Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy 9780674273689

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Harvard Historical Studies • 156 Published under the auspices of the Department of History from the income of the Paul Revere Frothingham Bequest Robert Louis Stroock Fund Henry Warren Torrey Fund

Imagining the Sacred Past Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy

Samantha Kahn Herrick

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2007

Copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress. Library of Congress catalog card number: 2006043068 ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02443-4 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-674-02443-5 (alk. paper)

In memory of Max Feuer Sheldon M. Kahn J. Kevin Herrick

Contents

Acknowledgments Map: Eleventh-Century Normandy Genealogical Chart: Rulers of Normandy and Their Connections, 911–1087 Introduction

ix xi xii 1

1 Placing the Texts in Time

13

2 Individual Appeal: Explaining the Interest in Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius

33

3 Imagining the Past of the Évrecin: The Vita Taurini

51

4 Reshaping History in the Bessin: The Vita Vigoris

74

5 Claiming the Heritage of the French Vexin: The Passio Nicasii

94

6 Broader Perspective: The Norman Vision of the Distant Past and Contemporary Hagiography

112

Conclusion

132

Appendix 1: Manuscripts of the Vita Taurini and Vita Vigoris Appendix 2: Transmission of the Passio Nicasii Notes Bibliography Index

139 145 151 223 251

Acknowledgments

This book owes much to many. To Thomas Bisson is due the deepest appreciation for his sage counsel at the outset of this project to work with sources I enjoyed reading. His wisdom and characteristic graciousness let me find my own way but kept me from getting lost. Charles Donahue and Jan Ziolkowski both provided generous attention, enthusiasm, and insight in the project’s early stages. Grants from the Fulbright Foundation; the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and the Pigott Fund of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, through the generosity of Dean Mitchell Wallerstein, supported the work at various stages. The friendly and helpful staffs at the Bibliothèque nationale and Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, the Bibliothèque royale/Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Brussels, and the Bibliothèques municipales of Rouen, Arras, Douai, and Chartres aided my investigation. The staffs of the Harvard University libraries, particularly Charles Fineman; John M. Olin Library and its Annex at Cornell; and E. S. Bird Library at Syracuse (especially the indefatigable interlibrary loan department) met odd and innumerable requests with goodwill. Matt Coulter spent many hours assisting me to create the map. Numerous friends and colleagues enriched this book and the experience of bringing it to fruition. Monique Bourin, as sponsor during my longest stay in France, introduced me to many people, often over delightful meals. Mathieu Arnoux generously shared his knowledge of Norman history and historians. Véronique Gazeau took time from her own research to discuss mine, as did Nancy Gauthier, Monique Goullet, Michel Parisse, Catherine Vincent, Hélène Millet, and Piroska Nagy. Pierre Bauduin put his unpub-

x

Acknowledgments

lished work at my disposal. Jacques Le Maho discussed Norman archeology with me at length, as Martin Heinzelmann did the study of hagiography. Joseph-Claude Poulin likewise shared his knowledge of medieval hagiographers, scribes, and hagiographical texts. Anne-Marie Helvétius entered with enthusiasm into the problems of apostolicity and gave generously of her splendid hospitality. Many on this continent also shared their time and learning. Thomas Head read and discussed portions of my work with keen insight and generous attention. Bernard Bachrach sharpened my knowledge of early Norman Bayeux. Leah Shopkow and Emily Albu discussed Norman history and its medieval chroniclers. Cassandra Potts-Hannahs commented helpfully on an article about Vigor of Bayeux. Michael McCormick shared his extensive knowledge. Annelies Wouters discussed knotty linguistic points. The support of my Syracuse colleagues has been invaluable, especially the generous engagement with this work undertaken by Dennis Romano and Ethan Pollock. To the anonymous readers whose comments improved this book, I am grateful, as I am to Patrice Higonnet, and to Kathleen McDermott and Kathi Drummy of Harvard University Press, who have been accommodating and helpful at every juncture. This book evolved during my time at Harvard, but in a sense its real inception lies years earlier and an ocean away. A summer’s bicycle trip through the soggy but enchanting Norman countryside brought alive the medieval past I had studied as an undergraduate and master’s student. Lessons taught by Henry Mayr-Harting, Olivia Remie Constable, Alexander Murray, Peter Cramer, and Malcolm Parkes bloomed in the Norman rain, and these teachers all deserve a special sort of credit for this book. My parents-in-law, James and Virginia Herrick, likewise merit recognition for proposing the bicycle trip. My then-fiancé, Michael, deserves the greatest gratitude of all, for graciously putting up then with the grumbling of a novice camper and reluctant hill-rider, and for graciously putting up ever since with everything else.

Eleventh-century Normandy: the Évrecin, Bessin, two Vexins, and other places mentioned in text

Judith = Richard II of Rennes (d. 1026)

Odo II = of BloisChartres Matilda

Herfast

Hugh, bishop of Bayeux (d. 1049)

John of Avranches, archbishop of Rouen (d. 1079)

Mauger of Corbeil

Hadvis = Geoffrey of Rennes

Edward the Confessor

Alfred

Cnut =2 Emma =1 Aethelred the Unready

Gunnor (=) Richard I (d. 996) = Emma, daughter of Hugh the Great

Odo I of Blois-Chartres = Bertha of Burgundy

Theobald =2 Liutgard =1 William Longsword (=) Sprota of Brittany =2 Esperling the Trickster of Vermandois (d. 942) of BloisChartres Raoul d’Ivry = Eremberga

Robert, archbishop of Rouen Count of Évreux (d. 1037)

Count = Adela of Poitou

Gisela = Rollo (d. c. 928) (=) Papia

King Charles the Simple

Rulers of Normandy and Their Connections, 911–1087

Bernard

et al. Mauger, archbishop of Rouen (deposed 1055)

Adelaide = Enguerrand II of Ponthieu

William the Conqueror (d. 1087) Odo, bishop of Bayeux (d. 1091)

Hugh Adeliza = Roger of Beaumont Robert of Mortain

Helvisa = Hugh Bear-Head

(=) Herleva =2 Herluin ? (=) Robert I Oda =1 Waleran I =2 Aélis the Magnificent of Meulan de Conteville (d. 1035)

Richard (of Heugleville) =2 Ada

Papia = Gilbert of Saint-Valéry

Nicholas, abbot of Saint-Ouen (d. 1092)

? (=) Richard III (d. 1027)

Eleanor = Baldwin IV of Flanders

Hugh = Alix of Meulan

Fulk, bishop of Amiens

Drogo = Godgifu of the Vexin

Richard fitz Herluin

Robert, abbot of Coulombs

Herluin of Heugleville / Mantes? =1 Ada

Raoul of Valois

Walter II the White of Amiens-Valois-Vexin

Introduction

In 911, the French king granted Viking raiders the territory that would become Normandy, on the condition that they adopt the Christian religion of the land. Not long thereafter, Rollo the Viking rose from the font a new man. Reborn in baptism as a pious and repentant Christian prince, Rollo sought to repair the damage he had caused the church in his heathenish barbarity. To the exultation of earth and heaven alike, Rollo, “like Constantine,” undertook to restore the churches he had destroyed, to protect the poor, to observe divine law, and to render to the saints their due veneration. As the baptismal waters cleansed Rollo’s soul, they infused it likewise with a deep reverence for the religious heritage of his new territory. So two clerical Latin authors portrayed Rollo’s baptism from the vantage point of early eleventh-century Normandy. This account originated with the region’s first historian, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, intimate of the Norman court. His story soon reached the monastery of Saint-Ouen, just outside the walls of the Norman capital, Rouen. Here, a monk writing not long afterward incorporated Dudo’s vision into his own work.1 The same story would then resonate among Norman authors down the generations. Before it radiated from their court, however, this vision of Rollo’s baptism took shape at the request and to the apparent approbation of Rollo’s heirs, whose view of their ancestor’s conversion it probably both reflected and influenced. As they urged and aided Dudo in his historical endeavor, Rollo’s descendants looked back on a century or so of marked success. In the generations following Rollo’s baptism, the Normans had solidified and expanded the power obtained in 911, despite serious setbacks. Although evidence for the earliest Normans is scant, it appears that a series of royal grants conceded to Rollo and his heirs the territory that would become Normandy piecemeal 1

2

Introduction

rather than at one stroke. The original grant of 911 probably gave Rollo the land around Rouen and along the Seine, in the hope that the baptized Viking would bar other adventurers from traveling upriver to Paris. Similar grants to Rollo in 924 and to his son William Longsword in 933 extended the newcomers’ licit field of action as far as the Breton marches.2 Although free to expand to the west, in reality tenth-century Norman rulers possessed little effective power beyond the neighborhood of Rouen. Indeed, even there they faced serious challenges from Franks and recalcitrant Vikings alike. Rollo’s son William Longsword survived a rebellion of Vikings opposed to accommodation with the Franks, only to be assassinated by a Frankish rival. Longsword’s death in 942 sparked a concerted Frankish effort to retake the territory.3 Only after a precarious minority could William’s son Richard I extend his rule beyond the vicinity of his capital. By means of military success, carefully forged alliances, and the skillful exploitation of Carolingian institutions from monasteries to counties, Richard solidified his power in the lands controlled by his father and grandfather, and expanded it.4 From their base in Rouen, the Norman rulers began from the later tenth century to extend their power, first to the south, and then to the west.5 By the early eleventh century, Richard II began to call himself “duke” of the Normans; he and his sons, particularly Robert I, set their sights on real power far from their capital. Where Frankish kings had given the earliest Norman leaders license to expand, these ambitious early eleventh-century “dukes” sought effective power. Roughly a century after Rollo’s baptism, the political entity created by that deed, although still emergent, was taking shape as a principality of note. Crucial to this success stood the Christian piety that Norman historical tradition so avidly attributed to Rollo in recounting his baptism. The Normans’ authority stemmed from their conversion as much as from royal grant; their legitimacy depended on their Christianity. For this reason, Norman rulers took pains to demonstrate their Christian identity: they endowed monasteries, restored bishoprics, and embraced reform. The story of Rollo’s baptism, which Norman authors recounted again and again, backed up these outward acts with history, as they chose to tell it.6 Both actions and stories thus promoted the identity on which Norman authority rested.7 That identity was informed by the venerable Christian heritage of the region the Normans acquired. Christianity came to the future Normandy centuries before 911; over the generations many holy figures had sanctified its soil by their deeds. This specific heritage formed the basis of the new

Introduction

3

identity the former Vikings assumed: they became not merely Christians but Norman Christians; their new Christian identity was rooted in the territory itself and linked to its history. They learned this history in part by following Rollo’s ostensible lead and giving to their new realm’s saints “their due veneration.” Veneration entailed not only granting wealth and protection to a saint’s church but also cherishing regard for the deeds that had demonstrated on earth the power the saint enjoyed in heaven. Latin texts related the saints’ achievements: a career ending in a peaceful death was recounted by the saint’s “life,” or vita; a career culminating in martyrdom was recorded in a “passion,” or passio. These tales of their careers furnished the basis for the liturgical veneration saints received on the feast days that marked their entry into heaven at death. Their deeds not only proved their holiness and prowess but also endowed the places they had worked with a particular sacred history. To become Norman Christians the newcomers had to adopt this history as their own and to see their own destiny as sequel to the region’s sacred past. Through appropriation of their new region’s religious heritage, as transmitted in the stories of its saints, the Vikings assumed the Christian identity on which their legitimacy hinged. Exploration of this heritage, through the stories of its saints, illuminates the identity the Normans constructed for themselves and by which they legitimated their power. Figures long eminent in the region enjoyed a large share of early Norman veneration. Foremost among these illustrious saints stands Audoenus, patron of the leading monastery of the Norman capital. Audoenus, bishop of Rouen in the seventh century, enjoyed fame and popularity down the generations: from his own time to the present, he remains the region’s most famous saint. His first biographer composed his vita not long after his death; copies of this and later vitae survive in manuscripts from the eighth century to the sixteenth and attest to a popularity undiminished by time.8 Norman tradition envisages Rollo learning the story of Audoenus’s life immediately after his conversion and numbers the recovery of the saint’s relics among the Norman ruler’s first acts.9 Rollo’s descendants extended their interest in the saints of their new region also to more obscure figures. Of the many saints whose lives had once graced the territory that would become Normandy, several appear to have attained among the Normans a prominence unprecedented in their previous veneration. No record of these saints’ careers survives before the ducal period, although they ostensibly lived as early, and as piously, as Audoenus.

4

Introduction

From the ducal era, however, their vitae survive in abundant copies, from both Normandy and elsewhere. Early Norman interest in the duchy’s sacred heritage thus raised from obscurity saints whose histories would otherwise be unknown; their stories owe their preservation to the vogue they achieved among the Normans. Such texts commemorating obscure saints of the distant past represent valuable sources for the often murky history of early Normandy. The texts’ prevalence in the manuscripts results from the significant place memory of the territory’s sacred history occupied in the early duchy. Stories of the region’s saints played an important role in the process of instilling Christian identity, and regional identity in particular; they transmitted to the new converts the heritage they took as their own. Through these stories, therefore, the transformation may be investigated from within: because the Vikings became Norman in significant part by adopting the religion and cultural traditions of their new territory, stories of the region’s saints reveal the history, and in large measure the identity, that the new Christians assumed in order to transform themselves from Viking to Norman. Among the saints whose vitae survive only, yet abundantly, in manuscripts produced after 911 rank Taurinus of Évreux, Vigor of Bayeux, and Nicasius of Rouen. The vita or passio of each survives in numerous manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and in none before that era. Each saint evidently enjoyed new regard in ducal Normandy and played a role in fashioning the view of the past in the new duchy. Although their vitae survive in fewer manuscript copies of this period than do the various vitae of Audoenus, enough copies survive to show that these three saints figured prominently in the piety of the new duchy.10 Like Audoenus of Rouen, the duchy’s most famous saint, these three occupied an important place in Norman memory. Their stories, therefore, merit scrutiny; they promise insights into the ways in which Norman power and identity evolved in the generations after Rollo. Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius are not unique among Norman saints in receiving sudden acclaim in ducal Normandy, but they are of particular interest for their geographical associations, their curious standing in early Normandy, and their flair. Other saints associated with the region’s past likewise rose to prominence in the duchy, and their texts too first survive from this era.11 Nonetheless, these three share features that render them of special significance. All three saints ostensibly worked to bring Christianity to the future Normandy; the memory of their evangelization holds partic-

Introduction

5

ular interest in assessing the Normans’ vision of their region’s sacred history and of their own recent entry into it. The three spent their careers in different areas of the future duchy, and their stories therefore reveal the memory of the region’s past with some breadth. Not only were they associated with the province’s three most important bishoprics; the regions in which all three worked also remained active frontiers in early Normandy; understanding the way in which the past of these regions was remembered, therefore, is of particular interest to the history of the emergent duchy. Finally, the three have in common dynamic and compelling texts that set them apart from the larger group of vitae circulating in the duchy. Although sometimes reluctant editors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries branded them clumsy, derivative, and implausible, the three texts display high drama, vivid encounters, and great action.12 The three overlap in sharing motifs—from dragon fighting to conversion to miraculous revival—to form a group not, perhaps, exclusive but consistent in its features. Each text stands as vibrant testimony to the tastes of early Norman piety, and together they cohere to suggest the broad outlines along which the early Norman vision of the sacred past took shape. Together they tell a story larger than the careers of three saints: the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii work together to delineate the sacred history of Normandy as it was recalled at the time the texts were being read, circulated, copied, and promoted. Each text tells the story of a powerful and holy bishop. Nicasius, first bishop of Rouen, comes to Gaul with Dionysius the Areopagite of Athens and Paris at the behest of Pope Clement. With several companions he sets out for Rouen, but receives martyrdom in the Vexin before reaching his goal. Taurinus of Évreux, too, is his city’s first bishop; he is also the companion of Dionysius and associate of Clement. Like Nicasius, he brings Christianity to the pagan inhabitants of the future duchy. Vigor of Bayeux, though not the first bishop of that city, evangelizes the region entrusted to him by God. Like Nicasius, he fights dragons, and like Taurinus, he revives the dead to demonstrate the power of his faith. By miracle and might all three win their regions for Christ and bring salvation to many souls whom they establish in faith. Whether they die peacefully or by the sword, the three saints strive to found God’s authority in the future Normandy, and they succeed. Their victories resonated in early Normandy to bring new currency to their memory and the texts that preserved it. Accounts of saints’ long-ago feats opened wide the sacred past to cleric

6

Introduction

and layman, Viking convert and native Christian alike. Hagiography reached, in diverse ways, an audience both broad and inclusive. Whether they dwelt in monastery, castle, or village, the Christians of Normandy heard these legends with frequent, indeed regular, repetition. The inhabitants of the Viking territory, like medieval Christians everywhere, knew the histories of their saints well. The primary audience for hagiography was the clergy, whose knowledge of their local saints was intimate and profound. At the heart of the liturgy for a saint’s feast stood the vita or passio recounting his or her holy life and death; from these texts came the lessons chanted during nocturn on the night of the feast. Celebration of a patron or founding saint’s feast usually involved reading these excerpts aloud for eight consecutive days, and then on the feast itself reading the text in full, year after year.13 Clergy thus knew intimately the deeds of the saints they celebrated. Regular clergy, moreover, heard the deeds of many saints not officially celebrated in their institutions: each morning, monks heard the entries for the day from the martyrology, in accordance with a practice instituted by Louis the Pious in 817.14 Additionally, they often heard vitae and passiones read aloud as they ate or worked, and might have been allotted such a text for private meditation in their cells. They thus heard the stories of saints not formally celebrated at their abbey but whose vitae were to be found in their library. Such tales might become great favorites with the monks or canons, and on occasion, the popularity of such a work within the community might lead to the institution of a new cult.15 The clergy, and especially monks and canons, thus enjoyed deep familiarity with the lives of the saints they venerated and some acquaintance with those venerated elsewhere. Familiarity with the saints’ stories was by no means exclusive to the clergy, however. Church lands were understood to be the property of the saint to whom the church was dedicated; the tenants who worked such saints’ land likely knew the saints’ stories and particular virtues. The lords who increasingly, in the generations after Rollo, made church benefaction a mark of their nobility, likewise knew the deeds demonstrating the holiness of those to whose memory they pledged their wealth.16 Pilgrims to churches housing relics would learn the stories of those whose shrines they viewed.17 But behind all these more casual instances stood the cultic celebration of the saint’s feast in which the laity took part, albeit passively. The local populace were expected to attend the feast of their patron saint and apparently did so in some numbers.18 Incentives to come to church for

Introduction

7

the patron’s feast abounded. Records of miracles contain both inducement to attend and warning of the consequences of truancy: the delinquent could expect dire supernatural affliction, while the dutiful devout might receive miraculous cures and blessings.19 Among those most strongly urged, and most likely to attend, the celebration were church tenants, dependents of the saint whose land they worked. Prominent local figures also frequently attended. Those outside the immediate community of the church might be drawn by the markets or fairs that often coincided with feast days, as did the fair held in Évreux on the feast of Taurinus and to the profit of the abbey dedicated to his memory.20 Such market days were memorable precisely because the feasts of prominent saints loomed so large in the local reckoning of time. The sparse sources surviving from early Normandy rarely reveal these lay people celebrating their patrons’ feasts, although material from other regions depicts crowds vast enough in some cases to cause concern and underscores the expectation throughout the church that the laity attend such feasts.21 Feast days therefore provided the ideal opportunity to instruct the laity: not only was attendance high but the foundation of the feast, the saint’s life, furnished the preacher with a topic at once edifying and entertaining. The sermons preached on feast days took the vita or passio as their basis in order to acquaint the faithful with the saint whom they venerated and to offer thereby a standard of Christian behavior. From the early ninth century, on Charlemagne’s recommendation, the clergy preached these sermons not in Latin but in the local vernacular, which guaranteed comprehension by the populace.22 The prominent place hagiography occupied in the liturgy and in instructing the laity shaped the style and content of many texts. Hagiographers not only modeled their work on existing texts but bore in mind, as they wrote, the purposes and audiences their compositions would serve.23 The entertainment value of such texts thus played a not small role in their production; the more entertaining a text, the greater would be the fame of its hero, the popularity of his or her cult, and its salutary influence on the faithful. Clerical authors did not misjudge lay taste for hagiography, which proved keen; moreover, the laity gained access to hagiography by multiple avenues. In addition to the vernacular sermons of the clergy on the feast day, saints’ stories reached the faithful through the translations offered by jongleurs and other popular entertainers, including members of the clergy themselves. On feast days, lay people could hear the saint’s deeds both inside the church

8

Introduction

and also in the square and other public places.24 Such tales served as entertainment, and the laity appear to have relished the feats their heroes accomplished. Orderic Vitalis recounts two examples of lay audiences regaled by hagiography. Of one saint’s military exploits, Orderic remarks that “a popular song is widely sung by the jongleurs.”25 But according to Orderic, the jongleurs were not alone in bringing hagiography to lay audiences. A Norman lord who rose to prominence in England soon after 1066 was “a great lover of the world and of worldly pomp. . . . He was prompt in battle and prodigal in giving, rejoicing in games and luxuries, mimes, horses and dogs, and other vanities of this sort.” The lord’s pious chaplain, a Norman priest “endowed with religion and honesty, and gifted in letters,” sought to encourage the reform of this worldly household by regaling the court with “the battles of the holy knights” to great effect.26 Like the determined chaplain and the jongleurs, at least one other Norman cleric of the eleventh century undertook to translate numerous saints’ lives from Latin into catchy vernacular songs for the benefit of the laity.27 The same century saw innovative hagiographers first compose saints’ lives directly in the vernacular.28 The laity, and the elite in particular, thus had ample opportunity to hear hagiographical stories; not surprisingly, the more thrilling of them enjoyed the greatest appeal. Yet the laity themselves, particularly princes, understood the value of hagiography as more than edifying entertainment; such texts told the story of the relics resting within a region and thus brought that region’s rulers prestige.29 Rulers therefore promoted hagiography relating the deeds of the saints whose relics lay in their territories.30 Their motives might encompass both piety and political shrewdness: the choice of a powerful saint to reside in and honor a particular territory did that territory and its prince credit worthy of publicity.31 The texts composed at a ruler’s behest might well reflect the vision of his rule, and the history of his territory, that the author believed the prince wished to endorse.32 Similarly, clerical patrons and authors of hagiographical compositions did not aim at exclusively devotional ends in their work. Hagiographical texts, like works of mundane history, served to express the truth concerning the world and God’s plan for it. That higher truth might or might not be best expounded through a relation of events as they actually occurred; in many cases, clerical authors chose to recount an idealized version of events, whether in cartularies, narrative histories, or hagiography.33 Religious communities, like their princely patrons, thus used hagiographical texts to sup-

Introduction

9

port particular agendas. The fluid boundary between mundane reality and higher truth justified hagiographers in imagining a past suited to their purposes, just as it condoned the forgeries that supported pious claims.34 Hagiography reflected its authors’ and patrons’ aspirations on earth as much as their vision of a life worthy of heaven. The past recounted in hagiographical texts was thus at once fluid and transcendent. Hagiography revealed to its audience the sacred history of their institutions and regions, while also bringing that past into the present. Unlike mere human deeds, a saint’s history did not end in the past: because the heroes of hagiography died to be born in heaven, their stories continued and their presence endured into the current day. Saints’ vitae were more than edifying tales worthy of imitation and reverence; they offered their listeners access to patrons whose power endured and whose favor was worth cultivating. In the stories of their region’s saints the inhabitants of Normandy learned their territory’s history and gained acquaintance with the heavenly figures who protected it. Hagiographical texts concerning Normandy’s traditional saints thus represent the most direct means of investigating what the Vikings inherited through conquest and baptism. If hagiography provides new insights into early Normandy and the process of transformation it witnessed after Rollo’s baptism in 912, its employment to this end is nevertheless not straightforward. The stories hagiographical sources tell bear a relation to actual events even more tangential than the usual run of historical sources. Hagiographical texts relate stories set on earth but pertaining to heaven; their records are not meant for elucidation of human history, but divine. The assumptions, methods, and goals of the hagiographer, therefore, overlap little with those of the modern historian, who seeks to uncover the patterns of human endeavors. Applying hagiographical sources to the investigation of early Normandy—or indeed of any region—requires special care. Hagiographical sources present particular difficulty with regard to date, authorship, and provenance—three of the features without which no source can be effectively applied to historical investigation. Because they relate in one instance the unfolding of the divine plan, hagiographical texts often show little concern for chronological precision. Many, moreover, assert a composition in the distant past and disguise (effectively or not) their true era. Authors rarely name themselves or state their relation to the events they record. These events themselves may be borrowed from exemplars without the least hesitation or duplicity; the story they convey is by defini-

10

Introduction

tion stereotypical. More problematic still, hagiographical texts were, above all, living traditions: circulation inevitably altered them, as they were abridged, expanded, excerpted, and simply changed by those who read and copied them. Determining the content of a hagiographical work can be as tricky as assigning it to a particular era, locale, or author. Nevertheless, hagiographical texts reflect their contexts and can be used to illuminate them in turn. Although determination of the date and place of production is rarely simple, such determination can be accomplished, at least with a fair degree of probability. Historical research by means of hagiographical texts requires precisely that approach: contextualization as best it can be achieved. Such analysis often goes against the hagiographer’s aim to elucidate not the earthly but the heavenly. However illuminating hagiographical texts may be of the historical eras that produced them, they are so despite themselves and often in opposition to their authors’ intentions. Disregard for the purpose of hagiography will prove dangerous, just as may uncritical reliance on it. Careful investigation of a text’s reflection of its time, however, can prove illuminating, as recent studies have shown. Historians have made increasing use of hagiographical sources both because they offer new access to often difficult problems—from the intangible aspects of power to the resolution of disputes, the slippery concept of truth, and the workings of memory—and because they constitute at once the most abundant and the most representative body of source material for the Middle Ages. Approaches to these sources have multiplied and grown more sophisticated as concern with their literal veracity has given way to an appreciation of their import for the societies that produced them.35 An increasing number of studies employing hagiographical sources have shown how much might be gained from them.36 Such studies illuminate nearly every corner of Europe, and Normandy too has shared in this growing scholarship. Scholars including Lucien Musset (at a relatively early date), Louis Violette, Cassandra Potts, John Howe, Elisabeth Van Houts, Mathieu Arnoux and, most prominently, Felice Lifshitz, have used hagiographical sources to shed new light on Norman history.37 Lifshitz in particular deserves credit for undertaking the first book-length study focused on Norman hagiography.38 Her sophisticated, if controversial, use of hagiographical material and her insistence that such texts embody political as well as religious discourses have elicited great interest in Norman saints and their literary records.39 Hagiography has come increasingly to the fore in Norman historiography, as in other regions, for good reason. The use of such texts re-

Introduction

11

mains difficult, but it represents an important venture for historians of all of Christian Europe. Hagiography reveals new dimensions of the medieval past: not only do hagiographical texts comprise the most numerous body of medieval sources, they also stand among the most influential in their own day. However idiosyncratic and abstruse they might be, however stereotypical, these stories profoundly shaped the world in which medieval Christians lived. By means of their conversion, the Vikings entered a civilization in which saints and their stories loomed large. These stories in large part helped the pagan Vikings to become Christian Normans. Cherished stories of Rollo’s baptism notwithstanding, the transformation from Viking to Norman did not occur in a moment or a generation. The extent to which Rollo and his companions ever truly embraced their new religion vexed their contemporaries and has remained debatable ever since; their children and grandchildren displayed a recognizably deeper faith, yet successive waves of pagan settlers prolonged the collective process of conversion.40 Only gradually did individual Vikings and the Viking territory alike become Christian and Norman. As converts and their descendants stood among the faithful of their new territory, year after year, they heard recounted the feats of the holy men and women whose lives had graced the land they now ruled. Hagiography concerning figures from the region’s sacred past made known to the new Christians their land’s religious heritage, a knowledge that in turn enabled the Normans, over time, to take that past as their own. The stories of Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius thus opened to the new Christians the sacred heritage of their new region and gave them a means to place themselves within it. These stories were not merely entertaining or edifying; they resonated with the inhabitants of Normandy because they made sense of the present. They provided a means for the new rulers to articulate an identity from which they could claim legitimate power; they offer important new perspective on the Normans’ success. To understand these processes is the goal of this book. To use these stories to illuminate Norman identity and power involves several steps. Dating the stories determines whether they represent old texts newly popular or new accounts of the region’s past. Such a distinction is important for assessing the stories the three texts tell. Establishing the reasons each saint attracted interest in the early duchy provides further insight into the role his story played. Detailed analysis of the stories themselves re-

12

Introduction

veals the past as it was absorbed by the congregations gathered to honor the saint or crowds eager for a good tale. From the exploration of these vibrant stories comes a new tale, that of how the vitae of these little-known saints helped the Vikings to take the faith and history of their new territory as their own and refashion themselves as legitimate rulers of a new entity, Normandy.

1 Placing the Texts in Time

Understanding the significance of the vitae of Vigor and Taurinus and the passio of Nicasius, which survive in early Norman manuscripts thanks to the vogue the texts enjoyed in the duchy, poses two initial problems. First, like most medieval texts, they survive in multiple forms. Their content varies from copy to copy because it was fluid by nature. To analyze any such text is therefore to approximate somewhat. Nevertheless, despite individual variants, each text retains its main features across copies; as a group the manuscripts both reflect the texts’ fluidity and preserve texts stable enough to support analysis. Their status at the time the copies preserving them were made, however, presents a second problem. These texts may have circulated in ducal Normandy as old works still in circulation, as adaptations of old texts, or as new creations. To understand their significance in the duchy requires determining this status, and this determination is best made by dating the composition of the texts as nearly as possible. Establishing a date for the composition of each vita or passio requires sifting the various pieces of evidence found within the text and without, as well as evaluating the scholarly traditions surrounding the work. Aside from the secondary literature, the evidence consists of factors external to a text, its internal features, and its manuscript tradition. Of these categories, the external evidence represents the strongest indicator of date, and often the most precise. This category includes references to the saint or to the text itself in other, datable texts, and the history of the cult. The internal features of a vita or passio, such as its language, style, sources, concerns, and passing references, tend to indicate a general vintage, rather than an exact date of composition, though they sometimes can suggest a more precise date. Manuscripts similarly point primarily to periods by which the text already 13

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existed, rather than the specific moment of composition. Additionally, however, their physical nature reveals the status a text enjoyed at a given period, while diffusion patterns indicate moments of sudden acclaim. Although the evidence is not equally abundant in every case, these various indicators work together nevertheless to date each text with fair precision. In some cases external information suffices to establish the date of the text’s composition. In others, more thorough examination of the internal and manuscript evidence is necessary. Many individual pieces of evidence can alone do no more than suggest the general period at which the vita or passio was likely produced. In the aggregate, however, the various pieces of evidence come together to indicate a fairly precise date for the probable composition of each text. Probability, rather than certainty, characterizes such findings. Yet probability, when it arises from the convergence of many independent indicators, will do, for it provides the premise on which subsequent examination of the work in that specific context will proceed. Whether a given context produced a given text—and why—can be determined only once a particular context has been proposed. To this end this chapter will examine the evidence pertaining to each vita or passio in turn, together with the scholarly traditions surrounding it, in order to determine as precisely as possible the date of its composition.

The Passio Nicasii The Passio Nicasii is perhaps the easiest of the three texts to date; little controversy surrounds its composition.1 The Bollandist Cornelius De Bye assigned it to the tenth century or shortly thereafter and dismissed it as lacking all authority in regard to Nicasius’s actual career. He did not attempt to date the text more precisely, since his main aim was to show it to be unreliable; and locating it at least seven centuries (by his reckoning) from the subject’s death suffices to make this point. Indeed, because of its late date, De Bye deemed the Passio unworthy even of print.2 Subsequent examinations of Rouen’s episcopal lists have confirmed both De Bye’s rough chronology and his estimation of the text’s worthlessness as a source for the early Christian era. Indeed, several scholars have confirmed De Bye’s theory that Nicasius and his companions were unknown to the episcopal traditions of Rouen until the eleventh century.3 Despite the consensus that the text issues from ducal Normandy, however, no precise date has yet been established for its

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composition.4 De Bye based his broad dating on the history of Nicasius’s veneration; a closer examination of this history serves to narrow the chronological field further. The earliest references to Nicasius exhibit no familiarity with his Passio, as De Bye and others have noted.5 He appears circa 865 in Usuard’s martyrology as a simple priest, martyred in the Vexin with two companions: “In the county of the Vexin, the passion of saint Nicasius the priest and his companions saints Quirinus and Pientia.”6 This spare notice contrasts sharply with the Passio, which presents Nicasius as a bishop accompanied by the priest Quirinus and the deacon Scubiculus, all of whom are buried after martyrdom by the good matron Pientia. Neither does Usuard present Nicasius as a bishop, nor does the saint’s retinue match the one described in the Passio: Scubiculus is entirely missing from Usuard’s notice, while Pientia is accorded the title of martyr, which the Passio in no way justifies. A similarly vague remembrance appears in the charter of Archbishop Riculf of Rouen, who in 872 visited the relics in the village of Gasny on the river Epte. Riculf records, “In the first year of my ordination, . . . I thought it worthy to go to the tombs of the saints, namely of the confessor of Christ Audoenus, once the nurturing bishop of the aforementioned city [Rouen], and of the blessed martyrs Nicasius, Quirinus, Scubiculus, and of Saint Pientia (whose sacrosanct bodies were at that time in the village of Gasny, for fear of the Northmen, in exile, although on their own land).”7 Riculf knows all three figures associated with Nicasius in the Passio but acknowledges him only as a simple martyr. The identity granted Nicasius by the Passio, as first bishop of Rouen, a disciple of Clement and Dionysius, appears to have been unknown toward the end of the ninth century. His martyrdom in the Vexin was already established and the names of his companions more or less settled, but his status and mission remained obscure. Evidently, the Passio Nicasii did not yet exist in the 870s. By the end of the eleventh century, however, Nicasius had attained an exalted position based precisely on the claims of his Passio and was revered as second patron of Saint-Ouen of Rouen, the leading monastery of the ducal capital. His importance is exemplified in the monastery’s Livre noir.8 This codex accords Nicasius much attention and in fact aims largely to establish his primacy over the traditional claimant, Mellonus. To this end, the Livre noir includes two texts produced at Rouen cathedral in honor of Rouen’s archiepiscopal heritage, into which it introduces interpolations. The monastery version of the Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium presents

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an argument for the primacy of Nicasius derived straight from the Passio Nicasii. The argument admits that Mellonus was first to occupy the episcopal throne but insists that Nicasius was first in order of appointment; his martyrdom merely prevented him ever reaching his see. The interpolator explicitly cites the Passio Nicasii as justification: “Prout sua testatur Passio” (as his Passio attests).9 Immediately following the Acta is a metrical catalogue of the archbishops of Rouen, also produced at the cathedral, roughly contemporaneously with the Acta and similarly interpolated at Saint-Ouen. The Saint-Ouen version of the catalogue includes thirty-two extra verses at the beginning, all devoted to Nicasius and closely dependent on the Passio.10 The codex also contains the Passio Nicasii; a metrical passio or hymn in Nicasius’s honor; the history of his translation; and a sermon for the feast of the saints whose relics rest at Saint-Ouen, in which Nicasius figures prominently, since the monks celebrated his death on October 11 and the translation of his relics on December 1.11 Nicasius thus receives more texts than any saint other than Audoenus or Romanus, whose cult was centered on the cathedral. The Livre noir was produced at Saint-Ouen, perhaps in the 1090s but certainly before 1110.12 By the turn of the twelfth century, therefore, the Passio Nicasii clearly existed and wielded conspicuous influence in the abbey, where it most probably originated. Indeed, from the later eleventh century, Nicasius gained renown as Rouen’s first bishop well beyond the cloister of Saint-Ouen. The monks founded in his honor, sometime before 1100, the parish church of SaintNicaise in the bourg that had grown up around the abbey. The Passio Nicasii made an impact still further from Saint-Ouen as well: in the twelfth century, the monasteries of Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, and Mont-Saint-Michel all endorsed the primacy of Nicasius in their episcopal lists and annals.13 Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni likewise accepted Nicasius’s claim.14 Even the cathedral, center of the rival cult of Mellonus, eventually bowed to the tradition of Nicasius’s primacy, perhaps by circa 1150.15 The composition of the Passio thus took place sometime after the 870s and before the end of the eleventh century, as De Bye first determined. De Bye did not pursue the question further. Nonetheless, several other texts do allow a closer investigation of the date of the Passio’s composition. Although the martyrology of Saint-Ouen is lost, copies that derive from it survive. In particular, the martyrology of the southern Italian monastery of Pulsano depends directly on that of Saint-Ouen.16 The Rouennais exemplar from which the Pulsano martyrology was copied dated from not earlier

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than the reign of Abbot Hildebert (circa 989–circa 1006), whose rededication of an altar it mentions.17 The Pulsano martyrology records Nicasius and his companions on October 11: “In the county of the Vexin, the passion of saint Nicasius the priest and his companions Excubiculus, Quirinus, and Pientia virgin and martyr.”18 This notice differs little from Usuard’s and offers further indication that in Abbot Hildebert’s day, Nicasius continued to be remembered only as a rather obscure martyr. Nicasius appears equally undistinguished in a second source from SaintOuen. The account of the return of Audoenus’s relics to Rouen makes passing reference to Nicasius and his companions.19 It relates that when the Viking raids made the saints’ original refuge in Gasny unsafe, the monks fled with all the relics and then separated them: “Therefore the monks, taking up the body of blessed Audoenus, took it to an estate in their authority called Condé: but the relics of the martyr Nicasius with his companions they replaced at Vambase.”20 Here the monks left the relics in safety. This brief mention serves to narrow further the chronological span within which the Passio Nicasii was composed. Like the martyrology, it reveals the cult of Nicasius unchanged from the time of Riculf, and of no particular interest at Saint-Ouen. For the author of the Translatio prima Audoeni, Nicasius remains a simple martyr. Moreover, the account makes clear that although the monks of Saint-Ouen knew where Nicasius’s relics lay when they regained those of Audoenus in or around 918, they did not feel any immediate compulsion to retrieve them as they did those of their patron saint.21 The relative lack of interest in Nicasius suggests that the Translatio prima Audoeni predates the Passio Nicasii. Since the Translatio was likely written at Saint-Ouen shortly after 1015, the Passio Nicasii had presumably not been composed before this date.22 Together, the Translatio Audoeni and the Pulsano martyrology indicate that Nicasius and his companions did not enjoy particular regard at SaintOuen before the early eleventh century. Under Abbot Hildebert, the abbey’s martyrology did not represent Nicasius as first bishop, nor did Hildebert or his predecessors make any effort to recover the martyrs’ relics from their known location. Even at the start of the eleventh century, too little consideration was granted Nicasius to make composition of the Passio likely. Hildebert’s successor, however, found Nicasius brought to his attention. A monk sent by Abbot Henry (1006–1033) on business to Saint-Ouen’s property at Vambase reported to his abbot that the relics of Nicasius and his companions were not held in the proper respect there. Indeed, the monk

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thought it imperative that the relics return to Saint-Ouen: “When he saw that the most precious limbs of the knights of Christ . . . were held there in neglect and not celebrated as was worthy, he noted it; and he decided absolutely to transfer them to his own monastery, if indeed the judgment of omnipotent God in whose hand are all things, should concede it.”23 He volunteered to retrieve them, and Henry sent him back at once with that commission. The monk took them by stealth, for fear of the local population, and carried them to Rouen, where they were received with joyful pomp.24 According to the Translatio Nicasii, Saint-Ouen thus found itself in possession of Nicasius’s relics, as the result of a more or less spontaneous inspiration. Serendipity, ostensibly, brought him to the forefront of the monks’ attention.25 According to the Translatio Nicasii, the relics returned to Saint-Ouen in 1032.26 All the chronological details of the text support such a date. The author places the event in “the time of Henry, king of the Franks.”27 Henry I was crowned at Easter, 1032.28 Abbot Henry died sometime in 1033.29 The other figures mentioned in the text—Duke Robert the Magnificent (1027–1035), Abbot Isembert of La Trinité-du-Mont (1031–1051), Archbishop Robert (circa 989–1037)—also belong in the early 1030s.30 That the relics returned in 1032 appears entirely plausible. The return of Nicasius’s relics to Saint-Ouen likely provided the necessary impetus to compose his Passio. Indeed, if the description of the pomp with which his arrival was marked is believed, some such text would surely have been required: the Translatio reports that the relics were met by a great crowd of monks, clerics, and lay people, specifically including the duke’s nobles, assembled in formal celebration and led by Archbishop Robert.31 Composition of the Passio Nicasii might well have thus followed on the translation in 1032; its production certainly preceded that of the Translatio, which makes explicit reference to it and which appears to have been written late in the century.32 Such a date accords well with all other indications that the Passio Nicasii was composed sometime between circa 1015 and circa 1090, including the known manuscripts, which all date from the eleventh century or later.33 Two last pieces of information lend further support for a dating closer to 1015 than to 1090. Although Nicasius does not appear in the version of the Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium originally composed at Rouen cathedral, his influence is nevertheless evident in that text. As both E. Vacandard and Louis Violette note, the Acta’s emphasis on saint Mellonus is pronounced.34 Mel-

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lonus receives a poem within the text, a unique honor, which emphatically announces his primacy in its opening verse: “Illustrious Mellonus was first in order [of bishops].”35 Aside from his status as first bishop of Rouen, however, the poem conveys little information about its subject; its other fourteen verses merely attribute to him the generic characteristics common to saintly bishops: it describes him as nobly born, mild, learned, generous, pious, humble, sober, and chaste, as well as a devoted protector of his flock. As Violette remarks, the text betrays both its interest in Mellonus and its ignorance of him.36 The poem reflects lively interest at the cathedral in a saint whose primacy was his sole distinguishing characteristic. The influence of the Passio Nicasii offers the only explanation for the keen but uninformed interest in Mellonus that the cathedral version of the Acta displays. No vita of Mellonus appeared until the twelfth century.37 Therefore the poem does not represent the active, calculated promotion of a cult. Instead, it appears to represent a response. The primacy of Mellonus gained importance at the cathedral only with the advent of Nicasius and the Passio portraying him as Rouen’s first and apostolic bishop. Since the original version of the Acta, in which the cathedral canons betray their concern over the question of primacy, dates to circa 1070, the Passio Nicasii must already have been current by that time. One last set of evidence supports a date in the first half of the eleventh century for the composition of the Passio Nicasii. Count Waleran I of Meulan (circa 1015–1068) is reputed to have exhibited fervent devotion to Nicasius.38 Indeed, Waleran founded the priory of Saint-Nicaise at Meulan in his patron’s honor. The circumstances and date of this foundation are hard to make out: no foundation charter survives, but the priory appears to have been established for some time when it was given to the abbey of Bec by Waleran’s son Hugh in 1077.39 One tradition reports that the foundation resulted in 1062 from a vow Waleran made in 1057 at the battle of Varaville, in which he sided with King Henry I of France against William the Conqueror and was captured in the Norman victory. According to this tradition, Waleran vowed to build a church in honor of Nicasius, should he regain his liberty; upon receiving his freedom in 1062, Waleran then fulfilled his pledge.40 Another tradition dates the foundation to circa 1050, in response to the acquisition of a portion of Nicasius’s relics.41 A third tradition places the foundation in 1032.42 The story of the vow at Varaville appears to originate in the Chronicon Sancti Nigasii Mellentis, which itself may be a seventeenth-century product.43 The tradition of the relic procurement

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stems from no clear source.44 Neither does the claim that the church was founded in 1032.45 The turmoil yields no greater conclusion than that Waleran likely did found a church of Saint-Nicaise sometime between 1032 and 1062. Luckily, an additional piece of evidence relative to Meulan, yet entirely separate from this tangle, implies a date in the early 1030s for the Passio Nicasii, while also supporting the tradition of Waleran’s devotion to Nicasius. In 1033 Waleran confirmed a donation made by his sister-in-law Helvisa to the abbey of Coulombs. In return, Waleran asked the abbot to come to Meulan each year to celebrate Nicasius’s feast: “Count Waleran . . . with his son Hugh and his wife Adelaide, willingly granted [Helvisa’s donation], on the condition that the abbot of Coulombs should come to Meulan every year on the feast of Nicasius, and that he should preside over any other abbots who might be there, and should celebrate the mass.”46 Waleran I seems to have felt a particular devotion to Nicasius as early as the 1030s, which apparently continued throughout his life. Such a devotion more likely sprang from the Passio than from the bare notice in Usuard, particularly as the Passio makes the neighborhood of Meulan the scene of a central episode in the saint’s mission. Waleran’s charter suggests that the Passio Nicasii existed by 1033. The care with which Waleran arranged for the celebration of Nicasius’s feast in the early 1030s suggests both that the Passio was already sparking devotion to the martyrs outside Saint-Ouen and that such devotion was new. No provision had yet been made for the celebration of Nicasius’s feast at Meulan; the church of Saint-Nicaise had either not yet been founded or was not yet fully functioning, and no other clergy appear responsible for celebrating the feast. Waleran turns to the abbot of Coulombs as though instituting a yearly celebration; he uses the leverage of his sister-in-law’s donation to win the abbot over to a new duty in honor, perhaps, of a newly established cult. That the request must be made heavy-handedly as a condition for the donation implies its acceptance was not otherwise ensured. Despite the muddled nature of the traditions surrounding the foundation of Saint-Nicaise, the evidence from Meulan favors the composition of the Passio Nicasii in the early 1030s, and thus confirms the testimony of the Translatio Nicasii. The various texts which testify to Nicasius’s veneration from the ninth through the eleventh centuries thus converge to indicate that the Passio Nicasii was most likely composed in the early 1030s. As late as circa 1015,

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Nicasius remained a shadowy figure, at most a simple priest martyred in the Vexin with two or three companions. By the end of the eleventh century he loomed large as the second patron of Saint-Ouen, venerated widely as Rouen’s apostolic first bishop, associated with lofty figures, and possessed of a dramatic history. The tradition appears to have sprung fully fledged at some propitious moment during the century; collectively, the evidence indicates that this moment occurred in the early 1030s. The triumphant return of the relics in 1032 would have focused much attention on the martyrs, both within the monastery and without. A biography would have been required to sustain this interest, particularly in the absence of miracles.47 Waleran’s devotion shows that interest was indeed sparked and maintained, and not only in the immediate neighborhood of Saint-Ouen. Such success resulted from dedicated promotion on the monks’ part. Indeed, the monks’ zeal, no less than their success, brings into question whether their interest in this shadowy martyr was in fact as serendipitous as the Translatio Nicasii claims. Knowing the date at which the Passio was most likely composed allows investigation of the particular interest this figure held at that time.

The Vita Vigoris The Vita Vigoris has been dated to various eras. Most scholars regard it as not earlier than the late seventh century. This view stems from the text’s most glaring anachronism: the monastery of Saint-Vaast, in which the Vita has the saint pass his childhood, was founded only after 670, although the Vita presents Vigor himself as contemporary with “King Childebert,” whom scholars have identified with Childebert I (511–558). The Vita’s Bollandist editor, Charles De Smedt, envisioned two separate redactions: the first, in the eighth century, yielded a crude and primitive text; the second, during or after the Carolingian renaissance, resulted in a more polished version. He dubs the two “Textus primigenius” and “Textus emendatior” respectively.48 Other sources, however, render this initial eighth-century dating problematic. According to the chronicler Hariulf, toward the end of the tenth century Vigor’s relics came to the abbey of Saint-Riquier.49 Hariulf reports that after the Viking invasions had devastated the region of Bayeux, a cleric of that city called Avitianus made off with Vigor’s relics to seek his fortune elsewhere by their sale. Avitianus came to Saint-Riquier, where he stored the body in the abbey church for safekeeping. Here the relics gradually made

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themselves known through a series of wonders. The miracles caught the attention of Abbot Ingelardus who, after much hard bargaining, acquired the relics from Avitianus in return for “many gifts.”50 Abbot Ingelardus and the monks of Saint-Riquier attached great value to Vigor’s relics for the virtues they demonstrated. Fittingly, they housed the saint’s body in a precious casket and placed it in a suitable spot in the abbey church, where it continued to receive veneration and to aid the faithful.51 As to the life of their new patron, however, the monks remained ignorant.52 Only under Ingelardus’s successor, Angelramnus, did the community of Saint-Riquier come to know anything of Vigor’s life. Hariulf mentions that Angelramnus went to Normandy, where he conversed with Duke Richard II. Angelramnus appears to have made the acquaintance also of Archbishop Robert of Rouen, the duke’s brother, and the monks of Saint-Ouen.53 While in Normandy, the abbot sounded his acquaintances for information regarding his own abbey’s mysterious second patron: “With those things for which he had gone [to Normandy] completed or finished, he began to inquire from the clerics of the province and from the monks of Saint-Ouen, whether they knew of any saint called Vigor: and they, knowing this saint very well, wondered at this alone, that the abbot himself did not know so great a confessor, relating his birth, and his worthy life. Then the abbot asked to be shown the text of his life, and to be granted a copy of it to be transcribed.”54 The monks of Saint-Ouen provided Abbot Angelramnus with a vita of saint Vigor sometime before the abbot’s death in 1045. Hariulf ’s account of the transaction implies that the Vita Vigoris had long been known in Rouen, and he himself believed it was only for spite that the cleric Avitianus had withheld the vita from Abbot Ingelardus when he sold him the relics.55 Yet this may well not have been the case. De Smedt dated the Vita Vigoris to the eighth century and saw a distinct, cleaner version as a later effort to polish it.56 Other scholars have shown, however, that the evidence goes against his theory. De Smedt based his vision of two separate redactions of the Vita Vigoris, one Merovingian and one later, on linguistic factors. In his view, the text found in the earliest manuscript exhibited “rude” and incorrect language that was characteristically Merovingian.57 Because the Vita sets the saint’s boyhood in the monastery of Saint-Vaast, Arras, which was founded around 670, De Smedt dates the earliest, crude version of the text to the eighth century. In contrast to this version, he sets later manuscripts containing notably “less barbarous” language, which De Smedt attributes to the effect of the Carolingian renaissance and views as an educated attempt to

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clean up the crude earlier text. He does not, however, posit even an approximate date for this “cleaner” text.58 Later scholars have challenged De Smedt’s theory in large part by looking at the possible sources of the Vita Vigoris. Balthasar Baedorf suggests that the prologue to the Vita Vigoris relies either on the Vita of Vedastus of Arras, composed by Alcuin between 790 and 804, or on a text of the late ninth century, the Vita of the nun Glodesindis of Metz, written shortly after 882.59 Although Baedorf does not determine which text served as the inspiration of the prologue of the Vita Vigoris, he argues that the text cannot be earlier than circa 800, no matter how crude its language. John Howe builds upon Baedorf ’s work to show that if the Vita Glodesindis did indeed furnish the source for the prologue to the Vita Vigoris, then De Smedt’s ordering of the two versions must be inverted, so that the “Textus primigenius” becomes instead a poor transmission of the earlier “Textus emendatior.”60 Howe further hypothesizes that the disruption visited on the region of Bayeux over the course of the ninth and tenth centuries indicates that the Vita Vigoris was written only after the revival of monastic life in the Bessin, that is, in the eleventh century.61 Manuscripts of the Vita Vigoris cannot supply a firm date for the text’s composition; however, they do support the notion that it is later than circa 800 and quite possibly represented a new composition in the eleventh century. All the surviving manuscripts of the Vita Vigoris present the text with the prologue, as did the manuscript used by De Smedt and subsequently destroyed; no evidence suggests that the text enjoyed an existence independent of whichever source inspired its prologue, whether the Vita Glodesindis or the Vita Vedasti.62 Baedorf ’s contention that the Vita Vigoris was composed only after circa 800 appears likely. Moreover, the manuscripts lend some support to Howe’s theory that the text appeared only in the early eleventh century: by their physical nature and fluid content, the manuscripts suggest that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the text was circulating widely and evolving rapidly.63 Although saints’ legends remained living texts always open to modification, such marked fluidity tended to characterize newer hagiographical compositions more than those long established.64 While they cannot indicate a precise date of composition, the manuscripts thus show a text gaining attention in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as it caught the interest of individual scribes, who altered it according to their needs and tastes.65 Such a trajectory fits easily with Howe’s vision of a composition in the earlier eleventh century. Moreover, the manuscript evidence accords well with Hariulf ’s report

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that the Vita was available in Rouen by mid-century but unknown before then to the monks of Saint-Riquier. Hariulf ’s testimony that “from that first time, therefore, when Saint-Riquier was blessed with the introduction of the holy body, it remained for some time without any supporting record of his deeds” may well reflect not the spitefulness of the cleric Avitianus, as Hariulf thought, but the nonexistence of any such record until the era when Abbot Angelramnus queried the monks of Saint-Ouen.66 Indeed, in the early decades of the eleventh century, the need for Vigor’s vita arose, both at Saint-Riquier and in Normandy itself, a need which would explain its composition at precisely that time. Sometime between 1030 and 1032, Duke Robert I the Magnificent founded the abbey of Saint-Vigor of Cerisy.67 Later tradition often attributes the original foundation of Cerisy to Vigor himself and remembers Robert’s deed as one of refoundation following devastation by the Vikings.68 Only flimsy evidence supports this view, however; even the Vita Vigoris, which relates the saint’s acquisition of land at Cerisy, does not credit him with foundation of a monastery there.69 The foundation appears to have been the duke’s own original deed and to have sparked interest in the new abbey’s patron. The duke’s choice of Vigor as patron, although his relics were far off in Saint-Riquier, likely prompted the composition in Normandy of the Vita Vigoris. Like the Passio Nicasii, this text would thus also date to the early 1030s. Robert’s choice raises the question of what interest Vigor held at that moment and why his Vita was written as it was.

The Vita Taurini Dating the Vita Taurini presents no small challenge.70 Aside from the fact that the text was produced later than the middle of the ninth century, little is clear. Only a limited number of clues aid the endeavor, while competing claims and theories muddle and strain what little evidence exists. Nevertheless, careful investigation can draw from the tangle a tentative date. The evident reliance of the Vita Taurini on the work of Hilduin of SaintDenis (d. circa 841) has both associated the text with the ninth century and quelled interest in establishing the precise date of its composition. The Vita’s Bollandist editor Pierre Van den Bossche noted only that the Vita Taurini must be later than circa 835, when Hilduin composed the Passio Dionysii on which it clearly depends.71 The patently specious nature of the Vita as a source for its subject’s life did not inspire Van den Bossche to fur-

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ther reflection as to its date; his suggestion of a terminus a quo in the middle of the ninth century has remained the standard opinion. In part, attention has continued to focus on the ninth century due to other aspects of Taurinus’s cult. Two conflicting regional traditions claim Taurinus’s relics, and their rivalry has shaped the historiography. According to texts produced in Auvergne and Burgundy, his relics fled the Vikings in the middle of the ninth century and came, under the guidance of the Auvergnat bishop of Évreux, to Lezoux in Auvergne.72 There, they performed many miracles. Indeed, their fame inspired the theft that brought them from Lezoux to Gigny, in Burgundy, apparently before 900. Here, a church arose in Taurinus’s honor, and his cult flourished; from Gigny the cult and relics passed to Cluny, also in Burgundy, to which Gigny was subjected in 1076. Various texts transmit this southern tradition, including a Translatio recounting the relics’ journey to Lezoux and their subsequent removal to Gigny; a Circumvectio narrating the saint’s travels around the region of Gigny in the middle of the twelfth century; and a history of miracles performed at Lezoux, which is interpolated into an earlier account of the discovery of Taurinus’s body at Évreux and the record of a number of miracles performed there.73 In addition to the claim put forward by Auvergne and Burgundy, however, the northern institutions of Fécamp, Chartres cathedral, and Saint-Taurin of Évreux also claimed Taurinus’s relics, and they rejected the southern claim. This northern tradition finds its modern spokesman in the abbé J.-B. Mesnel, who pushed the northern claims strenuously in the early twentieth century and in whose artillery the date of the Vita Taurini constituted one element. Mesnel, curé of a Norman church, worked to destroy the Lezoux-Gigny tradition and to vindicate northern claims.74 He countered the tradition of a flight south by arguing against the need for any such flight: for Mesnel, the ninth century in Évreux was “relatively tranquil” and witnessed not panic, but a long spate of miracles followed by hagiographical enterprise.75 Mesnel places the miracles Taurinus worked at Évreux, which form the basis for both the original and the interpolated Miracula, primarily in the reign of Charles the Bald (died 877); then he dates the composition of both the Miracula and the Vita Taurini to the end of the century and attributes them to a single author, who in the Vita Taurini calls himself Deodatus.76 Mesnel only admits to a Viking attack on Évreux and disruption of the monastic life pursued there in Taurinus’s honor in the final years of the ninth century.77 No element of this scheme however—neither the image of tranquil

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monastic life at Évreux in the ninth century, nor the placing of the miracles under Charles the Bald, nor the identification of Deodatus as the author of the Miracula, nor, finally, the attribution of the Vita to the ninth century— stands up to scrutiny. Mesnel’s partisan zeal for the Norman claim to Taurinus’s relics led him beyond the strength of the evidence. What evidence there is for ninth-century Évreux belies Mesnel’s image of settled monastic routine. Various contemporary sources record multiple Viking attacks on Évreux in the second half of the century, as well as many in its vicinity.78 The monastery of Saint-Taurin would quite likely have been disrupted, if not destroyed, before 898, when Mesnel admits of Viking attack. However, no evidence indicates that before the middle of the tenth century anything more than a simple church served by a few clerics stood on the site of Taurinus’s tomb.79 The bustling center of cultic and literary activity Mesnel depicts toward the end of the ninth century appears unlikely. Although a simple shrine of this sort might well have accommodated and recorded local miracles (such as those recounted in the Miracula), it would have withstood attack only with difficulty. The few clerics serving such a shrine may have followed their bishop into exile readily, as the southern tradition recounts. Mesnel’s motivation to place the miracles in the reign of Charles the Bald stems from his desire to refute the statement made in the account of the translation to Lezoux, that Taurinus’s relics had left Évreux for Auvergne during that reign.80 Yet the miracles appear more likely to have occurred and been recorded before the rise in attacks witnessed after circa 850; indeed, the Miracula itself accords better with this scenario than with the one proposed by Mesnel. Mesnel’s dating of the miracles to the reign of Charles the Bald depends largely on the statement that one miracle occurred “with Lord King Charles reigning, in the seventh year of his reign.”81 Because he intends to disprove the need for a flight from Évreux in the middle of the ninth century, Mesnel takes this introduction to refer to Charles the Bald and assigns the miracle to the year 846.82 Yet this comment need not refer to Charles the Bald: Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Simple all ruled as king for more than seven years, and there is no other temporal reference in the uninterpolated miracle account to set this one under Charles the Bald. Indeed, various elements of the text locate the miracles in a time of peace and strong public authority: the miracles almost exclusively cure illness, and there is no mention of disruption or violence, despite the fact that the Vikings were active in the region from the 840s and increasingly in the 850s. The miracles portray a small local community: largely agrarian, apparently prosperous, run by

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royal officials, and evidently peaceable. The image fits the reign of Charlemagne better than that of his grandson. The miracles might well have occurred nearly three-quarters of a century before Mesnel posits: “the seventh year” of Charles’s reign might well be 775, rather than 846.83 Thus, nothing in the Miracula itself supports Mesnel’s attribution of the events it records, or the record itself, to the second half of the ninth century. The identification of the author of the Miracula with Deodatus similarly falls short. The two texts, which share no common material, appear to be the work of two separate authors with two distinct styles. High drama characterizes the Vita, in sharp contrast to the measured tone of the Miracula, and the two texts’ distinct styles reflect their differing sense of the dramatic. Whereas nearly all the feats Taurinus performed after death cured mundane illnesses or punished everyday transgressions, he used his miraculous powers during his lifetime for accomplishments of a much more exceptional sort, including reviving the dead and combating Satan. Deodatus deals in marvelous material, and he uses stylistic methods to heighten its effect. In particular, he employs adjectives, adverbs, and spirited verbs abundantly to enliven his descriptions and engages in extensive direct quotation in nearly every scene.84 The author of the Miracula avails himself very rarely of either technique. Thus, the least dramatic of the Vita’s scenes (a conciliar decision to evangelize Gaul), involves multiple superlatives and forceful verbs, as well as a direct quotation.85 The Miracula, by contrast, reports even the most sensational of its thirteen miracles in staid phrases with only a single adjective and no adverbs: a miracle recounted almost entirely in the passive voice restores its subject to “pristine” health. The cry with which the subject in this case addresses the saint, the only instance of direct speech in the Miracula, resounds with little fervor; it appears to be wrested as much from the author as from the sinner himself.86 Their quite disparate styles and taste for the dramatic clearly differentiate Deodatus and the author of the Miracula. The texts are not likely to be the works of a single author and are not necessarily from the same era. Nor does the Vita Taurini easily accord with a ninth-century dating. Deodatus’s attempt to masquerade as a late-antique author is quite transparent: his chronological blunders regarding the early Christian era and his dependence on Hilduin’s Passio Dionysii reveal him to be no earlier than the second third of the ninth century.87 His handling of the history of Taurinus’s diocese, however, suggests that he wrote in reference to the Viking raids and after their end. Although Deodatus would clearly locate his hero in the first and second

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centuries, the Vita foretells invasion and the destruction of Évreux in terms that closely echo descriptions of the Viking raids. An angel reveals to the aged saint that “this place will be deserted for a long time, but will be restored again for the better.”88 The saint, in turn, warns members of his flock, who worry upon his death that his grave will be desecrated by the approaching enemy.89 Their fears are assuaged by a mysterious guide, whom they believe to be their bishop’s angel, who assures them that the body will be safe and urges them to flee: And there appeared there, while they were worrying, a certain man honorable of face, white as snow, saying to them: “Brothers, take up the body of your father and with me leading follow without hesitation . . .” . . . And watching that man, we awaited what he should tell us. He said: “Do not fear, brothers, that this your patron will be taken away from you, since just as I was his guardian in life, so will I be no less surely to him in his grave, and his memory will be great forever. But now this city of yours will be overthrown, but all of you will be saved, since none of you will perish.” After we finished all that was fitting for his tomb, that man, whom we truly believe to have been our father’s angel, said to us: “Know that for a long time this place will be unknown. And withdraw from here as quickly as possible, lest you be overwhelmed by the enemy already approaching. Indeed, you will receive from God the reward for your labors. May peace be with you all.” With these things said he was no longer visible. And so with the angelic benediction received, we fled in fear of the enemy who was not far away from us.90

The disciples’ fear of grave desecration and their urge to flee correspond both to sources contemporary with the Viking invasions and those written later.91 The scenario as a whole, however, places the Vita after the end of the raids. The raids figure in the Vita Taurini as a prophecy which author and audience alike know to be already fulfilled: the city of Évreux will be devastated but Taurinus’s grave spared, and the saint’s “place” will be restored for the better afterward. To what exactly “this place” (locus) corresponds is not clear. It might designate only the city of Évreux, soon to be overrun by the enemy invader. Or it might refer to the institution of the church that Taurinus had brought into being there. “Locus,” the word used by the angel, has even more abstract connotations and can mean simply “circumstances.” The ambiguity renders the corollary notion of restoration equally sweep-

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ing; the implication is that everything pertaining to the diocese—its institutions, territory, and members—will suffer devastation and then experience rebirth. Not merely the destruction but also the restoration appear as episodes equally foreseeable and assured. Indeed, Deodatus places equal emphasis on each stage of this future; destruction presages rather than overshadows restoration. The confidence with which he predicts the revival betrays his historical perspective: he views the raids as past and the work of restoration well under way. Deodatus says nothing of the hardships the people of Évreux might face during the period of invasion; instead, he pairs their fear of imminent disaster with their knowledge of future security and revival. The logic of the Vita’s prophecy makes destruction the necessary forerunner of restoration; the two are inseparable. These two endpoints of the raids, their beginning and their ultimate result, eclipse the raids themselves and whatever actual suffering they may have entailed. Such a perspective does not belong to the ninth century.92 The very language Deodatus employs to predict a future revival betrays his perspective. The angel’s assurance that “this place . . . will be restored again for the better” (restaurabitur in melius) echoes the language of monastic reformation and refoundation. When Richard I supposedly introduced Benedictine monks at Mont-Saint-Michel in 966, he “restored it for the better” (restauravit in melius).93 The words match those of Deodatus’s angel exactly; the only change is in the tense of the verb, from future to past. Deodatus’s promise of restoration “for the better” thus would appear to locate him in the period of restoration that followed the raids. The phrase hints at Deodatus’s milieu as well as his era. The verb “restaurare” means not only to restore or return but also to reform. This is indeed what the word signified to the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel, who used it in the middle of the eleventh century to denote a reform they mistakenly attributed to Richard I: by replacing the allegedly dissolute canons with monks, Richard was thought to have reformed the monastery. Although the diploma recording the deed is a forgery, it accurately depicts the significance of the monks’ arrival at Mont-Saint-Michel in 966: their introduction was both intended and later remembered as an act of reform.94 Moreover, although the forged diploma anachronistically assigns Norman influence at the Mont to the middle of the tenth century, it accurately depicts Richard as an active proponent of reform. Richard’s father restored the monastery of Jumièges and invited reformers to his territory. Later in the tenth century

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Richard himself pursued this agenda to set in motion what would, in the eleventh century, blossom into a more widespread movement.95 The abbey of Saint-Taurin, which Richard founded in Taurinus’s honor sometime between 966 and 989, thus formed part of a widening campaign of monastic restoration and reform.96 The prophecy Deodatus places in an angel’s mouth seems to belong to this milieu and hints that Deodatus himself did too. Deodatus likely wrote after the foundation of the abbey in his hero’s honor, and perhaps at, or for, that abbey. Indeed, his vocabulary confirms a date at least this late.97 One last aspect of the Vita suggests he wrote still later. In one of the rare instances of direct quotation granted Taurinus’s disciples, they give vent to a notion that echoes an historical event.98 After Taurinus revives a young girl, he speaks to the crowd of onlookers, and they respond: “And thus the famous bishop of the Lord speaking to the people, and asking them which God they wished to serve, and they responded with a great voice: ‘Let him who wishes to adore another God than that you worship, and in whose name you resuscitated the dead girl, be burned alive.’”99 The response is remarkable for its sentiment of violent bigotry. The saint’s converts assign to him sole power to determine orthodox belief. As a consequence, the crowd directs its threatened violence against anyone who does not worship as Taurinus prescribes. There lurks in this passage not only the threat of violence against non-Christians but also a threat against those whose approach to the Christian God is not founded on obedience to his representative. This sort of intimidation evokes the reaction of the church as it confronted the stirrings of dissent and heresy in the central Middle Ages. The nature of the threatened violence itself resonates with a specific event of the early eleventh century. In 1022 a handful of scholarly clerics in Orléans expressed nonconformist ideas concerning baptism and the eucharist. King Robert the Pious condemned them to be burnt at the stake as heretics—the first such sentence recorded in the medieval West.100 While there is no explicit reason to suppose that Deodatus meant to comment on or refer directly to the incident at Orléans, the passage implies that he knew of it. Such familiarity would have been very likely among the religious of Évreux, particularly as the incident involved both Duke Richard II and his brother the archbishop.101 The affair was widely known, however, and this possible reference to it does not firmly place Deodatus in Évreux; it does suggest, nevertheless, that Deodatus and his work belong in the early eleventh century. No other internal feature of the Vita Taurini demands a date in the eleventh century, and this single potential reference to an event of 1022

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does not in itself anchor the text in that era. Nonetheless, nothing shows the text to have existed before this date. The manuscript evidence is inconclusive: the oldest surviving witnesses bear little indication of either a date or a precise place of production, although they incline strongly toward a Norman origin and, more tentatively, toward a date in the eleventh century.102 Twelfth-century manuscripts further attest to the Vita’s intensive penetration among the major Norman monasteries in that century, as well as its reception beyond the confines of the duchy.103 The manuscripts would thus locate the Vita’s composition in Normandy sometime between the foundation of the monastery, probably after 966, and the twelfth century. Within this span, the 1020s stand out not only for the apparent reference to heresy but also because it was apparently just at this moment that the cult of Taurinus began to spread from Évreux. Mesnel cites evidence suggesting that Taurinus began to enjoy veneration at Chartres cathedral in the 1020s. According to a later tradition, in 1024 Archbishop Robert of Rouen, who was likewise count of Évreux, urged Bishop Fulbert of Chartres to translate to his cathedral relics of Taurinus resting elsewhere in his diocese. The evidence supporting Robert’s activity as cult promoter is far from firm, although he is known to have visited Chartres at this time and to have been on good terms with Fulbert.104 An interest in the founding bishop of one of his province’s most important sees and the chief city of his county would be entirely plausible. Moreover, Taurinus’s veneration is recorded at Chartres from precisely this period, when he appears in a Chartrain martyrology written between 1026 and 1028.105 The evidence, although sparse, points to expansion of the cult in the 1020s. This expansion coincides with the possible reference to a contemporaneous event to suggest that the Vita indeed dates to this time. The archbishop-count’s possible involvement also suggests a more precise milieu for production of the Vita Taurini. Robert’s interest in Latin literature and in the history of the duchy was well known to aspiring authors of his own day. So was his literary patronage, which such authors sought by dedicating to him works molded to his sensibilities. The Vita Taurini resembles work known to have been written with the archbishop in mind.106 Its conformity to literary productions intended to please him suggests that it may belong to the sphere of his patronage, which included support for monasteries associated with his father, such as Saint-Taurin, as well as for literary activity. To link the Vita’s composition to the archbishop-count’s sphere appears plausible, if uncertain. While a date in the 1020s can be assigned to the Vita Taurini only tenta-

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tively, it nonetheless accords with the few pieces of evidence the text, the monastery, and the cult together yield. Despite Van den Bossche’s influence in associating the text with the ninth century and Mesnel’s attempt to date it definitively to the end of that century, it is more plausible that the text postdates the Viking raids and emerged from the subsequent period of restoration. Moreover, it conforms better to the tastes and concerns of the early eleventh century, as its apparent references to church reform and nascent persecution suggest. Such a hypothesis inspires further questions as to why this ancient bishop held interest in Normandy in the 1020s and how his vita reflects and perhaps responds to the circumstances of that moment.

All three texts—the Passio Nicasii, the Vita Vigoris, and the Vita Taurini— thus most likely originated in Normandy in the early eleventh century, more exactly in the 1020s and early 1030s. All three were evidently composed in those decades as new texts: no trace of their import appears before this period. Each saint had long enjoyed veneration: the monks of SaintOuen preserved some memory of Nicasius, whose relics they claimed and protected but did not hasten to recuperate; Vigor presumably had at least a marked tomb in Bayeux where Avitianus found his relics; and before the raids, Taurinus was apparently commemorated at a shrine where local people sought and received his miraculous aid before any formal record of his life existed. Moreover, all three saints appear in Usuard’s martyrology, associated with the precise region’s in which their vitae set their careers. Yet the reverence they enjoyed before the eleventh century reflected little or no knowledge of the careers with which their vitae credited them; beyond the martyrologies, no formal record proclaimed their earthly deeds. Despite the scant knowledge of their histories and the limited nature of their devotion, in the early eleventh century all three saints apparently came to enjoy interest sufficient to produce the stories of their careers. The dating of the texts relating these histories thus raises the further question of why precisely these saints might have gained importance at precisely these moments. Investigation of the contexts from which the texts emerged will illuminate the particular nature of the interest these saints commanded.

2 Individual Appeal Explaining the Interest in Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius

Saints Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius all appear to have enjoyed marked attention at particular moments in the early eleventh century. This attention distinguished saints of whom very little was known; before the composition of their vitae and passio, most likely in the 1020s and 1030s, a few words sufficed to recount the traditions concerning them.1 Thus, Usuard’s martyrology (865) relates merely the name of each, his status, and the place and day of his death, although Usuard was by no means averse to transmitting more than this basic information, if he could.2 Famous deeds, therefore, do not explain the attention shown these saints in the early eleventh century; the roots of their appeal lay elsewhere. These saints did not, however, garner attention by chance. Instead, the interest they inspired arose from the particular concerns of given places and times, concerns with which their own obscure histories resonated. Through an examination of these contexts, this chapter aims to uncover the reasons these three saints gained the attention of the milieux that apparently found them of interest in the early eleventh century, and thereby to assess the dates of composition proposed in the previous chapter.

Taurinus of Évreux Composition of the Vita Taurini appears to have coincided with the rise of Taurinus’s cult at Chartres, where tradition relates the translation of his relics into the cathedral in the early 1020s, perhaps at the urging of Archbishop Robert of Rouen, and where his veneration is attested from later that decade. The adoption of Taurinus’s cult at Chartres would have sparked interest there in his life, and Bishop Fulbert would likely have turned to the 33

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cult’s promoter for the text. Because no evidence suggests that Taurinus’s vita had yet been composed, the cult’s exportation to Chartres may have provided the occasion to create one. While the adoption of Taurinus’s cult at Chartres perhaps explains the need to compose the Vita Taurini in the 1020s, it also raises the question of why Taurinus would have attracted such attention in that diocese at that time. Taurinus was not a well-known saint; nor had he performed any recent miracles.3 As the details of his career and character remained unknown, interest in him did not likely arise in response to his fame or deeds. Instead, his cult appears to have spread as a result of the particular situation of his city and its county in the early eleventh century. Évreux presided as capital over the frontier county of the Évrecin, the setting for fierce power struggles that, in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, determined the southeast border of Normandy. Whether this region or portions of it formed part of the territory granted to Rollo remains unclear. Although William Longsword made donations in the Eure valley, no evidence shows him to have enjoyed authority in or around Évreux.4 His assassination ended whatever Norman authority may have existed there and left control of Évreux uncertain: the city passed first to Duke Hugh the Great, then to the king, and then perhaps to Hugh’s vassal, Count Theobald the Trickster of Blois (died 977).5 If Theobald did not already hold Évreux before Hugh’s death in 956, he may well have seized it in the period that followed, when he took Chartres and marched on Rouen.6 This encounter pitted against one another two rising powers, the neighboring lords of Normandy and Blois-Chartres. After defeating Theobald outside Rouen in 962, Richard I and his Viking allies pursued their victory to win control of Évreux in 965 or 966.7 Sometime later, probably in the late tenth century, the Norman ruler then created the county of Évreux and invested his son Robert as count. Robert was simultaneously archbishop of Rouen, and this dual position enabled him to use land belonging to the cathedral to strengthen his position in the Évrecin.8 Richard I may have made this dual appointment with just such a view in mind, and although the policy earned his son the censure of later reformers, it proved an efficient means of securing the newly established frontier zone.9 The Évrecin frontier remained volatile, however, despite both Richard I’s arrangements and later attempts at peace: in 1013–1014 a fresh war erupted over disputed land along the border—land given as dowry in the failed peace-making marriage of Theobald’s grandson Odo II and Richard I’s

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daughter Matilda. The marriage likely occurred in or after 995; before 1005, Matilda had died childless. Her brother, Duke Richard II, then reclaimed her dowry, which included half the castle of Dreux and some land along the river Avre. Odo refused to part with it, and a war broke out that was settled by King Robert after Richard renewed his father’s appeal for Viking aid.10 The settlement, which brought peace to the frontier, favored Duke Richard II: although Odo received the disputed castle of Dreux, Richard obtained disputed land along the river Avre and the castle of Tillières-sur-Avre, which he had built to fight Odo. Richard thus gained control of land over which Norman authority had been largely theoretical. As a consequence, his influence over the counts of the Vexin and Meulan increased.11 Closer ties to the clergy of Chartres cathedral also resulted when in 1014 Richard granted the cathedral Norman lands in reparation for damage done by his armies.12 The grant included strategically significant holdings in the Évrecin that compensated the cathedral, aligned it to ducal interests in Normandy, and perhaps instilled in the clergy an interest in the Évrecin and its history. The war of 1013–1014 thus ushered in better relations with the count of Blois-Chartres and his subjects, and it is to this happier period that the Vita Taurini likely belongs. The peaceful relations Richard II enjoyed with Odo II of Blois-Chartres in the 1020s raised the duke to the height of his influence. Richard benefited from his good standing with both Odo and King Robert, and from growing discord between them. In 1022, allegations of heresy at Orléans came to Robert’s attention by way of a Norman lord, Herfast. Before alerting the king, Herfast consulted with his nephew the duke and, with his consent, solicited the guidance of the clergy of Chartres.13 Bishop Fulbert of Chartres, whose advice Herfast sought, stood out not only as a figure of undisputed orthodoxy and knowledge; as the occupant of a royal see located in the stronghold of the king’s fiercest rival, and a beneficiary also of Norman patronage, Fulbert was a powerful figure with close ties to count, king, and duke alike. His sacristan, who, in Fulbert’s absence, urged Herfast to prosecute the heretics, also enjoyed Norman patronage.14 In 1022, the clergy of Chartres, Odo, and the Normans joined forces in what was a deeply political affair, and it was the Norman role that brought the affair to its dramatic end.15 During the year that followed the heresy at Orléans, Richard again stood tall. Odo’s inheritance of the counties of Troyes and Meaux in Champagne had alienated the king, who saw his own domains nearly surrounded by this obstreperous vassal.16 Relations between the two deteriorated, and Richard at-

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tempted to mediate in 1023 or 1024. As Odo relates in a letter to King Robert, Richard had proposed to act as judge in the matter, and both men had accepted his offer.17 Although the mediation ultimately failed, Richard occupied in 1023–1024 a position of unequalled strength.18 Moreover, he acted once more with the cooperation of Bishop Fulbert, who seems to have written to the king on Odo’s behalf in order to express the count’s own view of the matter. The Vita Taurini would thus belong to a period of unprecedented Norman prestige, a prestige which depended in large part on the duke’s relationships with Count Odo II of Blois-Chartres and Bishop Fulbert of Chartres. To these relationships, in turn, the county of the Évrecin was both important and problematic. The county had been created in the tenth century to secure the region against Blois-Chartres; this necessity did not disappear in the eleventh, despite good relations. Odo’s refusal to yield a castle in the Évrecin, just ten years before his cooperation with Richard II, had provoked a war that escalated dangerously with Richard’s call for Viking aid. This most recent war had arisen out of efforts at peace, and Odo’s continued possession of the disputed castle did not augur well. Odo’s eager ambition to expand his territories rendered his possession of a castle within the Évrecin a sensible danger to the Norman duke. Odo attempted to acquire territory in Italy, Burgundy, Lorraine, and the Auxerrois in this period, as well as Champagne. His endeavors rarely precluded attacking a neighbor, even when diplomacy would have advised otherwise.19 The Norman duke’s own ambition to impose himself in the Évrecin, and particularly along its southern border, likewise grew keener in the early eleventh century.20 Similarly, the Capetian king sought to strengthen his influence over the local families whose ties and lands straddled the frontier, and whose loyalty was not to be taken for granted.21 The Évrecin frontier, and peace with BloisChartres, remained unstable, even at the height of Richard’s influence and the warmest point in his relationship with Odo. Further efforts had to be undertaken to fortify the relationship with Blois-Chartres and secure peace. Exportation of Taurinus’s cult to Chartres appears to have been one such effort. Shared veneration, particularly when relics were likewise freely shared, created a bond of common devotion between communities. Such cultic relationships engendered spiritual alliances among both clergy and laity. The saint extended his patronage and protection to both communities alike, and they joined in his spiritual family. Such bonds helped to forge peace.22 Adoption of Taurinus’s cult at Chartres, therefore, offered one means to extend the friendship between the bishop of that city, his secular

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lord, and the Normans beyond the lifetime of the individuals involved. As Duke Richard died in 1026 and Fulbert in 1028, such a move would indeed have been timely. The saint’s vita served still more pointedly to cultivate friendship: by setting the story of the saint in one geographical location, it endowed that place with positive, indeed sacred, associations. The saint’s chosen city and region became holy sites, ones not lightly to be attacked. Indeed, such aggression would provoke the saint’s righteous anger.23 Exporting Taurinus to Chartres would have served to forge an alliance based on ties stronger and far more durable than personal cooperation. Taurinus represented the ideal candidate for such a mission. As bishop of Évreux, he remained intimately connected with that diocese and its analogous county. Moreover, as the region’s first bishop, he possessed a naturally high status, which his spate of Carolingian miracles enhanced.24 Veneration of the Évrecin’s most famous saint, one commemorated in the county’s capital by a well-endowed ducal monastery, therefore involved respect, if not reverence, for the Évrecin itself. Despite his prestigious stature, however, Taurinus remained, in the early eleventh century, a mystery. With his deeds unrecorded, the promoters of his cult enjoyed the opportunity to shape the career to fit the saint. The situation allowed for the elaboration of a vita worthy of a founding bishop, and one sure to bring admiration to his city and its region. Exporting Taurinus to Chartres offered Archbishop Robert—the supposed impresario—a golden opportunity. Extolling to a friendly community the feats of the major saint of the region they bordered allowed for the implication that all the saint’s prowess—shared beneficently with them—stood ready to defend his diocese. Taurinus’s impressive credentials lent themselves well to fashioning a patron worthy of veneration, while simultaneously insisting due respect be shown his territory. Promotion of his cult at Chartres might thus serve not merely to bring that city and its region into the family of Taurinus’s faithful but also to impress upon the people of Blois-Chartres the power protecting the Norman county. If the vita exploited Taurinus’s credentials to the full, the saint and his vita would hold both the incentive to peace and the spiritual power to enforce it. Adoption of the cult and the occasion it provided to compose the Vita Taurini thus granted the opportunity to export a particular image of the Évrecin and its protector, an image fashioned to strengthen the good terms between Normandy and Blois-Chartres. Taurinus likely attracted interest in the early 1020s as an ambassador of peace; he appealed as the means to strengthen a promising alliance with a traditional foe.

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Vigor of Bayeux Foundation of the abbey of Saint-Vigor of Cerisy by Duke Robert I the Magnificent between 1030 and 1032 likely prompted composition of the Vita Vigoris. That the establishment should have created a need for the vita of the new abbey’s patron saint is not surprising; the choice of Vigor, whose relics lay outside Normandy, requires more explanation. In fact, the selection of Vigor as the new abbey’s patron, like the foundation of Cerisy itself, represented a shrewd move by the duke. The establishment of Cerisy, roughly twenty kilometers southwest of Bayeux, signaled a new phase in the expansion of ducal authority and Christian culture in Lower Normandy. In the early eleventh century, this region remained a hinterland where ducal authority barely reached and ecclesiastical infrastructure was only just beginning to recover from the raids of the ninth and tenth centuries. The new monastery gave church and duke alike an increased presence in this precarious region. Cerisy lay between the sees of Bayeux to the northeast and of Coutances approximately forty-three kilometers to the southwest; both had suffered greatly during the raids of the ninth and tenth centuries and were only slowly recovering in the early eleventh. Five successive bishops of Coutances ruled in exile from Rouen after the murder of their predecessor by the Vikings in 890. Even circa 1028, when Duchess Gunnor began rebuilding Coutances cathedral, Bishop Herbert ventured only as far west as Saint-Lô, a fortified town sixteen kilometers southwest of Cerisy.25 Following the murder of the bishop of Bayeux during a raid in 858, his successors likewise appear to have fled: sources yield no sign of a bishop resident in Bayeux from the last quarter of the ninth century until the accession of Bishop Hugh around 1015.26 Although active elsewhere, from Fécamp to Rouen to Paris, the earliest Norman bishops of Bayeux do not appear in their see—even Dudo of Saint-Quentin sets the baptism of Richard I, performed by an otherwise unknown and likely imaginary bishop of Bayeux, at Fécamp.27 The bishops’ apparent absence reflects the limited power of Rollo and his descendants, which did not extend to Bayeux until the late tenth century. Only toward the end of his long reign, according to the second Translatio Audoeni, did Richard I undertake to build a fortified palace in Bayeux: that center and symbol of ducal authority was still under construction when saint Audoenus of Rouen allegedly appeared to the duke in a dream to set in

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motion the translation of his relics in 989.28 Richard’s fortification and the power behind it likely paved the way for a bishop to reside safely in the city; the first certainly to do so, Richard’s nephew, Hugh d’Ivry (circa 1015–1049), represented both episcopal authority and ducal power there. Revival of episcopal authority in Lower Normandy thus began sometime around 1015 at Bayeux and extended to Saint-Lô around 1028, supported in each case by ducal power. In the 1030s the two fortified towns formed a frontier beyond which Norman episcopal authority did not yet reach; along this very line lay Cerisy, a presence, like Hugh’s, at once ecclesiastical and ducal. Cerisy both represented and solidified ducal and ecclesiastical authority along this frontier; its foundation both brought monastic life to the Bessin and rendered this introduction one manifestation of ducal power. At the start of the eleventh century, the region contained no functioning monastery, although numerous priories may have existed. The nearest established abbey, Mont-Saint-Michel, lay over one hundred kilometers to the southwest; the abbey of Bernay, newly founded by Richard II in 1025, lay a comparable distance to the southeast. The Bessin was not without monastic ties, however: under Richard I and Richard II, Mont-Saint-Michel and the ducal monasteries of Upper Normandy had established tentative footholds in the region round Bayeux. By 1027, Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, Saint-Ouen, Fécamp, and Mont-Saint-Michel all possessed lands, churches, and privileges in the Bessin.29 These acquisitions resulted primarily from ducal grant, and such grants in turn did much to bolster ducal power. Monastic endowment both displayed and enhanced ducal power. Grants in Lower Normandy demonstrated the dukes’ beneficence to the church while also asserting ducal power to allocate resources as they wished in this region far from their own capital. Such donations to powerful houses, moreover, implanted in this distant region able administrators whose interests coincided with the dukes’ own.30 Finally, such endowment encouraged the continued convergence of these interests by underscoring the link between prosperity and ducal favor; careful administration of markets, tolls, tithes, woods, and mills could enrich monastic coffers only where ducal power chose to bestow such valuable resources.31 By entrusting territory far from Rouen to the great monasteries whose interests converged with the dukes’ own, the Norman rulers augmented their power while benefiting the church. Although the early years of Robert I’s reign weakened the great monasteries’ influence as the duke seized such lands and distributed them among

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his followers, his foundation of Cerisy built on, and indeed brought to fruition, the work of his father and grandfather.32 Robert’s establishment of a monastery in precisely this region marked both his reconciliation with the church and his growing power from about 1030: he could do more than seize resources in the region; he could guarantee the safety of monks and their property far from his capital. Indeed, the new abbey would represent his interests in a particularly distant and precarious zone. The holdings Cerisy would oversee lay further north and west than those of almost any other institution; only Mont-Saint-Michel, an institution as closely aligned with the rulers of Brittany as with the Normans, possessed a patrimony located exclusively in the west of the duchy, in territory beyond firm ducal control.33 In bringing monks to the outer bounds of the Bessin, Robert I asserted his religious patronage and lordly power along a frontier that represented the limits of ecclesiastical and ducal authority. The new institution both reflected and expanded his power. Extensive endowments undergirt the new abbey’s strategic position and symbolic importance; they likewise indicate the care with which the duke buttressed his new foundation. Robert’s lavish endowment of his new monastery reflects not merely his piety and undoubted fondness for the place (where he intended to be buried) but also his recognition of its precarious situation in what remained the duchy’s hinterland. In addition to exemption from the authority of its local bishop, the duke granted Cerisy diverse and ample revenues, privileges, and holdings from his own lands in the Bessin; in the cities and suburbs of Bayeux, Caen, and Rouen; and elsewhere in Upper Normandy.34 The new abbey represented an outpost of ducal authority in what was essentially a frontier zone, and Robert provisioned it accordingly. Selection of a patron saint for the new institution required careful consideration: the monastery’s patron would offer not only his or her protection but also his or her particular tradition of holy power—whether that tradition were venerable or newly minted. In placing Cerisy under the patronage of Vigor, Robert selected a saint who boasted an ancient association with the region and a longstanding cult. Vigor’s appearance in the vita of Paternus of Avranches by Venantius Fortunatus indicates that he had been bishop of Bayeux in or before the sixth century, although the poor state of Bayeux’s episcopal lists leaves Vigor’s precise place in the sequence of bishops unclear.35 The possibility that Vigor was not only a genuine historical figure but even one of whom some accurate memory persisted in and

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around medieval Bayeux has intrigued scholars.36 Vigor’s cult dates from at least the ninth century, although the first evidence for it comes from outside the Bessin: the clergy of Le Mans possessed a relic by 834, and Usuard included Vigor in his martyrology in 865.37 Nonetheless, Vigor did not, before the eleventh century, enjoy widespread renown and veneration in the Bessin or elsewhere. Indeed, around 1030 his cult appears to have been limited almost exclusively to the non-Norman abbey of Saint-Riquier, which housed his relics. Yet, though limited in scope, the cult enjoyed prominence precisely where several of Duke Robert’s interests, both secular and ecclesiastical, lay vested, namely, in the county of Ponthieu. Duke Robert enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the abbey of Saint-Riquier, which played a part in restoring the Norman church. According to the chronicler Hariulf, Abbot Angelramnus requested a donation from Duke Richard II and in return received on behalf of saint Richarius the church of Équemauville (Scabellivilla), in Calvados.38 Équemauville, between Honfleur and Deauville, lies roughly halfway between Rouen and Bayeux, just inland from the coast and outside the area firmly controlled at that date by the duke. Richard may well have granted it to Saint-Riquier as part of his routine utilization of non-Norman monasteries and reformers to strengthen the ecclesiastical structure of his duchy.39 Through his acquaintance with Duke Richard II, Angelramnus came to play a role in Richard’s reorganization of the Norman church. In return, Richard and his children became associates of the Ponthieu abbey (a condition of Richard’s grant) and they shared the credit for its good deeds.40 Duke Robert inherited from his father both this corporate association with Saint-Riquier and the personal acquaintance with Abbot Angelramnus. Together with his brother Richard III and his uncle the archbishop, Robert too had been present when his father granted Angelramnus’s request for a donation to Saint-Riquier. His mark appeared on the charter formalizing the grant.41 His later choice of Vigor as patron for his new, and important, foundation indicates that he maintained the connection. Given Robert’s other interests in Ponthieu, such a friendship was indeed valuable. Around the time that Robert founded Cerisy, Count Enguerrand I of Ponthieu gained a foothold in northeastern Normandy. Through his son’s marriage to the heiress of Aumale, Enguerrand acquired land roughly sixtyfive kilometers northeast of Rouen. Enguerrand’s presence there potentially threatened the erosion of both Norman territory and ducal authority. However, Robert responded to the danger by courting the count’s friend-

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ship, rather than by hostility, and he sanctioned Enguerrand’s claim to be “count” of Ponthieu, as the two surviving ducal charters to which Count Enguerrand attested show.42 Robert’s decision not to antagonize Enguerrand fits into the larger picture of the duke’s activities in the north. Indeed, Robert followed a consistent policy of forming alliances with strong lords along his eastern border. He intervened in the early 1030s in both France and Flanders to achieve firm alliances with the ruling figures of each realm. In Flanders, Robert’s intervention of 1030 restored to power Count Baldwin IV, whom his son, the future Baldwin V, had deposed.43 The elder Baldwin married Robert’s sister, probably in the same year; the intervention thus created an influential connection to the Flemish household and a firm ally.44 In the years immediately following the intervention in Flanders, Robert similarly served the new king of France by securing Henry’s throne against the machinations of Queen Constance and her ally, Count Odo II of Blois-Chartres. Robert’s diplomacy in dealing with Enguerrand thus added the “count” of Ponthieu to the formidable list of his allies. Robert’s understanding with Enguerrand formed part of a pattern to render the duchy’s eastern frontier stable and thereby allow the duke to turn his attention elsewhere—to the aggressive count of Brittany, the ambitious Bellême clan, and the western hinterland of Lower Normandy.45 If Robert’s alliance with Count Enguerrand illustrates the duke’s preference for accommodation along his own borders, it also reflects the extent to which a community of interest had already been established between the two regions. Saint-Riquier’s involvement in reestablishing the Norman church—the property it possessed between Rouen and Bayeux—gave that prominent Ponthieu institution an interest in promoting peace with the Norman duke. Similarly, the ducal family’s friendship with Abbot Angelramnus, as well as Robert’s own standing as an associate of Saint-Riquier, likely inclined the duke to compromise. Saint-Riquier’s veneration of Vigor provided yet another common interest and also a means to express the alliance. The choice surely appealed to Count Enguerrand as well, in his capacity as lay advocate of Saint-Riquier.46 That the choice of Vigor was deliberate is clear. Other saints associated with the region might have served as patron. Had Robert placed Cerisy under the protection of saint Exuperius, for example, he might well have been able to provide his new foundation with relics. The body of Exuperius, first bishop of Bayeux, had been moved during the invasions. In Robert’s time,

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it rested in Corbeil, of which his uncle and close ally Mauger was count.47 Yet rather than name Exuperius as patron and thereby provide the new monastery both with a more impressive patron—the founding bishop— and perhaps some of his relics, Robert chose Vigor: a saint of whom little was known and whose relics remained closely guarded at Saint-Riquier. The choice smacks more of politics than of devotion. Robert’s selection of Vigor for his new foundation symbolized the friendship between Ponthieu and Normandy and brought added renown to Saint-Riquier. However, it also posed a threat to Saint-Riquier’s exclusive claims to Vigor’s relics and the monks’ control of his cult. When Abbot Angelramnus visited Saint-Ouen while in Normandy on business sometime before 1045, he made a diplomatic effort to regulate this delicate situation. In the course of his visit, the abbot took care to underline the strength of his own position.48 After casually asking the monks whether they knew of a saint Vigor and receiving in response a copy of the Vita, Angelramnus stunned the monks with an announcement: “Then the abbot asked to be shown the text of his life, and to be granted a copy of that to be transcribed: and when they agreed, they were taken aback by hearing from him: ‘In the abbey of Centula, in the monastery of my lord saint Richarius, his body is kept.’ Then the monks of blessed Audoenus [Saint-Ouen] said to him: ‘By this, honorable father, know that you really do have it, if inspecting those bones, you do not find the chin: which bone you will not find there, since thanks to God we have it here.’”49 Abbot Angelramnus and the monks of Saint-Ouen struck a bargain: in return for the saint’s vita, Saint-Riquier would accept SaintOuen’s claim to a portion of Vigor’s relics. The two institutions would share the relics, the Vita, and the cult, without hostility. By means of this compromise, Angelramnus obtained the vita of his abbey’s new second patron, an important aspect of the cult. But control over the cult—appraisal of relic claims and dissemination of the vita—fell to the monks of Saint-Ouen. Saint-Ouen’s control of the cult might appear surprising, since Vigor had achieved sanctity as bishop of Bayeux and thence been transported to Ponthieu. Yet authority over Vigor’s cult did indeed lie with Saint-Ouen. When Robert the Magnificent founded Cerisy and placed it under Vigor’s protection, he likewise placed it in the charge of Saint-Ouen, the leading monastery of his capital. The first abbot of Cerisy, Durand (1030–1033), was a monk of Saint-Ouen. Most likely, the monks he brought with him to establish the new abbey also came from Saint-Ouen.50 The presence of Vigor’s

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chin in Rouen both symbolizes the tie between the two abbeys and hints at the significance of such a connection. The Norman dukes frequently made use of established monasteries to found new ones. By linking a new institution to an older house, the founder might obtain experienced personnel to guide the new foundation. Such tutelage aided the setting up of monastic life and also ensured that the new establishment would not be vulnerable either to predation or laxity. These links additionally augmented the prestige of both the new and established abbeys—the one by associating it with recognized renown, the other by increasing its influence. Such relationships might also have a political dimension, particularly where the duke acted as founder.51 By subjecting new monasteries distant from the center of ducal power to institutions closely associated with the dukes both by geography and tradition, the Norman rulers formed a network of religious, administrative, and cultural centers that promoted a new Christian and “Norman” identity for the entire duchy. Duke Robert’s reliance on Saint-Ouen to establish monastic life at Cerisy represents just such an action, at once religious and political.52 Duke Robert’s request that the older institution take charge of the newer represents the origin of the ties between Saint-Ouen and Cerisy; the presence of Vigor’s relic at Rouen represents the potent symbol of such tutelage. While saints might offer protection and perform miracles anywhere they received veneration, their primary loyalty remained to the places where their bodies were preserved. Miracles were powerfully associated with the presence of relics, and medieval people attached great value to their possession.53 To keep Vigor’s one Norman relic at Rouen, rather than at Cerisy, therefore vividly symbolized the dominant position of Saint-Ouen in its relation to Cerisy: the relic, like the hostage of a noble family, guaranteed the new foundation’s good behavior.54 The relic’s absence from Cerisy likewise, and not by chance, reminded the lay inhabitants of the Bessin that power— spiritual and political—lay in Rouen. Foundation of Cerisy in the early 1030s and the choice of Vigor as patron thus allowed Duke Robert to bolster his authority in the hinterland of Lower Normandy both institutionally and symbolically. The strategy reflects Robert I’s political agenda within and beyond Normandy, as well as his own growing piety. Vigor’s appeal lay not in his deeds—which were unknown—but in the associations he enjoyed with Ponthieu, where the duke sought to strengthen his alliance, and with the Bessin, where the new institution dedicated to him served to represent ducal power, based, like Vigor’s relic, in far-off Rouen.

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Nicasius of Rouen As in the cases of Taurinus of Évreux and Vigor of Bayeux, the sudden interest aroused by Nicasius of Rouen in the early 1030s, which resulted in the translation of his relics to Saint-Ouen and, most likely, the composition of his passio, was not purely spiritual. Nicasius was remembered from the ninth century on as having been martyred in the Vexin. This geographical association would have made him an appealing figure in the early 1030s. The creation of Normandy in 911 split in two the existing county of the Vexin, and gave rise to an awkward situation. What had been in the Merovingian and Carolingian eras a single entity, under the control of a single count, became in 911 two different regions, belonging to two separate rulers. The Norman Vexin, which occupied the area from the river Andelle, just east of Rouen, to the river Epte, fell under the authority of Rollo and his descendants; the French Vexin, extending from the Epte to the Oise on the east and the Seine on the south, remained royal territory ruled by the count.55 A buffer zone between the king and the Normans thus came into existence, but one with idiosyncrasies certain to cause tension. Among these idiosyncrasies ranks the inclusion of both the Norman and French Vexins within the province of the archbishop of Rouen. This situation presented a number of difficulties, particularly from circa 989, when Richard I appointed as archbishop his son Robert.56 For the better part of the next hundred years, a member of the Norman ducal family would rule over the church in territory belonging to the French king.57 Only an uneasy partnership evolved between the two figures. The king could not rely firmly on the archbishop to support his interests and authority.58 With Archbishop Robert, in particular, no great trust could exist. Robert worked zealously to strengthen his father’s and brother’s authority and then ruled as regent for his absent nephew and his minor great-nephew; he also led the movement to restore church lands held by the laity, particularly in the two Vexins.59 For the king the situation represented a weak point in his control of the territory bordering Paris itself. From the duke’s perspective, the French Vexin represented the entrance to Normandy. The Roman road leading from Paris to Rouen made access to one capital from the other dangerously easy, as did the navigable Seine.60 Safeguarding the Epte frontier had figured as one of Rollo’s first preoccupations and remained a chief concern of his descendents. To this end the Norman leaders entrusted frontier holdings to ecclesiastical institutions both outside and within their territory, especially Saint-Ouen of Rouen. Rollo

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gave Saint-Ouen several properties along the Epte, covering a range of almost forty kilometers and including possessions at the confluence of the Epte and the Seine.61 After Rollo this sector continued to receive careful attention, and the number of institutions with holdings there increased: Duke Robert, in particular, gave property in this area to Rouen cathedral.62 Such grants, frequently restitutions, allowed the Norman rulers to perform acts of conspicuous piety. The strategic locations of the lands granted benefited both the recipients, who eagerly sought access to river transport, and the dukes, who relied on these ecclesiastical outposts to fortify their authority at (and beyond) the limits of their realm.63 A number of these sites along the Epte were fortified beginning in the later eleventh century.64 In addition to securing the frontier, the dukes worked to increase their influence in the French Vexin itself as a means to protect their territory and also to gain strength with respect to their neighbors, including the king. In this endeavor, Rollo’s descendants achieved marked success. Norman efforts to control the French Vexin culminated in the claim to the county itself. Orderic Vitalis reports that King Henry I granted the French Vexin to Duke Robert the Magnificent in 1033 in return for the latter’s aid in gaining Henry the throne. Robert certainly played a vital role in establishing Henry: the king took refuge from his opponents in Normandy and received aid which he could not have compelled. According to Orderic, at Easter of 1033 Henry came to Normandy seeking refuge and “humbly begged” Robert’s aid.65 That Henry had taken refuge in Normandy appears clear from his attestation to one of Robert’s charters, which specifies that he was “a refugee in that land.”66 Clearly he owed Robert a great debt; yet there is no evidence of such a grant. Instead, Orderic’s claim represents the propaganda of a later period, a claim put about by William the Conqueror in his own attempt to control the French Vexin. After 1077, when King Philip I seized the French Vexin and began to rule it directly in the name of Saint-Denis, no buffer zone stood between France and Normandy. Castles proliferated along the Epte, and tensions escalated. In 1087, William the Conqueror attacked Mantes and likely made the claim to the Vexin as justification.67 Yet, though it neither dates from nor accurately depicts the era of Robert’s aid to Henry, the claim nevertheless merely distorts rather than fabricates reality. Robert the Magnificent did not receive the French Vexin in fief; yet he did exercise conspicuous influence within it. In his uncle the archbishop, the duke had an ally positioned to further Norman interests in the Vexin. Furthermore, he enjoyed a warm relationship with the count of the Vexin. Be-

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tween 1017 and 1026, Count Drogo (1017/1024–1035) married Godgifu, daughter of King Aethelred the Unready of England and sister of the future king Edward the Confessor. Godgifu and her brothers had grown up in exile at the Norman court of their uncle Richard II in the company of their cousin Robert, with whom they enjoyed particularly warm relations.68 The duke arranged the match as that of a daughter of his own family; Drogo’s marriage thus allied him firmly with the Norman ruler.69 He stands out as a generous benefactor of Norman abbeys, particularly those tied to the dukes.70 Later, the friendship between Robert and Drogo led to their joint pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which resulted in both their deaths in Nicaea.71 Whether their relationship went beyond alliance, marriage ties, and friendship is not certain; Drogo made frequent appearances at the Norman court and was later said to have done homage to Robert as his lord.72 In addition to his friendship with Drogo, Robert enjoyed a generally peaceful, if somewhat more turbulent, relationship with Count Waleran I of Meulan. Waleran made a career of vacillating among the powerful neighbors who vied for his support. Early in the eleventh century, he fought beside Odo II of Blois-Chartres against Richard II.73 After 1014, he began to style himself “count” and frequent the Norman court, where in 1023 he made a generous donation to Fécamp attested by Richard II, then at the height of his influence.74 Waleran’s more sympathetic attitude toward the Norman duke perhaps reflected the influence of his cousin and likely lord, Count Drogo.75 Further ties perhaps also linked him to Normandy; Duke Robert may have arranged a marriage that joined to a member of the Norman ducal family both the widow of Waleran’s brother and the lordship he left her.76 Waleran certainly held lands in Normandy by 1031 and was entrusted with the protection of a property near Meulan belonging to Jumièges. A quarrel with Robert before this date prompted Waleran to seize this property in retaliation for the duke’s confiscation of his Norman holdings.77 Unlike Drogo, Waleran certainly did not rank among Robert’s friends. Nevertheless, peaceful relations predominated. In the wake of the quarrel, Waleran sent his son Hugh to the Norman court, where he grew up with William the Conqueror.78 Still closer ties to Normandy arose from the marriage of Waleran’s daughter Adeliza to the Norman lord Roger of Beaumont.79 Nevertheless, Waleran continued to switch his allegiance: after joining the rebellion of his cousin Raoul IV of Valois against King Henry I in 1041, he took refuge from the king’s vengeance in Normandy, where he witnessed three surviving charters of William the Conqueror, but he later fought with Henry against

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William in 1057.80 For the better part of his long and feisty career, however, Waleran remained on good terms with the Norman dukes. To this relationship, the cult of Nicasius provided a stabilizing bond. By choosing to rest in Rouen, Nicasius created a physical link binding the Vexin where he endured martyrdom to the city from which Norman authority emanated. In particular, the precise placement of Nicasius’s relics sanctioned the authority and aspirations of the duke. Nicasius lay not in the cathedral, where the remains of this putative proto-bishop would have enhanced the prestige of his successor, but in the abbey of Saint-Ouen. Although founded as an episcopal abbey and long under the bishop’s rule, Saint-Ouen had by 1032 been detached from episcopal control. It now boasted an independent abbot and a close connection to its most prominent benefactor, the duke.81 Indeed, the abbey’s hagiographical activity in the early eleventh century emphatically underlined the dukes’ close ties to the abbey: Rollo was remembered at Saint-Ouen as having cherished a deep reverence for Audoenus, whose relics he ostensibly recovered and whose favor he humbly won.82 The Translatio prima Audoeni entwines Norman legitimacy with devotion to the monastery’s patron saint. The translation of Nicasius’s relics offered the duke a new opportunity, to venerate and patronize a saint whose relics linked to Rouen a territory at the forefront of ducal ambition. Just as Audoenus, in the traditions of Saint-Ouen, sanctioned Rollo’s accession to power in Rouen, so Nicasius might now sanction Norman ambitions in the Vexin. Nicasius’s arrival in Rouen thus symbolized the saint’s tacit endorsement of growing ducal influence in the Vexin, and the spread of his cult further strengthened it. Among the earliest recorded devotees of Nicasius stands Count Waleran I of Meulan, who venerated Nicasius from as early as the 1030s. Waleran’s devotion to a saint associated with his own region but preserved, and promoted, in Rouen, can only have solidified further his relationship with the Norman rulers. Translation of Nicasius’s relics and promotion of his cult served to bolster Norman authority in royal territory by usurping the religious heritage of the region. The presence of the relics in Rouen did much to link the French Vexin to Normandy; the composition of the passio, however, bound the two regions still more closely and made explicit Norman pretensions to authority in the French Vexin. Nicasius’s lack of any precise tradition, other than martyrdom in the Vexin in the company of several companions, rendered him yet more attractive as a focus of attention and energy at Rouen in the early

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1030s. In fashioning his story, the monks of Saint-Ouen seized an opportunity to show that Normandy and the French Vexin were intimately, historically, and divinely linked. Such an endeavor built on the translation of the saint’s relics to the Norman capital and showed that the choice of Nicasius had not been accidental.

Examination of the specific circumstances of the 1020s and 1030s shows plausible reasons for interest in the three saints at that time and supports the hypotheses that the texts concerning them originated then. This investigation, moreover, reveals the nature of the attention the three garnered. That Nicasius, Vigor, and Taurinus each received attention in the early eleventh century sufficient to inspire composition of their vitae and passio resulted not from any awed remembrance of famous deeds but from the association each saint enjoyed with a particular region or regions and the opportunity offered by their obscurity. Their geographical and institutional connections rendered all three saints appealing in this era of almost exclusive ducal patronage.83 All three boasted association with key regions: frontier zones where the dukes sought to strengthen their authority or fortify their borders, neighboring territories where the dukes looked to increase their influence and solidify alliances. Careful placement of these saints’ relics served to associate them, and the regions with which they were connected, with ducal power. Their presence in one locale made real the link between that place and the region the saint had graced in life and protected in death. Relics thus represented power and alliance in a deliberate symbolic strategy. Veneration of a saint drew attention to the location of his relics and also to the region that the saint had distinguished by his deeds. Promotion of the cults of Vigor, Nicasius, and Taurinus therefore focused attention on the Bessin, the French Vexin, and the Évrecin—all three key frontier regions—and associated these regions firmly with ducal authority. These cults also forged links between communities that claimed to possess the saints’ relics—Saint-Ouen and Saint-Riquier, Chartres and Saint-Taurin—or venerated them—Rouen and Meulan—and drew them together into the family of the saint. By linking frontier regions to ducal authority and fostering alliances with neighboring powers, the cults thus served to strengthen ducal authority both within and beyond Normandy. In addition to their geographical and institutional connections, the very obscurity of these saints’ careers would have lent them appeal. Just as the

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geographical associations made them ideal representatives of Norman power, so, inversely, their unknown histories provided a golden opportunity. These saints with mysterious careers offered the chance to create figures ideally suited to the tasks at hand. Each text represented a blank slate: the hero whom the vita or passio would promote in strategic regions would be fashioned precisely for the mission. Nicasius, Vigor, and Taurinus received attention not only because their associations linked them to regions of concern to the Norman dukes but also because their obscure histories lent themselves to the fashioning of Normandy’s religious heritage that best suited the concerns of the times and places from which the texts emerged. Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius, eminent but mysterious saints linked with strategic sites, provided the opportunity to articulate an ideal image of Normandy’s past, an opportunity that the authors of their texts did not squander.

3 Imagining the Past of the Évrecin The Vita Taurini

The Vita Taurini tells the story of Taurinus, first bishop of Évreux, from an early Norman vantage point.1 A variety of evidence suggests that its author worked in the 1020s, in a time of improved relations between Normandy and the neighboring county of Blois-Chartres, and in the wake of heresy at Orléans. The story he relates, however, pertains to a much earlier age. Deodatus, as this author calls himself, locates his hero in the early days of Christianity, the first and second centuries. He sets himself in this era as well, by posing as the saint’s disciple and godson.2 His work thus recalls the distant advent of Christianity in Gaul. However, his account offers no plausible record of the career of Évreux’s founding bishop; instead, it presents such a career as imagined by a writer of a very different age and accepted, as the Vita’s manuscript tradition shows, by his audience.3 Deodatus’s vision of Taurinus’s age sheds light, paradoxically, on his own. Deodatus assigns his hero to the earliest days of Christianity by associating him with well-known figures. The saint is born in the reign of the emperor Domitian (81–96).4 At baptism, the infant saint’s devoutly Christian mother entrusts him to Pope Clement I (88–97).5 Clement then chooses as the child’s godfather Dionysius the Areopagite, the bishop of Athens traditionally remembered as a disciple of Paul.6 The two bishops not only raise the boy far from the influence of his resolutely pagan father; in conjunction with Domitian, they also place Taurinus’s birth toward the end of the first century, probably in the 90s. Deodatus thus succeeds in making clear the age in which he wishes to set his hero’s life, even if he later muddles his chronology. Deodatus assigns Taurinus’s death to the reign of a Pope Sixtus: Sixtus I died circa 126, when Taurinus would (if he were born in the 90s) have been only in his thirties, although the Vita describes him as old; Sixtus 51

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II died in 258, by which time Taurinus would have been around 165. Such chronological gaffes, together with Deodatus’s confusion regarding Roman religion and provincial government, have revealed this supposed godson as a medieval impostor and deprived his text of credibility.7 Yet such details, although neither reliable nor convincing, nevertheless do set the stage vividly for Deodatus’s tale of deeds done by a hero of the early church. After relating Taurinus’s birth and baptism, the Vita recounts his journey to Roman Gaul and his career there as a missionary of the nascent church. While still a boy, he accompanies his godfather to Gaul; many years later, Dionysius ordains him bishop of Évreux. Thereupon, Taurinus begins to contend with Satan and to wrest from his control the souls of those who live in and around Évreux. The people of the Évrecin convert by the thousand in response to miracles demonstrating the evident power of the saint and his God. Among the converts, the saint finds a disciple and biographer, Deodatus, author of the Vita. By virtue of miracle, Taurinus ultimately wins over to Christianity even the Roman consul of the region, who had initially subjected the saint to interrogation and torture. As an old man, Taurinus learns through angelic revelation both of his impending death and of the coming invasion that will destroy his city and leave it deserted for many years before its eventual restoration. His followers bury him where an angelic guide commands them, and where the guide promises their patron will lie safe from the approaching enemy; then they flee as the invaders bear down upon Évreux. Four themes dominate the Vita Taurini’s account of Évreux’s founding bishop. Apostolicity represents the first of these topics. The Vita renders Taurinus apostolic not merely in the sense that he receives episcopal consecration or first spreads the Christian faith in the Évrecin. Taurinus is closely linked to the Apostles themselves, and his deeds reiterate theirs. By association, he shares something of their status and authority. The link between proselytism and power constitutes a second subject: Taurinus’s work as a missionary pits him against the leading powers of the region, and he ultimately gains control in the Évrecin. The Vita further dwells on a third theme, that of ruin and restoration. The text presages destruction and renewal for Évreux and renders these coming experiences inevitable stages in the divine plan. Finally, conversion represents the last of these dominant themes. As Taurinus uses miracles to win souls, his missionary activity reflects a particular understanding of conversion, one expressed elsewhere in early Norman texts. The Vita Taurini thus presents a wonder-working first

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bishop with apostolic connections and irresistible power, and it foretells the fate of his diocese for centuries to come. The Vita’s preoccupations point to the concerns of the milieu that produced it. In posing as the disciple of the saint, Deodatus presented the advent of Christianity as vividly as he could. While he strove to portray that event plausibly, he also inevitably emphasized those aspects with particular resonance for his own age. Deodatus’s vision of the distant past thus corresponds to the concerns, most likely, of the early eleventh century, and, in particular, the concerns of those promoting Taurinus’s veneration, including, very probably, the monks of Saint-Taurin of Évreux, and possibly Archbishop-Count Robert. Analysis of the Vita’s dominant themes, therefore, within the context of Deodatus’s probable milieu and with reference to his sources, will illuminate the ways in which he, and perhaps his contemporaries, envisioned the distant past of the Évrecin.

Taurinus the Apostle As first missionary to the region, Taurinus plays the key role in effecting the conversion of the people of the Évrecin, and he stands in a position of paramount importance to them in the new existence that follows. In precipitating their conversion, the saint brings the inhabitants of the Évrecin into the family of Christ. Within this circle, Taurinus himself occupies an important position in relation both to his flock and to other saints. Évreux receives salvation at the hands of a particularly eminent missionary and thus wins enduring prestige, as well as eternal life. To those he converts, Taurinus stands as patron and advocate, a role to which Deodatus draws attention. A young man the saint miraculously revives proclaims that in death, “I saw this man of God among the choirs of angels and he pleaded with God for us.”8 His listeners beg baptism at once. The vision makes clear not only Taurinus’s willingness to defend his flock but also the high standing in heaven that renders him a valuable champion. In addition to the acquisition of salvation, conversion in the Vita Taurini thus signifies coming under the potent guardianship of the saint. Taurinus’s flock enjoys the advocacy and protection of a holy man, as do all converted by saints. Yet his particular patronage outstrips that of most holy missionaries, thanks to his proximity to Christ. Through the apocryphal traditions surrounding those Deodatus names as his mentors, Taurinus is drawn into the network of Christ’s disciples. Ac-

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cording to one strain of medieval tradition, Pope Clement I, who baptized the infant Taurinus, acceded to the see of Rome immediately after his own spiritual father, Peter; Taurinus’s godfather Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens, was understood to have been the disciple of Paul. The roots of each tradition extend deep into Christian apocrypha. Much lore surrounds the mysterious figure of Pope Clement I. The long letter he addressed in Greek to the Christians of Corinth places his papacy toward the end of the first century.9 Two predecessors likely intervened between Peter’s reign in Rome and his, as the canon of the Roman mass recalls.10 Nevertheless, church histories of the second and third centuries relate that Clement knew the Apostles personally and that Peter ordained him directly.11 From this slender basis the tradition of Clement’s acquaintance with the Apostles burgeoned. Authors of the third and fourth centuries identified him with the disciple of Paul named in Philippians 4:3.12 It was as a disciple of Peter, however, that Clement gained renown. By the fourth century (or possibly earlier), legend proclaimed him the favorite disciple and chosen successor to the prince of the Apostles. Stories of Clement’s conversion by Peter, of their long travels together, and of the many adventures they shared form the subject of a group of Syriac texts collectively called the Clementine Romances. These legends reached the West in a selective Latin translation made by Rufinus of Aquileia (died 410) that included the novel known as the Recognitiones and various letters.13 Through Rufinus, the legends gained wide diffusion in the West, where they turned existing confusion regarding the right ordering of the earliest popes to the enhancement of Clement’s reputation. According to this apocryphal literature, Clement was at once the second and the fourth occupant of the Roman see. Rufinus explains that Peter possessed a dual authority over the Roman church: episcopal and apostolic.14 During his lifetime, the episcopal authority was delegated to two assistant bishops, while the apostolic authority remained in the Apostle’s own hands. On his deathbed, Peter then transmitted both powers to Clement.15 The two figures who separated Peter and Clement in the series of Roman pontiffs were thus merely the Apostle’s assistants, rather than his heirs, and had never enjoyed the full authority, episcopal and apostolic, transmitted to Clement alone as the Apostle’s true successor. Thus Rufinus reconciles the accepted series of initial popes with claims ostensibly put forward by Clement himself. In a letter addressed to the Apostle James, an author claiming to be Clement relates his election by the dying Apostle and his in-

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stallation as Peter’s successor.16 This scenario, which necessitates so abstruse an explanation from Rufinus, makes a natural sequel to the Recognitiones. The novel, also attributed to Clement, narrates at length his long and fruitful association with Peter, and so inextricably entwines their careers. Clement emerges from the legends as the Apostle’s chosen heir, the intermediary groomed by Peter to transmit apostolic teaching and authority to future generations. These apocryphal legends infuse Deodatus’s text, although they remain unspoken. Clement is not specifically presented as Peter’s immediate successor but merely named as “apostolic.”17 No attention is given to Clement’s history, his baptism by Peter, or his intimacy with the Apostle. That Deodatus says so little of this central character suggests that Clement needed no introduction. Such familiarity appears plausible enough: surviving manuscripts of his Passio (which names him as third after Peter) indicate that Clement enjoyed veneration in early Normandy, while the abundance of manuscripts of the Recognitiones produced and circulated across the regions of northern Francia, including Normandy, suggests a similarly widespread acquaintance with the apocryphal traditions.18 The hagiographer thus relied on his audience to draw on all the information, orthodox and apocryphal, at their disposal to round out the figure who lifts the infant saint from the font, as he himself was taken from the font by Peter.19 Familiarity with the Romances would make Clement the single, solid link connecting Taurinus directly to the prince of the Apostles. Apocryphal tradition colors more openly the character of Taurinus’s godfather, Dionysius the Areopagite, apostle to Gaul. Deodatus presents in Dionysius the conflation of three distinct figures made standard in the Gallic church by Hilduin of Saint-Denis. In the Passio he composed for Dionysius around 835, Hilduin merged three figures: Dionysius the Areopagite, named in Acts 17:34 as one of the Athenians converted by Paul in the Areopagus; the pseudo-Dionysius who wrote numerous theological texts in the fifth century; and Dionysius, bishop of Paris, sent, according to Frankish tradition, as Roman missionary to Gaul in the third century.20 Hilduin melds the three to fashion a first-century evangelizing saint with theological acumen, an elite spiritual pedigree, and apostolic power. The Clementine tradition lends force to the last of these virtues. The Clementine Romances enhance Hilduin’s portrait of the pope to whom he attributes his hero’s mission and, consequently, also elevate the missionary dispatched to Gaul. By virtue of the apostolic authority that he

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himself received “from my master Peter . . . by right of sacred heredity,” Clement confers on Dionysius “all Gaul, as the portion of your apostolate.”21 He exhorts the new apostle to faith and strength and finally offers him the hope that “just as the Lord was with our lords, fathers, and teachers, his Apostles Peter and Paul, so may he be with you in all things.”22 The two legends go naturally together, as the more splendid the pope who initiates the mission to Gaul, the more powerful the missionary at the Passio’s center. Hilduin associates his hero with the stature of his apostolic benefactor Clement; Deodatus follows staunchly in Hilduin’s wake to surround his own hero with guardians of impressive caliber. In casting the legendary figures of Dionysius and Clement in his text, Deodatus thus draws on traditions well-ensconced in the church, particularly the Frankish church, to exalt his hero. The saints with whom he populates his tale bring to the Vita Taurini a potent aura of proximity to the princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. Even without explicit insistence on Clement’s primacy or the two saints’ intimacy with the Apostles, the widely diffused legends surrounding Clement and Dionysius would likely have resonated with the Vita’s audience to exalt both figures and the infant they raised. The network of connections the legends collectively weave renders Taurinus the spiritual grandson of Peter and Paul. Taurinus thus stands only two degrees removed from Christ himself. The links Deodatus forges between his hero and figures of apocryphal eminence grant the Évrecin not merely a holy and powerful patron, but one with an exceptional pedigree. Such a pedigree carries significant implications for Taurinus’s church of Évreux. According to the Vita Taurini, it dates back nearly as far as that of Rome itself and claims nearly as close a connection to Christ—only a single spiritual generation distinguishes them. Taurinus’s connections additionally create the illusion of Évreux as a church more apostolic than others founded at a greater remove from Christ. As a consequence of its founder’s spiritual genealogy, neither the antiquity, the apostolicity, nor indeed the orthodoxy of the church of Évreux can brook any suspicion. Taurinus’s upbringing by Clement and Dionysius ensures the orthodoxy of his belief. The two saints were, after all, ostensibly indoctrinated by Peter and Paul. As the pupil of both Clement and Dionysius, Taurinus imbibed correct doctrine from infancy until his ordination, which Deodatus specifies took place in his fortieth year.23 Deodatus thus leaves no room to doubt that Taurinus inherited the Apostles’ teachings untainted, undiminished, and almost directly. Taurinus’s doctrinal soundness could hardly rest on firmer ground.

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As Taurinus’s close link to the Apostles ensured the correctness of Évrecin devotion at its inception, so his continued patronage of the diocese ensured its persistent orthodoxy. The Vita Taurini told the people of eleventh-century Évreux that the foundations of their diocese lay among the deepest and most venerable roots of Christianity itself. Their continuing guardianship by the missionary-bishop who embodied that link ensured the continued orthodoxy of their church. As patron of Évreux, Taurinus vouched for the correct belief of his faithful; as one close to the root of apostolic truth, his warranty held good. To claim foundation by a saint closely linked to the Apostles thus served a church well by augmenting its prestige and asserting its orthodox roots; at a time of incipient heresy, such a tradition would have proved especially valuable. Charges of heresy at Orléans and elsewhere would have increased the appeal of a saint closely linked to the Apostles. Deodatus’s insistence on the apostolic status of Évreux proved timely, as it proclaimed the orthodoxy of Évreux, past and present. Indeed, to underline his hero’s orthodoxy, Deodatus makes what appears to be a veiled reference to the affair at Orléans, in the converts’ collective cry that any who choose to worship otherwise than as the saint prescribes should “be burned alive.”24 In a time of growing doctrinal disquiet the continuing patronage of an apostolic saint offered assurance of orthodoxy, a guarantee that proclamation of his spiritual pedigree advertised.25 Taurinus’s apostolic status thus represents a leading point of the Vita Taurini, a point for which Deodatus stands indebted to one of his sources in particular. Taurinus’s association with Clement and Dionysius represents the conceit on which Deodatus bases his hero’s apostolic status. Deodatus may have known the Recognitiones directly, but multiple sources influenced by that text transmit the tradition of Clement’s intimacy with Peter, and Deodatus’s precise source remains unclear. Both Clement and Dionysius appear, however, in the single source from which Deodatus took the character of Dionysius: Hilduin’s Passio Dionysii, which itself exhibits the influence of the Clementine Romances. Hilduin emphasized the direct link between the see of Paris and the protégé of the Apostles; Deodatus used Hilduin to extend this status to Évreux. The Passio Dionysii thus furnished the cornerstone of Deodatus’s claim to apostolicity. Deodatus appears, however, to have sought nothing more in the Passio Dionysii than the apostolic link he borrows; he does not model his hero on Dionysius. Whereas the bishop of Paris dies a martyr, his godson Taurinus dies peacefully in his own church. The abstract theological discourse by

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which Paul wins over the Athenian to Christianity has no counterpart in the Vita Taurini, which sparks conversion by means of resolutely visible catalysts. Unlike his godfather, whom a priest and a deacon assisted, Taurinus works alone. The two saints are alike in mission only: though both apostolic founding bishops, they resemble each other in neither approach nor fate. Deodatus’s interest in Dionysius appears to have been solely as a guarantor of apostolic status. As Deodatus’s slight reliance on Hilduin indicates, he envisioned his hero’s career quite differently than did the abbot of Saint-Denis. For Deodatus, a missionary-bishop heir to the Apostles should imitate them more directly than did the bishop of Paris. To this end he modeled Taurinus on the heroes of other apostolic texts: the Historia certaminis apostolici, attributed to the imaginary Abdias, bishop of Babylon; and perhaps the Vita Martialis prolixior by pseudo-Aurelianus. Both works concern the deeds of those they present as veritable Apostles, companions of Christ. They therefore provided Deodatus with a model of apostolic conduct, to which he could demonstrate his hero to have adhered. Abdias, first bishop of Babylon, is traditionally named as the author of most of the Historia certaminis apostolici, which recounts the deeds of the twelve Apostles in ten books. Abdias presents himself as the disciple of Simon and Jude, who ordained him bishop. The preface to the work states that Abdias wrote in Hebrew, that his work was then translated into Greek by his student Eutropius, and then into Latin by the chronographer Julius Africanus. In reality, the Historia was probably composed in the late sixth century in Latin in a Frankish monastery. It relies heavily on the Vulgate of Jerome and the Historica ecclesiastica of Rufinus, as well as on the Recognitiones; it was well known to Venantius Fortunatus (who used it) and to Bede (who dismissed it).26 J.-B. Mesnel noted Deodatus’s use of Abdias in his study of the texts relating to Taurinus, although he suggests a greater fidelity than Deodatus exhibits.27 On the whole, Deodatus’s reliance on Abdias is casual: the Historia clearly provides the particulars of given scenes, but borrowings are often more impressionistic than faithful, and Deodatus adapts his source to fit his particular goals.28 The Vita Martialis prolixior was written at the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century by an author (likely Ademar of Chabannes) posing as Aurelianus, successor to Martialis as bishop of Limoges, in a bold claim of apostolic status for the church of Limoges.29 The Vita presents Martialis not merely as apostolic in mission or as spiritual offspring of the Apostles but as an Apostle himself, a cousin of Peter and companion of

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Christ. Whether Deodatus knew the Vita Martialis and consciously modeled his own work after it is impossible to determine with certainty. The saints’ deeds resemble each other closely.30 Moreover, one of the earliest known manuscripts of the Vita Martialis prolixior is Norman.31 This copy may have been made, like the rest of the codex containing it, at Jumièges. It is thus possible that a Norman author of the early eleventh century may have been acquainted with the new legend regarding Martialis’s apostolicity then being formulated and disseminated. There is, however, no way to know whether Deodatus was familiar with the new legend. Thus, although a much closer dependence is possible, all that can be stated definitively regarding the relationship between the two vitae is that they closely resemble each other in tenor, as well, it would seem, as date. They thus probably pertain to the same era and reflect the same general tendency to make bold claims while rewriting the past. Combat against Satan and his minions and the destruction of pagan idols stand foremost among apostolic accomplishments, according to Aurelianus and Abdias. The eighth book of Abdias’s apocryphal text pits the Apostle Bartholomew against Satan’s demonic underlings who torment the possessed and also deceive humankind by wounding people and then pretending, in the guise of pagan idols, to cure them.32 Martialis also encounters hordes of demons serving their master by similarly plaguing and deceiving humankind.33 Each hero triumphs repeatedly over demons hiding in pagan idols: the saints conjure forth the demons, expose them to crowds of onlookers, and then banish them.34 Deodatus likewise recounts several clashes between Taurinus and the devil or his servants, including one in which Taurinus banishes a demon from the image of a goddess.35 All the banished demons appear strikingly alike: Taurinus’s demon, “an Ethiopian, black as soot, having a wild beard and emitting fiery sparks from his mouth,” is the image of all.36 The three saints accomplish other similar exploits: Martialis and Taurinus revive the dead, and all three face plots against them instigated by the humiliated priests of pagan temples.37 Not only do the three heroes all perform the same feats, but in each case the saint’s power over the agents of evil follows the same pattern: each Satanic representative knows his defeat is foreordained and inevitable—the saint’s power literally binds him fast—and each obeys the saint’s commands without protest, if also without joy.38 The close resemblance of the three saints’ exploits reflects the likely relation of the three texts: Aurelianus relied on Abdias, as did Deodatus, and

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Deodatus may have known the Vita Martialis. More important than the mere fact of such reliance, however, is the motive behind it: a clear pattern of apostolic behavior, first elaborated by Abdias, appears in all three texts, and all three heroes follow it. The repeating and stylized feats performed by Bartholomew, Martialis, and Taurinus demonstrate each saint’s apostolicity. In combating Satan and destroying paganism, Taurinus thus engages in unmistakably apostolic activity. Clearly Deodatus cannot be credited with creating such scenes expressly to embody the unique history of Évreux. Yet Deodatus’s reliance on Abdias, and perhaps on the pseudo-Aurelianus, does not undercut the importance of such scenes for the Vita Taurini. Although not wholly original, they nevertheless reflect the significance of the saint’s advent as Deodatus understood it. Like Bartholomew and Martialis, Taurinus vanquished the devil to gain power over his new territory and render it to God. Indeed, that Taurinus thus reiterates actions performed by the Apostles enhances, rather than diminishes, the significance of his achievement. His feats are not meant to be unique but to adhere to the standard of apostolic behavior as understood in the early eleventh century. In true apostolic fashion, Taurinus wrested his new territory from the devil to sanctify it for Christ.

Proselytism and Power Taurinus’s clashes with Satan are not merely derivative episodes meant to associate him with the company of recognized Apostles. They also represent Deodatus’s vision of proselytism as an arduous and antagonistic undertaking: Taurinus’s efforts to win over the populace entangle him in numerous struggles with foes both demonic and human. The saint successfully renders the Évrecin Christian by means of his miraculous powers, which both inspire the inhabitants’ conversion and confound his enemies. Nevertheless, Taurinus gains control of the region only with hard work. In this respect, the Vita Taurini portrays his missionary activity as a conflict between the saint and various opponents of inferior virtue. Most prominent among the foes Taurinus faces appears the devil; the conversion of the Évrecin pits the saint repeatedly against Satan and his underlings. Upon his very arrival at Évreux, Taurinus must defeat Satan at the city gate, where the saint overpowers the demon disguised as three successive beasts.39 Similarly, the saint’s first success in converting a large number of people follows his resurrection of a young girl whom the devil cast into

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the fire.40 Taurinus likewise vanquishes a demon in the form of the local goddess: the saint expels him from an idol, shows him to the horrified populace, and delivers him in chains to an angel.41 Finally, Taurinus defeats the devil’s human ministers, the priests of the disgraced pagan temple, in an assassination attempt and gains the upper hand over the Roman governor of the region.42 The saint repeatedly thwarts Satan in what Deodatus clearly presents as a power struggle. The ambition of each party, saint and Satan, to control the Évrecin appears explicitly in the clashes between them. When the saint defeats the devil in their first encounter at the city gate, Satan responds with an explicit acknowledgment of the threat Taurinus poses to him: “Satan . . . said: ‘What joy can there be for me now that you have come here with your God to overthrow my power, and to take away the residence only I possessed in this province? . . . I will enter battle with you.’”43 The later confrontation in the pagan temple again portrays the struggle as warlike. As the demon, expelled from the image of the goddess, concedes defeat, he describes the clash in which he has been beaten: “When you [Taurinus] came here, I thought that I would overcome you and kill you. Now, however, you have gained strength and are stronger than I, since your God defends you; for I had conflicts with many, and none overcame me as you have.”44 Taurinus’s arrival signaled the start of a battle for control of Évreux—a battle in which the saint stood as the aggressor, as well as the victor. This image of the saint as warlike savior of the region appears in the inhabitants’ pleas to the saint, as well as in the devil’s complaints against him. In one scene, the populace equate proselytism with military aid. Deodatus recounts that upon witnessing the saint’s first act of revival “the people, prostrate at his feet, began to demand that he relieve their lost city.”45 The verb the people here employ in pleading with the saint, subvenire, connotes the military assistance offered by an army. The implication emerges clearly that, as of this first miracle performed by the saint for the people of Évreux, the devil controls the city and holds the inhabitants captive. Taurinus must “relieve” the city by aggressive force. Similarly, upon seeing the demon expelled from the statue, the populace address the saint, “praying that he liberate them from [the demon].”46 Such phrases find no echo in either the Historia certaminis or the Vita Martialis. In contrast to his sources, Deodatus makes plain the devil’s power over the inhabitants of Évreux and the saint’s ambition to wrest control from him. Taurinus comes to the Évrecin to overthrow Satan’s power.

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For Deodatus, the arrival of the saint and his religion thus marks the advent of a new dominion, one established by conquest. Taurinus’s victory signifies the end of a regime Satanic and also Roman. Taurinus triumphs not only over the devil but also over his human agents, including the priests of the Roman goddess Diana and the Roman consul Licinius. The Vita places an emphasis on subverting the Roman government that finds no real parallel in its sources. The collapse of Satan’s rule brings down also that of his Roman minions. Thus, the sequel to Taurinus’s victory over the devil is that over the consul Licinius. Taurinus’s conversion of Licinius completes his control of the Évrecin. The lengthy scene opposing saint and consul makes evident the change of regime that conversion entails: the consul first manifests his power by arresting the saint, deriding him, and having him beaten; the balance shifts when the consul, hearing of his son’s accidental death, begs the saint’s aid in reviving the boy; after the revival Licinius, along with his wife, his son, and “the nobles,” throw themselves at the saint’s feet to beg baptism.47 Mesnel notes that any number of martyrs’ passiones might have supplied the outlines of this encounter, and it would seem that Deodatus did model the saint’s torture on some source, particularly since the story line fits only awkwardly within the larger tale of a saint who died peacefully.48 Yet the scene does more than make its hero a quasi-martyr; it enables the saint to outshine his opponent verbally, and it humbles the consul before him in dramatic fashion. Licinius’s conversion entails his submission. By overcoming the Roman official, Taurinus topples the whole Roman government of the Évrecin at once. As Licinius humbles himself at the saint’s feet to rise as his disciple, Taurinus emerges as the leading figure of the region; his authority stands unchallenged.49 The struggle with Licinius is the last in which the saint engages; afterward, he appears in control of the province. By converting the ruling figure of the Évrecin, Taurinus thus ensures his own supremacy in the region: according to the Vita, the adherence of the populace naturally follows. The people of the Évrecin are, for Deodatus, fairly passive beings in whose hearts and minds the author shows little interest. The scenes leading up to Taurinus’s arrest do involve numerous mass conversions; however, these are incidental to the saint’s struggle against Satan, rather than the focus of the story. Instead, they represent the saint’s successful countering of a move by the devil, and the populace appear as auxiliaries to the main action. That the focus is indeed on these two antagonists, Satan and Taurinus, and not the masses whose souls are at stake, ap-

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pears clearly from Deodatus’s apportioning of direct speech. Throughout the scenes pitting the saint against Satan, nearly all speech pertains to these two.50 Conversion, in the Vita Taurini, comprehends the transfer of political authority from the agents of Satan to those of Christ. The linking of political upheaval with the will of God thus figures as one of the Vita’s prominent messages.

Ruin and Restoration Even the sacred regime instituted by Taurinus is not exempt from such upheaval, nor is it fated to last long; indeed, the Vita Taurini prophesies its imminent collapse. This eclipse, the Vita warns, will last many years but will not prevail: on heavenly authority the text guarantees the region’s subsequent revival. The collapse of holy rule in the Évrecin immediately follows the saint’s death. As soon as the whole region has come under his control and has begun to benefit from his teaching, the devil strikes back to achieve a temporary return: Therefore, while all Gaul flourished with the wisdom and teaching of blessed Taurinus, the devil, enemy of peace and truth, stirred up against the Gauls a vast eastern enemy. And when the Gauls had despaired of standing against so monstrous a multitude, they all appealed to the aid of the man of God. And the man of the Lord imposed there a three-day fast. When it had been completed, an angel of the Lord, appearing, said to the blessed man, “Thank your creator, for he has given you souls; this place, however, will be deserted for a long time but will be restored again for the better. And you, dearest, will receive the crown of your labor from the Lord on the eighth day.”51

The saint’s sacred regime lasts but a moment, though it presages the future revival of his region. The imminent doom heralded by the Vita Taurini functions in the story as a prophecy fulfilled to create a particular vision of history. The angel foretells not only the city’s coming fall but also its distant revival. The two are equally inevitable and equally necessary; the doom cannot be understood without the restoration that reverses it.52 The Vita Taurini thus incorporates the region’s history of destruction and restoration into a foreordained and repeating cycle of salvation; the Évrecin is saved again and again. Taurinus’s

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foreknowledge of these events links the region’s first savior to its future restoration. Taurinus’s achievement is not undone by the immediate destruction of his city; instead, his work lays the foundation upon which later restoration “for the better” will build. Moreover, the future renewal will be achieved by one following in the saint’s footsteps to complete his work: Taurinus’s true disciple is not Deodatus but the distant figure who will restore his territory “for the better” and thus reestablish his holy power. The destruction of which he is forewarned merely heralds the better future that the saint makes possible. Ruin thus appears as the necessary prelude to restoration, and the agent of restoration is the saint’s true heir. Because the Vita Taurini renders destruction as the harbinger of future good, and invasion as the counterpart of the saint’s work, it allows the later Viking raids to appear in the larger context of the story of salvation. The Vita does not merely foretell invasions evocative of those visited by the Vikings, it also renders them a part of the divine plan for the region. In the Évrecin, salvation comes, repeatedly, through aggression. This vision of raids evoking those of the Vikings resembles another of the same era: Dudo of SaintQuentin similarly portrays the Northmen as laying waste to Francia in order to render it more perfect, and his vision mirrors Deodatus’s in many particulars. Deodatus and Dudo concur in depicting their respective raids. Each does so inaccurately, by stressing the utter devastation of a region that was in fact never totally abandoned or utterly razed.53 Thus, Dudo’s dominant image is of desolation. Hasting the Dane and his men find Francia empty: With evil lurking about, Francia is abandoned, entirely emptied. It laments, destitute of wine or grain, in which it had formerly been most rich. It mourns that it is deserted by its inhabitants and deprived of its peasants. It bewails not to have been plowed by the plowshare and tilled by the plow. The land grows numb from lying still, not worked by the labor of oxen. Its thoroughfares are neglected, unworn by the footprints of men. With the passing time, its fields are clogged with species of foliage and bushes and groves. Safety was bewailed, and the confidence of life withdrew from men. In their ship the Danes sought those very waters, leaping from which they ravaged the neighboring lands. By night they attacked the bodies of the dead, buried in the quiet of the stupor of forgetfulness. With all that was seen by them devastated, and not finding combat of battle in all Francia, all the convoys returned, looting, to their ship.54

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Deodatus likewise depicts the Évrecin as already deserted by Taurinus’s followers before the invaders’ arrival and portrays the inhabitants in fear of precisely the actions Dudo attributes to Hasting’s band: And a not small question arose among the people, in what place he should be buried so that he might not be found by the enemies, they prayed the Lord that he might deign to show them where they should put the body of his servant. And there appeared there, while they were worrying, a certain man honorable of face, white as snow, saying to them: “Brothers, take up the body of your father and with me leading follow without hesitation.” . . . . . . And watching that man, we awaited what he should tell us. He said: “Do not fear, brothers, that this your patron will be taken away from you, since just as I was his guardian in life, so will I be no less surely to him in his grave, and his memory will be great forever. But now this city of yours will be overthrown, but all of you will be saved, since none of you will perish.” After we finished all that was fitting for his tomb, that man, whom we truly believe to have been our father’s angel, said to us: “Know that for a long time this place will be unknown. And withdraw from here as quickly as possible, lest you be overwhelmed by the enemy already approaching. Indeed, you will receive from God the reward for your labors. May peace be with you all.” With these things said he was no longer visible. And so with the angelic benediction received, we fled in fear of the enemy who was not far away from us.55

The same themes sound in both texts and with the same prominence. In each tale fear sparks flight, which in turn leaves the region desolate even before the enemy’s onslaught; inhabitants and attackers cooperate in the work of desolation, and in both texts oblivion is foreordained. Looting of the dead appears in both accounts as a potent motif: fear of grave robbery torments Taurinus’s faithful flock, while Hasting’s Vikings engage in such pillage wantonly. The deepest fear of Taurinus’s disciples thus resounds as precisely the pitch to which Dudo attunes the extreme barbarity of Hasting and his crew. The similarity between these two fanciful accounts of destructive raids encompasses not only the particulars of barren landscapes and frightful barbarity but extends also to the implications of this vision. Dudo and Deodatus both make destruction the necessary forerunner of peace and pros-

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perity; they thus present the same vision of Norman history, one flattering to the Norman rulers. In Dudo’s tale the savage attacks of Hasting are redeemed by the beneficent restorations of Rollo, just as the destruction of Évreux foretold by the Vita Taurini prepares the way for later revival. In presenting invasion with striking similarity, the two accounts reflect a shared set of assumptions and aims, which indicates in turn a shared context. Though the precise relationship between the two texts remains tantalizingly vague, they seem to belong to the same general milieu. Both authors were educated clerics working most likely for Norman patrons, probably in the early decades of the eleventh century. In each case, members of the ducal family figure among the known or possible patrons. Dudo, who finished his history circa 1015, claims to have written at the command of Dukes Richard I and II and with the help of their kinsman Raoul d’Ivry; in addition, he addresses four poems to Archbishop Robert of Rouen.56 Deodatus most likely wrote at or for the ducal monastery of Saint-Taurin in the 1020s; although his identity cannot be known, he probably had some connection to Normandy. He may have been a monk of Saint-Taurin, as Mesnel thought; alternatively, he may have resided in another of the duchy’s leading monasteries or in the circle surrounding its preeminent cleric and literary patron, Archbishop Robert. This beneficiary of Dudo’s poetic flattery and possible promoter of Taurinus’s cult and vita may have influenced both texts, as he did the work of other writers in the educated circle that surrounded him. It is even possible, though hardly demonstrable, that Dudo himself wrote the Vita Taurini and chose to cloak his own Frankish name with a Latinized pseudonym.57 The possibility that the two works shared a patron or even an author remains beyond certainty. They nevertheless share a common view of Norman history. The unified vision the two authors present of raids as divinely ordained destruction necessary to bring about renewal “for the better” appears to have been the one current in the leading circles of the era, whose tastes both texts worked to reflect. Their striking similarity strengthens the likelihood that Deodatus did indeed write in the early eleventh century and, like Dudo, had some connection to the ducal court. The Vita Taurini, like Dudo’s De moribus, responds to a history of invasion and restoration by envisioning a larger historical framework for the Évrecin, one within which savage destruction and Norman restoration realize the divine plan.

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Conversion in the Vita Taurini Deodatus plays on the theme of renewal further, and with similar effect, in his portrayal of conversion. Taurinus comes to the Évrecin to convert the region to Christianity; the centrality of this mission gives Deodatus ample opportunity to delineate the workings and meaning of conversion. He does so explicitly. Deodatus portrays the saint employing miracle to persuade the populace and, through baptism, granting his followers new life. Taurinus wins over the people of the Évrecin by means of miracles, which take the form primarily of resurrections. Taurinus revives three people, killed accidentally, to demonstrate the power of his belief. He first revives a young girl cast into the fire by the devil; later he revives the son of the Roman consul and the young man’s squire, who have died in a hunting accident.58 Unlike the preaching with which Taurinus is credited, the content of which Deodatus never reveals and the effects of which seem to have been minimal, each instance of resurrection sparks large-scale conversion among the populace.59 The three revivals enable the saint to impress the people of the Évrecin and to win their confidence. They also provide a deliberate symbol for the meaning of baptism: through the sacrament the new converts, like the revived individuals, gain new life in salvation. Deodatus makes literal the spiritual gift the saint offers. This vision of rebirth through conversion mirrors the text’s understanding of history: the individual, like the region, is reborn and saved after an interlude of desolation. Deodatus goes out of his way to construct this parallel. One of the saint’s miracles of resurrection adapts a scene found in both the Historia certaminis of Abdias and the Vita Martialis. Early in their careers, both Martialis and Bartholomew exorcise a young girl, the daughter of a powerful man. The two accounts resemble each other closely. In each case, the saint responds to the father’s request by liberating the daughter from a demon already vanquished and returns the girl, safe and sound, to her parent.60 Aurelianus, however, portrays the exorcism in greater detail and outlines the girl’s progress toward health. The saint commands the demon to leave the girl. “At this voice, the girl vomited the unclean spirit and became as dead. Then blessed Martialis, taking her hand, raised her and returned her safe and sound to her father.”61 Deodatus takes the metaphor still further and transforms the miracle entirely. In his account, the devil does not merely take possession of the girl but hurls her into the fire and kills her. The saint then brings her back to life not metaphorically, as do

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Bartholomew and Martialis, but literally: “Taking the hand of her lying there, he said, ‘In the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, Eufrasia, rise.’ And at once she arose and no sign of the burn appeared on her.”62 Taurinus’s action makes literal the promise of new life he offers through conversion: for the inhabitants of the Évrecin rebirth is not metaphorical but real. Like their land in the distant future, so they themselves will be restored from a state of spiritual desolation. Deodatus thus permeates his tale with images of fundamental ruin and renewal: the entire Évrecin, animate or insentient, will experience through the saint’s work the renewal that is counterpart to its affliction. Conversion represents not a cleansing, as in the other texts, but a complete regeneration. Deodatus presents conversion as a renewal at once total and instant. The people of the Évrecin respond to the saint’s promise of new life by converting spontaneously in large numbers; they demand baptism at once after witnessing the saint’s miracles.63 Such a vision of conversion suggests an instant transformation, one that occurs in response to an external stimulus and which baptism completes. No preparation, theological or psychological, appears necessary for Taurinus’s flock. They embrace Christianity totally and at once. This vision of conversion implies a particular state of mind among Taurinus’s flock: it suggests that they stood on the verge of belief even before the saint’s arrival and that a mere precipitating event sufficed to bring them into the Church. The people of the Évrecin were thus ready to convert; they did not require lengthy inner transformation because they were in essence Christian already. This view of conversion, instant and total due to an underlying predisposition toward Christianity, is not unique to the Vita Taurini. It characterizes other Norman texts of the early eleventh century and reveals not so much a theological opinion as a particular historical claim, one that resonates with the Vita’s vision of history. The notion that Christianity comes naturally to some, and that for them baptism instantly brings about complete conversion, appears in both Dudo’s De moribus and the Translatio prima Audoeni. These two texts, roughly contemporary with the Vita Taurini, represent the dominant tradition of Norman historiography.64 Each relates the conversion of Rollo, and they portray the event in similar fashion. For Dudo, Rollo inclined toward Christianity before Charles the Simple offered him a reason to convert. Even as a Viking raider, Rollo enjoyed divine favor; his conversion was foreordained and even foretold in dreams.65 Because of this predisposition,

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Rollo emerged from the font as the ideal Christian prince and began to demonstrate his deep piety by immediately seeking to learn which were the foremost churches of his territory and to grant them land.66 The Translatio prima Audoeni mirrors this portrayal. Upon emerging from the font, Rollo, “like a new Constantine, repenting of all his past evils, applied himself to the restoration of the churches of God which he had destroyed, to the defense of the poor, to the observation of the divine law, and the veneration owed to the saints.”67 According to these early eleventh-century texts, Rollo and his men (who followed him to the font) inclined naturally toward Christianity; even while pagan they stood ready to rise from the font as perfect Christians. The inhabitants of the Évrecin whom Taurinus converts receive baptism with similar predisposition; no inner conversion occurs because none is necessary. Their conversion adheres to the model elaborated in the early eleventh century, according to which the inhabitants of Normandy had always harbored Christianity in their hearts. Deodatus thus reflects the vision of his contemporaries in positing a predisposition toward Christianity among their ancestors. He extends their vision back in time, however, to include in this tendency not just the Vikings but also the Normans’ distant predecessors of the early Christian era. By positing such a common tendency, Deodatus asserts the inherent identity of Taurinus’s flock throughout time: the Évrecin has always been home to those with a pronounced natural tendency toward Christianity. The Viking conversion was not unique but followed the model of the region’s first Christians. Norman piety thus appears an extension of the region’s apostolic roots, just as Norman renewal of the Évrecin completed the saint’s initial work in wresting it from the devil.

The four dominant themes of the Vita Taurini emphasize the inherent Christianity of the Évrecin and represent its history—spiritual and worldly, individual and collective—as one of ruin and renewal achieved by aggressive redeemers closely linked to Christ. Together the themes make bold claims regarding the region’s history, while they also cast that history in a specific mold particularly well suited to the Évrecin in the early eleventh century. In recounting Taurinus’s story, the Vita insists on a particular reading of the region’s past, one which demonstrates a certain continuity. The Vita Taurini denies the possibility of interruption in the Évrecin. Temporary eclipse of the saint’s regime is foreordained; yet such eclipse

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foreshadows, rather than obscures, future renewal. The angel who announces the desolation of the territory by enemy invaders and its later renewal reveals the divine plan for the region: true interruption, true devastation are not possible; instead, salvation comes in stages at the hands of distinct but linked redeemers. The hiatus separating the region’s first conversion from its later renewal recedes into the background. The interval of desolation, which corresponds to the momentary death of the individual about to win salvation, appears incidental within the grand scheme of the region’s spiritual history. The Viking invasions, like those foretold to Taurinus, interrupted the saint’s work of salvation in no meaningful fashion. The claim of inherent faith, together with the claim of a close link to the Apostles, establishes the Christianity of the Évrecin as unimpeachable and likewise serves to diminish the raids. Not only is the church of Évreux nearly as old as Rome itself, and nearly as close to Christ, but it is founded upon those whose faith, whole and pure, is an immutable feature of their being. No pagan incursion could deflect the natural tendency towards Christianity characteristic of Taurinus’s flock. Deodatus thus implies that the coming enemy could in no way jeopardize the Christianity of the Évrecin; this assertion resonated with particular force in the early eleventh century. The foundation of Normandy in 911 had not ended the period of turmoil in the Évrecin. That region came firmly under Norman control only in the middle of the tenth century, and then only through the military aid lent Richard I by Viking raiders. Once again, in 1013–1014, pagan Vikings came to the region as ducal allies. These events nurtured lingering Frankish suspicion of the Normans. Authors such as Richer of Reims emphatically refer to the Normans of the middle of the tenth century as “pirates,” while the monks of Fécamp would claim that in 1001 William of Volpiano confessed himself reluctant to undertake the reform of the Norman church because of the dukes’ reputation as “truculent and barbaric men who subvert rather than build” the church, and Maiolus of Cluny refused the task outright.68 Recourse to Viking aid likewise proved awkward for Norman authors, who found in such actions scant evidence of Norman piety. In his account of this first episode, Dudo handles the Normans’ appeal for Viking aid with finesse. He begins, plausibly enough, by characterizing the Franks as harboring persistent suspicion of the Normans’ Viking connection and also of their Christianity. According to Dudo, Count Theobald the Trickster of Blois-Chartres, from whom Richard I eventually succeeded in

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taking Évreux, came into possession of the city by tricking King Lothair; fear of the Vikings played the key role in this ruse. Theobald persuades Lothair that Richard aims at winning the entire kingdom and that he is not above calling in pagan Viking raiders to assist him in this endeavor. Theobald urges the king to thwart such danger by granting him control of Évreux: “Besides, with the Danish heathen summoned, perhaps he [Richard] thinks in the arrogance of his boasting to invade the realm of your authority, as his grandfather Rollo once did to your grandfather Charles. Against this man’s efforts of presumptuous cunning, I give you the counsel of a favorable and most beneficial helper. Invade and besiege and take the city of Évreux for me; I will win for you the whole region of Normandy.”69 In suggesting Richard’s willingness to employ pagan raiders against the Franks to the east and south, Theobald plays upon both the Normans’ historical roots and Richard’s family ties. The Latin phrase “ascita Dacigena gentilitate,” by which Theobald intimates to the king that Richard, “with the Danish heathen summoned,” may contemplate the invasion of royal territory, might equally be translated, “with the Danish clan relationship claimed.” The claim by which Richard might call upon the Danes for aid— by which, according to Dudo, he did call upon them—was one of kinship.70 The key word in the phrase, gentilitas, connotes at once the Danes’ paganism and Richard’s kinship with them; the implications for Richard’s own religious loyalties patently emerge. In Dudo’s work, the Christianity of the Normans remains in doubt among the Franks in the middle of the tenth century, and upon that question hangs the fate of Évreux. Dudo’s tale continues with the king’s acquiescence in Theobald’s plot, which leaves Richard no choice but to appeal for Viking aid; it is the Vikings who, with much violence, save Évreux, and this course of events poses a problem for Dudo.71 Yet the problem is one of Dudo’s own making, and he solves it adroitly. Theobald’s implicit equation of the Normans’ continued connection to the Vikings with a feeble devotion to Christianity provides the premise to be disproved. Dudo demolishes it by using the Danes’ presence in Normandy to effect their conversion at the hands of Duke Richard himself.72 Far from casting doubt on the sincerity of Norman Christianity, the episode thus demonstrates its profound and unshakable nature. Dudo’s story of the events at Évreux in the middle of the tenth century represents the traditional Norman account; the reality, however, appears to have been far more complicated. Like Dudo, William of Jumièges would later emphasize that Richard’s appeal for pagan aid was a last resort, in the

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face of united and unjust Frankish aggression against his territory.73 By contrast, the fight for Évreux appears in Frankish sources as merely another episode in Theobald’s efforts to cast off his lords, the Robertian dukes of the Franks, and this view lies closer to the reality. Theobald’s alliance with Lothair was of new vintage and represented the ambitious count’s response to the defeat inflicted by the Normans outside Rouen in 962, for which he blamed his erstwhile lord and Richard’s brother-in-law, Hugh Capet.74 Indeed, Lothair and Theobald probably took Évreux from Hugh rather than from Richard; before the episode Dudo uses to glorify the Norman leader, Richard had not controlled Évreux: his power extended little beyond the confines of Rouen. From the 940s, Évreux had belonged not to the Normans but to a series of Frankish lords beginning with Hugh the Great.75 Moreover, Richard may not have called in Viking aid at all; a Viking host profiting from the absence of any strong authority west of the Norman capital to plunder along the rivers may merely have arrived at a convenient moment and been persuaded to serve Richard, and perhaps even to settle under his leadership.76 An appearance by the Vikings and an alliance with them, solicited or serendipitous, nevertheless likely exacerbated mistrust of the Normans and of the sincerity of their Christianity. Viking rescue of Évreux recurred in the early eleventh century and once more cast doubt on Norman faith. In the course of his war against Count Odo II of Blois-Chartres, Richard II repeated his father’s use of pagan Viking aid, which again brought the hostilities to an end: King Robert the Pious intervened in the quarrel between Richard and Odo in fear of a Viking attack on his realm.77 The Vikings’ involvement reawakened Frankish suspicions: King Robert’s fear of Viking attack, though he was not involved in the quarrel, reflects a generalized fear of pagan depravity and the Normans’ potential to unleash it against their Christian neighbors. Once more, the Franks questioned the Normans’ faith, and once more a Norman historian sought to remedy the problem. William of Jumièges, who wrote of this episode later in the eleventh century, employs the same method as Dudo for reaffirming Norman Christianity in the face of a Viking alliance. This time it is Archbishop Robert who brings about the conversion of King Olaf of Norway.78 According to William, when Frankish treason again made necessary the appeal to pagan aid to which the Normans’ ancestry entitled them, the devout Normans, as true Christians, took advantage of their influence with the pagans to convert them. Thus, appeal to pagan Viking mercenaries only proved again the depth of Norman Christianity.

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Dudo and William protest too much. The lengths to which both authors go to prevent continued reliance on Viking might from maligning Norman Christianity belie some discomfort with the memory of such alliances. Both authors strive to vindicate Norman Christianity by showing the Norman rulers as pious evangelizers. In so doing, they portray figures who follow in Taurinus’s footsteps. Deodatus, who, like Dudo, probably wrote as the Norman court finally turned away from its Viking connection, implies just such a parallel.79 By prophesying the destruction and renewal of the Évrecin, Deodatus links the region’s saintly founding bishop with its later reformers. According to Deodatus, Taurinus himself knows of this future revival and understands it as the completion of his own work; he fears no interruption of his achievement because such interruption is not to last. Those to come will finish his task by renewing the region he wrested from Satan; he dies secure in the knowledge that his work will be brought to fruition by later hands. Deodatus pairs the saint with those who, according to angelic prophecy, will restore his region and his regime. Read against the backdrop of the Évrecin’s recent history, Deodatus’s tale appears to foretell the Viking invasions (the coming desolation) and to identify the region’s future reformers with the Norman rulers, whose recent acts of restoration did restore it “for the better.” Richard I founded the monastery of Saint-Taurin after taking control of Évreux with Viking aid around 965; Archbishop Robert, count of Évreux, oversaw the region’s restoration from circa 989 to his death in 1037. The very figures whom Dudo and William of Jumièges credit with missionary activity proving Norman devotion to the faith took charge of the restoration of the Évrecin; they did indeed complete Taurinus’s work. Deodatus’s assertion that what a figure close to Christ began those to come will finish thus includes the Norman rulers of the tenth and early eleventh centuries in the work of the Apostles. The church of Évreux traces its foundations to the dawn of Christianity, and its faith remains pure under the patronage of its saint. Prophecy spans the intervening desolation to link that original founding saint to his spiritual descendents, who in keeping with the divine plan will restore his sacred regime in the land of the fundamentally devout. Deodatus fashions a version of the Christianization of the Évrecin that links Norman efforts at renewal with the work of Christ’s disciples, and he thus helps to refute any other interpretation of continued Norman reliance on Viking aid to secure the Évrecin frontier.

4 Reshaping History in the Bessin The Vita Vigoris

The earthly deeds of Vigor of Bayeux are related by the vita composed for him most likely in the early eleventh century.1 Vigor had been bishop of Bayeux in or before the middle of the sixth century, but little or nothing more was known of him when Duke Robert I founded the monastery of Cerisy in his honor in or just before 1032. Thus, although some scholars have credited the Vita with a basis in reliable fact, in reality, Vigor’s biographer had scant information to work with in portraying the life of the new abbey’s patron.2 The anonymous hagiographer consequently envisioned the saint’s career as seemed plausible from his own vantage point, probably in the 1030s. Like Deodatus, he inevitably pictured his subject within the framework of his own age; he too allowed the present to shape the past. Thus the Vita Vigoris, like the Vita Taurini, dwells on themes that resonated with the circumstances of its composition. The Vita Vigoris presents the life of an evangelizing bishop of early Francia; although not the first bishop of Bayeux, Vigor purges the region of paganism and converts the inhabitants to Christianity. According to the text, the saint was born of a noble family in the Artois during the reign of King Childebert and was raised at the monastery of Saint-Vaast in Arras. To evade his parents’ worldly plans for him and to fulfill divine commandment, the young saint set off westward to do God’s will wherever the spirit should guide him. An angel directed him to the Bessin, and there he undertook a holy life in the hope of converting the natives. Vigor inspired the conversion of many by various means, and in return he acquired abundant property. His renown grew, and upon the death of the bishop of Bayeux, Vigor was ordained his successor. As bishop, he continued his efforts to cleanse the region of paganism with zeal and success. Finally, the aged pontiff died peacefully, leaving behind a thriving diocese. 74

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The author molds Vigor’s story from three principal themes. Property serves as the first: the saint’s successful missionary efforts win him extensive holdings, to which the author draws pointed attention. Indeed, the hagiographer’s concern for the saint’s property reveals his own identity. Second, the text examines the nature of authority in various guises, as Vigor struggles to convert the Bessin by every possible means. Third, conversion itself occupies the author’s mind, as he portrays the different processes by which faith is instilled and its consequences. All three themes shed light on the circumstances current in Lower Normandy in the early eleventh century, when the Vita was likely composed.

Claims to Property and the Author of the Vita Vigoris Although it portrays a missionary who sought to win souls rather than wealth, the Vita Vigoris records how Vigor obtained abundant property in the course of his evangelizing activity; indeed, the Vita enumerates his acquisitions in detail, as Gaston Aubourg has noted.3 The saint gains extensive holdings in and beyond the Bessin, often through miracle and always by formal grant. The author takes care to name these holdings individually. Similarly, his clear warning of the consequences of infringement on the saint’s property reveals something of his circumstances. Vigor acquires the bulk of his property in reward for miraculous favors done on behalf of landowners. In four instances frightened landowners call upon the saint to rid their land of infestation, and in return they grant him possession of it. The first occasion involves the land on which Cerisy later stood; the author records its acquisition by Vigor by means of a miracle. According to the text, a wealthy landowner, having heard of the saint’s powers, begs him to rid his land of a giant serpent. Vigor succeeds and in turn receives the land as his own.4 Despite its banishment, however, the serpent reappears at three other sites, from each of which the saint evicts it, and each of which he then receives as his property: Cella (probably Cheux, located eighteen kilometers southeast of Bayeux), Camelitum or Cameron (probably Campemeille, a district of Rogerville, Seine-Maritime, cant. Saint-Romain-de-Colbosc), and Fraus Chelydri (most likely Saint-Vigord’Ymonville, located seven kilometers from Rogerville).5 The final grant exemplifies the recurring phenomenon. The “princes of the region” where the serpent has reappeared beg the saint to aid them; upon his successful expulsion of the beast “the aforementioned estates with all their many outlying regions were given over to the man of God in possession.”6 As Vigor

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cleanses the land at the owners’ requests, his miracles thus win him outright possession, as the formal grants the text records make clear. The saint acquires a further property from the king, by grant alone. Vigor approaches Childebert for aid in converting a hill outside Bayeux, the inhabitants of which stubbornly cling to their pagan practices. The king discovers that the hill belongs to the royal fisc and grants it in perpetuity to the saint.7 No miracle precipitates Vigor’s acquisition of this property or justifies his possession; instead, royal grant alone establishes the saint’s claim. As in the case of possessions acquired from private individuals in response to miracle, however, this royal donation gives Vigor absolute right to the property. By means of miracle and formal grant, whether royal or by lesser figures, the author thus both asserts Vigor’s claims to property and places these claims on firm legal footing. The care Vigor’s biographer takes to enumerate and justify the saint’s acquisitions suggests he has a stake in the saint’s legacy. His attention to the lawful transmission of land adds little to the larger story of Vigor’s missionary career. Instead, the records of official grant establish legal right to land to be transmitted by the saint to his heirs: one such property is explicitly described as an “inheritance” granted by the Lord.8 The author’s inclusion of such transactions implies that he wished to safeguard possession of the lands mentioned, presumably because he had some interest in this patrimony. Although straightforward, such an aim poses an historical problem: the majority of places named in the Vita cannot be shown ever to have belonged to any institution associated with Vigor. No evidence connects Cheux, Campemeille, or Saint-Vigor-d’Ymonville to the diocese of Bayeux, to Cerisy, or to the priory of Saint-Vigor-le-Grand founded in the middle of the eleventh century outside Bayeux.9 Gaston Aubourg posits that these sites appear in the Vita because at the time of its composition they already harbored active cults, but he provides no evidence for this contention and rejects the identification of Saint-Vigor-d’Ymonville, where Vigor presumably enjoyed veneration at some point.10 The hagiographer may have worked from information now lost without a trace, or perhaps he put forward claims that failed. Despite the obscure basis for these claims, however, their inclusion in the Vita remains significant. The author’s concern to assert Vigor’s possession of particular properties suggests his own affiliation with some institution that would have benefited from such a tradition. An affiliation with Cerisy appears logical, and the author’s handling of the various locales he associates with the saint confirms this hypothesis.

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The Vita Vigoris describes Cerisy with a specificity that implies firsthand knowledge. In recounting Vigor’s expulsion of the serpent from Cerisy, the text describes both the dragon’s lair and the exact circumference of the land encompassed by the grant. According to the Vita, Vigor found at Cerisy “the path by which the serpent went to the spring and returned to his den, which was within the old wall next to the roots of a certain tree.”11 This description implies familiarity with the site; the author knows not simply that the serpent lived at Cerisy, but he can identify the location of the beast’s den, even if he exhibits some imprecision regarding exactly which tree sheltered the dragon’s lair. Similarly, Vigor’s biographer notes that the grateful landowner “gave over to [the saint] that whole place which is called Cerisy, which is encompassed in a circuit of nearly thirty-five miles, with all its possessions.”12 The author applies to the property granted Vigor at Cerisy a thoroughness and precision unique in the Vita. The text’s references to other sites do not match the specificity given to Cerisy. The Vita names the three other properties that Vigor obtains by banishing the serpent and vaguely describes two of them as lying across a body of water, but the sites’ actual locations, their physical features, and their extent remain unclear—with the consequence that their identification has generated controversy.13 The text does denote the location of the hill Vigor acquired from the king, which it places about a mile outside Bayeux.14 The hagiographer does not appear to have been well acquainted with it, and the Vita relates historical, rather than physical, detail of the site. It describes the hill, Mons Phanus or Temple Mount, as harboring a pagan shrine in which a female image was venerated and states that Vigor and his followers built a church in its place and renamed the hill Mons Chrismatum.15 No first-hand knowledge of the site appears to inform the passage. The author does not describe the shrine’s location or relate any detail of its physical character. Nor does he describe the church that took its place, except to note in a later passage its dedication to Peter.16 Rather than enjoying any personal familiarity with the hill, he appears simply to know that the church there traced its origins back to purification by a saint—a not uncommon legend.17 Of Bayeux itself the author relates not a single detail: no episode of the Vita takes place in the city, nor is any feature of it described; the action of the text comes no closer to the city than the mountain roughly a mile outside its walls. The hagiographer’s own familiarity appears to have been limited to Cerisy. Additionally, the author evinces greater interest in Vigor’s work as mis-

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sionary than in his career as bishop. Roughly half of the deeds related by the Vita occur before Vigor’s election; moreover, those that he performs afterward do not differ in character from the earlier feats. All his actions pertain either to proselytism or to the acquisition or defense of property.18 Thus his election as bishop marks no turning point in his career; the saint engages in precisely the same activities as before. Moreover, the hagiographer displays no interest in anything specifically pontifical. He mentions a ritual procession and baptism traditionally performed by the bishop and clergy of Bayeux on Mons Chrismatum each Easter but appears to refer to the custom only as a mark of Vigor’s success in rendering the hill Christian.19 Vigor himself performs no action characteristic of a bishop rather than a missionary. The author’s lack of interest in Vigor as bishop, and in Bayeux as an episcopal city, contrasts with his more precise description of Cerisy and his report that Vigor acquired it not as bishop but as missionary: evidently his loyalty and interest lay with the abbey. Indeed, that Vigor’s acquisition of Cerisy in particular occurs before his election may represent his biographer’s intention to distinguish this property clearly from the cathedral of Bayeux. Duke Robert had rendered his foundation independent of its local bishop, and the hagiographer may well have wished to underscore this status. His identity as a monk of Cerisy thus appears plausible, as John Howe has also suggested.20 As a monk of the new abbey, the author would have taken special interest in connecting the monastery with the saint’s history. Though he does not explicitly credit Vigor with founding a monastery at Cerisy, the hagiographer creates a link between the institution later established there and the saint’s miraculous deed. By having Vigor obtain the land on which the monastery later stood, the text makes the foundation appear dependent on the saint’s action; although establishment of Cerisy occurred centuries later, the saint’s initial acquisition thus appears as its prerequisite. Indeed, by linking him inextricably with Cerisy’s land the Vita makes unimportant the question whether Vigor in fact founded the abbey; his purgation of the serpent represents the consecration of the land, if not the actual foundation of a monastery there.21 Though founded in the eleventh century, Cerisy can thus claim a historical basis in the distant days of its patron’s life. The passage thereby lends the eleventh-century establishment an aura of sacred antiquity. Such a connection also underlines the saint’s strong interest in the institution honoring him and implies that Vigor will protect his land from incursion.

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Indeed, the Vita Vigoris sternly warns against any infringement on the saint’s property. When an arrogant count of the Bessin, “with the devil goading him” and “aflame with the ravings of avarice,” seizes a field belonging to the saint, he brings upon himself the saint’s revenge: at Vigor’s prayer he falls from his horse to break his neck and deliver his soul to deserved eternal torment.22 Though stated in the past tense, the lesson of this episode is clear: “from that day, no one dared to invade the possession of the man of God.”23 The Vita thus sounds a clear warning to any who might harbor designs on the saint’s patrimony. The Vita’s concern with protecting the saint’s land reflects the precarious situation of the new monastery in the first half of the eleventh century. Located far from the center of its founder’s power at a time of only nascent ecclesiastical infrastructure and ducal power in Lower Normandy, a time, moreover, preceding widespread reform of lay attitudes toward church property, Cerisy remained vulnerable to predation by figures nearer at hand. Various sources show a large and growing number of armed men vying for power and resources in Normandy by building castles in the first half of the eleventh century. Among the most famous examples remain the Bellêmes, who gained strength precisely in the reign of Robert I; the Tosnys; and the Giroies, whose history Orderic Vitalis chronicles in detail.24 Although they won praise for founding numerous monastic houses, these ambitious magnates did not refrain from usurping church property when the opportunity arose, as numerous charters attest.25 Such depredations had been particularly rife in Robert’s early years, and memory of them remained vivid even after his death.26 The author of the Vita Vigoris, apparently writing within the new abbey of Cerisy, necessarily took an interest in strengthening his monastery’s position against such dangers. By associating Vigor closely with the monastery later founded in his honor, the hagiographer gave the abbey a stronger claim to its own land and rights. Similarly, by claiming other territories in the saint’s name and threatening dire consequences for those who should trespass, he bolstered the saint’s patrimony— real or imagined—as best he could against the threat of predation that was all too real in the early eleventh century. The hagiographer thus used Vigor’s life to strengthen the position of the saint’s monastic descendants by rooting their traditions deep in his history. In warning against infringement of the saint’s property, the Vita Vigoris makes a further point regarding the saint’s status, one that likewise resonated with his eleventh-century heirs. The two scenes granting him Cerisy

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and pitting him against the arrogant count show the saint dominating secular lords who either bow to him or are crushed. The saint’s overwhelming strength in subduing others appears repeatedly in the text and reveals the author’s view of authority.

Authority in the Vita Vigoris Vigor’s career as missionary in the Bessin involves infusing the region with his faith; according to the Vita Vigoris, the imposition on the region and its inhabitants of the saint’s authority is concomitant in this process. Vigor need not defeat any single being for control of the region; his advent in the Bessin does not bring down an entire regime, as does Taurinus’s in the Évrecin. Instead, Vigor accepts the existing power structure he finds in the Bessin and strives to put himself at its summit. The Vita shows Vigor asserting his supremacy repeatedly. Even among his supporters, Vigor makes clear his predominance, while those who oppose him feel the full force of his and his allies’ power. Vigor wins Cerisy not only by defeating the serpent that infested it but also by humbling its lord. Velosianus the landowner grants Vigor the estate while prostrate at the saint’s feet before a crowd of on-lookers: “Then all the people who had gathered at the spectacle glorified God saying: ‘Truly God is in his servant, through whom he does such a miracle in the eyes of living men.’ Among whom Velosianus, prostrating himself at the feet of the blessed man, confessed that God was wondrous in his servants. Then he gave over to him that whole place which is called Cerisy.”27 The saint does not merely gain possession of land, his miracle also wins him authority over the figure previously in control of it. This latter result does not follow from the saint’s combat with the serpent; although it had infested the estate, it had never ruled it. Real dominion remained with Velosianus. Vigor undertakes to defeat the serpent at the landowner’s request, and the grant appears to be Velosianus’s free choice. Vigor does not, therefore, win authority over Cerisy by defeating the land’s ruler but by demonstrating to him his own virtue. The serpent thus represents the key to entering and surmounting the existing power structure. Velosianus is not overthrown but merely replaced at the top of the hierarchy by Vigor. Vigor’s rise to power in the Bessin results from enlisting the lords of the region, rather than from active combat. While Vigor appears willing to cooperate with lords who accept his authority, he nevertheless tolerates no challenge to his supremacy. Vigor’s tri-

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umph over the greedy count who usurps his field emphasizes that he brooks no insubordination. The count’s affront to Vigor’s authority appears clearly; in his overweening pride he has placed himself above the saint, only to fall: [W]ith his hands spread [Vigor] began to pray, saying: “Lord God my helper, defend the inheritance which you gave me. Raise your hand against the pride of the enemy, since the enemy has done wickedly. Bring down the powerful from their seat and exalt the humble in faith, so that all may know that you alone are powerful and wondrous on earth.” The man of God had not yet completed the words of his prayer, and behold suddenly the same wicked and most arrogant count fell from the horse on which he was sitting and, with his neck broken, expired; as soon as his life and inheritance were lost, he was handed over to the eternal fires of Gehenna for torture.28

In tumbling to his death, the count falls from a position to which he had no just entitlement. Local lords cannot resist the saint’s power; they must submit to his domination or be destroyed. By contrast, one figure stands level with the saint at the summit of authority; the king appears as his partner in the work of conversion. Together, saint and king employ their authority to effect the conversion of a stubborn band. When, soon after his election as bishop, Vigor undertakes to render Christian the hill outside Bayeux where a pagan shrine still flourishes, he meets with a marked lack of success: “When in his usual way he had begun to announce there the word of God, the whole multitude of the populace, rising up, banished him by force, saying: ‘We shall hold to the custom of our fathers and forebears, and we will in no way recede from the worship of our gods, nor will we comply with your directions.’ On account of that the man of God withdrew from the place in anger.”29 Thus thwarted, the saint approaches the king, who receives him with sympathy, grants him the hill, and lends him the means to subdue it. Accompanied by royal deputies, Vigor returns to “destroy all the filth of the profanity of idolatry” and build a church on the hill.30 Vigor thus accomplishes the conversion of the mountain, but not without the aid of an ally; he turns to King Childebert without hesitation. The balance the Vita strikes between saintly and royal authority stands in marked contrast to the clear superiority the saint enjoys over local lords. That the saint does not occupy the pinnacle of authority alone but shares this position with the king implies, moreover, a particular vision of princely power.

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For the author of the Vita Vigoris, prince and saint work together. The king ensures that the inhabitants of the mountain gain salvation. However, he proceeds against the hill only at the holy man’s request. Royal power, though glorious in itself, must be called into action by the saint and operates only in conjunction with him and to his benefit; while the inhabitants of the mountain obtain salvation, Vigor and his successors win possession of their land. The king acts merely as an instrument of the saint’s will and gains nothing but the good opinion of the church. This image of princely power as an adjunct of saintly authority carefully balances the roles and precincts of the two figures.31 The bishop remains impotent without the king, and the king acts only in response to the saint’s summons. Each power aids the other in the fulfillment of the divine will. This partnership indicates the author’s concern with the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authority. He grants the prince an important and laudable role in supporting the church. The image he fashions of strong, responsible, and inherently good princely power corresponds to that being promoted by Cerisy’s founder, Duke Robert. Around the year 1030, Robert the Magnificent sought to repair his relationship with the church. Robert may have been a man of ungovernable temperament, as he is often presented.32 Moreover, the circumstances of his accession may have rendered his early years as duke difficult; his elder brother’s sudden and mysterious death after less than a year in power sparked rumors of foul play, which later generations at least laid at Robert’s charge.33 Because no duke had succeeded his brother, and because Richard III left an illegitimate son whom Robert quickly put into a monastery, the new duke’s right to succeed appeared somewhat uncertain despite his designation as heir by his dying brother and his apparent recognition by the Norman magnates.34 Possible doubts about Robert’s right to rule and suspicion of his role in his brother’s death may have left him vulnerable. Certainly his early years witnessed turmoil that included aristocratic factionalism and private warfare, seizure of church property, and Robert’s own aggressions against powerful magnates. He plundered church property to the profit of his knights and quarreled with both his uncle, Archbishop Robert, and his cousin Hugh, bishop of Bayeux.35 By about 1030, however, Duke Robert had established himself in Normandy and entered onto the stage of Frankish politics. He could now afford to dispossess his followers in favor of the church. He admitted the impropriety of his earlier behavior, made peace with Archbishop Robert and Bishop Hugh, and restored to Norman

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churches possessions he and his men had alienated. The acts of restoration indicate that Robert sincerely repented of his earlier behavior and that his repentance was accepted (together with the restored property) by the monks who drew up the charters. To the monks of Fécamp, he admitted: “[W]ith certain of our counselors, who were not justly looking after the church of God, persuading me, I transferred to our army certain possessions of the monastery of the holy Trinity [of Fécamp]. But moved by respect for God, when I entered the period of young manhood, with his mercy operating in me, the understanding of my mind soon realized that I had not done well, I have restored to the aforesaid church with all integrity those villages that they stole, and I decree them with all authority to have been restored in perpetuity.”36 By means of these actions and the documents that record them, the duke began to fashion a new image for himself, that of a pious leader whom the church might trust: its defender, rather than its despoiler. This new piety would culminate in the pilgrimage to Jerusalem on which Robert embarked in 1035 and from which he never returned. The pious and powerful prince of the Vita Vigoris represents the very image Robert sought to cultivate. The text thus endorses and promotes the new ideal to which the duke aspired in his relations with the church, the strong prince whose power the church invoked and supported and whose power was sanctioned from above. By promulgating the very conceptions he espoused, the Vita thus bolstered Robert’s own efforts to refashion the image of ducal power. The similarities between the duke’s endeavor and the author’s portrayal suggest that the Vita Vigoris reflects the vision not merely of one monastic community but of a monastic community in touch with the aspirations of its founder, the duke. The text’s concerns thus merit particular attention. Foremost among them ranks the process of conversion.

Conversion in the Vita Vigoris Vigor comes to the Bessin as part of the divine plan to save the pagan inhabitants of the region; he works there primarily as an evangelizer. Over the course of his career, Vigor accomplishes conversion by three methods; in recounting his various achievements, the Vita Vigoris thus presents three different visions of this process. All three models shed light on the author’s view of conversion and point to the historical significance of the Vita. The most colorful instance of Vigor’s missionary activity presents the cosmological side of his work. In their recurring encounters, Vigor banishes

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the enormous serpent time and again. In each case events follow the same sequence: the saint is summoned to overcome the beast, confronts it, and vanquishes it. That Vigor does not banish four distinct serpents but one, which he diligently pursues from place to place to chase it away for good, suggests that the serpent represents something more than a mere monster. Indeed, the Vita makes this larger dimension plain by explicitly associating the saint with Christ and the serpent with Satan: “[A]pproaching the den, [Vigor] said to the serpent: ‘Old serpent and Satan, I order you in the name of Jesus Christ the son of the living God, who gave the servants of God the power of treading down the asp and the basilisk and of crushing the lion and the dragon, that you leave this den.’”37 By banishing the serpent, the saint vanquishes the agent of Satan to cleanse the land of evil.38 Conversion thus goes beyond the salvation of individual souls to purify the land itself, while Vigor fights on behalf of Christ as the champion of good against evil. Indeed, the episode shows Vigor’s status in an interesting light. In banishing the serpent, Vigor exercises apostolic powers. As the saint tells the beast, his power against it represents a gift from Christ. Indeed, the saint’s injunction to the serpent echoes Christ’s exhortation to the seventytwo disciples regarding their mission and their powers: “‘He who hears you, hears me, and he who spurns you, spurns me, and he who spurns me, spurns him who sent me.’ The seventy-two returned with joy saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.’ And he said to them, ‘I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven, behold I give you the power of treading upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall harm you.’”39 Vigor wields a power granted by Christ to his disciples and is thereby assimilated to their number. Moreover, Vigor’s statement closely paraphrases Psalm 90:10–14: “Evil beings shall not come near you and the scourge shall not approach your dwelling, for he will command his angels concerning you that they should guard you in all your ways. They shall carry you in their hands, lest perchance you should strike your foot against a stone. You shall tread underfoot the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon. Because he has hoped in me I will liberate him, I will protect him because he has known my name.”40 The psalm appears again in Matthew 4:6–7, where Satan quotes it in tempting Christ: “If you are the son of God, cast yourself down, for it is written, that ‘he will command his angels concerning you, and in their hands they shall raise you lest perchance you should strike your foot against a stone.’”41 Matthew’s overt application of the psalm to Christ endowed it with mes-

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sianic connotations. Liturgy reinforced the view that the psalm spoke of Christ by including in the Mass for the first Sunday of Lent both the passage from Matthew and, immediately preceding it, Psalm 90 itself.42 Visual representation also stressed the association of Psalm 90 with Christ, particularly in Carolingian illustrations of the psalm that show Christ trampling basilisks and lions.43 Vigor’s power over the serpent thus strongly associates him with Christ, and the passage from the psalm appears in the Vita Vigoris tinged with distinctly apostolic associations. Although the monk of Cerisy did not model his hero after recognized apostles, he nevertheless appears to have envisaged his hero in apostolic terms. For the monk of Cerisy, the apostle evangelizes by channeling Christ’s power to purge the land of evil. Vigor’s particular method of banishing the serpent emphasizes his status as the apostolic representative of Christ and also identifies him as a member of a select group of dragon-fighters. Vigor brandishes against the serpent the symbols of the Christian faith: “And [the serpent] left there gnashing his teeth, with his head high, spewing flames and as if ready to devour. His length was forty feet in number, and his aspect was very terrible. As soon as the servant of God saw him, with his hand raised he flung out the sign of the cross. And he, with his mouth closed and his neck lowered came to him. Then the man of God seized his stole, bound his neck, and handed him over to his servant . . . like a tame sheep.”44 That Vigor remains unnamed at this high point of his heroism emphasizes that though brave and virtuous, he does not overcome the serpent in his own right. Instead, the ferocious beast is vanquished by the symbols of the Christian faith, the cross and the stole, which Vigor wields as the representative of Christ.45 Vigor himself thus serves merely as a conduit for the faith he preaches. Moreover, his actions clearly recall those of other saints known in Normandy. In binding the serpent with his stole, Vigor repeats the actions of Samson of Dol and Marcellus of Paris, on whose deeds the author of the Vita Vigoris may have modeled his hero’s. In the ninth-century Vita Samsonis, Samson also binds dragons (with his belt and his mantle), and he similarly commands a vanquished beast (a lion, rather than a dragon) to die by paraphrasing Psalm 90.46 Samson’s Vita was known in Normandy and possibly associated with Vigor’s; the manuscript preserving the earliest Norman copy of the Vita Vigoris also contains, immediately following it, the Vita Samsonis, although the Vita Vigoris predates the rest of the codex.47 According to his sixth-century biographer, Marcellus of Paris banished a giant serpent by striking it on the head three times with his stick, binding its neck

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with his stole, and then leading it away to choose exile in either desert or sea.48 Eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts of the Vita Marcelli, although not of Norman provenance, include the Vita Vigoris among their contents, suggesting that at some relatively early date the two texts were known together and may both have circulated in Normandy.49 Later tradition likewise credited Romanus of Rouen with having bound a dragon with his stole.50 Finally, Nicasius of Rouen dealt with a dragon in similar fashion. Indeed, such dragon-taming appears to have been fairly ubiquitous; Felice Lifshitz notes that “by the twelfth century practically every major town in Gaul could boast a dragon-taming saint, and mounted Rogation Festivals with processional dragons,” although no evidence exists for such a procession at Bayeux.51 Rather than set Vigor apart as a vanquisher of dragons, his actions therefore establish him as a member of a select class of saints fighting evil. Together with other renowned saints, Vigor combats evil on behalf of Christ to purify the land. Vigor thus contributes to the effort to sanctify Francia, but as he does so, his actions overshadow him. In these episodes, the saint, as much as the serpent, becomes an emblem for something much larger than himself; his story becomes the greater tale of the Christianization of an entire region. Vigor’s actions in vanquishing the serpent conform to a set pattern: they assimilate him to the ideal of sanctity established by other dragon-fighting saints.52 Just as this intended conformity enhances Vigor’s particular achievement by absorbing it into the feats of the saints more generally, so this larger theme of Christianization looms larger than Vigor’s own career. The history of Christianization eclipses Vigor within his own vita and suggests that conversion dominated the author’s thoughts more than did the ostensible subject of his work, the saint himself. The author employs Vigor’s story to explore the phenomenon of conversion in two further, less spectacular, episodes, which reveal the more mundane and more complicated aspects of the saint’s missionary activity. Early in his career, Vigor converts a Bessin town in an episode that examines conversion as a complex process of negotiation. Later, he purges the hilltop pagan shrine and converts the neighboring population by force. These scenes show conversion as a struggle not between Christ and Satan but between the proselytized and the agent of their salvation. Vigor’s efforts to purge the pagan shrine located on the hill just outside Bayeux show conversion as an involuntary step compelled by external force. In turning to the king for aid after his initial failure, and in availing himself

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of royal deputies to impose his will and his faith on the inhabitants of the mountain, Vigor uses force to achieve his holy aim. His proselytizing takes the form, in this case, of forced conversion rather than peaceful persuasion. The missionary relies upon royal power to win souls, and his victory brings new subjects into the realm. In a parallel scene Paternus of Avranches resolves a standoff with recalcitrant pagan worshippers through miracle; Vigor’s contrasting reliance on the king’s agents emphasizes the coercive nature of proselytism and its relation to worldly power.53 Conversion appears in this episode not as a spiritual experience but as a secular matter determined by force. Baptism represents admission into a polity as much as into the church, an admission which can be compelled against individual dissent. For the inhabitants of the mountain, submission is the price of salvation. Another episode of the Vita further examines conversion as a struggle between the proselytizer and his hearers. In this case, however, the situation does not deteriorate into open conflict, but is resolved through miracle. Early in his missionary career, Vigor converts a town in the Bessin.54 He gains some initial success there by preaching. Indeed, the Vita boasts that “nearly all were converted through his preaching and by the example of his sanctity to the faith of Christ.”55 Yet real adherence comes not in response to eloquence, but to proof. A grief-stricken mother, familiar with the saint’s promises, names as the price of her belief the resurrection of her young son. According to the Vita Vigoris, the woman: “[W]ith wailing and great clamor ran to the man of God, and began to shout saying, ‘Saint Vigor, if you are truly the servant of God and the things that you announce in the name of Christ are true, come and revive my son, since he is dead. For the lord sent you to this region for our illumination.’”56 The saint, in turn, begs the Lord, “[R]estore the soul of this boy to within his viscera, so that recognition of your name may be revealed in this people.”57 His prayer thus echoes the woman’s stipulation that miracle precede belief. She challenges him to win her soul by irrefutable proof of his claims, and he meets her on her own terms. By placing this anguished woman at the heart of the scene, the author focuses it not merely on the process of conversion, rather than on the saint, but on the process of conversion from the perspective of the converted. The members of Vigor’s flock articulate, through the woman, their uncertainty regarding the new faith whose minister courts them, and the ambitious hopes they address to it. Although willing to be persuaded, unlike the in-

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habitants of the mountain, these people too do not bend easily to the saint’s authority. They appear as reluctant, perhaps refractory, possessed of strong wills and ready tongues. The woman hesitates not a moment to approach and barter with the saint, the agent of her salvation. Though less obdurate than the adherents of the hilltop shrine, she too is a bold and willful figure. Like Vigor’s rebuff on the hill, the tense negotiation that passes between woman and saint emphasizes the difficulty of the saint’s task and the entrenched nature of the pagan faith he aims to uproot. Proselytism emerges as a reciprocal process, one fraught with tension even when peaceful. The saint must not merely preach to an audience but must also persuade his hearers, and their conviction does not rest entirely within his control. Indeed, in both episodes it is the people of the Bessin who determine the terms of their conversion. They require Vigor to compel them to Christianity by miracle or by force; the initiative lies with them. The author demonstrates a subtle grasp of the difficulties involved in effecting conversion, in contrast with the more typically Norman view of the Vita Taurini. He also displays a clear idea of the character of those living in the Bessin, a feisty people whose conversion can only be a lengthy and arduous process, one that demands much even of a saint. Indeed, this process, rather than the saint himself, once more appears the theme uppermost in the hagiographer’s mind and work. This preoccupation, like the text’s concerns with property and authority, says a great deal about the atmosphere of western Normandy in the early eleventh century, 120 years after the conversion of Rollo.

Conversion, hierarchical authority, and secure claim to property all preoccupied the author of the Vita Vigoris. His wish to claim property in the saint’s name and to protect such possessions against violation, his insistence that the saint stands at the pinnacle of authority in the Bessin, and his intense interest in the process of conversion reflect intertwined aspects of the history of the region and its situation in the early eleventh century. This history, as the Vita Vigoris presents it, justifies a particular agenda. The Vita Vigoris reveals its author’s efforts to strengthen the position of Cerisy, where he was likely a monk; this aim also entailed bolstering ducal authority. The Vita Vigoris makes express claims to property in the name of the saint. Yet, the saint’s claim relies in every case on a higher earthly authority; the formal legal grants that give Vigor possession retain force only

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if a viable power stands behind them. If the local lords whose grants the Vita records, or their distant heirs, should no longer recognize such transactions, the monks must have recourse to a higher authority. Thus, without the duke’s backing to enforce the saint’s right to land, the formal grants recorded by the Vita would remain void. The author of the Vita Vigoris appeals implicitly to ducal authority to enforce the legal claims embedded in the text. Yet, the hagiographer also provides what resources he can against the limitations of that authority and against the potential infringement of the saint’s property he seems to see as all too possible. In making quite clear the consequences of incursion on the saint’s rights, the text warns potential malefactors that punishment awaits them. The saint appears fully capable of defending his own possessions by miracle, should the need arise. The author thus shields the saint’s patrimony with a double safeguard: he bases the saint’s possession on formal legal transactions, grants on which a judicial procedure might rest; yet he also makes plain the saint’s ability to defend his property single-handedly. The text appears to put its trust in ducal justice, while it allows equally for the possibility that such justice might fall short in the Bessin. The hagiographer’s assessment of ducal power in the Bessin appears accurate, as does his fear for the plausible infringement of monastic property. When Duke Robert founded Cerisy in or shortly before 1032, his own authority in Lower Normandy did not yet enjoy the force he hoped to achieve. The monastery served as an outpost of ducal authority in this precarious frontier zone and looked to its founder for protection, as well as support. The center of the duke’s power, however, lay in far-off Rouen; the monks might depend on and trust in the duke, but the real efficacy of such protection remained limited. As a consequence of the emergent nature of ducal power in the Bessin, the monks faced the danger of depredation by figures nearer at hand. The most obvious of these, perhaps, to a monastic mind, was the local bishop. Duke Robert had established Cerisy as independent of the bishop of Bayeux, and thus in principle this figure posed no viable threat.58 Moreover, the wealthy Bishop Hugh d’Ivry (circa 1015–1049) could manage without such pilfering.59 By contrast, monasteries remained particularly vulnerable to local lay lords. The Vita’s insistent representation of the saint at the summit of the regional hierarchy, with local lords at his feet, reflects the fear of depredation quite real in the early eleventh century. Nevertheless, however

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vividly the monks might portray their heavenly patron’s power to punish transgressors, its earthly efficacy remained uncertain. Ducal protection represented the monastery’s best chance for independence, and the strengthening of such authority was thus very much in the monks’ interest. The image of the good prince thus reflects more than mere flattery of Duke Robert; in the promotion of ducal power in Lower Normandy the interests of monks and duke merged. This coincidence of interests characterizes Normandy generally; dukes before and after Robert succeeded in augmenting their own power by cultivation of monastic institutions.60 Cerisy, at the limit of ducal authority in the west, represents one element of this larger scheme; the portrayal of saint and prince in the Vita Vigoris reflects this situation. The saint works to bring the region under his authority and to subdue local lords whose arrogance leads them to appropriate more than they justly possess. In this endeavor he relies on the good prince, who supports him and employs force for the sake of a greater good. Together, saint and prince wield just power in a region not always amenable to the divine will. The Vita portrays the Bessin as a savage territory not to be conquered for God without difficulty. Such a vision of the region reflects not only its continuing insecurity in the early eleventh century but also its turbulent history. The hard-won imposition of righteous authority well characterized the history of the Bessin from the vantage point of the early eleventh century. In the wake of the assassination of William Longsword in 942, Bayeux suffered attack by Hugh the Great, duke of the Franks, in conjunction with King Louis IV d’Outremer. The contemporary annalist Flodoard of Reims relates that Louis took Rouen and Hugh marched upon Bayeux in what appears as a full-fledged effort to regain the territory of the Northmen, even if the two then quarreled over their spoils.61 Vigor’s city resisted, apparently under the command of a Viking warlord, one Harold, who emerged during the failed Frankish attack as the ruler of Bayeux. Flodoard describes him simply as “the Northman Harold, who was in charge at Bayeux.”62 Modern scholars agree in viewing Harold as a Viking chief not subject to the Norman leader who, based in Rouen, ruled little more than the neighborhood of that city and, in the minority of Richard I, not even that.63 After the siege was lifted, Harold allied with Hugh, but he appears to have done so voluntarily.64 Harold the Viking, apparently independent with regard to both Norman and Frankish leaders, seems to have controlled Bayeux as his own territory.

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The Viking chief was likely a pagan as well as an independent actor. The numerous raiders and settlers who came to Normandy from Scandinavia at this date remained unconverted.65 Moreover, Christianity had not laid firm hold on its new adherents in Normandy. Flodoard refers in 943 both to “Northmen who had arrived as pagans” and those who “reverted to paganism” and contrasts both groups with “Christian Northmen,” who supported Duke Hugh elsewhere.66 Religion certainly played a role in the political alignments of the middle of the tenth century. Indeed, Flodoard reports an attempt to turn the young duke himself to paganism.67 Whether or not Duke Richard personally experienced such pressure to abandon Christianity, the inhabitants of Normandy, particularly in the west, took neither his religion nor his authority for granted. Even toward the end of Richard’s long reign, the situation in Bayeux remained precarious. Richard appears to have asserted his authority there circa 989 by building a fortified stronghold.68 Whether by that date the city was sufficiently calm to accommodate a resident bishop remains unclear, as the contemporary bishops of Bayeux appear only elsewhere than their see: a Bishop Richard attended the translation of Audoenus’s relics in Rouen in 989, and the next year Bishop Radulfus attended the dedication of Fécamp, where he appeared again in 1006.69 Long after the events of Harold’s day, neither duke nor bishop appears to have been securely established in Bayeux. It is just at this moment that Hariulf of Saint-Riquier locates the departure from the city of Vigor’s relics. Hariulf wrote in the second half of the eleventh century, but he places the flight from Bayeux of the cleric who brought Vigor’s relics to Saint-Riquier around 987.70 Hariulf portrays Bayeux in the late tenth century as utterly devastated: It came to pass while the venerable body of most blessed Vigor still rested within the region of his former bishopric . . . that the country . . . was so devastated by the incursion of barbarians, that not only secular pomp, but even ecclesiastical decorum came to be defiled. In that storm, in the church of Bayeux, a certain cleric, Avitianus by name, was a warden; who, when he discerned that his homeland did not abound in its accustomed plenty, and that the divine services of the churches, which are normally devoutly exhibited to God’s saints, were entirely lacking, he began to ponder where he might now flee the poverty of this present life, thinking that the country devastated by hostile distress was not able to be restored in his lifetime.71

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Since, by Hariulf ’s day, Saint-Riquier claimed Vigor’s relics (minus the chin) and prominently venerated them, some tale of their acquisition was necessary. The one Hariulf tells, of a pious cleric seeking honor and safety for his city’s saint (and a profitable reward for himself), may or may not be true.72 Nevertheless, Hariulf ’s portrait of late tenth-century Bayeux, devastated and abandoned even by its saintly patron, matches Norman evidence that the city was not yet stable. For Hariulf, Avitianus’s flight—Vigor’s flight—marks the nadir of Christian Bayeux. Frankish sources thus assert that this independent and semi-pagan region of western Normandy came only slowly to form part of the territory subject to a Christian prince; by contrast, most Norman sources exhibit discomfort with this reality and employ various means to revise it. The Translatio secunda Audoeni, which depicts Richard I constructing a fortification in Bayeux late in his reign, simply omits any mention of the necessity for such a structure. Dudo of Saint-Quentin, by contrast, addresses the city’s history head-on. Dudo transforms Harold from an independent Viking leader based in Bayeux to the king of Dacia, that is, Denmark, who comes to western Normandy at the request of the guardians of the boy duke.73 Dudo gains much from this portrayal. The myth of “King Harold” allows him to place fierce and independent pagans in Lower Normandy without compromising either the notion of Norman political cohesion or that of Norman Christianity. Thus Dudo is able to put “an innumerable multitude” of fierce pagans, under the command of a strong and independent leader, at the service of the young Richard without calling into question either the faith or the authority of the duke.74 Dudo, at least, found the notion of an independent, pagan Viking chief “in charge” at Bayeux in the middle of the tenth century troubling, and he was probably not alone. If Dudo’s work reveals discomfort with the recent pagan past of Lower Normandy, this sentiment may well have belonged equally to his patrons, the powerful of Rouen, including the duke and the archbishop. Dudo’s unease with the recent memory of pagan Vikings ruling the Bessin thus merits attention. It provides a frame of reference for the roughly contemporary Vita Vigoris. Like Dudo’s fiction of “King Harold,” the Vita Vigoris deals with the question of paganism in the region of Bayeux without admitting its recent existence there. In the Vita paganism recedes to the era of the Merovingian kings when Vigor purges it from the Bessin once and for all with great drama. The Vita thus allows an examination of paganism and conversion

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without mentioning recent paganism in the region or its independence from ducal authority. The text recounts the initial purification of the Bessin by a representative of Christ endowed with apostolic power. It dwells on the difficult process by which the inhabitants of the region gained salvation and lost independence. It links the winning of eternal life to political submission. It examines conversion from multiple angles and allows the converted a notable role. Above all, it identifies conversion with the start of a new era. The text announces a new age in the Bessin, the advent of true faith and political cohesion under saint and prince. Yet by casting this new age as beginning in the sixth century, rather than the early eleventh, the Vita Vigoris smoothes over the region’s recent, troubled past and makes it one episode in a much larger pattern. The Vita Vigoris links the eleventh-century present with the distant past. Vigor’s task, as missionary to the region, is to cleanse it of idolatry, win the inhabitants’ souls for Christ, and grant them life everlasting. In the process he rises to the position of supreme authority over them and gains much wealth to perpetuate his rule. The tale imbues recent struggles for faith and power with an aura of sacred antiquity. The conversion of the Bessin takes on a timeless quality; the people with whom the saint interacts, and whom he converts, give voice to the concerns of the proselytized in all ages. The dramas of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, consequently, appear through the medium of the Vita Vigoris as echoes of age-old epic struggles. The recent past, troubling from the perspective of Rouen, emerges as one episode in an ancient and repeating cycle. The Vita lifts conversion and submission from their historical context and assimilates them to legend, to sacred antiquity, and to the divine plan. The influence in Lower Normandy to which Duke Robert aspired had been achieved by Saint Vigor long ago; the duke’s aims were foreordained, divinely countenanced, and assured.

5 Claiming the Heritage of the French Vexin The Passio Nicasii

The Passio Nicasii, Quirini et Scubiculi relates the deeds with which the monks of Saint-Ouen credited the martyrs whose relics they received in 1032.1 Composition of the text appears to have followed shortly after the relic translation. As the anonymous author obliquely declares in denoting his heroes as “our most holy fathers,” the text emanated from the abbey; the author himself was thus presumably one of Saint-Ouen’s monks.2 The Passio represents the first of the community’s many efforts to promote the cult of Nicasius and his companions.3 It also expresses the monks’ vision of their new patron’s life and significance. The text transforms Nicasius from a martyr of small repute and unknown deeds into a heroic first bishop worthy of prominent devotion in a leading ducal monastery. To achieve this metamorphosis, the hagiographer elaborated on the saints’ reputed martyrdom in the Vexin, the region that separated Normandy from Paris, and their ancient association with the monastery’s possession at Gasny on the river Epte, where their relics had formerly rested. He knew little else of Nicasius and his companions, however, and consequently, he invented much. Upon the foundation of martyrdom in the Vexin, he created for Saint-Ouen a worthy patron and also posited a particular history for the Vexin. Although the monk of Saint-Ouen wrote in an era when the Vexin was divided into two parts, one Norman and one French, he wrote of an era long before this separation.4 The hagiographer imagined the Vexin as something more than a buffer zone; he pictured it as the setting of sacred history. The Passio Nicasii relates the brief career of a founding bishop and martyr, and his two companions. Nicasius’s story unfolds within that of another saint. According to the Passio Nicasii, soon after his succession to Peter, 94

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Pope Clement I welcomed to Rome Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens. Clement decided to send Dionysius to Gaul for the sake of establishing divine authority there. He appointed as companions to the Athenian many worthy men, among them Nicasius, Quirinus, and Scubiculus, the first of whom Clement ordained a bishop before his departure. The holy company reached Paris, where Dionysius decided to focus his energies, and from there they dispersed across Gaul and Germany. Nicasius chose Rouen as his bishopric and set out with Quirinus and Scubiculus across the Vexin. Their journey brought them face to face with the malevolent forces controlling the region, whom they vanquished one by one. The success of Dionysius and his fellows, however, raised the ire of the pagan authorities; Domitian sent forces to quell them, and first Dionysius, then Nicasius and his companions received martyrdom. Nicasius, first bishop of Rouen, never reached his bishopric, but his wondrous life and death in the Vexin prepared the way for the full evangelization of the region and the rise of the see of Rouen. Three themes share prominence in the Passio Nicasii’s portrayal of this first bishop’s career. Chief among them ranks the view that power is the goal of evangelization, as the missionaries aim to establish divine dominion in Gaul. Second, the theme of apostolicity dominates the text: every major figure mentioned enjoys apostolic status. Third, the author explores the meaning of conversion, as his hero brings Christianity to the people of the Vexin. The themes of the Passio Nicasii echo those of other texts; yet although the author handles themes found elsewhere, he adapts them according to his particular subject and his own genius. These standard themes appear at once familiar and new, as he shapes them to his own vision. While the Passio Nicasii reflects the way in which one monastery imagined one saint, it thus also adds to the larger vision of the early Christian past elaborated by Deodatus and the anonymous monk of Cerisy. Together, the three texts reveal the contours of the past as it was recalled in Normandy in the early eleventh century.

Evangelization and Power in the Passio Nicasii The monk of Saint-Ouen offers a particular view of evangelization, one which reinterprets his main source. For him, evangelization connotes the extension of divine authority on earth. His heroes venture from the capital

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of Christendom charged with bringing new territory under divine rule. Their mission aims at dominion, and they represent the army sent to enforce God’s will. They accomplish their task by confrontation with the forces of evil, and they achieve victory even in death. This vision of the saints’ task adds a new dimension to the model from which the hagiographer works, and thus reveals his particular understanding of the story he tells. The Passio Nicasii makes explicit its equation of evangelization with the establishment of divine dominion. The mission of Dionysius and his followers arises from God’s decision to “transfer” the people of Gaul from “the noxious slavery of the ancient enemy” to “his own authority.”5 Divine inspiration reveals this decision to Pope Clement and shows him that Dionysius and his fellows are to serve as the means of realizing it. The saints thus seek to effect a change of regime, and power in Gaul emerges as the leading concern of the Passio Nicasii. The opposing sides of the conflict share this focus on power and view the saints’ venture in the same light: the forces of evil understand that the saints represent a threat to their dominion. Thus, when Dionysius, Nicasius, and the other evangelizers have achieved marked success, Satan sees his own power waning and undertakes a last defensive strike in determining “to turn all his efforts toward attacking the servants of God.”6 Concern with power likewise informs the charges made by the Roman authorities who aim to thwart the saints. The Roman official sent to end their mission accuses Nicasius and his companions of subversion: he alleges they are “misleaders” come to “overturn” the people; Nicasius counters that he and his companions aim to guide the people, not mislead them, and to convert them, not subvert them. The scene hinges on the play between pairs of related words—“guide” (reductor), “misguide” (seductor); “to convert” (convertere), “to subvert” (evertere).7 The shared roots on which the puns turn reveal what is at stake in the mission to Gaul: the position of leader (ductor) over the people of the Vexin, with its inherent power to turn (vertere) their loyalty. The official charges Nicasius with the political crime of attempting to displace the allegiance of the populace; he understands the saint’s mission precisely. This central theme of the Passio Nicasii represents a variation on its chief source, the Passio Dionysii by Hilduin of Saint-Denis. Like the Passio Nicasii, the Passio Dionysii presents its hero’s task as realizing the divine will in Gaul. Indeed, the Passio Dionysii furnished both the outlines of the Pas-

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sio Nicasii and many of the details by which the story is conveyed. Thus, both texts depict Dionysius’s mission as arising from the same cause and in much the same imagery. Hilduin reports that “when omnipotent God wished in his mercy to illuminate western shadows by a most splendid eastern ray, that is, most holy Dionysius, of the true sun, namely the Lord Jesus Christ, . . . and [when] he disposed, by the apostolate of this same Dionysius, to raise all Gaul, which remained wretchedly subjected to Mercury in demonic servitude, he touched the heart of blessed Clement.”8 The Passio Nicasii echoes this passage closely: “And when omnipotent God had decided to rescue the people of Gaul from the noxious slavery of the ancient enemy and, lighted up by the splendor of the true sun, to transfer them to his own authority, he put it in the heart of most blessed Clement that Saint Dionysius was suited to such a task.”9 Although it takes its framework and imagery from the Passio Dionysii, the Passio Nicasii nevertheless casts this borrowed vision in much stronger rhetoric and thereby transforms the mission at its core. Although both the Passio Dionysii and the Passio Nicasii portray their heroes as realizing the divine plan in Gaul, the texts present that plan differently. Hilduin’s hero aims to “raise” Gaul from “demonic servitude.” By contrast, Nicasius seeks both to “rescue” the people of Gaul from enslavement to Satan and to bring them under divine rule. The key word of the Passio Nicasii, “ditio,” the divine dominion that the saints seek to establish in Gaul, finds no echo in the Passio Dionysii. The focus on power central to the Passio Nicasii thus represents a new understanding of the mission, one revealed further in additional adaptations of the Passio Dionysii. Hilduin grants his hero’s mission both urgency and authority by giving it a militant cast. The daunting challenge of “raising” Gaul from paganism will require words of great power. In preaching, therefore, Dionysius must be “an arrow of eloquence” and a battering ram against the wall of unbelief.10 The success of his mission will further demand all the strength that faith and apostolic blessing can furnish. Clement charges him accordingly: “[F]ully fortified with all Christian virtue and religion, proceed in the name of the Lord: go and engage the western regions, and as a good soldier of Christ fight the battles of your Lord God . . . accompanied by our prayers, and strengthened by the intercessions of the holy apostles, taking up all Gaul as your apostolate by our apostolic authority, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry, so that the news of Christ might be diffused there through you, and in the days of retribution you might deserve to hear

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from the Lord, ‘Well done, good servant.’”11 The martial rhetoric lends urgency to the “evangelist’s work” with which the saint is charged. Eloquent Dionysius, “fortified with Christian virtue,” “strengthened” by prayer and by the intercession of the Apostles themselves, is ready to “raise” Gaul from “demonic servitude.” His mission echoes closely that of Timothy, the “good soldier of Christ” charged by Paul with preaching the Gospel in modesty and patience in order to free those ensnared by the devil.12 The echo recalls Dionysius’s own supposed conversion by Paul and endows his mission with something of the Apostle’s authority. The Passio Nicasii does not preserve this echo; its author retained the military spirit of Paul’s and Hilduin’s words but transformed them. In his hands the warlike rhetoric intensifies to render the mission itself one of belligerence. For the author of the Passio Nicasii, the “rescue” of Gaul can only be violent; his heroes, therefore, pursue their mission through belligerence. Clement’s exhortation to Dionysius is consequently adapted to reflect this warlike approach: “Therefore, since you are a most true reporter of the testimony of the Lord, and an inflexible warrior of the Lord’s wars, go manfully into Gaul, and armed with the shield of the Lord’s protection, place yourself as a most strong wall for the house of Israel, and stand for it unvanquished in battle. Fight with the ancient serpent, and free souls deceived by his fraud; so that giving them back to the Lord, you might deserve to enter into the joy of your Lord.”13 Here Dionysius embarks upon a mission of warlike aggression, armed for battle. The “good soldier of Christ” has become “an inflexible warrior” whose ministry is achieved in combat; he aims not to “diffuse the news of Christ,” but to “stand . . . unvanquished in battle.” He himself makes the bellicose nature of the mission clear by exhorting his followers, “reminding every one of them to fight for the flock of the Lord unto death.”14 The mission of Dionysius and his companions thus emerges anew as one of aggression; the evangelists of the Passio Nicasii venture into Gaul as holy warriors ready for battle. Nicasius’s mission thus entails war against the ministers of evil for the sake of establishing God’s dominion. On their journey to Rouen, he and his companions accomplish their task by vanquishing various representatives of evil and gaining their strongholds for Christ. They first destroy a dragon and then confront a demon that lurks in a cliff to prey on passing ships. Each encounter results in the total destruction of the foe, the baptism of many souls, and the acquisition of a foothold for Christianity in the region. Nicasius not only baptizes the people he liberates from evil; he also en-

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lists them in Christ’s militia and bequeaths to them his own efficacious arms. To those he rescues from the dragon, the saint grants weapons of which he demonstrates the value: “‘And just as you will presently see this one crushed by the sign of the cross, so arm your brows with the same sign of the holy cross, and know that every plot of the devil will be banished from you.’ And with the sign of the cross having been made, the dragon was smashed to bits at the invocation of the name of Christ, so that no sign of evil or of its cadaver remained in all the world.”15 Nicasius makes the people his partners in the work of battling Satan by arming them with his own Christian weapons. Not merely rescued, they are now empowered to fight the devil on their own. When Nicasius continues his journey, therefore, he leaves them ready to defend their newly rescued town against Satan’s return. Thus equipped, they stand capable of guarding this place recently won for Christ. Having baptized them, the saint leaves them as a garrison and resumes his march toward Rouen. Nicasius thus employs the weapons of his faith to win victories for God against Satan in the greater campaign to establish divine dominion. Although these weapons prove overwhelming to the beastly ministers of Satan, the saint does not employ them against his human agents. In his final brush with evil, Nicasius chooses victory through death. The martyrdom of Nicasius and his companions both acknowledges tradition and casts it in a new light. The author of the Passio Nicasii had little choice but to end his heroes’ history with their violent deaths; their martyrdom represents the single detail of their careers known to tradition before the eleventh century.16 Yet the hagiographer handles this tradition deftly. He uses it to show that even in death the saints realized God’s plan; indeed, their deaths crown their achievements. Nicasius’s martyrdom represents a final, astounding victory for God. The Roman persecution of Dionysius and his followers originates with the devil’s realization that his power in Gaul is waning; the Roman official who orders the saints’ deaths implements the command of Satan. Yet, in killing the missionaries, the Roman also fulfills the divine plan. The saints all welcome death gladly and see in it the ultimate tribute to Christ. Their joy at martyrdom negates any Roman triumph in their deaths; their executioner merely fulfills their wish, as they declare to him unanimously, “For that which you threaten, we have long wished; what you want to fulfill, we have a long while desired.”17 More importantly, their deaths entail their foe’s downfall, as they warn him: “But unless you will have come to your senses,

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you will be punished with your father the devil by death in the pit of hell . . . We, having been killed, shall please the Lord in the region of the living. But you, having been condemned with the old enemy, will suffer eternal fire.”18 Their deaths gain the martyrs eternal life, and guarantee their enemy’s damnation; the victory is indeed theirs. The martyrs’ triumph results from more than just their willingness to die and their executioner’s fate, however; even in death they pursue their mission to win the region for God. Having been decapitated and left “to be eaten by the cruel birds and wild dogs,” the saints defy Satan once more.19 Angels guard their bodies until nightfall and protect them from abuse. Then, the trio make one last thrust forward to claim territory for God: “And with the accomplices receding, and with the silence of night coming on, the holy martyrs, arisen, with angels as companions, having taken up their own heads, hastening, came to the river.”20 Even in death, Nicasius and his companions gain territory for Christ in fulfillment of their mission. They rob the devil of victory both by welcoming death for their faith and by continuing on, headless, in their aim. With their final march they extend the region under God’s rule and choose as their resting place a defensive stronghold, an island in the river. A pious matron buries them and builds a church in their honor; here their bodies remain, the last garrison to be established in the region newly conquered for God.21 Even in death, therefore, Nicasius and his companions pursue their mission to overthrow Satan and institute the rule of Christ. They “stand unvanquished in battle” and “fight for the flock of the Lord unto death” and even beyond. Although they never reach Rouen, they discharge their duty admirably by defeating the ministers of Satan and securing footholds for Christianity. Indeed, their martyrdom, together with their persistence, even in death, and their accomplishments in life demonstrate that they are more than “inflexible warriors”; their deeds show them to be apostolic.

Apostolicity in the Passio Nicasii Many of the details of the Passio Nicasii appear contrived to assert its hero’s apostolic status. Nicasius’s associates, mission, power, and death all make this point. Most prominently, his overt reliance on the Passio Dionysii enabled the author of the Passio Nicasii to posit his hero’s apostolicity after the model of Dionysius. To this model he then added further details that enhance the particular significance of Nicasius’s apostolic career.

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The martyrdom of Nicasius and his companions overtly follows the model of Dionysius. Their deaths form part of the same wave of persecution, they die by the hand of the same Roman official, by the same method, and accomplish the same miracle after death. All similarly obtain burial from a pious woman.22 The resemblance is patent: the Passio Nicasii has the executioner sent to Gaul by Domitian to end the Christian mission proceed toward Rouen by way of Paris to visit the same fate on both bishops in turn. The official goes first to Paris, where he executes Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius; then he pursues Nicasius, Quirinus, and Scubiculus.23 Indeed, the scenario of Nicasius’s death and miraculous march come directly from the Passio Dionysii. According to Hilduin, “[W]ith their knees bent and their necks stretched forth, at one and the same moment, with blunted hatchets, according to the order of the prince, [Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius] are decapitated . . . and the body of most blessed Dionysius arose, and with an angelic guide directing his step, and with celestial light surrounding him, with his arms hanging, he began to carry in his holy hand the head truncated from the body by the executioner’s pickaxe.”24 Nicasius and his companions follow precisely in the footsteps of Dionysius. Not only do they suffer the same fate while undertaking the same mission, but they even correspond in number and rank: Bishop Dionysius, his priest, and deacon are matched exactly by Nicasius, Quirinus, and Scubiculus.25 The author of the Passio Nicasii makes the correspondence overt and unmistakable. By relying so heavily on the Passio Dionysii, he asserts his heroes’ apostolicity plainly. Frankish tradition honored Dionysius of Paris as apostle to the Gauls. Gregory of Tours, who first recounts Dionysius’s mission, describes him as one of seven bishops sent to preach and found churches in Gaul.26 According to Gregory, Dionysius undertook an apostolic mission in the sense of spreading the Christian faith. Later generations granted him a certain preeminence among the group of seven as evangelizer of the future royal capital. The monks of Saint-Denis cultivated this aura to make Dionysius patron of the entire realm and of its monarchs.27 They also placed their founder’s mission in the first century, which rendered it apostolic in a further, historical, sense. Hilduin’s work deepened this dimension. By identifying Dionysius as the disciple of Paul named in Acts 17:34, he imparted to his hero something greater than the apostolic authority of an evangelizer. This disciple of a veritable Apostle loomed above other missionary saints, and his ostensible connection to Clement (legendary disciple of Peter) strength-

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ened this image. Dionysius’s life and death represented one clear model of an apostolic saint.28 The author of the Passio Nicasii followed Hilduin’s pattern to establish his hero too as apostolic. While open reliance on the Passio Dionysii provides the basis for the Passio Nicasii’s presentation of its apostolic hero, the text also employs other details to bolster this proposition. The Passio extends the direct association with Pope Clement, enjoyed by Dionysius, to Nicasius and his companions. Clement selects the three to accompany Dionysius, and he ordains them himself.29 Similarly, the story opens with the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, to whose status it implicitly assimilates its heroes by their like fate.30 The text thus forges a strong link between Nicasius and the Apostles and thereby brings him and his companions close to Christ himself. Like Taurinus, Nicasius enjoys nearly direct association with Christ; a single spiritual generation separates them. Not only does Nicasius accompany Dionysius to Gaul, he does so as the choice of Peter’s chosen heir, thus reinforcing his apostolicity. In Gaul he gives further proof of his apostolic status, even before he shares the fate of the Apostles themselves. Nicasius’s deeds show him to resemble Christ’s first followers. His exploits fulfill with vivid drama Christ’s own description from the Gospel of Mark: “These signs shall follow those who believe: in my name they shall expel demons, . . . [and] destroy serpents.”31 Nicasius adheres to the prescription strictly: he adjures the cliff demon “through the ineffable name of the holy and indivisible Trinity and through the virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ” and thereby expels it straight through the sheer rock roof of the cliff; he destroys the dragon with the sign of the cross and the invocation of Christ’s name.32 The hagiographer follows his sources closely. As scholars have noted, Christ’s description and the Passio Dionysii provide the basis for all the action of the Passio Nicasii; the substance of its every scene derives from one source or the other.33 Nicasius thus achieves over Satan’s ministers the victories foretold by Christ of his disciples. The apostle to the Vexin is recognizably apostolic and therefore a worthy founding figure. Moreover, the Passio Nicasii does not derive entirely from its sources; the hagiographer went beyond imitation to create an apostle unique to the Vexin. The stereotypical deeds that establish Nicasius as apostolic find countervailing weight in the geography of the Passio Nicasii. Although Nicasius performs deeds wholly derivative, he accomplishes his feats in specific places, which he wins for God. These places do not owe their origin to either of the hagiographer’s two sources. Instead they elaborate on the hazy

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tradition predating the Passio Nicasii, to root Nicasius and his companions in particular places and thereby grant their story special relevance to the Vexin. The Passio Nicasii names four locations on Nicasius’s journey; at these sites occurs all the action of his apostolic career. The journey begins as Nicasius, Quirinus, and Scubiculus leave Paris and cross the river Oise to enter the Vexin. The trio then find themselves in the place called Vallis, where they encounter the dragon.34 Vallis has been identified as Vaux-sur-Seine (arrondissement Mantes-la-Jolie, canton Meulan), roughly ten kilometers southwest of Pontoise.35 The place thus lies just inside the French Vexin when approaching from Paris. Having vanquished the dragon, the saints proceed to Monticas.36 Although Cornelius De Bye identifies it as Montiers, this site would appear instead to be the town designated on old maps as Monceaux, as Canon Legris suggests.37 Monceaux, now known as Mousseaux-sur-Seine (arrondissement Mantes-la-Jolie, canton Bonnières-sur-Seine), lies about fourteen kilometers downriver from Mantes-la-Jolie and about six kilometers southeast of Gasny (as the crow flies). The Roman executioner overtakes Nicasius and his companions in the market of a place called Scannis or Scamnis, which remains inconclusively identified. It is generally assumed to be Gasny, although the Latin name for Gasny, Vadiniacum, would suggest otherwise—as indeed the Passio implies.38 Here the saints are killed, and from here they march to the river Epte to cross to their island resting place by means of a miraculous ford, from which the town of Gasny supposedly takes its name: “vadum Nicasii,” or “the ford of Nicasius.”39 Whether Scannis and Gasny feature in the Passio Nicasii as two neighboring locales or as one that obtained a new name from the miracle the text recounts, the Passio makes the saints’ basic itinerary clear. Nicasius pursues a precise and plausible route: he follows the Seine from Paris to the Epte and then would have proceeded downriver to Rouen. This itinerary not only gives the apostle’s career a plausible foundation in geographical reality, it also links him to particular places in the Vexin and claims these places in his name. The geography of the Passio Nicasii thus roots its shadowy archetype of a hero in space to make real his symbolic exploits. The saint performs apostolic deeds in settings that render him apostle to a specific area. As apostle to the Vexin, Nicasius belongs to the region as it belongs to him. In addition to setting his hero’s deeds in a particular and original geography, the author independently envisioned another aspect of the apostle’s career; although he models his hero’s actions strictly on his sources, he

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draws his depiction of the crowds for whose liberation the saint fights from his imagination. The people of the Vexin, though they appear clearly in only one scene, do not follow the exemplar of any particular source.40 The author appears to have portrayed them afresh, as he believed they ought to have been. They too reveal something of his understanding of the stereotypical story he tells in showing his view of conversion.

Conversion in the Passio Nicasii The author of the Passio Nicasii sets against the backdrop of scenes based closely upon his sources a portrayal of conversion envisaged anew. The interaction between the apostle to the Vexin and the people of the Vexin, though not prominent in the Passio, reveals once more that the text is not wholly derivative. The dynamic of proselytism, as the monk of Saint-Ouen imagines it, shows his originality in telling the apostle’s story. The people of the Vexin are featured in only one scene of the Passio Nicasii; this scene, however, shows them to be active in determining their own fate.41 Upon their arrival at Vaux, where the dragon plagues the local population, the saints begin to preach. Despite the dire situation in which they find the inhabitants of the place, Nicasius and his companions do not undertake to vanquish the dragon until asked to do so by the people. After having heard the saints’ preaching, the “more clear-headed” portion of the populace seek their help, over the suspicions of the more committed pagan element: Therefore, the inhabitants, observing the quality of the strangers’ dress, and hearing an eloquence heretofore unknown, hesitated like savages dull of mind; whether [the strangers] should be listened to as urbane interpreters of the coming age; or whether, despised in their judgment as adversaries of their gods and vituperators, they should be punished. But more clear-headed men, having understood that the mercy of salvation had been promised them, and not forgetful of the harm caused them by the dragon’s malice, with the saints convened, said to them: “Our fathers, from the earliest times, and we until now, have lived in this place happily and with bodily health; from the attack of evil beings we have remained safe. But now a most savage dragon lies in wait for us, prohibiting us drink and killing whomever it is able to reach; moreover by its breath it inflicts a hard plague on us. If, therefore, your God is able to rescue us from such

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great evils, and to restore the prosperity of our former tranquility, let faith now be put to what has been said, and we are prepared to obey his holy commands.” And so, having heard these things, blessed Nicasius, happy, gave thanks to God.42

The saints await invitation to contend against the devil’s agent; they allow the local populace to direct their action. Indeed, initiative lies throughout the scene with the people being evangelized, rather than with the missionaries, and this dynamic reveals the author’s view of conversion. The author of the Passio Nicasii reveals conversion to be a collaborative process. Central to this dynamic stands his notion of conversion as liberation. The saints come “to rescue the people from the noxious slavery of the ancient enemy,” that is, to liberate them from the rule of Satan. For the author of the Passio Nicasii, such liberation, though bellicose, cannot be imposed but must be invited. Conversion thus emerges as a collaborative venture, one in which the initiative lies with the converted rather than with the mighty agent of their deliverance. The saint fights on behalf of the people but only at their bidding and for their good. Their conversion entails restoration of their free will without any irony of coercion. Indeed, the people of Vaux need no coercion; they can distinguish good and evil for themselves, as the text’s representation of evil shows. Nicasius’s foes contrast sharply with those faced by Taurinus and his exemplar, Bartholomew. To Deodatus and the pseudo-Abdias, demons and pagan gods appear synonymous. As the animating force of the idols to which the people have traditionally had recourse, the demons of each text explain to their adherents the saint’s power. Thus, the saints’ adversaries act as reluctant intermediaries. Nicasius’s flock requires no such mediation from satanic interpreters; they repose no trust in the monsters who plague them and do not have recourse to idols in seeking to understand the saints’ mission. Instead, they observe the saints with critical eyes, consider the preachers’ message and their own predicament, and confer together to decide upon a response. Though “dull of mind,” their intellectual independence distinguishes them, and they freely accept the promises the preachers make. Chief among these promises ranks security. Among the benefits preached by Nicasius and his companions, safety in this life appears as prominently as redemption. Thus, Christianity vividly offers the inhabitants of Vaux security from evil, even before it arms them to face evil unaided; such safety indeed represents the inhabitants’ chief de-

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sire. Their decision to engage the saints as their champions against the dragon arises from their wish for physical safety. So too their fear of the beast conditions their response to seeing it, even defeated and bound. Having overcome the monster with the sign of the cross, Quirinus, as charged by Nicasius, “approaching and putting his master’s stole around its neck, began to drag it, and he exhibited it, bound and chained, to the episcopal presence. But those who were with the bishop and were gladly hearing from him words of their salvation, seeing this wondrous deed, like men of weak mind, were disturbed not a little and, undone by excessive panic, were thinking of flight from their sole defense [praesidium].”43 To the inhabitants of Vaux, the apostle and his faith represent, above all, “praesidium,” safety in the midst of peril. In converting Vaux and arming its inhabitants with the weapons of his faith, Nicasius renders the place safe from Satan. Christianity gives the town stalwart protection; Nicasius establishes at Vaux a fortress of faith. Conversion in the Passio Nicasii thus bestows protection from evil; those who choose to side with God merit a sure defense against their enemies. The apostle to the Vexin liberates the people from Satanic enslavement and offers them arms and a stronghold against the further assault of evil. The region’s fierce liberator bequeaths a martial security through faith. The new Christians, protected by their faith, are left in defense of the territory rendered to God and are equal to the task. They emerge from the font as soldiers of Christ, a garrison ready to guard the outpost of their faith.

In creating a history for the saints whose relics came to rest in the abbey in 1032, the anonymous monk of Saint-Ouen spun a tale at once derivative, compelling, and original. He selected well-known and highly regarded models for his apostle’s story, the description given by Christ of a believer’s powers, and the life of the apostle of Gaul, Dionysius of Paris. The monk followed his sources faithfully. Yet even in creating a story largely recycled from other sources, he displayed originality. His work gives the inhabitants of the Vexin a significant role in the process of their own conversion and shows that they never submitted to the devil’s tyranny. Similarly, he assigns to his heroes a particular itinerary that associates them with specific sites. Finally, he elaborates on his sources to create a new vision of the apostolic past, one which creates a meaningful history for the Vexin. Just as it represents the benefit of conversion as primarily physical, so the

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Passio Nicasii portrays the danger of paganism as essentially external. The demons and dragons of the text infest the landscape but do not hold the people’s minds in bondage. The people of Vaux seek the saints’ aid on their own initiative; they recognize the threat the dragon poses in ways the benighted of other vitae do not. They have not been compromised by Satan’s tyranny, and their rectitude and autonomy remain untainted. Their landscape, however, stands in need of purification. The deeds the saints perform as they proceed through the Vexin not only show them to be the region’s apostles but also purify the territory of evil. As they cast out demons and destroy dragons in Christ’s name, Nicasius and his companions render the Vexin free of evil’s taint. The region emerges cleansed. The saints focus particular energy on cleansing one element of the landscape, an element that the Vexin’s history left in particular need of purification. Nicasius and his companions consecrate the waterways of the Vexin. Rivers provide the saints’ route from Paris to Rouen and mark the beginning and end of their journey: the saints enter the Vexin by crossing the Oise, traverse it by following the course of the Seine, and end their journey in the middle of the Epte. Moreover, water receives particular attention in their deeds. The monsters they fight have made their evil mark on the landscape by polluting water, the dragon they destroy has infested the local spring, while the demon they banish preys on river traffic from his cliff hideout.44 The saints not only cleanse water, they sanctify it by choosing to deposit their bodies on an island in the Epte. The rivers of the Vexin, as much as the region’s inhabitants, benefit from the saints’ mission, which renders them free of pollution and associates them to holiness. The prominence of rivers in the Passio Nicasii reflects the Vexin’s history: the saints follow the rivers, as would the Vikings centuries later. By marching along the banks of the Seine from Oise to Epte, the saints trace, in advance and in reverse, the later course of the Vikings, who sailed up the Seine to sack Rouen and Paris and who spent a number of winters camped on the island of Jeufosse (arrondissement Mantes-la-Jolie, canton Bonnières-surSeine) at the confluence of the Seine and Epte.45 Throughout the second half of the ninth century, the Seine remained the raiders’ main artery, despite attempts to fortify points along it.46 The purification the saints undertake forestalls the region’s later desecration; indeed, the dragon and demon themselves can be understood as representing the Vikings. The saints purify the territory from river to river, once and forever.

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The course the saints chart along the rivers also defines the boundaries of the territory they claim. The text makes quite plain the territory conquered by the saints: Nicasius’s career takes place within the precise boundaries of the French Vexin. The land north of the Seine from the Oise to the Epte constituted the portion of the ancient county of the Vexin not ceded to Rollo but controlled until 1077 by the counts of the Vexin as vassals of the king, and then by the king himself. In this territory Nicasius vanquishes evil and sheds his own blood for Christ as apostolic evangelizer, martyr, and bishop. By his deeds Nicasius wins as his own the territory bordered by the Oise, Seine, and Epte. The French Vexin belongs to Nicasius as apostle and bishop and, through him, it belongs to Rouen. The Passio Nicasii’s claim to the French Vexin is at once traditional and bold. Although the entire Vexin, French and Norman, belonged to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Rouen in the eleventh century, the Passio Nicasii appears to claim a greater authority for its hero. The rhetoric and settings of the Passio Nicasii grant the saint more than ecclesiastical authority in the Vexin; the text claims the French Vexin for Rouen outright. The text articulates its claim in three ways. In addition to defining the boundaries of Nicasius’s territory by specifying his precise route, the hagiographer makes two deft adaptations to his main source, the Passio Dionysii. The monk of Saint-Ouen borrows from Hilduin the miracle his hero performs after death; in his story, however, it takes on an entirely new significance. Dionysius’s headless walk from Montmartre to his chosen burial site demonstrates to the inhabitants of Paris his sanctity and his victory over death and provides a miraculous origin for his suburban shrine.47 The miracle thus serves primarily to prove the saint’s virtue and to establish his shrine on a wondrous foundation. By contrast, Nicasius and his companions march with their heads in their hands to the river that marks the boundary of the region in which they worked and died. Their march fulfills their journey across that region to claim it in its entirety as theirs and God’s. The shrine founded on this boundary in their honor does more than perpetuate their memory and prove their virtue; it also marks their territory. In addition to changing the nature of the hero’s final miracle, the Passio Nicasii also recasts his mission as a military campaign. The saints here aim to “fight unto death” and “stand unvanquished in battle.” By portraying evangelization as war, the author of the Passio Nicasii extends the authority his hero acquires in the Vexin from the spiritual to the earthly. The text’s martial imagery presents the enclaves of Christians the saints leave behind them as

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they progress through the region as a series of garrisons holding the line in the territory between the Oise and the Epte. Indeed, the text makes this metaphor real by associating Nicasius and his companions with genuine strategic locations. Vaux, the saints’ first stop, lies just upstream from the island in the Seine at Meulan that harbored the region’s most important fortification. The stronghold occupied the island from at least the ninth century; the same island housed the church of Saint-Nicaise founded by Count Waleran I sometime after 1032.48 In the neighborhood of Vaux, saint and stronghold were closely associated. Mousseaux likewise occupies a strategic site, if not a fortified one: the demon infested the cliff there precisely because it offered unobstructed access to the river traffic upon which he preyed. Gasny on the Epte similarly holds an important position near the confluence of the two rivers and was later the site of a fortification. The enclaves of Christians who occupy the saint’s praesidia thus hold key strategic sites. The saints’ affinity with such sites continued in later tradition, which reported the pious matron who buried Nicasius to have been lady of La Roche–Guyon, the stalwart fortification guarding the bend in the Seine just opposite Gasny, and claimed Nicasius had performed a miracle at Mantes.49 These river strongholds appropriate to the saint the power they in reality enforced for count, duke, and king. Meulan, with its island fortress, belonged to the count of Meulan, first an occasional supporter of the Norman duke, and then, from the later eleventh century, a Norman lord himself, after the Beaumont family came into the inheritance of Hugh of Meulan in 1080. Rollo had entrusted Gasny to Saint-Ouen because of its strategic value. It was later used militarily by both Henry I, king of England and duke of Normandy, who built a fortification there, and King Louis VI of France, who used it as a base for raids into Normandy.50 The later legends continued the association: Mantes and La Roche–Guyon belonged to the count of the Vexin and, after 1077, to the French king.51 By using real strategic sites to make concrete his metaphor of military proselytism, the hagiographer makes a potent statement about control of the Vexin. The extent of the territory subjected to Nicasius includes the whole of the French Vexin from Oise to Epte. The text leaves no power in the region in any other hands. King, count, duke, and archbishop all converge in the figure of Nicasius. The Vexin, in its entirety, falls under the control of its apostle-bishop. The text thus articulates a clear stance regarding control of the French Vexin, one which harmonized with Norman ambition but conflicted with the French position.

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In the eleventh century the Norman dukes sought to extend their influence over the French Vexin beyond the ecclesiastical jurisdiction entrusted to the archbishop, and the Passio Nicasii resonates with this ambition. By claiming the whole Vexin in the name, not of the duke, but of the apostolic missionary to both Rouen and the Vexin, the Passio Nicasii addresses the delicate situation of the 1030s with finesse. Preponderant Norman influence in the French Vexin in the early eleventh century linked the region, nominally subject to the king, to his powerful neighbor instead. The Passio underlines this connection and reinforces it by making its origin both ancient and sacred. The Vexin represents a single entity in the eyes of God and is bound to Rouen by the holy tie of an apostolic martyr’s blood. Royal grant thus becomes irrelevant; heaven itself has united the Vexin with Normandy.52 Although the future of the French Vexin lay with France, not Normandy, the claims of the Passio Nicasii, like the close links forged in the early eleventh century, were to have important ramifications nevertheless. In the chaos unleashed by the struggle between Henry I and his nephew William Clito in the early twelfth century, Louis VI rallied the lords of the French Vexin with a gesture reminiscent of the Passio Nicasii. In 1124, Louis took up the oriflamme from the altar of Saint-Denis and called on the saint himself to defend France.53 Louis assumed the banner in his capacity as count of the Vexin: he claimed that the territory belonged to Dionysius, and the right to carry the banner belonged to him who held the county in fief.54 Louis performed this gesture under threat of attack by both Emperor Henry V and his father-in-law, Henry I of England and Normandy. Their allied efforts aimed to end William Clito’s bid for Normandy, a cause in which the Vexin lords had played a central role. Tensions in the Vexin had been running high since 1116, when Louis had sided with William Clito against Henry, and both factions had commenced active raiding (including Louis’s raids from Gasny). For the lords of the French Vexin, the dispute presented a difficult choice: many descended from families distinguished by generations of service to the dukes, yet all owed allegiance ultimately to the king. King Louis’s busy encouragement of support for William Clito against his Anglo-Norman rival rendered the situation especially volatile. Waleran II of Meulan rebelled against Henry I in 1122 and again in 1124, despite generations of loyal service to the Norman duke by his family and his twin’s allegiance to Henry.55 Although capable of stirring up rebellion in the French Vexin, however, the Capetian king could not necessarily count on the region’s loyalty. Louis’s recourse to Dionysius, therefore, represents an

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effort to strengthen his cause, specifically in the French Vexin where the struggle was keenest.56 In this context the resemblance to the image of Nicasius is particularly striking. Dionysius, lord of the Vexin and protector of France, here resembles the hero of the Passio Nicasii, just as that text modeled Nicasius on Dionysius himself. In their respective traditions, each side thus came to associate the French Vexin, and its defense, with the saint whose favor it enjoyed. Louis’s gesture of 1124 may reflect some influence exerted by Nicasius’s legend, even if the legend itself never featured in disputes over the Vexin. The Norman dukes of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries never staked their unsuccessful claims to the French Vexin on the Passio Nicasii; instead, they repeatedly cited the fictitious grant to Robert I. Nonetheless, the Passio Nicasii makes its own claim for Norman power in the territory, and it does so in terms hard to refute. According to the Passio Nicasii, a link of indissoluble strength bound the French Vexin to Rouen. Nicasius and his companions “came to us to illuminate our region by preaching, to heal it by their benefits, and deigned to consecrate it by their blood.”57 The blood of its martyrs made the Vexin a unified and holy territory belonging to God and Rouen. The martyr’s final march to the Epte completed his journey through the French Vexin and into Normandy. He chose to rest on the boundary of the future duchy; in his sacred person, Nicasius thus linked the region he wrested from the devil to the city he chose as his own. The Passio Nicasii binds the whole Vexin to Rouen by the sacred tie of its apostle’s blood and bones. When Louis acknowledged Dionysius as lord of the Vexin and protector of the realm, he acted in the tradition of the Passio Nicasii, even while rejecting its claims. Indeed, the need to rally the lords of the French Vexin to the cause of France was itself in part the legacy of the Passio Nicasii. Their ancient religious heritage bound the people of the Vexin tightly to Rouen, whither the region’s first liberator had turned their gaze after rescuing their land and rendering it forever sacred by his blood.

6 Broader Perspective The Norman Vision of the Distant Past and Contemporary Hagiography

The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii all probably emerged at about the same time and, in conjunction, they articulate a common vision of the distant past. Their shared themes outline for the future Normandy a sacred history that says much about the duchy in the early eleventh century when they appear to have been composed. This collective vision illuminates the context from which it came to reveal the influence the Norman present exerted on memory of the apostolic past. This vision cannot be fully contextualized, however, without placing it in a larger setting still. Although unique among Frankish realms for its Viking dynasty, Normandy nevertheless formed part of the larger Frankish world; so too its hagiography pertains to the greater tradition of Frankish religious literature. Indeed, the themes predominant in the three texts are not unique to Norman, or even to Frankish, hagiography; they appear in the legends of other regions within and beyond the old Carolingian Empire. Most immediately, however, they fit into the evolving stream of Frankish hagiography, from which the three authors took their sources and inspiration and within which their work was primarily dispersed. Comparison of the themes central to the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii with texts of other Frankish lands therefore sets the Norman texts in broader perspective. For the most part, the eleventh century offers sufficient scope. Certain themes, however, enjoyed a long vogue in Frankish lands, and their investigation requires chronological expansion. Charting the resonance of the Norman texts with those of other regions defines what, if anything, is peculiarly Norman about them and thus illuminates the extent to which the Viking territory retained distinct concerns. Whether distinctively Norman or common to all Francia, the message 112

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conveyed by the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii influenced a broad audience. The role of hagiographical literature in liturgical celebration, as well as in more general entertainment, ensured that these texts reached many.1 As with most medieval texts, little can be known of the exact identity of this audience, and less about their reaction to the stories they heard. Traces of the texts’ diffusion nevertheless both underscore the breadth of the stories’ reach and suggest that they did indeed resonate strongly with their hearers. The influence of the vision elaborated by the three texts thus appears to have been substantial, both within the monastery and beyond.

The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii: A Composite View The three texts most likely composed in the early eleventh century for Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius resemble each other a good deal: all three exhibit interest in evangelization and conversion and view these phenomena as intricately bound up with questions of power and even violence. The shared concerns of the three texts suggest that their portrayals reveal something greater than the individual careers of three saints as imagined by three clerical authors; instead, the texts articulate a common vision of the distant past, in which evangelization foreshadows and legitimates the duchy’s future history. Foremost among the themes common to the three texts ranks evangelization, which all three explore by setting their stories in eras either early in Christian history or early in the Christianity of particular regions, and by relating the conversion achieved by heroes presented, with more or less emphasis, as apostolic. Two of the texts effect this portrayal by associating their subjects with acknowledged apostolic figures of the first Christian generations. Taurinus and Nicasius both come to the future Normandy at the behest of Pope Clement, successor to Peter, and both accompany Dionysius of Athens and Paris, apostle of Gaul. All three saints appear as apostolic by their deeds; not only do they all bring Christianity to pagan territories, they all additionally perform the deeds of Jesus’s disciples. Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius fulfill vividly Christ’s prediction that his disciples will “expel demons and destroy serpents” (Mark 16:17–18) and his promise that his followers shall have “the power of treading down serpents and scorpions” (Luke 10:19). All three texts show their heroes to have apostolic powers according to biblical criteria articulated by Christ himself. Apostolic status

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thus appears as a leading motif shared by the three texts. By this common theme, the texts together cast the history of Christianity in Normandy in a particular light. The portrayal of each saint as apostolic implies that God took special care to bring the future Normandy into Christendom. The territory appears, in the Vita Taurini and the Passio Nicasii, among the first regions of the West to receive the Gospel. Its evangelization was undertaken with deliberate attention by Clement and Dionysius, intimates of the Apostles. As a result, the province of Rouen can claim antiquity and status equal to many in Gaul. Yet the deliberate evangelization of the region by apostolic saints grants the province more than prestige and precedence within the ecclesiastical hierarchy; the care with which Normandy was evangelized serves to eclipse the Viking raids. The hagiographers’ vision of evangelization provides a precedent that makes the dukes the heirs of the region’s evangelizers. Proselytism emerges from the vitae as a process of conquest and purification, which establishes Christ’s dominion and the region’s enduring faith. A similar logic inspires Norman accounts of the duchy’s foundation and its rulers’ conversion. Conversion thus operates in both the distant past and the later duchy as the means of transforming and purifying individual, landscape, and polity. The dukes’ actions to restore their new territory from its ostensible desolation reiterate the initial conquest and purification of the region by its apostolic saints. The saints whose deeds the dukes reiterate thus appear to foreshadow the dukes themselves and to provide a template for them to follow in achieving rightful power: the saints win the region for Christ by defeating Satan and purifying the territory through baptism, a process the dukes complete by accepting and promoting that faith in their turn. This view pushes the Viking raids into the background and brings dukes and saints to the fore as partners in cyclical regeneration and fulfillment of the divine plan. The conversion scenarios discussed in the three vitae not only allow Norman authors an examination of a recent phenomenon at a safe remove but also enable them to understand the first instances of conversion in their region as presaging those to come centuries later. Conversion serves as a framework for legitimate power; those who render the territory to Christ wield a power both sacred and invincible. Ducal authority thus gains justification from the very rupture in the region’s ecclesiastical history that the Vikings effected. The opportunity to reconsecrate the territory assimilates the dukes to the saints, as the saints’ reiteration of apostolic deeds associ-

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ated them to the disciples of Christ.2 The saints’ legacy is not thwarted by the Vikings but fulfilled in the persons of the Norman dukes. As the saints’ heirs, the dukes hold sacred authority.3 Behind this common argument lies the guiding theme shared by all three texts, legitimacy. The saints’ apostolic status guarantees the purity of the Norman church from its inception, and their precedent guarantees the legitimacy of ducal rule. The fierce nature of the saints’ power justifies, moreover, a particular kind of lordship, with the ministers of Christ employing coercion and violence in his service, as well as (and more vividly than) peaceful methods of persuasion. The grim battles the saints undertake against the agents of evil, and the warlike methods they employ, justify violence in the name of rightful authority. Not merely power but staunch power vigorously asserted appears in accordance with the divine will. God sends his emissaries to fight for dominion; such activity clearly conforms to his will. This justification of power actively asserted takes on particular significance in connection with the three saints’ geographical associations. Tradition linked each of the three with territories that remained active frontiers in ducal Normandy in the early eleventh century. The texts’ support for aggressive authority thus justifies the expansion of ducal power in these frontier zones. The dukes might rely, therefore, not merely on the administrative capacity of the monastic institutions they established in outlying regions; they might likewise benefit from the vision of the past articulated in the texts produced by or for those institutions. The expansion and strengthening of authority at which the dukes aimed in these frontier zones thus found legitimacy in the careers of distant saints credited with fulfilling just such a mission in the name of Christ. The vision of the apostolic past, evidently current in at least three instances in early eleventh-century Normandy, thus legitimates ducal power in multiple ways. Without explicitly alluding to the Norman rulers, the three texts resonate with the ducal present. The dukes’ deeds and the images fashioned for them by their supporters link them to these distant and holy forerunners. As a result, the imagined past of these three texts foreshadows and vindicates the Norman dukes. Like the saints, the dukes rescue the region from darkness and restore it to light; like the saints, they battle evil on the frontiers, establish divinely ordained power, and fulfill the divine plan. Normandy emerges purified once and forever, with its champions in every age ready and willing to fight for goodness. The cyclical vision of history overcomes the disruption of the raids and connects the dukes to the warlike

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servants of Christ. In imagining this past and present, the texts both conform to and diverge from the broader stream of Frankish hagiography.

Claims to Apostolicity in Frankish Hagiography In presenting their heroes as apostolic, the authors of the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii followed a trend of long duration in Frankish hagiography, one at distinct odds with the likely history of the Gallic church. Sixteen Gallic bishops attended the Council of Arles in 314.4 The origins of their sees remain overwhelmingly obscure, but with a single exception they appear to have arisen not long before the Council. Eusebius of Caesarea records the persecution inflicted on the church of Lyon in 177. His account reveals that in the second century Gaul boasted only a single bishopric (Lyon), which apparently oversaw one or more smaller churches.5 By the middle of the third century, more sees had come into being, including that of Arles, whose bishop gained notoriety as a heretic in the 250s.6 The third century apparently witnessed the first significant institutional growth of the church in Gaul and the establishment of the dioceses whose bishops would sit in synod at Arles in 314. Gregory of Tours envisioned a similar chronology when he placed a mission of seven bishops sent from Rome to found as many sees under the reign of the emperor Decius (249–251). The seven whom Gregory named were said to have established the churches of Tours, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Paris, Clermont, and Limoges; a disciple of one of the seven then founded the church of Bourges.7 All eight dioceses would thus, according to Gregory, trace their origins to the middle of the third century. Although the synchronicity Gregory proposed cannot be proven, and perhaps hides a deeper agenda, nevertheless his dating of important Gallic dioceses to this era appears likely.8 Nevertheless, another tradition gradually arose among many of the very dioceses that Gregory dates to the middle of the third century, and of which the true origins remain murky. Certain of these churches came over the centuries to locate their foundations in the first Christian generations, and to attribute their origins to associates of the Apostles.9 The first such claim stems from the see of Arles, which enjoyed a brief jurisdictional primacy over the entire Gallic church under Pope Zosimus I (417–418). In the letter of 417 that announced this new order, Zosimus cited as justification the foundation of the church of Arles by Trophimus, a disciple of Peter, “from

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whose source all Gaul received rivulets of faith.”10 When later popes attempted to reduce this privilege, supporters of the bishop of Arles elaborated a defense of his primacy that once more relied on the see’s foundation by this ostensible disciple of Peter.11 Gregory of Tours himself transmitted the next claim to apostolic origin. He reports with some skepticism that “it is said” (fertur) that Pope Clement I personally ordained Eutropius and sent him as bishop to Saintes, where he was martyred.12 The connections to Peter and to Clement that each tradition asserts, however improbable, went on to enjoy considerable vogue in the Frankish church. New claims to foundation at the behest of Clement and Peter surfaced in the dioceses of Paris and Metz in the eighth century; the ninth century then saw a flurry of such claims.13 Vitae portraying the founding bishops of Beauvais, Limoges, and Périgueux as disciples of Peter emerged in the ninth century.14 The same century saw Hilduin of Saint-Denis refine the tradition of the see of Paris, whose first bishop, already identified as the disciple of Peter and envoy of Clement, he now further identified with the disciple of Paul and the eminent Greek theologian also known as Dionysius.15 The church of Le Mans similarly proclaimed that its first bishop, also a disciple of Peter, had been specially sent to Gaul by Clement.16 The see of Clermont likewise attributed its foundation to the instigation of Pope Clement, as did the clergy of Verdun, who nonetheless dated this event to the fourth century.17 The vogue for apostolic origins in the ninth century extended even beyond Peter and Clement. The martyrology of Ado of Vienne, which records the tradition linking Périgueux to Peter, also presents the first bishops of Vienne and Narbonne as disciples of Paul.18 The ninth-century fashion for apostolic founders continued into the tenth. Further vitae of the bishops of Clermont and Périgueux reaffirm their respective connections to Clement and Peter, already publicized in the ninth century.19 Additionally, a new claim to apostolic association appeared in the tenth century at Reims: Flodoard revised the prevailing tradition that attributed the see’s foundation to the instigation of Pope Sixtus (probably Sixtus II, circa 250) by assigning the foundation, without explanation, to Peter.20 In the eleventh century the quest for apostolic status intensified, and so did the claims hagiographers articulated. Around the turn of the millennium, a new legend of the first bishop of Trier, Eucharius, not only named him the disciple and envoy of Peter but placed him among the seventy-two disciples of Christ.21 Not long afterward the pseudo-Aurelianus fashioned a

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similar history for Martialis of Limoges.22 So too did the clergy of Clermont, Bourges, Le Puy, and Périgueux envisage anew their founding bishops.23 A flock of new disciples thus crowded the scenes of Christ’s life and passion, disciples whose presence in biblical Palestine often contradicted older accounts of their careers. Thus, the earliest (ninth-century) vita of Fronto of Périgueux places his birth in the diocese of which it makes him head, then has him travel to Rome to be sent back to Gaul by Peter as a missionary, and it credits him with a miraculous revival.24 A second vita affirms this history, which was also accepted by Ado of Vienne.25 However, an eleventhcentury vita goes much farther, setting Fronto’s birth in Palestine, linking his life firmly to Peter’s, and making him a disciple of Christ.26 The career of Austremonius of Clermont underwent a similar evolution. Gregory of Tours names Austremonius as one of the seven bishops sent to Gaul in the middle of the third century.27 The first Vita Austremonii, composed toward the end of the ninth century, anachronistically incorporates both Gregory’s chronology and the popular connection to Clement; it sets Austremonius among the group dispatched by Clement “in the days of Emperor Decius.” The text recounts that Clement appointed the missionaries, including Austremonius, “disciple of Christ’s Apostles,” to their sees, “as though they had been ordained by the Apostles.”28 Such contingent apostolic status, however, did not satisfy later partisans of Clermont. The third Vita Austremonii, of the late tenth or early eleventh century, replaces Clement with Peter, whom Austremonius follows to Rome from Palestine and by whom he is ordained evangelizer of all Aquitaine. Austremonius’s apostolic status no longer derives from Clement “as though ordained by the Apostles”; he is in fact ordained by the Prince of the Apostles and is himself “among the number of the seventy-two disciples designated by the Lord Jesus Christ.”29 The trend toward apostolic foundation begun by the clergy of Arles thus culminates in the promotion of Fronto and Austremonius, among others, to the company of Christ. Although in most cases dates for individual vitae and passiones have yet to be rigorously established, the general chronology and trajectory of apostolic claims in Frankish hagiography emerge clearly.30 Beginning with Arles and Saintes, the Gallic church exhibited an early aspiration to apostolic status. Initially, hagiographers aimed at this status by associating their heroes to the font of Roman authority, Peter, or to his successor Clement. Although either saint might dispatch a founding bishop in hagiography of the eighth through tenth centuries, and the two might appear in tandem, Peter

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proved to be the more popular figure, as a preference for direct apostolic commission predominated. In the late tenth and eleventh centuries, this preference gave way to a still bolder and surer route to apostolic authority, as seen in the growing number of founding bishops whose vitae incredibly number them among the disciples of Christ. The trajectory of Frankish hagiography toward ever more daring revisions of the past appears clearly. In the face of increasingly rife and audacious claims to apostolic origins, however, doubts began to surface. The records of the council of Limoges of 1031 reflect the criticisms leveled at apostolic claims in the early eleventh century. The medieval controversy over the apostolicity of Martialis came to a head in 1029, when Benedict of Chiusa humiliated Ademar of Chabannes and the supporters of Martialis’s apostolicity in open debate. What followed is difficult to ascertain. Documents purporting to be the records of a council held in Limoges in 1031 to investigate the claim survive and record that the council, and indeed the pope, endorsed Martialis’s apostolicity.31 Despite traditional acceptance of this scenario, however, Richard Landes argues that the conciliar record regarding Martialis’s apostolicity is fraudulent and represents nothing more than the mythomania of Ademar of Chabannes.32 Even if they do not record genuine conciliar debate or judgment, the canons do reflect both ambitious efforts to secure the apostolicity of Martialis of Limoges and vitriolic rejection of the apostolicity of Fronto of Périgueux. Though the affirmation of Martialis may be illusory, the critique of the Périgueux claim reflects the real skepticism such assertions faced in the early eleventh century. In the midst of myriad uncritical statements in defense of Martialis’s apostolicity, the pretensions of Périgueux receive in the canons a vehement censure based on careful historical research. The cleric of Périgueux who mentions the apostolicity of his patron finds himself severely reprimanded, and the vita on which he bases his see’s claims—the tenth-century Vita secunda Frontonis—is disparaged as a novelty manufactured for the sake of profit.33 Among the arguments against Fronto’s apostolicity appears the charge that he did not perform those deeds necessary for an apostle to convert a pagan populace. In particular, the critic charges that Fronto did not revive the dead, and therefore he did not fulfill the teaching of Jesus that “unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe” (John 4:48).34 Apparently, without such marvels no heathen could be expected to convert, nor, conversely, might any saint lacking such accomplishments be a verita-

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ble apostle. The conciliar records thus articulate criteria for apostolicity current in the early eleventh century: apostles were expected to revive the dead and convert the populace by wonders. Whether imaginary or real, the debate shows that deeds, as well as lineage, defined an apostle in the early eleventh century. Although they clearly enumerate the deeds requisite to claim apostolic status, the conciliar records also show deep distrust of new texts elaborating just such deeds; claims to apostolicity in the early eleventh century, though rife, remained risky. Indeed, the possible fraudulence of the conciliar record itself suggests the depths of this distrust. According to Landes, suspicion of the Limoges claim was too strong for its partisans to overcome in their own generation, and so Ademar fabricated documentation of its success in order to convince posterity.35 The account of the Council of Limoges thus reveals the dilemma faced by cult promoters of the eleventh century: a successful claim to apostolic foundation might win a diocese great prestige, preeminence over its rivals, and, perhaps, popular pilgrimage; the assertion of such claims, however, risked exposure, subjugation, human derision, and divine displeasure. The campaign to promote Martialis’s apostolic status was quite likely known in Normandy. The legend on which the new claims rested, the Vita Martialis prolixior, circulated in Normandy, and steady contact existed between the two regions.36 In 1027, Ademar of Chabannes met a monk of the monastery of Saint-Catherine on Mount Sinai, who was on his way to Normandy to receive a gift from the duke. The Greek monk spent some time in Limoges with Ademar as his guide and then went on to Normandy. Normans also figured among the pilgrims of 1026–1027.37 Family ties linked the rulers of Normandy to the south: the counts of Poitou were descended from Rollo’s daughter Adela.38 Moreover, at least one Norman cleric of the first half of the eleventh century sought his education in Poitou.39 Norman authors thus knew well, from Carolingian hagiography and the contemporary efforts of Martialis’s promoters, the scope of claims that might be put forward in honor of a domestic saint. Whether they realized the risk such claims ran remains less certain, but unlike Ademar, they chose a safer approach. In articulating claims to a glorious past, discretion appears to have been the wisest course, and it is this cautious course that the three Norman authors followed. By the standards of the early eleventh century, the presentation of Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius as apostolic appears quite restrained. None

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emerges from his vita or passio as the associate of Christ, witness to the passion, or member of the seventy-two disciples. Indeed, their texts associate them with no figure more eminent than Pope Clement and Dionysius of Athens and Paris. Two conclusions may be drawn from this common tact. First, the desire for eminence in the Frankish church, which motivated claims of apostolicity elsewhere, did not preoccupy Norman hagiographers.40 To judge from the framework within which they situated their heroes’ tales, the Norman authors, instead of seeking to trump rival churches in the quest for supreme status, sought merely to integrate their region into the accepted heritage of its neighbors. They thus went no further than to insert their heroes into the accepted history of neighboring Paris. The resulting cloak of apostolicity endowed the sees it encompassed with venerable antiquity and irreproachable origins but provided no foundation to claim precedence. The founding bishops who appear in these vitae as the associates of Dionysius grant their sees at best mere parity with Paris. The new traditions of the province of Rouen integrate Normandy into the glorious history being elaborated by hagiographers throughout Frankish lands, but they do not claim any special place within it. The Norman authors’ reliance on the traditions of Paris indicates that they worked merely to gain their territory a place in the accepted history of the Gallic church, not to seize its summit. Their humbler ambition suggests a concern different from that of Limoges, Périgueux, or Trier: the fear not of being outshone in the history of the Gallic church but of being excluded from its ever increasing glory. Second, the modest pretensions of the three texts reveal that Norman hagiographers did not feel compelled to follow the fashion of their day. The Vita Vigoris demonstrates that in Normandy an evangelizer with apostolic powers need not be a founding bishop, nor need he be the associate of any celebrated figure. Vigor, evangelizer of the Bessin, emerges from his vita fully capable of the feats that mark an apostle. He converts with signs and wonders; he treads down serpents and revives the dead. Yet he requires no Roman mission, no celebrated associate, no direct connection to any Apostle or Apostle’s disciple. Norman authors felt free to borrow the traditions of other regions in establishing the glory of their own saints, but not compelled to make every Norman hero conform to a model specifically elaborated elsewhere.41 The apostles of Normandy thus appear very much within the fashion of their day, yet not entirely subjugated to that fashion. Though their biographers take pains to show them as apostles who convert with signs and won-

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ders a populace yet unsaved, they do not follow the model current in Aquitaine and elsewhere of claiming association with Christ. Instead, they portray their evangelizers as independent, or borrow from Paris the mission that integrates their region into the apostolic history of the Gallic church. Still more than their apostolic connections, the three texts insist upon the apostolic feats of their heroes. Deeds, rather than lineage, appear to have been the final proof of apostolicity in Normandy. This attention to apostolic deeds suggests that Norman authors ultimately sided with the critic whose putative attack on the claims of Périgueux appears in the records of the council of Limoges: apostles are known above all through the signs and wonders they perform to convert the unbelieving. Apostolic mission takes precedence in these Norman texts; the saints’ achievement in gaining power in the region and rendering its inhabitants Christian represents their ultimate claim to veneration.

General Trends in Eleventh-Century Frankish Hagiography Like the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii, Frankish hagiography of the eleventh century exhibits interest in themes beyond apostolicity. The three Norman vitae thus share other concerns with texts of their likely age. Even authors making no claim to apostolic status evinced a fascination with the distant past that the three Norman texts also demonstrate. Moreover, power and aggressive or even violent sanctity characterize stories composed elsewhere in this turbulent era. Finally, conversion, the theme that, together with power and evangelization, lies closest to the heart of all three texts, gained growing attention in the eleventh century. A broader overview of trends in eleventh-century hagiography of Frankish lands further delineates the place and significance of the Norman texts. The Norman hagiographers’ interest in the distant past was shared universally in this period, quite aside from the rage for apostolicity. While the desire for greater prestige and authority usually drove the quest for apostolic origin in the churches where it dominated, outside those institutions two different currents swelled a broader early eleventh-century fascination with the distant past. The first stimulus to enquiry into the past stemmed from the Viking raids and characterized hagiography of the regions most affected by them. Here the raids sparked interest in a past of which they had in some measure obliterated the record and from which they had produced a sense of rup-

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ture. The displacement or destruction of many communities during the raids spurred a desire to reestablish continuity. The vitae of founding saints contributed to this effort; foundation legends fostered a sense of continuity by bringing communities closer to their origins and dispelling memory of more recent distress.42 They also supported claims to rights and property of which no proof existed by making them the gift of a founding saint.43 Traditions and claims articulated after the raids might be genuine or spurious; in either case, they were pervasive. The desire to recover from or even capitalize on disruption sparked interest in the past and its heroes, whose stories reknit a community’s identity, history, and patrimony. Moreover, this interest in the past was not exclusive to the regions most affected by the raids; it flourished wherever a venerable saint’s story needed telling. In particular, curiosity regarding saints of regions hard hit by the raids often arose far off and consequently expanded interest in the past even where little disruption had been inflicted. Those saints whose relics had been displaced (or been opportunely stolen) in the turmoil often piqued curiosity wherever they came to rest, particularly if they favored the new location with miracles. Curiosity to learn more of a newly acquired patron might fuel historical interest both locally and in the region from which the relics had come.44 Requests for information spurred the survivors of displaced communities, or their beneficiaries, to articulate visions of glory and continuity both for home consumption and export; where a saint’s community had vanished entirely, such requests also created opportunities to fabricate claims to all he or she had possessed or bequeathed. The urge to overcome disruption—institutional, psychological, and proprietary—thus spurred interest in deeds reputedly done by saints long ago. A further phenomenon generating eleventh-century interest in the past focused more exclusively on the early Christian era and owed little to the direct impact of the raids. The Peace of God movement that flourished in the eleventh century looked for inspiration to the early Christian age. In remembering that age as one of apostolic peace, texts associated with the Peace focused attention on an idealized period of the distant past, and made its revival their goal.45 In this context too, the past served the present by representing an era worth remembering and restoring. Both those texts inspired by the desire to overcome the raids and those seeking to revive an age of apostolic peace look to saints of the distant past to bring stability to the present. In this impulse they resemble the three Norman texts. Yet the means by which the different communities sought to

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heal rupture and revive past tranquility differed according, in part, to their view of power. Like the three Norman vitae, hagiography of eleventh-century Aquitaine allots ample space to aggression and power. Southern saints exercised force readily. Saint Fides might act with great violence against those who sought to harm her monastery or her devotees in the present day.46 Martialis of Limoges likewise exercised force, though in the past, in order to implant Christianity in the Limousin. The Vita Martialis prolixior and other southern accounts of saintly violence promoted the Peace movement by granting the saints the power to punish abuse and establish rightful authority, either in the past or the present.47 In a similar fashion, the Norman texts legitimated ducal authority by making it heir to apostolic conquest. In both Normandy and Aquitaine, these portrayals of saintly aggression, past and present, served similar ends. Saintly aggression in each region’s hagiography promoted political stability.48 This common use of saintly aggression to achieve salvation, political stability, and peace distinguishes the Norman and Aquitanian texts from eleventh-century hagiography of other regions, where aggressive power was of little concern. North of the Loire, hagiography of the first half of the eleventh century worked in large part to create networks of sanctity in particular areas. By elaborating the familial ties among saints, such texts showed that a given region enjoyed the protection of a network of patrons, whose eminent earthly lineages made them worthy guardians. Zeal to show their patrons’ noble descent and interlinking connections, rather than their power to fight Satan and gain control of a region, dominates in the hagiography of Flanders, the Orléannais, and Anjou.49 Saints of these regions do demonstrate power, but it is the posthumous power to protect and heal their faithful, rather than the power to conquer evil in life. Their devotees of the eleventh century sought concrete aid against daily ills and proof of the nobility of their patrons, rather than evidence that their land had been wrested from Satan and won for God by valorous and mighty deeds.50 These saints’ stories healed the rupture between past and present by retelling stories of aristocratic foundation and creating networks of patronage. Beneficence, rather than violence, effected stability. Though it likens them to the saints of Aquitaine, their aggressive power sets Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius apart from other northern saints in the eleventh century. Eleventh-century hagiography across Francia thus exhibits a widespread interest in discovering the past, in overcoming disruption, and in reviving

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an apostolic age. Authors of different regions and moments in the eleventh century employed the past with varying emphasis and effect. But the shared interest in the distant past and in founding saints looms large in eleventhcentury hagiography generally. In giving prominence to these themes, the Norman authors shared the interests and concerns of their counterparts across much of Francia. Another of their central themes, however, set them apart. The Norman interest in historical conversion distinguishes these texts. While other regions ravaged by the Vikings look to their founding saints for institutional and communal continuity, and in this search often linger on figures credited with evangelization, these non-Norman texts exhibit little interest in the process of conversion. Similarly, hagiography associated with the Peace movement appeals to the earliest Christian era as one of apostolic peace, but without much attention to the experience of those who embraced the new faith through which peace ostensibly came. Indeed, scholars of eleventh-century hagiography outside Normandy have not remarked any emphasis on conversion, despite the frequent acknowledgment of the vogue for Christian origins evident in the texts.51 By contrast, a new trend somewhat later in the eleventh century sharpened interest in conversion. From the middle of the eleventh century, reform currents generated interest in questions of conversion and apostolic faith. However, this interest focused on a revival of apostolic Christianity in the ascetic piety of recent figures, rather than on the ancient deeds of apostolic saints.52 Such a new focus on conversion in the present through reform transferred to the contemporary era a topic the Norman hagiographers had handled in a historically distant setting. These later texts thus emphasize conversion in a contemporary context and stress ascetic piety as a revival of apostolic faith, rather than its initial implantation. The three Norman texts thus stand somewhat outside the dominant fashion of the early eleventh century, when the available evidence places their composition. Just as their caution with regard to their heroes’ apostolic status shows them to be more conservative than many contemporary texts of Aquitaine, so conversely their interest in the experience of conversion appears a rather precocious anticipation of later eleventh-century trends, which would focus that interest instead on contemporary figures. The interest in conversion set in the early Christian era distinguishes the Norman texts from others of their day, even as the themes they handle show them to be very much the product of their time. Conversion, though requi-

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site among the deeds of apostles everywhere, does not receive elsewhere in the early eleventh century the attention it enjoys among the Norman authors, who display genuine interest in the experience of the converted and articulate various views of the process. Conversion appears to have held greater interest in Normandy than elsewhere in the early eleventh century to which the texts evidently belong. The themes prominent in the three Norman texts both assimilate them to the broader scope of eleventh-century hagiography and carve out for them a separate place within it. Their focus on power resembles the hagiography of Aquitaine associated with the Peace movement. Moreover, they share their interest in the distant past both with texts promoting peace and with those aiming to heal institutional rupture or establish claims. Yet the Norman vision stands apart from the hagiography of other regions in its content and aim. From the elements common to hagiography of the early eleventh century, the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii weave a distinct pattern. Here the focus on origins and the early Christian era common to hagiography of the early eleventh century does something more than provide the model of apostolic peace or assert institutional continuity. Instead, the vision of this distant era serves to legitimate the present by bringing it within the divine plan. The Norman texts thus share the concern for continuity broadly characteristic of hagiography in the period. Yet in the three Norman vitae continuity means more than healing institutional rupture; it also involves legitimating a new political order by fitting it into the larger history of the region. The Norman texts’ focus on conversion also stands out, suggesting that this process preoccupied people here more than elsewhere. Normandy was at once a territory more and less Christian than its neighbors; it existed because Rollo accepted baptism. Yet the recent conversion of its rulers, together with their continued reliance on Viking raiders into the eleventh century, attracted the attention and roused the suspicion of their Frankish neighbors. Additionally, their pagan roots and connections continued to fascinate and perhaps to trouble the former Vikings’ descendants, even more than a century after Rollo’s conversion. Exploration of the region’s religious heritage both assuaged discomfort and satisfied curiosity. In the sacred past the Normans found the presage of their own conversion, a template for their power, and evidence that they did indeed form part of the divine plan. The past came alive in the early eleventh century to satisfy needs uniquely Norman by creating a parallel between the region’s evange-

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lization and its current disposition. Diffusion patterns indicate that this vision of the distant past influenced many.

Diffusion of the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii The distant past fashioned by the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii gained currency as the texts spread. These spirited tales of heroic deeds achieved wide diffusion both within the Norman church and beyond it, which indicates the significance of their vision. Norman literary works of the early eleventh century display a marked penchant for thrilling tales of heroism, violence, and the ultimate triumph of good, all set within the duchy. Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s long account of the deeds of the Norman dukes rests upon just such a narrative thread. His patrons, the dukes and their relations, including Archbishop Robert of Rouen, apparently relished such dynamic and warlike stories. The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii gratify the same taste and benefited from the vogue such taste enjoyed. All three saints came to enjoy substantial renown within Normandy. Their feasts were celebrated in many of the duchy’s most influential monasteries and in cathedral churches across the province. Fécamp took the lead in promoting devotion to Taurinus from 1034, when it gained control of Saint-Taurin. He then became the abbey’s second patron (after the Trinity); his feast was celebrated with an octave, and an office in twelve lessons was composed for him and exported.53 Before that time, there is evidence of veneration in the cathedrals of Évreux as well as Chartres; he was certainly also celebrated as patron at Saint-Taurin. From Fécamp, Taurinus’s cult spread to other Norman monasteries: Mesnel cites Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, Bec, Saint-Evroult, Conches, Lyra, Troarn, and Mont-Saint-Michel.54 Copies of his office survive in manuscripts from Jumièges, Lyra, and SaintWandrille.55 The oldest manuscript of his vita, probably produced at either Saint-Taurin or Fécamp, also contains a homily and a sermon in his honor.56 Taurinus was also venerated in the dioceses of Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances, and with particular devotion in Lisieux, where a chapel in the cathedral and several parish churches were dedicated to him.57 Vigor enjoyed veneration within and beyond his diocese, even if its traces are now somewhat faint. Although no liturgical manuscripts from Cerisy survive, as patron Vigor would doubtlessly have been celebrated there with an octave. Vigor also became patron of the monastery of Saint-Vigor-le-

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Grand, just outside Bayeux. This abbey, founded by Bishop Odo of Bayeux around 1066 (later reduced to a priory of Saint-Benigne, Dijon), would also have marked his feast with special attention. He may well have been celebrated at the cathedral of Bayeux, particularly as Odo’s foundation of SaintVigor-le-Grand suggests special episcopal interest in Vigor, but no surviving evidence confirms such veneration. Similarly, Vigor’s vita was known at Jumièges from at least the twelfth century, but the surviving copy of it from that monastery contains no lectio divisions and does not appear to have been used in the liturgy.58 According to Gaston Aubourg, Vigor became the patron of twenty-six parishes in Calvados, though he does not say at what date such dedications occurred.59 Although the evidence is not abundant, Vigor appears to have loomed large in Lower Normandy and to have received attention in the duchy’s other sectors as well. Saint-Ouen remained the center of Nicasius’s cult, which it zealously exported to the major monasteries of the duchy and, by the thirteenth century, to all the other dioceses of Normandy. At Saint-Ouen, Nicasius received lavish celebration; both his feast (October 11) and the anniversary of the translation of his relics (December 12) were formally marked, as liturgical divisions made in the Livre noir copies of both his Passio and Translatio show.60 The martyr’s feast was also celebrated with an octave in the parish church of Saint-Nicaise in the abbey bourg.61 From Rouen the cult spread across all of Normandy and beyond. Avranches cathedral accorded the martyrs an octave from the eleventh century, and they also enjoyed prominent veneration from that era at Mont-Saint-Michel.62 From at least the twelfth century, Nicasius was celebrated at Évreux cathedral, the abbeys of Fécamp and Jumièges, and either Lisieux cathedral or the monastery of Troarn.63 Thirteenth-century evidence survives for his cult at either the cathedral of Coutances or that diocese’s church of Saint-Lô in Rouen, and at the monastery of Bonport in the diocese of Évreux.64 The saints’ fame, moreover, spread well beyond Normandy. Nicasius received veneration particularly at places bound up with his story; his cult, and in many cases his relics or those of his associates, appeared in the dioceses of Chartres (which included Vaux and Meulan), Liège (which included Malmédy, where the better part of Quirinus’s relics went during the raids), Paris, and Orléans.65 Vigor achieved particular popularity among the Cistercians, and from the twelfth century he received veneration in their houses across Europe; of the thirteen surviving manuscripts of the Vita Vigoris, five are of Cistercian

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provenance, with another of possible Cistercian origin.66 Vigor also remained the second patron of Saint-Riquier, where his feast received an octave. In addition to the vita they had acquired from Saint-Ouen, the monks of Saint-Riquier also composed new works for Vigor, whose prominence in the abbey was further enhanced by visions in which he appeared to its denizens.67 The monastery of Saint-Vaast, Arras, celebrated his feast; SaintPère, Chartres, also possessed a copy of the Vita Vigoris, although whether this copy served in the liturgy is unclear.68 Vigor’s cult remained active also at Le Mans, to which church Saint-Riquier sent another relic, and Gaston Aubourg claims that Vigor received some veneration in England, although he does not indicate at what date.69 Taurinus also gained renown outside Normandy. He received celebration in Chartres cathedral and in Saint-Vaast, Arras.70 He also enjoyed some favor among the Cistercians: the Vita Taurini appears in manuscripts from the Cistercian houses of Chaâlis, Val-Notre-Dame, and possibly Clairvaux.71 Taurinus gained a more prominent place, however, at Cluny, due to the reputed translation of his relics during the Viking raids. A tradition vehemently rejected in Évreux reported that in the ninth century Taurinus’s relics were taken to Lezoux in Auvergne. From there they supposedly reached Gigny in Burgundy sometime before the middle of the tenth century. Through the monks of Gigny, Taurinus came to the attention of Cluny, where he had an altar dedicated to him. His vita and office appear to have reached Cluny through Fécamp sometime in the eleventh century.72 A tour of Burgundy undertaken by his relics in the twelfth century brought him still greater fame. This pervasive liturgical celebration resulted in a widespread familiarity with the saints’ legends, most evidently among the clergy. The legends enjoyed greatest renown among the clergy of Normandy, where they held strong local interest. Clerical familiarity with Taurinus and Nicasius led to their appearances in twelfth-century histories of the duchy. Robert of Torigni includes Nicasius and Taurinus among the bishops sent to Gaul with Dionysius.73 Orderic Vitalis incorporates their stories into his version of the ancient history of the region.74 Promotion of their cults and diffusion of the legends necessary to them thus ensured the saints’ place in the duchy’s history. The stories composed for them in the eleventh century effectively influenced Norman historians’ remembrance of their region’s past. Both in Normandy and beyond, faint reflections of familiarity with their stories among the laity emerge as well. The celebration of their feasts in the

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duchy’s major monasteries and cathedrals, as well as in the numerous smaller churches dedicated in their names, reveals that over time a growing proportion of Norman devotion focused on Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius. While it should be stressed that the great majority of the smaller dedications are not clearly dated, veneration in the important monasteries and cathedrals dates largely from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The widespread patronage enjoyed by Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius suggests at least a concerted effort to make the three popular, if not their actual popularity. Their extensive patronage inevitably entailed the wide diffusion of their legends among the faithful. Moreover, Norman sources reveal hints of early popular veneration for the three. Orderic Vitalis credits Taurinus with miracles accomplished up to his own day and adds to his résumé of the saint’s career two new stories of possible popular origin. According to Orderic, Taurinus reputedly protected the inhabitants of Évreux from a demon called gobelinus (apparently the same one he expelled from the statue), and Taurinus continued in Orderic’s day to keep the city free of venomous beasts.75 Orderic further documents the special veneration the counts of Meulan continued to cherish for Nicasius in the late eleventh century. Robert, count of Meulan (1080–1118), rashly demanded a possession from Robert Curthose in 1090, saying: “I wish to have what your father gave my father. Otherwise, by saint Nicasius, I shall do that which will displease you.”76 Two generations later, the family of Waleran I maintained a special (if not always a well-regulated) regard for the saint.77 A similar filial piety attached to the ducal interest in Vigor. The saint’s continued performance of miracles at Saint-Riquier prompted William the Conqueror to acquire a relic for his father’s foundation of Cerisy in 1048. Hariulf records William’s request for a relic and the accompanying threat to seize Saint-Riquier’s Norman possession unless his wish be granted that gave the request added force.78 The arrival of such a relic undoubtedly heightened local popular devotion, although there is no evidence of miracles at the abbey.79 Although evidence remains limited, Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius do appear to have enjoyed renown among the Norman laity. Indeed, these heroes’ dramatic stories might well have appealed to the audiences whom jongleurs and clergy regaled with tales of virtuous might.80 The texts were shaped for a broad audience; the stories’ content and style were well suited to edify and entertain beyond the confines of the cloister.81 Although the precise scope of the stories’ impact cannot be known, the surviving evi-

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dence attests to wide diffusion among clergy and, more dimly, laity alike. The texts’ vision of the Norman past therefore reached and influenced many.

That vision suggests that Normandy of the early eleventh century occupied, on the whole, the mainstream of Frankish culture but retained its own concerns. Like their colleagues in distant Aquitaine and Trier, Norman clerics exhibited interest in the apostolic origins of their church; like their brethren in Anjou and Flanders, they focused on the distant days of foundation to minimize the more recent period of disruption. Yet the Norman authors display concerns unusual elsewhere. While hagiographers in other regions sought to dominate the history of the Gallic church, Norman authors revealed a concern merely to claim for their region a place in that history. Similarly, their strong interest in the process of conversion, in the struggles evangelizing saints faced and the ambivalence evangelized pagans felt, sets them apart from hagiographers elsewhere. While saints of Aquitaine employed violence to effect conversion, the stories of their deeds bear a different relation to the present than those of their Norman counterparts. Rather than working to improve contemporary society by elaborating ideals of lay behavior and promoting a vision of apostolic peace, the Norman texts focus on the strife of the distant past, the trouble and cyclical trauma allotted to their region by the divine plan. Peace does not dominate these texts but rather strife, the vision of a past marked repeatedly by upheaval and recovery. Norman authors employed thrilling tales to put a troubled past in the perspective of the divine plan while their counterparts elsewhere constructed a vision of the past that argued for a peaceful and orderly society. The distant past that intrigued authors of all regions proved equally fruitful as inspiration for Norman authors. Yet their vision represents in some sense the converse of the one promoted in Aquitaine: rather than appealing to a peaceful past to reform a violent present, Norman authors evoke a troubled past to legitimate conquest. While they engage in a pursuit typical of clerical writers throughout the Frankish, and indeed Christian, world in recording the lives of their saints, these Norman hagiographers thus display concerns of their own. They fashion a past that above all legitimates their particular present: Normandy emerges as an inherently Christian territory integrated into the greater history of the Gallic church, and the Norman dukes emerge as worthy heirs to the region’s apostolic saints. The sacred past validates the Norman present.

Conclusion

Three saintly bishops of the distant and sacred past came vividly alive in early Normandy. Whatever these ancient figures had in fact done— regardless of whether they had even lived at all—they captured the attention of three authors apparently working in the duchy in the early eleventh century. Working from the scant information available for these obscure figures, from well-established models, and, above all, from their own resources, the hagiographers cobbled together a history for each saint. In picturing these heroes’ deeds, the three authors each conjured up an age long antecedent to his own. The resulting stories reveal a religious heritage imagined anew for its new adherents, the inhabitants of Normandy. The stories the three authors fashioned, the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii, envisage the sacred history of Normandy from the specific historical circumstances of their authors’ own era. The past they relate reflects concerns current in the early eleventh century. Their tales elaborate a past that in important ways resembles their present; this similarity results in a cyclical view of history in which renewal follows from and eclipses disruption. The vision of the early Christian era elaborated by the three texts thus reconciled past and present to make the Norman dukes and their followers heirs to the region’s apostolic saints. The hagiographers’ work provides a template for ducal power and a precedent for ducal authority. In particular, the texts’ vision of sacred history integrates frontier regions into the duchy. The stories of Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius thus recast the past to foreshadow and legitimate the present. The texts cohere to present this new religious heritage, although they apparently came into being independently. Three unknown but, in all probability, independent authors, working at roughly the same time most likely 132

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in different institutions located in various regions of the duchy, imagined their regions’ sacred history in strikingly similar fashion. Their vision aligns to conjure up a past more vivid for its reiteration. Through liturgical and popular retelling, these stories and their collective vision of the past would have reached a wide audience with regularity. Those whose churches venerated these early bishops or who heard their tales as edifying entertainment imbibed a religious heritage consistent in its outlines and powerful in its appeal. Normandy’s sacred past took shape in the early eleventh century along clear lines. These outlines, moreover, resonate with the dynamics of power posited by other contemporary sources. Dudo of Saint-Quentin portrays Rollo rising from the font to ask the bishop of Rouen which were the most venerable churches in his land and which, due to the merits and patronage of their saints, were the most powerful. According to Dudo, the bishop listed the patrons of the cathedrals of Rouen, Bayeux, and Évreux, and of the monasteries of Mont-Saint-Michel, Jumièges, and Saint-Ouen. Rollo discovered that the Virgin, the archangel, and the Prince of the Apostles watched over his realm, as did Audoenus of Rouen, and that the strongest figure on its borders was Dionysius of Paris. The new prince concluded that these powerful figures were of great consequence. He declared that he would grant them part of his new territory, “so that they may deign to rally to my aid.”1 Dudo thus characterizes Norman power as posited from the start on the active interest of the saints, who worked alongside the first Norman leaders in an active partnership no human agent, Frankish or Viking, might thwart. This partnership extended, in the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii, to the region’s apostolic evangelizers. The heroes of the three texts offered the new rulers not only a model of divinely sanctioned aggressive power asserted in frontier regions but also their enduring support from heaven. The sacred past established in the texts and broadcast in their recitation carried over directly into the present: in addition to a precedent, the saints offered valuable and active aid to their Norman successors. The positioning of their relics and the promotion of their cults reinforced that enduring partnership. The alliance between dukes and saints implied in the stories extended into the present. The inhabitants of Normandy learned from these stories not only that the present disposition of their region stemmed quite naturally from its distant history but that the heroes of the past actively supported the power of its current rulers. The ramifications of such a partnership reached well beyond the cloister and equally beyond the

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confines of the past. It mattered greatly how the sacred past was remembered in early Normandy because the careers of its evangelizing saints had by no means ended with their deaths. The implications of this sacred past for the legitimation of Norman power in the early eleventh century offer new insights into the nature of ducal power. Such stories fill out the cultural dimension of a picture scholars have long seen more readily through institutional, genealogical, and military lenses. The Normans’ preservation and adroit employment of institutional structures inherited from the Carolingians; their weaving together of alliances with the Franks, successive groups of Danes, and others through marriage; their use of Latin culture to exercise and enhance their power; their military might; and their luck are all aspects of their early success that remain of fundamental importance. The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii demonstrate that newly minted memories of the region’s traditional saints supported such strategies on a more abstract and subtle level. The region’s religious heritage provided another way for the new rulers to integrate themselves into their new territory, to legitimate their power, and to make sense, for themselves and their subjects, of their own past and present. As David Bates recently put it, “‘Normandy’ became ‘respectable’ in the sense that its rulers and aristocracy came by the early eleventh century to share the same ambitions and aspirations as their counterparts elsewhere . . .”2 Such respectability owed much to those imaginative authors who drew on the territory’s religious heritage in powerful ways to reveal the present as divinely ordained. This dimension of the Normans’ success suggests a great deal about both the potential of hagiography for historical inquiry and about Norman identity in the early eleventh century. Hagiography influenced the perceptions of Christians everywhere in the Middle Ages. It thus presents historians with a means to explore directly how the real was transformed to accommodate the ideal, and how the past was imagined and made to suit the present. Examined in its particular historical context, hagiography can open new doors. Such texts reached audiences far broader than did charters, histories, and treatises. Although tricky to employ and of negligible value for their ostensible subjects, such texts are rich for the contexts that produced and used them. The world they reveal is neither straightforward nor plausible; it was nonetheless the world inhabited, mentally, by medieval Christians. The concerns of hagiographical texts did not originate with, pertain to,

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or find acceptance among all sectors of society equally; nevertheless, their public dissemination made these preoccupations the intellectual property of all members of a given society. The import of the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii, therefore extends beyond the agendas of the Norman dukes, whose ambitions found vindication in the deeds of their distant predecessors. Stories of the apostles to the future Normandy reveal that ducal power gained valuable support from the sacred past, but they show additionally that supporters of the former Vikings did not hanker after power alone. As Dudo of Saint-Quentin and the Translatio prima Audoeni indicate, those writing in support of the dukes wished them to deserve, or to be seen to deserve, their power. Portraying the dukes’ virtue offered one means to this goal. Another was to show that the Normans belonged to the land that now belonged to them and to promote a version of the past that realized this view. In elaborating a vision of the past adapted to present circumstances, the Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii gave the Normans entry to the sacred past and enabled them to situate themselves within it. The resemblance between the faith of the region’s apostolic saints and its new rulers, between the converts of the early Christian era and those of the early duchy, between the past and the present, showed the inhabitants of Normandy to be the region’s true people. The obscure memories of ancient saints developed in the eleventh century into histories that resonated with an age, as the numerous copies of the texts show, because that age saw itself in the three saints’ stories. As the descendants of former Vikings and Franks alike learned through devotion to these saints, the Norman present not only issued from the pre-Norman past but remained linked to it as a further stage of the divine plan from which they both unfolded. Stories of the region’s obscure but venerable saints thus put the inhabitants of eleventh-century Normandy into the sacred history of their region and into the greater history of God’s plan. As the saints’ stories thus facilitated the slow transition from Viking to Norman by linking past and present, they also exemplify the transition itself. The hagiographers’ efforts to recast the past to legitimate the present, and in particular their emphasis on conversion, shows continuing discomfort in early eleventh-century Normandy regarding the duchy’s origins. Yet the very means by which Norman hagiographers sought to resolve that discomfort, by telling the stories of the region’s saints, reflects the extent to which the Viking territory formed part of the Christian world. By turning

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to the saints to reconcile past and present, to find and adopt the sacred history of their region, the Normans showed themselves to be already full participants in Christian Frankish culture. The effort to mobilize the region’s apostolic saints to harmonize past and present, therefore, does just that: by imagining their region’s sacred past and taking possession of it as their own, Normans demonstrated their Christianity and their right to that heritage. Hagiography concerning the region’s traditional but obscure saints gave Normans real entry into the past of their new region; the vision they articulated of that past reflected their tastes, their piety, their concerns, and their ambitions. The heritage they imagined was indeed their own.

Appendices Notes Bibliography Index

appendix 1

Manuscripts of the Vita Taurini and Vita Vigoris

Manuscripts of the Vita Taurini Twenty-three manuscripts are known to preserve the Vita Taurini. The great majority date from the late eleventh or twelfth centuries through the fifteenth.1 These witnesses attest to a wide and apparently rapid diffusion after about 1100. However, this pattern shows nothing more with regard to the date of the vita’s composition than that it occurred sometime before the twelfth century. In contrast, the three earliest exemplars set a somewhat more precise boundary for the date by which the Vita Taurini existed. Such clarification requires that the oldest exemplars themselves be dated as precisely as possible, and this task proves a difficult one. The copy of the Vita Taurini once preserved in Chartres can now be considered only at second hand, as the manuscript was destroyed in 1944.2 Catalogue descriptions of the codex differ as to its nature and date. Charles De Smedt depicts it as a tenth-century manuscript into the midst of which three twelfth-century leaves were later inserted.3 He offers no comment on the relative unity of the rest of the codex; although his observation suggests at least the potential for further heterogeneity among its contents, his dating implies he viewed it as a uniform whole. Henri Omont treats the codex as a single entity and dates it in its entirety to the eleventh century.4 The Vita Taurini did not attract these scholars’ attention, and they made their judgments of the codex without special reference to it. By contrast, J.-B. Mesnel focused exclusively on the section dealing with Taurinus, and he concurred with Omont that it originated in the eleventh century. Although Mesnel appears to have examined the codex directly, he accepts Omont’s opinion primarily because he believed the manuscript came from Chartres cathedral, where Taurinus’s cult was introduced only in about 1024.5 Presumably the manuscript itself, in 139

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his view, accorded with such a date. If Mesnel’s opinion, based primarily on the history of the cult, is accepted as confirming Omont’s judgment, made of the codex as a whole, then the lost copy of the Vita Taurini may have dated from the eleventh century, although this line of reasoning remains tenuous. Close examination of the two oldest surviving manuscripts leads to a similar conclusion. Each has been assigned, entirely or in part, to the tenth, eleventh, and/or twelfth centuries. The Vita Taurini occupies in both instances a section distinct from the bulk of the codex, and these sections have not received individual attention. Although only very general dates can be assigned them based on their physical features and content, these elements do nevertheless suggest that each witness postdates the millennium. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS Latin 989, contains the Vita Taurini, together with other texts concerning Taurinus, in a section of puzzling format independent from most of the other material in the codex. The texts relative to Taurinus occupy the entirety of four quires, as well as one side at the back of a quire otherwise dedicated to the Passio metrica Luciae.6 The Passio Luciae, as well as the Vita Nicholai and Miracula Nicholai, appear to have been produced more or less contemporaneously with the texts for Taurinus: the ruling, quality of parchment, and orange pigment match among the texts, as do the hands. The whole set of texts is crude and worn, and its decoration is incomplete, although occasionally ambitious. The gatherings of MS Lat. 989 display a clear regard for Taurinus. A number of other texts in his honor accompany the Vita Taurini, including the Inventio et miracula, a homily by Alcuin adapted for Taurinus, a sermon for Taurinus’s feast, and three responses for his office. Taurinus’s vita, unlike those of Lucia and Nicholas, was intended for liturgical use and divided into lectiones at its production.7 Additionally, the Vita Taurini alone received large decorated initials: the opening letters of both the prologue and the Vita itself take up the better part of their sides and exhibit ambitious decorative intent, even though it is not clear whether the decorative initials were completed.8 The relative splendor of the Vita Taurini and its liturgical markings, together with the sheer number of items pertaining to Taurinus, suggests that this set of texts was copied for a community actively celebrating Taurinus’s feast. Before the widespread diffusion of the cult in the twelfth century, such a community would most likely have been found either in Normandy, particularly at Évreux or Fécamp; at Chartres (from circa 1024); or in Burgundy at either Gigny or Cluny. Of these possibilities, Normandy appears most plausible.

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Several features of the manuscript and its history suggest a Norman origin. The codex belonged at some point to the abbey of Fécamp, where Taurinus became second patron after 1034.9 It may have reached Fécamp during the twelfth century; the copy of the Vita Taurini listed in the second inventory of the abbey’s library (compiled circa 1150–1187) may be MS Lat. 989.10 However, this manuscript does not appear to have been produced at Fécamp, as that abbey’s scriptorium turned out rather more sophisticated codices. Moreover, the eleventh-century inventory of its library—produced circa 1050–1075 and more complete than the twelfthcentury one—does not mention the Vita Taurini.11 While a codex used for the liturgy may have been kept not in the library but among liturgical books, nevertheless it seems more likely that before the twelfth-century inventory the manuscript was elsewhere than Fécamp, possibly wherever it had been produced. Mesnel hypothesized that the codex came to Fécamp from Saint-Taurin, where it originated.12 His attribution of the codex to Saint-Taurin remains conjectural but is nevertheless plausible; the codex’s intense interest in Taurinus indicates that it originated among the most fervent of Taurinus’s faithful, while the omission of all interpolations associated with the southern tradition surrounding him suggests a northern origin. Certainly Saint-Taurin is the most obvious community deeply devoted to Taurinus, and the fact that the monastery was subjected to Fécamp in 1034 would explain the manuscript’s eventual transfer there.13 The inclusion of the vita and miracles of Nicholas of Myra similarly support the notion of a Norman origin. Although after 1087 devotion to Nicholas proliferated across western Europe, he enjoyed particular popularity in Normandy from the early eleventh century.14 The marked attention Nicholas receives in the sections of the codex he shares with Lucia and Taurinus suggest that the manuscript originated in Normandy in the eleventh century. Dating MS Lat. 989 by its physical features alone is almost impossible. The salient characteristics of MS Lat. 989 might belong to either the tenth or the eleventh century, as is evident in the ambivalence of those who have examined it. Mesnel, who based his edition of the Vita Taurini on MS Lat. 989, dated it to the tenth century; so did the Bollandists.15 More recently, however, both Philippe Lauer and Geneviève Nortier assigned it to the eleventh century.16 The crude quires containing the Vita Taurini and other texts concerning Taurinus exhibit no feature pinning them indisputably to either century. This portion of the codex would certainly support Lauer’s

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and Nortier’s revised opinion pointing to an eleventh-century date, which its contents suggest is the more plausible. The final witness occasionally dated to the tenth century, Paris BnF MS Lat. 13,345 also contains the Vita Taurini in an independent section of unclear origin and date. The Vita Taurini here shares a quire with the Passio Marci, which is in turn linked to the Vita Philiberti.17 The similarity of the hands among the three texts suggests they were produced in the same place at more or less the same time. When and where that event took place, however, remains unclear. Existing descriptions of the manuscript do not pertain to this section, which has received direct attention only from Mesnel; that other portions of the codex have been dated variously to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, and occasionally linked to particular institutions, thus sheds little light on these quires.18 Mesnel, who examined the Vita Taurini section in light of catalogues dating the entire codex either to the tenth or the twelfth centuries, concurred with the latter date.19 The features of the relevant quires support this judgment, although they do not prove it.20 The origin of the copy remains unclear. As a whole, this group of texts does not exhibit particular interest in Taurinus: his vita alone of the three is not divided into lectiones. Moreover, the scribe did not copy the Vita Taurini in an easily legible fashion; letter forms vary, errors are rife, the poorquality ink has blurred. The lack of deep regard for Taurinus provides little clue to the copy’s origin; its version of the Miracula neither exhibits interpolations nor matches the version in MS Lat. 989.21 Although its origin cannot be determined, its diffidence would appear to rule out Évreux and perhaps Fécamp and Chartres. MS Lat. 13,345 appears to belong among the many twelfth-century witnesses from across Frankish lands that attest to the Vita Taurini’s successful diffusion but shed little light on its composition. Although their precise dates remain uncertain, the three earliest copies of the Vita Taurini appear more likely to have been produced after the year 1000 than before it. The two oldest, which predate all the other known exemplars, are more plausibly assigned to the eleventh than to the tenth century. Such an attribution does not rule out an earlier date of composition, but neither do the manuscripts provide evidence for a composition much before these first witnesses. MS Lat. 989 reveals a saint already prominently venerated somewhere, quite possibly at Saint-Taurin, at some point, probably in the eleventh century. The lost Chartres MS 193, from that city’s cathedral, seems to confirm the cult’s establishment there in the eleventh

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century. Neither of these earliest witnesses can serve to date the origination of the text with certainty. Their tentative evidence, however, points to composition of the Vita Taurini at some unspecified time before the later eleventh century. Manuscripts of the Vita Vigoris The manuscripts of the Vita Vigoris date mainly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.22 In addition to these later manuscripts, De Smedt worked with two he dated to the eleventh century—one of which represented his primary source for the “Textus primigenius.” That manuscript, Chartres, BM, MS 68, was destroyed in 1944.23 The second is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS Latin 13,765. De Smedt dates Lat. 13,765 to both the eleventh and the twelfth centuries but assigns the folios containing the Vita Vigoris (fols. 129–135) to the eleventh.24 Although his dating has not won consensus, it may indeed be correct.25 The hand, layout, and other features of the relevant quire, while not conclusive, would support De Smedt’s dating.26 The provenance of this manuscript is likewise unclear; the portion containing the Vita Vigoris constitutes an independent quire of eight folios, wholly unconnected with anything else now in the volume. The rough quality of these folios, together with the fact that their outermost sides (fols. 129 and 136v) are badly damaged, suggests they may have circulated as a booklet.27 By the late fifteenth century at least the portion of the manuscript containing folio 46 already belonged to Saint-Germain, Paris, whence it came to the Bibliothèque nationale.28 When the section containing the Vita Vigoris reached Saint-Germain, and from where, is not clear. De Smedt evidently did not know what appears to be the second-oldest surviving manuscript, Rouen, BM, MS U 39.29 This miscellaneous volume dates from the twelfth century and came to the Bibliothèque municipale of Rouen from Jumièges.30 Like MS Lat. 13,765, it contains a plain, rough copy of the Vita Vigoris. Also like the older manuscript, the copy of the Vita Vigoris in MS U 39 stands apart from the rest of the volume, within an independent quire.31 Moreover, this quire predates the rest of the manuscript, which simply incorporated it.32 The Vita Vigoris of MS U 39 once again represents a copy of the text not originally contained in any larger collection. It was produced before the twelfth-century collection of which it now forms a part and thus may not be very much later than the text of MS Lat. 13,765.

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The manuscripts additionally indicate the fluid nature of the text that circulated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The great textual variation which led De Smedt to propose his theory of two separate redactions shows instead a text achieving diffusion and engaging its readers and copiers. As the text circulated among houses in independent, crude copies, it was emended and adapted by scribes perhaps encountering it for the first time. Although scribes would continue to adapt the text to suit their needs, the Vita Vigoris attained a recognizable and stable form later in the eleventh and particularly the twelfth centuries as it came to form part of more formal collections of vitae. Such a scenario does not rule out an earlier composition that suddenly attained vogue in the eleventh century. However, the pattern of the surviving manuscripts, which move from crude and independent copies of a highly fluid text to more formal copies embedding a stable text in the known traditions of a given house, suggests that the Vita Vigoris in the eleventh century represented a new composition that caught the attention of scribes as it circulated among them and inspired their emendations.

appendix 2

Transmission of the Passio Nicasii

No critical edition of the Passio Nicasii exists. The late eighteenth-century Bollandist Cornelius De Bye undertook a lengthy examination of the history of Nicasius’s cult and the validity of the legend, but he forbore to publish in the Acta Sanctorum what he deemed a thoroughly worthless text.1 Slightly less than a century later, while assembling the catalogue of hagiographical manuscripts belonging to the library of Namur, De Bye’s successors came across two copies of the Passio Nicasii, and from these they made a provisional edition of the body of the text. The version they published in 1882 is primarily that found in a thirteenth-century manuscript of SaintHubert in the Ardennes (Namur, Musée des arts anciens du Namurois, fonds de la Ville, no. 15, fols. 75–80), compared where possible with the highly abbreviated text of the second Namur manuscript, a fourteenth-century codex also of Saint-Hubert (Namur, BV MS 2 fols. 220–21).2 Neither of the Namur manuscripts included the prologue, which was published separately from a fourteenth-century manuscript of Saint-Trond (Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université, MS 58 [210, t. II], fols. 17–20).3 The same codex also furnished passages not found in the Namur manuscripts.4 Taken together, then, the catalogues thus provide a serviceable edition that is readily accessible, if discontinuous. Although no Norman copies served for the makeshift edition, it nevertheless corresponds in large part to the text preserved in the earliest Norman manuscripts. The portions published from the Liège manuscript in particular closely match the text of the best Norman manuscripts. The remainder (roughly two-thirds), published from the Namur codices, reflects the Norman manuscripts more loosely. 145

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In the absence of a critical edition, therefore, the early Norman manuscripts represent the most straightforward access to the Passio Nicasii as it existed in Normandy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is to be hoped that a critical edition will establish the text as solidly as possible with reference to all the twenty surviving manuscripts dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries.5 Until such a study is undertaken, however, a rougher approach will remain necessary; in particular, the text preserved in the earliest Norman manuscripts must suffice to represent the Passio Nicasii as it circulated in the duchy. Such an approach to the text remains potentially problematic: it is possible that the best record of the early Norman text exists in a late manuscript far from Rouen. Nevertheless it is probable that the earliest Norman manuscripts collectively preserve a text that represents what circulated in the duchy with reasonable accuracy. Moreover, many critical editions pose hosts of new problems, since the aims of an editor may be to reconstruct a text that never actually circulated, or to trace its evolution over time and space rather than to represent a text as it was known in a given context.6 Fortunately, for the purposes of getting at the text as it circulated in ducal Normandy, several early manuscripts survive. More luckily still, the oldest surviving Norman witness was produced at Saint-Ouen, the abbey that created the legend of Nicasius. Access to the Passio Nicasii that emanated from Saint-Ouen and circulated in ducal Normandy thus appears possible, even without a critical edition. Five Norman manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries preserve the Passio Nicasii. The oldest of these, and the most important (although not the best for establishing the full text), is the famous Livre noir of SaintOuen (Rouen, BM, MS Y 41, fols. 17–23v).7 This lavish manuscript, produced at Saint-Ouen around the turn of the twelfth century, contains the vitae, translationes, and other hagiographical material relevant to the saints venerated in the abbey. The codex preserves the official traditions at the center of the abbey’s cultic life. The copy of the Passio Nicasii contained in the Livre noir thus represents the legend as it was accepted at the institution where it originated in the first generations after its composition. The Livre noir text of the Passio Nicasii now lacks the prologue.8 However, the body of the legend itself corresponds closely, indeed almost exactly, to two other Norman exemplars: Rouen, BM MSS U 2 (fols. 111–114) and U 39 (fols. 91–94v), both from Jumièges and produced in the twelfth century.9 These two contain the full Passio with the prologue and would seem, from their close correspondence with the text of the Livre noir, to transmit the full text

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disseminated from Saint-Ouen. Together with two further, abbreviated copies, which condense the text of the Jumièges exemplars and the Livre noir, these manuscripts represent the Passio Nicasii as it circulated in Normandy in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.10 One notable discrepancy between the text of the Jumièges manuscripts and that of the Livre noir suggests that the former in fact preserve an earlier version of the Passio Nicasii than that now found in the Saint-Ouen codex. The postmortem miracle that leads Nicasius and his companions to the island on which they obtain a resting place appears identically in all three manuscripts. Their burial on the island, however, shows a fascinating divergence of tradition. Both Jumièges manuscripts relate enigmatically that “having crossed by a ford till that hour unknown to men, and on account of this [event] from then on called ‘the ford of Nicasius’ in memory of the saints, they came to rest on a very charming island in the same river [Epte]. And a certain matron, Pientia by name, converted to the faith of Christ by the admonitions of the saints, with very holy men, famous [claris] in name and in deeds, having been received from their company as priests, she took up the saints’ bodies and buried them honorably in that place.”11 Deep obscurity shrouds the identity and role of these “holy men”; although their presence at the burial is clear from their insertion into the very sentence of its performance, the nature of their participation remains hazy in large part because the verb “buried,” conjugated resolutely in the singular, applies to Pientia alone. Despite the attention the text bestows on these mysterious holy men by its deliberate pause and numerous accolades, they remain shadowy figures. In contrast, the Livre noir contains a corrected version of the same passage. Where the original scribe wrote something now erased, an emendator altered the passage to dispel the mystery: “Having crossed by a ford till that hour unknown to men, and on account of this [event] from then on called ‘the ford of Nicasius’ in memory of the saints, they came to rest on a very charming island in the same river [Epte]. And a certain matron, Pientia by name, converted to the faith of Christ by the admonitions of the saints, with a priest received from their company for the most holy deeds, a man named Clarus, she took up the saints’ bodies and buried them honorably in that place.”12 What lay beneath the new correction is impossible to make out, although the space erased would certainly have accommodated the reading of the Jumièges manuscripts. It appears certain, in any case, that the monks of Saint-Ouen altered the text of the Passio Nicasii after the composition and

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initial dissemination of the legend. Because the corresponding passage of the Jumièges version presents so difficult a reading, it would seem to predate the emended version of the Livre noir. While the Jumièges reading might reflect a glitch in transmission, rather than the passage as originally diffused from Rouen, the fact that the monks of Saint-Ouen deemed it necessary to emend this very passage indicates it posed a problem even within the abbey. However the Jumièges manuscripts relate to what lies beneath the emendation of the Livre noir, they appear to predate the solution arrived at within Saint-Ouen to the obscure passage they transmit. The evidence suggests that MSS U 2 and U 39 stem from a quite early copy of the Passio Nicasii, one disseminated from Saint-Ouen before that monastery had fully resolved the problems inherent in the text it had produced. The emendator’s motives, like the precise words he erased, cannot be known. He made one further alteration to the text of the Passio Nicasii, one which underlines the monks’ possession of Gasny. He continues the account of Nicasius’s burial by Pientia and Clarus with the foundation of the church in the martyrs’ honor: “She took up the saints’ bodies and buried them honorably in that place, giving to those saints her estate in its whole entirety for the celebration of the saints’ memory. In which place, both by them and by the rest of the devout faithful, a church was built in honor of the saints: Bishop Nicasius, the priest Quirinus, and Scuviculus the deacon, in which flourish their benefits up to the present day.”13 This statement emends the somewhat less forceful one found in the Jumièges manuscripts: “She took up the saints’ bodies and buried them honorably in that place, giving that place to their estate with all its patrimony for the memory of the saints. In which place, both by them and by the rest of the devout faithful, a church was built in honor of the saints.”14 Assertion of Saint-Ouen’s ownership evidently inspired this second correction but does not account for the first. How the transformation of a group of anonymous but holy men into the singular personage of Clarus strengthens the monks of Saint-Ouen remains obscure. The new reading went on to a notable future, nonetheless. The emendation gave a needed boost to the cult of saint Clarus, whose vita appeared later in the eleventh century. Although Usuard notes a Clarus associated with the Vexin (in whose honor saint-Clair-sur-Epte is named), the saint’s connection to Nicasius emerged only after this passage of the Passio Nicasii appeared to associate them, and Clarus’s rise in veneration followed.15 The Benedictines of Paris think the reference to Clarus was deliberate and represents a polite gesture towards the inhabitants of SaintClair-sur-Epte, whose patron remained without any known deeds at the

Appendix 2

149

time the Passio Nicasii was composed.16 If nothing else, the emendation linked Nicasius and his abbey to another Vexin saint. Pientia also went on to an independent career, although her identity sometimes veered between virgin and matron, humble associate and martyr. Her appearance in the Passio Nicasii reflects both the account of Nicasius given by Usuard, who included a Pientia among the martyrs of the Vexin, and the Passio Dionysii, which relates Dionysius’s burial by a pious matron.17 During the eleventh century, her relics came to the cathedral of Avranches, where they were honored in a yearly procession to Mont-SaintMichel, in conjunction with a procession of monks from the Mont carrying the relics of their founder, Aubertus, to the cathedral.18 Pientia also became identified as lady of La Roche–Guyon and thereby associated Nicasius with yet another stronghold on the river Seine.19 The later cults of Pientia and Clarus do not shed much light on the composition of the Passio Nicasii in the early eleventh century, but their afterlives do trace the influence of the text. They reveal that Nicasius’s cult was very much alive in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and that his legend spread across Normandy and helped to generate new stories in its wake. The evolution of the passage of the Passio Nicasii that links both Pientia and Clarus to Nicasius and his companions suggests further that Clarus came to feature in the Passio Nicasii at some point after the text’s original creation, and after it had already been diffused among the leading monasteries of the duchy. The early Norman manuscripts that survive in Rouen’s Bibliothèque municipale, therefore, both give access to the text as it apparently circulated in ducal Normandy and reflect the continuing development of Nicasius and his associates in the networks of saints and monasteries across Normandy.

Notes

Abbreviations AASS AB Acta arch. Rothomag.

AN Annales Bertiniani ANS BHL

BHLms

Bibliotheca sanctorum BM BnF BSAN CAN Cart. Saint-Martin

Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, edited by Jean Bolland et al. Antwerp et al., 1643–present. Analecta Bollandiana: Revue critique d’hagiographie Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium, edited by Jean Mabillon. In Vetera analecta, sive collectio veterum aliquot operum & opusculorum omnis generis. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Paris, 1723. 222–226. Reprinted (in extract) PL 147:273–280. Annales de Normandie Annales de Saint-Bertin, edited by Félix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard, and Suzanne Clémencet. Paris, 1964. Anglo-Norman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conference Société des Bollandistes. Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis. 4 vols. (including Supplementa). SH 6, 12, 70. Brussels, 1898–1901, 1911, 1986. Société des Bollandistes. Bibliotheca hagiographica latina manuscripta: Index analytique des Catalogues de manuscrits hagiographiques latins publiés par les Bollandistes. http://BHLms.fltr.ucl.ac.be. Bibliotheca sanctorum. 13 vols. Rome, 1961–1970. Bibliothèque municipale Bibliothèque nationale de France Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie Cahiers des Annales de Normandie Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Pontoise, edited by Joseph Depoin. Pontoise, 1895–1909. http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr. 151

152

Notes Cat. Brux.

Cat. gén. Arras

Cat. gén. Chartres

Cat. gén. Rouen

Cat. Paris.

Cat. Rotomag.

CCCM CCL CHFMA CTEEH De moribus

Epist. Arelat.

Études critiques Fastes Flodoard, Annales Fulbert, Letters Gallia christiana

Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum Bibliothecae regiae Bruxellensis. Pt. 1, Codices Latini membranei. 2 vols. SH 1. Brussels, 1886–1889. Omont, Henri, et al. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des départements. Vol. 4, Arras, Avranches, Boulogne. Paris, 1872. France. Ministère de l’instruction publique et des beaux-arts. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Départements. Vol. 11, Chartres. Paris, 1890. Omont, Henri. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Départements. Vol. 1, Rouen. Paris, 1886. Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum antiquiorum saeculo XVI qui asservantur in Bibliotheca nationali Parisiensi. 3 vols. SH 2. Brussels; Paris, 1889–1893. Poncelet, Albert. “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum bibliothecae publicae Rotomagensis.” AB 23 (1904): 129–275. Corpus christianorum continuatio medievalis Corpus christianorum series latina Les classiques de l’Histoire de France au moyen âge Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’Histoire Dudo of Saint-Quentin. De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, edited by Jules Lair. MSAN 23 (1865). “Epistolae Arelatenses genuinae,” edited by Wilhelm Gundlach. Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini aevi 1. MGH Epistolae 3. Berlin, 1892; Munich, 1978. Gaiffier, Baudouin de. Études critiques d’hagiographie et d’iconologie. SH 43. Brussels, 1967. Duchesne, Louis. Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule. 3 vols. Paris, 1899–1915. Les Annales de Flodoard, edited by Philippe Lauer. CTEEH. Paris, 1905. The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, edited by Frederick Behrends. OMT. Oxford, 1976. Gallia christiana, edited by Dionysius Sammarthan et al., 16 vols. Paris, 1716–1865.

Notes GND

Hagiographica Hagiographies

Hariulf, Chronicon

Historia certaminis

Historia francorum

HSJ IMTa IMTb JMH KBR Les évêques normands

Les saints dans la Normandie médiévale MGH AA SRM SS MSAN

153

The Gesta normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, edited by Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts. 2 vols. OMT. Oxford, 1992–1995. Hagiographica: Rivista di agiografia e biografia della Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino Hagiographies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, edited by Guy Philippart, 3 vols. Corpus Christianorum Hagiographies 1–3. Turnhout, 1994–1996. Hariulf, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier (Ve siècle–1104), edited by Ferdinand Lot. CTEEH. Paris, 1894. Abdiae Babyloniae, Historia certaminis apostolici in decem libros distributa, edited by Johann Albert Fabricius. Codex apocryphus Novi testamenti. 2nd ed. Vol. 1, pt. 2. Hamburg, 1719. 402–742. Gregory of Tours. Historia francorum, edited by Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison. MGH SRM 1, pt. 1. Hannover, 1937–1951. Haskins Society Journal Inventio et miracula Taurini (BHL 7994), edited by J.-B. Mesnel. “Saint Taurin.” 68–70, 75–79. Inventio et miracula Taurini (BHL 7992), edited by Pierre Van den Bossche. AASS Aug. II (1751): 643–645. Journal of Medieval History Bibliothèque royale de Belgique/Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België Les évêques normands du XIe siècle: Colloque de Cerisyla-Salle (30 septembre–3 octobre 1993), edited by Pierre Bouet and François Neveux. Caen, 1995. Les saints dans la Normandie médiévale: Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle (26–29 septembre 1996), edited by Pierre Bouet and François Neveux. Caen, 2000. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores antiquissimi. 15 vols. Berlin et al., 1877–1919. Scriptores rerum merovingicarum. 7 vols. Hannover, 1885–1920. Scriptores. 38 vols. Hannover, 1826–present. Mémoires de la société des antiquaires de Normandie

154

Notes

MSS des bibliothèques sinistrées

Neustria pia

OMT OV Paris, BnF MS Lat. Passio Dionysii PL PNa

PNb

PNms

proPN

PVSM RADN RCN Rekognitionen

RHT Richer, Historiae

Direction des bibliothèques de France. Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France. Vol. 53, Manuscrits des bibliothèques sinistrées de 1940 à 1944. Paris, 1962. Du Monstier, Arthur. Neustria pia, seu de omnibus et singulis abbatiis et prioratibus totius Normaniae. Rouen, 1663. Oxford Medieval Texts The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, edited by Marjorie Chibnall. 6 vols. OMT. Oxford, 1969–1980. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, codex latinus Hilduin of Saint-Denis. Passio Dionysii (BHL 2175). PL 106:23–50. Migne, Jaques-Paul. Patrologia cursus completus: Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–1864. Passio Nicasii (BHL 6081). Lectiones 1–4, edited by Bollandists. “Appendix ad catalogum codicum hagiographicorum bibliothecae civitatis et academiae Leodiensis.” AB 5 (1886): 372–374. Passio Nicasii (BHL 6802), edited by Bollandists. “Appendix ad catalogum codicum hagiographicorum civitatis Namurcensis.” AB 1 (1882): 628–632. Passio Nicasii episcopi, Quirini presbyteri, Scuviculi diaconi, martyrum in pago Vulcassino (BHL 6081–6082). Rouen, BM MS U 2, fols. 111–114. “Prologus.” Passio Nicasii (BHL 6081), edited by Bollandists. “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum bibliothecae publicae, civitatis et academiae Leodiensis.” AB 5 (1886): 335. Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici. 5 vols. MGH SRM 3–7. Hannover, 1896–1920; repr. 1977–1979. Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, edited by Marie Fauroux. MSAN 36 (1961). Revue catholique de Normandie Die Pseudoklementinen, edited by Bernhard Rehm. Vol. 2, Rekognitionen in Rufins übersetzung. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte 51. Berlin, 1965. Revue d’histoire des textes Richer of Reims. Historiae, edited by Hartmut Hoffmann. MGH SS 38. Hannover, 2000.

Notes Rouen, BM MS “Saint Taurin” Settimane di studio SH Storiografia TNA Translatio Nicasii Translatio prima Audoeni Translatio secunda Audoeni Uses of the Past Usuard, Martyrologium VFOP

Vies des saints Vita Martialis prolixior

VTa VTb

Vulgate VV

155

Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, codex Mesnel, J.-B. “Saint Taurin, premier évêque d’Évreux.” Les saints du diocèse d’Évreux. Fasc. 1. Évreux, 1914. Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo Subsidia hagiographica La storiografia altomedievale, 10–16 aprile 1969. Settimane di studio 17. 2 vols. Spoleto, 1970. Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, edited by Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand. 5 vols. Paris, 1717. Translatio Nicasii (BHL 6084). TNA 3: 1677–1682. Translatio corporis beatissimi Audoeni anno 918 (BHL 756). TNA 3:1669–1676. Reprinted AASS Aug. IV (1752): 820–822. Translatio corporis beatissimi Audoeni anno 941 [989] (BHL 757). TNA 3:1675–1678. Repr. AASS Aug. IV (1752): 823–824. The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes. Cambridge, 2000. Le martyrologe d’Usuard: Texte et commentaire, edited by Jacques Dubois. SH 40. Brussels, 1965. Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati, Opera pedestria, edited by Bruno Krusch. MGH AA 4, pt. 2. Berlin, 1885; Munich, 1995. Benedictines of Paris. Vies des saints et des bienheureux. 13 vols. Paris, 1935–1959. Aurelianus of Limoges [pseudo]. Vita Martialis prolixior (BHL 5552), edited by Laurentius Surius. De probatis sanctorum vitis. Vol. 2. Cologne, 1618. June, 365–374. Deodatus [pseudo]. Vita Taurini episcopi Ebroicensis (BHL 7991), edited by J.-B. Mesnel. “Saint Taurin.” 40–66. Deodatus [pseudo]. Vita Taurini episcopi Ebroicensis (BHL 7990), edited by Pierre Van den Bossche. AASS Aug. II (1751): 639–643. Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, edited by Bonifatio Fischer et al. 3rd ed. Stuttgart, 1983. www.drbo.org. Vita Vigoris episcopi Baiocensis (BHL 8608–8613), edited by Charles De Smedt. AASS Nov. I (1887): 297–306.

All translations are by the author, unless otherwise noted.

156

Notes to Pages 1–2

Introduction 1.

De moribus, ii.30 (170–171); Translatio prima Audoeni, 1670–1671. For the dates of the two texts and the relationship between them, see Olivier Guillot, “La conversion des Normands peu après 911: Des reflets contemporains à l’historiographie ultérieure (Xe–XIe s.),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles 24 (1981): 101–116, 181–219, particularly 216. Dudo of SaintQuentin wrote for Dukes Richard I and II, and their relation Raoul d’Ivry, as he relates in his “Epistola panegerica,” De moribus, 115–120, at 119; see also Emily Albu, The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth, and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2001), 7–9; Eleanor Searle, “Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin,” Viator 15 (1984): 119–137. Scholars continue to explore the nuances of Dudo’s work and the various messages it may have conveyed to different audiences; in addition to the contrasting views of Searle and Albu, see also: Leah Shopkow, “The Carolingian World of Dudo of Saint-Quentin,” JMH 15 (1989): 19–37; Pierre Bouet, “Dudon de Saint-Quentin et Virgile: ‘L’Enéide’ au service de la cause normande,” in Recueil d’études en hommage à Lucien Musset, CAN 23 (1990): 215–236; Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992), 145–160; Mathieu Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on Early Norman Historiography,” ANS 22 (2000): 29–48; Gilduin Davy, Le duc et la loi: Héritages, images et expressions du pouvoir normatif dans le duché de Normandie, des origines à la mort du Conquérant (fin du IXe siècle–1087), Romainité et modernité du droit (Paris, 2004). 2. The main source for Rollo is Flodoard of Reims, Annales; and Historiae Remensis ecclesiae, ed. Martina Stratmann, MGH SS 36 (Hannover, 1998). For the initial grant of 911, see Historiae Remensis ecclesiae, ed. Stratmann, iv.14. The grant of 924 was made by King Ralph, who took the throne and imprisoned Charles the Simple after the upheavals of the early 920s. In 933 Flodoard reports that Ralph conceded “the land of the Bretons,” presumably the Avranchin and Cotentin, in return for William’s commendation; see Annales, 24, 55 (years 924, 933.) For a concise overview of the duchy’s earliest history and its place in the tangle of Carolingian-Robertian rivalries, see Robert Helmerichs, “The Rollonid Principality,” www.the-orb.net. For an astute discussion of Rollo’s Frankish connections before the grant of 911, see Pierre Bauduin, La première Normandie (Xe–XIe siècles): Sur les frontières de la Haute Normandie; Identité et construction d’une principauté (Caen, 2004), 97–141. 3. For the rebellion of Riulf, see De moribus, iii.43–46 (187–191); for the Frankish attacks, see Flodoard, Annales, 83–100 (years 942–945). 4. See, among others, David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982);

Notes to Pages 2–3

5.

6.

7.

8.

157

Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley, 1988); Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Quelques observations au sujet des débuts du ‘duché’ de Normandie,” in Droit privé et institutions régionales: Études historiques offertes à Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), 691–709; JeanFrançois Lemarignier, “Le monachisme et l’encadrement religieux des campagnes du royaume de France situées au nord de la Loire, de la fin du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle,” Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della “societas christiana” dei secoli XI–XII, Diocesi, pievi e parrochie: Atti della sesta Settimana internazionale di studio, Milano, 1–7 settembre 1974 (Milan, 1977), 357–394; and Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales (Lille, 1945); Cassandra Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 11 (Woodbridge, 1997); Davy, Le duc et la loi. For less successful efforts at expansion to the northeast (toward Picardie) and east (into the French Vexin), see Bauduin, La première Normandie and Chapter 5 below. Indeed, successive histories of his career written for Rollo’s heirs extol with ever greater warmth this adoption as his own of the religious traditions of his new realm; see William of Jumièges’s transmission of Dudo of SaintQuentin’s version of Rollo’s baptism, with later embellishment added by Orderic Vitalis: GND, ii.12 (18)–13 (19); see also Robert of Torigni’s Additamenta following GND, viii; and OV, iii.2 (2:8). See Albu, The Normans in Their Histories; Shopkow, “The Carolingian World of Dudo”; Cassandra Potts, “Atque unum ex diversis gentibus populum effecit: Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity,” ANS 18 (1996): 139–152; and Potts, “When the Saints Go Marching: Religious Connections and the Political Culture of Early Normandy,” Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Proceedings of the Borchard Conference on AngloNorman History, 1995, ed. C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), 17–31. Vita prima Audoeni episcopi Rotomagensis (BHL 750), ed. Wilhelm Levison, PVSM 3 (Hannover, 1910, 1979), 553–567; Vita [secunda] Audoeni, by pseudo-Fridegodus of Canterbury (BHL 751), ed. Guillaume Cuypers, AASS Aug. IV (1752): 810–819. For the dates, see Levison’s commentary preceding his edition of the Vita, PVSM 3:536–553, particularly 543; François Dolbeau, “Prose, rythme et mètre: Réécritures dans le dossier de saint Ouen,” in La réécriture hagiographique dans l’occident médiéval: Transformations formelles et idéologiques, ed. Monique Goullet and Martin Heinzelmann, Beihefte der Francia 58 (Stuttgart, 2003), 231–250, at 231; Cuypers, “Commentarius praevius,” AASS Aug. IV (1752): 794–805. “Vita [tertia] S. Audoeni Rotomagensis episcopi, auctore anonymo” (BHL 753), ed. E. P. Sauvage, AB 5 (1886): 76–146. For the manuscripts preserving the Vitae Audoeni, see below.

158 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

Notes to Pages 3–6 Translatio prima Audoeni, 1671–1673 §3–6; Brevis relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum, ed. Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden Miscellany 34, 5th ser. 10 (Cambridge, 1997), 1–48, at cap. 14; and Robert of Torigni’s Additamenta to GND, 2:280–282. The various vitae of Audoenus (BHL 750–754) survive in twenty-two manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, of which at least six are of Norman provenance; see BHLms. Audoenus additionally received a new collection of miracles in this period (BHL 760–762). The vitae of Taurinus of Évreux and Vigor of Bayeux, the Vita Taurini and Vita Vigoris, survive, respectively, in 16 and 9 manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, of which six and one, respectively, are Norman; see Appendix 1. Finally, twelve manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries transmit the story of Nicasius’s martyrdom, the Passio Nicasii, of which at least five are likewise of Norman origin; see Appendix 2. No images or representations of any of the three survive from this period. For example, the lives of Vulganius, bishop of Lens (BHL 8746) (although not active in Norman territory during his life, Vulganius was remembered and promoted in Normandy due to the presence of his relics at Saint-Ouen); Laudus, bishop of Coutances (BHL 4728–4729d); and the female hermit Ceronna all appear only in manuscripts of the eleventh century or later. Similarly, the passio of Ravennus and Rasiphus (BHL 7089), venerated in Bayeux, survives from the twelfth century on, as does the vita of Mellonus, bishop of Rouen (BHL 5899–5902). A particularly notable example is the vita of Romanus, bishop of Rouen, which in many ways resembles the texts under consideration here and which has been studied in detail by Felice Lifshitz. See, for example, the Bollandist commentaries on each of the saints considered here and particularly for Nicasius: Cornelius De Bye, “De SS. Nigasio, Quirino, Scubiculo seu Scuviculo et Pientia mm. in Vadiniaci in pago Vilcassino: Commentarius historico-criticus,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 510–550. See Baudouin de Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public au XIe siècle,” in Études critiques, 475–507; Thomas Head offers a detailed overview of the liturgical celebration of saints’ feasts, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge, 1990), 121–130. De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 484–485. See also Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud, introduction to Le martyrologe d’Adon: Ses deux familles, ses trois recensions, texte et commentaire (Paris, 1984), xx. More fully, see Felice Lifshitz, The Name of the Saint: The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia, 627–827 (Notre Dame, 2006). De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 479. For a concise overview of the different types of monastic benefaction in

Notes to Pages 6–7

17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

159

early Normandy and their chronology, see Véronique Gazeau, “Les abbés bénédictins de la Normandie ducale,” ANS 26 (2004): 75–86. See the similar reasoning of Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995), 297–300. Before the spread of parish churches across the countryside in the twelfth century, lay church attendance overall appears to have been poor. In areas with an active church, particularly a reformed monastery, however, attendance was more strongly and apparently more successfully urged upon the populace. Such attendance peaked on major feasts such as Easter and in celebration of a patron saint’s feast. Monastic reform began fairly early and quite effectively in Normandy from the middle of the tenth century, under the leadership largely of outsiders such as Gerard of Brogne and, from 1001, William of Volpiano, who aided the dukes in establishing reform and in many cases replacing secular canons with reformed monks. For lay religious practice, see Bernard Hamilton, “Religion and the Laity,” The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4, pt. 1: c. 1024–c. 1198, ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge, 2004), 499–533, esp. 499–503; for the beginnings of reform in Normandy, see Véronique Gazeau, “Guillaume de Volpiano en Normandie: État des questions,” Tabularia “Études” 2 (2002): 35–46. The Miracula of Taurinus includes one such example, concerning a woman attacked by a serpent when she failed to attend the feast: IMTa, vii (76). A parallel miracle is found in Vita [secunda] Audoeni, ed. Cuypers, AASS Aug. IV (1752): 813–814 §18–19. RADN, no. 5. See Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints, 131–132, for evidence that lay people in the Orléannais attended saints’ feasts in large numbers; while that evidence cannot be transposed to Normandy, the likelihood of an overall similarlity in attendance patterns is strong. See also the evidence of large (but volatile) crowds presented by Barbara Abou-el-Haj, “The Audiences for the Medieval Cult of Saints,” Gesta 30 (1991): 3–15. De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 495. See also Katrien Heene, “Merovingian and Carolingian Hagiography: Continuity or Change in Public and Aims?” AB 107 (1989): 415–428; Heene, “Litteris ac memoriae mandare: Writing and Oral Information in Carolingian Miracle Stories,” Hagiologia 3 (1997), www.fundp.ac.be/philo_lettres/histoire/a00.htm; Heene, “Audire, legere, vulgo: An Attempt to Define Public Use and Comprehensibility of Carolingian Hagiography,” in Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Roger Wright (New York, 1991), 146–163; Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints, 132. Over time, the

160

23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

Notes to Pages 7–8 focus of veneration generally shifted away from local saints toward universal saints such as New Testament figures, the Virgin Mary, and Christ himself; by the late Middle Ages, therefore, local saints enjoyed less attention. See Guy Philippart, “Les Namurois des XIIIe et XIVe siècles honoraient-ils leurs saints? Le témoignage du ‘petit cartulaire’ de la collégiale Saint-Aubain,” in Retour aux sources: Textes, études et documents d’histoire médiévale offerts à Michel Parisse, ed. Sylvain Gouguenheim, Monique Goullet, et al. (Paris, 2004), 719–727; Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 8 (Leiden, 2002), 211–228, esp. 222–223; Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2000). De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 494–495, 502. See also Louis Violette, “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais: Valorisation de reliques par l’hagiographie au XIe siècle,” in Autour des morts: mémoire et identité: Actes du Ve colloque international sur la sociabilité; Rouen, 19–21 novembre 1998, ed. Olivier Dumoulin and Françoise Thelamon (Rouen, 2001), 377–386 at 380–381; and Robert Bartlett, “Rewriting Saints’ Lives: The Case of Gerald of Wales,” Speculum 58 (1983): 598–613. De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 497; Étienne Delaruelle, “La culture religieuse des laïcs en France aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” in I laici nella “Societas christiana” dei secoli XI e XII. Atti della terza Settimana internazionale di studio, Mendola, 21–27 agosto 1965 (Milan, 1968), 548–581. William of Gellone or Orange (died circa 812), renowned for his battles against the Saracens; a cycle of epic legends bears out Orderic’s remark; OV, vi.3 (3:218). OV, vi.2 (3:216); see also vi.4 (3:226). See Inventio et miracula sancti Vulfranni (BHL 8740), ed. J. Laporte (Rouen, 1938) at §65 (68–70). For example, the Vie de S. Alexis, composed by a cleric of northern France (perhaps Normandy); see De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 497–498; G. Brunel-Lobrichon et al., “L’hagiographie de langue française sur le Continent IXe–XVe siècle,” in Hagiographies, 2: 291–371; Nancy Vine Durling, “Life of St. Alexis,” in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (New York, 2000), 317–320. See Hedwig Röckelein, “Zur Pragmatik hagiographischer Schriften im Frühmittelalter,” in Bene vivere in communitate: Beiträge zum italienischen und deutschen Mittelalter; Hagen Keller zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Scharff and Thomas Behrmann (Munster, 1997), 225–238. Thus Count Baldwin V of Flanders (1036–1067) asked the archbishop of

Notes to Pages 8–9

31.

32.

33.

34.

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Reims to inform him concerning relics he possessed, as had his father before him. Renier IV, count of Hainaut (died 1039), similarly sought to learn the history of relics in his possession. See De Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie et son public,” 504–505; and “L’hagiographie dans le marquisat de Flandre et le duché de Basse-Lotharingie au XIe siècle,” in Études critiques, 415–422. A similar point is made by Urusla Swinarski regarding pilgrimages performed by rulers: Herrschen mit den Heiligen: Kirchenbesuche, Pilgerfahrten und Heiligenverehrung früh- und hochmittelalterlicher Herrscher (circa 500–1200) (Bern, 1991). Along these lines, see Felice Lifshitz, “St. Romain de Rouen: missionaire franc dans la Normandie des Vikings,” in Voix d’ouest en Europe, souffles d’Europe en ouest: Actes du colloque international d’Angers, 21–24 mai 1992, ed. Georges Cessbron (Angers, 1993), 23–30. The concept of truth remained distinctly broad in this period, as the many studies on monastic memory and forgery have shown. For the nature of historiography, see Karine Uge, “The Politics of Narrative Production: Monastic Historiography in Flanders (Ninth–Eleventh Century)” (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 2000); Robert-Henri Bautier, “L’historiographie en France au Xe et XIe siècles (France du Nord et de l’Est),” in Storiografia, 2: 793–850; Albu, The Normans in Their Histories; Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1997); Mathieu Arnoux, “La fortune du ‘Libellus de revelatione, edificatione et auctoritate Fiscannensis monasterii,’” RHT 21 (1991): 135–158; Felice Lifshitz, “The Politics of Historiography: The Memory of Bishops in EleventhCentury Rouen,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 10 (1998): 118–137; and, more generally, Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994); and Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge, 1992). For the relation between historiography and hagiography, see Baudouin De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie: Quelques aspects du problème,” in Recueil d’hagiographie, SH 61 (Brussels, 1977); Dieter R. Bauer and Klaus Herbers, “Hagiographie und Historiographie: Fachtagung der Akademie der Diözese RottenburgStuttgart mit dem Arbeitskreis für hagiographische Fragen 25–27 August 1994 in Stuttgart-Hohenheim; Ein Tagungbericht,” Hagiographica 2 (1995): 309–312; Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–113, and “St. Romain de Rouen.” For the relationship between hagiography and forgery, see Walter Goffart, The Le Mans Forgeries: A Chapter from the History of Church Property in the Ninth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1966); Richard Landes, “A Libellus from St. Martialis of Limoges Written in the Time of Ademar of Chabannes

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(989–1034): ‘Un faux à retardement’,” Scriptorium 37 (1983): 178–204; Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints, 226; Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud, “Influence des Vies des saints sur le développement des institutions,” in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés IVe–XIIe siècles: Actes du Colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979), ed. Pierre Riché (Paris, 1981), 491–513; Stephanie Coué, Hagiographie im Kontext: Schreibanlaß und Funktion von Bischofsviten aus dem 11. und vom Anfang des 12. Jahrhunderts, Arbeiten zur Frühmittelalterforschung 24 (Berlin, 1997); Baudouin De Gaiffier, “Mentalité de l’hagiographe médiéval d’après quelques travaux récents,” AB 86 (1968): 391–399. 35. The pathbreaking work of Hippolyte Delehaye, Les légendes hagiographiques (Brussels, 1905), launched hagiography into the forefront of serious scholarship. Others then took his insights further, including Léopold Genicot, “Discordiae concordantium: Sur l’intérêt des textes hagiographiques,” Académie royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, ser. 5, vol. 51 (1965): 65–75; and, most notably, Peter Brown. Twentieth-century work on hagiography has inspired the very different approaches of scholars such as Baudouin De Gaiffier, Martin Heinzelmann, François Dolbeau, Thomas Head, Monique Goullet, Anne-Marie Helvétius, Dieter Bauer and Klaus Herbers, Felice Lifshitz, and Guy Philippart, among many others. See further Julia M. H. Smith, “Review Article: Early Medieval Hagiography in the Late Twentieth Century,” Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992): 69–76; Patrick J. Geary, “Saints, Scholars and Society: The Elusive Goal,” in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), 9–29; and the various assessments gathered in “Gli studi agiografici sul Medioevo negli ultimi trenta anni in Europa,” Hagiographica 6 (1999). 36. Innovative and illuminating recent works include (among many others): Coué, Hagiographie im Kontext; Paul Antony Hayward, “TranslationNarratives in Post-conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest,” ANS 21 (1999): 67–93; Michèle Gaillard, “De l’Eigenkloster au monastère royal: L’abbaye Saint-Jean de Laon, du milieu du VIIe siècle au mileu du VIIIe siècle à travers les sources hagiographiques,” in L’hagiographie du haut moyen âge en Gaule du nord: Manuscrits, textes, et centres de production, ed. Martin Heinzelmann, Beihefte der Francia 52 (Stuttgart, 2001), 249–262; Richard Gyug, “The Dalmatian Martyrs: Legend and History in Thirteenth-Century Dubrovnik,” in Religion, Text and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honor of J. N. Hillgarth, ed. Thomas E. Burman et al. (Toronto, 2002), 200–222. 37. Lucien Musset, “De saint Victrice à saint Ouen: La christianisation de la province de Rouen d’après l’hagiographie,” in “Actes du Colloque de Nanterre 1974: La christianisation des pays entre Loire et Rhin, IVe–VIIe siècles,”

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Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France 62 no. 168 (Jan.–Feb. 1975): 141–153; Louis Violette, “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais”; and “Le thème des origines de l’église de Rouen d’après une oeuvre de ses chanoines: Les annales de Rouen,” in Chapitres et cathédrales en Normandie: Actes du XXXIe congrès des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie (Bayeux, 16–20 octobre 1996), ed. Sylvette Lemagnen and Philippe Manneville, Annales de Normandie, série des congrès des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie 2 (Caen, 1997), 287–294; John Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor of Bayeux,” AB 102 (1984): 303–312; Howe, “The Hagiography of Jumièges (Province of Haute-Normandie) (SHG VII),” and “The Hagiography of Saint-Wandrille (Province of HauteNormandie) (SHG VIII),” both in L’hagiographie du haut moyen âge en Gaule du nord, ed. Heinzelmann, 91–125 and 127–192; Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, “Historiography and Hagiography at Saint-Wandrille: The Inventio et miracula Sancti Vulfranni,” ANS 12 (1990): 233–251; Mathieu Arnoux, “La conversion des Normands de Neustrie et la restauration de l’Église dans la province de Rouen,” in Le christianisme en occident du début du VIIe siècle au milieu du XIe siècle, ed. François Bougard, Regards sur l’histoire 117 (Paris, 1997), 269–281, and “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo”; Lifshitz, “Politics of Historiography”; “St. Romain de Rouen”; “Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity,” HSJ 2 (1990): 63–74; and numerous other articles as well as her book (see following notes). 38. The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics 684–1090, Studies and Texts 122 (Toronto, 1995); it expands her dissertation, “The Dossier of Romanus of Rouen: The Political Uses of Hagiographical Texts” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1988). 39. Lifshitz analyzes hagiographical texts from the Merovingian to the Norman era and explicates their changing content with reference to political change and, above all, changing political discourse. In place of genuine Viking disruption, she argues that later hagiographical texts (particularly the dossier of Romanus of Rouen) promoted a discourse of disruption, which in turn facilitated Viking assimilation. The argument is ingenious and controversial: Lifshitz’s assessment of the Viking impact and her placement of the text central to her argument, the Vita Romani, in the middle of the tenth century both continue to elicit debate. Here and elsewhere, her thought-provoking work exemplifies the light hagiography might shed on historical problems when handled deftly, while also challenging historians to consider with care the nature, significance, and analysis of hagiography. 40. See especially Arnoux, “La conversion des Normands de Neustrie”; Guillot, “La conversion des Normands”; Searle, Predatory Kinship.

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Notes to Pages 14–15

1. Placing the Texts in Time 1. No critical edition of the Passio Nicasii exists, but a provisional one may be pieced together from the Bollandists’ manuscript catalogues, which publish, in separate entries, the prologue (proPN), the first four lessons of BHL 6081 (PNa), and the entirety of BHL 6082 (PNb). For a fuller discussion of the text, the manuscripts, and the makeshift edition, see Appendix 2. The manuscripts (and scholars in turn) variously spell the saint’s name as “Nicasius,” “Nichasius,” and “Nigasius”; for ease of reference, I follow the BHL, which uses the first form. 2. Cornelius De Bye, “De SS. Nigasio, Quirino, Scubiculo seu Scuviculo et Pientia mm. in Vadiniaci in pago Vilcassino. Commentarius historico-criticus,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 510–550, esp. at 514. De Bye’s successors later published the Passio Nicasii in the ad hoc editions listed in the preceding note. 3. E. P. Sauvage, “Elenchi episcoporum Rotomagensium,” AB 8 (1889): 406–428; Fastes, 2:200–241, esp. at 201–206; Louis Violette, “Une entreprise historiographique au temps de la réforme grégorienne: Les actes des archevêques de Rouen,” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 83, no. 211 (July– Dec. 1997): 343–365; and Violette, “Le problème de l’attribution d’un texte rouennais du XIe siècle: les Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium,” AB 115 (1997): 113–129. 4. A. Legris, for example, assumes a precise date for the Passio Nicasii but makes little effort to justify his assumption. A. Legris, “Les premiers martyrs du Vexin, saints Nicaise, Quirin, Scuvicule, Pience,” RCN 22 (1912): 280–296, 320–329, 421–435; 23 (1913): 70–85. 5. AASS Oct. V (1786): 512–513, 520–521; also Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 282–284. 6. Usuard, Martyrologium, 319 with note on 320. 7. Riculf, archbishop of Rouen (872–875), [Charter of 872], ed. Jean-François Pommeraye, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Ouen de Rouen (Rouen, 1662), 399–401; reprinted AASS Oct. V (1786): 523–524; see also Gallia christiana, 11:23–24. Whether Nicasius’s relics were in fact at Gasny in 872 and how they were then transferred elsewhere has been discussed by Louis Violette, “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais: Valorisation de reliques par l’hagiographie au XIe siècle,” in Autour des morts: Mémoire et identité; Actes du Ve colloque international sur la sociabilité, Rouen, 19–21 novembre 1998, ed. Olivier Dumoulin and Françoise Thelamon (Rouen, 2001), 377–386 at 382; and Felice Lifshitz, “The ‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered: The Translation of the Relics of St. Gildard of Rouen to Soissons,” AB 110 (1992): 329–340 at 337–339. See also A. Legris, “L’exode des corps saints au diocèse de Rouen (IXe–XIe siècles),” RCN 28 (1919): 125–136, 168–174, 209–221, to which Lifshitz responds.

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8. Rouen, BM MS Y 41; for more detail of the manuscript, see Appendix 2. 9. Acta arch. Rothomag., 222; this edition represents the interpolated version; the original (uninterpolated) version dates to the early 1070s and survives (though somewhat corrected) in the Livre d’ivoire of Rouen cathedral, now Rouen, BM MS Y 27 pp. 26–36. See Violette, “Le problème de l’attribution,” 119–128, esp. at 122 and 125–126; and “Entreprise historiographique,” esp. 347, 363; Olivier Diard, “Histoire et chant liturgique en Normandie au XIe siècle: Les offices propres particuliers des diocèses d’Évreux et de Rouen,” AN 53 (2003): 195–223 at 212–218; E. Vacandard, “Un essai d’histoire des archevêques de Rouen au XIe siècle,” RCN 3 (1893): 117–127, esp. 119, 121; and Sauvage, “Elenchi,” 422–426. 10. Rouen, BM MS Y41, fols. 12v–15; [“Metrical catalogue of archbishops of Rouen,”] ed. E. Martène, Veterum scriptorum collectio nova 2 (Paris, 1700) 248. These additional verses increase the total length of the catalogue, originally ninety verses, by over a third. See Vacandard, “Essai d’histoire,” 117–120; Violette, “Le problème de l’attribution,” 119; and “Entreprise historiographique,” 346. 11. The Passio Nicasii occupies fols. 17–23v of the Livre noir; the metrical Hymnus in laude supra dictorum martyrum [Passio metrica Nicasii] (BHL 6083) fols. 23v–32v; the Translatio (BHL 6084) fols. 32v–36; the sermon, Sermo in festivitate sanctorum quorum reliquiae in praesenti ecclesia [Sancti-Audoeni] requiescunt (ed. TNA 3:1681–1686), fols. 87–90v. See also Appendix 2 and, for the metrical vita, François Dolbeau, “Deux poèmes inédits, extraits du Livre noir de Saint-Ouen de Rouen,” in Sanctorum societas: Récits latins de sainteté (IIIe–XIIe siècles), 2 vols., SH 85 (Brussels, 2005) 2:747–800 at 752. For a thirteenth-century version of the office for the feast of Oct. 11, see “L’Office de saint Nicaise en usage à l’abbaye de Saint-Ouen,” ed. A. Legris, “Les premiers martyrs du Vexin,” app. 1, 75–83. 12. François Dolbeau dates the codex to between 1092 and 1110 in “Deux poèmes inédits,” 750; Felice Lifshitz, “The Acta archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium: A Monastery or Cathedral Product?” AB 108 (1990): 337–347 at 337, dates it more narrowly to between 1090 and 1093. 13. See Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 425–426. 14. OV, v.4 (3:22), v.6 (3:36–38), but Orderic names Mellonus as first bishop too at v.9 (3:48); Chronique de Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. Léopold Delisle, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1872–1873), 1:2 (year 96). 15. Sauvage, “Elenchi,” 408, 426; Fastes, 2:202–204. Legris claims the Livre d’ivoire was “corrected” to include Nicasius in the thirteenth century, “Premiers martyrs,” 427–428. 16. Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 283 and n2; and, in greater detail, “La liturgie rouennaise en Italie,” Revue des questions historiques 93 (1913): 450–460 at 456–459.

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Notes to Pages 17–18

17. Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 283 and n2. For Hildebert, see also Translatio secunda Audoeni. Despite the title under which it has been published and known, the translation occurred in 989, and the record is clearly set in that year. 18. Martyrology of Pulsano, ed. Jean-Baptiste Du Sollier, “Martyrologium Usuardi, V Idus, mensis Octobris: Auctaria,” AASS June VI (1715): 535–536. 19. Translatio prima Audoeni. 20. Ibid., 1669–1670. For the place identifications, see De Bye, AASS Oct. V (1786): 530, 548; Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 293. 21. The year 918 is the traditional date for the return of Audoenus’s relics, based on this first Translatio. Olivier Guillot raises sound objections to it and suggests the relics returned somewhat later: “La conversion des Normands peu après 911: Des reflets contemporains à l’historiographie ultérieure (Xe–XIe s.),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles 24 (1981): 101–116, 181–219 at 216–217. 22. Guillot, “La conversion des Normands,” 212–216, esp. 216; Guillot further shows that Dudo did not know the Translatio. 23. Translatio Nicasii, 1680–1681. It is not clear just when in Henry’s abbacy this episode occurred. The BHL credits the Translatio to a monk of Saint-Ouen named John, but this attribution appears unwarranted as the text is anonymous and no evidence regarding its author’s name can be discerned from it. 24. Translatio Nicasii, 1681–1682. Violette questions the reality of the theft and suggests that the account might mask a more banal commercial transaction; see “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais,” 383–385. 25. Whether the theft (if there was one) was as spontaneous as the Translatio claims is dubious, both for institutional and political reasons. 26. Translatio Nicasii, 1682. 27. Ibid., 1680. 28. See Jan Dhondt, “Une crise du pouvoir capétien 1032–1034,” in Miscellanea mediaevalia in memoriam Jan Frederik Niermeyer (Groningen, 1967), 137–148. 29. See RADN, no. 66; and GND, 2:47n5. 30. For Isembert’s dates, see RADN, 293n2; and GND, 2:60n1. 31. Translatio Nicasii, 1681–1682. 32. Ibid., 1679; note also the text’s reference to King Henry and Abbot Henry as figures of the past, Translatio Nicasii, 1680. Felice Lifshitz appears to reach a similar conclusion but does not explicitly date composition of the Passio Nicasii. See Lifshitz, “The Politics of Historiography: The Memory of Bishops in Eleventh-Century Rouen,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 10 (1998): 118–137. 33. See Appendix 2.

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34. Vacandard, “Essai d’histoire,” 122–124; Violette, “Entreprise historiographique,” 356–357. 35. Rouen, BM MS Y 27 p. 36; MS Y 41, fols. 1v–2; Acta arch. Rothomag., 222. 36. Violette, “Entreprise historiographique,” 363. 37. Ibid., 357; Vacandard, “Essai d’histoire,” 123–124. 38. See, for example, Gallia christiana, 8:1286–1288. 39. Recueil des chartes de Saint-Nicaise de Meulan, prieuré de l’ordre du Bec, ed. Émile Houth (Paris, 1924), vii–viii. Most references to Waleran and Nicasius cite Nicolas Davanne, prior of Saint-Nicaise and its avid—and not overly reliable—historian in the seventeenth century, author of Vie et martyre de saint Nicaise (Meulan, 1628, 1643). Davanne appears to have been the source of various and even conflicting traditions, which are not easily traced beyond him. See Legris’s evaluation, “Premiers martyrs,” 287ff.; notwithstanding his criticisms, Legris himself relies on Davanne. 40. Houth, Recueil des chartes de Saint-Nicaise vii. (who mistakenly cites Gallia christiana, 8:1285); Neustria pia, 332; and De Bye, “Commentarius,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 535, citing Davanne. 41. Gallia christiana, 8:1287–1288; see also De Bye, “Commentarius,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 532–538. Meulan would later claim an abundance of Nicasius’s relics, ostensibly acquired in the ninth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. 42. Legris, “Premiers marytrs,” 288–289, citing Davanne. 43. Émile Réaux cites the Chronicon directly but without reference to any edition, manuscript, or even specific section; he merely refers to it as “une vieille chronique,” from which he has derived his information; Émile Réaux, Histoire de Meulan (Meulan, 1868), 7, 106. It is tempting to identify the Chronicon with the Chronique du monastère de Saint-Nicaise depuis sa fondation jusqu’en 1672 which survives in the departmental archives of the Seine-et-Oise, as 24H3. This Latin chronicle is the work of Victor Cotron, prior of Saint-Nicaise in the late seventeenth century. 44. Gallia christiana cites no authority; Legris and De Bye cite Davanne relating a similar story, which they diversely place either in the 840s, or in the time of Waleran’s son, Hugh, or in the twelfth century, “Premiers martyrs,” 289; De Bye, “Commentarius,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 534. 45. Legris cites Davanne but does not mention his evidence, “Premiers martyrs,” 288–289. 46. Helvisa, wife of Hugh Bear-Head, [“Charter in favor of Coulombs, 1033,”] ed. Pierre Bauduin, La première Normandie (Xe–XIe siècles): Sur les frontières de la Haute Normandie; Identité et construction d’une principauté (Caen, 2004), annexe II: “Dossier de textes,” no. 2, 367–368. 47. No account of miracles performed by Nicasius and company at Saint-Ouen is known to exist, even in the thorough Livre noir; indeed, the pointed in-

168

48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

Notes to Pages 21–24 clusion in the Translatio of miracles performed by the relics of Quirinus at Malmédy suggests an attempt to fill a gap in the dossier. This inclusion, and an early manuscript of the Passio Nicasii produced at Malmédy, has suggested to Felice Lifshitz a collaboration between Saint-Ouen and SaintRemacle of Malmédy (which claimed Quirinus’s relics) in promoting the cult. See Lifshitz, “Politics of Historiography.” Charles De Smedt, “De Sancto Vigore, episcopo Baiocensi in Gallia. Commentarius praevius,” AASS Nov. I (1887): 287–297 at 287–288; see also Appendix 1. Hariulf, Chronicon, iii.28. Ibid., iii.23. No other source mentions Abbot Ingelardus, whose accession Hariulf dates to 987–988; see ibid., iii.23. See ibid., iii.28. Vigor proved especially efficacious against fire, and the monk Fulcard refers to him in his poem as “Flammarum domitor.” Ibid., iv.20. Ibid., iv.5. Ibid., iv.4. It is not clear how many trips to Normandy Angelramnus made. Ibid., iv.5. See ibid., iv.5. De Smedt, “Commentarius praevius,” AASS Nov. I (1887): 287–288. Ibid., 287 §2. This manuscript was Chartres, BM MS 27 1/B (68), for which, see Appendix 1. Ibid., 287–288. Alcuin, Vita Vedasti episcopi Atrebatensis (BHL 8506–8508), ed. Bruno Krusch, PVSM 1 (Hannover, 1896; repr. 1977), 414–427; Vita Glodesindis abbatissae Mettis (BHL 3562), ed. Pierre Van den Bossche, AASS July VI (1729): 203–210. Balthasar Baedorf, Untersuchungen über Heiligenleben der westlichen Normandie (Bonn, 1913), 102–105. John Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor of Bayeux,” AB 102 (1984): 303–312. Ibid., 309. Howe assumes the text was composed in or near Bayeux. Thirteen manuscripts survive, all containing the prologue; see Appendix 1. See Appendix 1. See Joseph-Claude Poulin, “Liber iste vocatur vita Sansonis,” AB 117 (1999): 133–150. For scribal engagement with and emendation of texts, see, among others, Rosamond McKitterick, “Political Ideology in Carolingian Historiography,” in Uses of the Past, 162–174, esp. 170–171. Hariulf, Chronicon, iv.5. RADN, no. 64; the original is lost. A slightly different version of the text is given by Paul de Farcy, Abbayes de l’évêché de Bayeux, vol. 1 (Laval, 1887),

Notes to Pages 24–25

68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

75. 76.

169

78–80. The charter was granted in 1032 but seems to mark the dedication of the church (on November 22, 1032) rather than the actual establishment of the monastery; see Georges Duval, “L’abbaye de Cerisy,” in La Normandie bénédictine au temps de Guillaume le Conquérant (XIe siècle), ed. L. Gaillard and J. Daoust (Lille, 1967), 179–185. See for example, l’Abbé Faucon, Essai historique sur le prieuré de Saint-Vigorle-Grand (Bayeux, 1861); Duval, “L’abbaye de Cerisy”; Lucien Musset, “Sites monastiques de la Basse-Normandie III: L’abbaye de Saint-Vigor de Cerisy,” Art de Basse-Normandie 7 (1957): 24–27; and Musset, “Notes de lecture sur la Vita Vigoris et les lettres de Sidoine Apollinaire: Volusianus, grand propriétaire gallo-romain du Bessin,” BSAN 56 (1961–1962): 821–824 and elsewhere in his works. VV, 300–301 §5. See further Guy Oury, “Les pérégrinations de reliques: Saint Révérend de Nouâtre,” Bulletin de la Société archéologique de Touraine 35 (1968): 279–293 at 282–284; Howe,“Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor,” 306. A similar tradition (stemming this time from the Vita) credits Vigor with foundation of a monastery on the hill just outside Bayeux that his vita designates as Mons Chrismatum; much romance but no evidence supports the earlier foundation of that institution, despite archaeological excavation. However, the legend may have inspired Bishop Odo of Bayeux to found Saint-Vigor-leGrand between 1049 and 1066. See Lucien Musset, “Rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles entreprises en 1964 à l’emplacement de l’ancienne église abbatiale de Saint-Vigor-le-Grand, près de Bayeux,” BSAN 57 (1963–1964): 696–703; “Second rapport relatif au chantier de fouilles de l’abbatiale de Saint-Vigor-leGrand en 1965 et 1966,” BSAN 58 (1965–1966): 538–544. The Vita Taurini survives in two slightly different versions, edited separately: VTa and VTb. Pierre Van den Bossche, “De S. Taurino, episcopo et confessore Ebroicis in Gallia: Commentarius praevius,” AASS Aug. II (1751): 635–639 at 638. Ibid., 636. Translatio Taurini ad castrum Laudosum et ad coenobium Gigniacense (BHL 7995), ed. Pierre Van den Bossche, AASS Aug. II (1751): 645–650; Circumvectio corporis Taurini anno MCLVIII (BHL 7996), ed. Van den Bossche, AASS Aug. II (1751): 650–656; IMTb (the interpolated Inventio et miracula Taurini); IMTa (the uninterpolated Inventio et miracula). “Saint Taurin,” especially chap. 7. Mesnel was curé of Heudreville-en-Lieuvin, Eure (arrond. Bernay, cant. Thiberville). For the rather mixed reaction to his argument, see the review by Henri Moretus in AB 33 (1914): 354–356. “Saint Taurin,” 190. Mesnel wavers as to whether the miracles began in the early ninth century, the 840s, or the 880s but unhesitatingly places composition of the Miracula

170

77. 78.

79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84.

85.

86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

Notes to Pages 25–28 after 880; see “Saint Taurin,” 79, 82, 143–144. For the identification of the authors, see “Saint Taurin,” 67, 83–84. “Saint Taurin,” 144; see also 179–192. See Ermentarius, Translationes et miracula Philiberti, liber II (BHL 6809), ed. Guillaume Cuypers, AASS Aug. IV (1752): 92–95 at 92 §54; Annales Bertiniani, 222 (year 878); Annales Fontanellenses, ed. Jean Laporte, Mélanges de la Société de 1’histoire de Normandie, ser. 15 (1951): 63–91, particularly at 89–91 (years 852, 855, 858–859). Louis Debidour, Essai sur l’histoire de l’abbaye bénédictine de Saint-Taurin d’Évreux jusqu’au XIVe siècle (Évreux, 1908), 23–31. Translatio Taurini, ed. Van den Bossche, AASS Aug. II (1751): 646 §5, §7. IMTa, viii (76). Mesnel distinguishes the miracles from the relic invention, although most manuscripts present the Inventio et miracula as one work; he would also attribute them to different eras. “Saint Taurin,” 81. See further “Saint Taurin,” 26–27, for Taurinus’s first appearance in a martyrology, between 788 and 806. See, for example, VTa, ix (54–57). All subsequent references to and quotations from the Vita are likewise from this edition, which better represents the earlier manuscript tradition. Since VTb is more readily available, however, citations to it are provided for reference. In this case, VTb, 641–642, §10. “Illis itaque diebus, efferbuit a Domitiano crudelissimo gravissima in christianos persecutio: tunc advocans beatus Clemens sanctum Dionysium episcopum, monere eum et precari coepit ut, pro nomine Christi, Galliarum peteret partes et populum ibidem commorantem Domino adquireret, adjiciens: ‘Forte enim a Domino huc advenisse te credo, opusque est ut haec facias,’” VTa, iv (44); VTb, 639–640 §2. “Quidam praeterea homo nomine Geroinus dum die dominico nollet ire ad missam, sed isset in pratum, invasus est a daemonio. Cumque coepisset clamare: ‘O Taurine, quare ante tempus me incendunt orationes tuae,’ adductus est in ecclesiam ac post octo dies ereptus, pristinam sanitatem est adeptus,” IMTa, viii (77); IMTb, 644 §4. The cry echoes Matthew 8:29 (Vulgate). See the scathing comments of Van den Bossche in his “Commentarius praevius,” AASS Aug. II (1751): 635–639; see also “Saint Taurin,” 30n1 and passim. VTa, x (61); VTb, 642 §13. VTa, xi–xii (63–64); VTb, 642 §14–15. VTa, xii (64–65); VTb, 642–643 §15. The fear of grave desecration and the general urge to flee correspond closely to the description of the raids made by Ermentarius, who recorded the miracles of Philibert during the monks’ exile. See Ermentarius’s two prologues

Notes to Pages 29–30

92.

93. 94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

171

in particular, Translationes et miracula Philiberti (BHL 6808, 6809), ed. Cuypers, AASS Aug. IV (1752): 81–82, 92. These same features also correspond to later sources, particularly Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s De moribus. See especially De moribus, i.4 (132). The contrast with Ermentarius is marked: while Deodatus merely opposes immediate fear with future security, Ermentarius dwells on the utter lack of security—present or future—the monks of Herio face. Recueil des actes de Lothaire et de Louis V, rois de France (954–987), ed. Louis Halphen and Ferdinand Lot (Paris, 1908), no. 24. Mathieu Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on Early Norman Historiography,” ANS 22 (2000): 29–48; K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, “Bibliothèque Municipale d’Avranches, 210: Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel,” ANS 21 (1999): 95–112. Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo”; Véronique Gazeau, “Guillaume de Volpiano en Normandie: État des questions,” Tabularia “Études” 2 (2002): 35–46; and Gazeau, “Les abbés bénédictins de la Normandie ducale,” ANS 26 (2004): 75–86. It appears that Richard I founded, rather than refounded, Saint-Taurin. The charter of Richard I, which survives only in a later copy, states that Richard “founded” the monastery: “[Q]ui abbatiam . . . instituit.” RADN, no. 5. It is not clear when Richard established Saint-Taurin, although it was most likely after his victory over Theobald of Blois circa 966; Abbot Frotmundus was present at the inventio of the relics of Audoenus at Saint-Ouen in 989, see the Translatio secunda Audoeni, 1678. See further Debidour, Essai sur l’histoire de Saint-Taurin d’Évreux. Mesnel edits an office in Taurinus’s honor that he dates to the seventh century; regardless of its age—it survives only in manuscripts of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries—it shows that the monks (or possibly canons) of Saint-Taurin could have celebrated their patron for some decades after the monastery’s foundation by commemorating him in only the most general terms as “amicus dei.” [“‘Primitive’ Office for Feast of Taurinus,”] ed. J.-B. Mesnel, “Saint Taurin,” 4–8; see also “Saint Taurin,” 1–4, 8–10. Among the terms Deodatus employs appear dominus and miles, both with meanings (“lord” or “territorial prince,” “knight”) they acquired only in the late tenth and eleventh centuries; see “Saint Taurin,” lesson ix, 60, for the terms; for the words’ evolution, see J.-F. Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vols. (Leiden, 2002). Dialogue is abundant in the Vita, but it is generally the privilege of Taurinus himself and his most prominent adversaries; members of his flock are for the most part silent. VTa, viii (49); VTb, 640 §5.

172

Notes to Pages 30–34

100.

See Robert-Henri Bautier, “L’hérésie d’Orléans et le mouvement intellectuel au début du XIe siècle: Documents et hypothèses,” in Actes du 95e congrès national des sociétés savantes, Reims 1970: Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610, vol. 1, Enseignement et vie intellectuelle (Paris, 1975), 63–88; R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe (Oxford, 1987), 13, 15–16, and elsewhere. 101. The king learned of the heretics through a Norman lord, the uncle of Duke Richard II. 102. See Appendix 1. 103. Ibid. 104. The relics were supposedly at Pézy. Robert’s request is recorded only in a seventeenth-century source (cited by Mesnel merely as “Mémorial” and “Mem. Hist.,” “Saint Taurin,” 167–168 and 167n1). Mesnel additionally notes that Robert is known to have been at Chartres in 1024 when he made a donation to Saint-Père; the Vita also appeared in an eleventh-century legendary of Chartres cathedral (Chartres, BM MS 193 (507 5/B), concerning which, see Appendix 1). There is no evidence whether the relics at Pézy were discovered at this time or had long been known. Similarly, it is possible that Taurinus’s veneration at Chartres began before this time, but there is no evidence to that effect. 105. See “Saint Taurin,” 168–169, and R. Merlet and l’abbé Clerval, Un manuscrit chartrain du XIe siècle (Chartres, 1893). 106. Most notably Dudo’s De moribus. For Robert’s literary patronage, see Lucien Musset, “Le satiriste Garnier de Rouen et son milieu (début du XIe siècle),” Revue du Moyen Âge Latin 10 (1954): 237–266; Jean-Michel Bouvris, “L’école capitulaire de Rouen au XIe siècle,” Études normandes 3 (1986): 89–103.

2. Indiviudal Appeal 1.

Although Taurinus had performed a number of miracles in the eighth or ninth century, neither the account of these nor that of the invention of his relics transmits any more information regarding his career than Usuard does. 2. See, for example, the entries for Fronto of Périgueux (October 25) and for Dionysius of Paris (October 9), Usuard, Martyrologium, 328, 317. For Usuard’s attention to such detail, see Felice Lifshitz, The Name of the Saint: The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia, 627–827 (Notre Dame, 2006). 3. Taurinus did perform a number of miracles, probably in the eighth century. 4. RADN, nos. 36, 53 (to Jumièges and Saint-Ouen); no. 14bis (dowry to William’s wife, Liutgard of Vermandois). See also Lucien Musset, “Actes in-

Notes to Pages 34–35

5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

173

édits du XIe siècle, III: Les plus anciennes chartes normandes de l’abbaye de Bourgueil,” BSAN 54 (1957–1958): 15–54; Pierre Bauduin, La première Normandie (Xe–XIe siècles): Sur les frontières de la Haute Normandie; Identité et construction d’une principauté (Caen, 2004), 162–165. Flodoard, Annales, 83–100 (years 942–945). Ibid., 150–154 (year 962). For the history of Blois-Chartres, see Karl Ferdinand Werner, “L’acquisition par la maison de Blois des comtés de Chartres et de Châteaudun,” in Mélanges de numismatique, d’archéologie et d’histoire offerts à Jean Lafaurie (Paris, 1980), 265–272; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 162–173. Bauduin shows that Theobald’s control of Évreux in the 960s, although uncertain, is entirely plausible. De moribus, iv.116 (279); Bauduin, La première Normandie, 168–170. The specific cause of the conflict is unclear: Musset seeks it in Liutgard’s dowry (which fell to her second husband, Theobald). Bauduin and François Neveux look instead to Theobald’s ambitions in Brittany and Richard’s interference there; La première Normandie, 169; François Neveux, La Normandie des ducs aux rois Xe–XIIe siècle (Rennes, 1998), 50. Dudo blamed it on Liutgard’s unexplained hatred of her stepson. Bauduin, La première Normandie, 194 and 325–330. The continuing importance of the Évrecin frontier has prompted some scholars to conclude that Duke Robert I gave the monastery of Saint-Taurin to Fécamp in 1034 in large part to remove it from the influence of his uncle, whom he no longer trusted. While this interpretation may overemphasize the ill will between the two, who were on good terms by the time Robert left for the East in 1035—Archbishop Robert remained count of Évreux throughout Robert’s reign (and his son apparently inherited the position); moreover, the archbishop played an important role during Duke Robert’s absence and the first two years of William’s minority—it accurately assesses the strategic significance of the region. See, for example, J.-F. Lemarignier, Evelyne Lamon, and Véronique Gazeau, “Monachisme et aristocratie autour de Saint-Taurin d’Évreux et du Bec (Xe–XIIe siècles),” in Aspects du monachisme en normandie (IVe–XVIIIe siècle): Actes du colloque scientifique de l’ “année des abbayes normandes” (Caen, 18–20 octobre 1979), ed. Lucien Musset (Paris, 1982), 91–108; see also Daniel Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2004), 129–130. The source for this war is William of Jumièges, who appears in part to be relying on a lost charter, GND, v.10–12. See also Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, introduction to GND, 1:xlii; David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), 65–66; Musset, “Actes de l’abbaye de Bourgueil”; Christian Pfister, Études sur le règne de Robert le Pieux (996–1031) (Paris, 1885; Geneva, 1974), 213–215.

174 11.

Notes to Page 35

See Bates, Normandy before 1066, 66; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 163, 171, 181–191; Musset, “Actes de l’abbaye de Bourgueil.” Norman influence over the counts is clear from charters; see RADN, nos. 25 (1023), 63 (1030). Waleran of Meulan, at least, had sided with Odo in 1013–1014, according to GND, v.10–11; in 1015 he and the count of the Vexin were both under pressure to go against Odo in a dispute involving the county of Sens, see Fulbert, Letters, no. 27; Émile Houth, “La campagne, en Bourgogne, de Galeran, comte de Meulan, en 1015,” Bulletin philologique et historique du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1959): 155–157. 12. Lucien Musset, “Une expédition d’une charte de Richard II (1014) pour la cathédrale de Chartres,” BSAN 55 (1959–1960): 476–483. See also Gilduin Davy, Le duc et la loi: Héritages, images et expressions du pouvoir normatif dans le duché de Normandie, des origines à la mort du Conquérant (fin du IXe siècle—1087), Romanité et Modernité du droit (Paris, 2004), 462–463 and Annexe I. 13. Herfast was the brother of Duchess Gunnor. He later became a monk at Saint-Père, and his story is related by Paul of Saint-Père, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Père de Chartres, ed. M. Guérard, vol. 1, Collection des cartulaires de France 1 (Paris, 1840), iv. 3 (108–115). For Herfast’s relationship to Richard and Robert, see Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, “Robert of Torigni as Genealogist,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill et al. (Woodbridge, 1989), 215–233. For Herfast’s role in the affair at Orléans, see Robert-Henri Bautier, “L’hérésie d’Orléans et le mouvement intellectuel au début du XIe siècle: Documents et hypothèses,” in Actes du 95e congrès national des sociétés savantes, Reims 1970: Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610, vol. 1, Enseignement et vie intellectuelle (Paris, 1975), 63–88 at 80–81. On the Norman role in the heresy more generally, and its implications for Normandy, see Éric Van Torhoudt, “1022: Les normands inventent l’hérésie d’Orléans!” AN 55 (2005): 341–367. 14. Fulbert and Odo sometimes allied and sometimes quarrelled; see Bautier, “L’hérésie d’Orléans,” 77–78; J.-F. Lemarignier, “Paix et réforme monastique en Flandre et en Normandie autour de l’année 1023,” in Droit privé et institutions régionales: Études historiques offertes à Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), 443–468 at 449–451; see also Olivier Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XI siecle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1972) 1: 32–38. Fulbert had numerous dealings with Richard II between at least 1014 (when the duke granted Norman lands to Chartres cathedral) and 1025 (when Fulbert sought the promise of Richard’s aid); there were also ties between Richard’s household clergy and Bishop Fulbert. See RADN, no. 15; Fulbert, Letters, nos. 83, 98; Musset, “Une expédition”; Davy, Le duc et la loi, 466. For Everard, Fulbert’s sacristan, who later became abbot of Breteuil, see Bautier, 81.

Notes to Pages 35–38 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

175

For Orléans and its political aspect, see Bautier, “L’hérésie d’Orléans”; Lemarignier, “Paix et réforme”; and Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge, 1990), 266–270. For the full implications of Richard’s intervention and its significance for the traditional view of Norman loyalty to Robert the Pious, see Van Torhoudt, “1022: Les normands inventent l’hérésie d’Orléans!” See Léonce Lex, Eudes, comte de Blois, de Tours, de Chartres, de Troyes et de Meaux (995–1037) et Thibaud, son frère (Troyes, 1892), 37; Louis Halphen, “La lettre d’Eudes II de Blois au roi Robert,” À travers l’histoire du moyen âge (Paris, 1950), 241–250; Lemarignier, “Paix et réforme,” 448. Odo’s letter to King Robert survives among those of Fulbert of Chartres, who probably wrote it. See Halphen, “Lettre,” 242 and 249; or, alternatively, Fulbert, Letters, no. 86. Halphen compellingly refutes earlier interpretations viewing Richard as Robert’s official mediator and convincingly shows that Richard proposed to try the matter in his court. The mediation failed when Robert insisted Odo be stripped of all his fiefs and thus removed the matter from Richard’s competency. See Halphen, “Lettre,” 246–247. No other court appears to have heard the case, although Emperor Henry II was consulted, probably before Richard’s offer. For example, in Lorraine and the Auxerrois; see Lex, Eudes, comte de Blois, 37–38, 41, and elsewhere; Lemarignier, “Paix et réforme,” 449; Bates, Normandy before 1066, 47–49, 55; and Elizabeth M. Hallam, Capetian France 987–1328 (London, 1980), 45ff. Bauduin, La première Normandie, 185–186. For example, in 1015 he sought the aid of Waleran of Meulan and Walter of the Vexin against the excommunicated archbishop of Sens and his supporter, Odo of Blois-Chartres. See Fulbert, Letters, no. 27. A related, though not quite analogous example of using saints to forge political alliances is that of King Robert the Pious in Aquitaine. See Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints, esp. 275. For similar protection saints offered to the communities in possession of their relics, see the example of Fleury; Barbara H. Rosenwein, Thomas Head, and Sharon Farmer, “Monks and Their Enemies: A Comparative Approach,” Speculum 66 (1991): 764–796. Although Usuard mentions Taurinus merely as “episcopus” and does not acknowledge his primacy, the Inventio, which dates to the eighth century or earlier, does call him “primus episcopus Ebroicae,” Martyrologium, 281; IMTa, 69; IMTb, 643. Bishop Lista’s murder is recorded by Regino of Prum, Chronicon, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 50 (Hannover, 1890; repr. 1978) 134–135 (year 890). For Herbert’s return, see the following: Gal-

176

Notes to Pages 38–39

lia christiana, 11:869; “De statu Constantiensis ecclesiae ab anno 836 ad 1093,” Gallia christiana, 11: Instrumenta, 217–224; René Toustain de Billy, Histoire ecclésiastique du diocèse de Coutances 1 (Rouen, 1874), 108 (following Gallia christiana); Lucien Musset, “Un millénaire oublié: La rémise en place de la hiérarchie épiscopale en Normandie autour de 990,” in Papauté, monachisme et théories politiques: Études d’histoire médiévale offertes à Marcel Pacaut, vol. 2, Les églises locales, ed. P. Guichard et al. (Lyon, 1994), 563–573; and Musset, “La contribution de Fécamp à la reconquête monastique de la Basse-Normandie (990–1066),” in L’abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp: Ouvrage scientifique du XIIIe centenaire 658–1958, 1 (Fécamp, 1960), 57–66, 341–343, at 58. For Gunnor, see “De statu Constantiensis ecclesiae,” 218; RADN, no. 214; Gallia christiana, 11:869. See also Pierre Bouet and Monique Dosdat, “Les évêques normands de 985 à 1150,” in Les évêques normands, 19–37 at 27; Cassandra Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 11 (Woodbridge, 1997), 19. 26. The annals of Saint-Bertin record under the year 859 the murder of Bishop Baltfridus that took place in the previous year, Annales Bertiniani, 81 (year 859); Gallia christiana, 11:351. See also Musset, “Un millénaire oublié,” esp. 566. The installation of Hugh d’Ivry has been dated variously to 1011 and 1015; see Gallia christiana, 11:353; Musset, “Un millénaire oublié”; David Bates, “Notes sur l’aristocratie normande, I: Hugues de Bayeux,” AN 23 (1973): 7–21. 27. Radulfus subscribed a donation in favor of Saint-Denis in 967 and attended the dedication of Fécamp in 990, Gallia christiana, 11:352–353. He returned to Fécamp in 1006 and is therefore likely the same man identified as “Richard” by the Translatio secunda Audoeni, 1678. Dudo of Saint-Quentin claims that Bishop Heiric of Bayeux baptized Richard I at Fécamp circa 933, but no contemporary source confirms Heiric’s existence, De moribus, iii.46 (191). RADN, no. 7, mysteriously records the attestation of a Bishop Hubert to a donation of Bessin property made to Saint-Wandrille sometime between 996 and 1006, apparently transacted in the Bessin; Hubert’s see is unspecified, and his presence (together with an unidentified Bishop Herveus) is unexplained. 28. Translatio secunda Audoeni, 1676–1677. Although the Translatio is not to be taken at face value, Richard I does seem to have built a palace at Bayeux, in keeping with his ambitious political agenda; that this event was roughly contemporaneous with the foundation of Fécamp (990), the site of his most important palace, seems very likely. See further Annie Renoux, “Palais capétiens et normands à la fin du Xe siècle et au début du XIe siècle,” in Le roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an Mil: Actes du colloque Hugues Capet,

Notes to Pages 39–41

29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

35. 36.

177

987–1987; La France de l’an Mil, Paris-Senlis, 22–25 juin, 1987, ed. Michel Parisse and Xavier Barral i Altet (Paris, 1992), 179–191. For Richard’s vision, see Mathieu Arnoux, “La conversion des Normands de Neustrie et la restauration de l’Église dans la province de Rouen,” in Le christianisme en occident du début du VIIe siècle au milieu du XIe siècle, ed. François Bougard, Regards sur l’histoire 117 (Paris, 1997), 269–281 at 275. RADN, nos. 4, 7, 27, 34, 36, 44, 47, 49, 52, 73; Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity, 40–41, 74–75, map 2, “Property of Ducal Abbeys in Normandy by 1035”; Musset, “La contribution de Fécamp.” This point is at the heart of Potts’s work, Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Idenity; see also Jean-François Lemarignier, “Le monachisme et l’encadrement religieux des campagnes du royaume de France situées au nord de la Loire, de la fin du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle,” in Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della “societas christiana” dei secoli XI–XII, Diocesi, pievi e parrochie: Atti della sesta Settimana internazionale di studio, Milano, 1–7 settembre 1974 (Milan, 1977), 357–394; and “Paix et réforme.” Odo II of Blois-Chartres followed a similar reform policy; see Olivier Guillot, “A Reform of Investiture before the Investiture Struggle in Anjou, Normandy, and England,” HSJ 3 (1991): 81–100. From the 1030s leading Norman aristocrats followed the dukes’ example in founding and reforming monasteries; nevertheless, the institutions under consideration here, all founded or refounded by the dukes, pertain to the period when the dukes still predominated as monastic patrons. See Musset, “La contribution de Fécamp,” 62. Fécamp and Saint-Taurin also held lands further west; however, these possessions represented only a small fraction of their overall holdings, whereas the vast majority of Cerisy’s possessions lay west of the territory firmly controlled by the duke. See Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity, Map 2, and Davy, Le duc et la loi, 388–389 and Annexe I. For Mont-Saint-Michel’s conflicting loyalties, see Cassandra Potts, “Normandy or Brittany? A Conflict of Interests at Mont-Saint-Michel,” ANS 12 (1990): 135–156; K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, “Bibliothèque Municipale d’Avranches, 210: Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel,” ANS 21 (1999): 95–112; and “Une charte de l’abbé Mayeul de Cluny et la réforme du Mont-Saint-Michel” in La Normandie vers l’an Mil (Rouen, 2000), 159–169. RADN, no. 64. See further Jean-François Lemarignier, Étude sur les privilèges d’exemption et de juridiction ecclésiastique des abbayes normandes (Paris, 1937), 44–50. Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Paterni episcopi Abrincensis (BHL 6477), VFOP, 33–37 at 36–37. For the episcopal lists, see VV, n1; Fastes, 2:212–222. Lucien Musset, “Notes de lecture sur la Vita Vigoris et les lettres de Sidoine

178

37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

Notes to Pages 41–42 Apollinaire: Volusianus, grand propriétaire gallo-romain du Bessin,” BSAN 56 (1961–1962): 821–824; Gaston Aubourg, “Saint Vigor, évêque de Bayeux (VIe siècle), la Vita Vigoris: Traduction et commentaire critique, première partie,” BSAN 57 (1963–1964): 317–375; Abbé Faucon, Essai historique sur le prieuré de Saint-Vigor-le-Grand (Bayeux, 1861); Neustria pia, 65. Each author would like to credit traditions making Vigor the founder of numerous institutions in the region, despite scant evidence. For the traditions regarding Vigor’s foundations, see Vies des saints, 11:50–56. Gesta domni Aldrici Cenomannicae urbis episcopi a discipulis suis (BHL 260), ed. R. Charles and L. Froger (Mamers, 1889), 16; John Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor of Bayeux,” AB 102 (1984): 303–312. Arrond. Lisieux, cant. Honfleur; Hariulf, Chronicon, iv.4. See also RADN, no. 20; Marguerite d’Albon, “Équemauville: Possession normande de SaintRiquier,” in Saint-Riquier, vol. 1, Études concernant l’abbaye depuis le huitième siècle jusqu’à la Révolution ([Abbeville], 1962), 87–104. See M. LeRoy-Ladurie, “Rôle des abbayes du Val-de-Loire dans la colonisation monastique normande (Xe–XIe siècles),” in “[Actes de la] Semaine d’histoire du droit normand, Caen (5–7 juin, 1952),” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 31 (1953): 322–323; Musset, “La contribution de Fécamp”; Neithard Bulst, “La réforme monastique en Normandie: Étude prosopographique sur la diffusion et l’implantation de la réforme de Guillaume de Dijon,” trans. Victor Saxer, Études Anselmiennes: Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècle 4 (1984): 317–330; Véronique Gazeau, “Guillaume de Volpiano en Normandie: État des questions,” Tabularia “Études” 2 (2002): 35–46”; and Gazeau, “Les abbés bénédictins de la Normandie ducale,” ANS 26 (2004): 75–86. Hariulf, Chronicon, iv.4; RADN, no. 20. Ibid. RADN, nos. 80, 85. See Bates, Normandy before 1066, 64; OV, iii (2:12). Bauduin, La première Normandie, 295–305. GND, vi.6. Ibid., v.13. William of Jumièges is the only source to mention this marriage; see Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, GND 2:29n5. For the dispute with Alan III of Brittany over Mont-Saint-Michel, see GND, vi.8; Potts, “Normandy or Brittany”; Bates, Normandy before 1066, 70–71. For the Bellêmes, see GND, vi.4, 7; Marjorie Chibnall, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis 2, app. 1; Kathleen Thompson, “Family and Influence to the South of Normandy in the Eleventh Century: The Lordship of Bellême,” JMH 11 (1985): 215–226; and Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of the Perche, 1000–1226 (Woodbridge, 2002). Hariulf, Chronicon, iv.7.

Notes to Pages 43–44

179

47. Mauger’s help was the key to Robert’s successful support for Henry I. See GND, vi. 7; Neveux, La Normandie des ducs aux rois, 90; David Douglas, “The Earliest Norman Counts,” English Historical Review 61 (1946):129–146 at 141–143. Bishop Odo of Bayeux did attempt to regain the body of Exuperius for his see later in the eleventh century: he bribed the sacristan to provide him with the relics but was duped and humiliated, as Guibert of Nogent pointedly recounts, De pignoribus sanctorum, PL 156:607–680 at i.3 (625–626). For Exuperius’s cult at Corbeil and, from the thirteenth century, at Bayeux, see Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 8 (Leiden, 2002), 211–228, esp. 218–224. 48. This visit occurred sometime before Angelramnus’s death in 1045, perhaps after the visit during which he received a grant from Richard II. 49. Hariulf, Chronicon, iv.5. 50. Georges Duval, “L’abbaye de Cerisy,” in La Normandie bénédictine au temps de Guillaume le Conquérant (XIe siècle), ed. L. Gaillard and J. Daoust (Lille, 1967), 179–185 at 180; Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor,” 311. 51. Cassandra Potts has shown that the dukes made use of older abbeys in the Seine valley to bind newer houses to the ducal authority firmly based there. Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity; and “When the Saints Go Marching: Religious Connections and the Political Culture of Early Normandy,” Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Proceedings of the Borchard Conference on Anglo-Norman History, 1995, ed. C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), 17–31. 52. The linking of abbeys to underscore and reinforce ducal authority represented a key element in Robert’s overall monastic strategy. Saint-Ouen and Fécamp were most often selected to oversee other abbeys, with Saint-Ouen responsible for roughly one-third of monastic foundations and refoundations before 1066. Robert’s subsequent direction of Cerisy involved weakening the tie to Saint-Ouen in favor of a Breton link. After the death of Abbot Durandus in 1033, Robert appointed the former abbot of Mont-SaintMichel, Almodus of Maine. The choice of Almodus is intriguing, since his career at the Mount had progressed in consistent opposition to ducal preference: the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel elected Almodus over a ducal candidate tied to William of Volpiano and Fécamp; during Robert’s conflict with Alan III of Brittany in the early 1030s, Almodus had sided with Alan. Following the reconciliation between the two princes which took place at the Mount circa 1032, Robert deposed Almodus and replaced him with Suppo, a relative and disciple of William of Volpiano. His appointment to Cerisy in 1033, therefore, represents not only a reconciliation with the duke

180

53. 54.

55.

56.

57.

Notes to Pages 44–45 but perhaps an effort on Robert’s part at once to appease the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel and to bind them more firmly to the duchy. The move also put one of Alan’s supporters under the watchful eye of the duke’s uncle, Hugh, bishop of Bayeux. For Mont-Saint-Michel and Almodus’s career, see Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity, 81–104, esp. 99–100. For the abbots of Cerisy, see Duval, “L’abbaye de Cerisy,” 180. For the dukes’ reliance on Saint-Ouen and Fécamp, and the rivalry between them it sparked, see Bulst, “Réforme monastique,” 321; Mathieu Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on Early Norman Historiography,” ANS 22 (2000): 29–48. Hariulf argues against just this view, Chronicon, iv.5. This practice of appropriating the holy as a foundation for political power and an incentive to loyalty appears also in contexts very different from medieval Normandy, for example, British missionaries in colonial Southern Rhodesia; see Terrence Ranger, “Taking Hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimages in Twentieth-Century Zimbabwe,” Past and Present 117 (1987): 158–194. I am grateful to Emmanuel Akyeampong for this reference. The northern border of the French Vexin is less clearly defined but is marked generally by the valley of le Sausseron. For the early history of the two Vexins, see Lucien Musset, “La frontière du Vexin,” Annuaire des cinq départements de la Normandie 124 (1966): 42–49; and Marcel Lachiver, “Le Vexin français: Esquisse historique,” Annales historiques du Mantois 2 (1977): 3–15. For the counts of the Vexin, see Philip Grierson, “L’origine des comtes d’Amiens, Valois, et Vexin,” Le Moyen Âge, 3rd ser., 10 (1939): 81–125. See also François Neveux, “Les diocèses normands aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” in Les évêques normands, 13–18 at 14. Although later tradition related that the count held not directly of the king but as subtenant from the abbot of SaintDenis, this appears to be the fabrication of a later age. See Jacques Flach, Les origines de l’ancienne France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1904) 3:525, 529; Pierre Bauduin notes that written sources distinguish the Norman and French Vexins from the 1030s, La première Normandie, 247–283. Little is known of the individual archbishops before Robert’s reign, but they appear to have been Frankish rather than Norman. For the lists and the later memories of the early bishops, see E. P. Sauvage, “Elenchi episcoporum Rotomagensium,” AB 8 (1889): 406–428; Louis Violette, “Une entreprise historiographique au temps de la réforme grégorienne: Les actes des archevêques de Rouen,” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 83, no. 211 (July–Dec. 1997): 343–365, esp. 350–354. Robert ruled as archbishop circa 989–1037; he was succeeded by Mauger, an illegitimate son of his brother Richard II, who was deposed in 1055; once more from 1067–1079 a member of the ducal family occupied the see, John

Notes to Pages 45–46

58.

59.

60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66.

181

of Avranches, son of Raoul d’Ivry and a cousin of William the Conqueror. See Bouet and Dosdat, “Les évêques normands de 985 à 1150.” For the contrasting collaboration between the French kings and the abbots of Saint-Denis, see Robert Barroux, “L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin en 1124,” Le Moyen Âge: Revue d’histoire et de philologie 24 (1958): 1–26; JeanFrançois Lemarignier, Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales (Lille, 1945), 47–55. For Robert’s role as count of Évreux, see above. His regency during Duke Robert’s absence on pilgrimage, and then after the duke’s death, is presumed rather than known certainly. See Michel de Boüard, Guillaume le Conquérant (Paris, 1984) 103. For reform and restitution of church lands, see Bauduin, La première Normandie, 266–273; and RADN, nos. 66, 67. Robert’s efforts in this sphere are ironic in the face of his own alienations of cathedral property. Although Robert found refuge in royal territory during his quarrel with his nephew, the duke, such hospitality does not necessarily indicate good relations with the king that endured after the archbishop’s reconciliation with the duke. For the quarrel of 1027, see GND, vi.3; and Fulbert, Letters, no. 126. For the precise route of the Roman road, see Michel Roblin, “Petromantalum, Saint-Clair et le Vexin: Trois énigmes à Saint-Clair-sur-Epte,” Journal des savants (Jan.–Mar. 1976): 3–31, esp. 4–17. RADN, no. 53. Ibid., nos. 66, 67. Rollo’s grant to Saint-Ouen of Limetz-Villez, at the confluence of Seine and Epte, epitomizes this symbiosis, but there are numerous other examples. See further Bauduin, La première Normandie, 249–251, 269–271; Lucien Musset and Jean-François Lemarignier view these grants as a conscious policy to strengthen ducal power on the frontier: Musset, “Ce qu’enseigne l’histoire d’un patrimoine monastique: Saint-Ouen de Rouen, du IXe au XIe siècle,” in Aspects de la société et de l’économie dans la Normandie médiévale (Xe–XIIIe siècles), ed. Lucien Musset et al., CAN 22 (Caen, 1988), 115–129; Lemarignier, “Paix et réforme,” esp. 459. Bauduin notes the good impression such grants made on Frankish neighbors and the mutual benefits they offered churches and dukes; La première Normandie, 250–251. See also Nathalie Manoury, “Reconquête du patrimoine monastique: L’exemple de Jumièges en 984,” in La Normandie vers l’an Mil, 116–119. Musset, “La frontière du Vexin,” 47; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 273–283. OV, vii.14 (4:74). RADN, no. 69, of April 13, 1033. Henry subscribed two further ducal charters during this stay: RADN, nos. 55, 63. For the events precipitating Henry’s

182

67.

68.

69. 70.

71. 72.

73. 74.

Notes to Pages 46–47 flight, see Jan Dhondt, “Une crise du pouvoir capétien 1032–34,” in Miscellanea mediaevalia in memoriam Jan Frederik Niermeyer (Groningen, 1967), 137–148. William of Jumièges, who confirms Henry’s flight to Normandy, makes no mention of any grant of the Vexin, GND, vi.7. As Marjorie Chibnall points out, William wrote before such a claim served any purpose, while Orderic wrote well after the French king had taken over direct control of the French Vexin and at a time when the dukes sought to counter his presence there. See Chibnall, introduction to The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 4:xxxii–xxxiii; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 253, 265–266. Godgifu probably arrived at the Norman court in 1013 or 1014. She may have returned to England with her family in 1014 but was back in Normandy by 1017. She then remained there until her marriage, which appears to have taken place by 1026; see Simon Keynes, “The Aethelings in Normandy,” ANS 13 (1990): 173–205. David Bates suggests the marriage may have occurred as early as 1017, based on evidence that Drogo already enjoyed a warm relationship with Richard II and had more than one son by 1027–1031; Bates, “Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors: The Family of the Counts of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin in France and England during the 11th Century,” in The Sudeleys—Lords of Toddington (London, 1987), 34–48 at 36. William of Jumièges suggests the relationship between Robert and Godgifu’s brothers perhaps extended even to formal blood brotherhood; see GND, vi.9, with Van Houts’s note 3. See also OV, vii.14 (4:76); Encomium Emmae reginae, ed. Alistair Campbell, Camden Texts 3rd ser. (London, 1949), esp. at xlii–xlv and xlix–l. Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley, 1988), 139. Drogo made grants of exemption from river tolls and restoration of Vexin property to Saint-Wandrille, Jumièges, and Saint-Ouen; see “Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye [de Saint-Wandrille],” ed. Ferdinand Lot, Études critiques sur l’abbaye de Saint-Wandrille (Paris, 1913), 21–191, nos. 7, 8; RADN, no. 63; Bauduin, “Dossier de textes,” no. 12, La première Normandie, 379–382; Bates, “Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors,” 37; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 255–257. OV, vii.14 (4:76). Ibid; Orderic places Drogo’s homage to Robert in the context of the supposed grant of the French Vexin to him by the king. Flach, Origines de l’ancienne France, 3:529 and n1. GND, v.10. Fulbert, Letters, no. 27; RADN, no. 25. Bauduin notes that the donation occurred only a few weeks after Richard attended the royal council at Compiègne opposing Odo’s growing ambitions; La première Normandie, 261.

Notes to Page 47

75.

76.

77.

78.

183

However, Waleran remained loyal to Odo, whose summons he appears to have obeyed in spring 1021; see Fulbert, Letters, no. 46. Waleran’s mother, Alix, was Drogo’s aunt; see Émile Réaux, Histoire de Meulan (Meulan, 1868), 80 and 84; Cart. Saint-Martin, 307; Bates, “Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors,” 35–37. Depoin identifies Waleran’s brother Hilduinus with Herluin, or Hellouin, of Heugleville, whose widow Ada was (according to Orderic Vitalis) given in marriage with her inheritance by Duke Robert to his avid supporter and great-nephew Richard (subsequently of Heugleville). However, as Bauduin notes, the identification poses difficulties. OV, vi.8 (3:252–254); Cart. SaintMartin, 306–309, 333; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 243 and n371. Another intriguing but apparently fantastical tie would make Waleran’s first wife, Oda, the sister of Herluin de Conteville, to whom Duke Robert married his concubine Herleve, mother of William the Conqueror. Although this supposed siblingship looms large in the amateur genealogies of cyberspace, no evidence from contemporary sources supports it. Oda’s background instead remains entirely murky, and too little is known of Herluin’s family to shed light on the matter. Certainly, Waleran and his children frequented the Norman court; a connection to the Conqueror’s mother and half-brothers, however, is not necessarily at the root of this tendency. Oda and Waleran may have been married circa 1017; by 1024 she had borne him five children, and Waleran sought an annulment citing incompatibility and Oda’s wish to retire to Coulombs, where her sister-in-law Helvisa (widow of Waleran’s brother Hugh Bear-Head) was already a nun. Oda died before 1033, when Waleran had remarried after failing to secure an annulment. See Cart. Saint-Martin, 308–311; Fulbert, Letters, no. 93; Réaux, Histoire de Meulan, 86, 94–95; Christian Pfister, De Fulberti Carnotensis episcopi vita et operibus (Nancy, 1885), 120; Émile Houth places Waleran’s attempt at annulment circa 1015: “La campagne, en Bourgogne, de Galeran, comte de Meulan, en 1015,” and Houth, “Les comtes de Meulan, IXe–XIIIe siècles,” Mémoires de la Société historique et archéologique de Pontoise, du Val d’Oise et du Vexin 70 (1981): 5–20. For Herluin, see David Bates, “Notes sur l’aristocratie normande, II: Herluin de Conteville et sa famille,” AN 23 (1973): 22–38; David Bates and Véronique Gazeau, “L’abbaye de Grestain et la famille d’Herluin de Conteville,” AN 40 (1990): 5–30. Bouafles was donated to Jumièges by the Le Riche (Dives) family, who sought Waleran’s protection for it; see Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges (v. 825 à 1204), ed. J.-J. Vernier, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1916) no. XVI. The dispute, into which Waleran’s action drew the monks of Jumièges and the Le Riche family, was soon settled. Hugh was at the Norman court from at least 1035, when he witnessed

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Notes to Pages 47–48

RADN, no. 89; see also Cart. Saint-Martin, 311n315; Bauduin, La première Normandie, 262. He appears at William’s side in 1066, RADN, no. 230. 79. For Adeliza (or Adelina) and her children, see GND, vii.(4); OV, viii.13 (4:204; see also 205n3), viii.25 (4:304); see also David Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986). The date of the marriage was perhaps circa 1045–1050, according to Bauduin, La première Normandie, 262. 80. For the rebellion, see Bauduin, La première Normandie, 261–262; for the charters (between 1035–1047), RADN, nos. 104, 105, 107. 81. Véronique Gazeau suggests that the reform of Saint-Ouen may have occurred as early as circa 960; “Guillaume de Volpiano en Normandie.” See also Musset, “Ce qu’enseigne”; and Musset, “Monachisme d’époque franque et d’époque ducale en Normandie: Le problème de la continuité,” in Aspects du monachisme en normandie (IVe–XVIIIe siècles): Actes du colloque scientifique de l’ “année des abbayes normandes” (Caen, 18–20 octobre 1979), ed. Lucien Musset (Paris, 1982), 55–74. The separation from the cathedral sowed the seeds of a rivalry between the two institutions that would intensify in the second half of the eleventh century and in which hagiography, including the Passio Nicasii, would come to play an important role. See Felice Lifshitz, “Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity,” HSJ 2 (1990): 63–74; “The Acta archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium: A Monastery or Cathedral Product?” AB 108 (1990): 337–347; “The Politics of Historiography: The Memory of Bishops in Eleventh-Century Rouen,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 10 (1998): 118–137; and The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics 684–1090, Studies and Texts 122 (Toronto, 1995), 193–200; Louis Violette, “Entreprise historiographique”; Violette, “Le problème de l’attribution d’un texte rouennais du XIe siècle: Les Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium,” AB 115 (1997): 113–129; Violette, “Le thème des origines de l’église de Rouen d’après une oeuvre de ses chanoines: Les annales de Rouen,” in Chapitres et cathédrales en Normandie: Actes du XXXIe congrès des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie; Bayeux, 16–20 octobre 1996, ed. Sylvette Lemagnen and Philippe Manneville, Annales de Normandie, série des congrès des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie 2 (Caen, 1997), 287–294; Violette, “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais: Valorisation de reliques par l’hagiographie au XIe siècle,” in Autour des morts: Mémoire et identité; Actes du Ve colloque international sur la sociabilité, Rouen, 19–21 novembre 1998, ed. Olivier Dumoulin and Françoise Thelamon (Rouen, 2001), 377–386. See also Bauduin, La première Normandie, 269–271. With regard to the role Lifshitz and Violette both assign Nicasius’s veneration in aggravating the tensions, it should be noted

Notes to Pages 48–54

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that neither precisely dates the Passio’s composition; instead, both seem to assume composition during the reign of Abbot Nicholas (1042–1092), perhaps in the 1040s. Each therefore places the Passio Nicasii in a context of greater hostility than the 1030s witnessed; Lifshitz in particular approaches the Passio as a deliberate assault on the cathedral. 82. Translatio prima Audoeni. Contrast the monopoly Audoenus here enjoys over Rollo’s devotion with the multiplicity of saints who share his reverence and benefaction in Dudo’s account, De moribus, ii.30 (170–171). 83. The first monasteries certainly active in early Normandy were all founded or revived by ducal initiative: Saint-Ouen, Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, SaintTaurin, Fécamp, Cerisy, and, to a lesser extent, Mont-Saint-Michel. Only from the 1030s did Norman aristocrats begin to emulate their leaders’ example as monastic founders and patrons, and the first of these aristocratic founders were the dukes’ closest associates and often their relatives. See Gazeau, “Les abbés bénédictins de la Normandie ducale”; Cassandra Potts, “Les ducs normands et leurs nobles: Le patronage monastique avant la conquête de l’Angleterre,” Études normandes 3 (1986): 29–37; Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity, 105–132.

3. Imagining the Past of the Évrecin 1. VTa, VTb; the two differ primarily in their respective prologues. 2. Deodatus names himself twice in the Vita and describes himself as the godson (filiolus) and disciple of the saint: VTa, viii (52), x (62); VTb, 640 §7, 642 §13. 3. See Appendix 1 for details of the Vita’s manuscript tradition. 4. VTa, ii (42); VTb, 639 §1. 5. VTa, iii (43); VTb, 639 §2. 6. Ibid. 7. See the scathing comments of Van den Bossche in his “Commentarius praevius,” AASS Aug. II (1751): 635–639; see also “Saint Taurin,” 31n1 and passim. 8. VTa, ix (59); VTb, 642 §12. 9. “The Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians Commonly Known as First Clement,” trans. J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harner, in The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed., rev. by Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, 1998), 28–64; see also Holmes’s introduction, 23–27. 10. Missale romanum, editio princeps (1570) (Rome, 1570), reprinted in facsimile by Manlio Sodi et al., Monumenta liturgica Concilii Tridentini 2 (Vatican City, 1998), 342. The liturgical enumeration follows that of Irenaeus, Contre les hérésies, livre iii, ed. Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, Sources chrétiennes 211 (Paris, 1974), 3.3 (32–34); and Eusebius of Caesarea, whose

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11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

Notes to Pages 54–55 work Rufinus translated into Latin; The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, ed. [in Greek] and trans. Kirsopp Lake, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1949–1953), iii; 15–16. Irenaeus (120–202), Contre les heresies, livre iii, 3.3; Tertullian (160–225), De praescriptione haereticorum, ed. Dietrich Schleyer, Fontes christiani 42 (Turnhout, 2002), xxxii. Eusebius (c. 260–c. 340), Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. Lake, iii.4, 13. Eusebius may be following Origen (c. 185–c. 254), who mentions Paul’s disciple in Commentarium in Ioannem, iv.36. Both works were transmitted to the West by Rufinus. Biblical reference is to Vulgate. Rufinus of Aquilaea, Clementis recognitiones (BHL 6644–6645), Rekognitionen, 6–371. Rufinus, “Prologus in Clementis recognitiones,” Rekognitionen, 3–5. Exactly what constitutes apostolic authority, and to what extent that authority might be transmitted by one of the twelve original disciples to someone outside their generation, remain live questions among theologians and historians of the early church. This discussion does not attempt to resolve the debate but aims instead to explicate the argument made by Rufinus and perhaps assimilated by Deodatus. For the notion of apostolicity in the early Christian churches, see Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 4 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). For some of the dimensions of apostolicity in medieval thought, see Paul Antony Hayward, “Gregory the Great as ‘Apostle of the English’ in Post-conquest Canterbury,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 19–57; for current thinking on apostolicity, see Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority, Harvard Theological Studies 51 (Cambridge, Mass., 2003). “Epistula Clementis ad Iacobum” (BHL 6646a), Rekognitionen, 375–387. VTa, iii (43); VTb, 639 §2. Four twelfth-century and one thirteenth-century manuscripts containing Clement’s Passio survive in the Bibliothèque municipale of Rouen alone: Rouen, BM MSS A 53 (provenance unclear), U 20 (from Fécamp and also containing the Vita Taurini, as well as the Passio Nicasii), U 22 (thirteenthcentury, from Saint-Ouen), U 32 (probably from Fécamp), and U 35 (SaintOuen). See Cat. Rotomag., 135–136, 165–169, 173–181; for MS U 35, see also Appendix 1. Of the Recognitiones, Rehm lists two northern Frankish manuscripts of the tenth or eleventh centuries, seven of the eleventh century, and at least four of the twelfth century. One of the eleventh-century copies is Norman (Avranches, BM MS 50, provenance Mont-Saint-Michel); as is one of the twelfth (Rouen, BM MS U 39, from Jumièges), which also contains the let-

Notes to Pages 55–58

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

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ter to James, the Vita Vigoris, and the Passio Nicasii. See Rehm, Pseudoklementinen, lxii–lxxi. For the Norman manuscripts, see also Joseph Van der Straeten, “Les manuscrits hagiographiques du Mont-Saint-Michel conservés à Avranches,” AB 86 (1968): 109–134 at 119; Cat. gén. Rouen, 373–375; Cat. Rotomag., 184–185. See Catherine Cubitt, “Memory and Narrative in the Cult of Early AngloSaxon Saints,” in Uses of the Past, 29–66, for similar instances of connections among texts. Passio Dionysii and Vulgate. See further the commentaries prefacing the AASS entries for Dionysius of Paris and Dionysius the Areopagite, respectively, Cornelius De Bye, “De SS. Dionysio episcopo, Rusitco presbytero et Eleutherio diacono martyribus, Parisiis in Francia. Commentarius praevius,” AASS Oct. IV (1780): 865–925, with an appendix at 925–987; and De Bye, “De S. Dionysio Areopagita. Commentarius praevius,” AASS Oct. IV (1780): 696–792, with Acta fabulosa and appendices, 792–855. See also Bibliotheca sanctorum, 4:650–661; Vies des saints, 10:277–278; and Michael Lapidge, “The Lost Passio metrica S. Dionysii by Hilduin of Saint-Denis,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 22 (1987): 56–79. Passio Dionysii, §xix. Ibid. VTa, v (46); VTb, 640 §3. Apostolic succession as a guarantor of doctrinal purity is intrinsic to Irenaeus’s original interest in compiling episcopal lists. See Frank D. Gilliard, “The Apostolicity of Gallic Churches,” Harvard Theological Review 68 (1975): 17–33. VTa, viii (49); VTb, 640 §5. For the full extent of disquiet in Normandy occasioned by the heterodox clerics of Orléans and their like as the dukes sought to “guide” the expansion of the Norman church, see Éric Van Torhoudt, “1022: Les normands inventent l’hérésie d’Orléans!” AN 55 (2005): 341–367. Historia certaminis. See also R. A. Lipsius, “Abdias,” in A Dictionary of Christian Biography, ed. William Smith and Henry Wace, vol. 1 (London, 1877), 1–4; and, more fully, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden: Ein Beitrag zur altchristlichen Literaturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Braunschweig, 1883–1887), 1:117–178. “Saint Taurin,” 22 and (in greater detail) 28–31. For a detailed discussion of Mesnel’s assessment of the relationship between Deodatus and Abdias, see Samantha Kahn Herrick, “Imagining the Sacred Past in Hagiography of Early Normandy: The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002), 87n17. Vita Martialis prolixior. See also Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, Mass.,

188

30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

35. 36.

37.

Notes to Page 59 1995), 50–74; and “A Libellus from St. Martialis of Limoges Written in the Time of Ademar of Chabannes (989–1034): ‘Un faux à retardement,’” Scriptorium 37 (1983): 178–204; and Richard Landes and Catherine Paupert, Naissance d’apôtre: La vie de Saint Martial de Limoges, un apocryphe de l’an Mil (Brussels, 1991). Particularly similar are the two texts’ emphasis on reviving the dead, including in each vita a young nobleman’s squire; combating demons; and the claim of the author to be the saint’s disciple. Rouen, BM MS U 40, fols. 15–22; this quire dates to 976–1025, although the rest of the codex originated earlier in the tenth century. See Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, 56n29; Cat. gén. Rouen, 344–345; Cat. Rotomag., 185–187; François Avril, ed., Manuscrits normands: XIe–XIIe siècles (Rouen, 1975), 8. Avril does not distinguish this independent quire from the rest of the manuscript. See Historia certaminis, 670–674, 679–681, and 683–684 for Bartholomew’s various encounters with demons. Martialis faces demons in Vita Martialis prolixior, §iix [sic], xi, xii, xv, xvii, xix, xxi. He faces them embodied as pagan idols (§xi, xvii, xxi), liberates the possessed from their possession (§xii, xix), and revives those they have perfidiously killed (§iix, xv). Bartholomew conjures demons at Historia certaminis, 679–681, after already having rendered one powerless at 670–671; Martialis conjures demons from statues in Vita Martialis prolixior, §xi, xxi, and another confesses his imminent defeat and banishment in §xvii. Roughly contemporary sculptures of Martin of Tours brandishing a hammer with which to smash idols found in early Norman churches reveal similar interest in such scenes; see the conclusions of Jacques Le Maho summarized by Jean-Jacques Bertaux, “A propos des saints en Normandie, érémitisme, iconographie, culte populaires,” AN 55 (2005): 377–381 at 378. VTa, viii (49–52); VTb, 640 §6–7. VTa, viii (51); VTb, 640 §7. Abdias describes one demon in very similar terms, if in more detail. Historia certaminis, 683. Mesnel notes this similarity; “Saint Taurin,” 31. Aurelianus presents a similar image; Vita Martialis prolixior, §xv. Both texts are quoted in Herrick, “Imagining the Sacred Past,” 89n22. Martialis revives dead people; Vita Martialis prolixior, §vi, iix, xiii, xv. Taurinus revives the dead; VTa, vii (48), ix (58–60); VTb, 640 §5, 642 §11–12. Pagan priests scheme to kill Bartholomew (and then do) on pages 684–687 of the Historia certaminis; they strike Martialis in Vita Martialis prolixior, §xi, then imprison and beat him in §xiii. Taurinus defeats a similar plot; VTa, viii (52–53); VTb, 641 §8.

Notes to Pages 59–64 38.

39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

189

Demons readily confess that Bartholomew has their hands bound and their voices stilled; Historia certaminis, 671, 679–680. Taurinus likewise binds his opponents; VTa, viii (51); VTb, 640 §7. The demons Martialis silences similarly confess their impotence in his presence; see Vita Martialis prolixior, §xi. VTa, vi (47); VTb, 640 §4. VTa, vii (48–49); VTb, 640 §5. VTa, viii (49–51); VTb, 640 §6–7. The text does not distinguish clearly between Satan and the demons who serve him; there is no clear sense that one held power on behalf of the other, or even that they are separate beings. Unlike the other texts, which present demons in statues as the minions of Satan, Deodatus seems to view them as manifestations of Satan himself. VTa, viii (52–53); VTb, 641 §8 (for the assassination attempt); VTa, ix (53–60); VTb, 641–642 §8–12 (for the confrontation with the Roman official). VTa, vi (47); VTb, 640 §4. VTa, viii (51); VTb, 640, §7. This speech echoes those made by Abdias’s demons; Historia certaminis, 671, 680. VTa, vii (49); VTb, 640 §5. VTa, viii (51); VTb, 640 §7. VTa, ix (53–60); VTb, 641–642 §9–12. “Saint Taurin,” 33–35. Licinius and his wife become Taurinus’s disciples and accompany him on a journey to Rome, where they are martyred. VTa, x (62); VTb, 642 §14. See, however, the important exception discussed in Chapter 1. VTa, x (60–61); VTb, 642 §13. A similar prophecy of doom is made in the Vita of Romanus of Rouen. A demon boasts to the saint that in revenge for Romanus’s cleansing a den of prostitutes and demons, the demon will raise a seafaring nation that will scatter the saint’s bones. Romanus responds that this nation will be fulfilling the divine plan and will obtain salvation. Felice Lifshitz sees in Romanus’s engagement with demons and their prophecies an effort to justify the Viking invasions and to incorporate the Vikings’ heirs into the divine plan. See Lifshitz, “St. Romain de Rouen: Missionaire franc dans la Normandie des Vikings,” in Voix d’ouest en Europe, souffles d’Europe en ouest: Actes du colloque international d’Angers, 21–24 mai 1992, ed. Georges Cessbron (Angers, 1993), 23–30; The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics 684–1090, Studies and Texts 122 (Toronto, 1995), 137–179. For the Vikings’ impact, see, among others, Lucien Musset, “Monachisme d’époque franque et d’époque ducale en Normandie: Le problème de la continuité,” in Aspects du monachisme en normandie (IVe–XVIIIe siècles): Actes du colloque scientifique de l’ “année des abbayes normandes” (Caen, 18–20 octobre 1979), ed. Lucien Musset (Paris, 1982), 55–74; Mathieu Arnoux, “La

190

54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Notes to Pages 64–68 conversion des Normands de Neustrie et la restauration de l’Église dans la province de Rouen,” in Le christianisme en occident du début du VIIe siècle au milieu du XIe siècle, ed. François Bougard, Regards sur l’histoire 117 (Paris, 1997), 269–281, esp. 269; Mathieu Arnoux and Christophe Maneuvrier, “Le pays normand: Paysage et peuplement (IXe–XIIIe siècles),” Tabularia “Études” 3 (2003): 1–27. De moribus, i.4 (132). VTa, xii (64–66); VTb, 642–643 §15. De moribus, “Epistola panegerica,” and 123–124, 125–126, 126–127, 214, and 292. For Dudo’s patrons, see Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1997), 219–220; Eric Christiansen, Dudo of St. Quentin: History of the Normans (Woodbridge, 1998), xxiii–xxix; Eleanor Searle suggests that Duchess Gunnor also influenced Dudo,“Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin,” Viator 15 (1984): 119–137. The only evidence for the identity of Dudo and Deodatus would be the vague similarity of the names; the possible influence of Archbishop Robert at Saint-Taurin, as archbishop and/or count of Évreux; the possible need to seek an author for the Vita in Rouen rather than at the monastery itself; and the striking similarity of the two texts’ visions, vocabulary, and style—all of which might easily derive from their common background. Thus there is no reason to suppose that in fact Dudo wrote the Vita Taurini, though the possibility remains faintly alive in the lack of evidence for any other author. For the school of Rouen (which gravitated around Robert), see Lucien Musset, “Le satiriste Garnier de Rouen et son milieu (début du XIe siècle),” Revue du Moyen Âge Latin 10 (1954): 237–266; Jean-Michel Bouvris, “L’école capitulaire de Rouen au XIe siècle,” Études normandes 3 (1986): 89–103; Emily Albu, The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2001), 49–50. The girl is revived at VTa, vii (48–49), and VTb, 640 §4–5; the two young men at VTa, ix (58–60), and VTb, 642 §11–12. Miraculous cures generally accompany the mass baptisms but are incidental to conversion. Taurinus is described as preaching twice, once at the end of his life and once just before his first miracle and the first large-scale conversion. See VTa, vii (48) and xi (63); VTb, 640 §4, 642 §14. Vita Martialis prolixior, §vii; Historia certaminis, 674. Vita Martialis prolixior, §vii. VTa, vii (48–49); VTb, 640 §5. VTa, vii (49), viii (51), ix (59); VTb, 640 §5, 640 §7, 642 §12. For the Norman historiographical tradition and its contrast with Frankish sources, see Olivier Guillot, “La conversion des Normands peu après 911:

Notes to Pages 68–72

65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

191

Des reflets contemporains à l’historiographie ultérieure (Xe–XIe s.),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles 24 (1981): 101–116, 181–219, esp. 198–219. De moribus, ii.5–6 (144–147). Ibid., ii.30 (170–171); see also Guillot, “La conversion des Normands,” 204, 206. Translatio prima Audoeni, 1671. Richer, Historiae, i.53; ii.20, 28. For William of Volpiano and Maiolus of Cluny, see Libellus de revelatione, aedificatione et auctoritate Fiscannensis monasterii, in Neustria pia, 193–215 (repr. PL 151: 699–724) at xix and xvi, respectively. See further Niethard Bulst, “La réforme monastique en Normandie: Étude prosopographique sur la diffusion et l’implantation de la réforme de Guillaume de Dijon,” trans. Victor Saxer, Études Anselmiennes: Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècle 4 (1984): 317–330 at 317–318; Mathieu Arnoux, “Les premières chroniques de Fécamp: De l’hagiographie à l’histoire,” in Les saints dans la Normandie médiévale, 71–82. See also David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), 36. De moribus, iv.110 (273). See particularly De moribus, iv.84 (239), where the Danes are begged to come to Richard’s aid in the 940s as his kinsmen. De moribus, iv.114 (277). Ibid., iv.120–124 (282–287). Richard preaches to the Vikings for weeks on end and finally brings the leaders around to conversion. See also Samantha Kahn Herrick, “Heirs to the Apostles: Saintly Power and Ducal Authority in Hagiography of Early Normandy,” in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350, ed. Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto (Aldershot, 2005), 11–24. See also Pierre Bouet’s notion that Dudo’s portrait of Richard I was intended to cultivate the late duke’s veneration: “Dudon de Saint-Quentin et Fécamp,” Tabularia “Études” 2 (2002): 57–70. GND, iv.16. Flodoard, Annales, 153 (year 962). See also Karl Ferdinand Werner, “L’acquisition par la maison de Blois des comtés de Chartres et de Châteaudun,” in Mélanges de numismatique, d’archéologie et d’histoire offerts à Jean Lafaurie (Paris, 1980), 265–272. Richard married Hugh Capet’s sister Emma in 960. Flodoard, Annales, 88 (year 943). This argument is put forth in particular by Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley, 1988), 86. GND, v.12. As Elisabeth Van Houts points out, William seems here to conflate two separate campaigns; see GND, 2:24n3. GND, v.12. That Robert’s Norwegian godson later became a saint no doubt increased the charm of this probably fictional relationship. See, however,

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Notes to Pages 73–77

Stéphane Coviaux, “Norvège et Normandie au XIe siècle,” AN 55 (2005): 195–211. 79. Bates, Normandy before 1066, 36–37. Bates notes the abrupt disappearance of Norman coinage from Viking hoards in the early eleventh century; Stéphane Coviaux argues that the Norwegians tried to maintain an alliance with the Normans into the 1050s but that after 1013 there is no sign of Norman interest in this project.

4. Reshaping History in the Bessin 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

VV; all references and quotations refer to the “Textus emendatior,” which better represents the early manuscripts, although a new edition is certainly desirable. Lucien Musset, “Notes de lecture sur la Vita Vigoris et les lettres de Sidoine Apollinaire: Volusianus, grand propriétaire gallo-romain du Bessin,” BSAN 56 (1961–1962): 821–824; Gaston Aubourg, “Saint Vigor, évêque de Bayeux (VIe siècle), la Vita Vigoris: Traduction et commentaire critique, première partie,” BSAN 57 (1963–1964): 317–375; Abbé Faucon, Essai historique sur le prieuré de Saint-Vigor-le-Grand (Bayeux, 1861); Neustria pia, 65. Aubourg, “Saint Vigor,” 320–323. VV, 300–301 §5. Ibid., 301 §6. For the identification of the sites and differing opinions, see Samantha Kahn Herrick, “Imagining the Sacred Past in Hagiography of Early Normandy: The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002), 117n6. VV, 301 §6. Ibid., 301–302 §8. Ibid., 302–303 §9. Some historians have also credited Vigor with founding a monastery at Reviers, the town he converts early in his career; see Faucon, Essai historique sur le prieuré de Saint-Vigor-le-Grand. Aubourg, “Saint Vigor,” 353–355, 358–359. VV, 300 §5. Ibid., 300–301 §5. Camelitum and Fraus Chelydri are described as “trans fretum maris,” but as the opposing identifications of these places show, such a vague detail does not suffice to make clear the location of the property concerned. VV, 301 §8. Ibid., 302 §8. The name of the hill was apparently meant to reflect its significance in pagan worship (even though it should then properly be Mons Fanum), as is clear from the contrast with its new name, Mons Chrismatum.

Notes to Pages 77–82

193

16. Ibid., 304 §11. 17. Jacques Le Maho, “La réutilisation funéraire des édifices antiques en Normandie au cours du haut Moyen Âge,” in L’environnement des églises et la topographie religieuse des campagnes médiévales: Actes du IIIe congrès international d’archéologie médiévale (Aix-en-Provence, 28–30 septembre, 1989), ed. M. Fixot and E. Zadora-Rio, Documents d’archéologie française 46 (Paris, 1994), 10–21. 18. The sole exception to this rule is the final miracle in which Vigor resurrects a goose his servant has killed, which De Smedt argues persuasively is an interpolation, VV, 303–304 §10; see also note “Num. 10—(a).” 19. VV, 302 §8. 20. John Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor of Bayeux,” AB 102 (1984): 303–312 at 309–311. 21. For analogous foundation legends, see Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995). 22. VV, 302–303 §9. 23. Ibid., 303 §9. 24. OV, iii (passim). For a brief overview of the extension of aristocratic families in this period, see David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), 99–128, and Jean-François Lemarignier, Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales (Lille, 1945); for one example in greater detail, see Gérard Louise, La Seigneurie de Bellême Xe–XIIe siècles: Dévolution des pouvoirs territoriaux et construction d’une seigneurie de frontière aux confins de la Normandie et du Maine à la charnière de l’an mil, 2 vols., Le Pays bas-normand, 85–86 (1992–1993). 25. RADN, nos. 49, 70, 74, 80, 95, 148, 201. 26. Indeed, Duke Robert was by no means above such pilfering himself as the charters testify. See further Cassandra Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 11 (Woodbridge, 1997) 121. 27. VV, 300–301 §5. 28. Ibid., 303 §9. Vigor’s prayer echoes Psalm 73:3 and Luke 1:52 (Vulgate). 29. Ibid., 301 §8. 30. Ibid., 302 §8. 31. For a broader view of the depiction of kings in hagiography and other legendary texts, see esp. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past. 32. See for example, David Crouch, The Normans: The History of a Dynasty (London, 2002), 46–47. 33. William of Jumièges reports the rumor of Richard III’s poisoning, GND, vi.2, as had Ademar of Chabannes at the time of the event: Ademari Cabannensis

194

34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

Notes to Pages 82–85 chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain et al., CCCM 129, pt. 1 (Turnhout, 1999) 184. William of Malmesbury accuses Robert, although whether the accusation was made earlier remains unknown, De gestis regum anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors et al., 2 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1998–1999), ii–179 (1:309). See further Crouch, The Normans, 46–47; Elisabeth Van Houts, introduction to GND, 1:xl–xli. For the designation, see RADN, no. 74; for the recognition, see GND, vi.3. William of Jumièges is the major source for these quarrels, the cause of which remains unclear; GND, vi.3–4 (for Archbishop Robert) and 5 (for Hugh). See also Fulbert of Chartres’s sympathetic letter to Archbishop Robert in exile in France in 1027: Letters, no. 126. Robert’s acts of plunder appear in the GND, as well as in Inventio et miracula sancti Vulfranni (BHL 8740), ed. Jean Laporte (Rouen, 1938), §28 (41); and in several of his own charters, see next note. RADN, no. 70. The charter likely dates to between 1031 and 1034. See also RADN, no. 74 (probably after 1030). VV, 300 §5. Many scholars have noted the patent symbolism of the serpent, or dragon, which derives in large part in Christian thinking from Revelations 12–15. See, for example, Aubourg, “Saint Vigor,” 361; and Maylis Baylé, “La lutte contre le dragon dans l’iconographie des saints en Normandie,” in Les saints dans la Normandie médiévale, 171–187. See further Stith Thompson, MotifIndex of Folk-Literature, 6 vols. (Bloomington, 1955–1958), 1:353; C. Grant Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 65. Luke 10:16–19 (Vulgate). Psalms 90:10–14, in the Gallican psalter, rather than the Hebrew. This version was the one common in the Gallic church, including the liturgy; this particular psalm was sung nightly at monastic compline, in accordance with the Benedictine Rule. Matthew 4:6–7 (Vulgate). Missale romanum, editio princeps (1570) (Rome, 1570), reprinted in facsimile by Manlio Sodi et al., Monumenta liturgica Concilii Tridentini 2 (Vatican City, 1998), 132–133. Although the liturgy used at Cerisy cannot be certainly known due to the loss of the abbey’s manuscripts, the monks likely followed the Romano-Frankish liturgy elaborated in the Carolingian era and disseminated in large part from Fécamp after 1001. This liturgy forms the basis of the 1570 Missale. See Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, trans. Francis A. Brunner, 2 vols. (New York, 1950). Robert Baldwin, “‘I slaughter barbarians’: Triumph as a Mode in Medieval Christian Art,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 59, no. 4 (1990): 225–242, http:// oak.conncoll.edu/rwbal/Publications.

Notes to Pages 85–86

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44. VV, 300 §5.Vigor here wears a stole although not yet ordained bishop or in major orders at all, as far as the text makes clear; for the history and significance of this garment, see especially Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien: Étude sur la liturgie latine avant Charlemagne, 5th ed. (Paris, 1925), 410–415. 45. Later readers also understood the episode in this sense. See the fifteenthcentury work of Johannes Capella, “Vita Gervini abbatis Centulensis,” cap. vii of Chronicon Centulense, ed. Godefroid Henskens and Daniel van Papenbroek, AASS March I (1668): 283–288 at §8 (285). 46. The first Vita of Samson (BHL 7478–7479) was written by an anonymous Breton monk of the ninth century. It recounts Samson’s victory over three serpents and a lion; all the episodes contain elements found in the Vita Vigoris. La vie ancienne de saint Samson de Dol: Texte édité, traduit et commenté, ed. Pierre Flobert, Sources d’histoire médiévale (Paris, 1997), i.32, 50, 57–58. 47. Rouen, BM MS U 39. See Appendix 1. The Vita Samsonis also appears in numerous other early Norman manuscripts, including Rouen, BM MSS U 32 (twelfth-century, from Fécamp); U 39 (twelfth-century, from Jumièges); U 3 (eleventh- or twelfth-century, from Fécamp); and Alençon, BM MS 12 (twelfth-century, from Saint-Evroult). 48. Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Marcelli episcopi Parisiensis (BHL 5248), VFOP, 49–54 at 53–54. 49. Montpellier, BM Academiae medicae (FM) 1 t. 2 (twelfth-century, from Clairvaux); Montpellier, BM Academiae medicae (FM) 30 (twelfth-century, from Clairvaux or Saint-Benign, Dijon); Paris, BnF MS Lat. 17,006 (twelfthcentury, from the Cistercian abbey of Val-Notre-Dame); Paris, BnF MS Lat. 16,733 (twelfth-century, from the Cistercian monastery of Chaâlis). Because these collections are all of Cistercian provenance, it is plausible that Cistercian houses in Normandy also possessed copies of the texts these codices contain. Nicasius also appears with Marcellus in the eleventh-century manuscript Paris, BnF MS Lat. 15,436 (probably from the chapter of SaintMarcel, Paris). 50. The earliest evidence of this tradition dates from the fifteenth century; the episode does not appear in his vita, which Felice Lifshitz dates to the middle of the tenth century. Lifshitz posits that the legend had long been known by the time it was put into writing in the fifteenth century, but there is no evidence to date the appearance of the episode. See Fulbert of Rouen, Vita Romani, ed. Felice Lifshitz, The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics, 684–1090, Studies and Texts 122 (Toronto, 1995), 234–267; Lifshitz also discusses dragons specifically at Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 152–154. 51. Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 153. Jules Lair dismissed the dragon episode altogether (as well as Vigor’s resuscitation of a boy) as too common

196

52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

Notes to Pages 86–91 to be meaningful, “Études sur les origines de l’évêché de Bayeux III: Saint Manvieu, Saint Contest, Saint Vigor,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 29 (1868): 33–55 at 39. See Catherine Cubitt, “Memory and Narrative in the Cult of Early AngloSaxon Saints,” in Uses of the Past, 29–66. Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Paterni episcopi Abrincensis (BHL 6477), VFOP, 33–37 at 34. Romanus of Rouen likewise cleanses a shrine, though in his case the temple of Venus was so called not because it still harbored pagan rites but because it sheltered prostitutes. See Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, 248. Redeveris (Reviers, Calvados; arrond. Caen, cant. Creully). VV, 299 §3. VV, 299 §4. The miracle itself vaguely echoes that told in John 4:46–54 (Vulgate). VV, 299 §4. RADN, no. 64. Hugh’s extensive patrimony is examined in detail by Véronique Gazeau, “Le patrimoine d’Hugues de Bayeux (c. 1011–1049),” in Les évêques normands, 139–147. Gazeau notes that Hugh’s holdings diminished over time, but this occurred late in his career. See, among others, Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity. Flodoard, Annales, 95 (year 944); see also Richer, Historiae, ii.42–43. For the quarrel see Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley, 1988), 82, who suggests that the two did not act in concert but in rivalry. Flodoard, Annales, 98 (year 945). Richer gives an identical description based upon Flodoard: Historiae, ii.47. See Bates, Normandy before 1066, xiv, 13–14, 26–27, 34; Searle, Predatory Kinship, 68–86; Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Quelques observations au sujet des débuts du duché de Normandie,” in Droit public et institutions régionales: Études historiques offertes à Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), 691–709; Henri Prentout, Essai sur les origines et la fondation du duché de Normandie (Paris, 1911), 240–245; and Étude critique sur Dudon de S. Quentin et son Histoire des premiers ducs normands (Paris, 1916), 359–363; Steven Fanning and Bernard S. Bachrach, introduction to The Annals of Flodoard of Reims, 919–966 (Peterborough, Ont., 2004), xviii, xxii. Flodoard, Annales, 97–98 (year 945); Richer, Historiae, ii.47–48. Norway was converted in the eleventh century by saint Olaf (1014–1030); Denmark converted under Harold Bluetooth (circa 950–985). For the successive waves of immigration from the north, see Searle, Predatory Kinship. Flodoard, Annales, 88 (year 943).

Notes to Pages 91–94

197

67. Ibid. See also Jean Renaud, Les Vikings et la Normandie (Rennes, 1989), 89. 68. Translatio secunda Audoeni, 1676. See further Annie Renoux, “Palais capétiens et normands à la fin du Xe siècle et au debut du XIe siècle,” in Le roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an Mil: Actes du colloque Hugues Capet, 987–1987; La France de l’an Mil, Paris-Senlis, 22–25 juin, 1987, ed. Michel Parisse and Xavier Barral i Altet (Paris, 1992), 179–191. 69. Translatio secunda Audoeni, 1678. See also Gallia christiana, 11:352–353; Lucien Musset, “Un millénaire oublié: La rémise en place de la hiérarchie épiscopale en Normandie autour de 990,” in Papauté, monachisme et théories politiques: Études d’histoire médiévale offertes à Marcel Pacaut, vol. 2, Les églises locales, ed. P. Guichard et al. (Lyon, 1994), 563–573, esp. 566. Additionally, Dudo of Saint-Quentin claims a Bishop Heiric of Bayeux baptized Richard I at Fécamp circa 933, but no contemporary source confirms Heiric’s existence. De moribus, iii.46 (191). 70. Hariulf, Chronicon, iii.23. For Hariulf ’s source, the vita of Abbot Angelramnus the Wise of Saint-Riquier (died 1045), see Chronicon, xxxiii–xxxiv; and for his dates, v, ix, and xvi–xvii. 71. Hariulf, Chronicon, iii.28. 72. For Avitianus’s profitable sale of the relics to Saint-Riquier, see ibid. On relic theft generally, see Patrick J. Geary, Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Princeton, 1990). 73. De moribus, iv.84–88 (239–246), and the poem between caps. 88–89 (245–246). For Dudo’s general reliance on Flodoard (which renders this divergence the more remarkable), see most recently Stéphane Lecouteux, “Une reconstitution hypothétique du cheminement des Annales de Flodoard, depuis Reims jusqu’à Fécamp,” Tabularia “Études” 4 (2004): 1–38. 74. De moribus, iv.85 (240).

5. Claiming the Heritage of the French Vexin 1.

A provisional edition of the Passio Nicasii may be pieced together from proPN, PNa, and PNb. See Appendix 2 for more detail. In the absence of a critical or even a unitary edition, PNms will provide the basis for quotations here, with reference to the Bollandist editions. 2. “[E]t isti patres nostri sanctissimi,” PNms, fol. 111v; PNa, 373. 3. A. Legris, “Les premiers martyrs du vexin, saints Nicaise, Quirin, Scuvicule, Pience,” RCN 22(1912): 280–296, 320–329, 421–435; 23 (1913): 70–85, esp. 421–435. For Saint-Ouen’s ambitions as a pilgrimage center, see also Lucien Musset, “Recherches sur les pèlerins et les pèlerinages en Normandie jusqu’à la Première Croisade,” AN 12 (1962): 127–150.

198

Notes to Pages 94–99

4. The Passio Nicasii itself does not explicitly distinguish between the French and Norman Vexins; accordingly, this chapter mainly refers to “the Vexin” in the singular, except where distinction is required. 5. “Omnipotens deus populum galliarum ab hostis antiqui noxia seruitute eruere. et ueri solis fulgore lustratum sue ditioni mancipare decreuisset”; PNms, fol. 111v; PNa, 372–373. See also note 9 below. 6. “[C]ernens diabolus diuinitatis cultum christianorum augmentando in dies proficere sueque artis ac nequitie fraudes paulatim deficere; omnes conatus suos seuiendo cepit in dei seruos conuertere,” PNms, fol. 113v; PNb, 631. 7. “Estisne uos seductores perfidi . . . ad euertendum populum uenistis? . . . non sumus seductores sed reductores hominum ad cognitionem creatoris sui. Neque ut tu improperas euertimus populum; sed conuertimus eum ad uiam ueritatis et pacis . . . Quia ergo conuertistis populum; conuertite et uosmetipsos ad culturam deorum nostrorum,” PNms, fol. 113v; PNb, 631–632. The accusation as “seductores,” as well as the spirit of wordplay, come from the Passio Dionysii, §xxvi. 8. Passio Dionysii, §xviii. 9. “Cum uero omnipotens deus populum galliarum ab hostis antiqui noxia seruitute eruere. et ueri solis fulgore lustratum sue ditioni mancipare decreuisset; posuit in corde beatissimi clementis. ut sanctum dionisium tali alloquio conueniret,” PNms, fol. 111v; PNa, 372–373 (with the omission of the verb eruere). Ditio appears with the same meaning, “authority,” in RADN, nos. 4 (referring to ducal authority), 13 (referring to the authority of a Norman lord), and 15 (referring to divine authority). 10. Passio Dionysii, §xviii. 11. Ibid., §xix. 12. 2 Timothy 2:1–3, 24–26 (Vulgate). 13. “Quia ergo es uerissimus testamenti domini relator et inflexibilis bellorum domini praeliator. aggredere uiriliter partes galliarum; ac scuto dominice protectionis uallatus. oppone te ipsum pro domo israel murum ualidissimum. et sta pro ea inuictus in bello. Pugna cum antiquo serpente. et libera animas ipsius fraude deceptas; ut reddens eas domino. merearis intrare in gaudium domini tui,” PNms, fol. 111v; PNa, 373. The image of the wall echoes the Passio Dionysii, where Hilduin uses it to symbolize paganism, but much more closely echoes Ezekiel 13:5 (Vulgate). 14. “Et conuocans sancti collegii fraternitatem exhortatus est eos in sancto seruitio dei. monens unumquenque pro grege domini certare usque ad mortem,” PNms, fol. 112; PNa, 373, where lege appears in place of grege (as it does in at least one Norman manuscript, see Appendix 2). 15. “Et sicut uidebitis signo crucis hunc praesentialiter discerptum; ita armate frontes uestras eodem signo sancte crucis. et scitote a uobis omnem argu-

Notes to Pages 99–101

16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

199

mentum diaboli effugandum. Et facto signo crucis. ad inuocationem nominis Christi diruptus est draco. ita ut ne signum aliquod malicie uel cadaueris eius in toto mundo remaneret,” PNms, fol. 113; PNb, 630. Tradition recognized Nicasius, Quirinus, and Scubiculus as martyrs from at least the ninth century. “[S]ancti martyres quasi ex uno ore respondentes; dixerunt. Ne putes hominum stultissime. nos minis tuis terreri. Quod enim minaris; diu est quod optamus. Quod implere cupis. ex multo tempore desideramus,” PNms, fols. 113v–114; PNb, 632. The image of the saints responding unanimously echoes Passio Dionysii, §xxvi. “Tu autem nisi resipiscas; cum patre tuo diabolo in inferni baratro ea morte puniendus eris . . . occisi placebimus domino in regione uiuorum. Tu uero cum antiquo hoste dampnatus; ignem patieris aeternum,” PNms, fol. 114; PNb, 632. “Cumque decollati fuissent; iussit corpora eorum auibus improbis. canibus ferisque uoranda derelinqui,” PNms, fol. 114; PNb, 632. “Sed omnipotens deus iussit ea [corpora] ab angelis intacta custodiri. Recedentibus uero satellitibus ac succedente tempore nocturni silentii; electi [i.e. erecti] sancti martyres angelis comitibus. apprehensis propriorum corporum capitibus properantes peruenerunt ad fluuium . . . ,” PNms, fol. 114. The translation reflects the wording of MSS U 39 and Y 41, which both have “erecti sancti martyres,” rather than “electi.” This reading is preferable, particularly as it echoes its source, the Passio Dionysii, almost exactly: “et beatissimi Dionysii se cadaver erexit,” Passio Dionysii, §xxxii. This appears to be the wording also of the Namur manuscripts that the Bollandists edited, since they too have “erecti,” PNb, 632. PNms, fol. 114. MS Y 41, the Livre noir, reflects a new reading, discussed in Appendix 2. The Bollandists give a variation on the text of the Livre noir, PNb, 632. For Nicasius’s burial by Pientia, and its relationship to the Passio Dionysii, see Appendix 2. PNms, fol. 113v; PNb, 631. Passio Dionysii, §xxxi–xxxii. “[E]dificata est aecclesia in honorem sanctorum Nichasii episcopi. Quirini presbyteri. et Scuuiculi diaconi”; PNms, fol. 114; the Bollandists’ edition does not name the saints in this passage, PNb, 632; but does at 629. Historia francorum, i.30. See also Pseudo-Venantius Fortunatus, Passio Dionysii episcopi Parisiensis, Rustici, et Eleutherii martyrum (BHL 2171), VFOP, 101–105 at 102–103. See Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “The Cult of St. Denis and Capetian Kingship,” JMH 1 (1975): 43–69.

200

Notes to Pages 102–103

28. Spiegel, “The Cult of St. Denis”; see also Michael Lapidge, “The Lost ‘Passio metrica S. Dionysii’ by Hilduin of Saint-Denis,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 22 (1987): 56–79. This notion of apostolicity remains very unclear. Its clarification is one goal of my next project. 29. PNms, fols. 111v–112; PNb, 629. 30. PNms, fol. 111v; PNb, 628. 31. Mark 16:17–19 (Vulgate). 32. Nicasius says to the demon: “Adiuro te nequissime demon. qui ad decipiendas animas hominum et corpora in hac rupe latitas. per ineffabile nomen sancte et indiuidue trinitatis ac per uirtutem domini nostri Iesu Christi qui te dudum cum patre tuo sathana in inferni baratrum dimersum perpetua dampnatione multauit; ut ab hoc loco recedens exeas. nec ultra cuiquam nocere praesumas. sed relictis accessibus hominum. pro quibus iam Christus suum dignatus est fundere sanguinem. ad ignem tibi eternaliter praeperatum sine mora redeas; nec meam uocem ut hominis contempnas. sed eius imperium metuas. quem tremunt angeli Iesu Christi filii dei uiui regnantis in secula,” PNms, fol. 113; PNb, 630–631. Nicasius sends his companion Quirinus to subdue the dragon, which he does with the sign of the cross and by binding him with the bishop’s stole, PNms, fol. 112v; PNb, 630. 33. De Bye, “Commentarius historico-criticus,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 513–514 §13; Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 280. 34. “Transeuntes itaque fluuium qui uocatur isara. uenerunt in pagum uilcasinum in praedium cui uocabulum est uallis,” PNms, fol. 112; PNb, 629 omits mention of the Vexin. 35. De Bye, “Commentarius historico-criticus,” AASS Oct V (1786): 513 §11; Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 323. 36. “Est autem super ripam sequane rupes excelsa ualde; in loco quem appellant incole monticas,” PNms, fol. 113; PNb, 630. 37. De Bye, “Commentarius historico-criticus,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 513 §12; see Samantha Kahn Herrick, “Imagining the Sacred Past in Hagiography of Early Normandy: The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002), 165n40 for the problems this identification poses. Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 323. See the map printed around 1660 by P. du Val, L’isle de France, le Valois, le Vexin françois, le Hurepoix et la Brie, extract repr. in Marcel Lachiver, Histoire de Mantes et du Mantois à travers chroniques et mémoires des origines à 1792 (Meulan, 1971), plate xi. 38. “[I]nuenerunt eos in quodam foro quod dicitur scannis uerbum domini populis praedicantes,” PNms, fol. 113v; PNb, 631. See Vies des saints, 10:341, for the widely accepted identification with Gasny. L.L. Goubert argued at length for an identification of Scannis with Écos (arrond. Les Andelys, cant. Écos), but his arguments are cogently refuted by Legris. See Legris, “Pre-

Notes to Pages 103–105

201

miers martyrs,” 325–327, where he gives a résumé of Goubert, Notice sur saint Nigaise, Apôtre du Vexin. Legris himself appears to accept the identification of Scannis with Gasny, “Premiers martyrs,” 325–326. 39. “[A]pprehensis propriorum corporum capitibus properantes peruenerunt ad fluuium cui uocabulum est ita. Transmeatoque uado ante hanc horam hominibus incognito. et iccirco deinceps ob sanctorum memoriam uadum Nichasii nuncupato”; PNms, fol. 114; PNb, 632, but with no reference to the ford being named for Nicasius. The Latin name of Gasny is indeed Vadiniacum or Vuadiniacum, though as Legris argues, the etymology is incredible. “Premiers martyrs,” 325. The church at Gasny which had housed Nicasius’s relics in (and perhaps before) the ninth century belonged in the tenth and eleventh to Saint-Ouen; the hagiographer’s desire to connect inextricably the saint, whose relics rested in the abbey, with Gasny may reflect a fear of losing it, particularly to the cathedral. See Pierre Bauduin, La première Normandie (Xe–XIe siècles): Sur les frontières de la Haute Normandie; Identité et construction d’une principauté (Caen, 2004), 270–271; Felice Lifshitz, “The Politics of Historiography: The Memory of Bishops in Eleventh-Century Rouen,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 10 (1998): 118–137; Louis Violette, “Le problème de l’attribution d’un texte rouennais du XIe siècle: Les Acta archiepiscoporum rothomagensium,” AB 115 (1997): 113–129; and Louis Violette, “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais: Valorisation de reliques par l’hagiographie au XIe siècle,” in Autour des morts: mémoire et identité; Actes du Ve colloque international sur la sociabilité, Rouen, 19–21 novembre 1998, ed. Olivier Dumoulin and Françoise Thelamon (Rouen, 2001), 377–386. 40. The contrast, for example, with Hilduin’s view of conversion is striking; compare to Passio Dionysii, §xxi–xxii. 41. A crowd of people is described as having been near enough to the demon’s cave to see or hear his defeat when he fled by bursting through the cliff top, but not enough is said of them to allow comparison with the people of Vaux. PNms, fol. 113; PNb, 631. 42. “Illi igitur aspicientes personarum ignoti habitus qualitatem. audientes omnibus seculis inexpertam eloquii nouitatem. ut agrestes mente hebetes hesitabant utrum ut futuri seculi urbani interpretatores audirentur; an ut deorum aduersarii aut uituperatores contempti eorum iudicio punirentur. Saniores uero capitis uiri intellecta promisse sibi salutis misericordia. nec immemores dampni sibi illati a draconis malicia; conuocatis sanctis dixerunt eis. Patres nostri a primis temporibus et nos usque modo in hoc loco feliciter uiximus; et cum salute corporum sine malorum incursu securi permansimus. Nunc uero insidiatur nobis draco seuissimus potum prohibens et quoscumque contingere potest occidens; in super et flatu suo

202

43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

Notes to Pages 106–109 pestem nobis diram immittens. Si ergo deus uester potens est nos a tantis eripere malis. et restituere in prosperitatem transacte quietis; adhibeatur nunc fides dictis; et parati sumus obedire eius iussionibus sanctis. Hiis itaque beatus Nichasius auditis; letus gratias retulit deo pro perceptis sermonibus iam sperate salutis,” PNms, fol. 112v; PNb, 629–630. “At uero sanctus Quirinus accedens et stolam magistri ipsius collo imponens cepit eum trahere; et uinctum ac catenatum episcopali praesentie exhibuit. Videntes autem qui cum episcopo erant et uerba sue salutis ab eo gratanter audiebant hoc factum mirabile; ueluti infirme mentis homines conturbati sunt non modice. ac pauore nimio soluti de solo fuge praesidio cogitabant,” PNms, fol. 112v; PNb, 630. PNms, fols. 112–112v (for the dragon), and fol. 113 (for the demon); PNb, 629 (dragon), 630 (demon). Annales Bertiniani, 37 (year 841); 49–50 (year 845); 72–73 (year 856); 84 (year 861). See also Janet L. Nelson, The Annals of St.-Bertin (Manchester, 1991), 75n1. Annales Vedastini, ed. Bernhard von Simson, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 12 (Hannover, 1909; repr. 1979), 56–63 (years 885–886); Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Près, Le siège de Paris par les Normands, poème du IXe siècle, ed. Henri Waquet, CHFMA (Paris, 1942). Carroll Gillmor, “Charles the Bald and the Small Free Farmers, 862–869,” in Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD 1–1300: Papers from an International Research Seminar at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, 2–4 May 1996, ed. Anne Nørgård Jorgensen and Birthe L. Clausen (Copenhagen, 1997), www.deremilitari.org; Simon Coupland, “From Poachers to Gamekeepers: Scandinavian Warlords and Carolingian Kings,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 85–114. Passio Dionysii, §xxxii, xxxvi. Émile Réaux, Histoire de Meulan (Meulan, 1868), 38–39; Marcel Lachiver, Histoire de Meulan et de sa région par les textes (Meulan, 1965), 11. The location of the church on the island emerges from Nicolas Davanne, as cited in Neustria pia, 332; see also Recueil des chartes de Saint-Nicaise de Meulan, prieuré de l’ordre du Bec, ed. Émile Houth (Paris, 1924), vii. Legris and Réaux both relate the tradition regarding Pientia, though without, in either case, mentioning their sources. It cannot be earlier than the late eleventh century when the lords of La Roche–Guyon first appear (the keep itself is twelfth-century, though the site may have served as defense of some kind during the ninth century). The better part of Pientia’s head was later translated, as was her finger, to the castle chapel where all the saints are still venerated. See Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 433; Réaux, Histoire de Meulan, 43 (he reports that Nicasius and company came to La Roche–Guyon be-

Notes to Pages 109–110

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

203

fore their deaths); De Bye, “Commentarius historico-criticus,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 532 §81; Suger of Saint-Denis, Vita Ludovici regis VI, qui grossus dictus, ed. Henri Waquet, CHFMA 11 (Paris, 1929), cap. 26. The tradition regarding Nicasius’s miracle at Mantes is recorded in the seventeenth-century chronicle of Mantes attributed to Jean de Chèvremont and excerpted in Lachiver, Histoire de Mantes et du Mantois, 25. For Rollo: RADN, no. 53; see also Bauduin, La première Normandie, 270. For Henry I and Louis VI: OV, v.19 (3:188); Suger, Vita Ludovici VI, ibid. See also Lucien Musset, “La frontière du Vexin,” Annuaire des cinq départements de la Normandie 124 (1966): 42–49 at 47; Judith A. Green, “Lords of the Norman Vexin,” in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. John Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), 46–63 at 49. Count Drogo of the Vexin and Amiens controlled the castle of Mantes; he granted exemption from its tolls to Norman abbeys on more than one occasion; see RADN, no. 63; more generally, see: Bauduin, La première Normandie, 254–257; David Bates, “Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors: The Family of the Counts of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin in France and England during the Eleventh Century,” in The Sudeleys—Lords of Toddington (London, 1987), 34–48 at 37. Louis Violette makes a similar point in noting that the translation of Nicasius’s relics fulfilled his wish, while alive, to reach Rouen. “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais,” 385. Suger, Vita Ludovici VI, cap. 38. See also Robert Barroux, “L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin en 1124,” Le Moyen Âge: Revue d’histoire et de philologie 24 (1958): 1–26 at 11–13. The propositions both of the abbey’s possession of the Vexin and of the king’s vassality were strengthened by forged documents: a charter containing the grant of the Vexin to Saint-Denis by Dagobert, which passed for genuine among many modern historians, and a charter of Charlemagne establishing the king’s vassalage to the abbey. See Jacques Flach, Les origines de l’ancienne France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1904), 3:525–526; A. Lecoy de la Marche, Oeuvres complètes de Suger (Paris, 1867), 442 (who claims the abbots enfeoffed the counts of the Vexin from the middle of the ninth century); Lachiver, “Le Vexin français,” 6; Paul Feuchère, “Une tentative manquée de concentration territoriale entre Somme et Seine: La principauté d’AmiensValois au XIe siècle,” Le Moyen Âge 60 (1954): 1–38, esp. 6; and Barroux, “L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin,” 4n12, 15 and elsewhere. OV, i.24 (1:161); see also Crouch, The Normans, 194–197; and David Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986). Waleran was eventually captured by ducal forces in 1124; he was about eighteen at the time of his first rebellion.

204

Notes to Pages 111–116

56. See Barroux, “L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin,” 5, 13–15; Crouch, Beaumont Twins, 13–24; Green, “Lords of the Norman Vexin.” 57. “[N]on tamen incommodum duximus et de hiis qui ex ipsorum partibus et eorum temporibus ad nos uenire nostramque regionem praedicationibus illustrare. beneficiis sanare. et suo sanguine consecrare dignati sunt uel breuiter dicere,” PNms, fol. 111v; proPN.

6. Broader Perspective 1. See Introduction. 2. Felice Lifshitz makes a similar argument regarding the Vita Romani, which has its hero foretell his city’s invasion and recovery. However, Lifshitz does not see any real need for restoration after 911, nor would she see the early eleventh century as a period in which such concerns attracted the attention of Norman authors. See Lifshitz, The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics 684–1090, Studies and Texts 122 (Toronto, 1995); and, more broadly, “The Migration of Neustrian Relics in the Viking Age: The Myth of Voluntary Exodus, the Reality of Coercion and Theft,” Early Medieval Europe 4, no. 2 (1995): 175–192; and “The ‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered: The Translation of the Relics of St. Gildard of Rouen to Soissons,” AB 110 (1992): 329–340; these works respond to Lucien Musset, “L’exode des reliques du diocèse de Sées au temps des invasions normandes,” Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique de l’Orne 88 (1970): 3–22; and A. Legris, “L’exode des corps saints au diocèse de Rouen (IXe–XIe siècles),” RCN 28 (1919): 125–136, 168–174, 209–221. 3. See Samantha Kahn Herrick, “Heirs to the Apostles: Saintly Power and Ducal Authority in Hagiography of Early Normandy,” in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350, ed. Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto (Aldershot, 2005), 11–24. 4. The bishops of Lyon, Vienne, Marseille, Arles, Orange, Vaison, Apt, Nice, Autun, Cologne, Trier, Reims, Rouen, Bordeaux, Gévaudan (Gabali), and Eauze attended. “Acta concilii Arelatensis (314),” ed. Giovan Domenico Mansi et al., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio 2 (1759): 463–512. 5. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, ed. [in Greek] and trans. Kirsopp Lake, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1949–1953), v.1–4; Eusebius’s account also preserves a letter from the Christians of Lyon and Vienne to those in Smyrna describing the persecution. See also Frank D. Gilliard,“The Apostolicity of Gallic Churches,” Harvard Theological Review 68 (1975): 17–33. 6. Cyprian of Carthage, “Epistula lxviii,” ed. G. F. Diercks, Sancti Cypriani episcopi epistularium, CCL 3C (Turnhout, 1996), 463–468. 7. Historia francorum, i.30–31.

Notes to Pages 116–117 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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For a recent challenge to Gregory’s authority (and that of his greatest proponent, Louis Duchesne), see Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 8 (Leiden, 2002), 211–228. Amy G. Remensnyder offers a concise and perceptive overview of this phenomenon. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995), 95–100. “Zosimus universis episcopis per Gallias et septem provincias constitutis,” Epist. Arelat., 5–6. See further Ralph W. Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-Century Gaul (Washington, D.C., 1989), 48–60; Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses,” app. 1, “Trophimus and the Apostolic Foundation of the Church of Arles.” Ravennius of Arles et al., “Precis missas ab universis episcopis ad Leonem papam,” Epist. Arelat., 17–20. Pope Boniface I diminished the powers of the vicariate; Leo I upheld Boniface’s decision but in 444 conflicted directly with Bishop Hilary, whom he excommunicated, then transferred much of the authority of Arles elsewhere and freed the church of Vienne from its control. Hilary’s successor, Ravennius (449–452), mounted resistance and was joined in his letter to Leo by nineteen other bishops of southern Gaul. See Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism, 173–178; Martin Heinzelmann, “The ‘Affair’ of Hilary of Arles (445) and Gallo-Roman Identity in the Fifth Century,” in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? ed. John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge, 1992), 239–251. Gregory of Tours, De gloria beatorum martyrum, ed. Bruno Krusch, Gregorii episcopi Turonensis libri octo miraculorum, MGH SRM 1, pt. 2 (Hannover, 1885), i.55; the Bollandists distinguish this brief passage with its own entry in the BHL (BHL 2786); Fastes, 1:57, 2:138. Venantius Fortunatus also names Eutropius as first bishop of Saintes but mentions neither his martyrdom nor his connection to Clement. “De basilica sancti Eutropis,” Carminum, epistularum, expositionum libri undecim, i.13, ed. Friedrich Leo, Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri italici, Opera poetica, MGH AA 4, pt. 1 (Berlin, 1881), 15. The story of the martyrdom followed the invention of Eutropius’s relics and the discovery that his skull bore a scar. Paul the Deacon, Libellus de ordine episcoporum Metensium, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 2 (Hannover, 1829), 260–270; Paul attributes the see’s foundation to Bishop Clement, a disciple of Peter, not to be confused with the pope. Pseudo-Venantius Fortunatus, Passio sanctorum martyrum Dionisii Rustici, et Eleutherii (BHL 2171), VFOP, 101–105. See also Cornelius De Bye’s lengthy study prefacing (and following) the AASS edition, AASS Oct. IV (1780): 865–930; and, more briefly, Vies des saints, 10:274–275.

206 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

Notes to Pages 117–118 Odo of Beauvais, Passio Luciani episcopi et socii martyrum Bellovaci (BHL 5009), ed. Jean Bolland, AASS Jan. I (1643): 461–466; see also Fastes, 1:57. Vita Martialis antiquior (BHL 5551), ed. F. Arbellot, Bulletin de la société achéologique et historique du Limousin 40 (1892): 238–243; this early vita is distinct from the later one written by pseudo-Aurelianus, which portrays Martialis as a companion of Christ. For Périgueux, see the earliest Vita Fronti [or Frontonis] (BHL 3181t), which Maurice Coens dates to the early ninth century: Maurice Coens, “La vie ancienne de S. Front de Périgueux,” AB 48 (1930): 324–360, esp. 325–326 with edition at 343–360. Passio Dionysii. Vita Juliani (BHL 4545), ed. Gustave Busson and Ambroise Ledru, in Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, Archives historiques du Maine 2 (1901): 10–27. The first chapter of the Actus also relates the gesta of Julian and posits the same claim: “Gesta domni Juliani episcopi,” (BHL 4543), ed. Busson and Ledru, 28–39. See also Walter Goffart, The Le Mans Forgeries: A Chapter from the History of Church Property in the Ninth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 51, 188. Vita prima Austremonii primi episcopi Arvernorum (BHL 844), ed. Guillaume van Hoof, AASS Nov. I (1887): 49–54; see also Fastes, 2:119. For Verdun, see Fastes, 3:67–68. Le martyrologe d’Adon: Ses deux familles, ses trois recensions, texte et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud (Paris, 1984), 37, see also xix. See also Fastes, 1:151. Vita secunda Austremonii (BHL 845–847), ed. Van Hoof, AASS Nov. I (1887): 55–61. Gauzbert, chorepiscopus of Limoges, Vita [secunda] Frontonis episcopi Petragoricensis (BHL 3182d), ed. Maurice Coens, “La Scriptura de S. Fronto nova attribuée au chorévêque Gauzbert,” AB 75 (1957): 351–365. Gauzbert wrote between 969 and 992. Flodoard of Reims, Historiae Remensis ecclesiae, ed. Martina Stratmann, MGH SS 36 (Hannover, 1998) i.3; for the older tradition, see Hincmar of Reims, Opusculum LV capitulorum adversus Hincmarum Laudunensem, PL 126:282–494 at §xvi (334); see also Fastes, 3:79. Gesta Treverorum, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 8 (Hannover, 1848), 111–174; pseudo-Goldscherus of Trier, Vita Eucharii, Valerii, Materni (BHL 2655), ed. Jean Bolland, AASS Jan. II (1643): 918–922; Thomas Head, “Art and Artifice in Ottonian Trier,” Gesta 36 (1997): 65–82. Vita Martialis prolixior. Ursinus of Bourges first appears in Gregory of Tours, De gloria martyrum, (BHL 8411), then in the Vita secunda Austremonii (BHL 845–847), and the Vita Ursini prior (BHL 8413), ed. Hippolyte Delehaye, AASS Nov. IV (1925): 108–114; and finally, he appears in the eleventh-century Vita Ursini episcopi

Notes to Pages 118–119

24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

207

Bituricensis (BHL 8412), ed. Étienne Michel Faillon, Monuments inédits sur l’apostolat de Sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence, et sur les autres apôtres de cette contrée, vol. 2 (Paris, 1865), 423–428. See also Fastes, 1:124; and Thomas Bauer, “Ursinus,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon 12 (1997): 947–951, www.bautz.de. Ursinus was venerated in Lisieux from 1055 when Bishop Hugh obtained some relics from Bourges; see Bibliotheca sanctorum, 12:862. Georgius of Le Puy first appears in the tenth-century Vita secunda Frontonis, and then the eleventh-century Vita Georgii episcopi Aniciensis seu Podiensis (BHL 3360–3361), which was edited in the seventeenth century by François Bosquet from a manuscript now lost; see Fastes, 2:132–133. Vita antiqua Frontonis episcopi Petragoricensis (BHL 3181t), ed. Coens, “La vie ancienne,” 343–360; an earlier vita of Gaugericus of Cambrai (BHL 3286–3287) names Fronto simply as confessor. Gauzbert of Limoges, Vita [secunda] Frontonis, ed. Coens; Martyrologe d’Adon, ed. Dubois and Renaud, 364. Pseudo-Sebaldus of Périgueux, Vita Frontonis episcopi Petragoricensis (BHL 3183–3185), ed. Joseph van Hecke, AASS Oct. XI (1870): 407–414. The text van Hecke publishes more closely reflects a fourteenth-century version (BHL 3185) derived by Bernard Gui from an eleventh-century model (BHL 3183–3184) attributed to Sebaldus of Périgueux. The eleventh-century text furnished van Hecke’s “Codex B,” but his edition merges the two. See Coens, “La vie ancienne.” See also Fastes, 2:130–133; and Pierre Bonnassie et al., “La Gallia du Sud, 930–1130,” in Hagiographies, 1:289–344. Historia francorum, i.30–31; Gregory calls him Stremonius. Vita prima Austremonii (BHL 844), ed. van Hoof, AASS Nov. I (1887): 49 §1. The vita then reproduces Gregory of Tour’s list of the bishops sent to Gaul. See also Albert Poncelet, “La plus ancienne Vie de S. Austremoine,” AB 13 (1894): 33–46; Vies des saints, 11:35–40. Pseudo-Praejectus, Vita [tertia] Austremonii (BHL 848–850), ed. Guillaume Van Hoof, AASS Nov. I (1887): 61–77 at 62 §3. The dates cited here largely reflect the opinions of the Bollandists, the Benedictines of Paris, and Duchesne, as well as more focused work where it exists. “Acta concilii Lemovicensis II (1031),” ed. Mansi et al., Sacrorum conciliorum, nova et amplissima collectio 19 (1774): 507–548. Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); “The Turbulent Career of a Monk of the Year 1000: Documentary Inversions and the Tale of Ademar of Chabannes (989–1034),” (1995), www.mille.org. Landes discusses the modern controversy over Martialis, as does Albert Houtin, La controverse de l’apostolicité des églises de France au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1903). “Acta concilii Lemovicensis II (1031),” ed. Mansi, 514.

208

Notes to Pages 119–123

34. Ibid., 514–515, and Vulgate for John. The critic further cites Mark 16:20. Although Fronto’s revival of a companion features prominently in all known versions of his vita, it is accomplished by means of a staff given to the saint by Peter and so apparently did not meet the critic’s standard of revival effected by a saint’s own virtue. 35. Richard Landes, “A Libellus from St. Martial of Limoges Written in the Time of Ademar of Chabannes (989–1034): ‘Un faux à retardement,’” Scriptorium 37 (1983): 178–204; and Landes, “Turbulent Career.” 36. A Norman manuscript preserves one of the oldest copies of the Vita Martialis prolixior: Rouen, BM MS U 40, fols. 15–22. 37. See Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, 157–158, 163 and elsewhere. 38. A connection that interested Ademar, according to marginalia in his Historia. See Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, 159n29, 31; 160n35. 39. Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant, par Guillaume de Poitiers, ed. Raymond Foreville, CHFMA 23 (Paris, 1952), viii–ix. This scholar probably went south in the 1040s. 40. Precedence appears to have been the goal of the clergy of Périgueux, and it figured among the ambitions of the clergy of Limoges. It likewise motivated the claims of Trier. See Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History; Head, “Art and Artifice”; Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, 95–100. The claims to apostolic foundation that abounded have indeed generally been seen as local bids at status and privilege. However, as Felice Lifshitz argues in “Apostolicity Theses,” local agendas should not be taken for granted. A great deal more work is needed to untangle the precise chronology, logic, and motivations behind the many individual claims, as well as their composite significance; this work forms the basis of my next project. 41. Vigor’s vita does present its hero in standard motifs found elsewhere but does not simply adopt the deeds or character of another saint. Instead, his biographer fashioned his own hero from the elements generally common to hagiography. 42. See I. Van ‘t Spijker, “Gallia du Nord et de l’Ouest: Les provinces ecclésiastiques de Tours, Rouen, Reims (950–1130),” in Hagiographies, 2:239–290; Baudouin de Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie dans le marquisat de Flandre et le duché de Basse-Lotharingie au XIe siècle,” in Études critiques, 415–422. In Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria, Felice Lifshitz turns this interpretation on its head, to suggest that, at least in Normandy, the stress placed on disruption in early Norman texts proves the minimal nature of that disruption. For clerical authors’ interest in their institutions’ (and patrons’) pasts, more broadly, see Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991); and Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, esp. 164–165.

Notes to Pages 123–125

209

43. See, for example, Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud,“Influence des Vies des saints sur le développement des institutions,” in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés IVe–XIIe siècles: Actes du Colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979), ed. Pierre Riché (Paris, 1981), 491–513; Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Les revendications de biens dans quelques documents hagiographiques du XIe siècle,” AB 60 (1932): 123–138; and “L’hagiographie dans le marquisat de Flandre,” 421; Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge, 1990); and Head, “Letaldus of Micy and the Hagiographic Traditions of Selles-sur-Cher,” AB 107 (1989): 393–414; van ‘t Spijker, “Gallia du Nord et de l’Ouest,” 244; Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, 151–156. 44. Saint-Riquier’s quest for Vigor’s history represents a case in point. 45. Landes has developed this theme in his examination of the Vita Martialis prolixior in the context of the Peace movement and apocalyptic expectations around the year 1000; see particularly Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, 60; “L’hagiographie de la Paix de Dieu,” in Richard Landes and Catherine Paupert, Naissance d’apôtre: La vie de Saint Martial de Limoges, un apocryphe de l’an Mil (Brussels, 1991), 9–39 at 30–33. See also Daniel Callahan, “The Peace of God and the Cult of the Saints in Aquitaine in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” in The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000, ed. Thomas Head and Richard Landes (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992), 165–183 at 170–172. 46. Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, ed. Luca Robertini, Biblioteca di “medioevo latino” 10 (Spoleto, 1994), i.5, 6; iii.6, 13. 47. See Bonnassie et al., “Gallia du Sud”; Landes, “L’hagiographie de la Paix de Dieu”; Callahan, “The Peace of God and the Cult of the Saints.” 48. This tendency also characterizes the Vita Romani, which Felice Lifshitz dates to the middle of the tenth century, but Nancy Gauthier would place in the eleventh. See Lifshitz, Conquest of Pious Neustria, esp. 178–179; Nancy Gauthier, “Quelques hypothèses sur la rédaction des vies des saints évêques de Normandie,” in Memoriam sanctorum venerantes: Miscellanea in onore di Monsignor Victor Saxer (Vatican City, 1992), 449–468 at 454. 49. See de Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie dans le marquisat de Flandre”; Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, 102–134; J.-M. Bienvenue, “La sainteté en Anjou aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” in Histoire et sainteté: Actes de la cinquième rencontre d’histoire religieuse (Angers et Fontevraud, 16–17 octobre 1981), Publications du centre de recherches d’histoire religieuse et d’histoire des idées 5 (Angers, 1982), 23–36. 50. See Bienvenue, “La sainteté en Anjou,” 31; Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Les héros de la littérature hagiographique,” in Études critiques, 452–474. 51. See the various works of de Gaiffier, Head, Landes, Bienvenue, van ‘t Spijker, Bonnassie, etc.

210 52.

53.

54.

55.

56. 57.

58. 59.

60. 61.

Notes to Pages 125–128 See de Gaiffier, “L’hagiographie dans le marquisat de Flandre”; van ‘t Spijker, “Gallia du Nord et de l’Ouest”; Bienvenue, “La sainteté en Anjou”; Bonnassie et al., “Gallia du Sud.” See also, for the similar interests of hagiographers in southern Italy, Oronzo Limone, “Italia meridonale (950–1220),” in Hagiographies, 2:11–60; and “Temi agiografici nell’Italia meridionale normanna (secc. XI–XII),” Studi linguistici salentini 9 (1977): 119–146. A good example of such a text is the Vita Romualdi by Peter Damian. The office used at Fécamp survives in several manuscripts with lectio divisions (Rouen, BM MSS A 261, 328, 314); see also [“Office for Feast of Taurinus at Fécamp”], ed. J.-B. Mesnel, “Saint Taurin,” 98–109. Exportation from Fécamp of what became the standard twelve-lesson office is apparent in the booklet found in a manuscript of Jumièges, Rouen, BM MS U 109, according to Olivier Diard, “Histoire et chant liturgique en Normandie au XIe siècle: Les offices propres particuliers des diocèses d’Évreux et de Rouen,” AN 53 (2003): 195–223 at 220; see also “Saint Taurin,” 96–99. “Saint Taurin,” 90–98, 109–111, 195–96; see also Van den Bossche in AASS Aug. IV (1752): 636. That Saint-Evroult had the text is also evident from Orderic Vitalis’s thorough and very precise résumé of it, OV, v. 7 (3:38–46); Orderic also lists Taurinus among other noteable “antiqui patres,” vi. 1 (3:214) Jumièges: Rouen, BM MSS U 109, 135; Lyra: Évreux, BM MS 70; SaintWandrille: Paris, BnF MS Latin 10,509. Additionally, Avranches, BM MS 168 preserves a later copy of the Vita Taurini divided into twelve lessons; see Van der Straeten, “Manuscrits hagiographiques du Mont-Saint-Michel,” 127–128. Paris, BnF MS Lat. 989; see Appendix 1 for more detail. Mesnel suggests the veneration at Lisieux is of great antiquity, but the manuscript he cites as evidence (apparently Paris, BnF MS Latin 14,446—a Norman missal—although he in fact cites MS Latin 1446—a seventeenthcentury item of no relevance to Taurinus) dates only to the middle of the twelfth century and may have come from the monastery of Troarn, rather than Lisieux cathedral. Similarly, Taurinus appears in missals of other Norman dioceses, but at what point this veneration began remains obscure. See “Saint Taurin,” xvi–xvii. For Coutances, see Paris, Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, MS 131. Rouen, BM MS U 39. Gaston Aubourg, “Saint Vigor, évêque de Bayeux (VIe siècle), la Vita Vigoris: Traduction et commentaire critique, deuxième partie,” BSAN 58 (1964–1965): 127–173 at 167–169. Rouen, BM MS Y 41, fols. 17–23v, 32v–36. See A. Legris, “Les premiers martyrs du Vexin, saints Nicaise, Quirin, Scuvicule, Pience,” RCN 22 (1912): 280–296, 320–329, 421–435; 23 (1913): 70–85 at 421, 429.

Notes to Pages 128–129 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

72.

211

See E. A. Pigeon, Vies des saints du diocèse de Coutances et Avranches: Leurs actes anciens, en latin et en langue romane, 2 vols. (Avranches, 1892–1898), 2:174. Évreux: Évreux, BM MSS 81, 101; Fécamp: Rouen, BM MS U 32 fols. 138–139v (from Fécamp, divided into eight lectiones); Fécamp also had an abbreviated version of the Passio Nicasii integrated into the Passio Dionysii (Rouen, BM MS U 20); Jumièges: Rouen, BM MSS U 2 (divided into lectiones) and U 39 (which retains marginal lectio markings); Lisieux or Troarn: Paris, BnF MS 14,446. Following Mathieu Arnoux, who posits rivalry between Saint-Ouen and Fécamp for leadership of monastic reform in Lower Normandy and primacy over the regular Norman church, Olivier Diard sees the cults of Nicasius and Taurinus as rivals and argues that Saint-Ouen ultimately failed to impose Nicasius and begrudged Taurinus his Clementine roots; there may have been rivalry, but ultimately both cults did establish themselves broadly. Moreover, it is unclear whether Fécamp had already taken possession of Saint-Taurin and of leadership in promoting Taurinus’s cult, when the Passio Nicasii was composed. Therefore it is difficult to see the articulation of a Clementine origin for Nicasius circa 1032 as a direct challenge to Fécamp. Nevertheless, the hypothesis bears consideration. See Mathieu Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on Early Norman Historiography,” ANS 22 (2000): 29–48; Diard, “Histoire et chant liturgique.” Coutances/Saint-Lô: Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 131; Bonport: Paris, BnF MS Latin 1864 (thirteenth- or fourteenth-century, with markings). See Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 428–435, 70–74. Three copies of the passio were known from Chartres cathedral (Chartres, BM MSS 193 (507 5/B), 190 (500 5/A), 479 (516 5/B). Paris, BnF MSS Latin 5353 (of Bonport), 16,733 (of Chaâlis), 17,006 (of ValNotre-Dame); Montpellier, BM Academiae medicae (FM) 1 t. 2 (of Clairvaux) and possibly FM 30 (either of Clairvaux or Saint-Benigne, Dijon); Brussels, KBR MS 7460 (of Val-Notre-Dame). See Hariulf, Chronicon, iii.29; iv.20. Saint-Vaast: Arras, BM MS 573 (thirteenth-century, with lectiones marked); the Saint-Père manuscript, Chartres, BM MS 68 (al. 27 1/B), was destroyed in 1944. Aubourg, “Saint Vigor,” 167–169. Chartres, BM MS 193 (507 5/B) (tenth- to twelfth-century, destroyed in 1944); Arras, BM MS 573 (thirteenth-century, Saint-Vaast). Chaâlis: Paris, BnF MS Lat. 16,734 (late twelfth-century); Val-Notre-Dame: Paris, BnF MS Lat. 17,005 (twelfth-century); Clairvaux (possibly): Montpellier, BM FM 30 (twelfth-century). See Jacques Charles, “Sur les pas de Saint Taurin,” Connaissance de l’Eure 106 (1997): 31–32; “Saint Taurin,” 185; Diard, “Histoire et chant liturgique,” 221.

212 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81.

Notes to Pages 129–139 Chronique de Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. Léopold Delisle, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1872–1873), 1:1 (year 94). Orderic summarizes Nicasius’s career briefly after mentioning the foundation of Rouen at the order of Julius Caesar, OV, v. 6 (3:36–38). Orderic then moves immediately to a summary of Taurinus’s career, v. 7 (3:38–46). Orderic continues the account with a thorough recapitulation of the Vita Taurini, to which he adds two additional anecdotes cited in the next note. OV, v.7 (3:44–46). OV, viii.13 (4:204). Robert was the son of Waleran I’s daughter Adeliza and her husband, Roger of Beaumont. Hariulf, Chronicon, iv.19. Dominique Gonthier and Claire Le Bas mention Vigor among their list of saints credited with miracles between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries but do not analyze his feats or give details of them. Dominique Gonthier and Claire Le Bas, “Analyse socio-économique de quelques recueils de miracles dans la Normandie du XIe au XIIIe siècle” (thèse, Université de Caen, 1971). The article based on the thèse makes no reference to Vigor; Dominique Gonthier and Claire Le Bas, “Analyse socio-économique de quelques recueils de miracles dans la Normandie du XIe au XIIIe siècle,” AN 24 (1974): 3–36. See Introduction. Louis Violette remarks that the Passio Nicasii seems to have been composed with a broad public in mind, “Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au saint rouennais: Valorisation de reliques par l’hagiographie au XIe siècle,” in Autour des morts: Mémoire et identité; Actes du Ve colloque international sur la sociabilité, Rouen, 19–21 novembre 1998, ed. Olivier Dumoulin and Françoise Thelamon (Rouen, 2001), 377–386 at 380–381.

Conclusion 1. De moribus, ii.30 (170–171). 2. David Bates, “West Francia: The Northern Principalities,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, c. 900–c. 1024, ed. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge, 1999), 398–419 at 406.

Appendix 1 1. Rouen, BM MSS U 109 (late eleventh- or early twelfth-century, from Jumièges but possibly originating at Fécamp), U 3 (twelfth-century, from Fécamp), U 20 (twelfth-century, from Fécamp), U 32 (twelfth-century, probably from Fécamp), U 17 (fifteenth-century, from Fécamp); Paris, BnF

Notes to Pages 139–140

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

213

MSS Latins 815 (fifteenth-century, from Évreux cathedral), 5296 (twelfthcentury, from Fécamp), 5360 (fourteenth-century, from Jouarre-en-Brie), 11,758 (thirteenth-century, from Royaumont or Saint-Germain, Paris), 16,734 (late twelfth-century, from the Cistercian abbey of Chaâlis), 17,005 (twelfth-century, from the Cistercian abbey of Val-Notre-Dame), and MS Nouvelles acquisitions latines, 2261 (late eleventh- or twelfth-century, from Cluny); Arras, BM MS 573 (thirteenth-century, from Saint-Vaast, text incomplete); Avranches, BM MS 168 (thirteenth- and fifteenth-century, from Mont-Saint-Michel); Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III,” codex XV.AA.13 (twelfth-century); Montpellier, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Medecine (FM), 30 (twelfth-century, possibly from Clairvaux), and 1 t. 4 (twelfth-century); Brussels, KBR MS 8690–8702 (late twelfth-century, origin unclear); and Charleville, BM MS 214 (late twelfth- to thirteenthcentury). See Cat. gén. Rouen; Cat. Paris; François Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs des manuscrits hagiographiques latins conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris,” RHT 9 (1979): 183–238; and “Notes sur la genèse et sur la diffusion du ‘Liber de Natalitiis’,” RHT 6 (1976): 143–195; Cat. Rotomag.; Cat. gén. Arras, 229–230; N. Caron, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de la Ville d’Arras (Arras, 1860) (which omits the text), 250–251; Joseph Van der Straeten, Les manuscrits hagiographiques d’Arras et de Boulogne-sur-Mer, SH 50 (Brussels, 1971), 42–47; Albert Poncelet, “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum Bibliothecarum Neapolitanarum,” AB 30 (1911): 137–251. Cat. Brux.; Henri Moretus “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum bibliothecae scholae medicinae in Universitate Montepessulanensi,” AB 34–35 (1915–1916): 228–305; Joseph Van der Straeten, “Les manuscrits hagiographiques du Mont-Saint-Michel conservés à Avranches,” AB 86 (1968): 104–134; and Les manuscrits hagiographiques de Charleville, Verdun et Saint-Mihiel, SH 56 (Brussels, 1974). Chartres BM MS 193 (507/B) included both the Vita Taurini (fols. 258–261) and the Inventio et miracula (fols. 261–262). For its destruction, see MSS des bibliothèques sinistrées, 2–4, 11. Charles De Smedt, “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum bibliothecae civitatis Carnotensis,” AB 8 (1889): 86–208 at 173–181; De Smedt assigns the vast majority of the codex’s 375 folios to the tenth century, except for three (fols. 312–314, containing the Passio Nicasii) that were produced in the twelfth century and added to the codex at an unspecified date. Cat. gén. Chartres, 236–242. “Saint Taurin,” xii. The Vita Taurini occupies folios 8v–24v with the Inventio et miracula on folios 24v–30, a homily for Taurinus (adapted from a homily by Alcuin) on folios 30v–34, and a sermon on folios 34v–40. All these folios comprise part of

214

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

Notes to Pages 140–141 a section independent from the rest of the codex. The script is a generic, rounded Caroline minuscule with high ascenders and c-t ligatures; the punctuation, ruling, and pricking are all unremarkable. Its structure is very hard to discern clearly: the quires consist largely of leaves pasted in by means now difficult to ascertain. The first quire (fols. 8–18) appears to have eleven leaves and to be followed by a single leaf (fol. 19), not clearly part of any quire now; the next three quires (fols. 20–40) have seven leaves each. A new quire begins with folio 41, but three responses for Taurinus’s feast, faintly visible on folio 53v, follow the Passio Luciae (BHL 4994, fols. 41–53); the Passio Luciae shares its second quire with the Vita Nicholai (BHL 6104–6108) and Miracula Nicholai (BHL 6150–6156, 6160, 6161, 6163–6165; fols. 54–95). The distribution of material for the three saints across shared quires suggests that all the texts were copied in conjunction, although there is no physical connection between the gatherings that contain the Vita Taurini and the ones that follow. The lectiones of the Vita Nicholai are marked in the margin but were not used to format the text itself, whereas the Vita Taurini is divided into sections marked off by colored and historiated majuscule initials. A majuscule C taking up nearly half of folio 8v and adorned with vegetal patterns in red and green commences the prologue; a similarly ornate and colorful majuscule T begins the Vita proper on folio 9v. Much of the tracery and color of each letter is faded, but they outshine anything found in the other texts of the relevant gatherings. Léopold Delisle, Bibliotheca Bigotiana: Catalogue des manuscrits rassemblés au XVIIe siècle par les Bigot, mis en vente au mois de Juillet 1706, aujourd’hui conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale (Rouen, 1877) 249. Betty Branch, “Inventories of the Library of Fécamp from the Eleventh and Twelfth Century,” Manuscripta 23 (1979): 159–172. Branch seems to believe this was the copy listed in the twelfth-century inventory, although her research suggests other candidates, too. See the inventories in Cat. gén. Rouen, xxiv–xxvi. They are analyzed in Geneviève Nortier, “La bibliothèque de Fécamp au moyen-âge,” in L’abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp: Ouvrage scientifique du XIIIe centenaire 658–1958, vol. 2 (Fécamp, 1960), 221–237; and Bibliothèques médiévales des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie (Paris, 1971), chap. 1; and Branch, “Inventories.” “Saint-Taurin,” ix–xi. Olivier Diard shows that the form of notation used in recording the three responses for Taurinus’s office that appear on folio 53v indicates that they were copied after 1001; he hypothesizes that they were composed under the influence of Fécamp (and possibly at Fécamp) after 1034. Olivier Diard, “Histoire et chant liturgique en Normandie au XIe siècle: Les offices propres

Notes to Pages 141–142

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

215

particuliers des diocèses d’Évreux et de Rouen,” AN 53 (2003): 195–223 at 218–219. Isembert, first abbot of La Trinité du Mont, Rouen, established in his new abbey an office of Nicholas that he had composed while a monk at SaintOuen before his election in 1031. The very name of Abbot Nicholas of SaintOuen (1042–1092), the illegitimate son of Richard III born sometime before 1027, also attests to the saint’s popularity in early eleventh-century Normandy. See Véronique Gazeau, “Guillaume de Volpiano en Normandie: État des questions,” Tabularia “Études” 2 (2002): 35–46 at 43; Diard, “Histoire et chant liturgique,” 198; Felice Lifshitz, The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics 684–1090, Studies and Texts 122 (Toronto, 1995), 208–210 (who, however, accepts a tenth-century date for BnF MS Lat. 989 and deduces from it a very precocious veneration in Normandy); Marjorie Chibnall, “The Translation of the Relics of Saint Nicholas and Norman Historical Tradition,” Rivista storica del Mezzogiorno 11–12 (1976–1977): 31–41 at 34; for veneration of Nicholas at Saint-Ouen (under Abbot Nicholas) see François Dolbeau, “Deux poèmes inédits, extraits du ‘Livre noir’ de Saint-Ouen de Rouen,” in Sanctorum societas: Récits latins de sainteté (IIIe–XIIe siècles), 2 vols., SH 85 (Brussels, 2005), 2:747–800, esp. 749. “Saint Taurin,” ix–xi; Cat. Paris, 1:53. Philippe Lauer, Bibliothèque nationale: Catalogue général des manuscrits latins, vol. 1 Nos. 1–1438 (Paris, 1939), 352–353; Nortier, “La bibliothèque de Fécamp au moyen-âge,” 230. The Vita Taurini occupies folios 185–194v; the Inventio et miracula folios 194v–198. This section is distinct from the rest of the codex: folio 185 begins a new quire of four bifolios, in a new hand, ink, style, decorative program, and parchment type from what precedes it. The next quire, folios 192bis–199, consists of a gathering of three bifolios (fols. 193–198), plus two pasted-in leaves (fol. 192bis and 199). The Passio Marci (BHL 5276) begins on folio 198v (which may originally have been blank, although it is impossible to be certain) and continues to folio 200, thus bridging two quires (fols. 192bis–199, 200–207); the Vita Philiberti (BHL 6805) then occupies folios 200v–215v, which include the rest of the quire used for the Passio Marci plus one further regular quire of four bifolios (fols. 208–215). While the texts relating to Taurinus may have existed independently of those pertaining to Mark and Philibert, they would likely have done so only briefly: all three texts exhibit a similar hand, particularly the Vita Taurini and the Vita Philiberti. Nothing connects these texts to the rest of the codex. The Bollandists date the codex to the tenth century, Cat. Paris, 3:191–193; Léopold Delisle assigns it to both eleventh and twelfth, Inventaire des man-

216

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

Notes to Pages 142–143 uscrits latins conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale sous les numéros 8823–18,613, et faisant suite à la série dont le catalogue a été publié en 1744 (Paris, 1863–1871), 97–98; François Dolbeau to the tenth and twelfth centuries, without indicating which texts he would assign to each century, “Anciens possesseurs,” 227. Mesnel reports that Henri Omont believed it to be twelfth-century and concurs with that judgment, “Saint Taurin,” xii, Felice Lifshitz dates the section dealing with Gildardus of Rouen to the tenth century and locates its production in the monastery of Saint-Medard, Soissons; see “The ‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered: The Translation of the Relics of St. Gildard of Rouen to Soissons,” AB 110 (1992): 329–340 at 330, 334. “Saint Taurin,” xii. The form of the script in particular inclines toward a twelfth-century date. In fact, it has its own BHL number: 7993. These are, respectively: Montpellier, FM 1 t. 2 and 30; Paris, BnF MSS Latin 16,733 and 17,006 (which, however, preserves the Vita Vigoris only in a fifteenth-century replacement quire); and Rouen, BM MS U 39, for the twelfth century, and Arras, BM MS 573; Brussels KBR MS 7460; Douai, BM MS 838; Paris, BnF MS 5353; and Saint-Omer, BM MS 716 t. viii, dating from the thirteenth century. De Smedt discusses nearly all these manuscripts, AASS Nov. I (1887): 287–288. In addition, see: for Montpellier, FM 1 t. 2: Moretus, “Catalogus bibliothecae scholae medicinae,” 230–233; Cat. gén. Rouen, 286, 296. For Montpellier, FM 30: Moretus, “Catalogus bibliothecae scholae medicinae,” 243–247; Cat. gén. Rouen, 286, 296. For Paris, BnF MS Lat. 16,733: Cat. Paris, 3:342–346; Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs,” 230; and Dolbeau, “Notes sur la genèse et sur la diffusion,” 158. For Paris, BnF MS Lat. 17,006: Cat. Paris, 3:394–396; Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs,” 230, and “Notes sur la genèse et sur la diffusion,” 163. For Rouen, BM MS U 39: Cat. gén. Rouen, 373–375; Cat. Rotomag., 184–185. For Arras, BM MS 573: Cat. gén. Arras, 229–230; Caron, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de la Ville d’Arras, 250–251; Van der Straeten, Les manuscrits hagiographiques d’Arras,” 42–47. For Brussels, KBR MS 7460: Cat. Brux., 2:1–13. For Douai, BM MS 838: Chrétien Dehaisnes, Catalogue des manuscrits de la bibliothèque publique de Douai: Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France 6 (Paris, 1878), 577–581; and A. Poncelet, “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum Doacacensis,” AB 20 (1901): 361–470 at 389–393. For Paris, BnF MS Lat. 5353: Cat. Paris, 2:304–311; Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs,” 204–205. For Saint-Omer, BM MS 716 t. viii: R. Lechat,“Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum Sancti Audomari,” AB 47 (1929): 241–306 at 280–283. MSS des bibliothèques sinistrées, 2–4, 11. The manuscript later had the num-

Notes to Page 143

217

ber 27 1/B; however, since it appears as 68 in all the pertinent discussions, it is so designated here. According to the librarians of the Chartres, BM salle des manuscrits, no copy of the manuscript is known to have been made before its destruction. De Smedt described it both in AASS Nov. I (1887): 287, and in “Catalogue codicum hagiographicorum Bibliothecae civitatis Carnotensis,” 99–101. He assigned its origin to the monastery of Saint-Père, Chartres. See also Cat. gén. Chartres, 13–14. 24. De Smedt, “Commentarius praevius,” AASS Nov. I (1887): 287. 25. The Bollandist catalogue posits that while the bulk of the manuscript dates from the eleventh century, folios 122–136 are twelfth-century, Cat. Paris, 3:202–203. François Dolbeau confirms a general date of the eleventh and twelfth centuries for the manuscript but does not comment on its various component parts. Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs,” 227. 26. Folios 129–136 consist of low-quality parchment, stiff, yellow, and badly misshapen. The hand, although not always easy to read due to the paleness of the ink and its very small size, is neat. Its small, vertical, plain, and rather stiff letter forms, with long ascenders and very few flourishes, could easily be described as eleventh-century, though this is by no means imperative. They exhibit little finesse or calligraphic nicety—in keeping with the low-grade parchment. The format of the page, in full lines with no decoration, similarly implies an early date—though certainly the rough nature of the work would not demand ornament. 27. The outermost sides show extensive wear and tear. However, the text begins on folio 129, which would have been the cover of a booklet. Such placement is unusual in booklets: the outermost folios were commonly left blank to serve as covers protecting the text contained within. Booklets or libelli are discussed, often with reference to hagiographical manuscripts in particular, by Francis Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Lives of the Saints,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 35 (1952–1953): 248–266; Bernhard Bischoff,“Über gefaltete Handschriften, vornehmlich hagiographischen Inhalts,” in Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1966), 93–100; François Dolbeau, “Typologie et formation des collections hagiographiques d’après les recueils de l’abbaye de Saint-Thierry,” in Saint-Thierry: Une abbaye du VIe au XXe siècle; Actes du Colloque international d’histoire monastique, Reims-SaintThierry, 11 au 14 octobre, 1976, ed. Michel Bur (Saint-Thierry, 1979), 159–182; and Dolbeau, “Notes sur l’organisation interne des légendiers latins,” in Hagiographie, cultures, et sociétés IVe–XIIe siècles: Actes du Colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979), ed. P. Riché (Paris, 1981), 11–23; Guy Philippart, Les légendiers latins et autres manuscrits hagiographiques, Typologie des sources 24–25 (Turnhout, 1977, rev. 1985),

218

28. 29. 30.

31.

32.

Notes to Page 143 99–100; Eric Palazzo, “Le rôle des libelli dans la pratique liturgique du haut moyen âge: Histoire et typologie,” Revue Mabillon n.s. 1 (= t. 62) (1990): 9–36; and Joseph-Claude Poulin, “Liber iste vocatur vita Sansonis,” AB 117 (1999): 133–150. The criteria for recognizing such booklets are best described by P. R. Robinson, “Self-Contained Units in Composite Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Period,” Anglo-Saxon England 7 (1978): 231–238; and “The Booklet: A Self-Contained Unit in Composite Manuscripts,” Codicologica 3: Essais typologiques, Litterae textuales 7 (Leiden, 1980), 46–69. Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs,” 227. This deduction is based on his failure to mention it anywhere in his discussion of the manuscripts. It still bears the former Jumièges shelfmark (G. 9) on its fly leaf. There is no firm evidence it was produced at Jumièges, nor anywhere else. It certainly might be attributable to Jumièges but contains the vitae of no saints specifically associated with that abbey. It contains the vitae of three Norman saints: Vigor of Bayeux, Nicasius of Rouen, and Gertrude of Blangy. It occupies folios 121v–125, which represent the first four and one-half folios of a quire of eight. This quire originally bore no relation to what now precedes or follows it: an abrupt change of hand at folio 121 sets the quire apart from the five quires that precede it, folios 83–120. Folio 121–121v contains a sermon adapted from a commentary by Rabanus Maurus on the genealogy of Christ as treated in the Gospel of Matthew. The sermon essentially strings together passages of Rabanus’s much longer commentary and adds connecting phrases and occasional remarks. See Rabani Mauri, Expositio in Matthaeum, ed. Bengt Löfstedt, CCCM 174–174A (Turnhout, 2000). The Vita Vigoris follows from folio 121v in the same hand as the sermon. Folios 83–120 represent a group of hagiographical texts all in the same hand and on the same type of parchment; the texts overlap quires. Similarly, the pricking of folios 121–129 does not match that of the other quires. Two features reveal this incorporation. Firstly, the sermon on Matthew preceding the Vita Vigoris was retained, despite its lack of conformity to the subject of the collection—to cut it would have required either sacrificing or recopying the prologue to the Vita. Secondly, the remaining folios of the quire (fols. 125–129v), originally blank, were given over to the continuation of the collection of saints’ vitae that occupies folios 83–120, and which resumes at the bottom of folio 125 in a hand nearly identical to that of the previous quires. The Vita Samsonis commences on folio 125 just below the end of the Vita Vigoris; the Vita Theodosiae, which follows on folio 128, continues on into the next quire. The hand of the Vita Samsonis (fols. 125–127v) is identical to that of the Passio Nicasii (fols. 91–94v) except for an additional form of g, not found in the Passio. The Vita Theodosiae (fols. 128–133) ex-

Notes to Pages 145–146

219

hibits a new hand, but one strikingly similar to the previous one. All these hands are distinctly different from that of the Vita Vigoris. Whether this quire circulated independently before its incorporation into the present codex is not clear, but no evidence of wear on its outermost sides suggests such a scenario. Of what this quire may have formed a part originally is hard to know; the sermon and the Vita Vigoris do not form a coherent set of texts, and the folios (125–129v) that were left blank before incorporation give no clue.

Appendix 2 1. Cornelius De Bye, “De SS. Nigasio, Quirino, Scubiculo seu Scuviculo et Pientia mm. in Vadiniaci in pago Vilcassino. Commentarius historicocriticus,” AASS Oct. V (1786): 510–550. 2. PNb, with the manuscript descriptions at 14–23 (MS 15) and 5–12 (MS 2). 3. proPN. 4. PNa. 5. Twenty surviving and three lost exemplars are known of the Passio Nicasii. The Norman copies are: Rouen, BM MSS U 2 (twelfth-century, from Jumièges), U 20 (twelfth-century, from Fécamp), U 32 (twelfth-century, probably from Fécamp), U 39 (twelfth-century, from Jumièges), Y 41 (the Livre noir of Saint-Ouen, twelfth-century), and U 17 (fifteenth-century, of unknown Benedictine provenance). The non-Norman exemplars include, in order of date: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Theol. lat. quart. 201 (middle of the eleventh century, from Saint-Remacle, Malmédy); Paris, BnF MS Lat. 15,436 (eleventh-century, likely of Parisian provenance, although possibly produced at Corbeil); Trier, Stadtbibliothek, MS 1372 (1316) (eleventh- or twelfth-century, from Saint-Martin, Trier); Brussels, KBR MS 9289 (3223) (twelfth-century); Liège, Bibliothèque universitaire, MS 256 (238) (twelfth-century); Vatican, Reg. Lat MS 593 (twelfth-century); Namur, Musée des arts anciens du Namurois, fonds de la Ville, no. 15 (first half of the thirteenth century); Trier, SB MS 1151, IV (965) (thirteenth-century); Paris, BnF MS Lat. 1864 (fourteenth-century); Liège, Bibliothèque universitaire, MS 58 (210, t. II) (of 1366); Namur, Musée des arts anciens, fonds de la Ville, no. 2 (fourteenth-century); Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ser. N. 12754 (fifteenth-century); Berlin, Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Theol. Lat. MS fol. 706 (produced between 1450 and 1480); and Paderborn, Erzbischöfliche Akademische Bibliothek, Th. MS Ba 2, (fifteenth-century). Three others were destroyed in 1944, all of which belonged to the BM of Chartres: MS 479 (516 5/B) (fifteenth-century); MS 190 (500 5/A) (twelfth-century); and MS 193

220

6. 7.

8.

9.

Notes to Page 146 (507 5/B) (twelfth century, although most of the manuscript probably dated from the eleventh century; the relevant folios, which were smaller than the other leaves, may have been an independent booklet). For these lost manuscripts, see MSS des bibliothèques sinistrées, 236–242. For the other manuscripts, see BHLms and the Bollandist catalogues listed there; additionally, for Berlin, SBPK MS Theol. lat. quart. 201, see Felice Lifshitz, “The Politics of Historiography: The Memory of Bishops in Eleventh-Century Rouen,” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 10 (1998): 118–137; for the Paris manuscripts, see Philippe Lauer, Bibliothèque nationale: Catalogue général des manuscrits latins, 7 vols. (Paris, 1939–); Cat. Paris, 3:303–308; Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs”; and for MS Lat. 15,436, Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 8 (Leiden, 2002), 211–228 at 227. For Trier, see Maurice Coens, “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum bibliothecae civitatis Treverensis,” AB 52 (1934): 157–285 at 253. For Berlin, SBPK, see Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Le martyrologe et le légendier d’Hermann Greven,” AB 54 (1936): 316–358. For all the Rouen manuscripts, see Cat. Rotomag. See, for example, De Smedt’s various renderings of the Vita Vigoris. In addition to the Passio Nicasii (17–23v), the MS contains several further texts concerning Nicasius: the metrical passio titled Hymnus in laude supra dictorum martyrum (BHL 6083, incipit “Ut ros nube fluens, ut flos de caespite surgens,” fol. 23v–32v); and the Translatio Nicasii (BHL 6084, fol. 32v–36); as well as a sermon for the feast of those saints whose relics rested in the abbey, Nicasius prominent among them, Sermo in festivitate sanctorum quorum reliquiae in praesenti ecclesia [Sancti-Audoeni] requiescunt (fols. 87–90v) ed. TNA 3:1681–1686. See further Cat. Rotomag., 220–224. Nicasius enjoyed two feasts at Saint-Ouen: one for his death on October 11 and one commemorating the translation of his relics on December 1. For the office for the October feast, as found in a thirteenth-century manuscript, see “L’Office de saint Nicaise en usage à l’abbaye de Saint-Ouen,” ed. A. Legris, “Les premiers martyrs du Vexin, saints Nicaise, Quirin, Scuvicule, Pience,” RCN 22 (1912): 280–296, 320–329, 421–435; 23 (1913): 70–85 at App. 1, 75–83. The Livre noir likely did originally include the prologue: the Passio Nicasii begins in mid-sentence after a cut folio still visible as a stub, which may well have held the prologue. The discrepancies among the texts of MSS U 2, U 39, and Y 41 consist mainly of occasional misreadings such as “electi” for “erecti,” or “lege” for “grege.” These minor discrepancies are detailed in Samantha Kahn Herrick,

Notes to Pages 147–149

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

221

“Imagining the Sacred Past in Hagiography of Early Normandy: The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002), chap. 5; the only substantive differences are discussed below. Rouen, BM MS U 35 (of Saint-Ouen); and Rouen, BM MS U 32 (of Fécamp). MS U 2 preserves the best and most complete copy of the Passio Nicasii and provided the basis for PNms. “Transmeatoque uado ante hanc horam hominibus incognito. et iccirco deinceps ob sanctorum memoriam uadum Nichasii nuncupato; requieuerunt in insula eiusdem fluminis amenissima. Quedam autem matrona nomine pientia sanctorum monitis ad fidem Christi conuersa; assumptis sanctissimis uiris claris actibus et nominibus ex ipsorum collegio presbyteris. suscepit corpora sanctorum et sepeliuit ea honorifice in eodem loco”; PNms, fol. 114; Rouen BM MS U 39, fol. 94. “Transmeatoque uado ante hanc horam hominibus incognito. et iccirco deinceps ob sanctorum memoriam uadum Nigasii nuncupato; requieuerunt in insula eiusdem fluminis amenissima. Quedam autem matrona nomine Piencia sanctorum monitis ad fidem christi conuersa: assumpto sanctissimis actibus uiro nomine CLARO ex ipsorum collegio presbytero. suscepit corpora sanctorum et sepeliuit ea honorifice in eodem loco”; Passio Nicasii, Rouen BM MS Y 41, fol. 23. The words and letters in bold typeface are those of the emendator. “[E]t sepeliuit ea honorifice in eodem loco. dans ipsis sanctis suum pre¸dium cum omni integritate ad sanctorum memoriam recolendam. In quo loco tam ab ipsis quam a ce¸teris fidelibus deuotis. e¸dificata est e¸cclesia in honore sanctorum. Nigasii episcopi. Quirini presbyteri et Scuuiculi diaconi. in qua florent beneficia ipsorum usque in presentem diem.” Passio Nicasii, Rouen BM MS Y 41, fol. 23–23v. The words and letters in bold typeface are those of the emendator. “[E]t sepeliuit ea honorifice in eodem loco; dans ipsum locum sui praedii cum omni sua facultate ad sanctorum memoriam. In quo loco tam ab ipsis quam a ceteris fidelibus deuotis edificata est e¸cclesia in honorem sanctorum.” PNms, fol. 114; Rouen BM MS U 39 inverts the order of “sua omni,” fols. 94–94v. See Usuard, Martyrologium, 335–336; and the Vita Clari eremitis et martyris in pago Vulcassino (BHL 1826), ed. Albert Poncelet, AASS Nov. II, pt. 1 (1894): 451–455. For a brief analysis of the development of Clarus’s cult, see Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 327–328. See also Michel Roblin, “Petromantalum, Saint-Clair et le Vexin: Trois énigmes à Saint-Clair-sur-Epte,” Journal des savants (Jan.–March 1976): 3–31 at 20–25. Vies des saints, 10:341. Pientia is described as “virgo et martyr” in the Pulsano version of Usuard’s

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Notes to Page 149

martyrology, ed. Jean-Baptiste Du Sollier, “Martyrologium Usuardi, V Idus, mensis Octobris. Auctaria,” AASS June VI (1715): 535–536. Jacques Dubois, however, believes the tradition more accurately to be, “In pago Vilcasino, passio sanctorum Nigasii presbiteri et sociorum eius Quirini et Pientiae,” Usuard, Martyrologium, 319. A. Legris notes that the desire to make Nicasius’s story correspond to Dionysius’s even led the author to transform Pientia from a virgin to a matron so that she should match Catulla as a mater familias. Legris, “Premiers martyrs,” 321; see also Passio Dionysii, §xxxiv–xxxv. 18. For the processions, see E. A. Pigeon, Vies des saints du diocèse de Coutances et Avranches: Leurs actes anciens, en latin et en langue romane, 2 vols. (Avranches, 1892–1898), 1:233n1; 2:169–179. The custom apparently originated under Bishop John of Avranches (1061–1068), later archbishop of Rouen (1068–1079), whose promotion of Nicasius’s associate appears ironic in light of his later conflicts with Saint-Ouen, outlined in the (interpolated) Acta arch. Rothomag. 19. Émile Réaux, Histoire de Meulan (Meulan, 1868), 43.

Bibliography

Items cited in the list of abbreviations are omitted from the Bibliography.

Manuscripts Arras, Bibliothèque municipale MS 573 (Sanctorum vitae, incl. Vita Vigoris) Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique / Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België MS 7460 (Lectionary, incl. Vita Vigoris) MS 8690–8702 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini, Inventio et miracula Taurini) MS 9289 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Passio Nicasii) Douai, Bibliothèque municipale MS 838 (Vitae et passiones sanctorum, incl. Vita Vigoris) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MSS Latins: 815 (Lectionary, incl. Vita Taurini) 989 (Vitae sanctorum, etc., incl. Vita Taurini) 1864 (Passiones et vitae sanctorum, incl. Passio Nicasii) 5276 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) 5296 (Lectionary, incl. Vita Taurini, Miracula Taurini, sermons for Taurinus) 5333 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Passio Nicasii) 5353 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Vigoris) 5360 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini, Miracula Taurini) 10,509 (Antiphonary, incl. mass for Taurinus) 223

224

Bibliography

11,773 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Vigoris) 13,345 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) 13,765 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Vigoris) 14,446 (Missal, incl. mass for Taurinus) 15,436 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Passio Nicasii) 16,733 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Vigoris) 16,734 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) 17,005 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) 17,006 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Vigoris) MS Nouvelles acquisitions latines 2261 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) Paris, Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève MS 131 (Lectionary) Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale MS A 261 (Antiphonary, including office for Taurinus) MS A 328 (Collectary, incl. office for Taurinus) MS U 2 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Passio Nicasii) MS U 3 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) MS U 17 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Passio Nicasii) MS U 20 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. partial Vita Taurini, sermon for Taurinus, partial Passio Nicasii) MS U 22 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Translatio Nicasii) MS U 32 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini, Passio Nicasii) MS U 39 (Vitae sanctorum et S. Clementis Romani recognitiones, incl. Vita Vigoris, Passio Nicasii) MS U 109 (Vitae sanctorum, etc., incl. Vita Taurini and office for Taurinus) MS U 135 (Vitae sanctorum, incl. Vita Taurini) MS Y 27 (Livre d’ivoire of Rouen cathedral, incl. Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium, metrical catalogue of archbishops) MS Y 41 (Livre noir of Saint-Ouen, incl. Acta archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium, metrical catalogue of archbishops, Passio Nicasii, Translatio Nicasii, hymn in honor of Nicasius) MS Y 46 (Breviary, incl. office for Taurinus)

Primary Sources Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Près. Le siège de Paris par les Normands, poème du IXe siècle, edited by Henri Waquet. CHFMA. Paris, 1942.

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Index

Abdias, pseudo-, 58; Historia certaminis apostolici, 58–60, 61, 67 Adeliza, daughter of Waleran I, 47, 212n77 Ademar of Chabannes, 58, 193n33, 119, 120. See also Martialis of Limoges, saint (works about): Vita Martialis prolixior Ado of Vienne. See Martyrologies Alix, mother of Waleran I, 183n75 Angelramnus, abbot of Saint-Riquier, 22, 24, 41, 43 Arles, church of, 116–117, 118 Arles, Council of, 116 Apostolicity: of Taurinus, 53–60, 121–122; apostolic authority, 54–56, 119; of Vigor, 84–86, 121–122; and the liturgy, 85; and authority, 97–98, 108–111; of Nicasius, 100–104, 121–122; of Dionysius, 101–102; apostolic status, 56–57, 113–114, 115, 117–120; in Frankish hagiography, 116–122; apostolic foundation, 116–118, 208n40; apostolic primacy, 116–117. Audoenus of Rouen, saint, 3, 15, 16, 133; relics of, 17, 171n96, 38–39, 48 Audoenus of Rouen, saint (works about): Translatio prima Audoeni, 156n1, 17, 48, 68–69, 135; Vitae Audoeni, 3, 4; Translatio secunda Audoeni, 38, 92 Aumale, 41 Aurelianus, pseudo-. See Ademar of Chabannes Austremonius of Clermont, saint, 118 Authority: ducal, 34–36, 38–40, 44, 114–115, 124, 133–135; and aggressive

power, 115, 133–134; and sacred power, 36–37, 40, 44, 90–93, 114–115, 124, 133–134; cultural dimensions, 134. See also Apostolicity; Historical imagination; Nicasius of Rouen, saint (works about); Taurinus of Évreux, saint (works about); Vigor of Bayeux, saint (works about) Avitianus, cleric of Bayeux, 21–22, 24, 32 Baldwin IV, of Flanders, 42 Baldwin V, of Flanders, 42 Baltfridus, bishop of Bayeux, 176n26 Baptism, 30, 67–69, 87; of Rollo, 1, 157n6, 126, 133; of Richard I, 38, 197n69; by Nicasius, 98–99; and purification, 114 Bartholomew, apostle, 59–60, 67–68, 105 Bayeux, 38–39, 77–78, 90–92, 127, 133; bishops of, 38–40, 78, 91. See also Bessin Bessin, 23, 38–41; and Rouen, 44; lords of the, 79, 80–81; Christianity in the, 91–93, 121. See also Bayeux; Historical imagination Blois-Chartres, county of, 34–36. See also Odo II, count of Blois-Chartres; Theobald the Trickster, count of Blois Bouafles, 183n77 Bourges, church of, 116, 118, 207n23 Cerisy. See Saint-Vigor of Cerisy, monastery Chartres, cathedral, 35–36; and Taurinus, 25, 31, 32, 34, 36–37, 127, 129, 139, 140, 142–143; and Nicasius, 128. See also Fulbert, bishop of Chartres

251

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Index

Chartres. See Blois-Chartres, county of Chronicon Sancti Nigasii Mellentis, 19 Church reform, 29–30, 41, 45, 70, 125 Clarus of the Vexin, saint, 147–149 Clement, disciple of Peter, 205n13 Clemintine Romances, 54–57 Clement I, pope, 54; in the Vita Taurini, 5, 51, 55–56, 121; in the Passio Nicasii, 5, 95–98, 102, 121; apocrypha about, 54–55; and apostolicity, 54, 117, 118 Clermont, church of, 116, 117, 118 Cluny, monastery, 129. See also Taurinus of Évreux, saint: relics of Conversion to Christianity, 1; by Taurinus, 52, 53, 60–63, 67–69; of Clement, 54; of Rollo, 68–69, by Richard I, 71; by Vigor, 83–88, 121; by Nicasius, 95–99, 104–106; and purification, 84, 107, 114–115; Norman interest in, 125–126. Coulombs, abbey, 20, 183n76 Coutances, church of, 38, 127, 128 Demons. See Satan Deodatus, 25, 27–30, 51–52. See also Taurinus of Évreux, saint (works about): Vita Taurini Devil. See Satan Dionysius, pseudo-. See Dionysius the Areopagite: apocrypha about Dionysisus of Paris, saint, 172n2, 121, 133; in the Passio Nicasii, 5, 95, 96–99, 101–102; in the Vita Taurini, 51, 52. See also Dionysius the Areopagite Dionysisus of Paris, saint (works about): Passio Dionysii (by Hilduin of SaintDenis), 55–56; date of composition, 24; dependence of the Vita Taurini on, 27, 57–58; dependence of the Passio Nicasii on, 96–98, 101–102 Passio Dionysii (by Pseudo Venantius Fortunatus) 199n26, 205n13 Dionysius the Areopagite, 54; apocrypha about, 55. See also Dionysisus of Paris, saint Domitian, emperor, 51, 95, 101 Dragons: in the Vita Vigoris, 75, 77, 80, 84–86; in the Vita Romanii, 86; in the Passio Nicasii, 86, 98–99, 102, 104–106; as symbol of the Vikings, 107

Dreux, castle of, 35 Drogo, count of the Vexin, 47, 203n51 Dudo of Saint-Quentin, 66, 73, 135 Dudo of Saint-Quentin (works by): De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, 127, 135; Rollo in the, 1, 185n82, 133; patrons of, 156n1, 92, 127; scholarship concerning, 156n1; Richard I in the, 38; portrayal of Viking raids in the, 64–66; conversion in the, 68–69; and the Évrecin, 70–72; and the Bessin, 92 Durand, abbot of Cerisy, 43, 179n52 Enguerrand I, count of Ponthieu, 41–42 Epte, river, 45, 46, 103, 107–108, 147 Équemauville, 41 Ermentarius: Translationes et miracula Philiberti, 170–171nn9192 Eucharius of Trier, saint, 117 Eutropius of Saintes, saint, 117, 205n12 Evangelization. See Conversion to Chrisitanity Évrecin, 25–26, 34–37; conversion of the, 52, 60–63, 67–69; apostolic status of the, 56–57; prophecy of destruction and restoration of the, 63–64. See also Évreux; Historical imagination Évreux, 7, 56–57; Taurinus’s battle for control of, 60–62; and Taurinus, 127, 130, 133, 140, 142; and Nicasius, 128. See also Évrecin Exuperius of Bayeux, saint, 42–43 Fécamp, monastery, 47, 194n42, 197n69; and Taurinus, 25, 127, 129, 140–141, 142 and the Évrecin, 173n9; and the Bessin, 38, 39, 177n33; foundation of, 176n28, 185n83; and Robert I, 179n52, 83; and Nicasius, 128 Fides of Conques, saint, 124 Flodoard of Reims: Annales, 156n2, 90–91; Historiae Remensis ecclesiae, 156n2, 117 Fronto of Périgueux, saint, 118, 119 Fronto of Périgueux, saint (works about): Vitae Fronti [or Frontonis], 206n14, 118, 119 Frotmundus, abbot of Saint-Ouen, 171n96 Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, 37; and relics of Taurinus, 31, 33; and Archbishop Robert,

Index 31, 33; and Richard II, 35–36; and the Vexin, 174n11; Letters, 175n21, 181n59, 183n76 ; and Odo II, 182n74 Gasny, 15, 17, 103, 109, 110, 148 Georgius of Le Puy, saint, 207n23 Gigny. See Taurinus of Évreux, saint: relics of Godgifu, wife of Drogo, 47 Gregory of Tours, 101, 116, 117, 118 Guibert of Nogent: De pignoribus sanctorum, 179n47 Gunnor, duchess of Normandy, 174n13, 38 Hagiography. See Vitae and Passiones Hariulf of Saint-Riquier: Chronicon, 41, 180n53, 91–92, 130; and the Vita Vigoris, 21–22, 24 Harold, Viking warlord, 90–91, 92 Hasting the Dane, 64–66 Heiric, bishop of Bayeux, 176n27, 197n69 Helvisa, widow of Hugh Bear-Head, 20, 183n76 Henry, abbot of Saint-Ouen, 17–18 Henry I, king of England, 109, 110 Henry I, king of the Franks, 18,19, 42, 46, 47 Herbert, bishop of Coutances, 38, 175–176n25 Herfast, 35 Herluin, of Conteville, 183n76 Hilduin of Saint-Denis, 55, 117. See also Dionysius of Paris, saint (works about): Passio Dionysii Historical imagination, 3–4, 51, 53; and the Vexin, 46, 106–111; and the Viking raids, 64–66, 123; and conversion to Christianity, 68–69; and the Évrecin 69–73; and the Bessin, 88–93; and authority, 115–116, 131; and apostolicity, 121; audience, 133; and power, 133–135; and the sacred past, 135 Hubert, bishop of Bayeux, 176n27 Hugh, count of Meulan, 47, 109 Hugh d’Ivry, bishop of Bayeux, 38–39, 180n52, 82, 89 Hugh the Great, duke of the Franks, 34, 90–91

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Ingelardus, abbot of Saint-Riquier, 22 James, apostle, 54 Jongleurs, 7–8 Jumièges, monastery, 59, 133; and Nicasius, 16, 128, 146; restoration of, 185n83; and church reform, 30; and the Évrecin, 172n4; and the Bessin, 39; and Drogo, 182n70, 47; and Waleran I, 47; and Taurinus, 127; and Vigor, 128, 143 La Roche-Guyon, 109, 149 Le Mans, church of, 41, 117, 129 Lezoux. See Taurinus of Évreux, saint: relics of Lifshitz, Felice, 10, 184n81, 189n52, 204n2, 208n42 Limoges, church of, 116, 117, 208n40, 121. See also Martialis of Limoges, saint Limoges, Council of, 119–120, 122 Lisieux, church of, 207n23, 127, 128 Lista, bishop of Coutances, 175n25 Livre d’ivoire of Rouen cathedral (Rouen BM MS Y27), 18–19 Livre noir of Saint-Ouen (Rouen BM MS Y41), 15–16, 199n21, 128, 146–148 Louis IV, king of the Franks, 90 Louis VI, king of the Franks, 109–110 Lucia of Syracuse, saint, 140–141 Lyon, church of, 116 Maiolus of Cluny, 70 Mantes, 46, 109 Marcellus of Paris, saint, 85–86 Martialis of Limoges, saint, 58–60, 119–120 Martialis of Limoges, saint (works about): Vita Martialis prolixior, 58–60, 67–68, 117–118; 120, 209n45, 124; Vita Martialis antiquior, 206n14 Martyrologies: Usuard, 15, 20, 32, 33, 175n24, 41, 148–149; of Chartres, 31; of Pulsano, 16–17, 221–222n17; Ado of Vienne, 117, 118 Matilda, sister of Richard II, 35 Mauger, count of Corbeil, 43, 180n57 Mellonus of Rouen, saint, 15–16, 18–19 Mesnel, J.-B., abbé, 25–27, 171n96, 31, 58, 62, 139–142 Meulan, 35, 109, 128

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Monastic endowment, 6, 39, 47, 185n83, 78 Mont-Saint-Michel, monastery, 133; and Nicasius, 16, 128, 149; and Richard I, 29; and church reform, 29; and the Bessin, 39, 40; and Robert I, 179–180n52; restoration of, 185n83; and Taurinus, 127 Nicasius of Rouen, saint, 4–5; relics of, 15, 17–18, 19; as martyr, 15, 99–100; as bishop, 15–16, 19, 95; cult of, 20, 32, 48, 94, 128, 130, 220n7, 149; miracles attributed to, 21, 98–109, 147; translation of relics, 16, 48–49, 128, 220n7; and Roman official, 96, 99, 101; as preacher, 104–106. See also Conversion to Christianity; Satan; Vexin Nicasius of Rouen, saint (works about), 128; Passio Nicasii, 158n10, 5, 48, 213n3; date of composition, 14–21, 33, 146–149; editions, 164n1, 94, 145; context of composition, 45–49, 212n81; authorship, 94; and power, 95–100; sources, 96–98, 101–102; and authority, 108–111; textual transmission of, 128, 146–149; Translatio Nicasii, 165n11, 18, 128, 220n7; manuscripts: (Rouen BM MS U39), 218–219n32, 219n5, 146–148; (Rouen BM MS U2), 219n5, 146–148. See also Livre noir of Saint-Ouen (Rouen BM MS Y41) Nicholas of Myra, saint, 140–141 Normandy: territorial expansion of, 2, 34–36, 38–41, 46, 115; relations with Franks, 2, 35–36, 42, 45–46; relations with Vikings, 2, 34, 35, 70–73, 90–91, 92–93, 126; and Christianity, 2, 11, 44, 114, 121, 135–136; and the Évrecin, 34–36; relations with Flanders, 42; and the Bessin, 92–93; relations with Poitou, 120. See also Vexin Oda, wife of Waleran I, 183n76 Odo, bishop of Bayeux, 169n69, 179n47, 128 Odo II, count of Blois-Chartres, 34–36, 177n30, 42, 47, 72 Orderic Vitalis, 16, 183n76, 129, 130, 210n54; on hagiography, 8; on the Vexin, 46, 182n71–72, 203n55; on the Bessin, 79 Orléans, 128; heresy at, 30, 35, 57

Paris, 45, 108, 121, 128; and apostolic tradition, 57, 116, 117 Passiones. See Vitae and Passiones Paternus of Avranches, 40, 87 Paul, apostle, 51, 54, 58, 98, 101, 102, 117 Paul the Deacon, 205n13 Peace of God movement, 123–126 Périgueux, church of, 117, 118, 119, 208n40, 121, 122 Peter, apostle, 54, 58, 77, 102, 117, 118, 208n34 Philip I, king of the Franks, 46 Pientia, saint, 202n49, 147–149 Ponthieu, county of, 41 Potts, Cassandra, 179n51 Power. See Authority; Historical imagination Property: in the Vexin, 45–46; acquisition of by Vigor, 75–78; protection of by Vigor, 78–79 Proselytism. See Conversion to Chrisitanity Radulfus, bishop of Bayeux, 176n27 Raoul d’Ivry, 181n57, 66 Regino of Prum: Chronicon, 175n25 Revival of the dead, 188n30, 119–120, 121; by Taurinus, 53, 59, 60–61, 67–68; by Vigor, 87 Richard I, of Normandy, 2, 45, 66; and church reform, 29–30, 73; and the Évrecin, 34, 70–72, 73; baptism of, 38, 197n69; and the Bessin, 38–39, 91–92; minority of, 90–92. See also Conversion to Christianity Richard II, of Normandy, 2, 37, 180n57, 47, 66, 72; and Saint-Riquier, 22, 41, 179n48; and heresy at Orléans, 30; and the Évrecin, 35–36; and the Bessin, 39; and church reform, 41 Richard III, of Normandy, 41, 82, 215n14 Riculf, archbishop of Rouen, 15 Robert, archbishop of Rouen, 34, 45, 66, 73, 127; and Nicasius, 18; and SaintRiquier, 22, 41; and heresy at Orléans, 30; and Taurinus, 31, 33, 37, 53; and Robert I, 82 Robert, count of Meulan, 130 Robert Curthose, of Normandy, 130

Index Robert of Torigni, 16, 129 Robert I, of Normandy, 2, 18, 173n9, 42, 181n59, 82–83; and Saint-Vigor of Cerisy, 24, 38, 39–40, 43–44, 78; and Saint-Riquier, 41, 43; and Saint-Ouen, 43–44, and Rouen cathedral, 46; and the Vexin, 46–47, 111; and Drogo, 47; and Waleran I, 47; and the Bessin, 79, 93 Robert the Pious, king of the Franks, 30, 35, 36, 72 Roger of Beaumont, 47 Rollo, 1–2, 34, 38, 45–46, 108, 109, 120 Rollo (in literature), 1–2, 48, 66, 68–69, 126, 133, 157n6. See also Conversion to Christianity Romanus of Rouen, saint, 158n11, 16, 189n52, 196n53 Romanus of Rouen, saint (works about): Vita Romanii, 204n2, 209n48. See also Dragons Rouen cathedral, 16, 18–19, 34, 46, 48, 133; and Saint-Ouen, 184n81; and the Vexin, 108 Rouen, 34; Nicasius’s march toward, 98–100, 101, 103. See also Normandy Rufinus of Aquileia: Recognitiones, 54, 55, 57, 58; Historia ecclesiastica, 58 Saint-Denis, monastery, 176n27, 180n55, 181n58, 46, 101, 110 Saint-Lô, 38, 39, 128 Saint-Nicaise of Meulan, priory, 19–20, 109 Saint-Nicaise of Rouen, parish church, 16, 128 Saint-Ouen, monastery, 133, 215n14, 222n18; and Nicasius, 15–18, 21, 32, 48, 128, 129, 146, 147–148; and Robert I, 179–180n52; and Saint-Riquier, 22, 24, 43; restoration of, 185n83; and the Évrecin, 172n4; and the Bessin, 39; and Saint-Vigor of Cerisy, 43–44; and the Vexin, 45–46, 109; and Drogo, 182n70; and church reform, 184n81; and Audoenus, 48; and Rouen cathedral, 184n81. See also Livre noir of Saint-Ouen (Rouen BM MS Y41) Saint-Père, monastery, 172n104, 174n13, 129, 217n23

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Saint-Riquier, monastery: and Vigor’s relics, 21–22, 24, 91–92, 129, 130; and Saint-Ouen, 22, 43; and Robert I, 41, 42. See also Hariulf of Saint-Riquier Saints’ cults, veneration of saints, 3–4; clergy and, 6; laity and, 6–8; and linking of monastic communities, 36–37, 42–44; and relics, 44, 49, 123; political uses of, 44, 48, 49. See also Authority: and sacred power Saints’ lives. See Vitae and Passiones Saint-Taurin of Évreux, monastery, 26, 31, 66; and Taurinus, 25, 53, 127, 141, 142; foundation of, 30; 185n83, 73; and the Évrecin, 173n9; and the Bessin, 177n33 Saint-Vaast, monastery, 21, 22, 74, 129 Saint-Vigor-le-Grand, monastery, 169n69, 76, 127–128 Saint-Vigor of Cerisy, monastery, 24, 75–79, 127; foundation of, 38–41, 185n83, 78–79, 130; and Saint-Ouen, 43–44 Saint-Wandrille, monastery, 16, 176n27, 39, 185n83, 127; and Drogo, 182n70 Samson of Dol, saint (works about): Vita Samsonis, 85; in (Rouen BM MS U39), 218n32 Satan, 188n30, 124; Taurinus’s battles with, 52, 59–60, 60–63; Vigor’s battles with, 84–86; Nicasius’s battles with, 96–100, 102, 104–106; Dionysius’s battles with, 96–98; as a symbol of the Vikings, 107–109, 114 Seine, river, 45–46, 103, 107–108 Serpents. See Dragons Taurinus of Évreux, saint, 4–5; relics of, 25, 172n104, 129; cult of, 25, 31, 32, 33–34, 36–37, 127, 211n63, 129, 139–140, 142–143; miracles attributed to, 159n19, 25–27, 34, 59–61, 67–68, 130; biography of, 51–52, as apostle, 53–60; and Roman consul, 61–62, as preacher, 67. See also Conversion to Christianity; Revival of the dead; Satan Taurinus of Évreux, saint (works about), 25, 127, 129; Vita Taurini: 158n10, 5; editions, 169n70, 141; date of composition, 24–32, 33, 139–143; sources of, 24, 57–60; and history of the Évrecin,

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Taurinus (works about) (continued) 28–29, 51–53, 63–66, 68–70; textual transmission of, 31, 127, 139–142; authorship of, 31, 51, 66; context of composition, 33–37; and authority, 56–57; and Dudo, 64–66; manuscripts: (Paris, BnF MS Lat. 989), 140–141, 142; (Paris, BnF MS Lat. 13,345), 142; (Chartres BM MS 193 (507/B)), 213n2, 139–140, 142; Inventio et Miracula Taurini, 159n19, 169n73, 175n24, 213n2, 213n6, 140, 215n17, 142; date of composition, 25–27; authorship of, 27 Theobald the Trickster, count of Blois, 34, 171n96, 70–72 Tillières-sur-Avre, castle of, 35 Trophimus of Arles, saint, 116–117 Ursinus of Bourges, saint, 206n23 Usuard. See Martyrologies Vaux, 103, 104–107, 109, 128 Venantius Fortunatus, 58, 205n12. See also Paternus of Avranches Vexin, 5, 35, 45, 48, 94, 102–104, 107–110, 149; Norman, 45, 108; French, 45, 46, 108–111; and Normandy, 48, 108–111. See also Historical imagination Vigor of Bayeux, saint, 4–5; relics of, 21, 22, 41, 43, 91–92, 129, 130; miracles attributed to, 22, 75–81, 83–88, 130; cult of, 32, 41, 43, 127, 128, 130; as patron, 40; biography of, 74; as bishop, 78, 81; as ally of princely power, 81–82. See also Conversion to Christianity; Satan Vigor of Bayeux, saint (works about): Vita Vigoris, 158n10, 5; date of composition, 21–24, 33, 143–144; textual transmission of, 23, 128, 129, 143–144; context of composition, 38–44; dissemination, 43; editions, 192n1; authorship of, 76–79; and authority, 80–83, 92–93; sources of,

85–86; manuscripts: (Rouen BM MS U39), 195n47, 128, 216n22, 143; (Chartres BM MS 68), 143; (Paris, BnF MS Lat. 13,765), 143. See also Property Vikings: conversion to Christianity of the, 1, 11; raids in the Vexin, 17; raids in the Bessin, 21, 24, 38; raids in the Évrecin, 25–29, 170n78, 64; aid to Normans by, 34, 35, 70–73; raids elsewhere, 64–66, 107; in Bayeux, 90–91; raids and Christianity, 114; and historical continuity, 122–123. See also Dragons; Satan Violette, Louis, 184n81, 203n52, 212n81 Vita Glodesindis, 23 Vita Vedasti, 23 Vitae and Passiones: as historical sources, 4, 9–12, 134–135; audience of, 6, 113, 134–135; uses of, 6–9; authority and, 8–9, 11, 48; historical truth and, 8–9, 123, 132–133; textual transmission of, 13, 144; dating composition of, 13–14; general Frankish trends, 119, 122–126; and historical continuity, 123–125, 126; and networks of sanctity, 124; critical editions of, 146. See also entries for individual saints by name; Historical imagination Waleran I, count of Meulan, 19–20, 174n11, 175n21, 47–48; veneration of Nicasius by, 48, 109, 130 Waleran II, count of Meulan, 110, 130 William Longsword, of Normandy, 2, 34, 90 William of Jumièges: Gesta normannorum ducum, 157n6, 179n47, 181n59, 182n68; and Viking aid, 173n10, 72–73; and the Vexin, 174n11, 182n67, 182n73; and Mont-Saint-Michel, 178n45; and Richard III, 192n33 William of Volpiano, 179n52, 70 William the Conqueror, 19, 173n9, 181n57, 46, 47, 13