßlau, Friedemann. Verloren, Gefunden, Heimgeholt: Die Wiedervereinigung des Quedlinburger Domschatzes. Quedlinburg: Quedlinburg Druck, 1996. Fraenkel, Heinrich, and Roger Manvell. Himmler: Kleinbürger und Massenmörder. New York: Putnam, 1965. Fuhrmeister, Christian. Beton, Klinker, Granit, Material, Macht, Politik: Eine Materialikonographie. Berlin: Verlag Bauwesen, 2001. Heiber, Helmut, and Hildegard von Kotze, eds. Facsimile Querschnitt durch das Schwarze Korps: Facsimile Querschnitt durch Zeitungen und Zeitschriften. Vol. 12. Munich: Scherz Verlag, 1968. Helzl, Franz. Ein König, ein Reichsführer und der wilde Osten: Heinrich I. in der ­nationalen Selbstwahrnehmung der Deutschen. Bielefeld: Transcript 2004. Herf, Jeffrey. Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys. Cambridge, MA: ­Harvard University Press, 1997. Heydenreuter, Reinhard. Kunstraub: Die Geschichte des Quedlinburger Stiftsschatzes. Munich: Bechtle, 1993. Hildebrandt, Franz. “Die Gewaltsame Inbesitznahme der Stiftskirche in Quedlinberg.” In Ich glaube eine heilige Kirche: Festschrift für D. Hans Asmussen zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Walter Bauer et al. Stuttgart: Evangelische Verlagswerk, 1963. 105–14.

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Himmler, Heinrich. Rede des Reichsführers SS im Dom zu Quedlinburg am 2. Juli 1936. Berlin: Nordland Verlag, 1936. Höhne, Heinz. Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf: Die Geschichte der SS. Munich: G. ­Bertelsmann Verlag, 1967. Honan, William H. Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1997. Jaskot, Paul. The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the Nazi ­Monumental Building Economy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Kellogg-Krieg, Annah. “Restored, Reassessed, Redeemed: The SS Past at the ­Collegiate Church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg.” In Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities ­Confront the Nazi Past. Ed. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot. Ann Arbor: ­University of Michigan Press, 2008. 209–30. Knape, Rose-Marie. Strasse der Romanik. Ed. Christian Antz. Halle: Verlag Janos ­Stekovics, 2001. Koshar, Rudy. Germany’s Transient Past: Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Kracauer, Siegfried. “The Mass Ornament.” In Art in Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 462–65. Kreisel, Heinrich. “Die Tagung und Besichtigungsfahrten der Denkmalpfleger im Juni 1962 in Niedersachsen und Mitteldeutschland.” Kunstchronik 15 (September 1962): 234–46. Lane, Barbara Miller. National Romanticism and Modern Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lane, Barbara Miller. “National Romanticism in Modern German Architecture.” In Studies in the History of Art. Vol. 29. Symposium Papers XIII: Nationalism in the Visual Arts. Ed. Richard Etlin. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991. 110–47. Lewis, Michael J. The Politics of German Gothic Revival: August Reichensperger. New York: Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press, 1993. Mühldorfer-Vogt, Christian. “Die Ausstellungskonzeption von ‘Geschichte und Propoganda’ im Quedlinburger Schlossmuseum.” In Geschichte und Propaganda: Die Ottonen im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus. Ed. Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt. Halle/ Saale: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen-Anhalt, 2008. 11–18. Mühldorfer-Vogt, Christian. Geschichte und Propaganda: Die Ottonen im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus. Halle: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen-Anhalt, 2005. Petropoulos, Jonathan. Art as Politics in the Third Reich. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Petropoulos, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Middle Ages: 800–1056. London: Longman, 1991.

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Ruf, Katharine. “Der Quedlinburger Dom im Dritten Reich.” Kritische Berichte 12/1 (1984): 47–59. Schnaase, Karl Julius Ferdinand, et al. Geschichte der bildenden Künste. 7 vols. ­Düsseldorf: Buddeus, 1843–61. Schultze, Willi. “Der Quedlinburger Dom als Kultstätte der SS.” In Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte Teil IV. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966. 215–34. Stahl, Andreas. “Der Provinzialkonservator Hermann Giesau.” In “Es thvn iher viel Fragen…” Kunstgeschichte in Mitteldeutschland, Hans-Joachim Krause gewidmet. Petersburg: Michael Imhoff Verlag, 2001. Thoss, Alfred. Heinrich I., 919–936: Der Gründer des ersten deutschen Volkreiches. Goslar: Blut und Boden Verlag, 1936; Bremen: Faksimile-Verlag-Versand, 1984. Voigtländer, Klaus. Die Stiftskirche St. Servatii zu Quedlinburg: Geschichte ihrer Restaurierung und Ausstattung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Vollmer, Antje. “Gruβwort.” In Geschichte und Propaganda: Die Ottonen im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus. Ed. Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt. Halle: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen-Anhalt, 2008. 9–10. Voss, Gotthard. “Hermann Giesau: Denkmalpflege im Bereich Halberstadt/Harz.” Sachsen und Anhalt 24 (2002/03): 67–72. Wäscher, Hermann. Der Burgberg in Quedlinburg: Geschichte seiner Bauten bis zum ausgehenden zwölften Jahrhundert nach den Ergebnissen der Grabungen von 1938 bis 1942. Berlin: Deutsche Bauakademie, 1959.

Dates of the Quedlinburg Abbesses, German Kings, and Bishops of Halberstadt The following abbesses, German rulers, and Halberstadt bishops are mentioned multiple times in the chapters of this volume. The dates of their reigns appear below.

Abbesses of Quedlinburg

Queen Mathilde I, widow of Henry I “the Fowler,” first convent superior, 936–68 Mathilde, 968–99 Adelheid I, 999–1044 Beatrix I, 1044–61 Adelheid II, 1061–95 Eilika, c.1096–1110 Agnes I, 1110–25/26 Gerburg of Cappenberg, 1126–37 Beatrix II of Winzenburg, 1138–60 Meregart, 1160–61 Adelheid III of Sommerschenburg, 1161–84 Agnes II of Meißen, 1184–1203 Sophia of Brehna, 1203–23 and 1224–26 Bertradis I of Krosigk, 1223–24 and 1226–30 Kunigunde of Kranichfeld and Kirchberg, 1230–31 Osterlindis of Falkenstein, 1231–33 Gertrud of Ampfurth, 1233–70 Jutta of Kranichfeld, 1308–47/48 Agnes III, 1354–62 Ermgard, 1379–1405 Adelheid IV of Isenburg, 1405–34/35 Anna I of Plauen, 1435–58 Hedwig of Saxony, 1458–1511 Magdalene, princess of Anhalt, 1511–15 Anna II of Stolberg-Wernigerode, 1515–74 Anna III of Stolberg-Wernigerode, 1584–1601

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Dates

German Kings and Emperors

Henry I “the Fowler,” king of East Francia, 919–36 Otto I “the Great,” king 936, emp. 962–73 Otto II, king 961, emp. 967–83 Otto III, king 983, emp. 996–1002 regents: Henry II of Bavaria, 983–84, Queen Theophanu, widow of Otto II, 984–91, Queen Adelheid, widow of Otto I, 991–94 Henry II, king 1002, emp. 1014–24 Conrad II, king 1024, emp. 1027–39 Henry III, king 1028, emp. 1046–56 Henry IV, king 1054, emp. 1084–1105/6 Rudolph of Rheinfelden, anti-king 1077–80 Hermann of Salm, anti-king 1081–88 Henry V, 1086–1125 Lothar III of Supplinburg, king 1125, emp. 1133–37 Frederick I Barbarossa, king 1152, emp. 1155–90 Henry VI, king 1169, emp. 1191–97 Philip of Swabia, anti-king 1197–1208 Otto IV of Welf, anti-king 1197–1218 Frederick II Hohenstaufen, anti-king 1211/12, emp. 1220–50 Friedrich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia 1840–61 Wilhelm II, emp. 1888–1918

Bishops of Halberstadt

Hildeward of Halberstadt, 968–96 Arnulf, 996–1023 Branthog, 1023–36 Burchard I, 1036–59 Burchard II, 1059–88 Reinhard of Halberstadt, 1107–23 Konrad of Krosigk, 1201–08/9 Friedrich II of Kirchberg, 1209–36 Meinhard of Kranichfeld, 1241–52 Volrad of Kranichfeld, 1254–95

Manuscripts Aschaffenburg, Schloßbibliothek, Nr. 2 (Aschaffenburg Lectionary) Bamberg, Staatsbibiothek, MS Msc. lit. 142 (Niedermünster Rule Book) Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, MS F III 15a (Isidore of Seville, De natura rerum, including Fulda Abbey’s oldest known book inventory) Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz MS Mus. 40047 (Quedlinburg Antiphonary) MS Mus. 40078 (gradual) MS Phillips 1657 (Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms) Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 233 (Physiologus) Bernburg/Dessau, Herzogliche Gypskammer, MS Fragment s.n. (psalm ­commentary in Old Saxon), now lost Braunschweig, Stadtbibliothek, Fragment 62 Cologne, Dombibliothek, MSS 63, 65, and 67 (three vols. of Augustine’s ­commentary on the Psalms) Düsseldorf, Universitätsbibliothek MS D 1 (sacramentary) MS D 3 (missal and gradual with a calendar) El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, Cod. Vitrinas 17 (Golden Gospels of Henry III) Essen, Münster Schatzkammer, quadruplex psalter Goslar, Stadtarchiv, B 4387 (Goslar Gospels) Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, 2° Cod. MS theol. 231 Cim. (Fulda Sacramentary) Halberstadt, Cathedral Treasury, cod. 214 [also listed under cod. 114 and inv. DS474 in various sources] (Semeke Missal) Halle, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek MS Quedlinburg Codex 74 (Jerome’s correspondence)  M S Quedlinburg Codex 76 (compilation of Psalm commentaries including Cassiodorus’s Explanatio psalmorum) MS Quedlinburg Codex 216 (Homiliarium Bavariense) Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, Hs St. Godehard 1 (St. Albans Psalter) Jena, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS fragm. lat. 24 (psalter) London, British Library Additional MS 37768 (Lothair Psalter) Additional MS 42130 (Luttrell Psalter) Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 3307 (Handbook of 809) Magdeburg, Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg, Rep. U 9, A IX Nr. 5 (Anton Ulrich von Erath, Codex Diplomaticus Qvedlinburgensis)

436

Manuscripts

Monte Cassino, Archivio dell’Abbazia, Cod. Casinensis 132 (Hrabanus Maurus, De Rerum Naturis, including De Anno) Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 4535 (Ambrose, Commentary) Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, MS 156142 (Codex Aureus of Echternach) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 943 (Sherborne Pontifical) MS Latin 9389 (Echternach Gospels)  M SS Latin 12240 and 12241 (two volumes of the three-volume set of ­Cassiodorus’s Explanatio psalmorum) Quedlinburg, Treasury Otto-Adelheid Gospels Samuhel Gospels Gospel book Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Palatini latini 1753 St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. Sang. 23 (Folchard Psalter) MS 196 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, MS Bibl. fol. 57 (Stuttgart Passional) Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32 (Utrecht Psalter) Wolfenbüttel Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv–Staatsarchiv 7 B Hs 47 6 Urk 11 (Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu and Otto II) Herzog August Bibliothek I Hs 1 (formerly at Universitätsbibliothek Helmstedt; psalter with ­canticles and calendar) Cod. Guelf. 13 Aug. 2° (Golden Calendar of Hildesheim)

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Index Abbess Mathilde 7, 20–22, 59, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 246, 283, 298, 300, 347 Adelheid I 7, 10, 22, 128, 130, 184, 189, 200, 202, 246, 261 Adelheid II 8, 24, 25, 128, 184, 192, 246, 248, 250 Adelheid III of Sommerschenburg 11, 29, 135, 231, 298, 302 Adelheid IV of Isenburg 35, 37, 181, 209, 210 Agnes I 8, 128, 190, 192, 194, 246, 248 Agnes II of Meißen (alt. Meissen) 10–12, 26, 29–31, 182, 200, 208, 210, 217, 232, 287, 294, 295, 298, 341, 348, 349, 350, 367 Albert Speer 405 Alexander Neckam 289, 292 Alfred Thoss 407, 412 Altstadt 6, 47, 49, 70, 71, 77, 78 Anna I of Plauen 37, 210–12 Annales Quedlinburgenses 3, 7, 17, 20, 22, 122, 124, 127, 128, 130, 132, 138, 165 apostles 5, 12, 190, 312, 328, 341, 349, 369, 377–79, 382. See St. Servatius Reliquary apotheosis 12, 290, 342, 343 archaeological excavations (at Quedlinburg)  4, 5, 49, 53, 55, 56, 60, 62–65, 67, 71, 73, 74, 77, 94, 248, 414 astrology 314, 327, 328, 336. See Zodiac astronomy 143, 335, 343 August Fink 199, 206 Bamberg box 317, 325, 334, 336. See St. Servatius Reliquary Beatrix I 7, 25, 123, 128, 184, 246, 250 Beatrix II of Winzenburg 29, 134, 136, 226, 229 Bertradis, Countess of Krosigk 12, 201, 202, 205, 374 bracteates 223–26 Byzantium 10, 142, 251, 252, 261, 288, 375, 386, 389

canonesses (of Quedlinburg) 7, 8, 35, 36, 124, 126–28, 132, 133, 136, 137, 144, 158, 162, 176, 245, 264, 271, 290, 301, 302, 344, 394, 395, 399 relationship with abbesses 35–37, 39, 201, 205, 210, 213 Cassiodorus 8, 143, 149, 161, 162, 165, 168, 169 Chapel of St. Nicholas in Chains (in vinculis) 60, 93, 94, 104, 105, 119, 120 Charlemagne 148, 410 chastity 11, 20, 201, 292, 293, 300–03, 344 children 23, 63, 65, 78, 149, 152, 158 Church of St. Mary on the Münzenberg 28, 71, 80, 126, 130, 389 Church of St. Servatius choir 91, 92, 104, 106, 107, 116, 119, 182, 279, 286, 405, 409, 413, 414, 422, 423 clerestory 109–12, 279, 405 confessio 49, 58, 59, 105, 118, 193, 337, 346–48, 415 crypt 55, 59, 71, 94, 105, 106, 116, 117, 118, 201, 282, 283, 296, 304, 346, 348, 350, 409, 414, 423 crypt frescoes 4, 10, 11, 30, 202, 296, 350 deconsecration in 1938 353, 354, 358, 413 Lutheran congregation 413, 417, 422 narthex 92, 112 nave 57, 92, 93, 104, 105, 109, 110, 112, 182, 258, 279, 282, 405, 409, 412, 413 Nazi instrumentalization of 353, 406–10, 422, 428, 429 Nazi renovations 412–14, 416, 418, 419, 423 postwar renovations 417, 419, 421–23. See Hallerian Way postwar understanding 420–429 reconsecration in 1945 6, 417 transept 55, 71, 91–94, 104, 106, 108, 113–17, 257, 258, 270, 279 westwork 55, 111, 119, 120, 243, 244, 279, 416, 417, 421–23

474 compilations 3, 7, 35, 146, 161, 162, 165, 166, 168–70, 172, 174 concentration camps 413, 414, 416, 420, 429 Consecratio cerei 7, 123, 124, 129 court 29, 30, 36, 51, 70, 122, 137, 149, 184, 311, 325, 328, 336, 345, 347, 384, 395 Court School of Charles the Bald 11, 317–20, 323, 336, 342 Crucifixion 12, 295, 299, 330, 340, 341, 378, 379, 382–85, 389, 394 Dechanei 98, 99 Dhuoda of Septimania 149, 151 Divine Office 20, 123, 155 dower/dowry 18, 52, 53, 79, 202, 289 dragons 252, 267, 270 Edgith of Wessex 18, 52 education 2, 8, 10, 18, 23, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 177, 268, 290–93, 300 effigial memorials of the Quedlinburg abbesses 8, 181–84, 190, 201, 203, 217, 248 memorial of Adelheid IV of Isenburg 209–10 memorial of Agnes II of Meißen 195–97 memorial of Anna of Plauen 210–12 memorial of Gertrud of Ampfurth  206–09 memorial of Hedwig of Saxony 213–17 memorial of Sophia of Brehna (?) 197–99, 201 memorial of an unnamed abbess 203–06 memorials of Adelheid I, Beatrix I, and Adelheid II 8, 26, 185, 188–190, 194, 195, 197, 199, 218, 247–250, 285 effigies 182–84, 190, 191, 193, 195, 215 Eilika 192, 246 emotion 154, 156, 157, 173–75, 177, 426 Empress Adelheid 11, 302 eremiticism 28, 60 eschatology 238, 252, 262, 271, 302, 312, 331, 334, 385, 395 Essen Abbey 1, 7, 16, 23, 35, 125–27, 132, 146, 150, 151, 188 Eupraxia of Kyiv 192 evangelists 300, 380, 382 excommunication 24–26, 28, 32, 192, 246, 248

index exoticism 242, 243, 252, 258–60, 272, 376, 389, 390 feast days 13, 24, 26, 31, 51–53, 61, 122, 134–36, 157, 174, 184, 200, 210, 246, 302, 344, 345, 372, 397 female gaze 264, 266 Ferdinand von Quast 181, 182, 197, 203, 209, 404, 405, 421 festive processions 29, 136, 267, 345, 396, 410 Freckleben hoard 9, 224, 225, 229. See bracteates Frederick I 28 Frederick II 28, 31, 32, 199, 200 Freiburg casket 386 Friedrich Ernst Kettner 3, 18, 206 Fulda Sacramentary 11, 320, 321 Gandersheim Abbey 1, 7, 16, 22, 24, 35, 123, 125, 132, 146, 190, 231, 303 Gerburg of Cappenberg 8, 26, 28, 193–95, 201, 218 Gernrode Abbey 26, 71, 151, 190, 257, 303 Gertrud of Ampfurth 181, 206, 208, 217 glosses 144, 146, 150, 151, 158, 162, 163, 166, 172, 175 Golden Calendar of Hildesheim 7, 135, 136 Gospel books 124, 165, 189, 197, 202, 250, 372 Halberstadt, bishops of 31, 33, 38, 123, 129, 130, 200–02, 208, 213, 224, 290, 374, 396, 398 relationship with Quedlinburg Abbey 23, 31, 38, 130, 131, 200, 202, 208, 213, 290, 398 Hallerian Way 354, 419, 420, 422, 424 Hedwig of Saxony 37–39, 96, 182, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217 Heinrich Himmler 6, 53, 59, 120, 313, 353, 403, 406–14, 416, 419, 423, 424 Heinrich Kreisel 425, 426 Henry I 1, 5, 16, 18, 37, 51–53, 57, 59, 60, 67, 68, 81, 145, 279, 283, 353, 407, 408, 416 instrumentalization by Nazis 6, 16, 59, 407–10, 412, 416 millennial anniversary of death 59, 353, 354, 408, 409 Henry III 24, 77, 128, 184, 246, 248, 250 Henry II’s Star Cloak 345

475

index Henry I reliquary 12, 369–372, 374, 378–383, 385, 395–397 heraldry 36, 95, 98, 200, 212, 215–217, 237, 259 Hermann Giesau 67, 354, 412, 413, 419, 423–425 historicism 6, 120, 377 Holocaust 420, 429 Hraban Maur/Hrabanus Maurus 155, 312, 328, 330 illiteracy 226 Incarnation 12, 13, 316, 378, 393, 394 Institutio sanctimonialium 1, 20, 27 intercession 123, 125, 128, 129, 138, 293, 295, 312, 384, 395 Investiture Controversy 5, 24, 26, 191, 246 Islamic art 258, 263, 364, 366, 374, 399 ivories 319, 323–25, 342, 369–71, 379. See Henry I reliquary; See St. Servatius Reliquary Jägerhaus 99 Jesus Christ 11, 158, 170, 172, 201, 289, 294, 295, 300, 301, 312, 313, 320, 325–27, 330, 332, 334, 336, 341, 345, 349, 366, 371, 377–84, 394, 395, 399 dual nature 11, 331, 334, 341, 344, 377–80 Joe Tom Meador 309, 364, 374, 394, 426, 427 Johann Gottfried Werner 405 Judas 326, 330, 340 Juno 289, 292, 293 Jupiter 289, 292, 293 Karl Schirwitz 49, 62, 63, 67

Marriage of Philology and Mercury 30, 202, 268, 289, 290, 292, 293 martyrdom 36, 122, 351, 384, 385 Mary Magdalene 190, 379, 390 Mass 137, 138, 171, 334, 342, 345, 350, 380 Master of Halberstadt 224, 225, 226. See bracteates memoria 7, 16, 23, 59, 124–129, 131–133, 135–137, 145, 192, 250, 272, 284, 296, 302, 304, 397 memorization 143, 149, 152, 154, 155, 157, 172, 174, 182 merchants 5, 74–77 Mercury 10, 30, 289, 290, 292, 293 Merseburg Book of the Dead 128, 129, 132, 137 militarism 410, 413 minting 76, 212, 223–25 monastic rules 27, 34, 143, 146, 147, 189, 191 monsters 243, 267, 270 Münzenberg 47, 71, 269 music 143–44, 154, 155, 157, 158, 175, 177, 265, 410 nationalism 355, 405, 407, 408, 410, 411, 420–22, 425, 426 necrologies 7, 124, 126, 128, 131–36, 145, 397 Neustadt 48, 81 Nordhausen Abbey 52, 126, 284, 303 Nuremberg rallies 410, 412

laity 147–49, 192, 398, 399 Late Antiquity 10, 30, 252, 289, 292, 332, 347, 351 libraries 3, 18, 35, 145, 148, 156, 162, 163, 165 liminality 11, 312, 331, 341, 350 lions 206–08, 212, 237, 267, 270, 331, 332 liturgy 18, 125, 126, 154, 155, 157, 158, 175, 271, 285, 295, 337 Lothair Psalter 148 Louis the Pious 147, 148, 149

ostensoria 12, 208, 376, 390, 396–98 Otto-Adelheid Gospels 124, 127, 129, 132, 137, 165, 202, 343 Otto I 1, 11, 17–19, 37, 51–53, 58, 68, 69, 77, 125, 129, 210, 218, 284, 297, 298, 300, 302, 344, 347 Otto II 19–21, 184, 202, 248, 261 Otto III 5, 7, 19–22, 47, 51, 61, 73, 74, 76, 122, 123, 125, 184, 202, 366, 376, 390, 397 Otto IV 28, 29, 31, 32, 118, 199, 200, 350, 369, 398 Ouroboros 252

male gaze 264–267, 410 manuscript illumination 11, 166, 251, 265, 316, 320, 324, 334

paganism 81, 256, 257, 342, 410, 411 paleography 131, 134, 153, 162, 163, 165, 166, 170, 172

476 Palm Sunday 31, 200, 208, 396. See Halberstadt, bishops of: relationship with Quedlinburg Philip of Swabia 28, 29, 31, 199, 200, 350, 369 Philologia (Philology) 10, 30, 31, 289, 290, 292, 293, 305 pilgrimage 26, 375, 403 Pope Agapetus II 19 Pope Benedict VIII 345 Pope Gregory VII 24, 25, 192, 246, 247 Pope Innocent III 200 Pope Sylvester II 123, 129 portable altars 11, 336, 338, 339, 340, 341, 351, 369. See St. Servatius Reliquary poverty 34, 344 prayer 7, 123–29, 133, 137, 145, 162, 215, 294, 298, 303, 341, 347 Prioress Mechthild of Hackeborn 35, 36, 210 Prioress Oderade 12, 30, 201, 294, 295, 341, 348, 349, 350, 368, 395, 397 Propstei 92, 94 Psalms 8, 142, 143, 146, 156, 169, 189, 207, 262, 334 among the laity 147–49 and intellectual activity 8, 143–45, 149, 151–54, 156, 157, 172, 176, 177 in devotion 146, 156, 157, 161, 166, 177, 189 performance of 8, 143, 144, 147, 154, 156, 157, 177 psalters 7, 134, 148, 150, 151, 265 Quedlinburg Abbey autonomy 19, 23, 27, 31, 33, 129, 202 bailiwick 2, 19, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 53, 69, 79, 81, 91, 296 conventual identity 4, 7–11, 126, 177, 182, 183, 195, 216–18, 271, 290, 398 dissolution 1, 39, 47, 249, 417 foundation 1, 5, 6, 18, 53, 55, 61, 79, 125, 284, 346 provosts 12, 20, 27, 92, 136, 210, 294 reeves 2, 33, 35, 39, 200, 205, 208, 213, 229, 231, 232 response to reform movements 11, 16, 27, 30, 35, 39, 182, 192, 194, 303 royal/imperial connections 1–3, 7, 16, 32, 61, 81, 123, 125, 126, 128, 136, 137, 192, 202, 245, 246, 249, 250, 280, 284, 285, 304, 346

index rule 1, 20, 27, 35, 36, 62, 194, 269, 344 Quedlinburg Antiphonal (alt. Antiphonary) 7, 124, 131, 132, 159, 160, 165, 174 Quedlinburg carpet 4, 10, 30, 268, 286, 287, 289–93, 296, 303, 304 Quedlinburg (castle/palace) 1, 51, 60–62, 64, 67, 68, 90, 94, 118, 119, 343 Quedlinburg Codex 76 7, 148, 161–63, 165, 166, 170–72, 176, 177. See Psalms Quedlinburg coins 4–5, 9, 76, 212, 224–26, 228, 229, 231–33 Quedlinburg (early settlement) 5, 47, 56, 60, 62–65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74, 77, 90, 94, 414 Quedlinburg frieze 4, 9–10, 108, 110, 235, 237, 239, 240, 243, 252, 267, 269, 271 historiography 235, 239, 249, 254–57, 262–64, 266–68 institutional context 243, 244, 247, 249, 250, 257, 258, 269, 271 sources 240, 242, 250, 252–58, 260, 263, 268, 270, 272 Quedlinburg gradual 161, 174 Quedlinburg (topography) 47, 61, 62, 65, 78, 81, 90, 92, 118, 269, 421 Quedlinburg (town) 5, 22, 33, 37–39, 47, 77, 78, 81, 212, 343, 355, 357, 358, 403, 417, 420, 429 Jewish population 34, 38, 213, 421, 429 market 5, 33, 48, 73, 74, 76–78 relations with abbey 33, 37–39, 47, 76, 96, 208, 212, 213, 350 Queen Mathilde 1, 5, 6, 7, 12, 17–19, 37, 52, 53, 57–59, 63, 123, 125, 126, 128, 131, 137, 145, 283, 284, 298, 344, 346, 347, 410, 411 radiocarbon dating 5, 64, 70, 73, 75, 77, 78 Reformation 15, 39, 126 reform movements 11, 16, 27, 34, 191, 192, 269, 303 Regula Benedicti 20, 27, 143 Relatio Geltmari 50, 60 relics 12, 371, 380, 384, 389, 390, 392–94. See reliquaries reliquaries as part of an ensemble 12, 13, 348, 349, 374, 380, 386, 391, 396–98 audience 12, 13, 327, 332, 335, 336, 364, 386, 396–99

477

index Resurrection 182, 299, 327, 330, 340, 345, 347, 377, 379, 395 reunification of Germany 7, 49, 263, 355, 356, 423 riddles 164 Robert Hiecke 412, 416–19, 421, 424 rock crystals 12, 208, 258, 260, 364, 366, 374–77, 389–91, 393, 396–99 Rome 20, 21, 53, 247, 342, 345 Sack of Constantinople 388–90 salvation 10, 11, 13, 32, 123, 124, 126, 138, 145, 170, 172, 177, 197, 262, 280, 294, 296, 304, 383, 385, 389, 394, 395, 399 salvation history 293, 300, 302, 395, 399 Samuhel Gospels 12, 202, 356, 372, 374, 382, 396, 426, 427 Schlossberg 1, 5, 18, 47, 49, 53–55, 60, 62, 65–70, 81, 94 scriptoria 145, 149, 151, 154, 162, 163, 165, 250, 325 seven liberal arts 289, 290, 292, 342 Soltikoff Cross 386–88 Sophia of Brehna 22, 23, 31, 136, 200–06, 208, 217, 303 spolia 280, 365, 366, 368, 369, 374, 377, 396 stained glass 166, 244, 414 St. Albans Psalter 265 St. Arnulf 371, 372, 397 St. Corona 36, 210, 371, 372, 397 St. Denis 242, 351, 371 Stiftshauptmannei 90, 99 St. Katherine reliquary 12, 381–86, 396 St. Pusinna 158 St. Servatius Reliquary as a portable altar 312, 336–38, 341 Carolingian core and 12th-century restoration 261, 311–13, 325, 339, 341, 343, 344, 346–48, 350, 352, 367–69

iconography 312, 326–328, 330, 331, 336, 345 St. Wiperti 5, 47, 49–51, 53, 61, 65, 67, 80, 194, 429 Susanna 11, 30, 299–02, 305 textiles 79, 81, 235, 243, 250, 251, 286. See Quedlinburg carpet Theophanu 10, 19, 21, 22, 122, 202, 261, 368, 375 Traditio Legis 332 Transfiguration 265, 341, 379 treasury 12, 114, 308, 309, 344, 348, 350, 352, 364, 366, 377, 396 looting during war 354–56, 364, 426 reunification 312, 355, 356, 364, 427 use by Nazis 353, 354 Tree of Life 389 True Cross 348, 380, 384, 386, 387, 389 Utrecht Psalter 334 Virgin and Child 216, 373, 378 Virgin Mary 13, 225, 266, 300, 366, 373, 379, 383, 394 Vita Mathildis antiquior 17, 298 wayside chapel. See Chapel of St. Nicholas in Chains (in vinculis) Westendorf 47, 48, 50, 65, 70, 78 Wilhelm Kreis 406 World War II 6, 112, 256, 308, 358, 423, 426, 427, 429 Zitter. See treasury zodiac 11, 321, 328, 334, 336, 342, 344, 345, 353. See St. Servatius Reliquary