Saints as Intercessors Between the Wealthy and the Divine: Art and Hagiography Among the Medieval Merchant Classes 135117133X, 9781351171335

Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how

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Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Notes
Bibliography
Part I: Merchant devotion to regional saints
Chapter 2: Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea merchant traders
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 3: The Sunday saint: Keeping a holy “merchant’s time” in the Middle English Life of Erasmus1
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Birgitta of Sweden and the merchant classes of Lübeck
Introduction: Birgitta of Sweden and the Birgittine Order
The reception of the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae in Lübeck
The adaptation of the Revelationes into Middle Low German
Lübeck: Queen of the Hanse and Imperial Free City
Devotional literature in Lübeck: The Mohnkopf Press
The readership of the Mohnkopf Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part II: Merchant patronage and individualized piety
Chapter 5: For the hope of salvation and the honor of family: Merchant devotional concerns in early sixteenth-century Burgos1
Burgos and its merchants
The carved altarpiece in Burgos
The funerary altarpiece of Fernando Castro de la Hoz
The funerary altarpiece of García de Salamanca
The funerary altarpiece of Gonzalo López de Polanco
Salvation and apostolic devotion
Female piety
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Unprinted sources
Chapter 6: For salvation or reputation?: The representation of saints in a Jouvenel des Ursins book of hours
The social and political ambitions of the Jouvenel des Ursins family
Material culture as a basis for legitimate nobility
Devotional manuscripts as markers of social status
Sacred or secular intercession in the Suffrages?
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 7: Spaces and times for worship: Merchant devotion to the saints in late medieval Barcelona
Scenes of a private devotion
The public spiritual sphere
Danger at sea27
Merchants’ role in the importation of relics
Drawing conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 8: The Fisher Miscellany: Reconstructing a late medieval merchant family’s book and its fashionable hagiography
Reconstructing a late medieval merchant family’s book and its fashionable hagiography
Notes
Bibliography
Part III: Holy protectors for merchant corporations
Chapter 9: London’s goldsmiths and the cult of St. Dunstan, ca. 1430–15301
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 10: Success, salvation, and servitude: Tallinn’s Brotherhood of the Black Heads and its relationship with local and regional saint cults1
St. Mauritius and the heraldic crest of the Brotherhood
Corporate identity and the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece: Sts. Nicholas, Victor, and George
Divine intervention and the Mary Altarpiece: A double intercession
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 11: Reanimating the power of holy protectors: Merchants and their saints in the visual culture of medieval and early modern Venice
Introduction
Trade, crusade, and Venetian merchant endeavors
St. Mark and Venetian belonging in the eastern Mediterranean
St. Isidore and triumph over Venice’s Christian rivals
St. George as holy warrior in the eastern Mediterranean
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part IV: Patterns of saintly intercession in the late medieval world
Chapter 12: The service of merchants: Politics, wealth, and intercessional devotion in later medieval Italy
Intercessory models in comparison
Political instability and local devotion
The effect of wealth and status on forms of intercession
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Saints as Intercessors between the Wealthy and the Divine

Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how merchants invoked saints, and why. Despite medieval and modern stereotypes of merchants as godless and avaricious, medieval traders were highly devout – and rightly so. Overseas trade was dangerous, and merchants’ commercial activities were seen as jeopardizing their souls. Merchants turned to saints for protection and succor, identifying those most likely to preserve their goods, families, reputations, and souls. The essays in this collection, written from diverse angles, range across later medieval western Europe, from Spain to Italy to England and the Hanseatic League. They offer a multi-disciplinary examination of the ways that medieval merchants, from petty traders to influential overseas wholesalers, deployed the cults of saints. Three primary themes are addressed: danger, community, and the unity of spiritual and cultural capital. Each of these themes allows the international panel of contributors to demonstrate the significant role of saints in mercantile life. This book is unique in its exploration of saints and commerce, shedding light on the everyday role religion played in medieval life. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious history, medieval history, art history, and literature. Emily Kelley is Associate Professor of Art History in the Art Department at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, USA. Her research focuses on mercantile patronage and representations of saints’ lives in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spanish art. She is co-editor of two books, Binding the absent body in medieval and modern art: Abject, virtual, and alternate bodies (2016) and Mendicants and merchants in the medieval Mediterranean (2013). Cynthia Turner Camp is Associate Professor of English at the University of Georgia, USA. She specializes in English saints’ lives, manuscript studies, and medieval historiography. Her 2015 monograph, Anglo-Saxon saints’ lives as history writing in late medieval England, argues for the centrality of narratives of Anglo-Saxon saints in the late medieval rethinking of a shared English religious history.

Sanctity in Global Perspective Series Editors Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, University of Pittsburgh, USA Alison Frazier, University of Texas at Austin, USA Phyllis Granoff, Yale University, USA Richard McGregor, Vanderbilt University, USA

Published under the aegis of The Hagiography Society, this series is dedicated to exploring the concept of sanctity in literary, artistic, ideational, and sociohistorical dimensions. “Sanctity in Global Perspective” publishes monographs and edited volumes that illuminate the lives of saintly figures, the communities dedicated to those figures, and the material evidence of their cults. Our aim is to foster critical scholarship that offers novel conceptualizations and the possibility of cross-pollination of ideas across traditions, geographical regions, and academic disciplines. The series is open to all areas of scholarship, without restriction as to religious traditions or time periods. The Cult of St. Anne in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Jennifer Welsh Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Hagiographical Strategies A Comparative Study of the “Standard Lives” of St. Francis and Milarepa Massimo A. Rondolino Peter Paul Rubens and the Counter-Reformation Crisis of the Beati Moderni Ruth S. Noyes The Cult of Thomas Becket History and Historiography through Eight Centuries Kay Brainerd Slocum Saints as Intercessors between the Wealthy and the Divine Art and Hagiography among the Medieval Merchant Classes Edited by Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Sanctity-in-Global-Perspective/book-series/SANCGLBPER.​

Saints as Intercessors between the Wealthy and the Divine Art and Hagiography among the Medieval Merchant Classes Edited by Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kelley, Emily D., editor. Title: Saints as intercessors between the wealthy and the divine: art and hagiography among the medieval merchant classes/edited by Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp. Description: New York: Routledge, 2019. | Series: Sanctity in global perspective | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018059776 | ISBN 9780815399803 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351171359 (pdf) | ISBN 9781351171342 (epub) | ISBN 9781351171335 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Merchants–Religious life. | Christianity and art–History. | Christian hagiography–History–To 1500. | Church history–Middle Ages, 600-1500. Classification: LCC BV4596.B8 S25 2019 | DDC 274/.05088381–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059776 ISBN: 978-0-8153-9980-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-17136-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introduction

vii ix xiii 1

EMILY KELLEY AND CYNTHIA TURNER CAMP

PART I

Merchant devotion to regional saints

25

2 Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea merchant traders

27

CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD

3 The Sunday saint: Keeping a holy “merchant’s time” in the Middle English Life of Erasmus

44

CYNTHIA TURNER CAMP

4 Birgitta of Sweden and the merchant classes of Lübeck

70

ELIZABETH A. ANDERSEN

PART II

Merchant patronage and individualized piety

87

5 For the hope of salvation and the honor of family: Merchant devotional concerns in early sixteenth-century Burgos

89

EMILY KELLEY

6 For salvation or reputation?: The representation of saints in a Jouvenel des Ursins book of hours JENNIFER COURTS

110

vi Contents   7 Spaces and times for worship: Merchant devotion to the saints in late medieval Barcelona

134

MONTSERRAT BARNIOL LÓPEZ

  8 The Fisher Miscellany: Reconstructing a late medieval merchant family’s book and its fashionable hagiography

156

JONI HENRY

PART III

Holy protectors for merchant corporations

177

  9 London’s goldsmiths and the cult of St. Dunstan, ca. 1430–1530

179

GARY G. GIBBS

10 Success, salvation, and servitude: Tallinn’s Brotherhood of the Black Heads and its relationship with local and regional saint cults

204

LEHTI MAIRIKE KEELMANN

11 Reanimating the power of holy protectors: Merchants and their saints in the visual culture of medieval and early modern Venice

238

KAREN ROSE MATHEWS

PART IV

Patterns of saintly intercession in the late medieval world

271

12 The service of merchants: Politics, wealth, and intercessional devotion in later medieval Italy

273

JANINE LARMON PETERSON

Index 291

Figures

6.1 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins(?), “St. Germain” 111 6.2 Copy after Pontifical of Poitiers, “Procession in Front of the Place de Grève” 117 6.3 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins(?), “St. Giles” 121 6.4 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins(?), “St. Amand” 124 7.1 Master of Canapost. Altarpiece of Consolat de Mar 140 8.1 Heraldic device with merchant’s mark 161 8.2 Decorated initial with merchant’s mark 162 8.3 Young man in CUL manuscript 163 8.4 Young man in Pepys manuscript 163 8.5 Ball game 164 9.1 From the 1270 map of London, an extract of the area near Westcheap from St. Paul’s Cathedral to Wood Street, with the addition of Goldsmiths’ Hall (1) and Goldsmiths’ Row (2), both of which would have been present in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 180 10.1 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, first position (closed), oil on panel and polychrome oak sculpture 208 10.2 Master of the Saint Lucy Legend, Mary Altarpiece, before 1493, third position (second opening), the Sacra Conversazione, oil and tempera paints on oak panel 210 10.3 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, second position (first opening), oil on panel and polychrome oak sculpture 212 10.4 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, second position (first opening), detail of the scene of Saint Nicholas saving the ship 214

viii Figures 10.5 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, second position (first opening), detail of the scene of the miracle of Saint Victor 10.6 Master of the Saint Lucy Legend, Mary Altarpiece, before 1493, second position (first opening), the Double Intercession, oil and tempera paints on oak panel 11.1 Venice, San Marco, Chapel of San Clemente, mosaics depicting the theft of Mark’s relics, twelfth century 11.2 Venice, San Marco, Pala d’oro, detail of scenes from the Life of St. Mark, 1105 11.3 Venice, San Marco, Cappella di Sant’Isidoro, mosaics depicting St. Isidore’s translatio, begun 1350 11.4 Venice, San Marco, Treasury, arm reliquary of St. George 11.5 Venice, San Marco, relief plaque depicting relics saved from Treasury fire, c. 1265

217

219 242 243 249 253 254

Contributors

Elizabeth Andersen graduated from the University of St. Andrews in 1978 with an MA in German language and literature and from the University of Edinburgh with a PhD in German medieval literature in 1986. She is now a visiting fellow in the German section of the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University, where she was employed until 2016 as a senior lecturer. In the course of her career, she has worked on German Arthurian literature, most notably the Prose Lancelot, and women’s mysticism, in particular Mechthild von Magdeburg (The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Peter Lang, 2000). Her current research is focused on the reception of Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes in Middle Low German: “Das Kind sehen: Die Visualisierung der Geburt Christi in Mystik und Meditation,” in Sehen und Sichtbarkeit in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters, ed. R. Bauschke et al. (Akademie Verlag, 2011); “Birgitta of Sweden in northern Germany: Translation, transmission and reception,” in A companion to mysticism and devotion in northern Germany in the late middle ages, ed. E. A. Andersen et al. (Brill, 2013); “Heiligkeit auf Niederdeutsch: Birgitta und Katharina von Schweden in Lübecker Frühdruken,” Niederdeutsches Jahrbuch, 2013. Montserrat Barniol López received her PhD in art history from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2013. Her thesis focused on the images and texts of St. Anthony Abbot in Catalonia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Dr. Barniol López has taken part in several research projects regarding Spanish (mainly Catalan) medieval art, and her research interests include iconography, hagiography and text-image relationships. Her publications include M. Barniol, J. Duran-Porta, eds., Bella i solemne. La creu gòtica dels Sants Màrtirs i la Cardona del seu temps (Cardona, 2010); M. Barniol, “Patrons and advocates of the sailors. The saints and the sea in Catalan Gothic,” Imago Temporis Medium Aevum 6 (2012); “El culto a San Onofre en Cataluña durante los siglos XIV y XV,” in El culto a los santos: Cofradías, devoción, fiestas y arte, Actas del Simposium, 2/5-ix-2008, Instituto Escurialense de Investigaciones Históricas y Artísticas, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 2008.

x Contributors She also collaborated on the Enciclopedia del Románico en la Península Ibérica (Fundación Santa María la Real). She is currently collaborating in the project Movilidad y transferencia artística en el Mediterráneo medieval (1187–1388). Artistas, objetos y modelos – Magistri mediterranei, directed by Prof. Manuel Castiñeiras (2016–2019; ref. MICINN: HAR2015-63883-P). Cynthia Turner Camp is associate professor of English at the University of Georgia. She specializes in English saints’ lives, manuscript studies, and medieval historiography. Her 2015 monograph, Anglo-Saxon saints’ lives as history writing in late medieval England, argues for the centrality of narratives of Anglo-Saxon saints in the late medieval rethinking of a shared English religious history. Her current research project pursues non-narrative, atemporal, and queer modes of “doing history” in medieval English nunneries, particularly through the nuns’ liturgical texts and performances. Her essays have appeared in journals such as Viator, New Literary History, and Exemplaria. Jennifer Courts is assistant professor of art history in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Southern Mississippi, and she is a specialist of late medieval and early modern art in northern Europe. She recently published “Weaving legitimacy: The Jouvenel des Ursins family and constructing nobility in fifteenth-century France,” in Dressing the part: Textiles as propaganda in the Middle Ages (eds. Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring, 2015) and “Le temps venra: Establishing visual legitimacy in the Petites Heures of Jean de Berry,” Comitatus 42 (2011). Her contribution to the present volume is derived from her current research on the artistic commissions of the new nobility in early modern France that focuses on the development of oil painting as a political medium in fifteenth-century France. Additionally, her research extends to the role of women, presented as objects to be owned and displayed, in the development of Renaissance portraiture. Garry Gibbs is professor of history at Roanoke College, Salem, VA, where he has held a position since 1990. He earned his PhD from the University of Virginia. He has served as the book review editor of The Sixteenth Century Journal since 2000. His most recent publications include “The queen’s Easter pardons, 1554: Ancient customs and the gift of Thucydides,” in The birth of a queen: Essays in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Mary Tudor, ed. Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); “London parish records and parish studies: Texts, contexts, and the debates over appropriate methods,” in Views from the parish: Churchwardens’ accounts, c. 1500–c. 1800, ed. Andrew Foster and Valerie Hitchman (Cambridge Scholars, 2015); “Arthur Golding’s metamorphoses: A protreptic endeavor for a Reformation readership,” with Florinda Ruiz, Explorations in Renaissance Culture 41 (2015).

Contributors 

xi

He also contributed to The story of the Church of England, ed. Dee Dyas, an interactive DVD created by the Center for Christianity and Culture, The University of York. Joni Henry completed her PhD at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge (faculty of English) in 2014 with a thesis on hagiography in manuscripts and early print in late medieval England. She has practiced as a corporate lawyer for over 15 years. After completing her PhD, she returned to legal practice, first at Clifford Chance and now as a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia. Her recent publications are “John Capgrave’s dedications: Reassessing an English flunkey,” Studies in Philology 110 (2013) and “Humanist hagiography in England, c.1480– c.1520,” Literature Compass 10 (2013). Lehti Mairike Keelmann earned her PhD (2016) in the history of art from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation centers on art production and patronage in the late medieval and early modern periods during the time of the Hanseatic League, with a particular focus on the port town of Reval in the eastern Baltic (modern-day Tallinn, Estonia). Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from the University of Michigan, as well as external institutions, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies. As a graduate student, she served on the International Center of Medieval Art’s Student Committee, co-organizing two committee-sponsored sessions for the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and contributing articles to the I.C.M.A. newsletter. In addition to presenting at conferences in North America and Europe, she has published an article based on the preliminary stages of her dissertation research in the edited essay collection, Beyond the sea. Reviewing the manifold dimensions of water as barrier and bridge (Böhlau, 2015). She has held positions at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, including the 2014–2015 Andrew W. Mellon curatorial fellow in the history of art, and most recently, assistant curator of Western art, overseeing the collection of European art spanning from the medieval period to the early twentieth century. Emily Diana Kelley is associate professor of art history in the Art Department at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan. Her research focuses on mercantile patronage and representations of saints’ lives in fifteenthand sixteenth-century Spanish art. Her publications on this topic include “Proclamations of piety and prosperity: The funerary altarpiece of the merchant Gonzalo López de Polanco,” Hispanic Research Journal (2014); “Servant of God and protector of the faithful: St. Nicholas as saint and redeemer in late medieval Burgos,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2012). She is also co-editor of two books, Binding the absent body in medieval and modern art: Abject, virtual, and alternate

xii Contributors bodies (Ashgate, 2016) and Mendicants and merchants in the medieval Mediterranean (Brill, 2013). She received her doctoral degree from Cornell University in 2010. Karen Rose Mathews is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami. She specializes in medieval art and Islamic art, concentrating on Muslim/Christian relations in the medieval Mediterranean. Her book, Conflict, commerce, and an aesthetic of appropriation in the Italian maritime cities, 1000–1150, was published by Brill Academic Publishers in 2018. She is currently editing an interdisciplinary volume on medieval Pisa and working on a book project that addresses the role of the Mamluk dynasty in the visual culture of the late medieval Mediterranean. Janine Larmon Peterson is an associate professor of history at Marist College in New York. She received her BA and MA in medieval studies from Fordham University and her PhD in the dual program of medieval history/cultural history from Indiana University. Her work focuses on the religious and cultural history of Italy c. 1100–1500, specifically on the issue of contested saint’s cults, with a strong interest in gender and sexuality. She has published articles on related topics in journals such as Past & Present, Viator, Scriptorium, English Language Notes, Essays in Medieval Studies, and Traditio. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Historical Association, and the American Catholic Historical Association, amongst others. Her monograph, Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics: Disputed Sanctity and Communal Identity in Late Medieval Italy, will come out with Cornell University Press in 2019. She has served on the awards committee of the Society for Italian Historical Studies, on the executive board of The Hagiography Society, and on the Advisory Board of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Christiania Whitehead is an associate professor (reader) in medieval literature at the University of Warwick. She is also the research fellow for the three-year Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project, “Region and nation in late medieval devotion to northern saints,” based at the University of Lausanne. Her recent books include Saints of northeast England, 600–1500, ed. Margaret Coombe, Anne Mouron, and Christiania Whitehead (Brepols, 2017); The doctrine of the hert: A critical edition, ed. Christiania Whitehead, Denis Renevey, and Anne Mouron (Exeter University Press, 2010); and A companion to the doctrine of the hert: The Middle English translation in its Latin and European contexts, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Exeter University Press, 2010). She has published a number of articles upon the cult of St. Cuthbert in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and is currently completing a book on the Cuthbertine ascetic tradition.

Acknowledgments

The idea for this volume began with a series of conference sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo and the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. We are grateful to all who participated in those sessions as well as to the conference organizers for providing us an initial venue to discuss this topic. Thanks also to Alexie McPherson and Howard Eagle for their assistance with the editorial process and to the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to shape the final format of this book. Of course, this book never would have been possible without the editors of the Sanctity in global perspective series who found the project to be a good fit and aided us with suggestions for its contents. We are additionally grateful to Joshua Wells and Jack Boothroyd at Routledge who guided the book through the production process. Finally, we would like to thank our husbands, Aaron and Nathan, who supported this project by helping with technological problems and proofreading text, and our children, Theron, Rebekah, Alexandra, and Sebastian, for their patience as we, at times, spent more time with saints than with them.

1

Introduction Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp

I am not planning to start any other enterprise and to make any other effort than to dedicate more time to God than I have done in the past. And for this reason I am buying books in the vernacular … they are all Gospels Epistles, sayings and lives of the Saints and other good and honest things.1

The Florentine merchant–banker Franscesco Datini might not have been the most pious of men, but even he recognized the need to improve his standing with God through education and prayer. Like Datini, merchants across Europe, from the Hanseatic states to the Mediterranean, were deeply concerned with their spiritual and secular welfare, and they frequently looked to holy helpers for aid. This volume pursues the intersection of medieval mercantile culture and the cult of the saints. Examining the religious lives of merchants and artisans, from affluent international wholesalers to modest craftsmen, the chapters in Saints as Intercessors between the Wealthy and the Divine consider not only the specific saints to whom merchants appealed for salvation and earthly protection but also the manner in which those appeals were made. They span the period of mercantile growth in medieval Europe: from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when long-distance trade was expanding, to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when merchants had long been integral to urban society. To what kinds of holy individuals did merchant communities turn? How did craftsmen and traders voice their spiritual, political, and professional concerns in their veneration of saints? The chapters in this collection address these and similar questions through a range of scholarly approaches, offering detailed profiles of merchant devotion from locales across Europe. Thematically divided, the chapters explore merchants’ religious lives from three angles: the first group considers selected saints to whom merchants were devoted; the second examines the piety of specific merchant individuals; and the third analyzes the religious practices of merchant corporations. Without making any claims to comprehensiveness, this volume uncovers the richness of mercantile spirituality and the broad range of uses that merchants would make of saints.

2  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp Although there are thriving scholarly conversations about both saints and merchants, surprisingly little published work draws the two together.2 Studies of individual saints who appealed particularly to merchant patrons, such as St. Nicholas of Bari, typically assess his popularity in general terms and only briefly note specific merchant relationships.3 The topic of merchant-saint connections has been most richly explored in relation to artistic patronage since the objects commissioned by merchants often provide primary source material documenting a connection to a particular saint. For example, studies by Dale Kent and Perri Lee Roberts prove the significance of personal protectors in the devotional lives of two prominent Florentine merchants. Kent demonstrates the significance of Sts. Cosimo and Damien to Cosimo de Medici; likewise, Roberts examines Michele Castellani’s manipulation of the lives of Sts. Nicholas, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and Anthony for the narrative cycles in his family’s chapel.4 While these valuable studies model the type of investigations undertaken in this volume, most scholarship notes the importance of saints to merchants’ religious devotions without focusing on its nuances.5 This volume is therefore the first to address the commercial classes’ veneration of saints from diverse temporal, geographic, and disciplinary angles to make a compelling case for saints’ importance in the daily lives of merchants across geographic and temporal boundaries. Traders had been operating since the early medieval period, but the mercantile classes began to develop in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when technological advancements encouraged extended maritime travel and the expansion of overseas trade. Larger ships were constructed, often necessitating the creation of new ports to accommodate the bigger vessels, and ports were charted on maps, called portolans, making maritime travel easier.6 At the same time, a greater prevalence of coin, the development of trading companies backed by investors, the use of the bill of exchange, and better systems of insuring goods all made long-distance trade safer and easier.7 Christiania Whitehead’s Chapter 1 focuses on this period and examines the cult of St. Cuthbert along the trade routes between England, Flanders, and Norway, noting the centrality of saintly intercession from the earliest days of North Sea trade. As trading practices shifted, merchants became central to growing urban communities. Merchants wielded collective power in most cities through their guilds, commercial associations centered around governing the production and trade of commodities.8 Alongside regulating economic activity for certain crafts or wholesaling bodies, trade guilds were also social organizations that could leverage their capital in the political sphere. By the thirteenth century, and increasingly toward the fifteenth century, guilds held great sway with local government, giving merchants some degree of collective power.9 In Venice, international traders wielded all the governing authority, but the situation of the London Goldsmiths, who frequently served as aldermen and mayor, is more representative of mercantile political influence.10 By the end of the fifteenth century, many merchants were taking

Introduction 

3

on increasingly important roles in the administration of their cities and even kingdoms, often but not exclusively through guild service.11 For example, John Shaa, a goldsmith discussed in Gary Gibbs’s Chapter 9, served as mayor of London from 1501–02. Likewise, the Jouvenel des Ursins family, whose artistic patronage is examined in Jennifer Courts’s Chapter 6, held positions in the Parisian Parliament. At the same time as mercantile communities were gaining prestige and dominance throughout Europe, religious devotion was changing forms, becoming more urbanized and focused on meeting the laity’s spiritual needs. The grassroots religious (often heretical) movements of the twelfth century were transformed, partly through the principles of pastoral care laid down by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, into the flowering of lay spiritual fervor of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries.12 The mendicants were one important aspect of this growing urban religiosity. Their presence in towns, preaching, and cura animarum responded to civic issues including the morality of mercantile practices.13 Mendicants were sympathetic toward the realities of merchants’ lives and livelihoods, and they sought to offer spiritual guidance through both vernacular sermons and written guides such as their Regula mercatorum (Rule for Merchants).14 Central to the vibrancy of lay and mercantile spirituality were the parishes and confraternities that structured town life across Europe. As the most basic local community, the parish or chapel dominated its members’ lives.15 Parishes not only provided most individuals with their spiritual home. They also became occasions for parishioners to control church fabric, conspicuously performing their devotion to saints and the Godhead by funding stained glass windows, lights, altarpieces, altar furnishings, and other movables, as many of our contributors discuss.16 Individuals would often supplement these spatially determined communities by joining parochial or interparochial confraternities. Religious confraternities,17 typically dedicated to a saint or an aspect of the divine, centered around charity, conviviality, religious display, and the salvation of their members’ souls. As social as well as spiritual organizations, confraternities provided critical networking opportunities and, in some instances, could shape civic government. Individuals often belonged to multiple confraternities for ambitious as well as pious reasons, and these memberships were frequently a mechanism for their charitable acts and patronage of art.18 The relationship among parishes, trade guilds, and confraternities was highly variable, across Europe and even within a single city. In many instances, confraternities were linked to specific trade guilds, formally or informally, with or without parish affiliations. Merchant communities living overseas often banded together under the auspices of a shared national saint, like Thomas Becket for the London mercers or Nicholas for the Venetians.19 In each case, devotion to the confraternity’s saint shaped the collective devotion of the fraternity as well as its individual members.20 For example, the fraternity of longbowmen in Bruges, its members drawn from across the social spectrum, suitably chose

4  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp St. Sebastian as their patron, honoring him at a chapel within the Franciscan friary rather than in a parish church;21 the Goldsmiths’ Company in London, discussed by Gibbs, adopted St. Dunstan as their patron saint, leading to his importance in many company members’ devotional lives. As part of their religious display, confraternities often commissioned works of art, reflecting their political and spiritual concerns, that became part of the community’s religious experience. Overseas trade could give merchants cosmopolitan tastes in art and devotion that then informed their pious commissions at home.22 Lehti Keelmann’s Chapter 10 considers the patronage of the Brotherhood of the Black Heads, a confraternity in the Hanseatic port town of Reval, examining the fifteenth-century altarpiece they commissioned for the Dominican monastery of Saint Catherine. Likewise, Karen Mathews examines the confraternal commissions of the Scuola Grande di San Marco and the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in the context of early sixteenth century Venice, where devotion to Sts. Mark, Stephen, and George was widespread. Aside from these collective commissions, many individual merchants actively funded art within their communities where they often strove for greater social recognition by emulating the nobility in everything from their role in government and education to their houses and patronage of art. Flemish funereal brasses, for example, became a marker of mercantile wealth and status throughout the Hanse.23 Jennifer Courts’s example of the social-climbing Jouvenel des Ursins family illustrates this well, as she examines how they sought to model their patronage after the Valois nobility. Demonstrating a similar phenomenon, Emily Kelley considers three merchant families from Burgos who founded funerary chapels with carved altarpieces, a new art form in the city popularized by local commissions made by Queen Isabel I, Bishop Luis de Acuña, and the noble Mendoza family. Montserrat Barniol López too details how Catalan merchants like Antoni Llonye funded altarpieces in Barcelona. The laity’s increasing spiritual independence was also fed by expansions in literacy, a phenomenon to which the commercial classes contributed. Merchants valued education for their professional lives. Literacy and numeracy were occupational necessities; wholesalers and retailers were enmeshed in documentary culture, so merchants and their wives were typically literate and sought education for their children.24 They, or their guilds, were sometimes involved in the foundation and administration of schools and libraries.25 After the fourteenth century, instruction was primarily in the vernacular, although importers received formal foreign language instruction as well.26 This increased the demand for teachers in cities with large commercial populations and for books. Merchants owned and produced significant numbers of manuscripts, and their aspirational literacies underpinned the production of printed books.27 At times, craftsmen and traders themselves became authors of literary texts that spoke directly to the conditions of the commercial classes.28

Introduction 

5

Merchants were great consumers of devotional reading materials, including saints’ lives, before and after the advent of print.29 Individuals at all levels, from powerful figures like the Florentine merchant-bankers Marco Datini and Piero di Cosimo de’Medici to lesser craftsmen like woodworkers and dyers, owned and read spiritual tracts and prayer books.30 Although books were a luxury item, even less affluent retailers and artisans had some access to the written word, for the exchange of religious reading material, whether through bequests and library donations or in common-profit books, was itself an act of charity.31 Books of hours were ubiquitous among the later medieval commercial classes,32 but in the hands of aspirational merchants like Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins, they could be powerful bearers of prestige and ambition.33 Also common were saints’ lives, which in certain instances track a tight relationship between specific hagiographic texts and the commercial classes. In his Life of St. Werburge, the early sixteenthcentury English poet Henry Bradshaw directly exhorts “Marchauntes passynge with marchaundise” (merchants traveling with merchandise) to invoke Werburgh “with humble hert and mynde” (with a humble heart and mind) whenever imperiled by their travels, while a distinctive miracle of St. James the Greater, die Jakobsbrüder, was written by the Strasbourg wine purveyor Kunz Kistener.34 Commercial concerns could influence the shape of some saints’ lives, as Cynthia Turner Camp argues for the Middle English Life of St. Erasmus and as Elizabeth Andersen demonstrates of the Mohnkopf Press, which printed a German language translation of Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes for the Hanseatic trading center of Lübeck. At the same time, “trendy” saints’ lives, such as those by John Lydgate and Geoffrey Chaucer, could also be consumed as status symbols, as Joni Henry suggests in her Chapter 8 on the Fisher manuscript of Middle English saints’ lives and romances. Most popular in print and manuscript, however, was the Legenda Aurea. This early thirteenth-century compendium of saints and feasts, compiled by the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine, was translated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the major European languages and quickly influenced other vernacular collections of saints’ lives.35 Retailers and artisans at every economic level were therefore invested in promoting their favorite saints, whether by commissioning works of art, incorporating specific images or suffrages into their books of hours, or simply donating wax to the local chapel. Beyond tracing how the commercial classes expressed their devotion to specific saints, individually and collectively, the chapters in this collection probe the motivating factors behind this reverence, many distinctive to merchants’ economic role in medieval society and their often precarious social and spiritual positions. While merchants could view saints as exemplars to imitate, they primarily invoked favored holy figures as intercessors with God. Intercession, in which the pious individual petitions the powerful saint to advocate with God on his or her behalf, presumes the saint’s spiritual potency, or virtus, and his or her capacity to be an effective mediator.36 That efficacy, as

6  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp demonstrated through miracles and answered prayers, is evidence of the saint’s proximity to God, and vice-versa; the belief that nearness to the Divine equaled increased access to God’s power is one reason why Mary and the apostles, Jesus’s companions on earth, remained eternally popular.37 As Janine Larmon Peterson details, merchants frequently sought to gain the ear of these powerful protectors by pledging their labor and/or their wealth, in the form of prayer, pilgrimage, the creation of guilds, the patronage of art and architecture, or other forms of service.38 Such acts of veneration demonstrate the devout individual’s particular fondness for this saint over others, which establishes an affinity of clientage or even friendship with the saint.39 Such intercessionary actions, as Sean Gilsdorf helpfully describes, “transform horizontal, particular, and strategic interactions – through ritual, visual, and verbal means – into vertical, eternal, and hierarchical interrelations.”40 That is, intercession is not a mechanized process of asking for and receiving aid, but the creation of an affective interpersonal relationship between petitioner and saint. The relational nature of intercession positions saintly advocacy within the wider matrix of intercessory forms also predicated on social bonds (by the living for the dead, for example).41 This association is not dependent on the petitioners’ current worthiness, but on their continued cultivation of it – something that merchants, with their expendable wealth, were well positioned to do. While all medieval people sought saintly intercession for physical and spiritual health as well as succor in the afterlife, importers frequently invoked saints’ assistance for their economic endeavors. Sea travel was precarious, often dangerous, and traders risked their goods and lives whenever they embarked on a voyage, as Barniol López illustrates. The desire for saintly travel protection is visible in some of the earliest narrative records of merchant veneration of saints; the twelfth-century miracles of St. Cuthbert, Whitehead’s Chapter 1 reveals, show him taking on a new role as the protector of North Sea trade. These concerns persisted through the end of the Middle Ages. Even in the late fifteenth century, as Keelmann’s analysis of a pictorial St. Nicholas miracle and Barniol López’s survey of Catalan wills show, powerful guilds and individual traders sought preservation from sea travel’s dangers. The elements were not the only threat that traders faced, for privateers and commercial adversaries were equally problematic. Many merchants took up arms, whether acting to protect their wares or organizing into militia to guarantee the safe transit of their goods. In Reval and Venice, Keelmann and Mathews demonstrate, guilds played military as well as economic roles, so they regularly turned to martial saints – in these instances, Sts. George of Cappadocia, Victor of Marseille, and Isidore of Alexandria – for aid in the combative side of overseas trade. While some merchants faced these earthly perils, many would also have sensed that their profession put them at a moral disadvantage; appeals for saintly assistance would have been one way of balancing their spiritual ledgers. Sermons, popular literature, and penitential tracts portrayed merchants

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7

as greedy and usurious, favoring worldly over otherworldly wealth.42 Certainly, the twelfth-century miracles of St. Cuthbert characterize North Sea traders as avaricious,43 while wealthy merchants like Deorman (in the stories of twelfth-century Bury St. Edmund’s Abbey) are portrayed as needing to reject their luxurious lifestyles to acquire eternal rewards.44 These attitudes were changing, however, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; preachers and writers not only recognized the ethical double bind that retailers found themselves in and strove to justify economic gain, but they also began to conceive of spiritual merits in economic terms.45 Metaphors of trade and exchange could be used to encourage the laity’s spiritual efforts, as in the early sixteenth-century French tract La marchandise spirituelle. This treatise not only addresses itself explicitly to “male and female merchants,” but also imagines the Lord exhorting them to “[d]o your spiritual trade in this world until I will come to search for you at your death.”46 Camp’s Chapter 3 on the Middle English life of St. Erasmus indicates that this commodification of moral action could shape the way saints were portrayed. Similarly, the notion that one could ensure proper restitution for any ill-gotten gains by funneling one’s wealth into alms underpinned individuals’ and confraternities’ aid for the destitute as well as their support for parish images and altars.47 Even as merchants became prized members of the medieval commonwealth and concerns about their usurious practices faded, suspicions about commercial wealth persisted. Wholesalers, craftsmen, and petty traders could be profitable members of the spiritual community, but only if they carefully governed their professional practices and consciously bolstered their devotional profile. The public enactment of piety was one way of accomplishing this task, so merchants frequently invested their wealth in the visual display of devotion to enhance the social position of individuals and groups. The display of altarpieces or other objects for parishes or chapels became a mechanism through which patrons could publicly express devotion while offering thanks to or soliciting aid from a heavenly intercessor. When displayed in a guild context, as Mathews, Keelmann, and Gibbs demonstrate, such objects could solidify the commercial association’s collective identity as successful and pious traders under the protection of specific saints. Altarpieces could play a parallel role when funded by individuals, as Kelley demonstrates about the rising mercantile families of Burgos; their artistic commissions voice familial concerns while also demonstrating their prestige within the community. Works of art in the less public context of a book of hours could function similarly, as Courts suggests of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins’ deluxe, highly personalized prayer book. In almost all these instances, this devotional performance of mercantile status was enhanced as patrons engaged with current artistic styles. Courts and Henry emphasize the way that the Jouvenel des Ursins and Fisher families, respectively, constructed themselves as au courant with contemporary visual and literary trends in their manuscripts, while Mathews, Keelmann, and Kelley emphasize the novel artistic styles

8  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp of the altarpieces they discuss. Saints were therefore more than spiritual protectors; they were also occasions for conspicuous consumption. These pious and political motivations were not antithetical, as Kelley, Keelmann, Peterson, and Camp emphasize: the successful businessman was the devout businessman, civic honor depending on the trustworthy, ethical enactment of one’s social role.48 Still, ambivalence toward money-making activities was widespread, as can be traced in the vitae and cults of those (primarily Italian) merchants eventually recognized as saints.49 These craftsmen – figures like Homobonus of Cremona (d. 1198), originally a tailor; the shoemaker Raymond Palmerio of Piacnza (d. 1200); or Peter Pettinaio of Siena (d. 1289), a comb-maker – were regarded as holy because they ultimately rejected their trade, even when earlier in life they engaged in honest commercial transactions.50 While still living in the world, Homobonus reputedly “so conducted himself that to the utmost of his ability he preserved faith and equity in his dealings (a rare event)”; Peter Pettinaio always charged a just price, even though his combs were highly prized, but he too finally became a tertiary.51 The only holy merchants, it seems, were ex-merchants. Although these lives are not directly addressed to the artisanal classes, they reinforce an anti-mercantile ethos. Spiritual and financial productivity were held to be antithetical, such that retailers who earnestly pursued their professions had no direct path to salvation. In this economy, merchants and artisans were in need of holy intercession because their professions inhibited spiritual perfection. Moreover, when we track the saints to whom merchants did turn, we see a preference for tried-and-true spiritual figures over newer worthies. With some exceptions, as Larmon Peterson discusses of the Italian saints Facio of Cremona and Albert of Willa, merchants did not turn to saints who had practiced their own trades;52 Homobonus never became the patron of Cremona’s tailors, for instance.53 Rather, as Mathews observes, influential importers “chose to rediscover and repurpose old saints rather than develop new cults,”54 turning to long-established saints such as apostles, early bishops, and martyrs whose proximity to God and efficacy as intercessors was well established. While there is certainly regional variation – and many of our contributors track mercantile affection for unexpected protectors – certain saints appear regularly. We have already seen how military saints like George of Cappadocia, Mauritius of Thebes, and Isidore of Alexandria were critical protectors for traders’ martial activities, as Keelmann and Mathews demonstrate for the merchant companies of Reval (Tallinn) and Venice. Early bishops were also popular because their combination of spiritual and secular responsibilities helped politically powerful merchants navigate the demands of their positions. Courts discusses this phenomenon for the holy Frankish bishops embraced by the merchant-turned-courtierbishop, Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins, and it also underlies the popularity of the English St. Dunstan among London’s goldsmiths, as Gibbs demonstrates. Some saints, such as Michael (see Kelley’s Chapter 5) or Erasmus,

Introduction 

9

had long been venerated by traders; Camp, Barniol López, and Gibbs show how Erasmus, a semi-historical bishop-martyr, was a favored intercessor of merchants from England to Spain. Other saints, like Cuthbert (Whitehead), Edmund (Henry), or Bartholomew (Barniol López), were newly appropriated for merchants’ concerns. One such figure was St. Onuphrius, a desert father who became newly popular among the merchants of Spain, as Barniol López and Kelley attest. Although female saints beyond the ubiquitous Mary are not prominent in these traders’ devotions, Mary’s mother Anne and popular virgin martyrs like Katherine and Barbara do appear regularly, often in contexts that suggest concern for the wives and daughters of the commercial classes.55 Birgitta of Sweden proves a provocative exception to this trend in Andersen’s Chapter 4, as the Mohnkopf Press’s adaptor reframes her Revelationes to encourage its mercantile readers to Christian perfection and to legitimize the press’s distribution of devotional literature. One bishop-saint to whom merchants regularly appealed was St. Nicholas. If any single saint could be considered the patron of international traders, it would be he.56 From the Hanse states to the Mediterranean, he was a consistent presence in the lives of a geographically diverse range of merchants; he therefore features, even if peripherally, in almost every chapter in this volume. Nicholas became popular in the medieval west after his remains were transferred from Myra, where he had served as bishop, to Bari in the year 1087.57 As his cult grew, accounts of the saint’s life became widely available, particularly through Voragine’s Legenda Aurea and public performances.58 As early as the twelfth century, Nicholas became such a well-known protector of tradesmen that his miracles impacted the legends of other saints. Whitehead demonstrates in Chapter 1 on St. Cuthbert how hagiographers who wanted their saints to exert authority over maritime trade would model their saints’ actions on the miracles of Nicholas. For merchants, Nicholas’s appeal came from several aspects of his vita. First, his legend is replete with his protection of seafarers. It includes two miracles where he rescues sailors at sea (once from a storm and once from the tricks of the devil) and another where he saves a young boy from drowning.59 These events secured Nicholas’s role as a protector of sailors, which in turn reinforced his significance to merchants whose livelihood depended on maritime trade. In addition, one of Nicholas’s earliest acts demonstrated his pious use of inherited wealth, making him an exemplar of the ways in which a wealthy person might maintain his or her piety through charitable acts. Such a message would have resonated with merchants who grappled with the moral implications of their financial gains. In this miracle, he prevents a poor nobleman from “prostituting his three virgin daughters in order to make a living” by gifting the man lumps of gold.60 This legend, arguably Nicholas’s most famous deed, is featured in most literary and pictorial accounts of his life and results in his attribute of three gold balls. Objects commissioned by merchants provide evidence that they took note of these miracles.61 In this volume, Kelley discusses the Burgalese

10  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp merchant Gonzalo López de Polanco, whose altarpiece includes scenes portraying Nicholas gifting the dowry, rescuing sailors, and saving the drowning. Both Keelmann and Barniol López’s Chapters 10 and 7, respectively, also examine altarpieces of Nicholas: Keelmann considers a work commissioned by the Brotherhood of the Black Heads and the Great Guild for the parish church of St. Nicholas, and Barniol López addresses one made for the Consulate of the Sea in the city of Perpignan. Finally, Gibbs notes the significance of Nicholas’s attribute of the three golden balls to London goldsmiths, arguing that the attribute helped the craftsmen feel a connection to the saint’s cult. Together, these examples, along with others discussed in this collection, show that Nicholas held a celebrated role in merchant communities across a vast geographic territory. Organized thematically, the volume opens with three chapters that center on specific saints who became regionally significant in the devotional lives of merchants. It begins with Chapter 2 by Christiania Whitehead that considers the life of St. Cuthbert, Cuthbert’s importance to North Sea traders during the twelfth century, and early discourses of mercantile ethics. Elizabeth Andersen’s contribution focuses on the Mohnkopf Press’s Low German adaptation of Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, for the mercantile readership of Lübeck, a Free and Imperial City. The Openbaringe was central in the devotional literary climate of this Hanseatic port city governed by urban elites, as Birgitta became a model for socially engaged spiritual transformation. A different kind of transformation governs the Middle English life of St. Erasmus of Formia, as Cynthia Turner Camp argues; the life’s generic shift from narrative passio to numbered list of torments invests in a spiritual economics of accumulation and, through its focus on Sunday as a day of religious benefit, of time management. This first section of chapters demonstrates the range of saints to which merchants devoted themselves as well as the ways in which saints’ lives were manipulated to help them appeal to a mercantile audience. The second grouping of chapters considers merchant devotion from another viewpoint, focusing on the devotional landscape of mercantile regions as well as the lives of particular merchant individuals. It includes analysis of four geographic locations: Catalonia, Spain; Burgos, Spain; Troyes, France; and Norwich, England. Montserrat Barniol López’s Chapter 7 examines the scope of merchant devotional practice across Catalonia, looking specifically at Barcelona. Through analysis of wills, commission records, and surviving objects, she delves into the range of saints revered by merchants from this region, addressing the venues in which traders performed their patronage and the roles they played in relic trade. Likewise, Emily Kelley examines merchants’ devotion in another Spanish city in Chapter 5. Her chapter considers carved altarpieces commissioned by three merchant families for their funerary chapels in the parish churches of Burgos, demonstrating that each patron was involved in selecting an individualized array of saints to represent his earthly and spiritual concerns. The next two

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chapters examine specific manuscripts that reveal individual merchants’ aspirations within their socio-literary contexts. Jennifer Courts’s consideration of the Book of Hours commissioned by the Troyes merchant-turnedbishop Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins indicates that his inclusion of Sts. Giles and Germain was driven as much by earthly ambition as it was piety. In a similar vein, Joni Henry discusses the literary Middle English saints’ lives in the fifteenth-century Fisher Miscellany, owned by the Norfolk merchant family of William Fisher, as a form of fashionable leisure reading more than intense spiritual devotion. Together, these chapters provide a glimpse into the personal experiences of individual merchants, demonstrating that their attraction to the saints was often shaped by their pursuit of social status as well as – sometimes more than – their piety. The third section of the volume considers saintly devotion by merchant corporations in London, Reval (modern-day Tallinn, Estonia), and Venice, highlighting the collective nature of traders’ devotions to saints. The section begins with Gary Gibbs’ examination of the London Goldsmith’s devotion to St. Dunstan. The Goldsmith’s Company was dedicated to Dunstan, and Gibbs traces the way that images of and altars for Dunstan proclaimed the goldsmith’s piety and justified their profession across several London parishes. Lehti Keelmann considers two altarpieces co-commissioned by the Great Guild and the Brotherhood of the Black Heads, elite organizations of medieval Reval’s merchants. She details how these works were tailored to convey their loyalty to Reval and to express the spiritual relationship between guild members and Sts. Mauritius, Nicholas, Victor, and George. Finally, Karen Mathews’s Chapter 11 considers Sts. Mark, Isidore, and George as protectors of Venetian merchants, emphasizing the importance these “old saints” and their relics held for the city and its confraternities and the manner in which they expressed this through artistic commissions. In their geographic diversity, these chapters emphasize the homogeneity of merchants’ religious culture across Europe, showing significant parallels in the importance of brotherhoods in merchants’ religious lives and the ways these brotherhoods solidified the merchants’ identity within each city. The volume concludes with Janine Larmon Peterson’s Chapter 12, which responds to, and elaborates beyond, those that precede it. She considers different forms of saintly intercession, synthesizing the requests of the merchants analyzed throughout this volume with a different mercantile group, the traders of northern Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This comparison allows her to identify nuances in the way different merchant classes in different regions invoked the aid of saints, concluding that the economic precarity of less affluent traders affected the relationships they pursued with saints. As this brief overview suggests, mercantile devotion to saints was tied into the distinctive features of trade, production, and status characteristic of wholesalers and retailers. From material for cultivated leisure reading

12  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp to justifications of economic time management, as martial defenders of traders’ prerogatives and as protectors from the perils of seafaring, saints proved to be central figures in merchants’ identity construction and selfdetermination. Across later medieval Europe, this emerging social class regularly petitioned saints for intercession to reassure themselves of their social position and spiritual merits. Much as Franscesco Datini did, they sought those mighty protectors most likely to preserve their goods and families, advance their reputations, and save their souls.

Notes 1 Franscesco Datini, letter to Boninsegna di Matteo (1395), quoted in Sabrina Corbellini, “Reading, Writing, and Collecting: Cultural Dynamics and Italian Vernacular Bible Translations,” Church History and Religious Culture 93 (2013): 204–05. On Datini, see Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335–1410 (Boston: David R. Godine, 1986); on religion, see Ann Crabb, The Merchant of Prato’s Wife: Margherita Datini and Her World, 1360–1423 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 115–16, 173–74, 141–43. 2 One salient example reveals the challenges in compiling and assessing evidence of mercantile devotion to individual saints: Nicholas Rogers, “Trading Saints: Cults Associated with Mercantile Activity,” in The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014), 208–20. 3 For example, Michele Bacci’s recent study of the saint includes a number of art historical examples patronized by merchant families: San Nicola: il grande taumaturgo (Bari: Editori Laterza, 2009). While studies of English guilds often discuss the guilds’ patron saints, the impression that these saints made on guildmembers’ personal piety is rarely explored: Matthew Davies and Ann Saunders, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds: Maney, 2004), 19–34; Anne F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130– 1578 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 72–74, 83–85, 161–72, and passim; Pamela Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 26–32, 177–78, and passim. 4 Dale Kent, Cosimo de Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 132–59; Perri Lee Roberts, “Familial Values and Franciscan Polemics in Late Trecento Florence: The Iconographic Program of the Castellani Chapel in Sta. Croce,” Gesta 48, no. 1 (2009): 87–115. 5 For example, William Caferro considers the character of the Florentine merchant Thomas Spinelli through analysis of archival documents, referencing his devotion to St. Thomas and St. Augustine: “Thomas Spinelli: The Soul of a Banker,” The Journal of the Historical Society 8, no. 2 (2008): 303–22. Jill Caskey discusses the devotion of wealthy laywomen to Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine of Alexandria in her analysis of the religious lives of Amalfi merchants: Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 212–20. Diane Wolfthal analyzes the role that concerns over usury played in the commission of the Portinari altarpiece, mentioning the significance of St. Margaret’s portrayal in the altarpiece as a protector during childbirth: “Florentine Bankers, Flemish Friars, and the Patronage of the Portinari Altarpiece,” in Cultural Exchange between

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13

the Low Countries and Italy (1400–1600), ed. Alexander Skipnes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 1–21. 6 David Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City, From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (New York: Longman, 1997), 106–08, 171–73. On portolans, see Tony Campbell, “Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 371–463. 7 For a broader overview of these changes, see Peter Spufford, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 19–55. 8 On the rise, development, and function of trade guilds generally, see Wim Blockmans, “Constructing a Sense of Community in Rapidly Growing European Cities in the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries,” Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research 83, no. 222 (2010): 575–87; James Davis, Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 169–75; Gervase Rosser, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250–1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Peter Stabel, “Guilds in Late Medieval Flanders: Myths and Realities of Guild Life in an Export-Oriented Environment,” Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004): 187–212. Sheilagh Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) considers the economic development of guilds. 9 Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, 220–29; Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade, esp. 1–40; Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London [1300–1500] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 53–102. 10 See Mathews’s and Gibbs’s essays below, pp. 238–240. 11 David Nicholas, The Later Medieval City (London: Longman, 1997), 108–20; Jennifer Ward, “Merchant Families and Religion in Later Medieval Colchester,” in The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014), 243–44. 12 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); R.N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) (England); Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005) (Italy). 13 C.H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society, rev. ed. (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), esp. 102–26; Jens Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539 (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 409–46, 460–76. On the friars’ shaping of urban physical and spiritual landscapes, see Caroline Bruzelius, Preaching, Praying, and Burying: Friars and the Medieval City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014) (Italy); Francisco García Serrano, Preachers of the City: The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile (1217–1348) (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1996) (Spain); Panayota Volti, Les couvents des ordres mendiants et leur environnement à la fin du Moyen Âge: Le nord de la France et les anciens Pays-Bas Méridionaux (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005) (France). The relationship between mendicant and merchant communities in the Mediterranean has been considered in Taryn E.L. Chubb and Emily D. Kelley, eds., Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean (Boston: Brill, 2012). 14 Chubb and Kelley, Mendicants and Merchants, 13–25.

14  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp 15 Beat A. Kümin, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish, c. 1400–1560 (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996), esp. 13–64, 198– 200, 256–64 (England within a European context). See also Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 131–54 and passim (England); Thompson, Cities of God, 33–42 (Italy). 16 Clive Burgess, “Making Mammon Serve God: Merchant Piety in Later Medieval England,” in The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014), 183–207, 200–05. 17 Because of potential confusion in English-language studies, we distinguish terminologically between “confraternities” as non-occupational, religious associations and “guilds” as craft or mercantile associations focused primarily on the regulation of production and trade, acknowledging that the distinction is arbitrary in some scenarios. For definitions and relationships between these overlapping voluntary communities, see Ken Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, c. 1470–1550 (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), 9–19; Davies and Saunders, History of the Merchant Taylors, 5–6; Gary Richardson, “Medieval guilds,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples, March 16, 2008,  http:​//eh.​net/e​ncycl​opedi​a/med​ieval​-guil​ds/. On the relationship between parishes and religious confraternities, see Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community; Kümin, Shaping of a Community, 148–59, 179–82. 18 Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 131– 54; Maria Flynn, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Andrew Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges, c. 1300–1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 133–94; Thompson, Cities of God, 90–94; Roisin Cossar, The Transformation of the Laity in Bergamo, 1265–c. 1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 19–59; Alfons K.L. Thijs, “Religion and Social Structure: Religious Rituals in Pre-Industrial Trade Associations in the Low Countries,” in Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power, and Representation, ed. Maarten Prak, Catharina Lis, Jan Lucassen, and Hugo Soly (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 157–73; Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl, eds., Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Sally Badham, “Mercantile Involvement in Religious Guilds,” in The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014), 221–41; Jesús D. Rodríguez-Velasco, Order and Chivalry: Knighthood and Citizenship in Late Medieval Castile, trans. Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 19 Rogers, “Trading Saints,” 210–11, 209. 20 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 144–54; Thompson, Cities of God, 128–38; Thrupp, Merchant Class, 30–38; Nightingale, Medieval Mercantile Community, 35–42, 176–93, 292–93, and passim (on the Grocer’s company evolution out of first a parish church and then a confraternity dedicated to St. Antonin); Sutton, Mercery of London, 72–74, 89 (on the Mercer’s loose affiliation with the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acre); Davies and Saunders, History of the Merchant Taylors, 19–23 (on the close but not exclusive identity of the Fraternity of John the Baptist with the Taylor’s Company). 21 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 139, 146–50; Henri Godar, Histoire de la gilde des archiers de S–Sebastien de la ville de Bruges (Bruges: A.G. Stainforth, 1947). 22 Burgess, “Making Mammon Serve God,” 189–95. 23 Paul Cockerham, “Hanseatic Merchant Memorials: Individual Monuments or Collective ‘Memoria’?” in The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012

Introduction 

15

Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014), 392–413. 24 Nicholas, The Later Medieval City, 288, 292–93; Anne F. Sutton, “FifteenthCentury Mercers and the Written Word: Mercers and their Scribes and Scriveners,” in Recording Medieval Lives, ed. Julia Boffey and Virginia Davis (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2009), 42–58, at 43–49; Crabb, The Merchant of Prato’s Wife, 136–44; Nicholas Orme, Medieval Schools: From Roman Britian to Renaissance England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 61, 131–35; Malcolm Richardson, Middle-Class Writing in Late Medieval London (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011); Nightingale, Medieval Mercantile Community, 375, 479; Sutton, Mercery of London, 165; Thrupp, Merchant Class, 155–61, 171 (on girls’ reading); Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 141–73. For the situation in the Norwegian territories, see Jan Ragnar Hagland, “Literacy and Trade in Late Medieval Norway,” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2011): 29–37. Children of the merchant elite in Italy (particularly Florence) received some of the most rigorous instruction. For a thorough history of education in Tuscany, see Robert Black, Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany: Teachers, Pupils and Schools, c. 1250–1500, in Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, volume 29 (Boston: Brill, 2007). 25 Orme, Medieval Schools, 241–44; Sabrina Corbellini and Margriet Hoogvliet, “Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (ca. 1400–ca.1520),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43 (2013): 521–44, at 537. Many London guilds founded or supported schools in the city and across the kingdom: Richardson, Middle-Class Writing, 24, 43–44, 132–34; Sutton, Mercery of London, 167–70. 26 Nicholas, The Later Medieval City, 288–91; Thrupp, Merchant Class, 158. For a study of female literacy in Valencia, see M. Philippe Berger, “Las lecturas femeninas en la Valencia del Renacimiento,” Bulletin Hispanique 100 (1998): 383–99. 27 On mercantile book ownership and exchange in England, see Katherine L. Scott, “Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages,” in Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014), 150–77; Julia Boffey, Manuscript and Print in London c. 1475–1530 (London: British Library, 2012); Nightingale, Medieval Merchant Community, 374–75; Amanda Moss, “A Merchant’s Tales: A London Fifteenth-Century Household Miscellany,” The Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 156–69; Tracy Adams, “‘Noble, wyse and grete lordes, gentilmen and marchauntes’: Caxton’s Prologues as Conduct Books for Merchants,” Parergon 22 (2005): 53–76. On Spain, see Jaume Aurell and Alfons Puigarnau, La cultura del mercader en la Barcelona del siglo XV (Barcelona: Ediciones Omega, 1998), particularly 148–53 and 203–32; Clive Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville: The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). On Italy and France, see Corbellini and Hoogvliet, “Artisans and Religious Reading”; Margriet Hoogvliet, “‘Car Dieu veult estre serui de tous estaz’: Encouraging and Instructing Laypeople in French from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Bart Ramakers (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 111–40. On Italy, see Angela Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Boston: Brill, 2013); Corbellini, “Reading, Writing, and Collecting,” 204–10. 28 Beyond the well-known example of English mercer and printer William Caxton, see Boffey, Manuscript and Print, 132–204 (on the draper and chronicler Robert

16  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp Fabyan); Gary K. Waite, Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515–1556 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), esp. 51–57 (on the Dutch Chambers of Rhetoric). 29 Rhiannon Purdie, “Sexing the Manuscript: The Case for Female Ownership of MS Chetham 8009,” Neophilologus 82 (1998): 139–48; Emily C. Francomano, “Manuscript Matrix and Meaning in Castilian and Catalan Anthologies of Saints’ Lives and Pious Romance,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 81 (2004): 139– 153, at 151. 30 Corbellini and Hoogvliet, “Artisans and Religious Reading”; Hoogvliet, “Car Dieu veult,” 111–40; Thompson, Cities of God, 360–64. For the inventories of Datini and Piero di Cosimo de Medici, see Francis Ames-Lewis, “The Library and Manuscripts of Piero di Cosimo de’Medici” (PhD Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1997), 380–401; Origo, The Merchant of Prato, 271–73. 31 Sutton, Mercery of London, 167–69; Sabrina Corbellini, “Uncovering the Presence: Religious Literacies in Late Medieval Italy,” in Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Bart Ramakers (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 81–84. 32 Virginia Reinburg, French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 48–52, 60, 66, 79–80, and passim. 33 See below, Courts, pp. 115–118. 34 Henry Bradshaw, The Life of St. Werburge, ed. Carl Horstmann, EETS o.s. 88 (London: EETS, 1887), 2.1810, 1815; Werner Williams-Krapp, “The Medieval German Lives and Miracles of St. James,” in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 201–18, at 213–15. 35 On the history and influence of the Legenda Aurea, see Sherry L. Reames, The Legenda Aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), esp. 197–209; Jacques Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and the Golden Legend, trans. Lynda G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Brenda Dunn-Lardeau, ed., Legenda Aurea: Sept Siècles de Diffusion (Montréal: Éditions Bellarmin, 1986); Manfred Görlach, Studies in Middle English Saints’ Legends (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1998), 25–39. On lay/merchant ownership of legendaries, see Katherine J. Lewis, “Male Saints and Devotional Masculinity in Late Medieval England,” Gender and History 24 (2012): 112–33, at 123–25; Sutton, Mercery of London, 168; Anne Jacobson Schutte, “Printing, Piety, and the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years,” Archive for Reformation History / Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980): 5–19, at 10, 19; Corbellini, “Uncovering the Presence,” 80; Geneviève Hasenohr, “Religious Reading amongst the Laity in France in the Fifteenth Century,” in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530, ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205–21, at 210–13; Koen Goudriaan, “The Church and the Market: Vernacular Religious Works and the Early Printing Press in the Low Countries, 1477– 1540,” in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 93–116, at 103. 36 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 169–83; Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 141–46; Clare M. Waters, “Power and Authority,” in A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, ed. Sarah Salih (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006). See also Vauchez, Sainthood, 444–53.

Introduction 

17

37 Sean Gilsdorf, “Deësis Deconstructed: Imagining Intercession in the Medieval West,” Viator 43 (2012): 131–73. 38 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 183–86, 190–96; Thompson, Cities of God, 201–03; Ken Farnhill, “Guilds, Purgatory and the Cult of Saints: Westlake Reconsidered,” in Christianity and Community in the West: Essays for John Bossey, ed. Simon Ditchfield (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 69. 39 Gilsdorf, “Deësis Deconstructed”; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 160–63; Vauchez, Sainthood, 453–62. 40 Gilsdorf, “Deësis Deconstructed,” 133. 41 Catherine Vincent, “L’intercession dans les practiques religiouses du xiie au xve siècle,” in L’intercession du moyen âge à l’époque moderne: Autour d’une practique sociale, ed. Jean-Marie Moeglin (Geneva: Droz, 2004). 42 Roger A. Ladd, Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 49–136; Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 111–15, 161–66. 43 See Whitehead’s essay below, pp. 29–30. 44 Nightingale, Medieval Mercantile Community, 29–30. 45 Wood, Medieval Economic Thought, 50–57, 115–20, 168–69; Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 69–73, 91–97, 103–04, 119–22, 129, 135–36. See also Odd Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition 1200–1350 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), esp. 573–76. 46 Quoted in Hoogvliet, “Car Dieu veult,” 121. 47 Jenny Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 116–55; Burgess, “Making Mammon Serve God”; Wood, Medieval Economic Thought, 55–56, 63–67, 169–71; Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 125–29, 377–80; Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 177–83, 195, 200–03. 48 Giacomo Todeschini, “Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-Representation,” in The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, ed. Margaret C. Jacob and Catherine Secretan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), esp. 32–34. 49 The increase in non-royal lay sanctity generally, beginning around the turn of the thirteenth century, is discussed in André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. 173– 212; Vauchez, “Lay People’s Sanctity in Western Europe: Evolution of a Pattern (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries),” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, esp. 170–83, 202–17. 50 The lives of all three saints are translated in Diana Webb, ed. and trans., Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Outside these and other Italian figures discussed in Vauchez, Sainthood, 199–203, most famous is the twelfth-century English hermit Godric of Finchale: Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, Heremitae de Finchale, ed. Stevenson, Surtees Society 20 (London, 1847). 51 Webb, Saints and Cities, 57, 196. 52 The Archbishop of Piza, Federigo Visconti, did laud Francis of Assisi as a “merchant intermediary with God” in a vernacular sermon of the 1260s, but the appellation seems not to have stuck: Little, Religious Poverty, 217. This is in contrast to a pair of manual laborers: St. Zita or Sitha, serving girl and occasional patron of servants, and Alberto of Cremona, wine porter and patron of same in his region of Italy. On Alberto, see Lester K. Little, Indispensable

18  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp Immigrants: The Wine Porters of Northern Italy and their Saint, 1200–1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). On Zita, see Webb, Saints and Cities, 160–90; Patricia Cullum and Jeremy Goldberg, “How Margaret Blackburn Taught her Daughters: Reading Devotional Instruction in a Book of Hours,” in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts. Essays for Felicity Riddy, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 225–28; Raffaella Sarti, “Telling Zita’s Tale: Holy Servants’ Stories and Servants’ History,” in Narratives of the Servant, ed. Regina Schulte and Pothiti Hantzaroula (Florence: European University Institute, 2001). See also Peterson in this volume. 53 The reason for this disconnect may lie partly in the ecclesiastical exploitation of these cults in later medieval Italy; see the relevant discussions in Diana Webb, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City States (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996). 54 Below, p. 238; see also Andersen, p. 80, on reasons why Birgitta of Sweden was not honored with a fraternity in Lübeck. 55 See the essays below by Andersen, Kelley, Barniol López, Henry, Gibbs, and Keelmann. 56 Edward G. Clare, St. Nicholas: His Legends and Iconography (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1985); Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Bacci, San Nicola. 57 Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 115–27. 58 The Hildesheim manuscript, the Fleury playbook, Wace’s Life of St. Nicholas, and Jean Bodel’s Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas are some examples of the plays celebrating the saint. Jean Bodel, Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, trans. Richard Axton and John Stevens (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971). For the Hildesheim and Fleury texts, see Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1933), 307–60; for Wace’s Life of Saint Nicholas, see Joel Fredell, “The Three Clerks and St. Nicholas in Medieval England,” Studies in Philology 92, no. 2 (1995): 181–202. 59 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 23, 26. Beyond these miracles, other aspects of St. Nicholas’s legend also celebrate him as a protector of children and a converter of the Jews. 60 Voragine, Golden Legend, 21–22. 61 Several Florentine pictorial representations of Nicholas’s life demonstrate the popularity of these miracles among merchant patrons. The example of the Castellani chapel is discussed earlier in this introduction. Other examples include the Quaratesi altarpiece by Gentile Fabriano in the funerary chapel of Bernardo di Castello: Alessandro Cecchi, “Gentile da Fabriano: Quaratesi Polyptych,” in Gentile da Fabriano and the Other Renaissance, ed. Laura Laureati and Lorenza Mochi Onori (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2006); Clare, St. Nicholas, 84.

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Badham, Sally. “Mercantile Involvement in Religious Guilds”. In The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, 221–41. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014. Black, Robert. Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany: Teachers, Pupils and Schools, c. 1250–1500, vol. 29, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Boston: Brill, 2007. Blockmans, Wim. “Constructing a Sense of Community in Rapidly Growing European Cities in the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries”. Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research 83, no. 222 (2010): 575–87. Bodel, Jean. Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas. Translated by Richard Axton and John Stevens. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971. Boffey, Julia. Manuscript and Print in London c. 1475–1530. London: British Library, 2012. Bradshaw, Henry. The Life of St. Werburge. Edited by Carl Horstmann. EETS o.s. 88. London: EETS, 1887. Brown, Andrew. Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges, c. 1300–1520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Bruzelius, Caroline. Preaching, Praying, and Burying: Friars and the Medieval City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Burgess, Clive. “Making Mammon Serve God: Merchant Piety in Later Medieval England”. In The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, 183–207. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014. Caferro, William. “Thomas Spinelli: The Soul of a Banker”. The Journal of the Historical Society 8, no. 2 (2008): 303–22. Campbell, Tony. “Portolan Charts from the late Thirteenth Century to 1500”. In The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward, 371–463. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Caskey, Jill. Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Cecchi, Alessandro. “Gentile da Fabriano: Quaratesi Polyptych”. In Gentile da Fabriano and the Other Renaissance, edited by Laura Laureati and Lorenza Mochi Onori, 256–63. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2006. Chubb, Taryn E. L. and Emily D. Kelley, eds. Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean. Medieval Encounters. Boston: Brill, 2012. Clare, Edward G. St. Nicholas: His Legends and Iconography. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1985. Cockerham, Paul. “Hanseatic Merchant Memorials: Individual Monuments or Collective ‘Memoria’?” In The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, 392–413. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014. Corbellini, Sabrina, and Margriet Hoogvliet. “Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (ca. 1400–ca. 1520)”. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43 (2013): 521–44. Corbellini, Sabrina. “Uncovering the Presence: Religious Literacies in Late Medieval Italy”. In Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Bart Ramakers, 68–87. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

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Introduction 

21

Griffin, Clive. The Crombergers of Seville: The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Hagland, Jan Ragnar. “Literacy and Trade in Late Medieval Norway”. Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2011): 29–37. Hasenohr, Geneviève. “Religious Reading amongst the Laity in France in the Fifteenth Century”. In Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530, edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, 205–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Henderson, John. Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Hoogvliet, Margriet. “‘Car Dieu veult estre serui de tous estaz’: Encouraging and Instructing Laypeople in French from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Sixteenth Century”. In Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Bart Ramakers, 111–40. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Jones, Charles W. Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Kent, Dale. Cosimo de Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Kermode, Jenny. Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kümin, Beat A. The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish, c. 1400–1560. Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996. Ladd, Roger A. Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Langholm, Odd. Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition 1200–1350. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Lawrence, C. H. The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society, revised edition. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Le Goff, Jacques. In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and the Golden Legend. Translated by Lynda G. Cochrane. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Lewis, Katherine J. “Male Saints and Devotional Masculinity in Late Medieval England”. Gender and History 24 (2012): 112–33. Little, Lester K. Indispensable Immigrants: The Wine Porters of Northern Italy and their Saint, 1200–1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. Moss, Amanda. “A Merchant’s Tales: A London Fifteenth-Century Household Miscellany”. The Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 156–69. Nicholas, David. The Growth of the Medieval City, From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century. New York: Longman, 1997. Nicholas, David. The Later Medieval City, 1300–1500. London: Longman, 1997. Nightingale, Pamela. A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

22  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp Nuovo, Angela. The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Boston: Brill, 2013. Ogilvie, Sheilagh. Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Origo, Iris. The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335–1410. Boston: David R. Godine, 1986. Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Philippe Berger, M. “Las lecturas femeninas en la Valencia del Renacimiento”. Bulletin Hispanique 100 (1998): 383–99. Purdie, Rhiannon. “Sexing the Manuscript: The Case for Female Ownership of MS Chetham 8009”. Neophilologus 82 (1998): 139–48. Reames, Sherry L. The Legenda Aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Reginald of Durham. Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, Heremitae de Finchale. Edited by Joseph Stevenson. Surtees Society 20. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1847. Reinburg, Virginia. French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400– 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Richardson, Gary. “Medieval Guilds”. EH.Net Encyclopedia. Edited by Robert Whaples. March 16, 2008. http:​//eh.​net/e​ncycl​opedi​a/med​ieval​-guil​ds/. Richardson, Malcolm. Middle-Class Writing in Late Medieval London. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011. Roberts, Perri Lee. “Familial Values and Franciscan Polemics in Late Trecento Florence: The Iconographic Program of the Castellani Chapel in Sta. Croce”. Gesta 48 (2009): 87–115. Rodríguez-Velasco, Jesús D. Order and Chivalry: Knighthood and Citizenship in Late Medieval Castile. Translated by Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Rogers, Nicholas. “Trading Saints: Cults Associated with Mercantile Activity”. In The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, 208–20. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014. Röhrkasten, Jens. The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004. Rosser, Gervase. The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250– 1550. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Sarti, Raffaella. “Telling Zita’s Tale: Holy Servants’ Stories and Servants’ History”. In Narratives of the Servant, edited by Regina Schulte and Pothiti Hantzaroula, 1–30. Florence: European University Institute, 2001. Schutte, Anne Jacobson. “Printing, Piety, and the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years”. Archive for Reformation History / Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980): 5–19. Scott, Katherine L. “Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages”. In Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A.S.G. Edwards, edited by Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall, 150–77. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Spufford, Peter. Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002.

Introduction 

23

Stabel, Peter. “Guilds in Late Medieval Flanders: Myths and Realities of Guild Life in an Export-Oriented Environment”. Journal of Medieval History 30 (2004): 187–212. Sutton, Anne F. “Fifteenth-Century Mercers and the Written Word: Mercers and their Scribes and Scriveners”. In Recording Medieval Lives, edited by Julia Boffey and Virginia Davis, 42–58. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2009. Sutton, Anne F. The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Swanson, R.N. Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Thijs, Alfons K. L. “Religion and Social Structure: Religious Rituals in Pre-Industrial Trade Associations in the Low Countries”. In Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power, and Representation, edited by Maarten Prak, Catharina Lis, Jan Lucassen, and Hugo Soly, 157–73. Burlington: Ashgate, 2006. Thompson, Augustine. Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125– 1325. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Thrupp, Sylvia. The Merchant Class of Medieval London [1300–1500]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Todeschini, Giacomo. “Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-Representation”. In The Self-Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, edited by Margaret C. Jacob and Catherine Secretan, 17–46. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Vauchez, André. “Lay People’s Sanctity in Western Europe: Evolution of a Pattern (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries)”. In Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, 21–32. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Vauchez, André. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Vincent, Catherine. “L’intercession dans les practiques religiouses du xiie au xve siècle”. In L’intercession du moyen âge à l’époque moderne: Autour d’une practique sociale, edited by Jean-Marie Moeglin, 171–93. Geneva: Droz, 2004. Volti, Panayota. Les couvents des ordres mendiants et leur environnement à la fin du Moyen Âge: Le nord de la France et les anciens Pays-Bas Méridionaux. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Waite, Gary K. Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515–1556. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Ward, Jennifer. “Merchant Families and Religion in Later Medieval Colchester”. In The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, 242–58. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2014. Waters, Clare M. “Power and Authority”. In A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, edited by Sarah Salih, 70–86. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006. Webb, Diana, ed. and trans. Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Webb, Diana. Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City States. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996.

24  Emily Kelley and Cynthia Turner Camp Weinstein, Donald, and Rudoph M. Bell. Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Williams-Krapp, Werner. “The Medieval German Lives and Miracles of St. James”. In Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, edited by Sabrina Corbellini, 201–18. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Wisch, Barbara, and Diane Cole Ahl, eds. Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Wolfthal, Diane. “Florentine Bankers, Flemish Friars, and the Patronage of the Portinari Altarpiece”. In Cultural Exchange between the Low Countries and Italy (1400–1600), edited by Alexander Skipnes, 1–21. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Wood, Diana. Medieval Economic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1933.

Part I

Merchant devotion to regional saints

2

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea merchant traders Christiania Whitehead

This chapter will examine one of the earliest instances in the Latin hagiography of insular saints in which saints conduct detailed interactions with merchant traders. The saint in question is the great northeastern Anglo-Saxon saint, St. Cuthbert, whose cult reached particular heights of popularity and textual production in the twelfth century, while the merchants in question are maritime traders operating on the North Sea between East England, Norway, Frisia, and Flanders in the second half of the same century. It may be useful to begin with some brief background information about the origins and reach of St. Cuthbert’s cult by the twelfth century. Following the abandonment of Lindisfarne monastery, where Cuthbert’s body was housed and venerated, under the pressure of Viking raids in 875, the community of Cuthbert became intermittently peripatetic for a number of years, before settling at Chester-le-Street with Cuthbert’s body in 882, and then on the rocky peninsula of land at Durham in 995.1 After the Norman Conquest, the secular clerks who had formed the community were replaced with an Anglo-Norman foundation of Benedictine monks in 1083, and work commenced upon Durham Cathedral, erected to provide Cuthbert’s body with a more grandiose resting place, in 1093.2 The Cathedral became the undisputed center for the tomb cult, welcoming increasing numbers of pilgrims as the twelfth century progressed. However, subsidiary cult centers also re-emerged after a couple of centuries of obscurity and dereliction: at Lindisfarne, off the coast of northern Northumbria, where Cuthbert spent time as a monk and a bishop in the late seventh century, and on Inner Farne Island, a few miles south, where he retreated to become a hermit in 676. The Durham Benedictine community formally re-established Lindisfarne as a dependent priory in 1093, and Benedictine hermits from Durham began inhabiting Cuthbert’s hermitage on Inner Farne from around the second quarter of the twelfth century.3 The best known of these hermits, who acquired the saintly appendage of a posthumous Vita, is St. Bartholomew of Farne (resident on Farne 1150–93).4 Some reference will also be made to the other major Cuthbertine hermit of the twelfth century, St. Godric of Finchale, living just north of Durham city, who, relevantly for this topic, plied the seas as a merchant trader prior to his entry into the eremitic life.5

28  Christiania Whitehead Until the early twelfth century, the main historiographies and miracle collections which detail the cult of Cuthbert are the anonymous Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, a maverick narrative relaying the fortunes of Cuthbert’s community and its acquisition of landholdings from the eighth to the early eleventh centuries;6 the Libellus de exordio (1104–07), by the Benedictine historian Symeon of Durham, an ambitious history of the church of Durham until the death of its second Norman bishop in 1096;7 and the anonymous Liber de translationibus et miraculi sancti Cuthberti (1083–c.1120), a rather loose collection of miracle stories, supplementing older miracles with newer material from the first decade of the twelfth century.8 All these historiographies and miracle collections evoke sea visitors and relationships eastward in unremittingly negative terms. The North Sea is the vehicle for the devastating Danish and Norse raids of the late eighth century as well as later waves of invasion and settlement from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. As late as 1153, we still read of one last Norwegian plundering enterprise, headed by King Eystein II, looting the Scottish and English eastern seaboard from Aberdeen down to Whitby.9 Cuthbert confronts this seaborne aggression posthumously in his miracle collections, as does St. Edmund of Bury, the other major Anglo-Saxon saint near England’s eastern seaboard, who will be used as a source of comparison at various points in this chapter.10 We hear nothing about any other kinds of exchange with the nautical world of the North Sea. Then, in the third quarter of the twelfth century, North Sea merchant traders become sizeable players within the sphere of Cuthbertine miracle working. Having remained completely absent from earlier collections, they suddenly participate in nine miracle stories, constituting 7% of the contemporary recipients of Cuthbertine miracles, a notable demographical shift.11 The text that enables us to arrive at these statistics is the large compendium of twelfth-century miracle stories titled the Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus, compiled by the Durham Benedictine, Reginald, during the 1160s and 70s, which records contemporary Cuthbertine thaumaturgy throughout northern England and southern Scotland. The Libellus de admirandis is supplemented by the Vita Sancti Bartholomaei Farnensis of Geoffrey of Durham (c. 1195), a life of the twelfth-century Cuthbertine hermit St. Bartholomew of Farne, and a further short text detailing twelve miracles performed on Farne Island, De mirabilibus Dei modernis temporibus in Farne insula declaratis, by an anonymous Durham writer, possibly one of the Farne hermits, composed around 1200.12 In Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis, in a cluster of miracles early in the collection, we hear of Cuthbert making visionary appearances and ministering to sailors caught in storms in the North Sea.13 These sailors are traders plying trade routes between England, Norway, Frisia, and Flanders. Turning briefly to an outline of the landscape of North Sea trade in the twelfth century, we should first note that as a result of Danish settlement in east and northern England, accentuated by the assimilation of England into

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  29 King Cnut’s North Sea empire in the first half of the eleventh century, there was a sizeable tradition of trade in dried fish, timber, animal skins and furs, lamp oil, grain, and cloth between England and Scandinavia, centered in particular upon the city of York; the Humber; Boston; Lincolnshire; and King’s Lynn in Norfolk.14 By the end of the twelfth century, these traditional trade links had weakened to some degree and begun to be replaced by a stronger economic focus south toward the Low Countries and northern France, facilitated no doubt by Norman links with these regions. During the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Frisia (the coastal region of the Netherlands) and Flanders experienced very rapid expansion in their urban and industrial economies, focused upon the port towns of Stavoren, Groningen, Tiel, Utrecht, Flanders, and Bruges.15 Flanders and Bruges, in particular, experienced an unparalleled boom in textile manufacturing, fed by exports of wool from East Anglia, and Flanders seems to have functioned as England’s chief trading partner for much of the twelfth century, although that relationship was eventually diluted by the growing dominance of Germany, in particular Lübeck, in Baltic and North Sea trade, and by the formation of the Hanseatic League early in the thirteenth century.16 St. Cuthbert ministers to traders sailing between eastern England, Norway, Frisia, and Flanders. In the light of the shifting economic seascape sketched above, we may observe how inclusively these miracle stories chart the multiple trade indices of the late-twelfth-century North Sea world, mapping declining links with the Nordic nations alongside promising new communications toward the south. In one story, it is possible there may be some suspicion of the economic turn towards Frisia: English traders are driven by a storm towards Frisian territory and threatened from a distance by Frisian pirates. Cuthbert appears in a vision and guides the beleaguered sailors back towards the haven of Farne Island, where they can take shelter and recount their experience to the Durham hermits, Bartholomew and Aelwin.17 The narrative depicts the saint of the North saving English sailors from the threat represented by Frisia and redirecting them back toward local waters. At a time of economic transition, it seems quite feasible to read this threat as an account of economic as well as physical anxiety. The story of the rescue from Frisia is, in its narrative structuring, representative of a whole cluster of miracles in Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis, in which various traders caught in storms on the North Sea are saved by an apparition of St. Cuthbert dressed as a bishop and led to a safe haven on Farne Island. On one occasion they lose their rudder in the storm, and Cuthbert supplies his pastoral staff as an alternative steering device.18 Once on Farne Island, they typically recount their salvation to the resident Durham hermits and are provided with a eucharistic meal. Frequently in these accounts, allegorical language impinges on the record of events. These traders had “negotiationis studio animum dederant et lucrandi desiderio avidius aestuabant” (dedicated their mind to the study of commerce and were boiling greedily with the desire of gaining profit). As such, they

30  Christiania Whitehead find themselves nigh-on drowned within stormy seas of sinful worldliness. Their ships are “avariciae vascula” (vessels of avarice); Cuthbert succors their souls when they “se advocantium a framea perditionis” (called for help from the framework of damnation).19 Clearly, from a twelfth-century, Benedictine viewpoint, professional engagement with commerce comprises a highway to perdition. This is distinctly disingenuous given the state of play on the ground. For, by the twelfth century, Benedictine monasteries were valuable commercial enterprises, supervising annual fairs, securing monopolies on local seasonal markets, and amassing revenues from the sale of timber and fishing rights as well as from the large-scale rental of manors on monastic lands.20 Nonetheless, the Benedictines want to be seen to reject commerce in their hagiographical writing, demonstrating a very different attitude from thirteenth-century moral treatises and sermon handbooks, many by mendicants, where the activities of the marketplace are frequently used as metaphors for Christ’s transactions with mankind in the alternative economy of salvation. The readiness of mendicants to coin metaphors of this kind presumably derives from their evangelical ministry to towns and cities, where they sought to couch their preaching and pastoral ministries in terms that would resonate with urban, middle-class congregations engaged in commerce. The De doctrina cordis, a mid-thirteenth-century devotional treatise of Low Country authorship, extensively influenced by Dominican scholarship, offers a relevant example: “Dowter” he seith, “yive me þin herte.” Sister, yif þin hert be for to selle, þou haste founde a blissid marchaunt, þe wiche bought it ful dere with moche price of his blode. And love was þe cause whi þat he wolde schede so moche blode: only for to bygh þin hert. Yif þou haddist a clothe þat were dere bought, woldist þou not kepe it wel more better þan anoþer cloth, because it cost þe moche? Moche more þan, me þinkith, þou shuldist kepe wel þin hert, þe wiche was bought right dere. Also, yif þin hert be for to be put away, þou shalt fynde þis blissid marchaunt, Jhesu Crist, a violent revour. For þogh þou wilt lese his good, leve it wel he wil not lese it for he bought it right preciously.21 (“Daughter,” he [Christ] says, “give me your heart.” Sister, if your heart is available to sell, you have found a blessed merchant who bought it very expensively with the huge price of his blood. And love was the reason that he shed so much blood: only in order to buy your heart. If you had a fabric that had been bought for a lot of money, would you not look after it more carefully than another fabric because it was so expensive? Much more then, it seems to me, you should guard your heart, which was bought very expensively. In addition, if your heart is about to be rejected, you will find this blessed merchant, Jesus Christ, is a violent robber. For although you lose his purchase, believe surely that he will not lose it, for he bought it very preciously.)

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  31 In this example, Christ is troped as a holy merchant who purchases human hearts with the currency of his blood. Significantly, such purchases are set alongside valuable textiles. Christ is different from normal merchants, but he is prepared to assume their attributes and envelope himself in the lexis of commerce in order to win souls. The famous late thirteenth-century pastoral handbook, the Somme le Roi, by the Dominican Lorens d’Orléans offers a similar example: For þis world fareþ riȝt as a feyre, wher-ynne beþ many fole marchauntes þat bien glas for sapheres, coper for gold, bleddres for lanternes. But he is riȝt a good merchaunt þat knoweþ wel what a þing is worþ and þe vertue of euery þing ... þe wise marchauntes, þat ben þe goode holy men þat þe Holy Gost is liȝt to bi knowlechynge verely, þat knowen wel al þing and wyten what alle þing is worþ.22 (For this world behaves in the same way as a commercial fair, in which there are many foolish merchants who buy glass mistaking it for sapphires, copper thinking it gold, bladders thinking them lanterns. By contrast, the one who knows exactly what a thing is worth and the intrinsic quality of everything may be accounted a good merchant … the wise merchants, they are the good and holy men who are illuminated truly with knowledge by the Holy Ghost, and fully comprehend the nature of things and know what everything is worth.) Here, the rhetorical opposition is not between worldly merchants and men of religion, but between foolish merchants who fail to read value correctly and “wise merchants,” good and holy men, who show an inspired appreciation of the true worth of the world and its objects. The entirety of humanity, it would seem, is engaged in different kinds of commerce. It is possible that the Durham Benedictines show such an uncompromising attitude toward commerce in the north of England during these decades because they are in competition in various ways with the Cistercians, recently arrived at various moorland locations in Yorkshire, Northumbria, and Cumbria.23 Durham’s vigorous campaign to produce saintly Benedictine hermits in the second half of the twelfth century very possibly responds in part to Cistercian ideals of desert asceticism. By the same token, their rhetorical rejection of business in these North Sea miracles may well reference some of the initial positions taken by the Cistercians: their opposition to the city and their idealistic rejection of revenue collection from the possession of manors and churches, from the management of mills, and from the organization of seasonal markets and fairs.24 Most of these principled positions were quickly watered down: English exports of wool throughout the Middle Ages derived in large part from the vast Cistercian estates turned over to sheep-keeping. Nonetheless, the ideals must have remained in the air for a time as a goad to Benedictine practices, and it is entirely possible that they may have wanted to create exemplary narratives in which their hermits were clearly differentiated from trade.

32  Christiania Whitehead This oppositional evaluation of the holy hermit and the merchant initiates a further series of related oppositions within Reginald’s miracle cluster. There is a very deliberate redirectioning at work in all these stories – from the predesignated endpoint of the commercial port to the eremitic island, emphasized by the change in the nature of the rudder from the nautical implement to the pontifical staff.25 By the same token, the turbulent flux of the waters underpinning the merchant enterprise is contrasted with the stasis and solid foundation of the Cuthbertine anchorhold;26 the commercial foodstuffs of fish, grain, and oil give way to the spiritual foodstuffs of the eucharistic meal; and the worldly economy of commercial exchange is replaced by a superior spiritual economy in which prayers, invocations, and offerings are exchanged for the intangible goods of safety and salvation. These oppositions accumulate to drive home the message that the holy hermit and the merchant, the anchorhold and the trading vessel, are completely antithetical. However, as stated above, it is important to recall that these are crafted oppositions representing idealistic positions; they are not the case on the ground. A slightly different way of reading these narratives, giving more place to their temporal indices, is to see them as repeated illustrations of an exemplary biographical trajectory from commerce to the eremitic life. Cuthbert changes the directions of these ships from the maritime trade route to the hermitage: traders might change to become men of God and hermits. Interestingly, this exemplary trajectory is actualized in the life of St. Godric of Finchale, which Reginald was also writing at the same time as the Libellus de admirandis. Godric starts life as a roving merchant trader, visits the shrines of St. Andrew in Scotland and St. Cuthbert at Farne in the course of his commercial journeys, is moved by them, and ends up exchanging the mobile life of commerce for the stability of the hermitage.27 The majority of the nautical miracles in Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis place Cuthbert in relation with St. Nicholas of Bari, the fourth-century bishop of Myra and patron saint of sailors and merchants, implying their equivalence as maritime wonderworkers and positioning Cuthbert as the de facto St. Nicholas of the North Sea.28 This is an entirely new position for Cuthbert to assume in the second half of the twelfth century; previously, saintly authorization has come principally in the form of comparisons with Benedict, Martin of Tours, and Anthony of Egypt, the traditional spiritual heroes of the monastic, episcopal, and eremitic lives.29 Following the translation of his relics from Turkey to Bari in southern Italy in 1087, the cult of St. Nicholas spread swiftly to northern Europe, where his feast day was celebrated in early December by sailors from port towns in the Low Countries.30 The cult also acquired devotees in England from the late eleventh century31 and seems to have been prominent in Durham from a very early date. We know that Durham priory possessed an illustrated Vita of St. Nicholas, together with relics of the saint, not long after its foundation.32 An early twelfth-century church in the city marketplace below the cathedral was dedicated to him, and in addition, a medieval chapel to St. Nicholas

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  33 exists in the cathedral beneath the prior’s house. St. Godric of Finchale, the trader turned hermit, seems to have had a particular devotion to the saint, and one of the three vernacular lyrics attributed to him takes the form of a prayer to St. Nicholas, arising from a visionary episode in which he sees the saint together with angels performing hymns at the sepulcher of Christ at Eastertide.33 Given that the Durham monks composed vitae of Godric, which consciously attempted to construct him as a Cuthbertine hermit, it is possible that this reference to his lyric devotion to St. Nicholas may have been deliberately created to contribute to this agenda. One of the main stories connected with St. Nicholas concerns an incident in which he is going on pilgrimage in an Egyptian ship when a storm blows up on the Mediterranean and a sailor climbing the mast of the ship falls and is killed. St. Nicholas quiets the storm and succeeds in bringing the sailor back to life. The story is a specific example of a more general narrative archetype in which the saint appears miraculously to sailors in peril on the sea and calms the wild elements.34 It is mimicked very closely in Chapter 32 of Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis, where sailors traveling from England to Norway encounter a storm and a crew member climbing a mast falls into the sea. Cuthbert appears miraculously garbed as a bishop, calms the storm, saves the drowning crew member, and redirects the ship to the safety of Inner Farne. The point at issue here, as well as the obvious relocation from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, is that Reginald has rewritten the pilgrimage ship as a commercial vessel, giving Cuthbert a much more explicit and sharply focused ministry toward sea-going merchants in distress. That is not to say that St. Nicholas does not engage with maritime traders. In another, well-known story, during a time of considerable famine in Myra, a number of cargo ships anchor in its harbor laden with wheat destined for the Emperor of Constantinople. Nicholas persuades the sailors to unload some of the wheat to feed his people despite their fears that the Emperor’s administrators will punish them for the shortfall. Miraculously, when they finally unload their wares at Constantinople, there is the same weight of grain on the ship as when they initially set sail.35 Nicholas intervenes in the maritime trading networks of the ancient Mediterranean world to succor those in dire physical need. Again, this example may well underlie miracles in Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis in the same nautical cluster, in which Cuthbert oversees the abundant provision of fish from fishing vessels for the monastic brethren and supplies reserves of grain to local fishermen which never run out.36 The late eleventh- and early twelfth-century miracle collections about St. Edmund of Bury by Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of SaintBertin also include several stories in which Edmund’s ministry to stormtossed travelers at sea is set in relation to St. Nicholas.37 In what is perhaps the most significant of these stories, some French monks from the abbey of Saint-Nicholas, Angers, are delayed in crossing to England from Barfleur on the coast of Normandy because of adverse winds. They discuss invoking

34  Christiania Whitehead St. Nicholas, their patron saint, to improve the weather, but one old monk suggests letting St. Edmund have a go instead: “ut qui notus est tantum in Anglia, fiat notus in aliena patria” (so that he might become as famous in another country as he is in England).38 Predictably, the next day, St. Edmund guides the ship unswervingly across the Channel to Southampton. Clearly, these hagiographers are appropriating St. Nicholas to serve a very similar purpose to Reginald’s utilization of the saint: like Cuthbert, St. Edmund is being tentatively set up as an indigenous St. Nicholas, although over a much more southerly area of sea, the Channel crossing to Normandy. Importantly, assuming this role is revealed as a way of amplifying one’s spiritual profile abroad, of internationalizing an English saint. We can deduce that the same purposes extend to mid-twelfth-century constructions of St. Cuthbert and that the comparisons with St. Nicholas are intended to authorize and advertise his activities on the North Sea and to set him upon an international thaumaturgical stage. Cuthbert is troped as the indigenous St. Nicholas of the North Sea, ministering to English, Norwegian, and Flemish merchant traders. There is clearly a territorial dimension to this depiction: a claim, in effect, for English political influence over the international waters of the North Sea and its maritime trade, enacted in incontestable terms via the wonderworking of an emphatically English patronal saint.39 This brings us to the question of the political ownership of the sea in the high Middle Ages. Sebastian Sobecki offers a useful overview of the evolving legal situation: maintaining the Roman legal principle that in natural law the sea was ineligible to be private property, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries European legal theorists still appear to have been committed to the idea of the mare communalis (the communality of the sea). This perception was on the wane by the fourteenth century when the idea of territorial waters entered legal theory and legislation, and the sea, in particular coastal waters, began to be treated as an extension of land territory.40 This is the speed at which things evolve in the legal sphere. However, I would like to propose that Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis and other similar collections effectively jump in ahead of international legislation by using hagiographical narrative to insinuate that the communal waters of the North Sea and the commerce enacted there come under principally English dominion. That English dominion is subtly encoded as the benign and miraculous oversight of St. Cuthbert, defined early on by Bede as epitomizing English sanctity, and thereafter closely identified with the social and spiritual identity of the north of England. Cuthbert’s rescue missions to ships in peril on the deep in the second half of the twelfth century extend English spiritual influence out onto the North Sea and over changing currents of maritime commerce, from Scandinavia down to Flanders. They imply political assertion and expansion in an easterly direction, perhaps pandering to Norman imperial aspirations,41 and additionally act as indicators of the confidence and ebullience of the

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  35 Cuthbertine corporation at Durham during this period. Rather than simply consolidating their possession of Cuthbertine landholdings within the diocese (their principal concern only a few decades before), Cuthbert’s Benedictine guardians demonstrate the security and confidence to invent a new and expanded version of their patron saint in which, for a few decades at least, he casts the nets of his wonderworking many maritime miles east into the ocean.42 In the final section of this chapter, I would like to move from Reginald’s maritime cluster of episcopal appearances at sea, compiled in the 1160s, to a later, more detailed miracle recorded solely in the anonymous De mirabilibus Dei modernis temporibus in Farne insula declaratis written around 1200, which offers a fascinating account of Cuthbert’s relationship with the Flemish textile trade.43 The miracle in question is an adapted version of a narrative originally recounted in Bede’s Prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti.44 In the original version, Cuthbert visits his old wet nurse, a holy woman, in a village in Lothian in the course of a preaching tour. A fire starts up within the village, but Cuthbert prevents it from crossing the boundaries of his nurse’s house by interposing his body along the ground in front of the threshold to the house. In the adapted version in the De mirabilibus Dei in Farne, we learn that a Flemish merchant from Aardenberg in the Low Countries, near Bruges, has long had a devotion to St. Cuthbert (this incidentally constitutes important evidence for the veneration of Cuthbert in Flanders at the beginning of the thirteenth century). One day while he is away on business, a town fire takes hold in Aardenberg which threatens to engulf his house. His wife, however, places a rope of tow around the boundary of the building, putting her faith in St. Cuthbert as she does so. Miraculously, the tow rope repels the flames and the house is saved. When the merchant hears this story, he makes two candles, brings them to the Farne Island oratory to offer to St. Cuthbert, and recounts the miracle to St. Bartholomew, the resident hermit. Bartholomew subsequently recounts the story to other visitors and gives them pieces of wax from the candles in order to fix the story in their memories. Composed thirty or forty years after Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis, this miracle narrative arguably presents the practice of urban commerce in a markedly more positive light than Reginald’s allegories of worldly greed and perdition. To test whether this argument holds, let us consider the principal changes brought to Bede’s story by the anonymous author of the De mirabilibus Dei in Farne. First, the village in Lothian has become a mercantile town in the industrialized Low Countries into which the story of Cuthbert’s spiritual power is brought by a merchant as a consequence of his commercial links with England. Cuthbert’s power is demonstrated within a commercial environment as a product of mercantile movement across the North Sea. Second, the holy old wet nurse is rewritten as the Flemish merchant’s wife. In other words, the matriarch of a commercial household becomes as worthy a recipient of miracle-working as the surrogate mother who suckled the infant

36  Christiania Whitehead saint. Third, rather than witnessing the interposition of the saint’s body at the threshold of the house, the merchant’s wife circles the periphery of her dwelling with a rope of tow. The specification of the yarn encourages further reflection. Tow is the coarse, broken fiber created in the processing of flax by hackling it with metal combs. One of the byproducts of the textile industry, it is created in the course of generating high-quality linen thread. It can come as no surprise to hear that a Flemish merchant’s wife should seek to protect her household with one of the key materials of their livelihood. Nonetheless, it is notable that this creates an interesting equation between the saintly body and the material stuff of the textile trade. De mirabilibus Dei in Farne makes this equation explicit, commenting that the rope of tow which repelled the fire was like Cuthbert’s chaste flesh which repelled the fire of carnal temptation.45 Cuthbert’s empowered saintly body is brought into an unexpected synthesis with the raw materials of the Flemish cloth industry. Continuing forward to the second part of the narrative, the merchant has two candles made and sails with them to Farne Island to recount what has happened, make an offering, and give thanks. In many medieval miracle collections, a common votive offering at a saint’s shrine is a candle in which the length of the wick replicates the height of the devotee who has been cured of illness (or hopes to be cured), or the circumference of a building or vehicle which has been miraculously protected.46 Two of the other miracles in De mirabilibus Dei in Farne relate precisely this votive ritual. In Chapter 8, the father of a Sunderland laborer is struck with illness, measures his body with a hempen rope, makes a candle from it which he offers on Farne Island, and comes home completely cured. And in Chapter 13, the nephew of an officer of the king of Scotland offers wax equal to the weight of his body on Farne Island in order to be healed from a disability.47 The identification of the rope of tow with the wicks of the candles that the merchant offers is not made explicit in the Aardenberg miracle story, but I would suggest that it may well be implicit: these candles have been closely aligned with a length of rope measuring the circumference of a building that has been miraculously protected. If this is the case, then it is possible to observe some very interesting transformations at work. The length of tow, a byproduct of the textile economy, is reconstituted as a key element within the spiritual economy of the saint’s shrine: a votive candle. It is literally remade to serve a different economy. Not only that, the candles are then broken into parts and distributed to subsequent visitors by Bartholomew to facilitate memorization of the Flemish miracle. Farne Island replaces Flanders as a center of distribution, but for spiritual rather than commercial goods, with the hermit as the primary agent or middleman. As for the candle fragments, each becomes a visual trigger for commemoration, a material cue for the miracle that has taken place. All in all, if we allow this identification, the rope of tow has made a very long conceptual journey: from commercial byproduct to votive offering to a final, definitive hermeneutic as a material cue or sign for the miraculous.

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  37 Despite the important economic links between England and Flanders in the second half of the twelfth century, there were also moments of tension and warfare in the 1170s and the 1190s, when trade bans were imposed, goods confiscated, and Flemish merchants imprisoned on English soil for ignoring or defying those bans. During the internal war between Henry II and Henry the Young King in 1173–74, mainly as a consequence of Philip of Flanders’ support for the Young King, Flemish weavers were associated with the rebel army in popular propaganda. Indeed, Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of Durham, who seems temporarily to have sided with William, King of Scots and the Young King, is reported to have orchestrated the landing of his nephew, Count Hugh of Bar-sur-Seine, at Hartlepool, together with five hundred Flemish mercenaries, in order to swell the rebel forces. Learning of the King of Scots’ capture, the Flemings were paid and sent back, and Puiset surrendered his castles to Henry II soon after.48 Doubtless because of these rebel associations, a ship carrying grain to Flanders was seized off the coast of Essex in 1173 and a ban imposed on the Flemish grain trade. Similar trade bans were reintroduced in the 1190s, and in 1197, Flemish merchants were imprisoned at a fair in Kings Lynn, Norfolk for attempting to breach those bans.49 It is illuminating to reconsider this miracle story in the light of these volatile economic relations. On the one hand, the story represents the Flemish mercantile town in an apparently positive light – a place of continental devotion to an English saint, a place where Cuthbert is happy to exercise his miraculous powers, and a place where the materials of industry seem to achieve a certain synthesis with the saintly body. On the other hand, it is also a story committed to a hegemonic, monastic vision of the world. And so, gathered up and redirected to serve a monastic economy, the materials and participants within Flemish commerce are accorded very little validity in their own right. The tow rope becomes a physical sign for the miraculous; the key distributor becomes not the merchant but the hermit; the merchant’s final travels take him toward the hermitage on Farne rather than to the commercial ports of his normal business world; his final cargo becomes not cloth but candles. This is a story about the relationship between the eastern English seaboard and the commercial Low Countries. It portrays a strong relationship, certainly; however, it is also a narrative committed to rethinking the frames of reference of Low Countries’ mercantile culture and to converting its practices to acknowledge the pre-eminence of the ecclesiastical economy and of an English saint. Given the volatile political situation we have just brought to light, it is additionally possible that it was intended as a riposte to the complexities of Anglo-Flemish trade relations in the 1170s–90s, namely, a crucially important culture of exchange shot through with the anxiety that the Flemish could be sporadically hostile to English monarchical interests. If this is the case, then we can see the Durham author of the De mirabilibus Dei in Farne using Cuthbertine thaumaturgy in a wonderfully subtle and

38  Christiania Whitehead creative way to expose the rifts in these trade relations and ultimately to opt for a protectionist polemic, trumping Flemish mercantilism with northern English sanctity.

Notes 1 David W. Rollason, “The Wanderings of St. Cuthbert,” in Cuthbert, Saint and Patron, ed. David W. Rollason (Durham: Dean and Chapter, 1987), 45–59. 2 The most relevant essay collections discussing these events are Gerard Bonner, David W. Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe, eds., St. Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to A.D. 1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989); and David W. Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich, eds., Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994). 3 Victoria Tudor, “Durham Priory and its Hermits in the Twelfth Century,” in Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. Rollason, Harvey and Prestwich, 67–78. 4 Geoffrey of Coldingham, Vita Sancti Bartholomaei Farnensis, in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series 75, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1882–85), 1:295–325. 5 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, ed. Joseph Stephenson, Surtees Society 20 (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1847). 6 Ted Johnson South, ed., Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: A History of St. Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002). 7 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie = Tract on the origins and progress of this the Church of Durham, ed. and trans. David W. Rollason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). 8 See Bertram Colgrave, “The Post-Bedean Miracles and Translations of St. Cuthbert,” in The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, ed. Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins (London: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 305–22. 9 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus quae novellis patrate sunt temporibus, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society 1 (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1835), ch. 29, pp. 65–66. The expedition is also recounted, from a more admiring point of view, in Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), chs. 20–21. 10 Eystein and his men draw up their ships for the night on Farne Island in the course of this raid. When Eystein’s soldiers start roasting the hermits’ sheep and stealing their timber, Cuthbert retaliates by drying up the island’s drinking well, forcing the soldiers to leave. Earlier, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, Cuthbert reacts with great aggression to the attempts of the Danish kings, Halfdan and Ragnald, to seize his landed endowments and give them to their retainers. These miracle stories are initially told in the anonymous Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, and are repeated in all subsequent histories of the church of Durham. In the miracles of St. Edmund of Bury, initially compiled by Herman the Archdeacon (c. 1070s–98) and later revised by Goscelin of SaintBertin (1120s–30s), a very similar story is told regarding Edmund’s animosity toward the Danish invader, Svein Forkbeard (king of Denmark, c. 987–1014, and of England, 1013–14), who attempts to extract a tribute from the East Anglian populace, and toward Osgod Clapa, an arrogant Danish warrior who violates his church and is punished by the saint with demonic possession and a withered hand. Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, The Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. and trans. Tom Licence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2014), Herman, “Miracles of St. Edmund,” chs. 4–8, pp. 14–21; Goscelin, “Miracles of St. Edmund,” ch. 9, pp. 206–11.

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  39 11 Sally Crumplin, “Rewriting History in the Cult of St. Cuthbert from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries” (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2004), 259. 12 The text survives in London, British Library, MS Harley 4843 (1520s). H.H.E. Craster, ed., “The Miracles of St. Cuthbert at Farne,” Analecta bollandiana 70 (1952): 5–19; H.H.E. Craster, intro. and trans., “The Miracles of Farne,” Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series 29 (1951): 93–107. 13 Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, chs. 23–34, pp. 50–77. 14 See Barbara Crawford, ed., Conversion and Christianity in the North Sea World (St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews, 1998); Anne Pedersen, “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea in the Eleventh Century: A Survey of the Danish Archaeological Evidence,” in Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350, ed. Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 43–69. As well as economic exchange, there is also some evidence for the export of saints’ cults from England to Scandinavia. The cult of the East Anglian saint, Botolph, is well attested in Scandinavia, and the feast day of St. Cuthbert seems to have been celebrated at Trondheim cathedral in Norway: Christopher Hohler, “The Durham Services in Honour of St. Cuthbert,” in The Relics of Saint Cuthbert, ed. C. F. Battiscombe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 155–91, at 161–62. In addition, Reginald tells a story about a noble Norwegian youth whose bishop in Bergen recommends that he seek healing for a neurological illness at the shrine of one of the English saints, recommending Edmund of Bury, Cuthbert of Durham, or Thomas of Canterbury: Libellus de admirandis, ch. 112, pp. 248–54. 15 Dirk Meier, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 139–43. 16 See Eljas Oksanen, “Economic Relations between East Anglia and Flanders in the Anglo-Norman Period,” in East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages, ed. David Bates and Robert Liddiard (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), 174–87; Birgit Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia from Conversion to Reformation c. 800–1500 (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1993). 17 Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, ch. 30, pp. 67–69. 18 Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, ch. 23, pp. 50–53. 19 Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, ch. 30, p. 67; 23, p. 52; 30, p. 67, respectively. My discussion of these quotations and the allegories to which they point is indebted to Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), 142–43. 20 James G. Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Boydell, 2011), 139–49; Janet Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000– 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 233–57. 21 Since this influential text has not yet been critically edited, I quote from the fifteenth-century Middle English translation: Christiania Whitehead, Denis Renevey, and Anne Mouron, eds., The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2010), 77. The De doctrina cordis is heavily influenced by the Postillae of the Paris Dominican cardinal, Hugh of St. Cher. All modern translations from Middle English are my own. 22 The Somme le Roi was translated into Middle English several times. I quote from The Book of Vices and Virtues, the most influential fourteenth-century translation: W. Nelson Francis, ed., The Book of Vices and Virtues, EETS o.s. 217 (London: Oxford University Press, 1942, repr. 1988), 74–76. 23 Rievaulx and Fountains Abbeys were founded in Yorkshire in 1132, Newminster Abbey was founded in Northumberland in 1137, and Byland and Furness Abbeys were established in Yorkshire and west Cumbria, respectively, in 1147. 24 Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders, 240–41, 245.

40  Christiania Whitehead 25 It should be noted that although St. Edmund of Bury occasionally helps seafarers in trouble (Herman and Goscelin describe pilgrims and monks in trouble at sea but make no reference to commercial travelers), he never causes ships to change direction to an alternative spiritual destination: Herman, Miracles, chs. 30, pp. 88–91; 43, pp. 124–25; Goscelin, Miracles, book 1, ch. 11, 216–19; book 2, ch. 3, 264–71. 26 The common metaphor of the Ship of the Church voyaging afloat seas of worldliness has to be rejected in this formulation. Rather, the moral opposition is between the sea and the rock of the island. 27 Reginald, Vita Godrici, ch. 5, pp. 31–32. 28 Cuthbert is explicitly compared with St. Nicholas in the miracles in Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis, chs. 27, 29–32. See also Robert W. Frank Jr., “Shrine rivalry in the North Sea world,” in The North Sea World in the Middle Ages, ed. Thomas R. Liszka and Lorna E. M. Walker (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 230–42, at 237. 29 Bede, Prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti, in Bertram Colgrave, ed. and trans., Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), chs. 14, 19, 20. Clare Stancliffe, “Cuthbert: The Polarity between Pastor and Solitary,” in Bonner, Rollason and Stancliffe, St. Cuthbert: His Cult, 21–44, at 36–44. 30 For the cult of St. Nicholas, see Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 31 Both the Vita of St. Nicholas by John of Naples and the Office of St. Nicholas by Reginold of Eichstätt were known in late eleventh-century England: Herman and Goscelin, Miracles, 90–91, n. 351. 32 Veronica Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 73. 33 Reginald, Vita Godrici, ch. 93, pp. 202–03. The text of the lyric is recorded in the French adaptation of Reginald’s Vita in Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 1716 (late 13th c.), and in an inserted leaf in British Library, MS Royal 5 F vii (14th c). 34 These stories clearly derive in turn from the biblical archetype of Jesus walking on the water and calming the storm: Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–56; John 6:16–21. 35 The story seems to be a maritime variant upon the biblical Feeding of the Five Thousand: Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:30–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–13. 36 Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, chs. 31, pp. 70–72; 34, pp. 76–77. There are many more such stories concerning undiminishing foodstuffs which assist the monks in their obligation of hospitality, scattered throughout the miracle collection. 37 See, for example, Herman, Miracles, ch. 30, pp. 88–91. 38 Goscelin, Miracles, book 2, ch. 6, pp. 298–303, at 300. 39 Bede sets up St. Cuthbert as a paradigm of English sanctity in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 4.27–32, pp. 430–48, and the construction is repeated and extended in a story recorded in the anonymous Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, chs. 14–18, and Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio, 2.10, in which Cuthbert appears to Alfred the Great and promises him military victory and the crown of all England, under his supernatural patronal guidance. 40 Bartolus de Sassoferrato was one of the most prominent fourteenth-century European jurists to treat the sea as a part of a nation’s territory: Sebastian Sobecki, The Sea and Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), 140–45. 41 Interestingly, when Geoffrey of Monmouth creates King Arthur’s empire as a mirror of Norman imperial aspirations a few decades earlier in his Historia

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  41 Regum Britanniae, IX.10–11 (c. 1136), he lists the imperial conquests of Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Gotland, effectively imagining a North Sea world under Arthurian (British) imperial rule: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. and trans. Neil Wright, vol. 5 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985), book 9, chs. 10–11. I am indebted to Dr. Sarah Rees Jones for this observation. 42 In addition to this nautical expansion east, Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis also demonstrates the spread of the cult (and of miracles associated with it) into Roxburghshire and Perthshire in Scotland, Cumbria, and Lancashire. 43 Craster, ed., “Miracles of St. Cuthbert at Farne,” ch. 12. 44 Bede, Prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti, in Colgrave, ed., Two Lives, ch. 14. 45 Craster, ed., “Miracles of St. Cuthbert at Farne,” chs. 12, 19. 46 This practice is described in Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London: J. M. Dent, 1977), 95–96, and Benjamin J. Nilson, Cathedral Shrines in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 102–04. 47 Craster, ed., “Miracles of St. Cuthbert at Farne,” chs. 8, p. 17; 13, p. 19. 48 Roger of Howden, Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 5, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, 1868–71), 2, ch. 63. 49 Oksanen, “Economic Relations,” 180–81, 184.

Bibliography Alexander, Dominic. Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008. Bede. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited and translated by Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Bonner, Gerard, David W. Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe, eds. St. Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989. Burton, Janet. Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000–1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Clark, James G. The Benedictines in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011. Colgrave, Bertram, “The Post-Bedean Miracles and Translations of St. Cuthbert”. In The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, edited by Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins, 305–22. London: Cambridge University Press, 1950. Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940. Craster, H. H. E., ed. “The Miracles of St. Cuthbert at Farne”. Analecta Bollandiana 70 (1952): 5–19. Craster, H. H. E., intro. and trans. “The Miracles of Farne”. Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series 29 (1951): 93–107. Crawford, Barbara, ed. Conversion and Christianity in the North Sea World. St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews, 1998. Crumplin, Sally. “Rewriting History in the Cult of St. Cuthbert from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries”. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. Finucane, Ronald C. Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England. London: J. M. Dent, 1977. Francis, W. Nelson, ed. The Book of Vices and Virtues. EETS o.s. 217. London: Oxford University Press, 1942, reprint 1988.

42  Christiania Whitehead Frank Jr., Robert W. “Shrine Rivalry in the North Sea World”. In The North Sea World in the Middle Ages, edited by Thomas R. Liszka and Lorna E. M. Walker, 230–42. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001. Geoffrey of Coldingham. Vita Sancti Bartholomaei Farnensis. In Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, edited by Thomas Arnold, I, 295–325. Rolls Series 75, 2 vols. London: Longman, 1882–85. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, edited and translated by Neil Wright, 5 vols. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985. Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. The Miracles of St. Edmund, edited and translated by Tom Licence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2014. Hohler, Christopher. “The Durham Services in Honour of St. Cuthbert”. In The Relics of Saint Cuthbert, edited by C. F. Battiscombe, 155–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956. Johnson South, Ted, ed. Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: A History of St. Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002. Jones, Charles W. Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Meier, Dirk. Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006. Nilson, Benjamin J. Cathedral Shrines in Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998. Oksanen, Eljas. “Economic Relations between East Anglia and Flanders in the Anglo-Norman period”. In East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages, edited by David Bates and Robert Liddiard, 174–87. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013. Ortenberg, Veronica. The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. Pedersen, Anne. “Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea in the Eleventh Century: A Survey of the Danish Archeological Evidence”. In Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350, edited by Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman, 43–69. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Reginald of Durham. Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus quae novellis patrate sunt temporibus, edited by James Raine. Surtees Society 1. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1835. Reginald of Durham. Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, edited by Joseph Stephenson. Surtees Society 20. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1847. Roger of Howden. Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, edited by William Stubbs. Rolls Series 5, 4 vols. London: Longmans, 1868–71. Rollason, David W. “The Wanderings of St. Cuthbert”. In Cuthbert, Saint and Patron, edited by David W. Rollason, 45–59. Durham: Dean and Chapter, 1987. Rollason, David W., Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich, eds. Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994. Sawyer, Birgit. Medieval Scandinavia from Conversion to Reformation c. 800–1500. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1993. Sobecki, Sebastian. The Sea and Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008. Stancliffe, Clare. “Cuthbert: The Polarity between Pastor and Solitary”. In St. Cuthbert: His Cult and his Community to AD 1200, edited by Gerald Bonner,

Cuthbertine hermits and North Sea traders  43 David Rollason and Claire Stancliffe, 21–44. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002. Sturluson, Snorri. Heimskringla. Translated by Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011. Symeon of Durham. Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie = Tract on the origins and progress of this the Church of Durham, edited and translated by David W. Rollason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Tudor, Victoria. “Durham Priory and its Hermits in the Twelfth Century”. In AngloNorman Durham, edited by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich, 67–78. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994. Whitehead, Christiania, Denis Renevey, and Anne Mouron, eds. The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary. Exeter: Exeter Univ. Press, 2010.

3

The Sunday saint Keeping a holy “merchant’s time” in the Middle English Life of Erasmus1 Cynthia Turner Camp

There should be nothing surprising about a Middle English life of St. Erasmus. One of the fourteen Holy Helpers and famous for his gory tortures – including having his intestines wound on a windlass – this semi-apocryphal early martyr became popular in later medieval Europe. Throughout the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, altars, chapels, and images for the bishop of Formia appeared in England’s parish churches, and guilds honoring him sprang up across England.2 Eamon Duffy has described Erasmus’s story, with its long litany of grueling torments and promised blessings, as typical of late medieval spirituality.3 Although Erasmus is ubiquitous, his poetic Middle English Life, appearing in six manuscripts plus a wall painting in four versions and various abridgments, has received no critical attention since these poems were edited in the nineteenth century. Yet this fifteenth-century story is formally surprising. Unlike equivalent lives for saints like Katherine, Margaret, and Dorothy, the Life of Erasmus is nonnarrative. It opens with a lengthy prologue, lists Erasmus’s torments at the hands of Maximian and Diocletian, emphasizes Erasmus’s good works as a bishop, then closes with three prayers. Most surprising is the Life’s focus on Sunday; Erasmus endured his torments on a Sunday, so his medieval devotees are encouraged not just to rest but also to perform their good works on Sundays. These unexpected features of Erasmus’s Life – the tendency to report Erasmus’s life via lists instead of narrative and its construction of Erasmus as a “Sunday saint” – are best understood within a nexus of mercantile concerns centered around the tallying up of virtues, vices, and time. Later medieval culture, including its piety, was characterized by a tendency to count everything countable (and some things seemingly impossible to quantify), a tendency linked to the increased monetization of society in the fourteenth century.4 Many devotional texts participate in this quantifying trend not only (for instance) by enumerating the drops of blood Christ shed on the cross, but also by developing an “ethics of reckoning,” which Martha Rust describes as the way “worldly and spiritual wealth are evaluated in divine terms.”5 In listing Erasmus’s good deeds and tortures, the Life of Erasmus engages this ethics of reckoning, calculating his merits as intercessor.

The Sunday saint  45 Erasmus is also an exemplar for his readers because he performed his good deeds on Sundays. By locating its ethics of reckoning temporally on the Lord’s Day, the Life of Erasmus intervenes in debates over Sunday observance that were felt strongly in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, especially among the lesser merchants and traders. Through this implicitly mercantile ethics of reckoning, the Life of Erasmus constructs Sunday as a spiritually productive day rather than a day of financial loss. In so doing, it folds the “merchant time” of trade and sales into the cyclical repetition of “church time” through almsgiving, prayer, and saintly imitation. Some verbal variation among its versions notwithstanding, the Middle English Life of Erasmus is consistent in its structure, its listing of Erasmus’s torments, and its emphasis on Sunday. Each version opens with a 38-line prologue addressed to the readers or hearers, who are told “whate merite they may haue & what mede” (what reward and compensation they might receive) if they venerate Erasmus specifically by praying, giving alms, and paying for candles on Sundays.6 It promises Erasmus’s devotees “Reasonable substance to his endyng” (reasonable sustenance until his last days),7 success against enemies, freedom from sickness, and a good death. The prologue is followed by a 60-line description of Erasmus’s fiftyodd torments, emphasizing that Erasmus endured these tortures “vpon þe sonday” (upon Sundays).8 Then follow three prayers. The first (lines 99–118), to Erasmus, requests that the saint “receyue oure prayer and oure offryng” (receive our prayer and our offerings).9 The second (lines 119–152), to the Trinity, details the good works Erasmus did “on the sonday” (on Sundays) as well as the sufferings he endured “on the sonday.”10 The final prayer (lines 153–172) requests God help the petitioner keep Sunday observances. The six manuscript witnesses, dating from c. 1400 to the early sixteenth century, preserve three closely related versions of the full poem plus an abridgement. The first version (Erasmus A) appears in two manuscripts,11 while Erasmus B appears in one.12 A third abridgment (Erasmus C, one witness) includes a shortened form of the prologue plus a tabulated list of Erasmus’s torments,13 while two manuscripts preserve the prologue only.14 Other abbreviations of the prologue appear in devotional contexts: at least twice as a rubric to suffrages in books of hours15 and once as an inscription on a wall painting of Erasmus.16 Several witnesses display a marked affinity with other mercantile issues and/or were sponsored by merchants (as I discuss below). The Middle English legend’s emphasis on Sunday is a literary elaboration on a new devotional trend. In the early fifteenth century, about the same time that the Life of Erasmus appears in the manuscripts, suffrages for Erasmus that emphasize his Sunday death begin to appear routinely in books of hours of English and northern European provenance;17 in some instances, his suffrage is prefaced with a prologue or indulgence that emphasizes the efficaciousness of the prayer when said on Sundays.18 Outside these prayers, however, and a brief reference to Sunday in the fifteenth-century

46  Cynthia Turner Camp Latin vita recorded by Boninus Mombritus,19 this pairing of Erasmus and Sunday is only a substantive element in later fifteenth-century Middle English texts. The Legenda Aurea, for example, details Erasmus’s tortures but makes no mention of Sunday;20 Osbern Bokenham’s c. 1440 abridgment of the Legenda Aurea’s Erasmus recounts the tortures sans Sunday references.21 By contrast, William Caxton’s prose Life of Erasmus, translated from the Legenda Aurea and added to the second printing of his Golden Legend,22 includes four references to Sunday that are not in the Legenda but do echo the Sunday emphases in the poetic Life of Erasmus.23 This Sunday element is also regularly present in the abbreviated prologues.24 And when the Scots reformer John Gau criticized intercessory prayers in 1533, he pointed to the claim that “quhay that redis sancti erasmis orisone apone the sonday thay sal get meit and drink aneuth” (whoever reads the prayer of St. Erasmus on Sunday, they will receive sufficient food and drink).25 This focus on Erasmus’s intercession on Sundays characterized pre-Reformation England’s devotion to the saint, becoming as central a part of his cult as his grueling tortures. The Life of Erasmus’s mercantile affinities appear initially in its ethics of reckoning. The litany of Erasmus’s torments, with its minimal narrative framing and emphasis on naming those tortures, one by one, functions as a detailed accounting of his persecutions. Erasmus C goes so far as to replace the narrative of tortures with three numbered lists: one of the torments he endured on Sundays, and one each on the persecutions meted out by the two emperors. This tabular abbreviation enhances the sense that these tortures are important for their number, rather than for details about their gruesomeness or God’s recurring protection of Erasmus. This quantification of persecutions is transformed into spiritual merit through the poem’s language of payment. The prologue promises “merite,” “mede,” and “rewardis” (worthiness, compensation, reward) to those who “wolle worshipe god & hym deuoutely / Euery day” (will devoutly worship God and him [Erasmus] daily).26 Erasmus’s ability to benefit others is emphasized via irony in the litany of his torments. In a lively moment during the windlass scene, the emperor Maximian mocks Erasmus, saying “let hym than after þat do alle his profete!” (let him be of any benefit after that!)27 Of course, Erasmus is of great “profete” to his devotees, as the reader believes. Erasmus’s profitability is emphasized via the language of merit in the three closing prayers; he “offred vp [his] good” (offered his goods) as alms on Sundays, while Erasmus’s own spiritual “mede” (profit) can help his petitioners repent.28 Finally, Erasmus C closes with a Latin tag promising that, if the reader says the accompanying prayer and antiphon to Erasmus, he or she will receive an indulgence of ten thousand days “pro mercede” – as a reward or payment for veneration. In all its versions, but especially the Erasmus C abbreviation, the Life of Erasmus acts as a cost-benefit analysis: the number and extent of Erasmus’s tortures are tallied as a way to gauge his spiritual “mede,” which is available to his devotees through veneration.

The Sunday saint  47 This type of spiritual accounting is not unusual; it appears in Middle English texts from The Doctrine of the Hert29 to the Digby Mary Magdalene play,30 from the “Childe of Bristowe”31 to The Book of Margery Kempe.32 The Life of Erasmus’s distinctiveness lies rather in the way it joins an ethics of reckoning to an intense focus on Sunday observance. Its passion narrative emphasizes that the martyr “vpon þe sonday he had most woo” (had great distress on Sundays),33 and the three closing prayers increasingly foreground Sunday’s role, in Erasmus’s life and in the lives of his devotees. The first prayer states that Erasmus both “offred vp thi good” (offered up your wealth) and “suffrest þi desese” (suffered your tribulations) “on þe sonday.”34 The second prayer expands upon this theme, listing all the good works that Erasmus accomplished on Sundays – hearing mass, preaching, feeding the poor, establishing candles for altars35 – and detailing again the torments he endured “on the sonday.”36 In the final, Sabbatarian prayer, the petitioner asks for help “euer kepyng his holy dayes, / And namely þe sonday to halwe so holy” (always keeping his [God’s] holy days, especially to honor Sunday as holy).37 The phrase “on the sonday” is repeated thirteen times in the thirty-three lines of these prayers, becoming a leitmotif that turns Erasmus into a “Sunday saint”: one who not only performed holy actions on Sundays, but whose aid and example will help his devotees in their own Sunday observances. In its insistence on Sunday, the Life of Erasmus addresses anxieties about the proper behavior of good Christians on Sundays. Although all sectors of society were to observe the third commandment, I suggest that the issue of Sunday observance was felt particularly by the lower trading and artisan classes. This subset of the merchant classes is characterized by the manufacture of goods within the household, often but not necessarily sold from the artisans’ own workshops or market stalls.38 As craftsmen, artisans frequently belonged to a craft guild, but such affiliations can be misleading because each household might undertake diverse kinds of handiwork, piecemeal employment that occurred outside guild oversight. While members of certain guilds, such as goldsmiths or butchers, could attain significant wealth, on the whole these craftsmen did not attain the political or economic prestige of the mercers and overseas traders, in part because their own handiwork was dependent on the raw materials these importers brought into the local economy. So, although many artisan households enjoyed comfortable living conditions, others in precarious circumstances attained financial stability only by supplementing their primary craft with victualing, petty trading, or textile services like string making. All members of the merchant classes faced threats to their livelihood, but where international traders feared pirates, storms, and exorbitant tolls, craftsmen’s earning abilities were dependent on their health, access to raw materials, and good working conditions. Those working conditions included time – time not only to produce and market their primary handicrafts, but also to undertake supplementary earning opportunities.39

48  Cynthia Turner Camp Such artisans and lesser traders were materially impacted by church and civic injunctions against working on Sundays. Sunday observance was neither clearly defined nor consistently heeded in medieval Europe.40 In the later middle ages, people were exhorted to rest from all servile labor on Sundays, but what exactly “rest” and “servile labor” meant remained a vexed issue. Were servile works those done for gain and/or those that would distract the actor from God, or were certain acts intrinsically servile? Was buying and selling on Sundays lawful? Should daily markets be open after Mass? It was all very well for Dives and Pauper, for instance, to say unilaterally “þat men abstinen hem from alle maner vnleful wark” (that people should abstain from all kinds of unlawful work) and that servile labor includes “beyyng, sellyng, erryng, sowyng, repynge, mowynge & alle craftis of [wordly] wynnynge; also pletynge, motynge, marketis, feyris … and alle warkys þat schuldyn letty man from Godis seruise & disposyn hym to coutetyse” (buying, selling, wandering, planting, harvesting, mowing, and all crafts of earthly gain, also pleading, litigating, markets, fairs, and all works that would prohibit people from serving God and dispose them to covetousness).41 Some kinds of work were needful on a Sunday. For instance, people had to eat, so victualers were often allowed to trade.42 Similarly, many markets were held on Sundays, despite episcopal attempts to move them.43 But the line between needful and avaricious trading was blurry and frequently crossed, as evidenced by repeated episcopal and civic injunctions against Sunday trade, often echoed in the ordinances of the guilds themselves.44 Injunctions against Sunday trading were unanimous in their concern about the spiritual peril of economic transactions. The gospel claim that “ȝe moun not serue God and richessis” (you cannot serve God and wealth) had been long invoked against acquisitive mercantile activity,45 but the problem of Sunday trade gave new life to the issue in the fifteenth century, when merchants’ activities had long been accepted by church and society. As a 1489 updated guild ordinance limiting bread selling on Sundays put it, only two shops would open on Sundays “to hentent that your Suppliauntes the gode Folkes of the same Craft may serve Godde the better on the Sonday as trew Cristen men shuld do” (for the reason that your supplicants, the good people of this craft, can serve God better on Sundays as true Christian men should do).46 The connection is expressed explicitly in a royal statute against Sunday trade issued by Henry VI in 1448–49, which emphasizes “the horrible Defiling of their Souls in buying and selling, with many deceitful Lyes, and false Perjury, with Drunkenness and Strifes, and [so] specially withdrawing themselves and their Servants from divine Service.”47 In 1359, Archbishop Simon Islip had issued a similar condemnation of Sunday markets, highlighting their fraudulent, criminal, even demonic nature.48 Trading on Sundays, king, archbishop, and guild insist, is even more detrimental to the soul than weekday markets. The evidence of statutes and ecclesiastical court presentations suggests that, in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, artisans and petty traders were those most frequently cited for improper work and trade on Sundays.

The Sunday saint  49 The records of church courts reveal regular cases of non-attendance, often for the sake of holding markets or selling goods.49 The individuals cited for selling on holy days are those of the artisanal classes – butchers, bakers, shoemakers – rather than the elite merchant classes of mercers, goldsmiths, or grocers.50 For example, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued an injunction to the Mayor and Aldermen of London in 1413 that the barbers should close shop on Sundays,51 and an ordinance of 1344 held that the girdle-makers of London should not open their shops on Sundays or feast days.52 Even the cooking and selling of food, typically considered needful work, was heavily regulated in the fifteenth century.53 Others yet would be cited for performing their handiwork without sales. In the diocese of Hereford, the visitation records of 1397 reveal that many parishioners were cited for non-attendance due to work, often because “exercet artem diebus dominicus et festis” (he worked at his craft on Sundays and feast days).54 In many cases, these craftsmen and women may have been pursuing additional earning opportunities outside the normal work-week. Certainly, the numerous citations for fishing on Sundays reveal not angling for pleasure but rather an easy way for petty traders to supplement their income.55 This does not mean that elite merchants did not conduct business after they heard Mass. The Pastons, of similar social station, wrote as many letters on Sundays as they did on other days of the week,56 and the courts that operated during the law terms would conduct business on Sundays.57 Some kinds of “labor” occurred with impunity: business that could be conducted, as Joel Rosenthal observes of the Pastons, “behind the closed doors of the private household.”58 Rather, it is the public visibility of buying and selling, a core principle of medieval concepts of fair and open trade,59 that made these Sunday infractions visible and therefore readily censured. Moreover, because petty traders were often portrayed as selfish profit-mongers, their reputations were more precarious than those of international wholesalers, often portrayed as hard-working, devout members of the commonweal.60 Although the issue of Sunday observance should have been felt at all levels of society, the brunt of the responsibility for visibly keeping the Sabbath holy fell upon the shoulders of victualers, artisans, and lesser traders. In the ordinances against Sunday trading, I posit that we see not only concern for parishioners’ souls but also tension over the proper use of time. This clash between the time of trade and the time of worship was first examined by Jacques Le Goff in his famous dichotomy between eschatological “church time” and “merchant’s time,” a secularized time governed by the new technology of the mechanical clock.61 Although Le Goff’s equation of “merchant time” and “clock time” is simplistic, as subsequent research has demonstrated, that research has also shown that merchants did develop a growing awareness of time’s economic value.62 That value took several forms. The price of goods could change over time, through scarcity or surplus;63 both usury and interest were time-bound concepts.64 Further, as I laid out above, time (especially daylight hours) was a necessary resource

50  Cynthia Turner Camp for crafting and sales. Merchant time, therefore, is less “clock time” than it is “quantifiable, linear moments that can be invested for (typically economic) gain.” These moments are measurable in the same way that spiritual activities are countable in an “ethics of reckoning”; however, they are also fleeting, singular, and therefore precious. Whether or not governed by mechanical clocks, merchant time focuses on the singularity of objectively defined temporal moments. In this focus on its quantifiability, time takes on a new economic feature: scarcity.65 Merchant time’s scarcity, its inability to be repeated or recovered once the moment has passed, is tied to its need to be regulated. It had long been a sin to waste time,66 but by the later fifteenth century, time had become a limited commodity that needed to be spent wisely. Each instant could be used for economic or spiritual gain, but once used it could not be recovered. This development is visible in two late-fifteenth-century texts. In chapter 10 of William Caxton’s Mirrour of the World, translated in 1480 at the behest of the London mercer Hugh Bryce, the writer uses a discussion of church clocks to urge the self-regulation of time. The text exhorts “men [to] serue God the better in due tyme” (men to serve God better in proper time) by allocating time appropriately to their devotions to gain spiritual salvation. This use of time is juxtaposed with those who are solely “enclyned to conquere the richesses, of whiche they cesse not nyght ne daye” (disposed to conquer wealth, which they don’t stop, neither at night nor by day).67 That is, time is a finite resource which needs to be stewarded properly to gain spiritual, not only earthly wealth. In his adaptation for print (in 1499) of the Contemplacion of Synners, Bishop Richard Fox frames this devotional text – a daily reader of biblical and patristic texts – with a prologue that similarly urges its readers to marshal their time well: For as saynt Bernarde sayth / there is no thynge comytted to the dysposycyon of man more precyous than is tyme …. And carnall creatures blydeth with sensuall appetytes surfeytly consume theyr precyous tyme … & maketh no more compte of lofte tyme whiche is vnrecouerable / than as it were but of vyle pryce / & well nere of no value.68 (sig. A.iii.r) (For, as Saint Bernard says, there is nothing entrusted to man’s discretion more precious than is time …. And worldly creatures, blinded by physical desires, consume their precious time excessively, and take no more account of elevated time which is unrecoverable than if it were of paltry price and held nearly no value.) Fox here makes the connection between time and its availability explicit: time is precious because it is scarce, and because it is scarce it must be consumed wisely. This mercantile conception of time as a limited resource bears on medieval attitudes toward Sunday observance because it exposes two separate understandings of how Sunday differs from weekdays. On the one hand is the classic understanding of Sunday as belonging to “church time” – that

The Sunday saint  51 is, the cyclical and eschatological time of salvation history. This theological understanding of Sunday’s importance resulted in the top-down regulation of Sunday labor.69 As the day of the Resurrection, Sunday becomes the linchpin in the weekly liturgical performance of God’s grace, as the most strident of Sabbatarian texts reveal. Two examples are also close analogues of the Life of Erasmus: the Sunday Letter and the Sunday List, related didactic texts popular throughout medieval Europe.70 The highly variable Sunday Letter, originating in the fifth century and purporting to be sent by God to the pope, consists of prohibitions against Sunday work and the dire consequences of breaking those prohibitions. One Middle English sermon based on the Sunday Letter takes a dire “Sabbath Breakers in the Hands of an Angry God” approach. Ventriloquizing God, the sermon-writer claims that qwosoeuer hontys ony ertly werke, þat ys to say, wesschyng or wryngyng, schapyng or sewyng, bakyng or brewyng, schauyng or collyng, I sall send apon þame my cursyng befor rehersytt, and I sall exclude þam owt of þe ioys of hewyn and put þam lastandly to byde in þe paynys of hell.71 (whosoever pursues any earthly work, that is to say, washing or wringing, cutting or sewing, baking or brewing, shaving or embracing, I shall send upon them my curse as stated before, and I shall ban them from the joys of heaven and set them forever to endure the pains of hell.) Raining multi-generational curses upon the person who takes on even basic sustenance work like baking or washing, this sermon is vengeful, punitive, and implacable. The Letter constructs Sunday as belonging exclusively, under pain of damnation, to “church time.” Sometimes accompanying the Letter, the Sunday List takes a different tack, demonstrating Sunday’s sacredness by listing the spiritual events that occurred on Sundays.72 In Dives and Pauper’s formulation of the List, For on þe Sonday þe world began, & lyȝth & angelis kende was mad. Þat day God sente angelis mete, manna, doun to þe childryn of Israel in desert & fedde hem so fourty ȝer. Þat day God ȝaf Moyses þe lawe in þe mount of Syna. Þat day Crist was born of þe maydyn Marie to sauyn mankynde. Þat day Crist ros fro deth to lyue …. And so þat day was þe fyrst day & schal ben þe laste day, þat neuere schal han ende, but it schal ben a day of endeles blysse to alle þat schul ben sauyd.73 (For on a Sunday the world began, and light and angelic kind was made. That day God sent the food of angels, manna, down to the children of Israel in the desert and fed them in that way for forty years. That day God gave Moses the law on the Mount of Sinai. That day Christ was born of the maiden Mary to save mankind. That day Christ rose from death to life …. And so that day was the first day and shall be the last day, which shall never have an end, but it will be a day of endless bliss to all who will be saved.)

52  Cynthia Turner Camp In the cyclical repetition of salvation history’s major events on Sundays, and especially in its final claim that Sunday will be a day of endless heavenly joy for the saved, Dives and Pauper too assimilates Sunday into eschatological time; the repetition of holy events sanctifies Sunday as it typologically prefigures eternal bliss. This is the understanding of “church time” that Le Goff uses when he argues that the merchant “could not avoid rude confrontations and contradictions between time as he used it in his business and time in his religion.”74 Other late medieval discussions of Sunday, however, implicitly assimilate Sunday to merchant time. A mercantile Sunday is not a typological hinge between past divine acts and heaven’s glories, but rather a series of discrete moments that ought to be invested for spiritual instead of earthly gain. One Middle English sermon on the Ten Commandments makes this equation explicit: “On þe halydaye,” the sermonizer claims, “euery man shall ȝeue hym to vertewe and plezynge of þe soule, ryght as ȝe do on þe weke dayes in youre oþur werldely occupacions” (on holy days, every person should attend to virtue and the gratification of the soul, just as you do on weekdays in your other worldly occupations).75 “Vertewe” and “werldely occupacions” are equivalent (they are equally legitimate ways of occupying a day) and incompatible (one attends to one or the other, but not both at once). John Mirk constructs Sunday’s time similarly. Discussing the third commandment, he states, “þou shalte holde þine haly-day, þat is, þou shalte bene as erly vppe and as late doune and ben also [besy] on þe haly-day to serue God as þou arte on þe werke-day to serue þe worlde” (you shall hold your day holy; that is, you shall rise as early and lay down [in bed] as late and shall be as busy to serve God on the holy day as you are on the work-day to serve the world).76 The hours of Sunday should be invested for spiritual gain, and Sunday’s time should be managed with the same care as weekday time. This “mercantile Sunday” absorbs the day into an ethics of reckoning in which Sunday’s minutes can be counted within a devotional economy. Fifteenth-century devotional literature therefore presents two understandings of Sunday’s temporal function: as a day set apart entirely from worldly time, or as a day in which earthly moments should be used to glorify God. Under the former understanding, Sunday is a financial liability, especially for the lesser traders who sought to pick up piecework or otherwise extend their earning opportunities. Full Sunday observance results in a net economic loss: no money can be made, even though money had been spent, on food and fuel at minimum, to support the body through the day. Under the latter, on the other hand, Sunday encourages a different economic investment: investing in eternal salvation. Perhaps money can’t be made to sustain the body, but that time can be put toward the soul’s health. The Life of Erasmus participates in this second spiritual economy, in its exhortations to readers to do their good deeds on Sundays. Promoting good Sunday behavior, the poem encourages the reader to venerate God and

The Sunday saint  53 Erasmus “Euery sonday, withe thre þinges principaly” (every Sunday, primarily with three things): pray, give alms, and pay for church candles.77 The final prayer similarly requests help with Sunday observance, but not so that (as in the Sunday Letter) the sabbath-keeper won’t burn in hell. Rather, the prayer emphasizes “deuote prayers heryng dew seruice” (devout prayers, hearing service suitably) and doing “other good dedes” (other good deeds) – that is, hearing Mass prayerfully and performing acts like almsgiving and wax donations, as the poem mentions earlier.78 The specificity of this list, unusual even among third commandment sermons that advise the audience to do good deeds on Sunday, acts as a how-to guide for earning heavenly credit. By identifying Sunday as the best day to undertake works of mercy, the poem offers its readers a way to earn spiritual wealth on the day they are not allowed to pursue temporal gain. More provocatively, the Life of Erasmus also provides a way of conceptualizing Sunday’s cyclical, eschatological church time features within the discourse of economic merchant time. It enfolds merchant time into the supratemporality of church time, helping traders envision a way their earthly productivity can position them within the timelessness of heaven. When the poem exhorts its readers to pray, give alms to the poor, and donate wax to their churches, those readers perform the lay equivalents of how the bishop Erasmus had spent his Sundays in life: “on þe sonday … / He taught the peple,” “he yeaue his good / To the pore peple,” and “he fond gret light / Brennyng in þe churche faire & bright” (on Sundays he taught the people, he gave his goods to the poor people, and he established great lights, burning fair and bright in the church).79 The reader is encouraged to emulate Erasmus’s Sabbatarian acts of devotion because she cannot emulate the saint’s Sunday tortures, commemorating “on the Sunday” both Erasmus's piety and his tortures endured “on the Sunday.” In so doing, the lay devotee typologically echoes Erasmus’s holy Sunday acts in her acts of mercy, mimicking the saint’s sacralizing of Sunday time through action much as the Sunday List elevates the day to spiritual significance by emphasizing its recurring holy events. Casting Erasmus as an exemplar, the poem allows its readers to participate in “church time” through emulating his Sabbatarian acts of mercy. These imitative devotional acts that participate in the salvation economy – prayers and alms will help the devotee gain eternal “merite” and “mede” – allow the reader to participate in the cyclical commemoration of Erasmus’s Sunday tortures and gain spiritual credit with God in heaven. That is, by deploying a mercantile conception of time within the typological framework of “church time,” the Life of Erasmus mobilizes the trader’s desire for profitable use of time within a spiritual temporality. Emulating Erasmus, the devotee not only transforms the merchant time of investable moments into heavenly reward, but also integrates herself into heaven’s time. In drawing out the Life of Erasmus’s mercantile sensibilities and construction of time, I am not claiming that Erasmus was the “special friend”

54  Cynthia Turner Camp of merchants broadly, the way St. Nicholas was. Across Europe he was popular with sailors,80 but his cult was celebrated widely in England, from wool producers to Queen Elizabeth Woodville.81 Nevertheless, the poem’s temporal dynamics and reconfiguration of the Sunday Letter and List material is most comprehensible within this modified understanding of merchant time, especially given the tensions over Sunday observance that concerned craftsmen and lesser traders. The Life of Erasmus offers an alternative justification for hallowing Sunday to those artisans and victualers who might otherwise have employed their crafts on Sundays. Although Le Goff has argued that “[t]he time in which he [the merchant] worked professionally was not the time in which he lived religiously,”82 the Life of Erasmus suggests ways in which some merchants may have accommodated these two times to each other, putting time’s economic productivity into the service of spiritual wealth and eternal reward. My reading of the Life of Erasmus as a mercantile-focused text, one that would have appealed to craftsmen and traders, is supported by its appearance in the manuscript record, where it frequently appears in contexts associated with merchant activity. Two of the texts appear in preaching contexts: Erasmus B in a “compendium of useful preaching material” opening with the Northern Homily cycle,83 and one prologue-only version written onto the flyleaves of the collection of Jacobus de Voragine’s sermons, owned by John Bristow, vicar of Rodbourne Cheney, Swindon, Wiltshire.84 Were the Life of Erasmus used in homiletic contexts, perhaps as an exemplum in sermons on the Third Commandment, its contents and Sabbatarian message would have reached artisans and traders in the congregation. Erasmus’s story was appreciated by the craft communities of Cirencester, Gloucestershire (about fifteenth miles north of Rodbourne Cheney). The Trinity Chapel in Cirencester’s parish church featured a wall painting of Erasmus, accompanied by an abbreviated version of the poem’s prologue. Cirencester was one of the great Cotswold wool centers, a town governed not only by wool merchants but also by the clothmakers who, in the fifteenth century, came to dominate the region’s industry. This community – the mercantile elite and the middling weavers – held the Holy Trinity chapel, including the Erasmus wall painting and inscription, at the center of their parochial devotions.85 Below the Erasmus inscription appear the arms of William Prelatte, “special benefactor” of the Trinity Chapel and the Erasmus painting.86 Prelatte (d. 1462) was a clothmaker and merchant who, under the auspices of the Weavers Guild, rose to become Richard, Duke of York’s receiver-general for the Yorkist Gloucestershire estates.87 The inscription’s distillation of the poem’s ethics of reckoning – it lists which three acts the petitioner should do in Erasmus’s name “eiry Sunday” (every Sunday) and precisely which five rewards she will receive in return – would have appealed to a wool merchantturned-ducal accountant.88 The position of the wall painting, visible from the nave, also suggests that the Erasmus story may have featured in sermons, as wall paintings could be used in parish preaching.89 Within the Cirencester

The Sunday saint  55 wool community, Erasmus was a special intercessor, and the visibility of the abbreviated prologue in the parish church suggests that his popularity was linked to his story’s ethics of reckoning. Two other manuscripts that contain the Life of Erasmus demonstrate that the poem’s merchant-focused themes were perceived by readers, for in both it appears adjacent to texts with similar mercantile concerns. British Library, MS Additional 36983, a 1442 West Midlands collection of spiritual vernacular texts that opens with Cursor Mundi, contains the list-like Erasmus C.90 British Library, MS Harley 2382, containing Erasmus A, has a Marian, poetic focus; it opens with Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady and includes Chaucer’s two saints’ lives alongside other literary devotional texts.91 In the Harley manuscript, Erasmus A precedes the “Childe of Bristowe,” a pro-merchant story in which a usurious lawyer’s son apprentices himself to a merchant and uses his training to buy his father’s soul out of purgatory.92 In the Additional manuscript, Erasmus C immediately follows William Litchfield’s “Complaint of God,” a dialogue poem in which God laments man’s misuse of his gifts.93 Litchfield was a London rector in the 1420s through 1440s who served the church of All Hallows-the-Great in Downgate, a section of the city populated by artisanal guilds such as the Skinners, Joiners, Dyers, and Chandlers.94 His “Complaint” concerns the religious dilemmas of London’s merchant population: it focuses on the proper deployment of wealth, the pride of sartorial display, and the tendency to falsify one’s product.95 Both the “Complaint” and the “Childe of Bristowe” navigate an ethics of reckoning within a specifically mercantile context, advocating for the salvation of merchants who deploy their material wealth for spiritual good even while the “Complaint” acknowledges “the moral slipperiness” of the merchant’s activities.96 They complement the Life of Erasmus’s attention to spiritual accounting and its attempt to accommodate a mercantile understanding of time’s profitability within a traditional conception of Sunday’s eschatological sacredness. Moreover, the Harley manuscript may have been owned by a merchant. The name “William Hert” appears on folio 128. John Manley and Edith Rickert have identified him as either a Norwich chaplain who died around 1504, or else a Norwich mercer, alderman, and mayor active during the reigns of Henry VII and VIII.97 Given the manuscript’s religious contents, Manley and Rickert preferred the chaplain as a probable owner. However, as we now have a more robust understanding of mercantile devotion, William Hert, mercer and alderman, seems an equally likely candidate. Not only could he have reveled in the manuscript’s “fashionable” hagiography by Lydgate and Chaucer, as Joni Henry argues in this volume for the Fisher Miscellany, owned by another Norwich merchant, but he could also have taken solace in the praise of merchants’ work ethic in the “Childe of Bristowe” and the spiritual accounting in the Life of Erasmus. For a politically and spiritually aspirational mercer, the Life of Erasmus and the “Childe of Bristowe” would have exemplified, and justified, the religious use of his time and money.

56  Cynthia Turner Camp The evidence, piecemeal though it is, suggests that the Life of Erasmus’s ethics of reckoning and valuation of Sunday as a day of spiritual profit found a ready audience among England’s mercantile communities. It was appreciated across the spectrum of English merchants, from high achieving, wealthy merchants like William Prelatte and William Hert, who had the financial resources to promote Erasmus’s hagiography, to the clothmakers of Cirencester and the artisans and traders who saw the image of Erasmus and listened to the preaching of vicars like John Bristow. The poem appealed not only because of Erasmus’s intercessory abilities, but also for the poem’s language of accounting: its tabulation of Erasmus’s tortures and virtues and its emphasis on spiritual gain. Erasmus was not an obvious saint to use for transforming the countable moments of merchant time into the intangible benefits of the eschaton, but his Middle English life performs that alchemy by temporally locating the bishop-martyr’s exemplary and intercessory traits on Sundays. As a Sunday saint, Erasmus thereby reinforced the mercantile virtue of not wasting time and the honoring of Sunday’s sacredness by emphasizing Sunday as a day for spiritual instead of monetary gain.

Notes 1 Special thanks is due to Nathan Camp, J. H. Roberts, Lainie Pomerleau, Dr. Rabia Gregory, Dr. Emily Kelley, Dr. Miriam Gill, and Dr. Shannon Gayk for assistance with various sections of this chapter. 2 Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Thrupp: Stroud, 2004), 11–15, 109–13; Robert Lutton, “Geographies and Materialities of Piety: Reconciling Competing Narratives of Religious Change in Pre-Reformation and Reformation England,” in Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640, ed. Robert Lutton and Elisabeth Salter (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 25. Altars, chapels, and lights for Erasmus were ubiquitous across later medieval England; for one such example, see below ch. 9, p. 181. 3 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 170–01, 177–78. 4 Thomas Lentes, “Counting Piety in the Late Middle Ages,” in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. Bernhard Jussen, trans. Pamela Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Joel Kaye, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Martha Rust, “The Arma Christi and the Ethics of Reckoning,” in The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. With a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014). See further n. 62 below. 5 Rust, “The Arma Christi,” 146. 6 Edited in C. Horstmann, Samlung Altenglischer Legenden (Heilbronn: Verlag von Gebr. Henninger, 1878), 198–200, line 6. I cite this text as “Erasmus A” and line number hereafter. All translations are mine unless cited otherwise. 7 Erasmus A, line 18. Erasmus B (see n. 12 below), line 18, reads “resonable fode vn-to his laste endynge” (reasonable food until his very end), clarifying the meaning of the line. 8 Erasmus A, line 45.

The Sunday saint  57 9 Erasmus A, line 105. 10 Erasmus A, line 128. 11 British Library, Harley MS 2382, fols. 109–11 (1475–1500). Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlingson poet. 34, fols. 6r–7r (15th c.). Edited in Horstmann, Samlung Altenglischer Legenden, 198–200. The other contents of these manuscripts are discussed at the end of this article. 12 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.1.1, fol. (c. 1400), fols. 295r–96v. Edited in Carl Horstmann, ed., “Nachträge zu den Legenden,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 62 (1879): 413–16. This version differs from Erasmus A in the readings of numerous half-lines, but the rhymes remain consistent and the substance of the text is identical. 13 British Library, Add. MS 36983 (c. 1442), 279v–80r. Edited in Horstmann, Samlung Altenglischer Legenden, 201–03. 14 British Library, Harley MS 1671 (early fifteenth century), a copy of the Weye of Paradys. The prologue, roughly following Erasmus A, lines 5–28, 31–38, is written out as prose on the flyleaf. Unedited. British Library, Royal MS 8.C.x (early fifteenth century); the prologue is copied as prose (corresponding roughly to Erasmus A, lines 1–38) on the flyleaf (2r). Unedited. 15 The abbreviated Erasmus prologue follows a full-page miniature of Erasmus’s martyrdom (with a portrait of the male owner praying Erasmus in the lower left margin), introducing a suffrage to Erasmus in Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 487, fols. 213r–v: The Chichester Cathedral Prayer Book: Written and Illuminated in England by a Lancastrian Scribe and Artist during the Episcopate of Reginald Pecock (1450–1457) (London, Chiswick Press, [1907]), 14–15. It, along with a suffrage for Erasmus, was added in a late fifteenth or early sixteenth century hand to Huntington Library, MS HM 1159, fol. 9v–10r. 16 Communicated by Samuel Lysons to the Society of the Antiquaries of London in 1803 and printed with a plate in the Appendix to Archaeologia 15 (1806): 405–06. For more on this prose abbreviation, see the end of this article. I am grateful to Dr. Miriam Gill for this reference. 17 Starting around 1410s, Erasmus suffrages found in English, German, Dutch, and some Flemish manuscripts often open with a phrase that locates Erasmus’s death on Sunday; the suffrage found in Huntington HM 1159, fol. 10r–v is typical. 18 In addition to the instances in n. 15 above, the suffrage in Huntington Library, HM 142, fols. 59v–60v (c. 1467) includes a Latin prologue claiming that whoever says this prayer or gives alms in Erasmus’s name on a Sunday will have their prayers answered; the Dutch suffrage in Huntington Library, HM 1140, fols. 140v–41v (late fifteenth century) opens with an indulgence claiming that anyone who prays the suffrage remorsefully on Sundays will, along with other benefits, receive 160 days remittance. I am grateful to Dr. Rabia Gregory for assistance with the Dutch language. 19 During his death scene, Erasmus requests that, if anyone prays to the Lord in his name, he may “recipiat mercedem suam sabbato et dominica” (receive his reward on the Sabbath and Sunday): Boninus Mombritus, “Passio Sancti Erasmi Martyris” in Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, 2 vols. (Paris: Albertum Fontemoing, 1910), 1:485–88 (BHL 2582). A similar phrase concludes BHL 2578, as printed in Acta Sanctorum, edited by the Bollandists, vol. Jun. I, col. 216E, although the AASS editors have compiled those words from other versions of the text, including Mombritus’s (see note k). 20 Jacobus de Voragine, “De sancto Erasmo,” in Legenda aurea vulgo historia lombardica dicta, ed. Johann Georg Theodor Grässe (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965), 890–94. 21 Abbotsford Legendary, fol. 112v. On the Abbotsford Legendary, see Simon Horobin, “A Lost Manuscript Found in the Library of Abbotsford House and

58  Cynthia Turner Camp the Lost Legendary of Osbern Bokenham,” English Manuscript Studies 14 (2007): 130–62. The Life of Erasmus does not appear in the Spanish translations of the Legenda Aurea (Billy Bussell Thompson and John K. Walsh, “Old Spanish Manuscripts of Prose Lives of the Saints and Their Affiliations. I: Compilation A [The Gran Flos Sanctorum)],” La Corónica 15 [1986]: 25) or in the 1476 French Légende Dorée, as printed in Jacques de Voragine, La Légende Dorée: Edition Critique, dans la révision de 1476 par Jean Batallier, ed. Brenda DunnLardeau (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1997). It does appear in the German translation of the Legenda Aurea, but without reference to Sunday: Jacobus de Voragine, Der Heiligen Leben, vol. 1, Der Sommerteil, ed. Margit Brand et al (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996), 127–36. 22 Caxton’s first printing of the Golden Legend (1483, STC 24873) ends with an explanation of the Mass and the Twelve Articles of the Faith; his second printing (1487?, STC 24874) adds the Life of Erasmus after the Twelve Articles. 23 William Caxton, Golden Legend (London, 1487), sig. kk.v.r–kk.vi.v (STC 24874). Caxton’s translation emphasizes that Erasmus was tortured, and the windlass on which he was wound was built, on Sundays (sig. kk.vi.r); upon his death a voice from heaven promises blessings to Erasmus’s petitioners who “vpon thy holy name callen / and the sue & worshyp euery soonday” (call upon your holy name and petition and worship you every Sunday), and Erasmus dies on a Sunday (sig. kk.vi.v). 24 See above, nn. 15–18. 25 John Gau, The Richt Vay to the Kingdome of Heuine (Malmo: John Hochstraten, 1533, STC 19525), fol. A.3r. 26 Erasmus A, lines 6, 16, 7–8. 27 Erasmus A, line 90. 28 Erasmus A, line 101 (compare line 133, “he yeaue his good” [he gave his possessions]), line 111. 29 Discussed by Whitehead above, ch. 2, pp. 30–31. 30 Theresa Coletti, “Pauperitas est donum Dei: Hagiography, Lay Religion, and the Economics of Salvation in the Digby Mary Magdalene,” Speculum 76 (2001): 337–78. 31 Roger A. Ladd, Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 119–25. 32 David Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing, 1360–1430 (New York: Routledge, 1988), 73–83; Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London: Routledge, 1993), 108–11; Sheila Delany, Writing Women (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), 86–88. 33 Erasmus A, line 45. 34 Erasmus A, lines 101, 103–04. 35 Erasmus A, lines 125–40. 36 Erasmus A, lines 141–51. 37 Erasmus A, lines 160–61. 38 What follows is drawn from Heather Swanson, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); James R. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Geoffrey Crossick, “Past Masters: In Search of the Artisan in European History,” in The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900, ed. Geoffrey Crossick (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), 4–15; Sabrina Corbellini and Margriet Hoogvliet, “Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (ca. 1400–ca.1520),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43 (2013): 521–44, at 522–24. As Christopher Dyer has demonstrated, the middling and lower classes made up a substantial portion of late medieval buyers

The Sunday saint  59 and sellers, and many trades did not occur on regular market days or from set stalls – conditions under which supplemental ad hoc trading would have flourished among these middling crafts: “The Consumer and the Market in the Later Middle Ages,” The Economic History Review, new series 42, no. 3 (1989): 305–27. 39 Compare Jacques Le Goff, “Labor Time in the ‘Crisis’ of the Fourteenth Century: From Medieval Time to Modern Time,” in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), esp. 45, 47. 40 Daniel Augsburger, “The Sabbath and Lord’s Day During the Middle Ages,” in The Sabbath in Scripture and History, ed. Kenneth A. Strand (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing, 1982), 190–214; R. J. Bauckham, “Sabbath and Sunday in the Medieval Church in the West,” in From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982), 299–309; C. R. Cheney, “Rules for the Observance of Feast-Days in Medieval England,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 34, no. 90 (1961): 117–35, esp. 117–18; Steven A. Epstein, Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 159–63; Dorothy Haines, ed. and trans., Sunday Observance and the Sunday Letter in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 1–35; Barbara Harvey, “Work and Festa Ferianda in Medieval England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23, no. 4 (1972): 289–309; Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations: An Historical Synopsis and Theological Commentary (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1943), esp. 45–55, 63–69, 101–05; Diana Wood, “Discipline and Diversity in the Medieval English Sunday,” Studies in Church History 43 (2007): 202–11; Odd Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition 1200–1350 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 112, 179, 515. 41 Dives and Pauper, ed. Priscilla Heath Barnum, vol. 1, EETS o.s. 275 (London: Early English Text Society, 1976), 275, 277–78. 42 Wood, “Discipline and Diversity,” 210; Statutes of the Realm, 1101–1713, vol. 2, 1377–1504 (Reprint, London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1963), 352. However, some guilds who were allowed or even expected to work on Sundays might choose not to: Epstein, Wage Labor, 163; Swanson, Medieval Artisans, 15. 43 James Lea Cate, “The Church and Market Reform in England During the Reign of Henry III,” in Medieval and Historiographical Essays in Honor of James Westfall Thompson, ed. James Lea Cate and Eugene N. Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 27–65; Cate, “The English Mission of Eustace of Flay (1200–1201),” in Etudes d’histoire dédiées a la mémoire de Henri Pirenne, par ses anciens élèves (Brussels: Nouvele société d’Editions, 1937), 67–89; Harvey, “Work and Festa Ferianda,” 304; Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 54 n. 43; Athene Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, BAR British Series 202 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000), 44–45. 44 James Davis, Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 184–86; Epstein, Wage Labor, 160–61; J. A. F. Thomson, “Wealth, Poverty and Mercantile Ethics in Late Medieval London,” in La Ville, la Bourgeoisie et la Genèse de l’État Moderne (XIIe–XVIIe siècles) (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1988), 276–77; Wood, “Discipline and Diversity,” 207–09; K. L. Wood-Legh, ed., Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham and His Deputies, 1511–1512 (Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society, 1984), 55; Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, ed. Reginald R. Sharpe, vols. H–L (London:

60  Cynthia Turner Camp HMSO, 1907–12), L pp. 217–18 (pouchmakers), p. 255 (“Hatt’ merchauntes”), p. 262 (fullers), H p. 21 (glovers) (hereafter cited by book letter and page range as Cal Letter Book). 45 The New Testament in English, According to the Version by John Wycliffe, ed. Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 11 (Matthew 6.24); Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 122. 46 Cal Letter Book, L 311–12. 47 Statutes of the Realm, 351–52 (27 Hen. VI, c. 5). 48 Wood, “Discipline and Diversity,” 207; David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, vol. 3 (London, 1737), 42–43. 49 Wood, “Discipline and Diversity,” 209–10; L. R. Poos, ed., Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in Late-Medieval England: The Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, 1336–1349, and the Deanery of Wisbech, 1458–1484 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 327, 331, 339; Wood-Legh, Kentish Visitations, 74, 222, 250, 272; E. M. Elvey, ed., The Courts of the Archdeaconry of Buckingham, 1483–1523 (Welwyn Garden City: Buckingham Record Society, 1975), 30. 50 For additional examples, all of whom are artisans or petty traders, see Richard M. Wunderli, London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1981), 122–23; Cal Letter Book, K p. 10–11 (butchers, bakers, fletchers); Poos, Lowe Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, 274 (tailor), 380 (flax working), 385 (weaving), 394, 401 (butchers), 418 (hemp working), 459 (cobbler); Wood-Legh, Kentish Visitations, 73, 118, 147–48, 267, 269 (butchers), 118 (millers), 147–48 (barbers); Elvey, Courts of the Archdeaconry, 7 (shoemaker); A. Hamilton Thompson, ed., Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517–1531, 2 vols. (Hereford: Lincoln Record Society, 1940–44), 1.32, 133 (butchers). 51 Cal Letter Book, I p. 115. The penalty to be exacted from noncompliant barbers was a fine instead of excommunication, because the former was held to be a bigger threat. 52 Cal Letter Book, K pp. 197–99. 53 Cal Letter Book, K p. 293, L pp. 217–18, 311–12; Poos, Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, 314, 316, 333, 346, 457, 471, 531; Wood-Legh, Kentish Visitations, 57, 147; Thompson, Visitations in Lincoln, 1.58, 2.34, 46. 54 A. T. Bannister, “Visitation Returns of the Diocese of Hereford in 1397. II,” The English Historical Review 44, no. 175 (1929): 444–53, at 445–46. For other instances of unspecific work, see Bannister, “Visitation Returns of the Diocese of Hereford in 1397. I,” The English Historical Review 44, no. 174 (1929): 279–89, at 281; Bannister, “Visitation Returns II,” 448; Bannister, “Visitation Returns of the Diocese of Hereford in 1397. IV,” The English Historical Review 45, no. 179 (1930): 444–63, at 446, 448, 454, 459, 460, 462; Poos, Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, 64, 275; Wood-Legh, Kentish Visitations, 242; Elvey, Courts of the Archdeaconry, 175. 55 Swanson, Medieval Artisans, 18–20, 137; Poos, Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, 270, 287, 383, passim; Elvey, Courts of the Archdeaconry, 161. 56 Joel T. Rosenthal, “A Time to Read and a Time to Write: Dates, Days, and Saints in the Paston Letters,” Journal of the Early Book Society 16 (2013): 171–93, at 176. 57 Susanne Jenks, “Bill Litigation and the Observance of Sundays and Major Festivals in the Court of the King’s Bench in the Fifteenth Century,” Law and History Review 22, no. 3 (2004): 619–43, at 635–39. However, Steven A. Epstein notes that Genoese notaries worked little on Sundays: “Business Cycles and the Sense of Time in Medieval Genoa,” The Business History Review 62, no. 2 (1988): 238–60, at 250. 58 Rosenthal, “Time to Read,” 177, see also 180; Thomson, “Wealth, Poverty,” 277.

The Sunday saint  61 59 Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 176–78. 60 Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 96–117. See also Ladd, Antimercantilism. 61 Jacques Le Goff, “Merchant’s Time and Church’s Time in the Middle Ages,” in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 62 Epstein, “Business Cycles,” 238–60; Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 245–46. See further Jaume Aurell, “Merchants’ Attitudes to Work in the Barcelona of the Later Middle Ages: Organisation of Working Space, Distribution of Time and Scope of Investments,” Journal of Medieval History 27, no. 3 (2001): 197–218, at 206–10. For specific critiques of Le Goff’s concept, see Peter Burke, “Reflections on the Cultural History of Time,” Viator 35 (2004): 617–26, at 623–25; Dohrn-van Rossum, Ordering Time, 226–32; Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift, Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales, 1300–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 71–72; Chris Humphrey, “Time and Urban Culture in Late Medieval York,” in Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), 106; Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” Past and Present 90 (1981), 61; Alexander Murray, “Time and Money,” in The Work of Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History, ed. Miri Rubin (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 3–25. Barry Collett, “Organizing Time for Secular and Religious Purposes: The Contemplacion of Sinners (1499) and the Translation of the Benedictine Rule for Women (1517) of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester,” Studies in Church History 37 (2002): 145–60, at 146 and passim reconfigures Le Goff’s “merchant’s time” into a “civil servant time” characterized by careful, responsible time management. 63 Lianna Farber, An Anatomy of Trade in Medieval Writing: Value, Consent, and Community (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 51, 63–64; Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 91; Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools, 179, 256– 57, 362, 501, 518, 543. 64 Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. 116–17, 161, 174–77; Wood, “‘Lesyng of Tyme’: Perceptions of Idleness and Usury in Late Medieval England,” Studies in Church History 37 (2002): 107–16; Davis, Medieval Market Morality, 66–67; Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools, passim, esp. 311–13. Kaye, Economy and Nature, 79–87 has established the impact that economic developments had on many aspects of medieval understandings of natural law in the later Middle Ages, such that time must be implicit in his discussions of both usury and interest. 65 See Epstein’s discussion of the rationalization of time in Genoese legal documents (“Business Cycles”), Dohrn-van Rossum’s examples of merchants carefully accounting for their time and his analysis of time-restrictive market practices as a way of managing a shortage of goods (Ordering of Time, 228, 246–51), Glennie and Thrift’s discussion of the regulation of work time (Shaping the Day, 186–88), Kaye on the economic principle of raritas (Economy and Nature, 147–48), and Langholm on the Dominican Albert the Great classifying Sunday marketing laws as the restriction of time within commerce (Economics in the Medieval Schools, 179), all which emphasize the relationship between time’s economic potential and time as a limited resource. 66 Wood, “Lesyng of Time,” 108–10; Le Goff, “Labor Time,” 50–52. 67 William Caxton, Caxton’s Mirrour of the World, ed. Oliver H. Prior, EETS e.s. 110 (London: Early English Text Society, 1913), 150. 68 Richard Fox, Contemplacoun of synners (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1499, STC 5643), sig. A.iii. r. See further Collett, “Organizing Time,” 146–53.

62  Cynthia Turner Camp 69 Cheney, “Rules for Observance,” 117–18; Ausburger, “Sabbath and Lord’s Day,” 204–07. 70 Ausburger, “Sabbath and the Lord’s Day,” 193–94, 200–01; Cate, “English Mission,” 74–75; Haines, Sunday Observance; Claire Lees, “The ‘Sunday Letter’ and the ‘Sunday Lists’,” Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985): 129–51; V. M. O’Mara, A Study and Edition of Selected Middle English Sermons: Richard Alkerton’s Easter Week Sermon preached at St. Mary Spital in 1406, a Sermon on Sunday Observance, and a Nunnery Sermon of the Feast of the Assumption (Leeds: Leeds Texts and Monographs, 1994), 94–98; Reiss, Sunday Christ. 71 O’Mara, Study and Edition, 117–18. Another Middle English version of the Sunday Letter is John Audelay, “De epistola Domini nostri Ohesu Christi de die Dominica,” The Poems of John Audelay, ed. Ella Keats Whiting, EETS o.s. 184 (London: Early English Text Society, 1931), 104–11. 72 Lees, “Sunday Letter,” 136–43. 73 Dives and Pauper, 266. 74 Le Goff, “Merchant’s Time,” 41. 75 Woodburn O. Ross, ed., Middle English Sermons edited from British Museum MS Royal 18.B.xxiii, EETS o.s. 209 (London: Early English Text Society, 1940), 23/20–22 (sermon 5). 76 John Mirk, John Mirk’s Festial, ed. Susan Powell, 2 vols, EETS o.s. 334–335 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009–2011), 1:90. 77 Erasmus A, lines 8, 10–11, 13. 78 Erasmus A, lines 164, 165. 79 Erasmus A, lines 131–32, 133–34, 137–38. 80 Montserrat Barniol, “Patrons and Advocates of the Sailors. The Saints and the Sea in Catalan Gothic.” Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum 6 (2012): 249–76, at 260–65. 81 Elizabeth Woodville added a chapel for Erasmus to the Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and requisitioned funds to support two monks of Westminster Abbey to pray for the health of herself and Edward IV: An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London, vol. 1, Westminster Abbey (London: HMSO, 1924), 17; Victoria History of the County of Worcester, vol. 3, ed. J. W. Willis-Bund (London: Constable and Co., 1913), 133. 82 Le Goff, “Merchant’s Time,” 37. 83 Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.1.1 is a holster book from the first quarter of the fifteenth century which opens with the Northern Homily Cycle and closes with various preaching and catechetical texts; Erasmus B opens the final quire, which contains edifying texts such as a Lenten poem (DIMEV 3049.1) and a poem on the nine virtues (DIMEV 375.1). For a detailed description, see Thomas J. Heffernan, “A Middle English Poem on Lovedays,” Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 172–74. Quotation from O. S. Pickering, “An Unpublished Middle English Resurrection Poem,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 74 (1973): 271. The Digital Index of Middle English Verse (DIMEV) is available online at www.dimev.net. 84 British Library, Royal MS 8.C.x is an early fifteenth century manuscript; in the early sixteenth century, Brystow (formerly a Cistercian monk of Hailes Abbey, Gloucestershire) added a number of short texts in his own hand to the flyleaves, including the abridged Erasmus and an ownership inscription (fol. 2r). 85 David Rollison, Commune, Country and Commonwealth: The People of Cirencester, 1117–1643 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), esp. 64–88 on the parish church, 73, 78–83 for clothiers’ support of the Trinity Chapel and parish church. Following antiquarian publications, Rollison misattributes Erasmus in the wall painting to St. Thomas Becket (66). On the growth of the clothmaking industry in the region, see J. N. Hare, “Growth and Recession in the FifteenthCentury Economy: The Wiltshire Textile Industry and the Countryside,”

The Sunday saint  63 Economic History Review n.s. 52.1 (1999): 1–26. Another wall painting of Erasmus originally graced the parish church of Ampney Crucis, five miles east of Cirencester: D. J. Viner, “The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus and Other Lost Wall Paintings from Holy Rood Church, Ampney Crucis,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 118 (2000): 201–06. This detail, coupled with the presence of Erasmus D in John Brystow’s sermon book (Rodbourne Cheney is less than 20 miles from Cirencester), suggests a particular devotion to Erasmus in this area of the Cotswolds. 86 “specialissimus benefactor hujus capellae.” Samuel Lysons, Appendix, Archaeologia 15 (1806): 406. 87 Rollison, Commune, Country, 71, 73; Lysons, Appendix, 406. Prelatte died in 1460. 88 Lysons, Appendix, 406. 89 Miriam Gill, “Preaching and Image: Sermons and Wall Paintings in Later Medieval England,” in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 90 It also contains William Lychefelde’s “Complaint of God” and the Abbey of the Holy Ghost. A full manuscript description by Ryan Perry and John Thompson can be found on the website Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350–1550 (www.​qub.a​c.uk/​geogr​aphie​ s-of-​ortho​doxy/​). 91 On the manuscript and its contents, see Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Miracles of the Virgin in Medieval England: Law and Jewishness in Marian Legends (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 160–63; John Matthews Manley and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts, vol. 1, Description of the Manuscripts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 245–48. 92 “The Childe of Bristowe,” in Altenglische Legenden, neue folge, ed. Carl Horstmann (Heilbronn, 1881), 315–21; Ladd, Antimercantilism, 119–25. 93 Amy Appleford and Nicholas Watson, “Merchant Religion in Fifteenth-Century London: The Writings of William Litchfield,” Chaucer Review 46, no. 1–2 (2011) 203–22. For this poem’s need of a proper edition, see 217 and nn. 43–44. 94 Appleford and Watson, “Merchant Religion,” 207–09. 95 Appleford and Watson, “Merchant Religion,” 219–22. 96 Appleford and Watson, “Merchant Religion,” 221. 97 Manley and Rickert, Text, 248. William Hert was alderman in 1512 and elected mayor in 1512 and 1519: William Hudson and John Cottingham Tingey, eds., The Records of the City of Norwich (London: Jarrold & Sons, 1906), 1:316–17; Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, vols. 3–4 (London, 1806), 3:193–94. He is probably the William Hert, alderman, buried in St. Crowche’s Church in Norwich in 1532: Blomefield, Essays towards a Topographical History, 4:299. He may also be the William Hert, citizen and merchant of Norwich, named as a plaintiff in the 1490s case of Bonnett v The Mayor and Bailiff of Grimsby over a case of attempted piracy: London, PRO, C 1/118/58.

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64  Cynthia Turner Camp London, British Library, Harley MS 2382. London, British Library, Royal MS 8.C.x. London, Public Record Office, PRO, C 1/118/58. Melrose, Scotland, Abbotsford House Library, Abbotsford Legendary. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlingson poet. 34. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.487. San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 142. San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 1140. San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 1159.

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The Sunday saint  65 Cate, James Lea. “The English Mission of Eustace of Flay (1200–1201)”. In Etudes d’histoire dédiées a la mémoire de Henri Pirenne, par ses anciens élèves, 67–89. Brussels: Nouvele société d’Editions, 1937. Cate, James Lea. “The Church and Market Reform in England During the Reign of Henry III”. In Medieval and Historiographical Essays in Honor of James Westfall Thompson, edited by James Lea Cate and Eugene N. Anderson, 27–65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938. Caxton, William. Golden Legend. London, 1487. Caxton, William. Caxton’s Mirrour of the World. Edited by Oliver H. Prior. EETS e.s. 110. London: Early English Text Society, 1913. Cheney, C. R. “Rules for the Observance of Feast-Days in Medieval England”. Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 34, no. 90 (1961): 117–35. The Chichester Cathedral Prayer Book: Written and Illuminated in England by a Lancastrian Scribe and Artist during the Episcopate of Reginald Pecock (1450– 1457). London, Chiswick Press, [1907]. “The Childe of Bristowe”. Altenglische Legenden. Neue folge. Edited by Carl Horstmann, 315–21. Heilbronn, 1881. Coletti, Theresa. “Pauperitas est donum Dei: Hagiography, Lay Religion, and the Economics of Salvation in the Digby Mary Magdalene”. Speculum 76 (2001): 337–78. Collett, Barry. “Organizing Time for Secular and Religious Purposes: The Contemplacion of Sinners (1499) and the Translation of the Benedictine Rule for Women (1517) of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester”. Studies in Church History 37 (2002): 145–60. Corbellini, Sabrina, and Margriet Hoogvliet. “Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (ca. 1400–ca.1520)”. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43 (2013): 521–44. Crossick, Geoffrey. “Past Masters: In Search of the Artisan in European History”. In The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900, edited by Geoffrey Crossick, 1–40. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997. Davis, James. Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Davis, Natalie Zemon. “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century Lyon”. Past and Present 90 (1981): 40–70. Delany, Sheila. Writing Women. New York: Schocken Books, 1983. Digital Index of Middle English Verse. Edited by Linne R. Mooney, Daniel W. Mosser, and Elizabeth Solopova. Virginia Technical Institute, 1995–2013. www. dimev.net. Dives and Pauper. Edited by Priscilla Heath Barnum. Vol. 1. EETS o.s. 275. London: Early English Text Society, 1976. Dohrn-van Rossum, Gerhard. History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Dyer, Christopher. “The Consumer and the Market in the Later Middle Ages”. The Economic History Review, new series 42, no. 3 (1989): 305–27. Elvey, E. M., ed. The Courts of the Archdeaconry of Buckingham, 1483–1523. Buckinghamshire Record Society 19. Welwyn Garden City: Buckingham Record Society, 1975.

66  Cynthia Turner Camp Epstein, Steven A. “Business Cycles and the Sense of Time in Medieval Genoa”. The Business History Review 62, no. 2 (1988): 238–60. Epstein, Steven A. Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Farber, Lianna. An Anatomy of Trade in Medieval Writing: Value, Consent, and Community. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Farr, James R. Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Fox, Richard. Contemplacoun of synners. London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1499. [STC 5643] Gau, John. The Richt Vay to the Kingdome of Heuine. Malmo: John Hochstraten, 1533. [STC 19525] Gill, Miriam. “Preaching and Image: Sermons and Wall Paintings in Later Medieval England”. In Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, edited by Carolyn Muessig, 155–80. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Glennie, Paul, and Nigel Thrift. Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales, 1300–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Haines, Dorothy, ed. and trans. Sunday Observance and the Sunday Letter in AngloSaxon England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Hare, J. N. “Growth and Recession in the Fifteenth-Century Economy: The Wiltshire Textile Industry and the Countryside”. Economic History Review n.s. 52, no. 1 (1999): 1–26. Harvey, Barbara. “Work and Festa Ferianda in Medieval England”. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23, no. 4 (1972): 289–309. Heffernan, Thomas J. “A Middle English Poem on Lovedays”. Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 172–85. Horobin, Simon. “A Lost Manuscript Found in the Library of Abbotsford House and the Lost Legendary of Osbern Bokenham”. English Manuscript Studies 14 (2007): 130–62. Horstmann, Carl, ed. Samlung Altenglischer Legenden. Heilbronn: Verlag von Gebr. Henninger, 1878. Horstmann, Carl. “Nachträge zu den Legenden”. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 62 (1879): 397–442. Hudson, William, and John Cottingham Tingey, eds. The Records of the City of Norwich. Vol. 1. London: Jarrold & Sons, 1906. Humphrey, Chris. “Time and Urban Culture in Late Medieval York”. In Time in the Medieval World, edited by Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod, 105–17. York: York Medieval Press, 2001. An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London. Vol. 1. Westminster Abbey. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England. London: HMSO, 1924. Jacobus de Voragine. “De sancto Erasmo”. Legenda aurea vulgo historia lombardica dicta. Edited by Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, 890–94. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965. Jacobus de Voragine. Der Heiligen Leben. Vol. 1. Der Sommerteil. Edited by Margit Brand, Kristina Freiehagen-Baumgardt, Ruth Meyer, and Werner WilliamsKrapp. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996. Jacques de Voragine. La Légende Dorée: Edition Critique, dans la révision de 1476 par Jean Batallier. Edited by Brenda Dunn-Lardeau. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1997.

The Sunday saint  67 Jenks, Susanne. “Bill Litigation and the Observance of Sundays and Major Festivals in the Court of the King’s Bench in the Fifteenth Century”. Law and History Review 22, no. 3 (2004): 619–43. Kaye, Joel. Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kelly, Vincent J. Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations: An Historical Synopsis and Theological Commentary. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1943. Kowaleski, Maryanne. Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Ladd, Roger A. Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Langholm, Odd. Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition 1200–1350. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Le Goff, Jacques. “Labor Time in the ‘Crisis’ of the Fourteenth Century: From Medieval Time to Modern Time”. In Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 43–52. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Le Goff, Jacques. “Merchant’s Time and Church’s Time in the Middle Ages”. In Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 29–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lees, Claire. “The ‘Sunday Letter’ and the ‘Sunday Lists’”. Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985): 129–51. Lentes, Thomas. “Counting Piety in the Late Middle Ages”. In Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, edited by Bernhard Jussen and translated by Pamela Selwyn, 55–91. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Lutton, Robert. “Geographies and Materialities of Piety: Reconciling Competing Narratives of Religious Change in Pre-Reformation and Reformation England”. In Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640, edited by Robert Lutton and Elisabeth Salter, 11–40. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007. Lysons, Samuel. Appendix. Archaeologia 15 (1806): 405–06. Manley, John Matthews, and Edith Rickert. The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studies on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts. Vol. 1. Description of the Manuscripts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940. Marks, Richard. Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England. Thrupp: Stroud, 2004. Mirk, John. John Mirk’s Festial. Edited by Susan Powell. 2 vols. EETS o.s. 334–5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009–2011. Mombritus, Boninus. “Passio Sancti Erasmi Martyris”. Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum. 2 vols. Paris: Albertum Fontemoing, 1910. 1:485–88. Murray, Alexander. “Time and Money”. In The Work of Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History, edited by Miri Rubin, 3–25. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997. The New Testament in English, According to the Version by John Wycliffe. Edited by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.

68  Cynthia Turner Camp O’Mara, V. M. A Study and Edition of Selected Middle English Sermons: Richard Alkerton’s Easter Week Sermon preached at St. Mary Spital in 1406, a Sermon on Sunday Observance, and a Nunnery Sermon of the Feast of the Assumption. Leeds: Leeds Texts and Monographs, 1994. Perry, Ryan, and John Thompson. Description of London, British Library, Additional MS 36983. Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350–1550, edited by John Thompson, Ian Johnson, and Stephen Kelly. Queen’s University, Belfast, 2009. http:​//www​ .qub.​ac.uk​/geog​raphi​es-of​-orth​odoxy​/. Pickering, O. S. “An Unpublished Middle English Resurrection Poem”. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 74 (1973): 269–82. Poos, L. R., ed. Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in Late-Medieval England: The Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, 1336–1349, and the Deanery of Wisbech, 1458–1484. Records of Social and Economic History, new ser. 32. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Reiss, Athene. The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting. BAR British Series 202. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000. Rollison, David. Commune, Country and Commonwealth: The People of Cirencester, 1117–1643. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011. Rosenthal, Joel T. “A Time to Read and a Time to Write: Dates, Days, and Saints in the Paston Letters”. Journal of the Early Book Society 16 (2013): 171–93. Ross, Woodburn O. Middle English Sermons edited from British Museum MS Royal 18.B.xxiii. EETS o.s. 209. London: Early English Text Society, 1940. Rust, Martha. “The Arma Christi and the Ethics of Reckoning”. In The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. With a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, edited by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown, 143–69. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. Statutes of the Realm, 1101–1713. Vol. 2, 1377–1504. 1816. Reprint, London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1963. Swanson, Heather. Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Thompson, A. Hamilton, ed. Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517–1531. Vols. 1–2. Lincoln Record Society 33, 35. Hereford: Lincoln Record Society, 1940–44. Thompson, Billy Bussell, and John K. Walsh. “Old Spanish Manuscripts of Prose Lives of the Saints and Their Affiliations. I: Compilation A (The Gran Flos Sanctorum)”. La Corónica 15 (1986): 17–28. Thomson, J. A. F. “Wealth, Poverty and Mercantile Ethics in Late Medieval London”. In La Ville, la Bourgeoisie et la Genèse de l’État Moderne (XIIe–XVIIe siècles), 265–78. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1988. Victoria History of the County of Worcester. Vol. 3. Edited by J. W. Willis-Bund. Victoria History of the Counties of England. London: Constable and Co., 1913. Viner, D. J. “The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus and Other Lost Wall Paintings from Holy Rood Church, Ampney Crucis”. Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 118 (2000): 201–06. Wilkins, David. Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae. Vol 3. London, 1737. Wood, Diana. “‘Lesyng of Tyme’: Perceptions of Idleness and Usury in Late Medieval England”. Studies in Church History 37 (2002): 107–16.

The Sunday saint  69 Wood, Diana. Medieval Economic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Wood, Diana. “Discipline and Diversity in the Medieval English Sunday”. Studies in Church History 43 (2007): 202–11. Wood-Legh, K. L., ed. Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham and His Deputies, 1511–1512. Kentish Archeological Society Kent Records vol. 24. Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society, 1984. Wunderli, Richard M. London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1981.

4

Birgitta of Sweden and the merchant classes of Lübeck Elizabeth A. Andersen

Introduction: Birgitta of Sweden and the Birgittine Order Birgitta of Sweden (1303–73), the only woman to be canonized in the fourteenth century, exercised a profound influence on the spirituality of the late Middle Ages through the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae, a rich and voluminous compilation of her locutions and visions.1 In the Revelationes, Birgitta emerges as a charismatic and political visionary whose contemplative mysticism was interwoven with a powerful sense of social engagement and reforming zeal. Birgitta received her “calling vision” just days after the death of her husband Ulf Gudmarsson in c. 1345. In this vision, Birgitta is instructed to become the sponsa et canale, the bride and channel (mouthpiece), for Christ. Prior to this life-changing event, only a few biographical facts are recorded; it would seem that Birgitta came from a socially privileged and well-connected family since she was related to the royal Folkung dynasty through her mother’s family. In 1316, at the tender age of 13, Birgitta was given in marriage to Ulf, who was also connected, distantly, to the Folkung family through his mother. Birgitta had eight children with Ulf, four sons and four daughters. The impact of the “calling vision” becomes evident in 1349 when, as a widow, Birgitta is directed by Christ to go to Rome. Accompanied by three of her children, Karl, Birger, and Katarina, she spent the rest of her life there, making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land during that period. Work on the application for Birgitta to be considered for canonization started in the year following her death in 1373. The canonization process, begun in 1379 under Pope Urban VI, was completed with spectacular speed in 1391 under Pope Boniface IX, just eighteen years after Birgitta’s death.2 As a laywoman, wife, mother, and eventually widow, Birgitta emerges as a new type of saint and as a controversial figure. On the authority of the revelations she received, she sought to reform the dissolute court of Stockholm; castigated knights, priests, and bishops for their actions; worked to persuade three popes, Clement VI, Urban V, and Gregory XI, to restore the papacy to Rome from Avignon; and gave advice concerning a peaceful solution to the Hundred Years War between England and France.

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  71 The Birgittine Order of the Most Holy Saviour (the Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris) was the first order to be founded by a woman. Formally recognized in 1378, the Order reflected Birgitta’s spirit in embracing both the contemplative ideal of the traditional monastic orders and the apostolic zeal of the mendicants.3 During the fifteenth century, the Birgittine Order spread rapidly throughout Scandinavia and also to Italy, Germany, England, Poland, Estonia, the Low Countries, and Spain.4 Birgitta was a fourteenth-century aristocrat, related by blood to the Folkung dynasty, and many of the early Birgittine monastic houses were dynastic foundations.5 However, in the course of the fifteenth century, there was a pronounced tendency for Birgittine houses to be established in urban and mercantile centers, in particular those which were affiliated with the Hanseatic League, that economic alliance that dominated trade from the Baltic to the North Sea in the late Middle Ages. Lübeck, dubbed the “Queen of the Hanse,” played a particularly prominent role in the reception and dissemination of Birgitta’s Revelationes amongst the patrician classes, and it is this agency that is the focus of what follows.

The reception of the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae in Lübeck After the establishment of the Birgittine Order in the 1380s, the canonization of Birgitta in 1391, and the spread of the Birgittine cult throughout Europe, interest in the Revelationes grew exponentially.6 Within the German-speaking world, the translation of extracts from the Revelationes into the vernacular dates back to the late fourteenth century, although the majority of extant extracts are from the fifteenth. There is evidence of widespread early translation into the vernacular in Southern Germany. The process was, however, slower in Northern Germany, but in the late fifteenth century, it became prominent through the printed word, most particularly in the presses of Lübeck.7 Birgitta’s texts were, from the start, the products of a shared enterprise. Within her native Sweden, Birgitta was supported by three confessors, Master Mathias Ovidi, canon of Linköping; Prior Petrus Olavi of the Cistercian Abbey of Alvastra; and his namesake, Master Petrus Olavi of Skänninge. The two Peters were the main transcribers and translators of her revelations from Swedish into Latin. These were then edited and shaped by Alfonso Pecha, a former bishop of Jaén whom Birgitta met in Rome in 1367, into the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae. With the advent of printing in Northern Europe, the motherhouse of the Birgittine Order at Vadstena responded to the interest in the Revelationes with a commission to the Lübeck printer Bartholomäus Ghotan in 1491 to produce the editio princeps, thereby ensuring the Order’s control over the legacy of their founding saint. The relevant entry in the memorial book of Vadstena records the magnitude and significance of this commission: eight hundred paper copies of the Revelationes and a further sixteen copies on vellum.8

72  Elizabeth A. Andersen The volume is large folio in format, has 422 leaves, with forty-six lines to the page in double columns, and includes fifteen woodcuts as a series of full-page and smaller illustrations. These imposing dimensions indicate the intended representational function this volume was to have for the Birgittine Order. In the Northern German context, the authority and impact of Birgitta of Sweden are, however, clear long before the printing of the Revelationes in 1492. Manuscript extracts from Birgitta’s revelations are frequently included in compilations from the Gospels, sermons, and florilegia; in two prayer books, printed by Bartholomäus Ghotan, Birgitta is classified as an authority along with the evangelists, prophets, and approved teachers of Catholic doctrine.9 In the context of the output of the first generation of Lübeck printers, the Revelationes, as a work pre-eminently of visionary mysticism, stands out as different in kind from the otherwise conventional devotional texts. The exceptional interest in Birgitta’s revelations may have been due to her identity as a northern saint, almost local, but, perhaps more significantly, the pronounced sense of social engagement and commitment to the salvation of the world that runs through her revelations no doubt resonated with the dominant purpose of devotional literature, which sought to instruct its readers in a Christian way of life. Birgitta’s revelations were a bestseller. No text other than the Bible was drawn on by so many of the Lübeck printers, whether it was the Latin edition, an adaptation into the vernacular, or excerpts that were inserted into composite devotional texts.10

The adaptation of the Revelationes into Middle Low German The earliest printed adaptation of the Revelationes into Low German comes from the press of Lucas Brandis in c. 1478, extant only in fragments. However, two copies survive of a Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, printed by Ghotan’s press between 1484 and 1494, thus roughly contemporaneous with the printing of the Revelationes.11 The work is a relatively short compilation in the vernacular of meditative and prayerful extracts that has an expressly devotional purpose and is supplemented with pseudo-Birgittine material on Christ’s passion. Ghotan’s printing of both the Revelationes and the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, with its pseudo-Birgittine material, is evidence of the widespread appeal and authority she had, not just for the enclosed world of the cloister but also for a secular lay audience. Birgitta’s revelations seemed to be a good business proposition, and so the Lübeck Mohnkopf Press did not miss the opportunity to champion her too. The adaptation of the Revelationes by the Mohnkopf Press in 1496, also entitled Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, is, however, a radically different rendering of the text, while at the same time also a more precise translation of the Latin than either the Brandis or Ghotan versions.12 Rather than an anthology of extracts, the Mohnkopf Openbaringe is a coherent

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  73 and structured book. What distinguishes the Mohnkopf version is the handling of the biographical material. In the five books of the Mohnkopf Openbaringe, about half of the text is biographical, pre-eminently about Birgitta, with Book 5 devoted to her daughter Katarina, who was canonized in 1484. Biography thus provides the structural framework of the narrative. By the late fifteenth century, the political and ecclesiastical landscape was quite changed from the one inhabited by Birgitta in the fourteenth century, and so the adaptor excises references to contemporary politics as well as the attacks on and warnings to the Pope and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In terms of genre, the Openbaringe is conceived as a saint’s life that includes a selection of revelations. The focus of the work is trained on the devotional and the didactic, as is made clear in the preface to Book 1: God to love unde to eren. unde der iunckvrouwen Marien der moder unses heren Jhesu Cristi. unde der eddelen hylghen vrouwen sunte Birgitten. unde to beteringe unses sundighen levendes so werden hyr ghesettet etlike capittele. ghenomen uth dem boeke der openbaringe sunte Birgitten dat dar heet uppe latyn Revelatio sancte Birgitte.13 (To the praise and honor of God and of the Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the noble holy lady Saint Birgitta, and for the improvement of our sinful life some chapters are recorded here, taken from the book of Saint Birgitta’s revelations that is called in Latin Revelatio sancte Birgitte.) Repeatedly, the adaptor stresses the efficacy of the revelations for inciting the faithful to lead a more perfect Christian life and emphasizes the responsibility of the individual to respond to what they read. He insists that they must accept the revelations made to St. Birgitta as made to themselves: Hyrumme so merken alle mynschen de dar lesen in den openbaringen. dat god de almechtighe here nicht allenen umme erer salicheit wyllen er so vele heft gheopenbaret. men in erer personen so menet he alle mynschen. Darumme so neme dat eyn yowelck alzo to syck. alze eft dat to eme van gode worde ghesproken.14 (Now everyone who reads the revelations should take note that God the almighty Lord has not revealed so much to her just for the sake of her salvation, but in her person he addresses all mankind. Therefore everyone should receive this as if God had spoken to him.)

Lübeck: Queen of the Hanse and Imperial Free City Between about 1473 and 1525, nine print workshops set up business in Lübeck, establishing it alongside Cologne and Antwerp as a leading center for the production of incunables in Northern Europe. What is more, the art of printing itself was introduced into Denmark and Sweden by Lübeck

74  Elizabeth A. Andersen printers, notably Johann Snell, the brothers Lucas and Matthäus Brandis, and Bartholomäus Ghotan.15 A close link between the economic and intellectual networks thus secured the dominance of the Lübeck printers in the book trade of Scandinavia well into the sixteenth century. The strong attraction of Lübeck for the new trade of printing is to be found in the city’s dual identity as a Hanseatic port and as a Free and Imperial City. Within the political structure of the Holy Roman Empire, the status of a city had far-reaching consequences for the form of its governance, as did the secular or religious alignment of its leaders for the trade and dominant culture of the city. In 1226 the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II granted Lübeck the status of imperial city through a letter of imperial freedom. This meant that the city was under the direct authority of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Imperial Diet.16 Under constitutional law, Free and Imperial cities were enclaves that ranked alongside the Imperial States with a seat and a vote in the Imperial Diet. This was in stark contrast to the majority of cities in the Empire, which belonged to a territory and so were governed by either a secular lord (e.g. a duke, margrave, count) or by an ecclesiastical lord (e.g. prince-bishop, princeabbot). In the Free and Imperial cities, the source of political power and legitimacy shifted from religious or dynastic authorities to the urban élite. The status of Imperial Free City thus conferred semi-independence and a far-reaching autonomy. The constitution of these cities was republican in form but oligarchic in nature, with a governing town council composed of a hereditary patrician class. Even more important for the understanding of Lübeck as a commercial center is the economic alliance that dominated trade in Northern Europe. The Hanseatic League stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the late Middle Ages and early modern period. It comprised seventy cities and 100 to 130 smaller towns, some of which enjoyed the privileges afforded by the Hanseatic League without formally becoming members of it. With a population of c. 25,000–30,000, Lübeck was the second largest city after Cologne in the German-speaking lands and by far the largest and most powerful member of the Hanse. The Imperial Free City of Lübeck derived its economic wealth and its political power from its strategic location. It stood at a crossroads of trading routes that ran west to east from Bruges in Flanders to cities on or near the Baltic such as Gdánsk, Reval, and Novgorod, and from north to south connecting Scandinavia with Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Venice. The Stecknitz Canal, nowadays the Elbe-Lübeck Canal, gave Lübeck control over the lucrative salt trade between Lüneburg, Scandinavia, and the lands along the Baltic coast.17 In the creation of wealth, trade establishes and fosters contacts and networks that facilitate not only economic but also cultural exchange. Even before printers set up business in Lübeck, books had been exported from the city to the lands around the Baltic. Books were clearly seen as a commodity

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  75 in line with other scarce resources such as salt. This is well evidenced by the toll which the city levied by the pound on all goods leaving the harbor. The customs books (Pfundzollbücher) from 1492–96 record numerous book shipments in chests, barrels, and tuns (kisten, vaten, tunnen) to Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, Stettin, Gdánsk, and Reval; to Copenhagen; and, as the prime market, to Sweden, in particular to Kalmar, Söderköping, Nyköping, and Stockholm.18 In the decades on either side of 1500, Lübeck was still at the height of its power; the social composition, the economic strength, the political autonomy, the well-developed trading, and the personal networks of the Free City provided very favorable conditions for the establishment of the new business of the book trade.19 The significance of these factors may be thrown into relief through a comparison with the neighboring Hanseatic port of Rostock. Within the Baltic region, Rostock was the second most important printing center after Lübeck. With the invention of printing, presses were typically set up in traditional centers of learning and administration – in monasteries, diocesan, and university towns, and at the courts of princes. Rostock had the first university in northern Europe, founded in 1429. Like Lübeck, the city enjoyed well-developed connections with the Hanseatic area, drawing students from as far west as the Netherlands and from Scandinavia.20 Indeed, the flow of Scandinavian students continued even after the establishment of universities in Greifswald (1456), Uppsala (1477), and Copenhagen (1479). The first printing press in Rostock belonged to the Brethren of the Common Life. They had arrived in Rostock from Münster in 1462, bringing with them the values and way of life of the devotio moderna movement, with its focus on personal spiritual regeneration through immersion in and imitation of the life of Christ, coupled with a concern for preaching and social ministry to the poor. This aligned them closely with the prevalent devotional character of urban spiritual life in Lübeck. However, a comparison of the printed output of the two cities highlights the difference in the impact of the respective political, social, and cultural conditions on the business of printing. The range and reach of what was printed in Rostock was far more restricted. The Brethren had always earned a living through the copying of texts. The university was thus a major employer for them.21 The “Michael Brothers,” as they became known after the patron saint of their church, embraced the opportunity to have their own press in 1475 to meet the needs of the university. Their other two major patrons were the Church and the House of Mecklenburg. The Brethren received three types of printing commission: 1) works of classical antiquity to serve the humanist Renaissance studies of the university; 2) liturgical books, letters of indulgence, and theological works for the Church; and 3) official, legal documents for the Mecklenburg princes. They also received commissions from Denmark, some to do with the succession to the Danish throne and

76  Elizabeth A. Andersen some promoting the Reformation.22 By contrast, the literature published by the first generation of Lübeck printers is pre-eminently characterized by its devotional nature.

Devotional literature in Lübeck: The Mohnkopf Press The overriding concern of the devotional literature printed in Lübeck is to communicate “nutte lere den simpelen luden” (useful instruction for simple people) in the proper conduct of the Christian life.23 In this context, “simple people” means the lay population, those who had not received the formal Latinate training of the Church but who, as members of the urban patriciate, could read and write. The development of this urban literary culture was influenced strongly by the mendicant orders, the contemporary monastic reform movements, and the devotio moderna, with their focus on making the teaching of the Church accessible to laypeople. The religious devotional literature of the Lübeck printers was conceived as practical theology in offering pastoral guidance, be it through prayers, sermon examples, or glosses.24 The Mohnkopf Press exemplifies this trend to a greater degree than the other printing houses. Programmatically, their works are intended “for those not schooled in scholastic learning who do not understand Latin thoroughly.”25 Where in the other Lübeck presses, output in Latin constituted between sixty-five and eighty percent of the total production, the majority of the thirty-one texts printed by the Mohnkopf Press between 1487 and 1527 are in the vernacular. This statistic is all the more astonishing when set against the overall proportion of Latin to vernacular prints in the Late Middle Ages, which was 7:1.26 The Mohnkopf Press thus established itself as one of the most important centers for religious writing in the vernacular in the German-speaking lands before the Reformation.27 The guiding concept behind the Mohnkopf Press was that the new art of printing was a divine gift for the instruction of the lay reader in devotional matters. It brought with it an express obligation to respond appropriately to the teaching. Thus, in the Mohnkopf Plenary of 1492,28 a section carries the heading “Wo gud unde durbar de kunst der prenterie is” (how good and valuable the art of printing is), in which those people who do not avail themselves of the benefits of printing are vigorously taken to task. In the injunction to buy books as a way of improving your moral state, the imperatives of ensuring both the business success of the Press and the salvation of the individual soul are addressed simultaneously: Scheme du mynsche de du ycht kanst lessen in dessen daghen. unde vorsumest de salicheit diner selen. welker salicheyt du sughen machst uth der kunst de god dyn here dy in dynen dagen heft ghe openbaret… Scheme dy du homidige mynsche dattu nicht vlyt deist dath du dy schaffest welke ghenoecchlike boke de du vmme ringe ghelt tuegen machst.29

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  77 (Shame on you, who can read in these days and yet neglect the salvation of your soul, that salvation which you may draw from the art which God your Lord has revealed in your time… Shame on you, you arrogant person, that you do not strive to acquire sufficient books which you could have for not much money.) The interpretation by the Mohnkopf Press of the new business of printing as an instrument intended for the moral and spiritual improvement of the reader is pursued further in the Sunte Brigitten Openbaringe. In Book 3 (88v–89r), the anonymous adaptor inserts a lengthy excursus on the new art of printing. He expresses gratitude for what he perceives to be a divine gift to German lands in particular: Eya wat gnade heft god de here gegeven dessen dudeschen lande. desse dudeschen steden in welken god sendet so vele predikers. so vele lerer. unde sunderliken desse nyen kunst. de in dudeschen landen erst is ghevunden. unde overvloedighen bloyet.30 (Oh what grace God has shown to these German lands, these German cities into which God has sent so many preachers, so many teachers, and in particular this new art which was invented on German soil and which has flourished vigorously.) He is convinced of the efficacy of the printed word for ensuring a God-fearing life: “Wente hadden etlyke ketters efte andere unlovighe menschen hyr bevoren ghehat in eren daghen desse kunst dar mede ghedrucket unde gheprentet wert de hilghe schrift. se hadden syk bekeret” (For had some heretics or other unbelievers had this art in their day, with which the Holy Scripture had been typeset and printed, they would have mended their ways).31 He also warns of the greater responsibility placed on the individual for his own salvation given the increased exposure to instruction: “Hyrumme hebbe wy vele underwysynge entfangen. so wil ock des to scharper rekenschop van uns warden gheeschet” (Through this we have received much instruction, and thus we will be held to greater account).32 The concept of printing as a divinely inspired art was not a new thought. Not long after Gutenberg’s invention, Nicholas of Cusa is said to have arranged for “haec sancta ars, quae oriri tunc videbatur in Germania, Romam deduceretur” (this holy art, which had apparently originated in Germany, to be transferred to Rome).33 Within the Lübeck context, the concept was key to the prevalence of devotional literature, and it was more central to the ethos of the Mohnkopf Press than anywhere else. Although the body of works printed by the Press is predominantly pragmatic and devotional in type, it also includes four of the most outstanding secular texts of the Low German canon: Henselyn (wise fool Littlejohn, a Shrovetide play, 1484, GW12267), Des Dodes Danz (The Dance of Death, 1489, GW M47262, reprinted 1498, GW M 47263), Dat Narren

78  Elizabeth A. Andersen Schyp (The Ship of Fools, 1497, GW05053), and Reinke de Vos (Reynard the Fox, 1498, GW12733). These too are adapted to conform to the programmatic devotional agenda of educating the literate classes in Christian virtue.

The readership of the Mohnkopf Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe The physical dimensions of the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe are in stark contrast to those of Ghotan’s imposing and representational Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae. The Mohnkopf volume is quarto in format, has 204 leaves ruled with twenty-nine lines to the page, and includes eleven woodcuts, including the printer’s signature marks at the end of the volume. The edition is clearly intended to be accessible to the individual financially and to be read, held in the hand, as an act of private devotion. Each of the five constituent books is opened by a woodcut: the same image of Birgitta, dressed as a matron and portrayed as the author, but with varying captions,34 is used for the frontispiece and to open the first four books, while her daughter Katarina opens “her” book. The woodcuts inserted into the body of the text are devotional images: Mary holding the Infant heads the opening prayer, while the Nativity and the Crucifixion are inserted in the accounts of those visions. These images are, in keeping with the dimensions of the book, much more modest in scale and in concept than the woodcuts of the Revelationes. Here the emphasis falls on Birgitta as an individual, as an author rather than on her role as a channel for God to address mankind. She sits writing in the conventional pose of the author, familiar from depictions of the Gospel writers and the Church Fathers. The focus is firmly on the book with Birgitta’s eyes trained on it as she writes. The visionary aspect of the work is represented in the depiction of the heads of Christ and Mary, as her most important interlocutors, in the top left-hand and right-hand corners. However, the smaller scale of these two heads reinforces the shift in emphasis that the adaptor made in his abridgement and shaping of the Revelationes from a pre-eminently visionary work to one which is in equal measure a work of devotion, a saint’s life, and a book of revelations. There are thirteen extant copies of the Openbaringe, held mostly in Northern German libraries.35 Written in Low German, this work addresses primarily a lay readership that had neither the necessary education nor indeed time to tackle the original text of the Revelationes, to judge from the adaptor’s comments quoted above. In the course of the Openbaringe, the adaptor is transparent about his method of working, about how he has shaped and framed his book, demonstrating a thorough knowledge of the Revelationes. Although he is writing in the vernacular for a lay audience, the adaptor nonetheless frequently gives precise references to where he has drawn this material from in the Revelationes. This habit of precise referencing, unusual for non-biblical material, emphasizes the authority of the

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  79 Revelationes as a divinely inspired text. It is reminiscent of the method used for commentaries and sermons where the text is given first and is then followed by an explanation or amplification. This kind of scholarly referencing facilitates the use of the Openbaringe as a devotional book, guiding the reader through the material and suggesting where to look for further reading. Throughout the Openbaringe, the adaptor makes clear what his didactic intentions are, supporting these by drawing on the Bible, the Old Testament, most frequently and in particular the Psalms, ecclesiastical writers, and contemporary authors, whom he refers to as lerer (“teachers”). Birgitta herself is presented as a teacher in the prayer to her, which follows the preface and precedes Book 1: Eyne soete leresche des weghes der salicheit. Eyne scharpe straffersche de sunde der menschen … eyne vlitige vorbiddersche der levendighen unde doeden. Eyn bilde unde eyn speygl der dede syn in deme elyken echten levende unde ok in deme wedeweliken stathe.36 (She [Birgitta] is a sweet teacher of the way of blessedness. A sharp scold about the sins of mankind … an assiduous petitioner for the living and the dead. An image and a mirror for those in both the state of marriage and widowhood.) Vernacular literacy was widespread among burghers, lay brethren and sisters, and craftspeople in the towns. The most likely readership of the Openbaringe would have been the patrician families of the Free City of Lübeck. Ex libris analyses have shown that well-educated merchants were among the members of the educated upper class who owned incunables, while the wills of burghers and records of book purchase orders reveal that spiritual guides, Bible translations, and devotional literature were the staple of books owned by laypeople.37 One particular constituency of the readership of this type of devotional literature would probably have been the members, which included women, of the religious brotherhoods or confraternities that had their beginnings in the middle of the fourteenth century.38 By the time of the Reformation there were some seventy of these brotherhoods in Lübeck.39 They co-existed alongside other civic affiliations such as guilds, and it was not unusual for wealthy burghers, for example merchants, to belong to both the appropriate professional association as well as to a religious brotherhood. The brotherhoods were attached to monasteries and churches where they often had dedicated altars. In Lübeck, the merchants had five brotherhoods, three of which were attached to the castle church (the Brotherhood of Corpus Christi, the Brotherhood of St. Anthony, and the Brotherhood of St. Leonard), one to the cathedral church (the Brotherhood of St. Roch), and one to the Church of St. Mary (The Brotherhood of St. Mary of the Annunciation). It was the business of the brotherhoods to hold funerals and services of remembrance for their members as well as to distribute alms to the needy in the city, who

80  Elizabeth A. Andersen in turn were to pray for deceased members of the brotherhood to shorten their time in purgatory. Although the incunables of the Lübeck presses point to considerable interest in Birgitta of Sweden, Birgitta does not occur as the patron saint of a brotherhood, perhaps because her canonization was relatively too recent. The female saint who does, however, recur in this role is St. Anne, the apocryphal mother of the Virgin Mary. In Lübeck alone there were three Anne brotherhoods. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the veneration of St. Anne grew exponentially in northwest Europe, especially in the Low Countries and in Germany, with Anne becoming “a cultural symbol of immense authority.”40 In particular, she functioned as an intercessor for married women and mothers, as “the ideal model of a spouse, mother and widow fitting into the pattern of norms and values of the urban middle class.”41 The keen interest in the Holy Kinship generated by the figure of Anne is reflected in the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe through the highlighting of the mother and daughter relationship of Birgitta and Katarina and the aligning of this relationship with Mary and her mother Anne. Already in the Revelationes (VI, 104) we are told that Anne appeared to Birgitta and taught her a prayer that married women could use to ask God to bless them with a child. This connection with Anne is strengthened in the preface to the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe (Mohnkopf Xv ), where Anne is included in the list of otherwise male saints who spoke with Birgitta in order to instruct her in spiritual matters (“in geystlichen dingen”). As the progenitrix, the exemplary woman, the devoted mother, and finally the chaste widow, St. Anne provided a model of saintliness by which to measure Birgitta and a familiar point of reference for an urban readership.42 Alongside this circumstantial evidence of a potential readership, we do have, however, a very specific dedication written into the Göttingen copy of the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, which provides insight into the probable social provenance of the woman gifting this copy of the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe. The hand-written inscription in the Göttingen copy states: Dyt bok heft gegheven erer leuen weseken Suster Katherina Gonehagen [sic] dat se erer dar by denke vppe dat se got vor se bidde in ereme ingen beede. Requiescant in pace Tybbeken Gronhagen. (Sister Katharina Grönhagen gave this book to her beloved auntie that she might remember her by it and pray for her to God in her devout prayer. May they [sic] rest in peace. Tybekke Grönhagen.) The Grönhagen family flourished in Lüneburg until 1600.43 The name Tibbeke (a pet name for Tiburg) is prevalent. Another branch of the family moved in the middle of the fifteenth century to Brunswick where we find a Tibbeke who married Hans the Younger of Brunswick in c. 1465. She died in 1512. The family in Lüneburg was a rich patrician family that derived its wealth from the salt industry. Tibbeke’s sister, Anna, married Ludolf

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  81 Elebeke, a Sülfmeister (someone who owned the rights to a salt pan) from Lüneburg; they had four daughters, one of whom married Heinrich Töbing, the burgher master of Lüneburg, while the other three entered the Cistercian convent of Medingen, one of the Lüneburg convents. Given the connection between Lübeck and Lüneburg through the salt trade, it would be fair to assume that the patrician family of Tibbeke Grönhagen represents the social context in which the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe circulated.

Conclusion The economic, political, and social composition of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck in the late Middle Ages created an environment which fostered the development of a progressive and coherent urban literary culture in the new age of printing. The salient features of the Imperial Free City, with its absence of a dominant secular and, even more importantly, ecclesiastical authority, allowed the printing business to flourish and to satisfy the demands of an educated urban patriciate. In this context, the production of the revelations of St. Birgitta in the printing houses of Ghotan and the Mohnkopf Press in the late fifteenth century provides an illuminating case study of the synergy of mercantile business and religious cultures. On the one hand, the Birgittine motherhouse of Vadstena recognized the excellence and capacity of Ghotan’s printing press in entrusting him with the production of the editio princeps of the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae, a commission that was fundamental to the Birgittines and central to the promotion of their Order. On the other hand, these revelations from a century earlier were simultaneously adapted and reframed, most particularly in the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe of the Mohnkopf Press. They were recast into the shape of a saint’s life to meet the spiritual needs of a lay readership seeking devotional guidance in the spirit of the devotio moderna, a readership drawn from the educated élite of the urban patriciate whose identity was most sharply defined by the merchant classes. The authority that Birgitta is imbued with in the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae functioned as a guarantee for the authority of the devotional literature written for the local market. The powerful paradigm of Birgitta as an attractive model of female sanctity for the merchant classes led to her becoming, as it were, the patron saint of the Lübeck printers.

Notes 1 Cf. Elizabeth Andersen, “Birgitta of Sweden in Northern Germany: Translation, Transmission and Reception,” in A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Elizabeth Andersen, Henrike Lähnemann, and Anne Simon (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 205–30; Bridget Morris, St. Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999); Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001).

82  Elizabeth A. Andersen 2 The swiftness of the canonization process was in no small part due to the politics of the contemporary papacy. Cf. Sahlin, Birgitta, 159–68. Birgitta became the patron saint of Sweden in 1396. In 1999, Pope John Paul II named her one of the patron saints of Europe. 3 Bridget Morris, Introduction and Notes to The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, trans. Denis Searby, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 113. 4 By the end of the fifteenth century, Birgittine houses numbered between sixty and seventy. 5 Cf. Sahlin, Birgitta, 17. 6 Cf. Bridget Morris and Veronica O’Mara, eds., The Translation of the Works of St. Birgitta of Sweden into the Medieval European Vernaculars (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). 7 Cf. Ulrich Montag, Das Werk der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden in oberdeutscher Überlieferung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1968). As Montag comments (107), it is impossible to calculate how many manuscripts may have been lost during the dissolution of the monasteries in the Reformation. 8 Claes Gejrot, ed., Diarium Vadstenense: Latinsk text med översättning och kommentar (Stockholm: Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 1996), XXXX, 889 (p. 378). Vadstena Abbey invited Ghotan to help set up their own printing press in 1495, but it was destroyed by fire in the following year. In the absence of a printing press at Vadstena, Lübeck continued to be the hub for the dissemination of Birgittine texts. 9 Bedeboek (Lübeck: Ghotan, c. 1484 [GW 13002]); Bedeboek (Lübeck: Ghotan, 1485 [GW 13003]). GW = Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke [Union Catalogue of Incunabula Database]. 10 Cf. Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke. 11 Hildegard Dinges, “Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe. Neuausgabe des mittelniederdeutschen Frühdrucks von 1496” (PhD diss., University of Münster, 1952), XX–XXXVIII. Ghotan also printed a life of Birgitta’s daughter Katarina, Vita cum miraculis b. Katharinae, in Sweden in 1487. Cf. Wolfgang Undorf, “From Gutenberg to Luther – Transnational Print Cultures in Scandinavia 1450–1525” (PhD diss., Humboldt University Berlin, 2012), 98. A slightly modified version of the dissertation was published by Brill, Leiden in 2014. 12 On the relationship of the Brandis and Ghotan texts to the Mohnkopf print, see Dinges, “Sunte Birgitten,” XXVI–XXXVIII, and James Hogg, “Sunte Birgitten openbaringe,” Spiritualität heute und gestern 7, Analecta Cartusiana 35 (1990), 156–60. 13 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe (Lübeck: Mohnkopf, 1496) 10r. 14 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, 37v–38r. 15 Hubertus Menke, “‘Na dem Holme 1 Vat mit Boken’. Zum spätmittelalterlichen Buchvertrieb Lübecks in den Ostseeraum,” in Niederdeutsch in Skandinavien. Akten des 1. Nordischen Symposiuns “Niederdeutsch in Skandinavien” in Oslo, ed. Kurt Erich Schöndorf and Kai-Erik Westergaard (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1987), 147–157; Hubertus Menke, “Die literarische Stadtkultur Lübecks um 1500,” in Reynke de Vos – Lübeck 1498. Zur Geschichte und Rezeption eines deutsch-niederländischen Bestsellers, ed. Amand Berteloot, Loek Geeraedts, and Hubertus Menke (Münster/Hamburg, 1998), 100; Elizabeth Andersen, “Religious Devotion and Business. The Pre-Reformation Enterprise of the Lübeck Presses,” Ons Geestelijk Erf 87 (2016): 200–223; Undorf, “From Gutenberg to Luther,” 192. 16 Stephan Selzer, Die mittelalterliche Hanse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010), 35. 17 Cf. Dieter Lohmeier, “Die Frühzeit des Buchdrucks in Lübeck,” in Die Lübecker Buchdrucker im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Buchdrucker für den Ostseeraum,

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  83 ed. Alken Bruns and Dieter Lohmeier (Heide in Holstein: Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens & Co, 1994), 11; Undorf, “From Gutenberg to Luther,” 110. 18 Menke, “Na dem Holme,” 149; Undorf, “From Gutenberg to Luther,” 192. 19 Undorf, “From Gutenberg to Luther,” 73. 20 Ursula Altmann, Buchdruck in Rostock 1476 (Rostock: VOB Ostsee-Druck, 1976), 6. 21 Nilüfer Krüger, 525 Jahre Buchdruck in Rostock. Die Druckerei der Brüder vom Gemeinsamen Leben (Rostock: Universitätsbibliothek, 2001), 10. 22 The economic benefits of accepting commissions for the promotion of the Reformation were offset by the conflicted position that the Brethren, who were staunchly Catholic, found themselves in. This was eventually resolved when the press was closed down in 1532 by Duke Heinrich of Mecklenburg, at the behest of Luther himself, for printing Jerome Emser’s Neues Testament, a counterblast to Luther’s version. Cf. Krüger, 525 Jahre Buchdruck, 25. 23 Boek van der Bedroffenisse Marien, 1498, y3a (GW04508). 24 Hubertus Menke, “‘Ghemaket vmme der eyntvoldighen vnde simple Mynschen Willen’. Zur Lübecker Druckliteratur in der frühen Neuzeit,” in Ausstattung Lübecker Wohnhäuser. Raumnutzungen, Malereien und Bücher im Spätmittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Manfred Eickhölter and Robert Hammer-Kiesow (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1993), 309. 25 Quoted from Timothy Sodmann, “Die Druckerei mit den drei Mohnköpfen,” in Franco-Saxonica. Münstersche Studien zur niederländischen und niederdeutschen Philologie. Jan Goossens zum 60. Geburtstag (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1990), 355: “vor de ungelerden de dat latyn nicht gruntlicken vorstaen” (De salter to dude, 274v [GW M36239]). 26 Seventy percent of the incunables were printed in Latin, ten percent in German. The data is based on the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (http://www.bl.uk/ catalogues/istc/) of the British Library, accessed June 30, 2016. 27 Sodmann, “Die Druckerei,” 351. 28 GW M34208. Quoted from Ursula Altmann, “Die Leistungen der Drucker mit Namen Brandis im Rahmen der Buchgeschichte des 15. Jahrhunderts” (PhD diss., Humboldt University Berlin, 1974), 62. 29 Plenarium (Lübeck: Mohnkopf, 1492), 273r. 30 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, fol. 88v–89v. 31 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, fol. 89v. 32 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, fol. 89v. 33 Dedication letter of the Vatican librarian Giovanni Andrea dei Bussi to Pope Pius II, in Prefazioni alle edizioni di Sweynheym e Pannartz prototipografi romani, Documenti sulla arti del libro, XII (Milan: Edizioni II Polfilo, 1978), 4. 34 The first illustration has as a caption: “Sancta Birgitta sponsa Cristi. Ora pro nobis” (Saint Birgitta, bride of Christ. Pray for us) (9v). 35 Cf. Hogg, “Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe,” 140–148. 36 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, 7r. 37 Cf. Cordelia Heβ, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 36–37. 38 Cf. Monika Zymslony, Die Bruderschaften in Lübeck bis zur Reformation (Kiel: Walter G. Mühlau, 1977); Antjekathrin Graβmann, Der Kaufmann und der liebe Gott: Zu Kommerz und Kirche im Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Trier: Porta Alba, 2009). 39 The Reformation came to Lübeck in 1531. 40 Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, Interpreting Cultural Symbols. Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens/London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 48.

84  Elizabeth A. Andersen 41 Ton Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne. A Holy Grandmother and Her Children,” in  Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakke (New York/London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1995), 121. 42 In their discussion of a St. Anne altarpiece commissioned in the late fifteenth century by a brotherhood of St. Anne that met in the Carmelite monastery in Frankfurt, Ashley and Sheingorn draw attention to a similar association of Birgitta with Anne: Interpreting Cultural Symbols, 43, fig. 24. In a panel of the altarpiece, Birgitta sits in her study intent on her writing. Her devotion is rewarded with a vision of Anne with the Virgin and Child. The scene is intended to offer the pious woman contemplating the altarpiece a model of devotion. 43 Cf. Hans-Jürgen Witzendorff, Stammtafeln Lüneburger Patriziergeschlechter (Göttingen: H. Reise, 1952), 46–48.

Bibliography All German prints of the fifteenth century are catalogued in the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (GW) [Union Catalogue of Incunabula Database] which is available online (http​://ww​w.ges​amtka​talog​derwi​egend​rucke​.de/)​. Altmann, Ursula. “Die Leistungen der Drucker mit Namen Brandis im Rahmen der Buchgeschichte des 15. Jahrhunderts”. PhD diss., Humboldt University, Berlin, 1974. Altmann, Ursula. Buchdruck in Rostock 1476. Rostock: VOB Ostsee-Druck, 1976. Andersen, Elizabeth. “Birgitta of Sweden in Northern Germany: Translation, Transmission and Reception”. In A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages, edited by Elizabeth Andersen, Henrike Lähnemann, and Anne Simon, 205–30. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 44. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Andersen, Elizabeth. “Religious Devotion and Business. The Pre-Reformation Enterprise of the Lübeck Presses”. Ons Geestelijk Erf 87 (2016): 200–23. Ashley, Kathleen, and Pamela Sheingorn, eds. Interpreting Cultural Symbols. Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Bedeboek. Lübeck: Ghotan, 1484 (GW13002). Bedeboek. Lübeck: Ghotan, 1485 (GW13003). Boek van der Bedroffenisse Marien. Lübeck: Steffen Arndes, 1498 (GW04508). Brandenbarg, Ton. “Saint Anne. A Holy Grandmother and Her Children”. In Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages, edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, 31–68. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995. Diarium Vadstenense: Diarium Vadstenense: Latinsk text med översattning och kommentar. Edited by Claes Gejrot. Kungl. Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, Handlingar del 19. Stockholm, 1996. Dinges, Hildegard. “‘Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe.’ Neuausgabe des mnl. Frühdruckes von 1496”. PhD diss., University of Münster, 1952. Graβmann, Antjekathrin, ed. Der Kaufmann und der liebe Gott: zu Kommerz und Kirche in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Hansische Studien 18. Trier: Porta Alba, 2009. Heβ, Cordelia. Social Imagery in Middle Low German. Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517). Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Birgitta of Sweden and Lübeck merchants  85 Hogg, James. “Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe”. Spiritualität Heute und Gestern 7. Analecta Cartusiana 35, no. 7 (1990): 101–213. Krüger, Nilüfer. 525  Jahre Buchdruck in Rostock. Die Druckerei der Brüder vom Gemeinsamen Leben. Veröffentlichungen der Universitätsbibliothek Rostock 132. Rostock: Universitätsbibliothek, 2001. Lohmeier, Dieter. “Die Frühzeit des Buchdrucks in Lübeck”. In Die Lübecker Buchdrucker im 15. und 16 Jahrhundert. Buchdrucker für den Ostseeraum, edited by Alken Bruns and Dieter Lohmeier, 11–53. Heide in Holstein: Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens & Co., 1994. Menke, Hubertus. “‘Na dem Holme 1 Vat mit Boken.’ Zum spätmittelalterlichen Buchvertrieb Lübecks in den Ostseeraum”. In Niederdeutsch in Skandinavien. Akten des 1. Nordischen Symposions ‘Niederdeutsch in Skandinavien’ in Oslo, edited by Kurt Erich Schöndorf and Kai-Erik Westergaard, 147–57. Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 4. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1987. Menke, Hubertus. “‘Ghemaket vmme der eyntvoldighen vnde simple Mynschen Willen.’ Zur Lübecker Druckliteratur und der frühen Neuzeit”. In Ausstattung Lübecker Wohnhäuser. Raumnutzungen, Malereien und Bücher im Spätmittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit, edited by Manfred Eickhölter and Rolf Hammer-Kiesow, 299–316. Häuser und Höfe in Lübeck 4. Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1993. Menke, Hubertus. “Die literarische Stadtkultur Lübecks um 1500”. In Reynke de Vos – Lübeck 1498. Zur Geschichte und Rezeption eines deutsch-niederländischen Bestsellers, edited by Amand Berteloot, Loek Geeraedts, and Hubertus Menke, 81–101. Niederlande-Studien. Kleinere Schriften 5. Münster: LitVerlag, 1998. Montag, Ulrich. Das Werk der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden in oberdeutscher Überlieferung. Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 18. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1968. Morris, Bridget. St. Birgitta of Sweden. Studies in Medieval Mysticism 1. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999. Morris, Bridget, and Veronica O’Mara, eds. The Translation of the Works of St. Birgitta of Sweden into the Medieval European Vernaculars. The Medieval Translator 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Plenarium. Lübeck: Mohnkopf, 1492 (GW M34220). Prefazioni alle edizioni di Sweynheym e Pannartz prototipografi romani. Edited by Giovanni Andrea Bussi. Documenti sulla arti del libro, XII. Milan: Edizioni II Polifilo, 1978. Revelationes Sanctæ Birgittæ. Lübeck: Bartholomäus Ghotan, 1492 (GW04391). The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden. Translated by Denis Searby with Introductions and Notes by Bridget Morris, 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006–2015. Sahlin, Claire L. Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001. Selzer, Stephan. Die mittelaterliche Hanse. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010. Sodmann, Timothy. “Die Druckerei mit den drei Mohnköpfen”. In Franco-Saxonica. Münstersche Studien zur niederländischen und niederdeutschen Philologie. Jan Goossens zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Robert Damme, Loek Geeraedts, Gunter Müller, and Robert Peters, 343–60. Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1990. Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe. Lübeck: Bartholomäus Ghotan, c. 1485 (GW04394).

86  Elizabeth A. Andersen Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe. Lübeck: Mohnkopf, 1496 (GW04395). Undorf, Wolfgang. “From Gutenberg to Luther – Transnational Print Cultures in Scandinavia 1450–1525”. PhD diss., Berlin: Humboldt University, 2012. Witzendorff, Hans-Jürgen von. Stammtafeln Lüneburger Patriziergeschlechter. Göttingen: Heinz Reise Verlag, 1952. Zymslony, Monika. Die Bruderschaften in Lübeck bis zur Reformation. Beiträge zur Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 6. Kiel: Walter G. Muhlau Verlag, 1977.

Part II

Merchant patronage and individualized piety

5

For the hope of salvation and the honor of family Merchant devotional concerns in early sixteenth-century Burgos1 Emily Kelley

By the end of the fifteenth century, several merchant families in Burgos, Spain had amassed sufficient wealth and status to afford chapels within the city’s parish churches. This chapter examines three merchant-commissioned, sculpted altarpieces from these chapels in early sixteenth-century Burgos, which reflect aspects of lay devotional life in the city. All three works survive in situ and have strong evidence that patrons were involved in their planning through the placement of crests and the presence of donor portraits, making them ideal representations of the families’ piety. Above all, the altarpieces reflect the merchants’ apprehensions over the fate of their souls in the afterlife, as it was believed that following death the soul would enter purgatory, a transitional place where most Christians went after death in order to become spiritually fit for heaven. Both earthly and divine intervention could shorten one’s stay in purgatory.2 As a result, many individuals would solicit prayers from their survivors, masses from various religious institutions, and saintly intercession.3 The altarpieces in this study reflect a common belief among Burgalese merchants that the saints were crucial intermediaries in this process, and they provide insight into the nature of merchants’ devotional lives as well as their connections to particular saints through the holy persons whom each patron selected. My analysis of these altarpieces reveals that, in preparation for death, the merchants of Burgos largely abandoned their earthly professions, focusing on broader spiritual concerns, specifically those of salvation, and on creating funerary monuments that honored their families’ status and ties to the community, representing them as part of the city’s urban elite. Thus, rather than focusing on a single saint known for his or her protection of merchants, this group shared devotional interests centered on several holy persons revered for their roles in redemption, salvation, and female piety; accordingly, the apostles, Sts. Michael, Mary Magdalene, and Katherine of Alexandria are present in each work. In instances where the patrons were most involved in the design of their retables, they also emphasized saints who honored familial connections, such as namesakes; institutional connections, such as monasteries and confraternities; and other themes of personal importance. Saints conventionally celebrated as protectors of merchants, like St. Nicholas, were

90  Emily Kelley sometimes present, but even this “merchant’s saint” represented a range of devotional concerns often more personal than professional. Although the specific iconography varies, each commission demonstrates that merchants valued saints as critical intercessors in the afterlife and, through their funerary commissions, wanted to create a lasting reminder of their family’s piety, wealth, social connections, and links to institutions in the city.

Burgos and its merchants Like many Castilian cities, Burgos emerged as a mercantile center due to the export of wool from that region. By the late Middle Ages, the city had established trade networks throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the west, with particularly significant connections to Seville, Flanders, and England, although Burgalese merchants were also frequent participants in more local exchanges such as the fairs at Medina del Campo.4 In the final decades of the fifteenth century, the city’s expanding connection with sea trade led to the development of the Universidad de Mercaderes in Burgos and a Burgalese branch of the Consulado del Mar, a governing organization of the city’s merchants.5 The merchants examined in this chapter formed part of a vibrant middle-class community in the Burgos city center where most merchants lived and where the city’s marketplace was located. As a group, they were benefactors of the city’s parish churches and monasteries, they populated the city’s confraternities, and they served in city government. The three merchants featured in this study were involved in both local and foreign trade and were sufficiently prominent and wealthy so as to afford prestigious burial in one of the city’s parish churches. The first merchant, Fernando Castro de la Hoz (also frequently referenced as Fernando de Castro in documentation), was a vassal of King Enrique IV and had high social standing in fifteenth-century Burgos.6 The Castro family engaged in trade with England from the mid-fifteenth century as exporters of wool and importers of English cloth; by the end of the century, they expanded their trade to some regions of France.7 Fernando de Castro distributed goods throughout the region of Castile, including many small towns; invested money on behalf of various clients; owned an array of investment properties; and served as a moneylender to the city of Burgos, though there is no indication that interest was ever collected or that these debts were ever paid.8 Castro was also a member of Burgos’s most prestigious confraternity, the Cofradía de los Reyes Magos.9 This organization comprised members of the thirteen most elite families in Burgos, all of whom had to prove purity of blood,10 making Castro’s membership a symbol of both his prestige and piety. The second merchant, García de Salamanca, traded in Flanders, likely exporting wool, and his altarpiece is unique in that it was created in Antwerp and imported to Burgos.11 In addition to his international ties, Salamanca rented properties in Burgos and was in the process of constructing new

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  91 houses in the San Juan neighborhood at the time of his death. Unlike the other merchants in this study, Salamanca was childless, and he therefore left his wealth and his business affairs to his siblings and nephews, many of whom were also buried in his chapel.12 The final merchant, Gonzalo López de Polanco, was a member of the Real Cofradía de los Caballeros del Santísimo y Santiago, a popular confraternity among the non-noble elite, and he served as prior of the Consulado del Mar.13 Like other merchants in this study, his family was involved in the cloth trade; in their trade with Florence and Andalusia, his family imported silk and exported wool.14 In addition to these professional relationships, his family held a documented connection to the Monastery of San Isidoro, where four of Polanco’s ten daughters were nuns.15 Aside from their parochial and confraternal associations, these merchants would have enriched their religious lives through printed vernacular texts, which were newly available in this region toward the end of the fifteenth century.16 These texts would have been both affordable and accessible to the merchant population, whose literacy and mathematical skills were necessary for their financial success.17 The funerary context and hagiographic focus of all three altarpieces suggest that two texts had a significant impact on the merchants’ commissions. The first is the Golden Legend, a compilation of saints’ lives written by Jacobus de Voragine that was published in Castilian in Burgos just prior to the commission of all three altarpieces in this study (c. 1499).18 The second, the Ars moriendi, was a fifteenth-century instructional and devotional manual meant to aid the laity in their preparations for death. Although not published in Burgos, it was widely available, and a printed Castilian translation of this text was produced in Zaragoza between 1479 and 1484.19

The carved altarpiece in Burgos Although these texts would have impacted the content of the commissions, the medium and style of the works were shaped by a growing trend toward carved altarpiece production in Burgos and Castile around the turn of the sixteenth century. In the late fifteenth century, Bishop Luis de Acuña and Queen Isabel each commissioned a notable and prestigious altarpiece in the city: Acuña for the chapel of Santa Ana in the Cathedral (c. 1485) and Isabel for the Monastery of Miraflores (c. 1496–99).20 Around the same time, noblewoman Mencía de Mendoza ordered a funerary chapel and altarpiece at the cathedral (c. 1498–1500). This latter work provides the closest iconographic parallel to the three merchant works in this study because it includes a personalized selection of saints that reflect Mencía’s devotion.21 Once the Burgalese nobility embraced the new trend of carved altarpieces, the social climbing merchant elite quickly followed. My analysis of the three merchant altarpieces in this study indicates that, like the royal and noble patrons before them, the merchants were

92  Emily Kelley significantly involved with their commissions and desired that the works reflect their families’ patronage. The iconography of each demonstrates that the patrons participated in the selection of holy persons for their retable, working with the artist and possibly also a spiritual advisor (likely the parish priest) to complete the design. A stark contrast to these examples of patronage is the sculpted altarpiece from the Chapel of the Buena Mañana in the church of San Gil in Burgos.22 Also dating to the early sixteenth century and found inside a merchant’s chapel, this work bears little evidence of the patron’s connection to the commission. It includes no crests of the merchant family nor does it include donor portraits, suggesting that the family’s involvement in its design was comparatively minimal. The sophisticated theological content of the altarpiece, which features iconography related to the Assumption of the Virgin and the Apocalypse, also suggests a strong ecclesiastical role in the altarpiece’s design, making it a counterexample to these three instances of hands-on merchant design and demonstrating that not all merchants felt compelled to engage themselves in details of their funerary commissions.

The funerary altarpiece of Fernando Castro de la Hoz The first work, commissioned by merchant Fernando Castro de la Hoz, includes a selection of scenes that reflect the personalized religious concerns of Castro’s family through the portrayal of figures relating to family namesakes, affiliations to religious institutions, and personal devotional concerns. For Castro, like the other patrons discussed in this study, the aforementioned issues superseded any need for extensive representation of saints who specifically served as protectors of merchants. Instead, he endeavored to create a personalized collection of saintly advocates whom he felt might best provide heavenly intercession. Compared to other retables in this study, analysis of Castro’s commission is challenging due to a lack of surviving commission record or will of the patron.23 Nevertheless, knowledge of Castro’s professional life, institutional affiliations, and family provide evidence for interpreting much of the imagery in his commission. Castro’s altarpiece is located in the Chapel of the Kings, which was founded in 1490 and constructed on the right of the high altar in the church of San Gil. Castro and his wife, Juana García de Castro, are interred at the center of the chapel in a raised floor tomb.24 Centered on the back wall, the altarpiece of the three kings forms the chapel’s focal point. Antonia Fernández Casla has dated the retable to c.1500–1510 and attributed it to the workshop of Felipe Vigarny, a sculptor who came to Burgos in 1498.25 The altarpiece portrays the Adoration of the Magi in the center with Christ as the Man of Sorrows above and fifteen large effigies of saints in the surrounding niches.26 The banco, or lowest register, of the retable includes male and female donor portraits, creating a visual hierarchy where the saints are placed between the patrons and Christ, reflecting their intercessory role.

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  93 Iconographic elements of the retable demonstrate that the work was meant to showcase the status of the Castro family and reflect their personal devotional concerns. Beginning at the center of the retable, the scene of the Adoration of the Magi honors Castro’s most significant institutional affiliation, his membership in the Cofradía de los Reyes Magos, the city’s elite confraternity. In her study of the altarpiece, Fernández Casla notes this relationship and argues that Castro’s portrait in the banco portrays him in a similar pose to that of the Magi, creating a parallel between Castro and the holy men in the central scene.27 By showcasing his membership in this esteemed organization, the altarpiece becomes a lasting reminder of the family’s prestigious affiliation. It also references the support that the confraternity’s members would have surely provided at the time of Castro’s death: gathering for his funeral, participating in his funerary procession, and offering prayers and masses to ensure the salvation of his soul.28 Further reflecting the family’s connections to organizations throughout the city, and through this their status and piety, several other saints on the retable align with specific churches, monasteries, and confraternities in the city of Burgos. I would posit that their portrayal here indicates either an association with or monetary donation to the institutions represented. Of these saints, Castro’s association with St. Giles can be clearly established since the saint appears in the family’s donor portrait in the banco, an honored position that reinforces Castro’s devotion and reflects his selection of the Church of San Gil as both his parish and his site of burial.29 In the absence of a surviving testament, the presence of several other saints (Sts. Lawrence Deacon, Andrew, Augustine, Peter, and Paul) might serve as a primary source suggesting the family’s connection, likely through financial donations, to these religious institutions since other patrons, like Gonzalo López de Polanco, discussed later in this chapter, utilized their funerary altarpieces in a similar manner.30 Of all the saints represented, only one, St. Onuphrius, has a potential relationship to Castro’s occupation as a merchant, showing that Castro’s retable references, but does not dwell upon, his professional life. This use of Onuphrius again demonstrates that, in death, Burgalese merchants had other devotional concerns. Although Onuphrius was a fifth-century Egyptian hermit, traditions of Onuphrius in Iberia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries include a posthumous miracle where the saint saved a merchant at sea during his travels to visit his sister, a Clarissan at the Monastery of Pedralbes in Barcelona.31 Consequently, images and texts honoring this saint were included in a number of inventories of merchant possessions from Cataluña, indicating that he was a popular saint among Catalan merchants during the period.32 Onuphrius may have also been viewed as a merchant protector in early sixteenth-century Burgos. The legend of St. Onuphrius is included in the appendix of the version of the Golden Legend that was printed in Burgos in 1499, suggesting that the saint may have been of local importance.33 However, the text does not include Onuphrius’s miraculous

94  Emily Kelley rescue of the sailors as part of the saint’s legend, meaning that Castro would have learned of the saint’s role as merchant protector from a different source. With only a single direct referent to his profession, Castro’s altarpiece focuses more on other aspects of his devotion. Specifically, several figures on the retable reinforce the family’s connection with the divine through the representation of family namesakes. Like the family’s crests and donor portraits, portrayal of these saints would serve as a visual reminder of the family’s patronage, but they would also honor those saints that Castro most valued as intercessors in the afterlife. Fernández Casla has established several of these connections: St. Anthony of Padua represents Fernando, St. Jerome his son Jeronimo, and St. Bartholomew multiple family members with the same name.34 A final aspect of the iconography suggests that the Castro family’s personal experience led to their particular devotion to saints associated with disease and pestilence, resulting in unique imagery for a Burgalese retable of this period. A number of associated holy persons are included here: St. Sebastian, St. Anthony Abbot, and St. Christopher. Also present are those who offer protection from sudden death or unrepentant sin: St. Christopher and St. Giles.35 Proportionally, these saints make up approximately a quarter of the saints represented on Castro’s retable, certainly suggesting that their appearance is not happenstance but instead has clear significance. They could perhaps relate to a hospital maintained by the Confraternity of the Magi,36 but more likely they reflect the family’s struggle with or fear of pestilence. This is made all the more probable since documentation places Fernando Castro de la Hoz in Britain around the time of an outbreak of disease that carried with it an unusually high mortality rate.37 Witnessing such a catastrophic event, and perhaps losing business associates and friends to the epidemic, may well have led to Castro’s devotion to these saints. Overall, the collection of saints on Castro’s retable are highly personalized and include those whom he believed would best represent the social status of his family and showcase their piety. Simultaneously, it reflects individualized aspects of his devotion, such as the representation of plague saints and family namesakes, that he believed would best aid his family as they sought eternal salvation.

The funerary altarpiece of García de Salamanca The next altarpiece continues to demonstrate the manner in which merchant-commissioned retables of the sixteenth century functioned as personalized demonstrations of the patrons’ devotion, although many of the iconographic decisions for this work were likely made by the patron’s descendant. Located to the right of the high altar in the Church of San Lesmes, this work is part of the funerary chapel of García de Salamanca and his wife, who is unnamed in the documentation.38 Unlike his contemporaries, who composed their wills while healthy, García de Salamanca wrote

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  95 his while ill, just eleven days prior to his demise.39 The will indicates that Salamanca gave generously to his parish, providing a donation of 30,000 maravedíes for the construction of the sacristy in addition to funding his funerary chapel.40 It also tasks García’s nephew, Diego de Salamanca, with making his chapel “better adorned and ornamented,” indicating that this work was incomplete at the time of García’s death.41 Thus, while García de Salamanca may have initiated aspects of the retable’s design and commission, it was likely his nephew Diego who saw the project to fruition, as is evident in some aspects of the iconography. The central quadrant of the altarpiece features Christ bearing the cross with the figure of Veronica kneeling before him. Circling this scene are six niches of equal size portraying Sts. John the Evangelist, Peter, Julian, Katherine, James, and Mary Magdalene.42 A small figure of St. Michael is located prominently at the center of these. Several other small figures depicting apostles and prophets are arranged between the aisles of the altarpiece. In the banco, a scene of the Lamentation is at the center with portraits of the donors on either side; García de Salamanca is accompanied by St. Andrew and his wife by a male saint who may be St. Gregory.43 Unlike the Castro altarpiece, which was made locally, the Salamanca retable was imported from Antwerp, where Salamanca had traded. It is attributed to the Flemish artist Lauris Keldermans, and a stamp on the back dates the work to 1510 and indicates its place of import.44 Despite having been imported, the altarpiece, as Lynn Jacobs notes, conforms to the layout of a Spanish retable and represents unusual iconography for a Netherlandish work, evidencing involvement of a Spanish patron in its design and reflection of “the family’s specific devotional concerns.”45 This iconography, while affirming the involvement of a Spanish patron, is less personalized than Castro’s altarpiece, a detail that suggests the involvement of García de Salamanca’s nephew, Diego. The work includes the apostles, giving particular prominence to St. James, the patron saint of Spain whose pilgrimage road passes by the Church of San Lesmes, as well as Sts. Peter, Andrew, and John the Evangelist, perhaps to reference the monastery of St. John adjacent to the church. The most individualized aspect of the altarpiece’s iconography is the effigy of St. Julian Hospitaller in the upper niche. Seeking repentance from the accidental killing of his parents, St. Julian became the patron saint of both travelers and lepers after having devoted his life to the aid of those crossing a river near his home.46 Given his aid of the ill and the leprous, María Gómez Bárcena has proposed that the saint’s presence in this retable relates to García’s trade in Flanders or to the hospital that was operated in conjunction with the Church of San Lesmes.47 Either of these possibilities may account for the inclusion of the rare saint, as might the fact that Salamanca and his wife had no children because Julian is also associated with protection of the childless.48 Although Salamanca’s retable lacks some of the personalization of the work commissioned by Castro, it nevertheless portrays a group of carefully

96  Emily Kelley selected saints. Comparison of the two works further reveals the diversity in mercantile devotion to the saints in sixteenth-century Burgos, suggesting that for each merchant this aspect of his devotional life was shaped by his life experiences – encounters with the plague, childlessness, etc. – rather than solely the mercantile nature or moral peril of his profession. Without a doubt, however, it was also the nature of each merchant’s profession and his excessive wealth that made him aware of the extensive measures necessary to prepare for the afterlife and resulted in these semi-public monuments through which each might solicit heavenly intercession.

The funerary altarpiece of Gonzalo López de Polanco The last altarpiece further reflects the concerns that Burgalese merchants had for establishing the intercessory role of their personalized heavenly representatives and showcasing those personages in the iconography of their altarpieces. This work serves as the high altarpiece of the Church of San Nicolás de Bari; it was commissioned by the merchant Gonzalo López de Polanco and completed by Francisco de Colonia between 1503 and 1505.49 Through its arrangement of figures, Polanco’s altarpiece illustrates most clearly the type of intercessory role that the patrons of all three altarpieces hoped the saints would serve. In my earlier work on Polanco’s commission, I argued that it connects directly to the opening lines of Polanco’s testament, which request the intercession of all of the saints, by positioning more than forty individual saints between the tombs of Polanco and his family and the Holy Trinity.50 Castro and Salamanca’s altarpieces have similar visual arrangements, with the patrons’ effigies placed in the banco of each altarpiece, imagery of saints in the middle, and Christ at the top. The hierarchical arrangement of each altarpiece demonstrates the role that each merchant desired his personalized selection of saints to serve in the salvation of his soul. Like the other two altarpieces, Polanco’s retable reflects specific devotion to a range of saints selected for their personal significance to the family, not for their specific function as merchant protectors. This altarpiece’s array of holy figures echoes Polanco’s testament; the same saints appear in Polanco’s petitions for posthumous prayers and masses from a range of Burgalese individuals and institutions while others reference individual family namesakes.51 Of all the saints on Polanco’s retable, St. Nicholas, who is known best for his role as protector of merchants, receives the most attention, with a large statue at the center of the retable and an eight-scene narrative of his life surrounding it.52 However, as is the case with Castro and Salamanca’s commissions, Polanco’s retable does not focus on the theme of merchant protection, despite St. Nicholas’s association with this role. Instead, this Nicholas narrative highlights Polanco’s concerns about the afterlife through scenes like his liturgical procession or giving of alms to the poor (atypical of the saint’s iconography) that directly reflect Polanco’s requests for prayers

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  97 and charitable donations while simultaneously addressing Polanco’s familial concerns through narratives of Nicholas protecting children.53 Therefore, despite the saint’s association with merchants and mariners, Polanco’s devotion to him is only minimally focused on mercantile concerns like travel (expressed through two seafaring scenes), again solidifying the preference among the three patrons for maintaining a focus on familial concerns and intercession, and placing little emphasis on the patron’s earthly profession.54

Salvation and apostolic devotion The three examples above demonstrate that Burgalese merchants commissioned funerary retables to include a personalized selection of saints meant to assist their souls in the afterlife and to serve as a lasting reminder of piety on earth. In some cases, saints who were particularly known for their protection of merchants, such as St. Nicholas or St. Onuphrius, were included among those represented, but these “merchant protectors” did not monopolize the iconography of any of the retables. Instead, one primary theme of each retable examined here was amassing a wealth of saints who would intercede on behalf of the merchant and his family in the afterlife. This approach reflects the merchants’ apprehension regarding the afterlife, which was in part based on the perception of merchants during this period as morally dubious individuals, a concept that is examined in greater depth in this volume’s introduction.55 As a result of these anxieties over the afterlife, the Castro, Salamanca, and Polanco retables include a significant focus on saints particularly known for their role in salvation, featuring representations of the apostles, St. Michael, and St. Mary Magdalene as part of their iconography. The apostles had strong abilities as intercessors because of their proximity to Christ. The Golden Legend lauds their significance at the time of judgment, calling them “the most noble of all because they were shepherds of the flock of Jesus Christ and are with him to judge on the day of judgment,” further stating that they would “save the souls of the sinners.”56 Each altarpiece includes representations of the apostles; they are in the side aisles of Polanco’s retable and between the aisles in Castro and Salamanca’s commissions. In addition, selected apostles, personalized to each merchant’s devotional preferences, are featured elsewhere on each retable. Further relating to the theme of intercession, the Archangel St. Michael is portrayed on each altarpiece in the act of slaying the dragon, which symbolizes his defeat of the devil. In Castro’s commission, he is positioned in the side panels, while in the Polanco and Salamanca retables, he has a prominent position in the upper center of the retable. St. Michael was well known for helping man to achieve salvation, and contemporary devotional texts celebrate him in this role. Francesc Eiximenis’ Book of Angels, which, like the Golden Legend, was printed in the vernacular in Burgos during the 1490s and would have been marketed to a lay audience, extolled Michael

98  Emily Kelley as the angel who “receives the souls that leave this life,” and he devotes an entire chapter of his text to St. Michael’s guidance of “our passing.”57 The Ars moriendi further echoes the significance of angels to dying through moments in the narrative where an angel offers the dying Morens spiritual guidance, repeatedly thwarts the devil’s plans to tempt his soul, and reminds him of the importance of penitence to achieve salvation.58 Also relating to the pursuit of salvation, although in this case through acts of confession and repentance, are the portrayals of St. Mary Magdalene on each retable.59 Mary Magdalene was often lauded as an exemplar of penitence since her early life was characterized by sin, which she later overcame. For this reason, she was highly regarded as a model of proper contrition and confession.60 As a symbol of the potential for redemption, Mary Magdalene became appealing to the laity during the later Middle Ages,61 and for merchants, her legend may have held specific attraction due to her ability to overcome sin.62 This aspect of the Magdalene legend was emphasized in various sources popular in fifteenth-century Castile. Voragine wrote that Magdalene’s tears, in particular, represented the verity of her remorse, purging her of sin.63 Building on Voragine’s portrayal of the saint, sermons by St. Vincent Ferrer in the early fifteenth century furthered this association, and he used Mary Magdalene to urge his listeners to confess their sins.64 Therefore, like the apostles and St. Michael, whose critical intercession in heaven would aid in salvation, Mary Magdalene was significant to redemption. She also would have been a particularly appealing example to the merchants’ wives, whose own devotional lives shaped other aspects of the retables’ iconography.

Female piety Although the quest for salvation was of great importance to the Burgalese merchants, details of their retables also reveal that the works were meant to represent the interests of their entire family. To this end, the saints on the retable represented the namesakes of children, monasteries to which their relatives belonged, and (in the case of Polanco) even narrative scenes reflecting aspects of the patron’s family life. Following this trajectory, the funerary retables also include iconography that directly reflects female devotional interests, which, I would argue, indicates involvement by the patrons’ wives and/or daughters in the altarpiece design. While Polanco’s retable includes several virgin martyrs and monastic women (Sts. Gertrude, Dorothy, Clare, Apollonia, and Agnes) as models for his four cloistered daughters,65 all three retables include representations of Sts. Mary Magdalene and Katherine, both of whom are often valued for their roles as exemplars to medieval laywomen. Although Mary Magdalene was an ideal of penitence for both men and women, she arguably was most influential for the wives and daughters of the Burgalese merchants. Born to a rich family and sought after for her

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  99 beauty but eventually overcoming these temptations,66 the Magdalene was able to spiritually circumvent the circumstances of her early life, making her an ideal exemplar for the wives and daughters of merchants. As Katherine Ludwig Jansen has argued, Mary Magdalene achieved “restored virginity” and was therefore a particularly apt devotional model for laywomen whose loss of virginity could be seen as a major obstacle to salvation.67 As Jansen explains, during the later Middle Ages, a distinction was made “between bodily virginity which could never be restored, and mental virginity, which through penance could be recuperated”; Mary Magdalene was an exemplar of the latter, having committed egregious carnal sin yet later having had her purity restored through her penance.68 In addition, Jansen also connects Mary Magdalene to laywomen’s devotion through her role as a protector of mothers and children in several of her miracles.69 Her most famous act in this regard comprises the bulk of her entry in the Burgos Golden Legend. In this miracle, she cures the infertility of a pagan ruler and his wife, saves their child from death, restores life to the mother after she dies in childbirth, and brings the family back together after the husband abandoned his dead wife and child.70 Mary Magdalene’s protective abilities during pregnancy and childbirth may have been of particular interest to the wives of Gonzalo López de Polanco and Fernando Castro de la Hoz, both of whom had many children, including several married daughters, who would also need the same protection. For García de Salamanca’s wife, Mary Magdalene’s appeal may have come from her assistance with infertility, since the couple was childless. Like Mary Magdalene, St. Katherine of Alexandria served as a powerful exemplar for secular women, and her image appears on all three altarpieces.71 On the Castro retable, she stands behind the female donors as their patron. On the Salamanca retable, she is given a celebrated place at the apex of the retable, alongside Sts. Julian and Michael, whose importance I have already demonstrated. Only in the Polanco retable is the emphasis on the saint somewhat minimized, as she appears alongside St. Lucy in the fourth row of saints. St. Katherine was prized for her intelligence, upbringing, and morality. Devotion to her was “bound to an identity of power and status,” making her a desirable protector of those who had or sought high societal position,72 like merchant-class women. Furthering her popularity among married women, St. Katherine was revered for being “faithful to her divine spouse,” a trait that Emily Francomano relates to the desire for “wifely consistency” among the laity.73 Moreover, Katherine’s cunning and education mirrored traits necessary for merchants’ wives, who often managed the education of their children and sometimes attended to their husbands’ business affairs while they were traveling.74 Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine Lewis note that Katherine may have been a particularly attractive model for women because she was one of few female martyrs who did not suffer rape or bodily mutilation prior to her death.75

100  Emily Kelley The presence of Mary Magdalene and St. Katherine in all three works, as well as the inclusion of several other female saints in the Polanco altarpiece, indicates that the devotional lives of the merchants’ wives and daughters were significant to the overall design of their retables. Without wills for the women or commission records for the retables, surviving documents do not indicate what role these women played.76 However, strong models for female patronage existed in late fifteenth century Burgos with Queen Isabel’s recent commission at the monastery of Miraflores and noblewoman Mencía de Mendoza’s foundation of a family chapel in the Cathedral of Burgos. These may have prompted greater interest and involvement among the merchants’ wives. In the case of Leonor de Miranda (Polanco’s wife) or Salamanca’s wife (whose name is not documented), they may have provided some instruction to their husbands prior to dying, since in both cases the wife’s death preceded her husband’s. Leonor de Miranda offers the strongest potential for this type of participation, since her death, in 1503, seems to have prompted Polanco’s commission of their funerary retable.77 While details of the degree to which the merchants’ wives were engaged in the designs and the nature of their participation are beyond the scope of this chapter, they merit further consideration. The involvement of these women, or at the very least recognition of their devotional concerns, fits with one of the broader concepts of this chapter – that the merchants were interested in using these monuments to portray their status in early sixteenth century Burgos – since two of the most prominent recent patrons in the city, Isabel I and Mencía de Mendoza, had been women.

Conclusion The three altarpieces considered in this chapter demonstrate that the merchants of early sixteenth-century Burgos designed funerary commissions replete with saints’ effigies that would remind the living of aspects of their earthly piety and largess, and they hoped these saints would aid them in their pursuit of eternal salvation. Somewhat contrary to other merchant families considered in this volume, the merchants of Burgos were not united behind a particular saint or set of saints recognized for their connection to merchants. At times, they offered devotion to mainstream merchant protectors like St. Nicholas or to more minor merchant advocates like Sts. Julian and Onuphrius. However, these saints were accompanied by a range of others who reflect confraternal memberships, namesakes, and donations to local institutions; this wide array perhaps suggests that the patrons hoped that those holy persons to whom they had most connected themselves in life would also serve as their greatest advocates in the afterlife. Rather than the (perhaps expected) shared iconography of saints known for their protection of merchants, commonalities among the three retables show interest in saints known for their aid in salvation, devotion to female saints who serve as exemplars to laywomen, and a minimal emphasis or overlap on the role of saints typically associated with protection of merchants. Together,

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  101 these iconographic choices suggest that, as they prepared for death, these merchant patrons were more than their professions; they were men who feared the afterlife as well as husbands and fathers who hoped to honor their wives’ piety and guarantee a good life for their heirs.

Notes 1 The research for this chapter was supported by funding from Saginaw Valley State University. I am grateful to the priests and staff at the parishes of San Gil, San Lesmes, and San Nicolás for allowing me to visit and conduct research in their churches. Thanks also to Gabriel de Avilez Rocha for paleographic assistance with the will of García de Salamanca. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Premodern Spanish History Association of the Midwest annual meeting in 2016. I appreciate the feedback of all who attended the meeting, particularly Grace Coolidge, who offered valuable research suggestions. Finally, I am indebted to Cynthia Turner Camp for her suggestions and editorial revisions on the drafts of this chapter. 2 Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 3 On death and purgatory in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Castile: Carlos M. N. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in SixteenthCentury Spain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Fernando Martínez Gil, La muerte vivida: muerte y sociedad en castilla durante la baja edad media (Toledo: Diputación Provincial, 1996), particularly 124–25; Laura Vivanco, Death in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Ideologies of the Elites (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2004), particularly 114–25. 4 Carlos Estepa Diez, Burgos en la Edad Media (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1984), 334–40. Numerous publications detail the role of Burgos as a commercial center. For example, Floriano Ballesteros Caballero et al., eds., Actas del V Centenario del Consulado de Burgos (1494–1994) (Burgos: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1994); Hilario Casado Alonso, ed., Castilla y Europa: comercio y mercaderes en los siglos XIV, XV, y XVI (Burgos: Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1995); Hilario Casado Alonso and Antonio García-Baquero, eds., Comercio y hombres de negocios en Castilla y Europa en tiempos de Isabel la Católica (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2007); Hilario Casado Alonso, ed., Señores, mercaderes y campesinos: la comarca de Burgos a fines de la edad media (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1987); Teófilo F. Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). 5 Hilario Casado Alonso, “El comercio internacional castellano en tiempos de Isabel la Católica,” in Isabel la Católica y su época: actas del Congreso Internacional, ed. Luis Antonio Ribot García, Julio Valdeón Baruque, and Elena Maza Zorrilla (Valladolid: Instituto Universitario de Historia Simancas, Universidad de Valladolid, 2007), 1:651–82. 6 Ismael García Rámila, Memorables instituciones burgalesas: la cofradía o hermandad de los treze (Madrid: Imprenta y editorial maestre, 1956), 17, n. 7. 7 Wendy Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), 224; Antonia Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes de la iglesia de San Gil de Burgos: Un ejemplo de fundación privada a fines de la Edad Media,” Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 75–76 (1999): 128; Bestabé Caunedo del Potro, “Operaciones comerciales del grupo familiar Castro a finales del siglo XV,” En la España medieval 8 (1986), 290.

102  Emily Kelley 8 Caunedo del Potro, “Operaciones comerciales,” 293–96. 9 Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes,” 139. 10 García Ramila, Memorables instituciones, 7. 11 María Jesús Gómez Bárcena, “Arte y devoción en las obras importadas. Los retablos ‘flamencos’ esculpidos tardogóticos: estado de la cuestión,” Anales de Historia del Arte, 14 (2004): 47–50; Lynn Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 1380–1550. Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 191. 12 Archivo Diocesano de Burgos (hereafter ADB): “Testamento de García de Salamanca,” San Lesmes, signatura 27. 13 Polanco’s entire will is transcribed in Matías Martínez Burgos, “La iglesia de San Nicolás en Burgos: Los Colonia y Gil de Siloe,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 138, no. 2 (1956): 153–227. The original document is held by ABD: “Testamento de Gonzalo López de Polanco.” San Nicolás, signatura 23. The material about Polanco’s life in this paragraph is detailed further in Emily Diana Kelley, “Servant of God and Protector of the Faithful: St. Nicholas as Saint and Redeemer in Late Medieval Burgos,” The Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 201, and “Proclamations of Piety and Prosperity: The Funerary Altarpiece of the Merchant Gonzalo López de Polanco,” Hispanic Research Journal 15, no. 5 (2014): 400–01. Both articles are published with Taylor & Francis Ltd, http:// www.tandfonline.com, reprinted with permission of the publisher. 14 Kelley, “Servant of God,” 201; Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 400–01. 15 Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 400–01; Martínez Burgos, “La iglesia,” 218–19. 16 The most comprehensive and recent publication detailing books printed throughout Iberia prior to the seventeenth century is Alexander S. Wilkinson, ed., Iberian Books: Books Published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601 (Boston: Brill, 2010). 17 David Nicholas notes that major centers of printing often coincided with large mercantile populations and that merchants were intended as some of the main consumers of those vernacular texts: Urban Europe, 1100–1700 (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 176, 187. On merchant education more generally, see the introduction to this volume. 18 London: British Library (hereafter BL), “Comienca la leyendo delos sactos,” IB53312. I discuss this text further in Kelley, “Servant of God,” 204–05. 19 This text was printed by Pablo Hurus in Zaragoza and is now located in the Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial (32-v-19). Since there is no evidence that the Ars moriendi was printed in Burgos during the fifteenth or early sixteenth century, this version may well have served the Burgalese market. Franciso Gago Jover reproduces the entire text: Arte de bien morir y breve confesionario (Zaragoza, Pablo Hurus c. 1479–1484): según el incunable de la Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial) (Barcelona: Liberduplex, 1999), 81–151. 20 I discuss the trend toward carved altarpiece production in greater detail in Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 413–20, and in Kelley, “Servant of God,” 202. On Acuña’s commission: Joaquín Yarza Luaces, Gil Siloe. El retablo de la Concepción en la capilla del Obispo Acuña (Burgos, 2000). On the Miraflores retable: Joaquín Yarza Luaces, La Cartuja de Miraflores: II El Retablo (Iberdrola, 2007); Joaquín Yarza Luaces, “El retablo mayor de la Cartuja de Miraflores,” in Actas del Congreso internacional sobre Gil Siloe y la escultura de su época: Burgos 13–16 octubre de 1999, ed. Joaquín Yarza Luaces and Alberto C. Ibáñez Pérez (Burgos: Institución Fernán González, 2001), 207–38. 21 On the iconography of Mencía’s retable: Felipe Pereda, “Mencía de Mendoza (1500): Mujer del I Condestable de Castilla. El significado del patronazgo femenino

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  103 en la Castilla del siglo XV,” in Patronos y coleccionistas: Los Condestables de Castilla y el arte (siglos XV–XVII), ed. Begoña Alonso et al. (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2005), 81–87. On the retable and chapel more generally: Francisco Crosas, “Las lecturas de doña Mencía: la iconografía del retablo de Santa Ana de la capilla del Condestable en la Catedral de Burgos,” Scriptura 13 (1997): 207–16; Felipe Pereda, “Liturgy as Women’s Language: Two Noble Patrons Prepare for the End in Fifteenth-Century Spain,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Boston: Brill, 2012), 937–88; Pereda, “Mencía de Mendoza (1500),” 10–119; Carlos G. Villacampa, “La Capilla del Condestable de la Catedral de Burgos. Documentos para su historia,” Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología 4 (1928): 25–44. 22 María Jesús Gómez Bárcena, “El retablo de Nuestra Señora de la iglesia de San Gil de Burgos,” Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 23 (1986): 59–92. 23 Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes,”147. This testament is not in the records of the Archivo Diocesano de Burgos, Archivo Municipal de Burgos, or the Archivo Histórico Provincial de Burgos. 24 Their commission was part of substantial merchant patronage at the church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Diego de Soria founded a funerary chapel and retable in the area of the high altar (no longer extant), and García Martínez de Mazuelo and Alonso de Lerma established a chapel (Chapel of the Buena Mañana) to the left of the high altar. The Church remained an active site of merchant patronage into the sixteenth century, and the Castro family was responsible for a second chapel (the Chapel of the Nativity) built between 1523 and 1529: Patricia Andrés González, “Imaginería de la pasión en la iglesia de San Gil de Burgos: La ‘Real Hermandad de la sangre del Cristo de Burgos y Nuestra Señora de los Dolores,” Boletín de la Institución Fernán González 73, no. 208 (1994): 8. 25 Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes,” 147–48. 26 For a more detailed explanation of the iconography, see Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes.” 27 Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes,” 136 and 138–39. 28 According to García Ramila, members of the confraternity would gather for a funeral at the ancient parish church of Vejarrúa, where the confraternity was headquartered, after the death of one of its members: Memorables instituciones, 7–8. It was standard practice of all confraternities to provide this manner of support for one of their deceased members, and these prayers and masses were considered integral to the salvation of one’s soul: Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, 135–39. 29 In fifteenth-century Burgos, the laity selected their parish rather than having it assigned based on the district where they lived: César Alonso de Porres Fernández, Las parroquias en la ciudad de Burgos (Burgos: Caja de Ahorros Municipal, 1981). 30 Financial bequests were a common feature in merchant testaments since they were seen as a way to offset the excessive wealth that merchants had accumulated during their lives: Taryn E. L. Chubb and Emily Kelley, “Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean: An Introduction,” in Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean, eds. Taryn E. L. Chubb and Emily Kelley (Boston: Brill, 2013), 22–24. 31 Montserrat Barniol López, “El culto a San Onofre en Cataluña durante los siglos XIV y XV,” in El culto a los santos: cofradías, devoción, fiestas y arte (Ediciones Escurialenses: Real Centro Universitario Escorial-María Cristina, 2008), 181; Montserrat Barniol López, “Patrons and Advocates of the Sailors. The Saints and the Sea in Catalan Gothic,” Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum VI (2012):

104  Emily Kelley 249–76; Gabriel Llompart, “San Onofre, Eremita, en el medioevo Mallorquín,” Studia Lulliana 7 (1963): 204–05. On Onuphrius, see further Barniol López’s Chapter 7 in this volume. 32 Barniol López, “El culto a San Onofre,” 185–87. 33 BL, “Comienca la leyendo,” 282r–287v. 34 Both are in the Chapel of the Kings as well as in the Chapel of the Nativity, founded by a member of the Castro family later in the sixteenth century. Fernández Casla believes that the family’s devotion to the saint may have been a result of new relics of St. Bartholomew in the city of Burgos: “La capilla de los Reyes,” 140–41. 35 Fernández Casla, “La capilla de los Reyes,” 135 and 144; Peter Murray and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 105 and 482. 36 García Ramila, Memorables instituciones, 8. 37 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476–85, p. 254. Feb. 24, 1482. Westminster. The language of the record suggests that Castro was in England prior to 1482: “General pardon to Peter de Castro, factor and attorney of Ferdinand de Castro de la Hosse, merchant of Spain, of all offences committed by him before 21 February.” The outbreak of plague in England is documented in The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, microprint edition (Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1983), 226. 38 Although Salamanca’s will indicates that he originally intended that he be interred in the “capilla mayor,” there is no evidence that his tomb was ever placed there. ADB: “Testamento de García de Salamanca,” San Lesmes, signatura 27, 1r. 39 An inscription on the chapel wall dates Salamanca’s death to 20 September: María Jesús Gómez Bárcena, Escultura gótica funeraria en Burgos (Burgos: Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1988), 148. The will is dated 9 September: “Testamento de García de Salamanca,” 7r. 40 “Testamento de García de Salamanca,” 6v. Additions and modifications were made to the church in the sixteenth century not long after the foundation of Salamanca’s chapel: César Alonso de Porres Fernández, “Reestructuración renacentista del templo de San Lesmes,” Boletín de la Institución Fernán González no. 241 (2010): 279–303; Jaime Vargas Vivar, Vida de San Lesmes Abad. Patrón de Burgos y Descripción histórico-artística de su iglesia (Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 1985). 41 “Testamento de García de Salamanca,” 4v. 42 María J. Gómez Bárcena provides a thorough discussion of the iconography and has identified the figure of St. Julian: “Revisión de algunos aspectos del retablo de la Santa Cruz en la iglesia de San Lesmes de Burgos,” in Homenaje al Profesor Hernández Perera (Madrid, 1992), 549–52. 43 Ismael García Ramila, “La capilla de la Cruz o de los Salamanca en la Iglesia de San Lesmes,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia (1955): 217–19. 44 Gómez Bárcena, “Revisión de algunos aspectos,” 554–56. 45 Jacobs, Early Netherlandish, 191. 46 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, intro by Eamon Duffy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 127–28. On Julian, see also Courts’s Chapter 6 in this volume. 47 Gómez Bárcena, “Revisión de algunos aspectos,” 549–52. 48 A brief account of the saint’s life appears in the Golden Legend printed in Burgos in 1499. Salamanca may have encountered the saint’s legend there or in his travels. BL, “Comienca la leyendo,” 29r–v. 49 For more on Francisco de Colonia: Kelley, “Servant of God,” 202–03. 50 For a thorough discussion of Polanco’s retable as a visual manifestation of his will, see Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 406–13. For a diagram of the

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  105 altarpiece iconography: Jesús López Sobrino, La iglesia de San Nicolás de Bari (Burgos: AMABAR, 2000), 88. 51 For a thorough discussion of these examples: Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 409–13. 52 See above, Introduction, pp. 9–10. 53 On Polanco’s concerns for salvation, see Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 408– 09; Kelley, “Servant of God,” 214–21. On Polanco’s concerns for his family, see Kelley, “Servant of God,” 224–25. On St. Nicholas’s liturgical procession and giving of alms to the poor, see Kelley, “Servant of God,” 213–17 and 220. For other aspects of Polanco’s St. Nicholas narrative, see Kelley, “Servant of God.” 54 On the connections between Polanco’s St. Nicholas narrative and his profession, see Kelley, “Servant of God,” 217–224. 55 See above, Introduction, pp. 6–8. 56 BL, “Comienca la leyendo,” 200r. 57 Marie Gillette has transcribed the edition published in Burgos in 1490: “A Paleographic Transcription and Edition of Francesc Eiximenis’ Libro delos Ángeles (Castilian Translation)” (PhD diss. The Pennsylvania State University, 1996), 18–25, 541. Eiximenis was a Franciscan who lived in fourteenth-century Cataluña. His writings circulated widely throughout Iberia during the fifteenth century. The original text is held by the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, INC 620. 58 Gago Jover, Arte de bien morir, particularly 87–97. 59 Castro and Salamanca’s retables both include her in one of the niches to the right of the main scene. At the Church of San Nicolás, Mary Magdalene is one of several statues featured as part of Gonzalo López de Polanco’s tomb decoration. 60 Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 203–24. 61 Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 257. 62 Even merchants who were not guilty of moneylending worried about perceptions of excessive wealth and the taint of usury over their profession. See further discussion of this above, Introduction, pp. 00–00. 63 Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 203–11. BL, “Comienca la leyendo,” 133v–135v. 64 Alberto Ferreiro, “St. Vincent Ferrer’s Catalán Sermon on Saint Mary Magdalene,” Anuario de estudios medievales 40, no. 1 (2010): 425. On Vincent Ferrer’s preaching in Castile: Pedro M. Cátedra García, Sermón, sociedad y literatura en la edad media: San Vicente Ferrer en Castilla (1411–1412) (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1994). 65 I explore this idea in greater depth in “Piety and the Merchant Patron: A Case Study of Merchant Patronage in Early Sixteenth-Century Burgos” (PhD Diss., Cornell University, 2010), 194–95. 66 BL, “Comienca la leyendo,”133v. Ferreiro, “St. Vincent Ferrer’s Catalán Sermon,” 422. 67 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen, 286–94. 68 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen, 293. 69 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen, 294–303. 70 BL, “Comienca la leyendo,” 134r–135r. 71 The text of her life was included in the Golden Legend printed in Burgos in 1499. BL, “Comienca la leyendo,” 224v–226v. The figure of St. Katherine also appears in several local commissions, including the retable commissioned by Queen Isabel for the Monastery of Miraflores and the retable commissioned by noblewoman Mencía de Mendoza for her funerary chapel in Burgos Cathedral. 72 Katherine J. Lewis, The Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 184.

106  Emily Kelley 73 Emily C. Francomano, “‘Lady, you are quite a chatterbox’: The Legend of St. Katherine of Alexandria, Wives’ Words, and Women’s Wisdom in MS Escorial h-I-13,” in St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, eds. Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis, 2003), 143. Jenkins and Lewis also discuss the perception that Katherine’s union with Christ was an actual marriage, not just a betrothal (as was the case with many virgin saints) in their introduction to the same volume (12). 74 Lewis, Cult of St. Katherine, 194–95 and 207–10. 75 Jenkins and Lewis, “Introduction,” 10–11. 76 Studies of conjugal patronage indicate that even with these records, a wife’s role might be obscured since her husband was expected to take a more active role in transactions of this type. See, for example, Catherine King, Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy c. 1300–1500 (New York: Manchester University Press, 1998), 49–50; Sheryl E. Reiss, “Beyond Isabella and Beyond: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Early Modern Europe,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, eds. Allyson M. Poska, Jane Couchman, and Katherine A. McIver (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 457–59. Roger J. Crum also addresses the problems with looking for documentation of a wife’s involvement: “Controlling Women or Women Controlled? Suggestions for Gender Roles and Visual Culture in the Italian Renaissance Palace,” in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, edited by Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), 37–41. 77 For more on the dating of this altarpiece, see Kelley, “Proclamations of Piety,” 399, n. 2.

Bibliography Unprinted sources Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476–85, p. 254. Feb. 24, 1482. Westminster. “Comienca la leyendo delos sactos”. British Library, London. IB53312. “Testamento de García de Salamanca,” Archivo Diocesano de Burgos. San Lesmes, signatura 27. “Testamento de Gonzalo López de Polanco”. Archivo Diocesano de Burgos. San Nicholás, signatura 23.

Printed sources Alonso de Porres Fernández, César. Las parroquias en la cuidad de Burgos. Burgos: Caja de Ahorros Municipal, 1981. Alonso de Porres Fernández, César. “Reestructuración renacentista del templo de San Lesmes”. Boletín de la Institución Fernán González no. 241 (2010): 279–303. Andrés González, Patricia. “Imaginería de la pasión en la iglesia de San Gil de Burgos: La ‘Real Hermandad de la sangre del Cristo de Burgos y Nuestra Señora de los Dolores’”. Boletín de la Institución Fernán González 73, no. 208 (1994): 7–16. Ballesteros Caballero, Floriano et al., eds. Actas del V Centenario del Consulado de Burgos (1494–1994). Burgos: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1994. Barniol López, Montserrat. “El culto a San Onofre en Cataluña durante los siglos XIV y XV”. In El culto a los santos: cofradías, devoción, fiestas y arte, 178–90. Ediciones Escurialenses: Real Centro Universitario Escorial-María Cristina, 2008.

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  107 Barniol López, Montserrat. “Patrons and Advocates of the Sailors. The Saints and the Sea in Catalan Gothic”. Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum VI (2012): 249–76. Casado Alonso, Hilario, ed. Señores, mercaderes y campesinos: la comarca de Burgos a fines de la edad media. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1987. Casado Alonso, Hilario, ed. Castilla y Europa: comercio y mercaderes en los siglos XIV, XV, y XVI. Burgos: Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1995. Casado Alonso, Hilario. “El comercio internacional castellano en tiempos de Isabel la Católica”. In Isabel la Católica y su época: actas del Congreso Internacional, edited by Luis Antonio Ribot García, Julio Valdeón Baruque, and Elena Maza Zorrilla, 651–84. Valladolid: Instituto Universitario de Historia Simancas, Universidad de Valladolid, 2007. Casado Alonso, Hilario, and Antonio García-Baquero, eds. Comercio y hombres de negocios en Castilla y Europa en tiempos de Isabel la Católica. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2007. Cátedra García, Pedro M. Sermón, sociedad y literatura en la edad media: San Vicente Ferrer en Castilla (1411–1412). Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1994. Caunedo del Potro, Bestabé. “Operaciones comerciales del grupo familiar Castro a finales del siglo XV”. En la España medieval 8 (1986): 289–98. Childs, Wendy. Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978. Chubb, Taryn E. L., and Emily Kelley. “Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean: An Introduction”. In Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean, edited by Taryn E. L. Chubb and Emily Kelley, 1–25. Boston: Brill, 2013. Crosas, Francisco. “Las lecturas de doña Mencía: la iconografía del retablo de Santa Ana de la capilla del Condestable en la Catedral de Burgos”. Scriptura 13 (1997): 207–16. Crum, Roger J. “Controlling Women or Women Controlled? Suggestions for Gender Roles and Visual Culture in the Italian Renaissance Palace”. In Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, edited by Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins, 37–50. Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2001. Eire, Carlos M. N. From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Estepa Diez, Carlos. Burgos en la Edad Media. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1984. Fernández Casla, Antonia. “La capilla de los Reyes de la iglesia de San Gil de Burgos: Un ejemplo de fundación privada a fines de la Edad Media”. Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 75–76 (1999): 125–56. Ferreiro, Alberto. “St. Vincent Ferrer’s Catalán Sermon on Saint Mary Magdalene”. Anuario de estudios medievales 40, no. 1 (2010): 415–433. Francomano, Emily C. “‘Lady, you are quite a chatterbox’: The Legend of St. Katherine of Alexandria, Wives’ Words, and Women’s Wisdom in MS Escorial h-I-13”. In St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, edited by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis, 131–152. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis, 2003. Gago Jover, Francisco, ed. Arte de bien morir y breve confesionario (Zaragoza, Pablo Hurus c. 1479–1484): según el incunable de la Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial). Barcelona: Liberduplex, 1999.

108  Emily Kelley García Ramila, Ismael. “La capilla de la Cruz o de los Salamanca en la Iglesia de San Lesmes”. Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia (1955): 217–49. García Ramila, Ismael. Memorables instituciones burgalesas: la cofradía o hermandad de los treze. Madrid: Imprenta y editorial maestre, 1956. Gillette, Marie. “A Paleographic Transcription and Edition of Francesc Eiximenis’ Libro delos Angeles (Castilian Translation)” PhD diss. The Pennsylvania State University, 1996. Gómez Bárcena, María Jesús. “El retablo de Nuestra Señora de la iglesia de San Gil de Burgos”. Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 23 (1986): 59–92. Gómez Bárcena, María Jesús. Escultura gótica funeraria en Burgos. Burgos: Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1988. Gómez Bárcena, María Jesús. “Revisión de algunos aspectos del retablo de la Santa Cruz en la iglesia de San Lesmes de Burgos”. In Homenaje al Profesor Hernández Perera, 549–60. Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1992. Gómez Bárcena, María Jesús. “Arte y devoción en las obras importadas. Los retablos ‘flamencos’ esculpidos tardogóticos: estado de la cuestión”. Anales de Historia del Arte, 14 (2004): 33–71. The Great Chronicle of London. Edited by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley. Microprint edition. Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1983. Jacobs, Lynn. Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 1380–1550. Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Jenkins, Jacqueline, and Katherine J. Lewis. “Introduction”. St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, edited by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis, 1–18. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis, 2003. Kelley, Emily Diana. “Piety and the Merchant Patron: A Case Study of Merchant Patronage in Early Sixteenth-Century Burgos”. PhD Diss: Cornell University, 2010. Kelley, Emily Diana. “Servant of God and Protector of the Faithful: St. Nicholas as Saint and Redeemer in Late Medieval Burgos”. The Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 199–232. Kelley, Emily Diana. “Proclamations of Piety and Prosperity: The Funerary Altarpiece of the Merchant Gonzalo López de Polanco”. Hispanic Research Journal 15, no. 5 (2014): 398–421. King, Catherine. Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy c. 1300– 1500. New York: Manchester University Press, 1998. Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Lewis, Katherine J. The Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000. Llompart, Gabriel. “San Onofre, Eremita, en el medioevo Mallorquín”. Studia Lulliana 7 (1963): 203–208. López Sobrino, Jesús. La iglesia de San Nicolás de Bari. Burgos: AMABAR, 2000. Ludwig Jansen, Katherine. The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Martínez Burgos, Matías. “La iglesia de San Nicolás en Burgos: Los Colonia y Gil de Siloe”. Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 138, no. 2 (1956): 153–227. Martínez Gil, Fernando. La muerte vivida: muerte y sociedad en castilla durante la baja edad media. Toledo: Diputación Provincial, 1996. Murray, Peter, and Linda Murray. The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Merchant devotional concerns in Burgos  109 Nicholas, David. Urban Europe, 1100–1700. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Pereda, Felipe. “Mencía de Mendoza (1500): Mujer del I Condestable de Castilla. El significado del patronazgo femenino en la Castilla del siglo XV. In Patronos y coleccionistas: Los Condestables de Castilla y el arte (siglos XV–XVII), edited by Begoña Alonso et al., 10–119. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2005. Pereda, Felipe. “Liturgy as Women’s Language: Two Noble Patrons Prepare for the End in Fifteenth-Century Spain”. In Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Therese Martin, 937–88. Boston: Brill, 2012. Reiss, Sheryl E. “Beyond Isabella and Beyond: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Early Modern Europe”. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, edited by Allyson M. Poska, Jane Couchman, and Katherine A. McIver, 445–67. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. Ruiz, Teofilo F. Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Vargas Vivar, Jaime. Vida de San Lesmes Abad. Patrón de Burgos y Descripción histórico-artística de su iglesia. Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 1985. Villacampa, Carlos G. “La Capilla del Condestable de la Catedral de Burgos. Documentos para su historia”. Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología 4 (1928): 25–44. Vivanco, Laura. Death in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Ideologies of the Elites. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2004. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan. Introduction by Eamon Duffy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. Wilkinson, Alexander S., ed. Iberian Books: Books Published in Spanish or Portuguese or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Boston: Brill, 2010. Yarza Luaces, Joaquín. Gil Siloe. El retablo de la Concepción en la capilla del Obispo Acuña. Oviedo: Ehga, 2000. Yarza Luaces, Joaquín. La Cartuja de Miraflores: II El Retablo. Bilbao: Iberdrola, 2007. Yarza Luaces, Joaquín. “El retablo mayor de la Cartuja de Miraflores”. In Actas del Congreso internacional sobre Gil Siloe y la escultura de su época: Burgos 13–16 octubre de 1999, edited by Joaquín Yarza Luaces and Alberto C. Ibáñez Pérez, 207–38. Burgos: Institución Fernán González, 2001.

6

For salvation or reputation? The representation of saints in a Jouvenel des Ursins book of hours Jennifer Courts

From humble origins as cloth merchants in the city of Troyes, the Jouvenel des Ursins family rose to wealth and social prominence in France during the first half of the fifteenth century, with its members holding such prestigious positions as the President of the Parisian Parlement, the Chancellor of France, and the Archbishop of Reims. In order to secure their newly acquired social status, the family made use of a multimedia visual campaign to strengthen and proclaim their legitimacy. The art patronage of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, the Chancellor of France under Charles VII – in particular his panel portrait by Jean Fouquet – is well recognized and represented in art historical literature. Yet his younger brother Jacques likewise was the owner of sumptuous luxury art objects. This chapter explores the manner in which Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins took advantage of a book of hours to reinforce his social status earned through his ecclesiastical position, directly calling upon saintly assistance to secure his worldly ambitions in the face of political turmoil involving his relationship with Charles VII rather than only using saintly intervention as a means to redress a number of social sins connected to his family’s wealth. I argue that Jacques took advantage of the flexibility of books of hours to be tailored to one’s individual needs and interests, selectively choosing visual depictions of uncharacteristic saints and events in the Suffrages in order to underscore his position and define his tenuous relationship to the crown. The book of hours in question is, unfortunately, no longer intact, and survives only in single leaves scattered among museums and private collections around the world. Alternately known as the Spitzer Hours, the folios were auctioned into various collections at the 1893 sale of the property owned by Frédéric Spitzer.1 Dated to around 1450, the manuscript is attributed to the Dunois Master.2 Both Sandra Hindman and Nicole Reynaud attribute the commission to a member of the Jouvenel des Ursins family based on a folio from the dismembered Spitzer Hours that survives in a private collection in the United States.3 Depicting scenes from the life of St. Germain, the page includes a clump of Acanthus mollis used to associate the manuscript with Jouvenel des Ursins patronage.4 The medieval Latin name for the blooming plant is branca ursina, or bear’s claw; the name refers to

Figure 6.1 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins(?), “St. Germain” (1450; USA: Private Collection). Image Credit: Sam Fogg Ltd, London.

112  Jennifer Courts its distinctive jagged leaves while at the same time presenting a pun on the Ursins name.5 Our knowledge of the family’s ownership is secured through this emblematic inclusion, a characteristic of Jouvenel des Ursins commissions; the Acanthus mollis appears on some of the surviving pages, particularly those depicting Sts. Germain, Giles, and Amand, that serve to define the relationship between a king and a dual statesman/ecclesiastical figure. The choice of these saints is deliberate; all are distinctly French and come from noble families. St. Nicholas, a more typical bishop-saint called upon by those from merchant families, does not appear in the surviving folios. Although he may have been present in the original format – the geographic origins and social backgrounds of the surviving figures cast doubt on if he was originally present – Nicolas was distinctly neither French nor noble. I maintain that the choice of particular saints and situations represented in the manuscript reveals Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins as the original owner of the book of hours in question and serves to accentuate the family’s claim to ancient nobility.

The social and political ambitions of the Jouvenel des Ursins family The members of the Jouvenel des Ursins family can be considered the noblesse de robe – those of merchant-class backgrounds who quickly achieved noble status through their appointment to key positions in the French government.6 During the first century of Valois rule, the kingdom of France experienced a dynamic shift in political organization. Charles V (r. 1364–1380) introduced this change by instituting a new organization of royal advisors later known as the Marmousets, men from both the landed and new nobility who were drawn from around the kingdom.7 As the contemporary Valois princes fought England, Navarre, and each other for political power, the governing of the young nation increasingly fell to these new royal advisors that included university educated lawyers and clerics. Jean Jouvenel, Jacques’s father, who was himself the son of a Troyes cloth dealer, was just such a man. He studied civil law at Orlèans and canon law at the University of Paris before beginning his career in the parlement of his native city of Troyes.8 Politically linked to Bureau de la Rivière, Jean married Michelle de Vitry, the niece of Jean le Mercier, in 1386.9 His political connections to the Marmousets allowed him to quickly ascend the social ladder of late medieval Paris, first as the prevôt de marchands, then the chancellor to the dauphin, Louis de Guyenne, and finally as the president of the Parlement of Paris. Born in Paris in October of 1410, Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins was the seventh son of Jean Jouvenel and Michelle de Vitry. Beginning in 1418, the English occupation of the French capital during the Hundred Years’ War required the family to flee with the rest of the government to Poitiers.10 Educated in civil law during the royal exile, Jacques was appointed a

For salvation or reputation?  113 counselor and lawyer to the king and the Parlement de Paris shortly after the official liberation of the city in 1436.11 His diplomatic skills, particularly during negotiations with England, marked him for rapid ascent in the political hierarchy of France.12 His political acumen did not go without notice, and soon he was persuaded to enter dual secular and sacred service, also becoming the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle in 1443.13 Jacques rapidly began training in canon law, an area of study he avoided in his previous education; this detail provides evidence that ecclesiastical appointment was not his initial plan.14 Jacques’ bifurcated political identity grew in its scope, and in 1444 he was named the president of the Chambre des Comptes, the French financial court, and the Archbishop of Reims, concurrently serving both positions that placed him on the Conseil du Roi as the First Peer of France.15 He continued in his diplomatic service to the king, negotiating further with the English and importantly with the Papacy during the Counsel of Basel. In 1448 he served as part of a royal delegation to Pope Nicholas V in Rome that resulted in the abdication of Felix V, the last of the antipopes.16 Concurrent with the papal negotiations in Rome was political wrangling in France over the authority to select bishops. Charles VII’s government issued the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438, establishing a General Church Council with authority to elect individuals to ecclesiastical office and bypass papal appointment.17 The bishop of Paris died in September of 1447, and the newly elected Nicholas V moved to promote a local canon at Notre-Dame de Paris, Antoine Crépin, to the position of bishop.18 The Council instead selected Guillaume Chartier, beginning a battle over who had ultimate authority: church or state.19 A possible solution to the standoff presented itself when the Bishop of Poitiers died in 1448.20 Charles VII suggested that the papal selection for Bishop of Paris, Crépin, be relocated to Poitiers, giving both secular and sacred selections significant positions within the ecclesiastical hierarchy.21 The papacy countered with a move that benefited the Jouvenel des Ursins family in general but resulted in the demotion of Jacques, who changed from the Archbishop of Reims to the Bishop of Poitiers and the titular Patriarch of Antioch in March of 1449.22 His brother, Jean II Jouvenel des Ursins, was given his previous position as Archbishop of Reims, and with it the title of First Peer of France. Although the family still held the most significant non-royal positions within the government, Chancellor and Archbishop, I argue that Jacques’ lowering in status played a significant role in the selection of saints in the Suffrage section of his book of hours. Their rapid ascent in the hierarchy of France marked the Jouvenel des Ursins family among the highest tier of the new nobility in fifteenth-century France and left them in a uniquely liminal position, betwixt and between their mercantile origins and the lavish existence of the traditional nobility. It is precisely this disjointed predicament, this outsider point of view, which renders them capable of understanding the visual culture of their

114  Jennifer Courts epoch in a unique way that is seen through their adaptation of models established for royal legitimacy to their own nascent noble context. Reinforcing their position was an urgent matter due to disputes over the authenticity of his family’s claim to ancient nobility, the “des Ursins” portion of the name.23 His brother, Jean II, went to great lengths in his political writings to construct documentation of the family’s claim to descent from the ancient Roman Orsini. Jean included a history of the Jouvenel des Ursins family in his biography of Charles IV by discussing his father as the choice to take over as the prévôt des marchands of Paris in 1388, and by defining the family as descending from the Orsini family, nobility from Naples and Rome.24 Jean subsequently expanded his family history in the essay he dedicated to his brother Guillaume upon his appointment to chancellor, the Traité du Chancelier (1445).25 His account, however, is a fabrication of historical evidence reinforcing the Jouvenel des Ursins’ claim to an Italian heritage in order to legitimize the family’s claim to ancient nobility.26

Material culture as a basis for legitimate nobility Words were not enough, and in addition to textually supporting their newfound status by directly writing themselves into the official history of France, the Jouvenel des Ursins family also deftly used visual culture to further support their position. For example, in 1443 Jacques and his mother negotiated the acquisition of the St. Remi chapel within the choir ambulatory at NotreDame de Paris from the church administration for use as a personal family chapel.27 The visible location of the space served as an important locale to bolster the social and political status of the Jouvenel des Ursins family. Although physical access to the chapel was limited – such spaces were closed and locked, accessible only to owners and the members of the clergy paid to pray for their memories – the messages of wealth and power in the form of lavish decoration were visible well beyond the chapel’s gates.28 Because the ambulatory of the choir was a multifunctional space that teemed with visitors from all walks of life, a large audience would have seen the visual displays of power present in the private chapel.29 The Jouvenel des Ursins family would have quickly furnished the devotional space in order to visually support their recently established noble identities by filling their chapels with sumptuous liturgical cloths and objects, figural grave markers, and a large-format family portrait that once functioned as a surrogate stained glass window in the chapel.30 While there is no record of textile endowments given to the chapel, the records of Jacques’s liturgical decorations once he took office at Reims hint at their lavish nature, and include a cloth of gold chapelle that was further embroidered with the arms of the Reims in gold, as well as six large tapestries for use in the choir on feast days.31 Not only was the St. Remi chapel in an important and highly visible location within the choir of the cathedral, it further served the ancillary need for the personal promotion of the Jouvenel des Ursins family, and in particular

For salvation or reputation?  115 Jacques, who would become Archbishop of Reims one year after acquiring the space. This promotion occurred through the chapel’s dedication to St. Remy, whose family background and blending of religious and political life mirrored that of the fifteenth-century man. Alternatively known as St. Remigius, the holy figure was born to a noble family in Gallo-Roman France, somewhat reflecting the mixed French and Italian noble heritage purported by the Jouvenel des Ursins family.32 St. Remy was educated in Reims, and although remaining a layman, was elected the local Bishop at the age of 22.33 Like Jacques, St. Remy functioned in a dual secular and sacred capacity, and both men had a close relationship with a king of France. While Jacques spent his career in service to Charles VII, St. Remy is most famous for converting Clovis I to Christianity, culminating in the often-reproduced scene of the saint baptizing the Frankish king.34 Jacques potentially used the biographical similarities between himself and the early French saint to strengthen his bid for the archbishopric. Unfortunately, representations of St. Remy within the chapel in the form of liturgical objects and other ornamentation are unknown; however, a near contemporary book of hours associated with the family through heraldic insignia and conserved at the Walters Art Museum includes St. Remigius in the Litany, demonstrating that members of the family were interested in promoting their connection to the early Christian bishop.35 Jacques and other members of the Jouvenel des Ursins family were avid collectors of sumptuous manuscripts that included references to saintly role models and counterparts, and that also proclaimed their identity through the prolific use of heraldry and emblems, reinforcing their alleged connections to the ancient Roman Orsini family. Portions of a number of manuscripts are associated with Jouvenel des Ursins’ patronage in the fifteenth century and survive to attest to the family’s use of luxury books to proclaim their social status and claim to legitimate nobility.36 Jacques personally maintained a large library that included contemporary legal texts, the Legenda Aurea, a breviary, a missal, and a large liturgical manuscript known today as the Pontifical of Poitiers, to which I will return below.37 Personal devotional manuscripts, like the subject of this paper, however, are assumed to be for private prayer, and understanding how they can function to create public personae as objects of personal treasure requires an examination of the developing function of devotional books in the early Valois courts.

Devotional manuscripts as markers of social status One difficulty researchers face in understanding the potentially public nature of devotional books is that scholars often point to them as evidence of private reading, which developed as a characteristic of the late medieval and early modern periods and replaced earlier aural presentation of text.38 Yet both historical and literary sources regarding the reading environment

116  Jennifer Courts of contemporary courtly audiences suggest the extent to which aural performance, the reading of books aloud to one or more people, continued as a vital social institution.39 Public reading within the Valois courts often possessed propagandistic value, and community-generated commentary through glossing was expected from texts presented through public performance.40 Jean de Berry, the most famous bibliophile in the early Valois courts, innovated the fashion for the use of devotional manuscripts for somewhat public consumption.41 Jean de Berry’s Petites Heures (Paris, BnF ms. Lat. 18014), for example, uses the form of the personal devotional book to conflate piety and power in a new way by combining textual and visual programs present in earlier, distinctly French and royal books of hours.42 The manuscript was designed for presentation, via a semi-public performance of the text, before a group of participants who included the most intimate members of the Duke’s circle. Another of Jean de Berry’s manuscripts, at approximately 400 x 300 millimeters, dwarfs the Petites Heures and represents a continuing adaptation of the book of hours for political purposes.43 Known as the Grandes Heures (Paris, BnF ms lat. 919), the enlarged format was designed to accommodate an extended viewing audience for the politically charged manuscript. Further, the opulent book of hours, lavishly painted and encased in a jewelencrusted binding, was the most expensive of the duke’s manuscripts, securing its status as princely treasure and allowing it to function as political propaganda as well as a devotional aide. The language used to describe the elaborately painted miniatures in contemporary inventories provides further evidence that they were understood to function as personal treasure. The Grandes Heures is identified as “a very large and exceedingly beautiful and opulent (riches) Hours.”44 The term riches refers both to the lavish nature of the manuscript and to the material value of its original large illuminations.45 The same word is used in the title of Jean de Berry’s most famous manuscript, the Très Riches Heures. Left incomplete at the deaths of both the patron and the illuminators, the Limbourg brothers, the book is named for its description in the inventory prepared after the duke’s death.46 Explained as a collection of pages within a box, the account cannot be associated with lavish binding and implies that the richement decorated pages were the source of the manuscript’s value as princely treasure. Both Jean de Berry’s Petites Heures and Grandes Heures represent a new function for books of hours designed for viewing alongside the sumptuous joyaux collected by the Princes of the Blood and intended to legitimize both the nascent Valois dynasty and Jean de Berry’s political ambitions. Members of the new nobility, such as the Jouvenel des Ursins family, adopted this alternate public function for devotional manuscripts. Evidence that Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins understood the significance of lavishly illuminated religious manuscripts to construct and reinforce political power is found in the rather large liturgical manuscript known as the

For salvation or reputation?  117 Pontifical of Poitiers.47 Although destroyed in a fire at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris in 1871, copies of illuminations and descriptions of the extraordinary manuscript survive. Begun for the English regent of France, John, Duke of Bedford, the Pontifical of Poitiers was even larger than the Grandes Heures, estimated at an impressive 500 x 340 millimeters, and it was likely acquired by Jacques during his tenure as treasurer of the Sainte Chapelle.48 Like the Grandes Heures, the immense size of the Pontifical – much too large to be held by an individual – reflects use by a larger audience. Additionally, the sumptuous nature of the manuscript, described by Alexandre Du Sommerard and Jules Labarte as “one of the most lavish and most exquisite examples of calligraphy and painting in the fifteenth century,” suggests that, like the

Figure 6.2 Copy after Pontifical of Poitiers, “Procession in Front of the Place de Grève” (fifteenth century; Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts décoratifs). Image Credit: Bridgeman Images.

118  Jennifer Courts Très Riches Heures, the Pontifical of Poitiers served a dual purpose as an object of treasure.49 The magnificent and distinctly royal manuscript was incomplete when Bedford died in 1435, but the project was taken up again for Jacques, who had the Jouvenel des Ursins family arms and his portrait included in the margins of the Crucifixion (f. 135v) and Last Judgment (f. 136r). Politically ambitious and successful, Jacques appropriated the Pontifical of Poitiers’s mixture of secular treasure and sacred text to further promote his own position, particularly in an illuminated image that represents a procession in the Place de Gréve. The scene directly refers to the Jouvenel des Ursins’ first home in Paris during their rise to political power in its choice of architectural portraiture. Situated opposite the Seine from Île de la Cité, the miniature does not depict the Cathedral of Notre Dame, one of the most frequently represented Parisian monuments in fifteenth-century French manuscripts, but instead represents the Hôtel de Ville, the residence of Jacques’s father while he served as prevôt de marchands prior to the English occupation of Paris during the Hundred Years’ War.50 This atypical architectural portrait underscores the continuity of Jouvenel des Ursins authority after the French government’s return to Paris, a feature particularly notable because it appears in a manuscript begun for the English regent. The large scale of the book ensured an audience that extended beyond Jacques alone, reinforcing his status as a member of the true nobility through its association as an object of treasure among his peers. Although smaller books of hours like Jacques’s are commonly considered vehicles for private devotion, the trend for personal prayer books to be dually considered as personal treasure and status objects by members of the new nobility was well established by the middle of the fifteenth century. The book of hours owned by the contemporary Treasurer of France, Étienne Chevalier, is stunning in the visual program executed by the premier Parisian painter and illuminator, Jean Fouquet. In addition to its lavish decoration, its size, measuring an average of 144 mm in width and 210 mm in height, attests to the use of devotional manuscripts as personal treasure.51 Along with further notable illuminators such as the Dunois Master and Jean Colombe, Fouquet was also a contributor to other ornate books of hours that were owned by the royal court officials Simon de Varie and Jean Robertet.52 Not only did Fouquet execute illuminations in a number of manuscripts owned by the recently ennobled heads of the government bureaucracy, he also produced independent panel portraits of Chevalier (left wing of Melun Diptych, c. 1455, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) and Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins (c. 1460, Louvre, Paris). Depicted in mimetic detail within splendid marble interiors decorated with heraldry and emblems, the paintings record the men’s status and position as legitimate members of the nobility, exemplifying the way that upwardly mobile court officials sought works by the most fashionable artists in the form of painted panels and manuscripts to support their ranks and ambitions. Jacques Jouvenel des

For salvation or reputation?  119 Ursins’s book of hours, as a devotional manuscript that also served as aristocratic treasure, obfuscated his family’s mercantile origin and supported the legitimacy of their claim to ancient nobility.

Sacred or secular intercession in the Suffrages? Suffrages in books of hours were intended to work by allowing the owner to pray to specific saints to encourage them to intercede on his or her behalf in a spiritual context, and the combination of text and image in Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins’ manuscript was certainly capable of performing in the prescribed manner. However, the selection of particular saints and the manner in which the images differ from the text of the Legenda Aurea indicate that the type of intercession sought by the owner was additionally secular in nature. A number of the surviving folios in Jacques’s book of hours show that he used the vehicle of the deluxe, illuminated manuscript to define his status and his relationship to the king. The folio depicting St. Germain not only contains the self-referential acanthus mollis, identifying the manuscript as belonging to a member of the Jouvenel des Ursins family, but also depicts two scenes taken from the Life of St. Germain of Auxerre, who, like Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins, was both the Archbishop of Reims and a diplomat, as recorded in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, a text familiar to Jacques, an owner of a version of the work.53 Similar to the mitered Jacques, St. Germain (c. 380–448) was born to a noble Roman family living in GalloRoman France.54 Germain traveled to Rome to study law and later served the Empire as a governor of the city of Auxerre. The hagiographical record parallels the life of Jacques, who became an attorney for the French royal government in his early career.55 Later, St. Germain was coerced into becoming a bishop and was a model religious statesman, mirroring Jacques, who was also persuaded into being an ecclesiastical diplomat. Both St. Germain and Jacques led ecclesiastic lives because of duties thrust on them by secular authorities. The result for Jacques, who was promoted by both King Charles VII and Pope Nicolas V, is that the fifteenth-century bishop was pulled between alliances to his nation and his church. By using the book of hours to compare himself to similar saintly bishops in order to underscore the fact that he was coerced into his role by the king and the pope, Jacques could find justification for political actions that ran counter to the interests of his patrons. The bas-de-page of the ornately decorated folio represents the death of St. Germain, who reclines enshrouded on a bed, still wearing his episcopal garments. The scene is drawn from the Legenda Aurea, which will serve as the source for the iconography present in Jacques’s manuscript, as there is a record of his ownership of Jacobus de Voragine’s text. The image records a posthumous miracle where St. Germain fulfilled a promise to Bishop Eusebius of Vercelli to consecrate a new church.56 The blooming outcropping of acanthus mollis appears between the bishops and the church, reinforcing

120  Jennifer Courts the relationship between Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins and St. Germain. The image itself does not deviate from its description in the Legenda Aurea, and the standard scene depicted in the bas-de-page serves to highlight the unique choice made in the central miniature that pairs the saintly bishop with an earthly ruler, a characteristic of all the pages under investigation. The framed, central miniature on the St. Germain folio represents a miracle from late in the bishop’s life as described in the Legenda Aurea. The scene is rather uncommon and points to Jacques’s commission of the manuscript through its use of St. Germain as a parallel for the fifteenth-century clergyman.57 According to the tale, Germain journeyed on a diplomatic mission to Ravenna, then capital of the Western Roman Empire, and was hosted by the Empress Galla Placidia. St. Germain traveled by a donkey to attend a meal at the imperial palace; however, while the nobles dined, his donkey died. The Empress quickly offered a horse in its place, but Germain refused the animal, stating that his donkey brought him to the dinner and that it could return him home. The saint spoke with the donkey, saying, “Up with you, ass, and let us get back to our inn,” at which point a miracle occurred and the animal rose from the dead to carry Germain home.58 The Dunois Master represents the moment of the miracle within an openair stable that allows a glimpse of the countryside and the city of Ravenna in the distance. St. Germain, featured prominently and dressed richly in a white robe edged with a thick band of gold, stands above the donkey that lifts its head with restored life. The donkey’s ears break the golden frame surrounding the miniature, extending into the viewer’s space and drawing our gaze to the bishop, who appears unsteady from the force of the event. His legs are twisted underneath his robe, and his arms are thrown up as if the miracle knocked him off balance. Beside him stands Galla Placidia, wearing an ermine-trimmed white robe and a golden crown distinctly ornamented with fleur-de-lis, deliberately correlating ancient imperial and fifteenth-century French royal power for a contemporary viewer. She too appears shaken by the event and holds her right hand over her heart as she hides behind the magnificent white horse offered to Germain. Galla Placidia is not discussed as present during the miracle in the text of the Legenda Aurea; however, the Dunois Master included her as a witness to the event, and the representation of the bishop with his royal sponsor is a reference to Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins and his relationship to the crown. Manuscript illuminations were understood to generate thought and commentary beyond the given narrative in the fifteenth century, inspiring a verbal gloss by a community of viewers.59 Examples where the textual description and visual representation differ, as in the disparity between the image of Germain’s life in Jacques’s book of hours and the text of the Legenda Aurea, highlight the ability of images to both affect memory and evoke an audience-specific glossing of the adjoining text. The inclusion of the white horse emphasizes the gifts owed to the Archbishop for his duties to the crown and the church through a

For salvation or reputation?  121 relationship forged on the noble system of gifting and reciprocity, the basis for social mobility and stability in fifteenth-century France.60 In such a gift economy, the gift implies a social contract where the presentation generates the requirement to reciprocate for the gifts received.61 In the late medieval world, gift economy breaks down into three major obligations: to give gifts, to receive gifts, and to reciprocate the gifts received.62 Within the Valois courts, gifting was a dominant form of economic exchange and the language for establishing and maintaining relationships.63 As an active member of the court, Jacques would have been aware of the social connections implied between Germain and Galla Placidia through the offer of the horse. Although the textual message of the Suffrage would present an appeal to St. Germain’s intercession on Jacques’ behalf, the visual representation presents its own specific gloss that underscores Jacques’ position as one of the highest-ranking members of the French nobility and underscores the duties of aristocratic giving as a means for securing relationships, such as his strained connection to the king after the Counsel of Basel.

Figure 6.3 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins(?), “St. Giles” (1450; London: V&A E.4583–1910). Image credit: Copyright: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

122  Jennifer Courts A second surviving folio again represents a bishop-saint, this time in the form of two episodes from the life of St. Giles (c. 650–710). Once more born of noble blood, this time in Athens, Giles’s adventures eventually brought him to the south of France, and he often appears in late medieval representations along with other notable French saints such as St. Denis and St. Louis. The bas-de-page represents St. Giles as he is commonly shown: tonsured, dressed in the black habit of the Benedictines, pierced by an arrow, and accompanied by a small doe. The scene originates from his time as a hermit in a Provençal forest, and the red devotional manuscript held in his hands highlights his adoption of a contemplative life. According to the Legenda Aurea, his only companion during his solitude was the diminutive deer, who provided the reclusive figure her milk as nourishment.64 St. Giles’s injury, the arrow that pierces his side, marks a turning point for the saint, who changes from a private to a public religious life. St. Giles’s transition from contemplative to an active life began in the wake of a royal hunting party sporting in the forest. The hunters tracked the deer back to the nest of brambles and thorns it shared with St. Giles, and one of the men fired an arrow into the thicket intending to chase out the doe, but instead struck the pious hermit.65 When the king discovered his hunter’s error, he provided medical attention to the wounded saint; offered him many gifts; dedicated a monastery, Saint-Giles-du-Gard, in his honor; and, with much coercion, promoted the former hermit to the public role of bishop.66 The theme of the hermit and the hunter has a rich history as a conversion story, typically ending with the spiritual transformation of a secular figure; however, in the case of St. Giles, the change is from the primitive purity of the forest to civilization.67 Mirroring St. Giles, Jacques was also the beneficiary of ecclesiastical appointment that thrust him into a somewhat public role as a dual sacred and secular diplomat. The folio’s framed central miniature, depicting the Mass of St. Giles – a scene included in the Legenda Aurea – further functions to define Jacques’ relationship to the king through comparison to saintly exemplum.68 St. Giles, this time dressed in white liturgical vestments trimmed with golden embroidery, stands in prayer before an altar outfitted with a golden crucifixion scene and chalice. He is located within the apse of an Early Christian basilica, as is indicated by the round Roman arches, wooden ceiling, and distinctive dome over the apse. The holy space is further defined by a luxurious red and gold textile chapelle. A king identified as Charles in the Legenda Aurea kneels behind St. Giles. The genuflecting figure was understood to be Charlemagne in the fifteenth century, and this identification is supported by his distinctive beard and crown.69 Hovering in the sky above the church is an angel bearing a scroll addressed to Giles inscribed with a note describing the forgiveness of the king’s sin as a result of Giles’ intercessory prayer.70 The Legenda Aurea does not define Charlemagne’s terrible sin, and for the most part, it remains unspoken, suggesting to medieval and modern scholars alike that it is sexual in nature.71 For fifteenth-century French audiences,

For salvation or reputation?  123 the carnal sin under discussion was incest, in particular, the allegation that the chivalric hero Roland was the son of Charlemagne and his sister.72 Like St. Giles, Jacques also had a close relationship with a king named Charles who was associated with sexual impropriety in several ways. In the fifteenth century, rumors of carnal sin were linked to Charles VII’s birth. His father, Charles VI, officially disinherited him in 1420, and it was popularly insinuated that the source of the severed relationship was a dispute in the dauphin’s parentage – in particular that Charles VII was the product of an adulterous relationship between Isabeau and her brother-in-law, Louis of Orlèans.73 Charles VII was linked to sexual sin by rumors surrounding his birth, but he was more strongly associated with sexual impropriety during his adulthood. Charles VII’s reign began during the turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War, a grueling conflict that colored much of his administration. Although ultimately victorious in defeating the English and uniting the Kingdom of France, Charles VII’s popular legacy is associated with that of his mistress, Agnès Sorel. Although publicly acknowledged, the affair was far from widely accepted. Georges Chastellain, the Burgundian diplomat and chronicler, was one of Agnès’s most outspoken critics and expressed disapproval of her extravagant possessions, but he leveled his most biting commentary on her choice of clothing, describing her dresses as unreasonably expensive and vulgar, uncovering her shoulders and breasts to expose the nipples.74 Further criticism comes from Jacques’s own brother, Jean II, who encouraged the king to remedy indecorous fashion within the court, including garments with “openings on the front, by which one can see the teats, nipples, and breasts of women.”75 That Jean II felt it prudent to speak out against the king’s mistress in his Traité du Chancelier, a text written for his brother Guillaume for his appointment to Chancellor of France, reveals the underlying attitude of the Jouvenel des Ursins family toward the royal impropriety. Disapproval of the king’s sexual partner also contributed to a rift between Charles VII and his son, the future Louis XI, who was banished from court in 1446 because of his attitude and behavior toward Agnès.76 Jacques, in his position as bishop and diplomat, was in a distinctive position to intercede on behalf of Charles VII to heal the broken relationship between father and son stemming in part from Charles’ sexual sins. By invoking St. Giles, a figure caught between a private and a public life as an ecclesiastic with close ties to a French king guilty of immorality, Jacques calls attention to his position as a diplomat with the potential to heal a significant division in the nation. Although father and son would never be reunited, through daily prayer to St. Giles, Jacques could signify his aptitude to address the situation. The relationship between another Frankish king and a noble-born bishop-saint is represented on the folio depicting St. Amand. Once again largely drawn from the Legenda Aurea, the folio includes a bas-de-page that represents a common scene from the life of Amand stemming from early in his life.77 As a youth he entered a monastery and encountered a large

Figure 6.4 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins(?), “St. Amand” (1450; Private Collection). Image Credit: Sam Fogg Ltd, London.

For salvation or reputation?  125 serpent that he miraculously banished to a great pit after prayer and making the Sign of the Cross.78 The Dunois Master represents Amand performing a benediction gesture toward the serpent while three monastic brothers stand in awe behind him. According to his legend, Amand spent the next fifteen years as a hermit before traveling to Rome where St. Peter appeared to him and directed the future saint to travel to Gaul and to reprimand the Merovingian king Dagobert I.79 Although famous for his licentious behavior and extra-marital affairs as recorded in the Chronicle of Fredegar, Dagobert was not receptive to Amand’s rebuke and had him banished from the kingdom.80 Dagobert, however, had a change of heart after the birth of his heir, and he invited Amand back to his court to baptize his newborn son.81 The folio’s central miniature represents Dagobert, accompanied by a well-dressed female companion who conspicuously does not wear a crown, meeting Amand outside of the city. Dagobert reaches out to assist the kneeling saint with his right hand while gesturing toward the city with his left, inviting Amand back into the court. Again, this visual representation of the Legenda Aurea differs from the text in a striking fashion. According to the legend, when Amand returned to the court, the king knelt before the holy man requesting forgiveness, yet the Dunois Master has inverted this scene, depicting the saint on his knees before the monarch. This reversal indicates Jacques’ own desire to return to the court and the king’s grace. Given the outcome of the turmoil regarding the appointment of French bishops from 1447–49, Jacques may have faced a difficult return to France after his stay in Rome during the Counsel of Basel. Nicholas V ultimately asserted his own strength as pope by appropriating the power to name bishops from the French Council, a move that resulted in Jacques’s transfer from Archbishop of Reims to Bishop of Poitiers. As a result of a successful negotiation to force the antipope Felix V to abdicate, Jacques lost a significant part of his own political power through his demotion and returned to France as the representative of the pope who overturned the king’s choice of bishops. The choice to have Amand appear on his knees before Dagobert, who invites him back into the kingdom, allows Jacques to use his book of hours in a daily petition for his own acceptance within the French royal court.

Conclusion Rising from a humble merchant background, the Jouvenel des Ursins family took advantage of every opportunity to promote their newfound status as members of the nobility by adopting strategies of aristocratic public promotion through displays of magnificence to affirm their contested legitimacy. In particular, they adopted the use of manuscripts as personal treasure to create an authoritative persona, as can be seen in the examples of the Pontifical of Poitiers and the book of hours at the heart of this study. Although only a few scattered folios survive from the personal devotional book associated

126  Jennifer Courts with Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins, some of the saints selected for representation were specifically chosen not only to serve as intercessors for the patron’s soul but also to define his at times strained relationship to Charles VII. The saints under investigation are all French saints from noble backgrounds who grudgingly became dual statesmen and ecclesiastics. While the story of St. Germain highlighted the king’s responsibilities to the bishop in terms of gifting and reciprocity, St. Giles’s life underscored the bishop’s role as a political diplomat, and St. Amand reveals Jacques’ desire to remain in Charles VII’s favor despite his political actions that sometimes opposed the wishes of the king in favor of the desires of the papacy. The decision to promote certain saints whose stories somewhat paralleled the lives of the family seems to permeate many of the Jouvenel des Ursins visual programs, particularly those initiated by Jacques, including the acquisition of the Saint-Remi chapel in Notre-Dame de Paris. Ultimately, examining how Jacques used saintly images in his personal book of hours to define his own earthly identity sheds light on how saintly intercessors worked in numerous ways on behalf of members of the rising merchant class. Jacques chose to include saintly models in his book of hours; yet, rather than simply serving as an exemplum for his own behavior, the moments represented highlight his desired relationship to the crown by obscuring his background as a newly established member of the French nobility and reinforcing his connection to early Christian ecclesiastical saints. In order to strengthen his own desired social status, the saints selected were of noble, often Gallo-Roman birth, mirroring his own Franco-Italian heritage. Further, they were all coerced into ecclesiastical service by a monarch, much as Jacques was persuaded to become both a spiritual and secular diplomat by Charles VII. Although a member of the church community, Jacques was important in establishing his family as influential members of the nobility through his diplomatic service to the king. Jacques embraces the strategies for representing legitimate status he witnessed as he ascended the social hierarchy of the Valois courts by adopting emblematic symbols and promoting his association with saintly models. Jacques selectively chose visual depictions of uncharacteristic saints and events in order to support his position and define his relationship to the king, providing evidence of how men of humble origins, like the Jouvenel des Ursins family, used visual culture to strengthen their newfound political power.

Notes 1 The pages comprised lots 3263–78. These pages include St. Gemanus of Auxerre; the Beheading of St. John the Baptist; St. Amand; St. Stephen; St. Apollonia; St. Giles; St. Julien; the Holy Wounds; Two Angels; St. Barbara; the Crucifixion; Sts. Donation and Rogatian; St. Dominic; St. Joachim, the Virgin, and St. Anne; the Descent from the Cross; and St. Christopher. For a detailed discussion of the remaining pages and their locations, see Sandra Hindman, “French Master,

For salvation or reputation?  127 Salting Painter (Paris, c. 1450),” Medieval and Renaissance Miniature Paintings (Akron: Bruce Ferrini Rare Books, 1988), 123–24. 2 Nicole Reynaud, “Les Heures du chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins et la peinture parisienne autour de 1440,” Revue de l’Art 126, no. 1 (1999): 27. 3 Reynaud, “Les Heures,” 27; Sandra Hindman, Enluminures, vélins, dessins du XIIe au XIXe siécle (Paris: Les Enluminures, 1994), 58–59. 4 Reynaud, “Les Heures,” 27. 5 For the etymological history of common names for Acanthus mollis, see William T. Stearn, “The Tortuous Tale of ‘Bear’s Breech,’ the Puzzling Bookname for ‘Acanthus mollis,’” Garden History Society 24, no. 1 (Summer 1996): 122–25. See also Nicole Reynaud, “Les Heures,” 27. 6 Although the term noblesse de robe was not in use during the fifteenth century, the social, economic, and political situations of the new nobility in Valois France mirrors that of the figures characterized by the term in the later Ancien Régime. 7 For a full discussion of the role of the Marmousets in the governments of Charles V and Charles VI, see Françoise Autrand, Naissance d’un Grande Corps de l’État: Les Gens du Parlement de Paris, 1345–1454 (Paris: University of Paris, 1981); Raymond Cazelles, Société Politique Noblesse et Couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V (Geneva: Droz, 1982); John Bell Henneman, Oliver de Clisson and Political Society in France Under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). 8 Louis Battifol, “Jean Jouvenel: Prévôt des Marchands de la Ville de Paris (1360– 1431)” (PhD Diss., University of Paris, 1894), 36, 56–59. 9 Jean Jouvenel was a client to Bureau de la Rivière. Clientage can be described as an alternative to feudalism that develops in the later Middle Ages in France where political alliances were not based on traditional landed nobility but instead extended to gain political, financial, and military support from various upwardly mobile men of humble origin. 10 Joseph Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers: Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins (1410– 1457),” Bulletin de la Sociéte des antiquaries de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers 4 (1961–1962): 86–87. 11 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 88. 12 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 89. 13 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 89. 14 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 89. 15 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 89. 16 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 91. 17 Kathryn L. Reyerson, Jacques Coeur: Entrepreneur and King’s Bursar (New York: Pearson, 2005), 108. 18 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 92. 19 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 92. 20 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 92. 21 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 92. 22 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 92. 23 For a complete discussion of the issues regarding the Jouvenel des Ursins nobility, see Louis Battifol, “Le nom de la famille Juvénal des Ursins,” Biblothèque de l’École des Chartes 50, no. 1 (1889): 537–558; Battifol, “L’origine italienne des Juvenel des Ursins,” Biblothèque de l’École des Chartes 54, no. 1 (1893): 693–717; Ch. Hirschauer and A. de Boüard, “Les Jouvenel des Ursins et les Orsini,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 32, no. 1 (1912): 49–67; P. S. Lewis, “La Noblesse des Jouvenel des Ursins,” in L’Etat et les aristocraties: France, Angleterre, Ecosse, XIIe–XVIIe siécle, actes dela table ronde, ed. Philippe Contamine (Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1989), 79–101.

128  Jennifer Courts 24 Jean II Jouvenel des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, Roy de France, et des choses memorable advanues durant quarante-deux année de son regne depuis 1380 jusque en 1422, ed. Denys Godefoy (Paris: I’Imprimerie royale, 1653), 364–65. 25 Jean II Jouvenel des Ursins, Écrits Politiques de Jean Juvénal des Ursins, ed. P. S. Lewis (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1978), 477. 26 Falsifying genealogy is not unknown in fifteenth-century northern Europe. Jean C. Wilson relates Guyont Duchamp’s visual falsification of lineage. Duchamp, châtelain d’Argilly from 1437, claimed nobility and supported this by his assertion that multiple generations of his family had faithfully lived nobly serving the dukes of Burgundy. His verbal claim was supported by a series of ancestral portraits that were later proved to be fakes. Jean C. Wilson, Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1997), 48. 27 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 88. 28 Michael T. Davis, “Splendor and Peril: The Cathedral of Paris, 1290–1350,” Art Bulletin 80, no. 1 (March 1998), 45. 29 Davis, “Splendor and Peril,” 45–46. 30 For a full discussion of the panel portrait see Jennifer Courts, “Weaving Legitimacy: The Jouvenel des Ursins Family and Constructing Nobility in Fifteenth Century France,” Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages, eds. Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 141–52. 31 The tapestries were used in choir until the sixteenth century when they were deemed old-fashioned: Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 100–01. 32 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, intro by Eamon Duffy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 86. 33 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 86. 34 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 86. 35 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS 456 includes a number of uncommon saints, including Ragobert, Balderic, and Macra, saints that are associated with Reims, and also Sts. Godo and Lupus, ones that are associated with Troyes, further linking it to the Jouvenel des Ursins family. St. Remy does not appear in the surviving pages of Jacques’ manuscript, perhaps reflecting that the manuscript was produced after his brother Jean II took over as Archbishop of Reims. 36 In particular, the Hours of Michel Jouvenel des Ursins (Paris, BnF n.a. Lat. 3113); the Hours of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins (Paris, BnF n.a. Lat. 3226); and the Mare Historiarum (Paris, BnF Lat. 4915). 37 Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 101. 38 Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 39 For discussion of silent reading and personal devotion, see Saenger, Space Between Words. In addition, Joyce Coleman’s work on the practice of aurality in the late medieval French and English courts is essential to understanding the role of public reading: Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xi; Coleman, “Reading and the Evidence in Text and Image: How History was Read in Late Medieval France,” in Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting 1250–1500, eds. Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), 53–68. 40 Coleman, Public Reading, 123. 41 I discuss this at length in my dissertation: Jennifer E. Courts, “The Politics of Devotion: Patronage and the Sumptuous Arts at the French Courts (1374– 1472)” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 2011). 42 Jennifer E. Courts, “Le Temps Venra: Establishing Visual Legitimacy in the Petites Heures of Jean de Berry,” Comitatus 42 (2011), 135–70.

For salvation or reputation?  129 43 The Petites Heures, the smallest of the duke’s books of hours, measures 210 x 140 mm. 44 Jules M. J. Guiffrey, “no. 961,” in Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry (1401–1416) publiés et annotés par Jules Guiffrey (Paris: Leroux, 1894), 1:253. 45 With the exception of the Way to Cavalry (Musèe du Louvre, Inv. RF 2835), the full-page illuminations in the Grandes Heures are lost. 46 Guiffrey, “no. 1164,” in Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry, 2:280. 47 For a thorough discussion of what is known about the Pontifical of Poitiers, see Catherine Reynolds and Jenny Stratford, “Le manuscript dit ‘Le Pontifical de Poitiers,’” Revue de l’Art 84 (1989): 61–80. 48 Reynolds and Stratford, “Le manuscript,” 61. 49 Reynolds and Stratford, “Le manuscript,” 63. For other nineteenth-century descriptions, see Ambroise Firmin Didot, Missel de Jacques Juvénel des Ursins, cédé a la ville de Paris (Paris: Typographie de Ambroise Firmin Didot, 1861); and the description by Sir Richard Holmes in his letter to Sir Frederic Madden in 1861, included in Reynolds and Stratford, “Le manuscript,” 72. 50 Reynolds and Stratford, “Le manuscript,” 67. Erik Inglis provides an excellent discussion of the role of architectural portraiture in post-Hundred Years’ War France, particularly in his chapter “Nation-Building: The Most Excellent Buildings of France,” in Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France: Art and Nation After the Hundred Years War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 141–203. 51 For a comprehensive overview of the Hours of Etienne Chevalier, see Nicole Reynaud, Jean Fouquet: Les Heures d’Etienne Chevalier (Dijon: Faton, 2006); and Patricia Stirnemann, Les Heures d’Etienne Chevalier par Jean Fouquet: Les quarante enluminures du Musée Condé (Paris: Somogy, 2003). 52 James Marrow, The Hours of Simon de Varie (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 1994); François Avril, Jean Fouquet, peintre et enlumineur du xve siècle, catalogue de l’exposition (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France / Hazan, 2003). 53 Jacques’ copy of the Legenda Aurea is lost, but its presence in his library is recorded in his collections: Salvini, “Un Évêque de Poitiers,” 101. 54 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 413. 55 Jean II was appointed avocat du roi in 1429. 56 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 416. 57 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 415. 58 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 416. 59 Brigitte Buettner discusses this phenomenon in “Profane Illuminations, Secular Illusions: Manuscripts in Late Medieval Courtly Society,” Art Bulletin 74, no. 1 (March 1992), 75–90. 60 For members of the nobility, payment in coin was not appropriate to their social station, and they were compensated instead with gifts of land and luxury objects. For a greater discussion of the gift economy in late medieval and early modern France, see Brigitte Buettner, “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (Dec. 2001): 598–625; Sharon Kettering, “Gift-giving and Patronage in Early Modern France,” French History 2 (1988), 131–51. For gift culture in general, see Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: Norton, 1990). 61 Mauss, The Gift, 1. 62 Mauss, The Gift, 10–11. 63 Buettner, “Past Presents,” 598–99. Her study addresses the ritual of presenting gifts within the early Valois courts on New Year’s Day. Labeled étrennes, a term that referenced both the gift and the exchange, the practice constituted a revival of an ancient Roman practice. Similar discussions can be found in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

130  Jennifer Courts 64 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 533. 65 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 534. 66 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 534. 67 Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2008), 119. 68 The Mass of St. Giles is also featured in the Vita sancti Aegidii. 69 In the Vita sancti Aegidii, the king is referred to as Carolus, and according to Ethel Cecilia Jones, the Carolus mentioned in the tenth century text was likely either Charles Martel or Charles the Bald; however, by the fifteenth century the king was understood to be Charlemagne: Ethel Cecilia Jones, Saint Gilles: Essai d’histoire littéraire (Paris: H. Champion, 1914), 19 n. 4. See also Jennifer M. Feltman, “Charlemagne’s Sin, the Last Judgment, and the New Theology of Penance at Chartres,” Studies in Iconography 35 (2014): 137. 70 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 534. 71 Miranda Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest,” Nephilogogus 88 (2004): 499. 72 This is suggested through critical readings of the Chanson de Roland. See Rita Lejeune, “Le péché de Charlemagne et la Chanson de Roland,” in Studia Philologica: Homenaje Ofrecido à Dámaso Alonso, vol. 2 (Madrid: Editiorial Gredos, 1961), 339–71. The reference also appears in medieval literature. The earliest surviving record is the thirteenth-century Old Norse Karlamagnùssaga, which was likely a translation of an earlier French epic. Charlemagne’s sin is finally explicitly noted in Tristan de Nanteuil, a fourteenth-century French chanson de geste. See Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin,” 515–16. 73 For a full discussion of Isabeau of Bavaria’s potential extra-marital affair and its aftereffects, see Rachel Gibbons, “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385– 1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996): 70. 74 For a full discussion of primary sources regarding Agnès Sorel’s clothing, see F. F. Steenackers, Agnès Sorel, et Charles VII; essai sur l’état politique et moral de la France au 15e siècle (Paris: Didier, 1868), 319–25. 75 Jean Jouvenel des Ursins, Traité du Chancelier, in Écrits Politiques de Jean Juvénal des Ursins, ed. by P. S. Lewis (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1978). 76 Paul Murray Kendall, Louis XI: The Universal Spider (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1971), 65–67. 77 The Vita Sancti Amandi also represents the life of St. Amand; however, for the purposes of this chapter, I have followed the story as depicted in the Legenda Aurea, a text Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins was known to have in his possession. 78 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 158. 79 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 158 80 Roger Collins, Die Fredegar-Chroniken (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2007), XV,152. 81 de Voragine, Golden Legend, 158.

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For salvation or reputation?  131 Printed sources Alexander, Dominic. Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2008. Appadurai, Arjun, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Autrand, Françoise. Naissance d’un Grand Corps de l’État: Les Gens du Parlement de Paris, 1345–1454. Paris: University of Paris, 1981. Avril, François. Jean Fouquet, peintre et enlumineur du xve siècle, catalogue de l’exposition. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France / Hazan, 2003. Battifol, Louis. “Jean Jouvenel: Prévôt des Marchands de la Ville de Paris (1360– 1431)”. PhD Diss., University of Paris, 1894. Battifol, Louis. “L’origine italienne des Juvenel des Ursins”. Biblothèque de l’École des Chartes 54, no. 1 (1893): 693–717. Battifol, Louis. “Le nom de la famille Juvénal des Ursins.” Biblothèque de l’École des Chartes 50, no. 1 (1889): 537–58. Buettner, Brigitte. “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400”. Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (Dec. 2001): 598–625. Buettner, Brigitte. “Profane Illuminations, Secular Illusions: Manuscripts in Late Medieval Courtly Society”. Art Bulletin 74, no. 1 (March 1992): 75–90. Cazelles, Raymond. Société Politique Noblesse et Couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V. Geneva: Droz, 1982. Coleman, Joyce. “Reading and the Evidence in Text and Image: How History was Read in Late Medieval France”. In Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting 1250–1500, edited by Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman, 53–68. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010. Coleman, Joyce. Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Collins, Roger. Die Fredegar-Chroniken. Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2007. Courts, Jennifer E. “Weaving Legitimacy: The Jouvenel des Ursins Family and Constructing Nobility in Fifteenth Century France”. In Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages, edited by Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring, 141–52. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Courts, Jennifer E. “Le Temps Venra: Establishing Visual Legitimacy in the Petites Heures of Jean de Berry”. Comitatus 42 (2011): 135–70. Courts, Jennifer E. “The Politics of Devotion: Patronage and the Sumptuous Arts at the French Courts (1374–1472)”. PhD Diss., Florida State University, 2011. Davis, Michael T. “Splendor and Peril: The Cathedral of Paris, 1290–1350”. Art Bulletin 80, no. 1 (March 1998): 34–66. Feltman, Jennifer M. “Charlemagne’s Sin, the Last Judgment, and the New Theology of Penance at Chartres”. Studies in Iconography 35 (2014): 121–64. Firmin Didot, Ambroise. Missel de Jacques Juvénel des Ursins, cédé a la ville de Paris. Paris: Typographie de Ambroise Firmin Didot, 1861. Gibbons, Rachel. “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385–1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess”. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996): 51–73. Griffin, Miranda. “Writing Out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest”. Neophilogogus 88 (2004): 499–520. Guiffrey, Jules M. J. Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry (1401–1416) publiés et annotés par Jules Guiffrey, vols. 1–2. Paris: Leroux, 1894.

132  Jennifer Courts Henneman, John Bell. Oliver de Clisson and Political Society in France Under Charles V and Charles VI. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Hindman, Sandra. “French Master, Salting Painter (Paris, c. 1450)”. In Medieval and Renaissance Miniature Paintings, 123–24. Akron: Bruce Ferrini Rare Books, 1988. Hindman, Sandra. Enluminures, vélins, dessins du XIIe au XIXe siècle. Paris: Les Enluminures, 1994. Hirschauer, Ch., and A. de Boüard. “Les Jouvenel des Ursins et les Orsini”. Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 32, no. 1 (1912): 49–67. Inglis, Erik. Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France: Art and Nation After the Hundred Years War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Jones, Ethel Cecilia. Saint Gilles: Essai d’histoire littéraire. Paris: H. Champion, 1914. Jouvenel des Ursins, Jean II. Écrits Politiques de Jean Juvénal des Ursins, edited by P. S. Lewis. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1978. Jouvenel des Ursins, Jean II. Histoire de Charles VI, Roy de France, et des choses memorable advanues durant quarante-deux année de son regne depuis 1380 jusque en 1422, edited by Denys Godefoy. Paris: I’Imprimerie royale, 1653. Kendall, Paul Murray. Louis XI: The Universal Spider. New York: W.W. Norton, 1971. Kettering, Sharon. “Gift-giving and Patronage in Early Modern France”. French History 2 (1988): 131–51. Lejeune, Rita. “Le péché de Charlemagne et la Chanson de Roland”. In Studia Philologica: Homenaje Ofrecido à Dámaso Alonso, volume 2, 339–371. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1961. Lewis, P. S. “La Noblesse des Jouvenel des Ursins”. In L’Etat et les aristocraties: France, Angleterre, Ecosse, XIIe–XVIIe siécle, actes dela table ronde, edited by Philippe Contamine, 79–101. Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1989. Marrow, James. The Hours of Simon de Varie. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 1994. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. New York: Norton, 1990. Reyerson, Kathryn L. Jacques Coeur: Entrepreneur and King’s Bursar. New York: Pearson, 2005. Reynaud, Nicole. Jean Fouquet: Les heures d’Etienne Chevalier. Dijon: Faton, 2006. Reynaud, Nicole. “Les Heures du chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins et la peinture parisienne autour de 1440”. Revue de l’Art 126/126 (1999): 23–35. Reynolds Catherine, and Jenny Stratford. “Le manuscrit dit ‘Le Pontifical de Poitiers’”. Revue de l’Art 84 (1989): 61–80. Saenger, Paul. Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Salvini, Joseph. “Un Évêque de Poitiers: Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins (1410–1457)”. Bulletin de la Sociéte des antiquaires de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers 4 (1961–1962): 85–107. Stearn, William T. “The Tortuous Tale of ‘Bear’s Breech,’ the Puzzling Bookname for ‘Acanthus mollis.’” Garden History Society 24, no. 1 (Summer 1996): 122–25. Steenackers, F. F. Agnès Sorel, et Charles VII; essai sur l’état politique et moral de la France au 15e siècle. Paris: Didier, 1868.

For salvation or reputation?  133 Stirnemann, Patricia. Les Heures d’Etienne Chevalier par Jean Fouquet: Les quarante enluminures du Musée Condé. Paris: Somogy, 2003. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan. Introduction by Eamon Duffy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. Wilson, Jean C. Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1997.

7

Spaces and times for worship Merchant devotion to the saints in late medieval Barcelona Montserrat Barniol López

In the late Middle Ages, merchants emerged as a cohesive social group that included tradesmen of radically diverse business practices. According to the earliest Hispanic Manual de Mercaderia (c. 1485), a didactic text for tradesmen, a “merchant” is anyone who does business at fairs and markets, a definition broad enough to include individuals from a wide range of professions, from the poorest retailers to the richest investors. Their differences notwithstanding, the members of this new social category aspired to advance in society; the higher they climbed the social ladder, the more closely their attitudes imitated those of the elite nobility, high clergy, and even royal civil servants.1 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the role of merchants in society and public life increased significantly until the time of the Catalan Civil War (1462–1472). The Mediterranean expansion of the Aragonese Crown clearly benefited tradesmen as it shaped an advantageous political and military context which grew in parallel with a notable manufacturing industry. Aragonese territories exported raw materials and products, including woolen textiles, throughout the Mediterranean and to some Atlantic regions and, at the same time, their imports significantly increased. New waterways connecting these territories were opened; naval technology and cartography improved; numerous Catalan consulates were established. All these economic developments strongly contributed to the consolidation of Barcelona and to the emergence of other smaller cities as prosperous commercial centers.2 To return focus to the devotional practices of Barcelonan merchants, histories such as Jaume Aurell Cardona’s Els mercaders catalans have characterized these men by their deep and genuine spirituality.3 It was a spirituality, I maintain, strongly shaped by their identities as tradesmen: their deep piety, desire for ostentation (to better associate with the elite), and, of course, anxiety over the peril that comes with a life of frequent travel.4 Regardless of social standing, these shared experiences allowed the merchants of Barcelona to develop a religiosity unique to tradesmen, evident in their manners of private worship, their venues of religiosity in the public sphere, and their piety shaped by the risks associated with travel. The role

Spaces and times for worship  135 merchants played in importing relics from the Eastern Mediterranean area is also significant. Thanks to their frequent travels around the Mediterranean and the knowledge they acquired of the region, tradesmen became effective importers of relics, which were vital to the growth of certain saints’ cults.

Scenes of a private devotion The merchant’s home, especially its private, intimate rooms, became the scene of the family’s innermost spirituality. Documentation proves that merchants owned altarpieces, triptychs, draps pintats (painted cloths), sculptures, and other items designed to accompany their private prayer. Many of these pieces were devoted to the Virgin and/or Jesus Christ, such as the sparsely documented but extraordinary “drap de pinçell” that hung in Eloi de Navel’s dining room, which represented “la ciutat de Jherusalem” (the city of Jerusalem) and “la imatge de Jhesucrist, qui stà en la Creu amb los dos ladres als costats” (the image of Jesus Christ with the two thieves at his side).5 Merchants frequently owned objects dedicated to saints as well. Pere Guingueta’s altarpiece with the Virgin, St. Catherine, and St. Barbara, or the St. Christophoros and St. Michael images belonging to Arnau Salavert, are examples, as is the “hun drap de pinzell de l’istòria de la Magdelena” (a piece of cloth with the Magdalene’s story), which Joan Romeu sold for the price of one lliura and two sous.6 On some occasions, evidence of religious objects is found in relatives’ wills: Margarita, the wife of the merchant Joan Boris, owned one “retaule de drap” (piece of cloth), “en que és pintada la Salutació ab Sant Miquel” (depicting the Virgin receiving the Angelic Salutation and St. Michael).7 Documentation referencing these examples is brief, telling of their existence but not elaborating on details of their creation, history, or function. Nevertheless, we can surmise that both the quality and richness of these objects differed substantially from piece to piece, according to their owners’ affluence. It can also be deduced that some of these pieces, such as some textiles, were produced in Barcelona. The documented presence of foreign embroiderers in the city suggests that their clientele could have included successful merchants.8 At the same time, we may easily assume that other pieces might have been imported, such as the magnificent linen cloth known as Frontal Florentí, painted and embroidered in Florence in the mid-fourteenth century and preserved in Manresa (Bages). This unparalleled piece depicting a Christological cycle was bequeathed by the jurist and trader Ramon Saera to Santa Maria de Manresa.9

The public spiritual sphere In the public realm, the foundation of benefices, the promotion of chapels, and the commission of liturgical furnishings and altarpieces were also part of merchants’ devotional lives, often closely linked to their choice of burial

136  Montserrat Barniol López place and concerns about the afterlife. There is clear evidence that medieval individuals made endeavors to ensure the future of their souls after death, and, for this reason, an unexpected death – which jeopardized the assurance of the soul’s salvation – was a source of dread.10 Merchants’ testaments reflect this anxiety, along with an awareness of life’s fugacity and the hazard of unforeseen death, at times in poetic and scripturally informed terms.11 It is therefore not surprising that they stipulated clear provisions in their wills, such as the ordering of masses. However, the piety that these practices demonstrate still leaves room for showy and pretentious displays of the family’s social position. As mentioned above, both spirituality and ostentation were determining factors when a medieval individual chose where to bequeath benefices or whether to promote chapels, some of which were intended for burial. In Barcelona, merchants concentrated these devotional practices in their parish churches, something which could have contributed to the fourteenth-century renewal of several such churches.12 It is noteworthy that two-thirds of Barcelona’s merchants had Santa Maria del Mar, also known as the “seamen’s cathedral,” as their parish church due to its privileged situation in the area where most seafarers worked and lived.13 Many examples exist of merchants – or merchants’ relatives – promoting chapels with the intent of making them their future burial places. In the mid-fourteenth century, many merchants funded chapels in Santa Maria del Mar. Benvinguda and her deceased husband, the merchant Bartomeu Monjo, commissioned a chapel devoted to St. Bartholomew, the late merchant’s patron saint. The chapel’s connection to the family could be easily identified, as their heraldic crest was present on the walls. Likewise, Raimon Savall sponsored St. Stephen’s chapel; Francesc Gener dedicated one to St. Thomas; Bernat Sabastida established one to Sts. Francis and Clare in 1338–1341.14 In contrast, evidence of merchants’ devotion is scarce (but not nonexistent) in other parish churches, such as Santa Maria del Pi and Sant Just, which were also being rebuilt in the Gothic style in the fourteenth century.15 Promoting a chapel in one’s parish church was a sign of prestige, clear proof of the family’s wealth; it was nothing, however, compared to sponsoring a chapel at the cathedral, as the apothecary-turned-merchant Pere Safont did. The documentation states that his residence was in Gem Nas street, which could belong either in Sant Miquel or Sant Just parishes. However, the chapel that Pere Safont chose to commission just some years before his death (c. 1382) was located in the wing next to Pietat street, in the cathedral cloister dedicated to St. Euphrosyne, the namesake of his daughter. This was also the place where he and his family (that is, his wife and daughter) would be buried. The chapel, now devoted to St. Ramon Nonat, St. Joachim, and St. Anne, can be identified by his heraldic signs.16 The cost of one of those chapels could be significantly higher than, even double, one in Santa Maria del Mar or Sant Just.17 Thus, sponsoring a chapel in the cathedral was an

Spaces and times for worship  137 ostentatious demonstration of one’s affluence, a privilege reserved only for the wealthiest merchants and royal civil servants. Wealthy families also set their sights upon convents and churches of the mendicant orders as the objects of their endowment, funding, and funeral plans. Merchants’ fondness for mendicant orders is a widely acknowledged phenomenon in many areas of historiography, repeatedly proven and closely examined in several studies.18 The aristocracy admired mendicants’ successful integration into medieval cities and their exemplary lifestyle, an admiration which, textual sources reveal, was mutual. The Catalan Franciscan writer Francesc Eiximenis (Girona, 1327/32–†Perpignan, 1409), in his Regiment de la cosa pública, extols the virtues of merchants, whom he considers key players in society.19 Dominicans and Franciscans were the largest mendicant orders in this period and, therefore, received the highest percentage of devotional practices. This pattern was also followed in Barcelona, where we may observe the bonds between merchants and mendicant orders.20 Pere Grony (or Gruny), an affluent businessman and banker, invited Dominican friars to settle in one of his houses on their arrival in Barcelona in 1219, probably thanks to the bishop Berenguer de Palou. They stayed in Grony’s houses until 1223, when the Dominicans moved to a small chapel devoted to St. Catherine.21 Offering his properties as a dwelling for the friars was just one of the businessman’s several charitable actions, according to his testament. It was due to his pious donations, for example, that the Santa Maria del Mar graveyard could be finished and the Barcelona hospice expanded.22 These types of charitable actions were common. Affluent merchants and businessmen who accrued significant wealth and luxury might have felt obliged to compensate society for their comfortable lifestyles. Moreover, as aforementioned, the need to ensure a good future for one’s soul was a matter of great concern. Shifting our focus southward reveals a remarkable example: in Valencia, ten merchants founded a mental hospital in 1409, galvanized by a friar’s sermon.23 Other examples may be less obviously striking, but numerous tradesmen in this period used their wealth to found or support charitable organizations. Among them is the prosperous merchant Bertran Nicolau (c. 1355–1421), also buried in Santa Caterina, who founded Terrassa hospital (Vallès Occidental) and stipulated in his testament that the recently built Santa Creu hospital (Barcelona) should be named as his legal heir. These are hardly Bertran Nicolau’s only pious and charitable actions. Not only did he bequeath significant amounts of money to several monastic institutions (Sant Jeroni de la Vall d’Hebron, Terrassa Carthusians, Sant Francesc de Barcelona, Sant Agustí de Barcelona, Carmelitans in Barcelona), but during his life he also founded a number of others: Sant Jeroni de Montolivet (Garraf), la Vall de Sant Jaume (Terrassa, Vallès Occidental), and Domus Dei de Miralles (Castellví de Rosanes, Baix Llobregat).24 The affluent tradesman was depicted as a donor on an altarpiece painted by Antoni Llonye (1462 ante quem) located in Miralles. The piece, now divided

138  Montserrat Barniol López (MNAC; Col. Mateu, Peralada), was devoted to the Virgin, St. Agustin, and Nicholas of Tolentino. Its central panel portrays the enthroned Virgin and Child, with the donor – identifiable by the heraldic crest depicted at the bottom of the scene – kneeling at the Virgin’s feet. On the upper central panel, an Epiphany can be seen, while the right and left panels include St. Agustin, dressed as a bishop, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino, as an Augustinian Friar. The upper panels depict scenes related to the saints: St. Agustin blesses a novice and St. Nicholas performs a mass for souls in purgatory. The saint was considered a powerful intercessor on the behalf of souls, so the image underscores the funereal context of the altarpiece. Two more panels belonging to this interesting altarpiece are preserved in Peralada museum, both containing scenes devoted to St. Agustin: the prodigies at the saint’s tomb and the death of his mother, St. Monica. Yet the altarpiece is incomplete, as the whereabouts of some panels remain unknown, including the missing Christological scenes described in Gaietà Barraquer i Roviralta’s early twentieth-century account.25 The example of the Lloberas family further emphasizes the charitable actions of merchants. The Lloberas was a successful family from Solsona (Solsonès), with connections through marriage to similar elite families. Around 1400, they established a mercantile company in Barcelona in cooperation with Joan de Junyent, also from Solsona. In Barcelona, they emulated the city’s nobility, entering their daughter Beatriu de Llobera in the monastery of Pedralbes, an elite Clarisan convent founded by queen Elisenda de Montcada (1322–†1364) that primarily housed noblewomen. Another member of the family, Francesca, stipulated in her testament (1411) that her money be used to build a hospital in Solsona, which she named as her sole heir. In addition, the family ordered two altarpieces for the hospital’s chapel – which probably were never completed – from the painters Jaume Cirera and Bernat des Puig.26

Danger at sea27 Certainly, one of the most frightening moments in any merchant’s life was the brush with death during a sea voyage.28 Preserved documentation proves that the risks were real. A letter written in 1307 by Muhammad II of Tunis to James II of Aragon (1291–†1327) discusses a visit between the Catalan ambassador, Pere Busot, and the sultan; among the topics they discussed were the injustices – attacks and killings – suffered by merchants and seafarers.29 Other texts, such as the aforementioned Manual de Mercaderia, also warn of these dangers.30 In the event of a storm, shipwreck, robbery, or other attack, not only were the merchant’s money and goods in danger, but so too was his life and, indeed, his afterlife: an unexpected murder or accidental death could mean dying without leaving a will. This was a terrible prospect, for the will stated not only legal provisions but also ones ensuring the protection of the soul in the afterlife. Worse still, a body drowned or otherwise lost at sea would go unburied and was hence unable to receive the rites that would secure the salvation of the spirit.31

Spaces and times for worship  139 Anxieties regarding the risk of travel were common among seafarers, no matter their social standing. These shared terrors may have led to the practice of certain devotions or cultic practices specific to mariners. It is well-known that seafaring merchants invoked Jesus Christ, the Virgin, and certain saints in times of danger, as we will have the opportunity to see.32 However, in addition to invoking the divine, desperate merchants feeling lost at sea might appeal to shrines devoted to these holy figures, particularly when no land was in sight, as Michele Bacci has demonstrated in his work on sacred shrines along sea routes.33 According to his scholarship, late medieval seafarers had their own system to guide themselves at sea (their own Portolano, to paraphrase Bacci) using the shrines along the Mediterranean as reference points, which were recognizable to a ship’s multicultural crew.34 These distant shrines constituted a common space, both physical and spiritual, for mariners. A related prayer, Il testo delle Sante Parole, which “is said when they have been several days without seeing land,” names a number of shrines in the Catalan area: St. Francis in Colliure, Santa Maria de la Serra in Montblanc, the cathedral of Santa Eulàlia de Barcelona, Santa Maria de Montserrat, the cathedral of Santa Tecla de Tarragona, and a church devoted to the Virgin in Tortosa Harbor.35 Clearly, these sites are not exclusively linked to maritime activities; the two cathedrals named certainly are not, and Montserrat was (and still remains) a crowded shrine, though its unique connections to maritime affairs have attracted scholarly attention.36 As far as the invoked saints are concerned, in most cases we cannot distinguish between merchants’ devotions and those professed by seafarers in general. Sources are not usually that specific. Nevertheless, there are some saints who seem to have specialized in saving seafarers in danger. In Catalonia, saints such as St. Nicholas, St. Erasmus, and, to a lesser extent, St. Onuphrius, featured heavily in such traditions. St. Nicholas, always popular, received widespread veneration; the bishop of Bari was invoked in all manner of situations, including, significantly, danger at sea. Johan Luschner’s print (1502) of Llibre del Consolat de Mar, one of the first maritime legislation books, refers to the saint as the protector of seafarers.37 St. Nicholas’s powers of deliverance take on a very literal quality in other Catalan medieval texts. Both the satirical Libre dels Mariners in the fourteenth century and the more reverential Sermó del Bisbetó refer explicitly to the saint’s power to intercede in the event of shipwreck.38 In addition, there exist a significant number of ships named for him and numerous chapels dedicated to him – among them, one built upon the seafront at Barcelona.39 Catalan Gothic artwork reinforces the association of the saint with the sea, often depicting narrative cycles devoted to St. Nicholas. One of the most outstanding examples is the altarpiece of the Consulate of the Sea of Perpignan, preserved in Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud, attributed to the Master of Canapost (Figure 7.1). On its central panel is a Trinitary image surrounded by phylacteries bearing messages of justice, complementing the piece’s placement in the chapel of the Consulate of the Sea, as one of the

Figure 7.1 Master of Canapost. Altarpiece of Consolat de Mar (Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud). Copyright: Fundació Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic. Arxiu Mas.

Spaces and times for worship  141 consuls’ duties was to apply justice. The scene below, the only narrative scene on this altarpiece, represents the busy Perpignan harbor, with the building of the Consulate prominently featured on the right. To the left, St. Nicholas appears, shielding traders at sea from harm.40 The altarpiece, with its prominent characterization of St. Nicholas as a protector of sailors, is clearly concerned with maritime affairs; it is noteworthy that variations of the same scene appear in other works of art without the connection to seafarers. The Canapost altarpiece (Baix Empordà), now in the Girona Arts Museum – attributed to the same Master and devoted to the Virgin, St. Bernard, and St. Nicholas – provides an example. So too does Bernat Llopart’s cross (c. 1435–1437), dedicated to St. Nicholas and designed for the saints’ chapel in Santa Maria de Cervera. It is significant that the cross at Cervera, an inland city, deemphasizes the relationship between saint and seafarers that underlies the altarpiece at the Consulate of the Sea.41 Rather, in this piece, the scene of the saint’s protection appears simply to demonstrate his prodigious abilities. The above-mentioned Llibre del Consolat de Mar also refers to “Sanct Helm” as an advocate of sailors. St. “Helm” (or Elm, Erm, Antelm, Telm, or Tem) is an alias of St. Erasmus of Formiae, though he has been mistaken at times for the thirteenth-century Dominican Pere González Telmo.42 The widespread devotion to Erasmus among sailors was expressed in many ways, beginning, again, with the naming of ships in his honor and extending to religious art. The account of a 1547 pastoral visit to the convent of St. Anthony and St. Clare in Barcelona describes an art piece now lost to history: an image of the saint, his history, and the coat of arms of sailors.43 Details concerning the piece are scarce, but it is known that the painters Bernat Martorell, Jaume Cirera, and Lluís Dalmau worked on the painting of the altarpiece or on the decoration of the chapel of St. Erasmus in this convent.44 A similar instance of a lost work that possibly depicted St. Erasmus once existed in Calella; its current whereabouts are unknown. Supposedly, the piece portrayed Sts. Abdon and Sennen with another saint, traditionally identified as St. Nicholas, standing between them and carrying a ship in his hands. However, it has been suggested that this third figure could be St. Erasmus, as he was also invoked by seagoing people, and as depictions of St. Nicholas holding ships were unheard of in Catalonia.45 It also bears mentioning that St. Erasmus very rarely appears in Catalan Gothic altarpieces. Among other works of art that suggest a connection between St. Erasmus and the sea, the boat-shaped ex-voto known as the coca (cog) of Mataró is particularly suggestive. This medieval offering, now preserved in the Maritien Museum Prins Hendrjk in Rotterdam (Netherlands), has its origin in a Catalan coastal town. Although it has been commonly accepted that it came from Sant Simó de Mataró (a hermitage that dates from the end of the sixteenth century), several clues point to its creation to Calella, home to a church dedicated to St. Erasmus.46 If this be the case, the coca might be understood as another link between the saint’s cult and seafarers.

142  Montserrat Barniol López Medieval documentation and Gothic paintings suggest that this kind of offering was not unusual. For instance, on the 12th of June 1372, the silversmith Romeu des Feu was paid seventy-two lliures, three sous, and three Barcelona coins for a gold-and-silver boat bearing the insignias of Prince Martin and Maria de Luna.47 Images of similar ex-votos occasionally appear in altarpieces, hanging above saints’ reliquaries or sepulchers as an offering requesting the saint’s intercession. An interesting Catalan example can be found in the St. Steven altarpiece in Granollers: here, in the scene of the exorcism of princess Eudoxia, several ex-votos hang above the saint’s tomb, among them one very much like the famous coca de Mataró.48 A similar object makes an appearance in the scene of pilgrims worshiping at the tomb of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, depicted in the Domus Dei altarpiece (the same altarpiece that, as we have already seen, includes a donor portrait of the affluent tradesman Bertran Nicolau). Turning now to a saint seldom examined in relation to seafarers’ devotions, St. Onuphrius, too, is a significant figure for pious merchants. The life of the saint, preserved in the Library of Catalonia, describes a miracle at sea. According to the text, a merchant from Barcelona went to visit his sister, a poor Clare nun, at Pedralbes monastery in order to ask for her prayers as he prepared for travel. The nun advised him to invoke St. Onuphrius when facing difficulties at sea. Sure enough, a storm indeed struck while he was at sea and, as his sister had instructed, the merchant invoked the saint and promised to dedicate a chapel to him in Pedralbes. Once restored to safety, the merchant kept his promise.49 This hagiographical narrative is highly suggestive, especially if we take into account that the outstanding predella devoted to the saint and preserved in the Barcelona Cathedral Museum comes from Pedralbes, which dates to c. 1360–1370. It must be identified with the predella containing the story of St. Onuphrius that is referenced in the monastery’s necrology. According to the surviving data, it was commissioned by the nun Beatriu d’Òdena (†1389) to be placed at the altar of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. Further, though the predella depicts St. Onuphrius’s life, it omits both of the saint’s postmortem prodigies, neither of which took place at sea.50 These data have given rise to suggestions that the protagonist of the prodigy could have been Beatriu’s brother, but I cannot see sufficient evidence to support this claim.51 Allusions to St. Onuphrius appear persistently in records of merchants’ lives. Among the many manuscripts in the library of the aforementioned Eloi de Navel was a life of St. Onuphrius.52 Likewise, the late-fifteenth-century merchant Caterina Llull i Çabatida bequeathed funds to pay for masses on seventeen holy days after her death, including the feast of St. Onuphrius. I have attempted to identify the cults which were most significant to merchants embarking upon dangerous voyages. That tradesmen invoked a wide range of saints beyond those mentioned requires no explanation. However, the association of some saints, such as St. Nicholas or St. Erasmus, with the devotion of tradesmen seems to be ubiquitous, extending beyond local interest.

Spaces and times for worship  143

Merchants’ role in the importation of relics In closing, I turn to another mode of mercantile engagement with the saints: the role of merchants in the acquisition of relics from the Eastern Mediterranean, which contributed to the growth of saints’ cults. Members of the Aragonese royal family were renowned collectors of relics, and documentation suggests that this passion was particularly intense during the reigns of Pere el Cerimoniós (1336–†1387) and his sons and successors, Joan el Caçador (1387–†1396) and Martí l’Humà (1396–†1410).53 Relics came to Barcelona through various means. Sometimes they arrived as gifts, as in the case of the reliquary containing the Virgin’s hair offered by the Duke of Berry to Joan el Caçador.54 On other occasions, monarchs had to endeavor to obtain them through diplomacy, bribery, patience, insistence – and, at times, the assistance of merchants. Tradesmen with experience traveling around the east coast of the Mediterranean could provide crucial information about the area and use their resources to aid in expeditions. Catalan monarchs’ pursuit of the relics of St. Barbara located in Cairo started c. 1322, a peculiarly early date given that data concerning devotion to the saint is scarce before the second half of the fourteenth century. King Jaume II (1291– †1327), by way of thanks to the sultan for the release of certain captives, sent gifts, along with a request for prized relics and objects, among them the body of St. Barbara. The attempt was unsuccessful, and the following years saw several diplomats and ecclesiastics vying for the valued relic. The fruitlessness of these endeavors did nothing to deter the interest in the body of the saint. On the contrary, fed by the merchant Pere de Manresa’s account of the sacred body, there was another attempt in 1373, during the reign of Pere el Cerimoniós, in which the Catalans spared no expense – with merchants helping to finance the endeavor. Nonetheless, these negotiations all met with the same failure, as the Coptic community was unwilling to part with their treasured relics. Desperate, the king Martí l’Humà suggested that Antoni Amatller, the merchant’s consul, should simply steal the relics. Again, the Catalans failed.55 Other endeavors to acquire relics were more successful: a Catalan expedition obtained both St. Tecla’s arms and several pieces of bone, which were housed in Tarragona in 1321. As Tarragona had been a significant site of the cult of St. Tecla, many of its cathedral canons and city representatives requested King Jaume II to bring the saint’s relics to the city on their behalf. In the course of these negotiations, the assistance of merchants was crucial: merchants provided information about the coveted relics, and it was a merchant, Simó Salzet, who led the expedition to retrieve them.56

Drawing conclusions In this chapter, I have demonstrated that merchants’ spirituality was as rich as it was intricate. Tradesmen’s devotions were expressed in the different spheres of their lives: both private and public, both on land and at sea. Their

144  Montserrat Barniol López devotional range consisted of practices similar both to those displayed by the nobility, whose status and wealth they aspired to achieve, and to the spiritual practices of other seafarers. The objects that merchants kept in the intimacy of their homes and itemized in their inventories and wills – the valuable painted cloths and small altarpieces meant to serve as companions to their private prayer – reveal the rich texture of their private devotion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the holy figures who appear on these pieces (Jesus Christ, the Virgin, and saints such as St. Catherine, St. Barbara, the Magdalene, or St. Michael) are not exclusive to tradesmen’s devotions. Meanwhile, in the public sphere, merchants emulated aristocratic attitudes but still maintained aspects of a piety specific to sailors, with whom they shared a consciousness of the sea and its perils. As I have demonstrated in these pages, merchants endeavored to promote chapels by contributing liturgical furnishings, including valuable works of art found in newly constructed parish churches (significantly those in Santa Maria del Mar) or even in the cathedrals – an expensive undertaking. Other high-ranking citizens, such as the nobility or royal civil servants, engaged in similar practices. Due to their experience with sea travel, merchants often invoked the saints who extended their divine protection to sailors. Of the many saints included in merchants’ devotions, St. Nicholas and St. Erasmus were especially revered. I also suggest that merchants worshipped saints whose cults were relatively small, such as St. Onuphrius. Due to the high social status some merchants acquired and the extensive knowledge they might have had about the Holy Land and Eastern Mediterranean, the Catalan royal family included merchants in its endeavors to obtain relics. While Catalan monarchs’ zeal for accruing relics is wellknown, history has rarely acknowledged the role that merchants played in these negotiations. Future studies may reveal more of the fascinating histories of these tradesmen–ambassadors. As we have seen, tradesmen’s devotion encompassed the multiple spheres of their lives; it reflected not only their private spirituality but also their desire for public prestige through emulation of the upper class. A heterogeneous group including both retailers and affluent traders, merchants nonetheless shared a rich devotional panorama, which, I have argued, forms the core of their personalities.

Notes 1 This chapter is the result of the research carried out as a member of the research project Movilidad y transferencia artística en el Mediterráneo Medieval (1187– 1388). Artistas, objetos y modelos – Magistri mediterranei, directed by Prof. Manuel Castiñeiras (2016–2019; ref. MICINN: HAR2015-63883-P). My thanks to Francesca Garrido, who revised the English version of this text. Concerning the Manual de Mercaderia: the text aims to be a reference book for tradesmen, containing commercial information as well as instructions for

Spaces and times for worship  145 becoming the “ideal” merchant. The manuscript (preserved in Universitat de Barcelona Library, ms. 4) seems to be the earliest Hispanic book of this kind and is clearly influenced by Italian volumes with similar purposes. For further details about the manuscript, see the introductory study by Miguel Gual Camarena in his edition: Miguel Gual Camarena, ed., El primer manual hispánico de mercaderia (siglo XIV) (Madrid: CSIC, 1966). An excellent overview about merchants in Barcelona in the Late Middle Ages can be found in Jaume Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans al quatre-cents (Lleida: Pagès editors, 1996). On merchants’ aristocratization, see also Cristina Borau Morell, “L’ascens social a la Barcelona del s. XIV vist a través dels promotors de capelles de la Seu i de les grans esglésies parroquials,” Anuario de estudios medievales 32, no. 2 (2002): 693–722. 2 Maria Teresa Ferrer Mallol, “Catalan Commerce in the Late Middle Ages,” Catalan Historical Review 5 (2012): 29–65; Daniel Duran Duelt, “El viatge a Bizanci: política, guerra, religió, comerç i cultura,” in Viatjar a l’Edat Mitjana (Vic: Museu Episcopal de Vic, 2015), 95–103; Borja de Riquer Permanyer et al., Història, política, societat i cultura dels Països Catalans. La forja dels Països Catalans, segles XIII–XV (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 1996), 96–116. For institutional context, see Daniel Duran Duelt, “El context institucional de mercaders i homes de mar,” in Un Mar de Lleis. De Jaume I a Lepant. Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, ed. Daniel Duran Duelt (Barcelona: Inst. Europeo de la Mediterrànea, 2008), 195–214. 3 Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 395. 4 Jaume Aurell Cardona, “La imagen del mercader medieval,” Butlletí de la Real Academia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 46 (1998): 23–44; Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 103; Charles M. de la Roncière summarizes merchants’ fears as follows: “Ils craignent à la fois pour leur argent et pour leur âme” (they feared for both their money and their soul) in “La foi du marchand: Florence XIVe– milieu XVe siècle,” Le marchand au Moyen Age, XIXe Congrès de la Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur Public (Reims juin 1988) (París: Cid Éditions, 1992), 237–50 at 240. About the risky situations at sea, see also Mario del Treppo, Els mercaders catalans i l’expansió de la corona catalano-aragonesa al segle XV (Barcelona: Curial, Documents de Cultura, 1976), 339–44; Jean Batany, “Un ‘estat’ trop peu ‘estable’: navigation maritime et peur de l’eau,” L’eau au Moyen Âge (Marseille: Publications du CUERMA, Université de Provence, 1985), 23–42; Christiane Deluz, “Pèlerins et voyageurs face à la mer (XIIe–XIVe siècles),” Horizons marins itinéraires spirituels (Ve–XVIIIe siècles), Marins, navires et affaires, eds. Henri Dubois, Jean-Claude Dubois, André Vauchez (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1987), 2:277–87; Michele Bacci, “Portolano sacro. Santuari e immagini sacre lungo le rotte di navigazione del Mediterraneo tra tardo Medioevo e prima età moderna,” in The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds. Erik Thuno, Gerhard Wolf (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2004): 223–48. 5 Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 204 n. 40. 6 Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 201 n. 30. 7 Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 201–16; Aurell Cardona, “Espai social i entorn físic del mercader barceloní,” Acta Historica et Archaeologica Medievalia 13 (1992): 253–73. 8 Guadaira Macías Prieto and Rafael Cornudella Carré, “Taller brabançó actiu a Barcelona (?). Frontal de Crist i els evangelistes,” in Convidats d’honor. Exposició commemorativa del 75è aniversari del MNAC (Barcelona: MNAC, 2010), 152–57; Rafael Cornudella Carré, “Obres i artistes de França i dels Països Baixos a Catalunya al voltant de 1400. Manuscrits il·luminats, pintura sobre fusta, vitralls, brodats i tapissos,” in Catalunya 1400. El Gòtic Internacional (Barcelona: MNAC, 2012), 25–37.

146  Montserrat Barniol López 9 Rosa M. Martín Ros, “El frontal de la Passió de la Seu de Manresa,” in L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arts de l’objecte, ed. Antoni Pladevall Font (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2008), 384–85. 10 Jacques Chiffoleau, “Dels ritus a les creences. La pràctica de la missa a l’Edat Mitjana,” L’Avenç 111 (1988): 38–49; Chiffoleau, “Ce qui fait changer la mort dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in Death in the Middle Ages, eds. Herman Braet and Werner Verbeke (Lovain: Leuven University Press, 1983), 117–33; Chiffoleau, “Sur l’usage obsessionnel de la messe pour les morts à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in Faire Croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1981), 235–56. 11 Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 237. 12 This complex issue has been widely discussed in Cristina Borau Morell, La fundació de capelles i retaules a la Barcelona del Segle XIV (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2003). However, we cannot undermine the importance of collective promotion – that is, the city guilds paying for and therefore having their own chapels in churches: see Joan Molina Figueras, “De la religión de obras al gusto estético. La promoción colectiva de retablos pictóricos en la Barcelona cuatrocentista,” Imafronte 12–13 (1998): 187–206. 13 Based on wills dated from 1370 to 1470. Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 270. 14 Josep Bracons Clapés, “Santa Maria del Mar,” in L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura II, catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, ed. Antoni Pladevall Font (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2003), 2:72–88; Borau Morell, La fundació de capelles, 441–52. 15 Magda Bernaus Vidal, “Santa Maria del Pi” and “Sants Just i Pastor de Barcelona,” both in L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura II, catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, ed. Antoni Pladevall Font (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, 2003), 2:96–104. 16 About the cathedral in general, see Josep Bracons Clapés and María Rosa Terés Tomas, “La catedral de Barcelona,” in L’Art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura I: catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, ed. Antoni Pladevall Font (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, 2002), 1:274–301. Cristina Borau Morell deeply analyzes Pere Safont’s promotion and the prices chapels may have cost: “L’ascens social a la Barcelona,” 693–722. 17 Borau Morell, “L’ascens social a la Barcelona,” 693–722. 18 Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 1978); Jacques Le Goff, “Apostolat mendicant et fait urbain dans la France médiévale: L’implantation des ordres mendiants,” Annales: Économies, Sociétiés, Civilisations 23, no. 2 (1968): 335–52. See also more recently Taryn E. L. Chubb and Emily D. Kelley, eds., Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013). 19 Francesc Eiximenis, Regiment de la cosa pública (Alzina: Bromera, 2009). 20 Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 283–84. See also Antonio M. Zaldívar, “Patricians’ Embrace of the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine in Thirteenth-Century Barcelona,” in Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean, eds. Taryn E. L. Chubb and Emily D. Kelley (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013): 25–58. Zaldívar’s close study of wills surviving from thirteenthcentury Barcelona concludes that patricians embraced Dominicans, while Aurell contends that the Franciscans may have been slightly more popular. 21 Ernest Ortoll Martín, “Algunas consideraciones sobre la iglesia de Santa Caterina de Barcelona,” Locus Amoenus 2 (1996): 47–63; Zaldívar, “Patricians’ Embrace of the Dominican Convent,” 35.

Spaces and times for worship  147 22 Zaldívar, “Patricians’ Embrace of the Dominican Convent,” 34–36; Maria Pont, “El testament de Pere Grony: 1227,” Medievalia 9 (1990): 179–84. About this family, see also Carme Batlle i Gallart, Angeles Busquets, and Immaculada Navarro Mollevi, “Aproximació a l’estudi d’una família barcelonina els segles XII i XIV: els Grony,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 19 (1989): 285–310. 23 Antoni Conejo da Pena, “Assistència i hospitalitat a l’Edat Mitjana. L’arquitectura dels hospitals catalans: del gòtic al primer renaixement” (PhD diss., Universitat de Barcelona, 2002), 35. 24 Carles Díaz Martí, “Noves aportacions sobre el mercader barceloní Bertran Nicolau (c. 1355–1421): riquesa, ordes monàstics i llegat testamentari,” Acta Historica et Archaeologica Medievalia, 32 (2014–5): 525–78; Díaz Martí, Bertran Nicolau, fundador de Sant Jeroni de la Murtra (Badalona: Museu de Badalona, 2006). 25 Anna Orriols Alsina, “Iconografía de San Agustín en los ciclos góticos catalanes,” Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 41 (1990): 13–46; Frédéric Elsig, “Antoine de Lonhy. Muerte de santa Mónica y Milagros ante la tumba de san Nicolás de Tolentino, c. 1460–1462,” in El Renacimiento Mediterráneo, viajes de artistas e itinerarios de obras entre Italia, Francia y España en el siglo XV, ed. Mauro Natale (Madrid-Valencia: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza-Museu de Belles Arts de València, 2001), 481–84; Francesc Ruiz Quesada, “Antoine de Lonhy,” in La pintura gòtica hispanoflamenca. Bartolomé Bermejo i la seva època (Barcelona: MNAC-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2003), 328–33. 26 Carme Batlle i Gallart, “Notas sobre la família de los Llobera, mercaderes barceloneses del siglo XV,” Anuario de estudios medievales 6 (1969): 535–52; Conejo da Pena, Assistència i hospitalitat. 27 Here, I strictly focus on examples of saints invoked in the event of danger at sea. That this is not (and cannot be) an exhaustive overview of the subject is self-evident. I omit several well-known artistic renderings of saints saving endangered vessels, as many of these are not explicitly linked to merchants’ devotion. I have discussed this topic more broadly in “Patrons and Advocates of the Sailors. The Saints and the Sea in Catalan Gothic,” Imago Temporis Medium Aevum 6 (2012): 249–76. 28 See note 4. 29 Daniel Duran Duelt, “Cat. 66. Carta de Muhammad II de Tunis a Jaume II d’Aragó amb resposta a diversos greuges presentats per alguns catalans en què l’informa de la seva entrevista amb Pere Busot, ambaixador del rei, a propòsit de la seva participació en la conquesta de Sardenya,” in Viatjar a l’Edat Mitjana (Vic: Museu Episcopal de Vic, 2015), 195. 30 Gual Camarena, El primer manual hispánico, 57. 31 Bacci, “Portolano Sacro,” 223–48. Burial rituals are described in Salvador Claramunt Rodríguez, “La muerte en la Edad Media. El mundo urbano,” Acta Historica et Archaeologica Medievalia 7–8 (1986–87): 205–18. 32 The bibliography regarding this question is abundant. Some relevant studies from a general viewpoint are Geneviève Bresc and Henri Bresc, “Les saints protecteurs de bateaux. 1200–1460,” Ethnologie française 9, no. 2 (1979): 161–78; Gérard Veyssière, “Miracles et merveilles en Provence aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles à travers des textes hagiographiques,” in Miracles, prodiges et merveilles au Moyen Âge, XXV Congrès de la Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur Public (Orléans, juin 1994) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995): 191–214; Bacci, “Portolano sacro,” 223–48. Regarding Catalunya, see Arcadi García Sanz, Història de la marina catalana (Barcelona: Aedos, 1977), 140; María Elisa Varela, “Navegar y rezar. Devoción y piedad de las gentes de mar barcelonesas (siglos XIV y XV),” Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 29 (1999): 1119–32. I have also written on this topic: “Patrons and Advocates of the Sailors.”

148  Montserrat Barniol López 33 Bacci, “Portolano sacro,” 223–48, esp. 227–48. 34 Michele Bacci, “La moltiplicazione dei luoghi sacri lungo le vie d’acqua per Gerusalemme nel tardo Medioevo,” in P. Caucci von Saucken and R. Vázquez eds., Peregrino, ruta y meta en las peregrinationes maiores. VIII Congreso internacional de estudios jacobeos (Santiago de Compostela, 13–15 Octubre 2010) (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2012), 179–94. 35 The original quotation in Italian is as follows: “si dice in galea o nave o altra fusta quando fussino stati alcuno giorno sanza vedere terra.” Bacci, “Portolano sacro,” 242. All the identifications are also suggested in the same study: 242–48. 36 Gabriel Llompart Moragas, “Las tablillas votivas del Puig de Pollensa (Mallorca),” Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares 28 (1972): 39–54; Anselm M. Albareda, Història de Montserrat (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1972), 126; José Tarín, “Montserrat y su tradición marinera,” in Leyendas y tradiciones marineras (Barcelona: Ediciones de la Sección de Prensa de la Diputación Provincial de Barcelona, 1954), 59–61. 37 Marià Aguiló, Catálogo de obras en lengua catalana impresas desde 1474 hasta 1860 (Barcelona-Sueca: Curial, 1977), 356–58. There are several editions of this important book: Ferran Valls Taberner, ed., Llibre del Consolat de Mar: Consolat de Mar (Barcelona: Barcino, 1930); Germà Colón and Arcadi García, eds., Llibre del Consolat de Mar (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2001). 38 In the former we find the following verses: “Cert, per sent Nicolau / més valgra que en nau / tot hora stat agués, / e no n agra despès” (Certain, for St. Nicholas, / it would have been better / in the ship to have stayed, / and so not to have had to pay): Joan Ors, “El ‘Libre dels Mariners’ (text i caracterització literària),” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 37 (1977–78): 213–52. In the second: “alscuns noxes eren an mar / Qui no podien escapar / clamaren sen Nicolau / E sempra la mar fo en pau / E axi foren escapats / de gran paril et desliurats” (Some damage there was at sea / that we could not escape / we prayed to St. Nicholas / and the sea was always calm / and we could escape and / from great danger were freed): Joaquim Miret Sans, “El Sermó de sant Nicolau,” Revue Hispanique, 28 (1963): 390–95. For the English translation, see my “Patrons and advocates of the sailors,” 18–9. 39 It is interesting to remember that in other cities belonging to the Aragonese crown there also were chapels devoted to the saint on their sea fronts: in Portopí, the Majorcan port (which, like the rest of the port, was depicted on the altarpiece of St. George by Pere Niçard), and in Ciutadella (Minorca). Gabriel Llompart Moragas, “País, paisatge i paisanatge a la taula de sant Jordi de Pere Niçard,” in Gabriel Llompart Moragas, Francesc Ruíz Quesada, eds., El cavaller i la princesa. El sant Jordi de Pere Nisard i la ciutat de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca: Consell de Mallorca-Sa Nostra Caixa de Balears, 2001), 59–89. 40 Joan Molina Figueras, “Espacio e imagen de la Justicia. Lecturas en torno al retablo del Consulado de Mar de Perpiñán,” Locus Amoenus 3 (1997): 51–66. On its painter, see Rafael Cornudella Carré, “El Mestre de la Llotja de Mar de Perpinyà (àlies Mestre de Canapost; àlies Mestre de la Seu d’Urgell),” Locus Amoenus 7 (2004): 137–69. 41 On the Canapost altarpiece, see Joan Molina Figueras, “Relacions i intercanvis artístics entre Girona i el Rosselló a la segona meitat del segle XV,” Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 33 (1994): 481–515; Joan Molina Figueras, El Mestre de Canapost i la seva obra. Reflexions sobre el caràcter de les imatges del Retaule de la Verge de Canapost del Museu d’Art de Girona (Girona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 1995). Regarding the cross, see Joan Ainaud de Lasarte, “Creu de Sant Nicolau. Bernat Llopart,” in Catalunya Medieval

Spaces and times for worship  149 (Barcelona: Lunwerg-Generalitat de Catalunya, 1992), 316–7; Núria de Dalmases, Orfebreria catalana medieval, Barcelona, 1300–1500 (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1992), 1:265–67; 2:276–77; Agustí Duran i Sanpere, “Orfebreria catalana: la creu de Sant Nicolau de Cervera. Els argenters de Cervera,” Estudis Universitaris Catalans 8 (1914): 108–201. 42 Ignasi M. Colomer, Sant Elm i la coca (Calella: Museu-Arxiu Municipal de Calella, 1989); García Sanz, Història de la marina, 140–41; Joan Amades, Els exvots (Barcelona: Orbis, 1952), 105. On devotion to Erasmus, see further Camp’s Chapter 3 in this volume. 43 Josep M. Madurell Marimón, “El pintor Lluís Borrassà. Su vida, su tiempo, sus seguidores y sus obras,” Anales y Boletín de los Museos de Arte de Barcelona 7 (1949): 58–59. 44 Agustí Duran i Sanpere, Barcelona i la seva història. L’art i la cultura, vol. 3 (Barcelona: Curial, 1975): for Bernat Martorell, see pp. 116–34 (docs. n. 55, 65); for Lluís Dalmau and Jaume Huguet, see pp. 135–79, 147–48; Madurell Marimón, “El pintor Lluís Borrassà,” 375–76 (doc. n. 365); Francesc Ruiz Quesada, “Lluís Dalmau,” in L’art gòtic a Catalunya. Pintura III, darreres manifestacions, ed. Antoni Pladevall Font (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2006), 3:51–67. 45 See Josep Gudiol i Ricart and Santiago Alcolea Blanch, Pintura gótica catalana (Barcelona: Polígrafa, 1986), 181 (cat. 503), 434 (illustration 879); Colomer, Sant Elm, 32 and passim. 46 Colomer, Sant Elm; Sjoerd de Meer “La coca de Mataró,” in Mediterraneum. L’esplendor de la Mediterrània medieval (Barcelona: Lundwerg, 2004), 573–79; Daniel Duran Duelt, “Rèplica del model de la coca de Mataró (segle XV),” in Viatjar a l’Edat Mitjana (Vic: Museu Episcopal de Vic, 2015), 142. 47 de Dalmases Balaña, Orfebreria catalana, 2:74. 48 Gabriel Llompart Moragas, “Aspectos folklóricos en la pintura gótica de Jaume Huguet y los Vergós,” Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares 29 (1973): 391–408; Joan Molina Figueras, “Hagiografía y mentalidad popular en la pintura tardogótica barcelonesa (1450–1500),” Locus Amoenus 2 (1996): 125–39. Regarding the altarpiece, in general see Margarita Tintó, El retaule gòtic de Sant Esteve de Granollers (Granollers: M. Tintó, 1990); Joaquim Garriga Riera, “L’antic retaule major de sant Esteve de Granollers, dels Vergós,” Lauro. Revista del Museu de Granollers 15 (1998): 15–35. 49 The manuscript is preserved in Catalonia Library (ms. 13); an edition of this manuscript can be found in José Hernández Serna, “El manuscrito 13 de la Biblioteca de Catalunya: Comença del Benaurat sant Honoffree la sua santa e uirtuosa vida,” Estudios románicos 8–9 (1993–95): 185–262. A wider version of the text was printed in València in 1502: Vida de sant Onofre (València: J. Costilla Impressor, 1502). This volume is still preserved in Valencia University Library. For Spanish merchants’ devotion to Onuphrius, see further Kelley’s Chapter 5 in this volume. 50 The necrology of Pedralbes was edited by María de Castro, “Necrologio del monasterio de Sta. Mª de Pedralbes (s. XIV),” Hispania Sacra 21 (1968): 391– 427. I studied the iconography of this outstanding predella in my master’s thesis: “El culte a Sant Onofre a Catalunya en època gòtica i la seva traducció plàstica” (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2006). More focused on the stylistic aspects of the piece is Rafael Cornudella Carré and Cèsar Favà Monllau, “Francesc Serra (?). Bancal de la vida de sant Onofre,” in Convidats d’honor: Exposició commemorativa del 75è aniversari del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (Barcelona: MNAC, 2009), 132–37. 51 Assumpta Escudero Ribot, El monestir de santa Maria de Pedralbes (Barcelona: Edicions de Nou Art Thor, 1988), 76–77.

150  Montserrat Barniol López 52 Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (Barcelona Historical Archive), Arxiu Notarial. I. 10. f. 27v. J. Antoni Iglesias Fonseca, “De drassanes i drassaners: Eloi de Navel (†1457), un drassaner lletraferit,” Drassana 11 (2003): 84–96; Aurell Cardona, Els mercaders catalans, 150 and 188; Jaume Aurell Cardona and Alfons Puigarnau Torelló, La cultura del mercader en la Barcelona del siglo XV (Barcelona: Omega, 1999), 263–64 and n. 199. 53 Alberto Torra, “Reyes, santos y reliquias. Aspectos de la sacralidad de la monarquía catalano-aragonesa,” in XV Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón. El poder real de la Corona de Aragón (siglos XIV–XVI) (Zaragoza: Gobierno de Aragón, 1994), 3:493–517. Regarding this topic, Francesca Español Bertran’s study on art and monarchy also provides an interesting perspective: Els escenaris del rei. Art i monarquia a la Corona d’Aragó (Manresa: Angle Editorial, 2001). 54 Español Bertran, Els escenaris del rei, 129. 55 Vicent Baydal Sala, “Santa Tecla, San Jorge y Santa Bárbara: Los monarcas de la Corona de Aragón a la búsqueda de reliquias en Oriente (siglos XIV–XV),” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 21 (2010): 153–62; Joan Molina Figueras and Mirko Vagnoni, “Sotto il segno d’Oriente. La monarchia catalano-aragonese e la ricerca del sacro nelle terre del levante mediterraneo,” in Representations of Power at the Mediterranean Borders of Europe (12th–14th centuries), eds. I. Baumgärtner, M. Vagnoni and M. Welton (Firenze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), 71–90. The manuscript was edited and studied by Josep Pijoan, “Un nou viatge a Terra Santa en català (1323),” Anuari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans 1 (1907): 370–84. 56 Baydal Sala, “Santa Tecla, San Jorge,” 153–62; Molina Figueras and Vagnoni, “Sotto il segno d’Oriente,” 71–90.

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Printed sources Aguiló, Marià. Catálogo de obras en lengua catalana impresas desde 1474 hasta 1860. Barcelona-Sueca: Curial, 1977. Ainaud de Lasarte, Joan. “Creu de Sant Nicolau. Bernat Llopart”. In Catalunya Medieval, 316–17. Barcelona: Lunwerg-Generalitat de Catalunya, 1992. Albareda, Anselm M. Història de Montserrat. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1972. Amades, Joan. Els exvots. Barcelona: Orbis, 1952. Aurell Cardona, Jaume. “La imagen del mercader medieval”. Butlletí de la Real Academia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 46 (1998): 23–44. Aurell Cardona, Jaume. Els mercaders catalans al quatre-cents. Lleida: Pagès editors, 1996. Aurell Cardona, Jaume. “Espai social i entorn físic del mercader barceloní”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Medievalia 13 (1992): 253–73. Aurell Cardona, Jaume, and Alfons Puigarnau Torelló. La cultura del mercader en la Barcelona del siglo XV. Barcelona: Omega, 1999.

Spaces and times for worship  151 Bacci, Michele. “La moltiplicazione dei luoghi sacri lungo le vie d’acqua per Gerusalemme nel tardo Medioevo”. In Peregrino, ruta y meta en las peregrinationes maiores. VIII Congreso internacional de estudios jacobeos (Santiago de Compostela, 13–15 October 2010), edited by P. Caucci von Saucken and R. Vázquez, 179–94. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2012. Bacci, Michele. “Portolano sacro. Santuari e immagini sacre lungo le rotte di navigazione del Mediterraneo tra tardo Medioevo e prima età moderna”. In The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Erik Thuno and Gerhard Wolf, 223–48. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2004. Barniol López, Montserrat. “Patrons and Advocates of the Sailors. The Saints and the Sea in Catalan Gothic”. Imago Temporis Medium Aevum 6 (2012): 249–76. Barniol López, Montserrat. “El culte a Sant Onofre a Catalunya en època gòtica i la seva traducció plàstica.” Master’s thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2006. Batany, Jean. “Un ‘estat’ trop peu ‘estable’: navigation maritime et peur de l’eau”. In L’eau au Moyen Âge, 23–42. Marseille: Publications du CUERMA, Université de Provence, 1985. Batlle i Gallart, Carme, Angels Busquets, and Inmaculada Navarro Mollevi. “Aproximació a l’estudi d’una família barcelonina els segles XII i XIV: els Grony”. Anuario de Estudios Medievales 19 (1989): 285–310. Batlle i Gallart, Carme. “Notas sobre la família de los Llobera, mercaderes barceloneses del siglo XV”. Anuario de estudios medievales 6 (1969): 535–52. Baydal Sala, Vicent. “Santa Tecla, San Jorge y Santa Bárbara: Los monarcas de la Corona de Aragón a la búsqueda de reliquias en Oriente (siglos XIV–XV)”. Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 21 (2010): 153–62. Bernaus Vidal, Magda. “Santa Maria del Pi”. In L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura II, catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, edited by Antoni Pladevall Font, 2:96–101. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, 2003. Bernaus Vidal, Magda. “Sants Just i Pastor de Barcelona”. In L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura II, catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, edited by Antoni Pladevall Font, 2:102–04. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, 2003. Borau Morell, Cristina. La fundació de capelles i retaules a la Barcelona del Segle XIV. Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2003. Borau Morell, Cristina. “L’ascens social a la Barcelona del s. XIV vist a través dels promotors de capelles de la Seu i de les grans esglésies parroquials”. Anuario de estudios medievales 32, no. 2 (2002): 693–722. Bracons Clapés, Josep. “Santa Maria del Mar”. In L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura II, catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, edited by Antoni Pladevall Font, 2:72–88. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, 2003. Bracons Clapés, Josep, and Maria Rosa Terés Tomas. “La catedral de Barcelona”. In L’Art gòtic a Catalunya, Arquitectura I, catedrals, monestirs i altres edificis religiosos, edited by Antoni Pladevall Font, 1:274–301. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, 2002. Bresc, Geneviève, and Henri Bresc. “Les saints protecteurs de bateaux. 1200–1460”. Ethnologie française 9, no. 2 (1979): 161–78. Chiffoleau, Jacques. 1988. “Dels ritus a les creences. La pràctica de la missa a l’Edat Mitjana”. L’Avenç 111 (1988): 38–49. Chiffoleau, Jacques. “Ce qui fait changer la mort dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Âge”. In Death in the Middle Ages, edited by Herman Braet and Werner Verbeke, 117–33. Lovain: Leuven University Press, 1983.

152  Montserrat Barniol López Chiffoleau, Jacques. “Sur l’usage obsessionnel de la messe pour les morts à la fin du Moyen Âge”. In Faire Croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle, 235–56. Rome: École française de Rome, 1981. Chubb, Taryn E. and Emily D. Kelley, eds. Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013. Claramunt Rodríguez, Salvador. “La muerte en la Edad Media. El mundo urbano”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Medievalia 7–8 (1986–87): 205–18. Colomer, Ignasi M. Sant Elm i la coca. Calella: Museu-Arxiu Municipal de Calella, 1989. Colón, Germà, and Arcadi García, eds. Llibre del Consolat de Mar. Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2001. Conejo Da Pena, Antoni. “Assistència i hospitalitat a l’Edat Mitjana. L’arquitectura dels hospitals catalans: del gòtic al primer renaixement”. PhD diss., Universitat de Barcelona, 2002. Cornudella Carré, Rafael. “Obres i artistes de França i dels Països Baixos a Catalunya al voltant de 1400. Manuscrits il·luminats, pintura sobre fusta, vitralls, brodats i tapissos”. In Catalunya 1400. El Gòtic Internacional, 25–37. Barcelona: MNAC, 2012. Cornudella Carré, Rafael, and Cèsar Favà Monllau. “Francesc Serra (?). Bancal de la vida de sant Onofre”. In Convidats d’honor: Exposició commemorativa del 75è aniversari del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, 132–37. Barcelona: MNAC, 2009. Cornudella Carré, Rafael. “El Mestre de la Llotja de Mar de Perpinyà (àlies Mestre de Canapost; àlies Mestre de la Seu d’Urgell)”. Locus Amoenus 7 (2004): 137–69. de Castro, Maria. “Necrologio del monasterio de Sta. Mª de Pedralbes (s. XIV)”. Hispania Sacra 21 (1968): 391–427. de Dalmases Balañà, Núria. Orfebreria catalana medieval, Barcelona, 1300–1500. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1992. de Meer, Sjoerd. “La coca de Mataró”. In Mediterraneum. L’esplendor de la Mediterrània medieval, 573–79. Barcelona: Lundwerg, 2004. de Riquer Permanyer, Borja et al. Història, política, societat i cultura dels Països Catalans. La forja dels Països Catalans, segles XIII–XV, 96–116. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 1996. Deluz, Christiane. “Pèlerins et voyageurs face à la mer (XIIe–XIVe siècles)”. In Horizons marins itinéraires spirituels (Ve–XVIIIe siècles), Marins, navires et affaires, edited by Henri Dubois, Jean-Claude Dubois, and André Vauchez, 2:277–87. París: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1987. Díaz Martí, Carles. “Noves aportacions sobre el mercader barceloní Bertran Nicolau (c. 1355–1421): riquesa, ordes monàstics i llegat testamentari”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Medievalia 32 (2014–15): 525–78. Díaz Martí, Carles. Bertran Nicolau, fundador de Sant Jeroni de la Murtra. Badalona: Museu de Badalona, 2006. Duran Duelt, Daniel. “Cat. 66. Carta de Muhammad II de Tunis a Jaume II d’Aragó amb resposta a diversos greuges presentats per alguns catalans en què l’informa de la seva entrevista amb Pere Busot, ambaixador del rei, a propòsit de la seva participació en la conquesta de Sardenya”. In Viatjar a l’Edat Mitjana, 195. Vic: Museu Episcopal de Vic, 2015. Duran Duelt, Daniel. “El viatge a Bizanci: política, guerra, religió, comerç i cultura”. In Viatjar a l’Edat Mitjana, 95–103. Vic: Museu Episcopal de Vic, 2015.

Spaces and times for worship  153 Duran Duelt, Daniel. “Rèplica del model de la coca de Mataró (segle XV)”. In Viatjar a l’Edat Mitjana, 142. Vic: Museu Episcopal de Vic, 2015. Duran Duelt, Daniel. “El context institucional de mercaders i homes de mar”. In Un Mar de Lleis. De Jaume I a Lepant, edited by Daniel Duran Duelt, 195–214. Barcelona: Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, 2008. Duran i Sanpere, Agustí. Barcelona i la seva història. L’art i la cultura. Barcelona: Curial, 1975. Duran i Sanpere, Agustí. “Orfebreria catalana: la creu de Sant Nicolau de Cervera. Els argenters de Cervera”. Estudis Universitaris Catalans 8 (1914): 108–201. Eiximenis, Francesc. Regiment de la cosa pública, edited by Josep Palomero. Alzina: Bromera, 2009. Elsig, Frédéric. “Antoine de Lonhy. Muerte de santa Mónica y Milagros ante la tumba de san Nicolás de Tolentino, c. 1460–1462”. In El Renacimiento Mediterráneo, viajes de artistas e itinerarios de obras entre Italia, Francia y España en el siglo XV, edited by Mauro Natale, 481–84. Madrid-Valencia: Museo ThyssenBornemisza-Museu de Belles Arts de València, 2001. Escudero Ribot, Assumpta. El monestir de santa Maria de Pedralbes. Barcelona: Edicions de Nou Art Thor, 1988. Español Bertran, Francesca. Els escenaris del rei. Art i monarquia a la Corona d’Aragó. Manresa: Angle Editorial, 2001. Ferrer Mallol, Maria Teresa. “Catalan Commerce in the Late Middle Ages”. Catalan Historical Review 5 (2012): 29–65. García Sanz, Arcadi. Història de la marina catalana. Barcelona: Aedos, 1977. Garriga Riera, Joaquim. “L’antic retaule major de sant Esteve de Granollers, dels Vergós”. Lauro. Revista del Museu de Granollers 15 (1988): 15–35. Gual Camarena, Miguel, ed. El primer manual hispánico de mercaderia (siglo XIV). Madrid: CSIC, 1966. Gudiol i Ricart, Josep and Santiago Alcolea Blanch. Pintura gótica catalana. Barcelona: Polígrafa, 1986. Hernández Serna, José. “El manuscrito 13 de la Biblioteca de Catalunya: ‘Comença del Benaurat sant Honoffree la sua santa e uirtuosa vida.’” Estudios románicos 8–9 (1993–95): 185–262. Iglesias Fonseca, J. Antoni. “De drassanes i drassaners: Eloi de Navel (†1457), un drassaner lletraferit”. Drassana 11 (2003): 84–96. Le Goff, Jacques. “Apostolat mendicant et fait urbain dans la France médiévale”. Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 23 (1968): 335–45. Little, Lester. K. Religious Poverty and the profit economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Llompart Moragas, Gabriel. “País, paisatge i paisanatge a la taula de sant Jordi de Pere Niçard”. In El cavaller i la princesa. El sant Jordi de Pere Nisard i la ciutat de Mallorca, edited by Gabriel Llompart Moragas and Francesc Ruiz Quesada, 59–89. Palma de Mallorca: Consell de Mallorca-Sa Nostra Caixa de Balears, 2001. Llompart Moragas, Gabriel. “Aspectos folklóricos en la pintura gótica de Jaume Huguet y los Vergós”. Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares 29 (1973): 391–408. Llompart Moragas, Gabriel. “Las tablillas votivas del Puig de Pollensa (Mallorca)”. Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares 28 (1972): 39–54. Macías Prieto, Guadaria, and Rafael Cornudella Carré. “Taller brabançó actiu a Barcelona (?). Frontal de Crist i els evangelistes”. In Convidats d’honor.

154  Montserrat Barniol López Exposició commemorativa del 75è aniversari del MNAC, 152–57. Barcelona: MNAC, 2009. Madurell Marimón, Josep M. “El pintor Lluís Borrassà. Su vida, su tiempo, sus seguidores y sus obras”. Anales y Boletín de los Museos de Arte de Barcelona 7 (1949); 8 (1950). Martín Ros, Rosa M. “El frontal de la Passió de la Seu de Manresa”. In L’art gòtic a Catalunya, Arts de l’objecte, edited by Antoni Pladevall Font, 384–85. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2008. Miret Sans, Joaquim. “El Sermó de sant Nicolau”. Revue Hispanique 28 (1963): 390–95. Molina Figueras, Joan, and Mirko Vagnoni. “Sotto il segno d’Oriente. La monarchia catalano-aragonese e la ricerca del sacro nelle terre del levante mediterraneo”. In Representations of Power at the Mediterranean Borders of Europe (12th–14th centuries), edited by I. Baumgärtner, M. Vagnoni, and M. Welton, 71–90. Firenze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014. Molina Figueras, Joan. “De la religión de obras al gusto estético. La promoción colectiva de retablos pictóricos en la Barcelona cuatrocentista”. Imafronte 12–13 (1998): 187–206. Molina Figueras, Joan. “Espacio e imagen de la Justicia. Lecturas en torno al retablo del Consulado de Mar de Perpiñán”. Locus Amoenus 3 (1997): 51–66. Molina Figueras, Joan. “Hagiografía y mentalidad popular en la pintura tardogótica barcelonesa (1450–1500)”. Locus Amoenus 2 (1996): 125–39. Molina Figueras, Joan. El Mestre de Canapost i la seva obra. Reflexions sobre el caràcter de les imatges del Retaule de la Verge de Canapost del Museu d’Art de Girona. Girona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 1995. Molina Figueras, Joan. “Relacions i intercanvis artístics entre Girona i el Rosselló a la segona meitat del segle XV”. Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 33 (1994): 481–515. Orriols Alsina, Anna. “Iconografía de San Agustín en los ciclos góticos catalanes”. Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 41 (1990): 13–46. Ors, Joan. “El ‘Libre dels Mariners’ (text i caracterització literària)”. Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 37 (1977): 213–52. Ortoll Martín, Ernest. “Algunas consideraciones sobre la iglesia de Santa Caterina de Barcelona”. Locus Amoenus 2 (1996): 47–63. Pijoan, Josep. “Un nou viatge a Terra Santa en català (1323)”. Anuari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans 1 (1907): 370–84. Pont, Maria. “El testament de Pere Grony: 1227”. Medievalia 9 (1990): 179–84. Roncière, Charles M. de la. “La foi du marchand: Florence XIVe–milieu XVe siècle”. In Le marchand au Moyen Age, XIXe Congrès de la Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur Public (Reims juin 1988), 237–50. París: Cid Éditions: 1992. Ruiz Quesada, Francesc. “Lluís Dalmau”. In L’art gòtic a Catalunya. Pintura III, darreres manifestacions, edited by Antoni Pladevall Font, 51–67. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2006. Ruiz Quesada, Francesc. “Antoine de Lonhy”. In La pintura gòtica hispanoflamenca. Bartolomé Bermejo i la seva época, 328–33. Barcelona: MNAC, 2003. Tarín, José. “Montserrat y su tradición marinera”. In Leyendas y tradiciones marineras, 59–61. Barcelona: Ediciones de la Sección de Prensa de la Diputación Provincial de Barcelona, 1954.

Spaces and times for worship  155 Tintó, Margarita. El retaule gòtic de Sant Esteve de Granollers. Granollers, 1990. Torra, Alberto. “Reyes, santos y reliquias. Aspectos de la sacralidad de la monarquía catalano-aragonesa”. In XV Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón. El poder real de la Corona de Aragón (siglos XIV–XVI), 3:493–517. Zaragoza: Gobierno de Aragón, 1994. Treppo, Mario del. Els mercaders catalans i l’expansió de la corona catalanoaragonesa al segle XV. Barcelona: Curial, Documents de Cultura, 1976. Valls Taberner, Ferran, ed. Llibre del Consolat de Mar: Consolat de Mar. Barcelona: Barcino, 1930. Varela, María Elisa. “Navegar y rezar. Devoción y piedad de las gentes de mar barcelonesas (siglos XIV y XV)”. Anuario de Estudios Medievales 29 (1999): 1119–32. Veyssière, Gérard. “Miracles et merveilles en Provence aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles à travers des textes hagiographiques”. In Miracles, prodiges et merveilles au Moyen Âge, XXV Congrès de la Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur Public (Orléans, juin 1994), 191–214. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995. Vida de sant Onofre. València: J. Costilla Impressor, 1502. Zaldívar, Antonio M. “Patricians’ Embrace of the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine in Thirteenth-Century Barcelona”. In Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean, edited by Taryn E. L. Chubb and Emily D. Kelley, 25–58. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013.

8

The Fisher Miscellany Reconstructing a late medieval merchant family’s book and its fashionable hagiography Joni Henry

Close attention to the form and content of books of hagiography surviving from late medieval England challenges any assumption that hagiography and the cult of the saints had become static traditions by the mid-fifteenth century. Instead, reading hagiographic texts within their material context – combining the interpretative tools of the history of the book with those of literary criticism – reveals a rich diversity in both the literary forms and the functions of the saints in late medieval books.1 This contextualizing of hagiography involves interpreting hagiographic texts by reference to the paratextual elements in each individual book and then drawing parallels with texts and paratexts in other books to detect broader cultural trends. Contextualizing must also examine surrounding texts to discern if their collocation alongside a saint’s life provides additional clues to late medieval readers’ habits of reading hagiography. This acknowledgment of the potential interpretive value of surrounding texts is important because hagiography seldom circulated as a single work in a stand-alone book. Saints’ lives were far more likely to be found in legendary collections and, even more commonly, to circulate in the ubiquitous miscellany manuscripts of the late medieval period.2 Indeed, the tradition of compiling saints’ lives into legendaries made hagiography a genre that invited separation and recollection into other books in much the same way as the Boccaccian and Chaucerian tale tradition invited and also reflected the collecting habits of the miscellany. Many surviving miscellanies retain evidence of discrimination in the selection and organization of hagiography even when found in unexpected company.3 These miscellanies reflect what Anthony Bale has called the “inherent instability of sanctity,” which allowed saints to encompass diverse and sometimes contradictory functions for their writers and readers.4 One such function that recurs in a number of late medieval books, particularly vernacular books owned by the laity, was the use of the saints as fashionable entertainment – a function not always in discernible harmony with the more recognized functions of the saints as practical intercessory aids or spiritual exemplars. Even in the small section of the laity covered by this volume, mercantile communities, the saints’ popularity as reading material is evident from

The Fisher Miscellany  157 surviving manuscripts and book ownership records. Kathleen L. Scott’s preliminary and extremely useful list of late medieval English merchants’ books, for example, includes fourteen books that incorporate saints’ lives, as well as thirty-seven books of hours and primers in which the saints feature so prominently. However, the idea of a fashionable function for hagiography extends beyond the mere popularity of the saints as lay reading material.5 Fashionable hagiography encompassed ostentatious displays of wealth and piety in book production as well as the emergence of a desire to collect works of the most renowned authors, including Chaucer and the East Anglian monk, poet, and hagiographer, John Lydgate. This chapter is a close examination of one medieval book, the Fisher Miscellany, which includes Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” and Lydgate’s Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund. The following introduction to Lydgate and his innovative use of the saints in his writings provides context to the subsequent codicological reading of the Fisher Miscellany and my argument that this miscellany is an intriguing example of hagiography as fashionable entertainment in late medieval lay books, as well as the adaptation of this fashion to a merchant family’s interests. Lydgate was a monk at the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds and the preeminent English poet of the fifteenth century (c. 1370–1449).6 He is best known for extravagantly long narrative poems, but his prodigious output, estimated at over 145,000 lines of verse, encompassed a great deal of devotional and didactic short verse ranging from prayers to court mummings. He wrote two epic-length verse vitae, Edmund and Fremund and the Lives of Saints Alban and Amphabal.7 Based on the number of surviving manuscripts, Edmund and Fremund was the more popular work and seemed to spark a fashion for long narrative hagiography in East Anglia in the mid-fifteenth century, as seen in the works of the later East Anglian writers, John Capgrave and Osbern Bokenham.8 Lydgate’s works continued to be a conspicuous influence on English hagiography until the English Reformation, for example in printed saints legends by William Caxton, Henry Bradshaw and, to a lesser extent, Alexander Barclay.9 Books containing Lydgate’s ambitious long-form hagiographies are not the only examples of writings about the saints collated in books that suggest early readers’ interest in literary fashion alongside the more practical intercessory and exemplary functions of the saints. A beautiful example is the collection of Lydgate’s prayers to saints in a Book of Hours now owned by Sidney Sussex College.10 This is a tiny vellum book (measuring 134 x 89 mm) that incorporates English prayers after the traditional Latin hours, including four of Lydgate’s verse prayers to saints.11 The fact that five of the six English prayers included in this manuscript are by Lydgate, the socially fashionable author favored for his aureate verse, suggests that ideas of literary fashion played a role in the choice of these additional texts.12 Lydgate is never identified as the author, but it seems unlikely that such a high proportion of his works could enter one manuscript by coincidence.

158  Joni Henry No source manuscript or connection to Lydgate’s circle has been identified; however, it is possible that speculative commercial production played a role in the making of this manuscript.13 The possibility of commercial exemplars of Lydgate’s works is supported by the existence of Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21. Linne Mooney demonstrated that this manuscript is made up of thirteen separate booklets produced by the same scribes between 1460 and 1480. She speculated that some of the booklets never left the premises of stationers or scribes but remained as shop copies from which customers could select texts.14 One of the booklets contains a collection of Lydgate’s prayers to the Virgin as well as Lydgate’s prayers to Sts. Anne and Ursula.15 This Marian collection would fit very well within a Book of Hours. A conservative dating of the Sidney Sussex manuscript, based on its contents and style, is mid-fifteenth century, placing it within the period, soon after Lydgate’s death in 1449/50, when speculative commercial exemplars of his work may have begun to circulate to satisfy or stimulate popular demand. Although Lydgate was a fashionable author, his prayers to saints in this book do not, for the most part, display the aureate verse for which he was famed. Restricted by the required brevity of the genre of prayer, Lydgate is unusually concise. Interestingly, he also concentrates on the practical use of prayers rather than on literary flourishes. Except in his prayer to St. Ursula, literary effects are subservient to the primary utilitarian purpose of petitioning saints for aid and support. For example, his “Prayers to Ten Saints” is, for the most part, a study in conciseness and practical invocation as seen in the efficient supply of the identifying attributes and story of St. Katherine: O Kateryne of the blod born royalle Of Alisaundir þi fadir him tyme a kyng Thou brake the whele fulle dredfulle and mortalle Outrayest thi tirant philesofers convuertyng The Quene with Porphury to Cristys feyȝth turnyng To suffre deth thine hede dist downe decline Pray for þi servauntis aboue with Crist regnyng Glorious pryncesse, martir and virgyne.16 (O Katherine, born royal of the blood of Alexander, your father [who was] once a king. You broke the dreadful and deadly wheel, overcame the tyrant [by] converting [the] philosophers, turning the Queen and Porphery to Christ’s faith. You bowed down your head to suffer death. Glorious princess, martyr and virgin, reigning with Christ above, pray for your servants.) This is not overly elegant and aureate language, but somber narrative language, dominated by concrete nouns and verbs and, for Lydgate at least, unusually free from adjectives. There is, for example, only one use of the otiose “ful” before another adjective, which is common in Lydgate. It is

The Fisher Miscellany  159 a style of language well suited to the accurate identification, invocation, and petition of a saint. Within the context of this manuscript, the tone and style of these prayers turns them into a series of suffrages in English verse, an alternative or supplement to the traditional Latin suffrages in Books of Hours. There is one Lydgate prayer, however, which does not demonstrate this restrained style. The “Prayer to St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins” is more overtly elegant and lacks the clear identification of the saint and succinct summary of her martyrdom seen in the other prayers. Compare the pretty description of St. Ursula with the martyrdom of St. Christina: Uppon youre hedde your storye doth deuyse For martirdome crowned with rosis rede Mellyd with lylyes for conquest in suche wyse Fresch on unfadid tokyn of your maydynhede.17 (Your story describes your head, crowned with red roses for martyrdom mixed with lilies for victory, appearing fresh and unfaded as a token of your virginity.) Suffredist peynes mortaly practysed Swerd flaume and fyre, mylk meynt and dropis rede Whan thei thy brestys gan from thi body schrede.18 ([You] suffered tortures violently inflicted [with] sword, flame and fire, milk and red drops mixed when they began to shred your breasts from your body.) The same red and white color scheme is used, but the gruesome concrete description of Christina’s infamously brutal martyrdom bears no resemblance to the literally flowery language of “St. Ursula.” There is also none of the specificity of description or invocation in “St. Ursula” and, due to this, it is inferior as a practical prayer. Yet it may have been considered superior in its deployment of the elegant language and pretty metaphors associated with Lydgate. It indicates an alternative use of prayer as a fashionable poetic exercise, perhaps even as an elegant reading pastime, a use which, like the material book in which this prayer is found, provides an interesting combination of piety and material beauty. I spend some time on the Sidney Sussex manuscript because it is a relatively simple example to introduce the mix of practical piety and fashionable and diverting entertainment based on emerging canonical authors that is also evident in the Fisher Miscellany. One half of the Fisher Miscellany is Cambridge University Library (CUL), MS Ee.2.15, once owned by a Norwich merchant. The mark of this Norwich merchant was the clue that led to the identification of its missing half: Cambridge, Magdelene College, Pepys Library MS 2030. Before turning to the textual contents, I wish to spend some time on the codicological evidence supporting the pairing of

160  Joni Henry these two manuscripts, not only because the two manuscripts have not previously been linked, but also because the paratextual elements provide evidence about the miscellany’s mercantile provenance and its use by its early merchant readers. (I use the phrase “Fisher Miscellany” to refer to the entire miscellany and the manuscript shelfmarks to refer to the two parts.) The contents of the two manuscripts in their current order are set out in the following table, but the original order of the texts is impossible to determine due to the damage sustained by both manuscripts and their early separation. In CUL, MS Ee.2.15, at the beginning of Costauns, better known as Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, is an amateur heraldic device that includes a merchant’s mark (Figure 8.1). In the nineteenth century, the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society recorded this mark “on a stone in the wall of an old house on the East side of the Duke Palace’s yard.”19 Sadly, the Duke’s Palace is now a car park and the stone is no more, but unlike many of the merchant’s marks that survived on the stones of Norwich and elsewhere, we can make a reasonable guess at the name of this mark’s owner. It was probably used by a merchant named Fisher based on the figure at the top of the device – a fish with the letters e and r beside it. Supporting this not overly shrewd interpretation of the device is the occurrence of the name “Wylliam fisher,” written in a fifteenth-century hand later in the manuscript.20 This might be the William Fisher of Norfolk recorded as a joint feoffee, or property holder, with John Cook in a Chancery case brought by Robert Thakker of Norwich in 1452–54.21 By happy accident, I showed this mark to Richard Beadle, who recognized it from a Pepys manuscript he had cataloged. On further examination, it was clear that the same Table 8.1 Contents of the Fisher Miscellany manuscripts CUL, MS Ee.2.15: fols. 1r–16v [Fragment of Mirk’s Festial, IPMEP 734]1 fols. 18r–35v Costauns [Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, NIMEV 4019] fols. 38r–40v Three Questions [excerpt from Confessio Amantis, NIMEV 2622] fols. 44r–46v King of Hungary [excerpt from Confessio Amantis, NIMEV 2622] fols. 48r–105v Seint Edmvnde and Seint Fremond [Lydgate’s, NIMEV 3440] fols. 107r–111r Þe Chartur [Long Charter of Christ, NIMEV 4154] fols. 111v–112v [SEL excerpt, legend of St Augustine of Canterbury, NIMEV 2854] Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 2030: fols. 1r–17v [Thomas Brampton’s Seven Penitential Psalms, NIMEV 1591] fols. 18r–v [Fragment from preface to Fifteen Oes, IPMEP 17] fols. 19r–132v [Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son, NIMEV 1540] 1

Lewis, Blake, and Edwards, Index of Printed Middle English Prose (IPMEP).

The Fisher Miscellany  161

Figure 8.1 Heraldic device with merchant’s mark. Cropped image reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, CUL MS Ee.2.15, fol. 18r.

mark had been written in both manuscripts. In CUL, MS Ee.2.15, the mark occurs within a decorated initial as well as in the amateur heraldic device, and this is the same mark which appears four times in Pepys MS 2030 (Figure 8.2).22 A closer inspection of both manuscripts reveals that they share other features besides the merchant’s mark. Almost all the texts were written by a single scribe in a late fifteenth-century hand modeled on secretary.23 The distinctive features of the hand of the main scribe include a narrow form of lower case h, two versions of capital T used interchangeably and, most notably, the same large flourishes, crossed in red, added to the ascenders of the top line and descenders of the bottom line as decoration on most leaves. The two parts of the Fisher Miscellany also share the same paper stock and other decorative features, namely running titles in red display script and red dashes used to fill up lines of verse.24 The presence of the same scribal hand, merchant’s mark, paper stock, and the strikingly similar mise-en-page in both manuscripts indicates that

162  Joni Henry

Figure 8.2 Decorated initial with merchant’s mark. Cropped image reproduced by permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalene College Cambridge, MS 2030, fol. 101v.

they were once part of the same book or, at least, a matching pair designed to be read as a collection.25 That they were read and kept together is clear from a series of marginal sketches by the same amateur artist in both manuscripts. His or her best work is in the Cambridge University Library manuscript, where there are sketches of a shepherd playing his bagpipes beside a pair of lovers, a jester, hares bouncing along the lower margin, and some form of ball game which seems to be a game of racketless real tennis.26 There are no such charming scenes in the Pepys manuscript, but there is a man sketched in the same manner as the shepherd and gallants of the Cambridge University Library manuscript and a small upright hare that is the mirror image of one in the other manuscript (compare Figures 8.3 and 8.4).27 All these illustrations are in the same, or very similar, inks to those used for the marginal decorations, indicating they were drawn not long after the copying and illustration of the text. Manly and Rickert concluded that they were drawn by the decorator or a very early owner.28 There are other illustrations in the Pepys manuscript that are in a darker ink and are more rudimentary, leading the later Pepys cataloguers to observe that this manuscript may have been in the hands of young children at some early stage in its life.29 Since the bulk of this half of the Fisher Miscellany is made up of

Figure 8.3 Young man in CUL manuscript. Cropped image reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, CUL MS Ee.2.15, fol. 98r.

Figure 8.4 Young man in Pepys manuscript. Cropped image reproduced by permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalene College Cambridge, MS 2030, fol. 33r.

164  Joni Henry Peter Idley’s poem, designed for a young audience, this theory of one or more child readers with access to ink is possible. In contrast, the other set of illustrations display a greater sophistication; for example, the depiction of the ball game includes speech scrolls in which the letters are in a neat hand, similar to the main scribe (Figure 8.5). This playful artist seems more likely to have been an older member of the Fisher household or someone involved in the composition or early circulation of this book. These illustrations of secular pursuits scribbled in the margins of psalms, a didactic poem, hagiography, and a pseudo-hagiography tale by Chaucer are a fascinating insight into the use of this miscellany by its early readers. They all depict leisurely secular pursuits seemingly at odds with the moral and religious concerns of the surrounding texts. Following Michael Camille, it might be tempting to view these as marginal fun rebelling against the moral and pious center.30 Yet if reading is considered a pleasurable leisurely activity as well as a morally acceptable one, then the juxtaposition is not at all jarring. The texts of the Fisher Miscellany present a moral universe in which such leisure activities could be pursued without censure and without conflict with the texts. The position of the ball game in the manuscript is a nice visual demonstration of the compatibility of text and margin in this book. The ball game occurs on a recto leaf where the scribe has left off copying Lydgate’s Edmund and jotted down a catchword so he will not lose his place when he resumes

Figure 8.5 Ball game. Cropped image reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, CUL MS Ee.2.15, fol. 81r.

The Fisher Miscellany  165 or receives another piece of his exemplar.31 Interestingly, the game does not occur in the true margin but in the position where the fourth and last stanza would have appeared if the scribe had not paused. It looks as if the picture intruded into the textual space during the scribe’s drink break. The game does not, in this context, look like a transgressive invasion of textual space but rather the replacement of one newly fashionable leisurely pursuit, a game of tennis, while waiting for another sanctioned and fashionable pastime to resume, such as copying and reading a fashionable saint’s life by the local laureate poet Lydgate. This sketch perfectly fits with the leisurely entertainment provided by the Fisher Miscellany and its fashionable but unchallenging hagiography. The selection and combination of the works themselves provide further insight into the reading interests of a Norwich merchant family and, particularly, the role of hagiography in their leisure reading. The first piece in the collection was probably the Man of Law’s Tale, given that this is the only text with a heraldic device included in a large decorative margin (Figure 8.1). Why this tale, with its pseudo-hagiographic elements, over all the others in The Canterbury Tales? Perhaps Mr. Fisher heard the opening lines, “In Surrey wylom dwelled a company / Of chapmen ryche, and ther to sad and trewe” (In Syria, there once dwelled a company of rich, and also serious and honest, traders), and was attracted to a story about merchants in his own best image.32 There is no evidence that the Prologue was ever included in the manuscript and, therefore, no way to tell if he also knew its praise of merchants, “O noble, o prudent folk,” and its admiration for the wonderful tales they tell.33 However, there are lines in the tale itself, which survive in this manuscript, that also recount the role of merchants as tellers of “tidynges” and “wondres” (news and wonders).34 The tale presents storytelling as a valuable commodity, particularly useful for merchants, therein providing justification for the Fisher family to incur the cost and effort of commissioning this book. Thinking of merchants as bearers of stories as well as of goods requires a reassessment of the purpose of the merchant’s mark in this miscellany. Spending the extra time, cost, and effort to mark a book is not just stating that the book is Fisher property; it is also stating that it is property worthy of bearing the Fisher mark. A little decorative filler becomes, in this light, not just an assertion of ownership but an assertion of quality and value. Contrary to our own ideas of the value of books, which tend to champion the literary value of the text often by reference to the perceived abilities of the authors of those words, in late fifteenth-century Norwich, marking the book with the Fisher device seems to have been more determinative of quality than marking the text with the name of Chaucer or any other famous poet, none of whom receive a mention in either manuscript. It is also interesting to look again at how the mark is incorporated into these manuscripts in a distinctly armigerous style. Sheila Lindenbaum

166  Joni Henry argues that the assumption of arms and the commissioning of books were used by London merchant elites to mark their status as urban aristocrats.35 The Fisher Miscellany and its incorporation of a merchant’s mark into an armigerous device may similarly record the Fishers’ position in the Norfolk urban elite or their aspiration for such social advancement. One text invites a reading of the collection as aspirational. In Gower’s Three Questions, a young girl advances her family from commoners to aristocrats and herself to queen using her wits and good character. The other texts in the book then become the worthy works such a young girl might have studied as part of her moral and intellectual education. These works have connections with each other beyond simple “worthiness,” instruction, or the desire to collect fashionable works by moral and learned authors. The parallels between the various texts are highlighted by their juxtaposition in the miscellany. For example, the moral lessons in the two fantastic tales from the Confessio Amantis, both tales about humility, resonate with the same concern for humility and acceptance of God’s will as found in many hagiographies. Similarly, the suffering of Constance, which has often been interpreted as more romance than saint’s life, appears far more like hagiography when read beside Lydgate’s Edmund and the extract from the South English Legendary. The parallels extend beyond these broad moral lessons; there are also recurring motifs in different works. The motif of the rudderless boat is one such parallel.36 Constance embarks three times on a rudderless boat and is guided to shore, saved from a rapist, and picked up by a passing ship, by the will of Christ, the grace of God, and the intervention of the Virgin respectively.37 In the life of St. Fremund, the saint also voluntarily boards a rudderless boat and trusts that God will guide him to the place where he can begin his newly chosen ascetic life as a hermit.38 In both the Man of Law’s Tale and St. Fremund, the rudderless boat is a potent symbol of the incredible passivity of its passenger and his or her complete faith in God’s providence. This passivity is most clearly shown in the constant inaction of Constance, who accepts all her bad fortune with equanimity and does not attempt to improve her situation. The same passivity can also be seen in the absence of action by St. Fremund at crucial moments. For example, when asked to return to defend the East Anglian kingdom from the Danes, St. Fremund is torn between his duty to his homeland and his vow to live as a religious recluse, but the need to decide is removed from him when an angel appears in a dream and tells him to return home.39 The absence of agency is also detectable in the messengers who were sent to find St. Fremund and manage it “at the laste, only by Goddis grace” (eventually, only by God’s grace).40 There is a weaker but still discernible echo of this passivity in the Gower tales in which both knights obediently accept their likely and unjust deaths at the hands of seemingly capricious rulers, with their only hope being to obtain their sovereign’s grace or forgiveness.41

The Fisher Miscellany  167 The motif of the rudderless boat highlights the importance of the miraculous and of fate in these stories. Heroes are steered to safety by God, or malign fate casts a villain ashore, enabling him to exact revenge. The regicide Bern in St. Edmund is set adrift on another rudderless boat, but by “hap and fortune” (luck and fortune) reaches Denmark to instigate the invasion of East Anglia by the Danes and the martyrdom of King Edmund.42 There is a similar emphasis on fate in the Man of Law’s Tale when the alignment of the stars foretells the disastrous outcome of Constance’s marriage to the Sultan of Syria: O furste mueuyng Cruelle fyrmament Wyth thy duryng hevynes that crovdest ay And hurlest alle from est tylle occident That naturally wolde holde anoder waye Thy crovydyng sette the hevyn in suche araye At the begynnyng of thys fayre wyage That crvelle Marys hathe sleyne thys maryage.43 (O first moving, cruel firmament, with your daily motion that ever pushes and hurls everything from east to west, that naturally would go another way. Your pressure set the heavens in such an arrangement at the beginning of this good voyage that cruel Mars has slain this marriage.) This emphasis on divine providence, malign fate, and the influence of the stars creates a world free from human agency. There is no great difficulty in being among the good, and the good will be rewarded. The wicked, on the other hand, are comfortingly fantastic and rare. Misfortune is not caused by the divine wrath of God or by the sins of individuals but by mischievous fate or unlucky stars.44 Even in the face of misfortune, a good Christian has only to trust in God’s providence and in the miracles performed by his divine saints and all will be well. The confrontational piety of other writings about martyrdom is tamed and gentrified.45 In the Fisher Miscellany there are no disruptive female martyrs such as St. Cecilia in Chaucer’s Second Nun’s Tale or impoverished saints who reject riches and marriage such as St. Alexius in another late medieval English miscellany of romance and hagiography, Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29.46 In their place are passive women and heroic kingly saints who provide no challenge to the wealth and leisurely pursuits of well-to-do merchants such as the Fishers. The high value placed on passive suffering is mirrored in the fragment of the Festial added to the beginning of the University Library manuscript, probably after it was separated from the rest of the Fisher Miscellany. It begins imperfectly with the feast of St. Nicholas and ends imperfectly with St. Thomas of Canterbury.47 Although the fragment of the Festial was originally part of another manuscript, as shown by its earlier hand

168  Joni Henry and different paper stock, this popular collection of vernacular sermons for saints’ feast days shares the same basic characteristics of much of the manuscript: popular vernacular religious texts with a hagiographic bent.48 There is also an interesting annotation in the Festial suggesting that the link with the rest of the manuscript is more than just their common interest in saints. Alongside the sermon for the feast of St. Stephen is a note, in a later hand, in a mix of Latin and English: “Nota quod quis þat esse martir sine sanguine effusione etc” (Note: he who is a martyr without shedding blood etc.). The note is above a hand pointing to a section of the sermon that reads: Thus may a man be a martyr though he shede not his blood. That is whan he suffreth wronge and pursute of euel men and thankis god therof and takis it with good will and prayeth for his enemyes to god in ful charite.49 (In this way may a man be a martyr although he does not shed his blood. That is, when he suffers the wickedness and persecution of evil men and thanks God for it and takes it with good will and prays to God for his enemies in true charity.) It is interesting that a later reader of the Festial took the time to note this concept of martyrdom dependent solely on submission, since this concept of passive suffering and acceptance of God’s will is very much in evidence in the works that were originally part of the complete Fisher Miscellany and survive in the same manuscript half as the Festial addition, particularly the portrayals of Constance in the Man of Law’s Tale and Sts. Edmund and Fremund in Lydgate’s hagiography. The collocation of the Festial with the other texts in the Fisher Miscellany, whether by intention or accident, suggests readers who valued a form of sanctity centered on acceptance of one’s fate and faith in God. This subdued and conservative reading of hagiography contrasts strikingly with subversive saints who challenge the established church, such as those whom Karen Winstead and Sarah James identify in the “dissident orthodoxy” of Capgrave’s hagiography, or political saints participating in contemporary political and social debates, such as Winstead finds in her study of virgin martyr texts or other critics have detected in Lydgate’s Edmund and Fremund when it was presented to Henry VI.50 The appeal of this quieter and apparently more palatable sanctity to members of the mercantile class is suggested by the diversity of genres in which such passivity is valued in this Fisher Miscellany: from the Festial sermon to Gower’s didactic poem, from Lydgate’s hagiography to Chaucer’s pseudo-saintly romance. It is a type of martyrdom that a wealthy leisured and lay audience could enjoy. After all, this martyrdom only requires that one passively accept all that fate throws in one’s way, trust in the benevolence of God, and enjoy the pious tales that fashionable authors or merchants can tell.

The Fisher Miscellany  169

Notes 1 My “material text” approach to the reading and interpretation of medieval books and their contents adopts tools and theories promoted by “new philology” or “total codicology.” Stephen G. Nichols introduces these approaches in “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65 (1990): 1–10. These concepts have been re-evaluated by Arthur Bahr and Alexandra Gillespie, “Medieval English Manuscripts: Form, Aesthetics, and the Literary Text,” Chaucer Review 47 (2013): 346–60. Examples of studies adopting material text approaches, or discussing their interpretative value, that have influenced my work include Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds., The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson, eds., Imagining the Book (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Julia Boffey, Manuscript and Print in London, c. 1475–1530 (London: British Library, 2012); Vincent Gillespie, Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); and Mary C. Flannery and Carrie Griffin, Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 2 The dominance of miscellanies in the circulation of late medieval hagiography is apparent from the catalogues of surviving manuscripts. For example, for vernacular verse hagiography listed in Julia Boffey, A. S. G. Edwards, and Carleton Brown, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005) (NIMEV), seventy-eight miscellany manuscripts contain one or more hagiographies. In comparison, there are only twelve vitae surviving in free-standing volumes, eight of which are Lydgate’s hagiographies of Edmund and Alban (NIMEV 3440, 3748, 6, 1805, 3677, 2879); and forty-seven legendaries, dominated by the South English Legendary, with thirty copies; then sixteen copies of the Northern Homily Cycle; and one each of the Scottish Legendary and of Bokenham’s Legendys of Hooly Wummen. Bokenham’s tally should be increased by one following the discovery of his fuller version of the Legenda Aurea in Sir Walter Scott’s library, as discussed by Simon Horobin, “A Manuscript Found in the Library of Abbotsford House and the Lost Legendary of Osbern Bokenham,” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 14 (2008): 130–62. (The NIMEV numbers for lives in the legendaries and miscellanies are too numerous to list because each life is given a separate number.) 3 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book; Yearbook of English Studies: Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies 33 (2003): 1–340 explore the possibilities of miscellany studies for furthering understanding of medieval book production and reading practices. Derek Pearsall, “The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscellanies and Their Modern Interpreters,” in Imagining the Book, ed. Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), and Joseph A. Dane, Abstractions of Evidence in the Study of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books (Farnham & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009) address the difficulties and dangers of miscellany interpretation. 4 Anthony Bale, “Introduction: St. Edmund’s Medieval Lives,” in St. Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, ed. Anthony Bale (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009), 25. 5 Kathleen L. Scott, “Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages,” in Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), 150–77. 6 Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (1371–1449): A Bio-bibliography (Victoria: University of Victoria, 1997) remains the best biographical introduction to Lydgate.

170  Joni Henry 7 Edmund and Fremund was commissioned by Lydgate’s abbot at Bury St. Edmunds, William Curteys, to commemorate the young King Henry VI’s extended visit to the abbey in 1433–1434 and his induction into the abbey’s confraternity, as Lydgate reports in the poem’s prologue (lines 106–12). The manuscript presented to Henry survives as British Library, MS Harley 2278, and was probably completed in the late 1430s, according to Anthony Bale and A. S. G. Edwards, “Introduction,” in John Lydgate’s “Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund” and the “Extra Miracles of St. Edmund,” edited by Anthony Bale and A. S. G. Edwards (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009), 18–19. 8 There are thirteen surviving manuscripts of Edmund and Fremund, compared to four manuscripts and one early print edition of Alban and Amphibal, which are listed and described in Bale and Edwards, “Introduction,” 11–18; and the introduction to John Lydgate, The Life of Saint Alban and Saint Amphibal, ed. J. E. Van der Westhuizen (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 3–12. There are few examples of long narrative hagiographies in English that can be reliably dated prior to the composition of Edmund in 1434. Karen A. Winstead, “Lydgate’s Lives of Saints Edmund and Alban: Martyrdom and ‘Prudent Policie,’” Mediaevalia 17 (1994): 221–41, at n. 2 notes that the roughly contemporary prose lives of Katherine of Alexandria and Alban from the 1438 Gilte Legende are of comparable scope and complexity to Lydgate’s Edmund. Her list does not include Simon Winter’s prose Life of St. Jerome, which is another possible antecedent or contemporary, composed between 1422 and 1440 according to E. Gordon Whatley, Anne Thompson, and Robert Upchurch, “St. Jerome: Introduction,” in Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections, ed. Whatley, Thompson, and Upchurch (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), 111. The lives of St. Edith (NIMEV 243) and St. Etheldreda (NIMEV 3090), which survive in British Library, MS Cotton Faustina B.ii, fols. 199r–263r and 265r–279v, have been dated c. 1420, but this early date was queried by Gordon Hall Gerould, Saints’ Legends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 275–76. Peter Lucas, From Author to Audience: John Capgrave and Medieval Publication (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1997), xv–xvii, 281–84, argued that only the prologue of Capgrave’s St. Norbert was written in 1440 and the rest composed before 1422, a date challenged by C. L. Smetana in the introduction to John Capgrave, The Life of St. Norbert, edited by C. L. Smetana (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1977), 10–11. Even if Lucas’s early date is correct, the dedication and circulation of the work in 1440 fits with a new interest in long vernacular hagiography after 1434. 9 The influence of Lydgate on later hagiographies such as Caxton’s St. Wenefryde, printed 1485, Bradshaw’s St. Werburge, 1521, and Barclay’s St. George, 1515, is discussed by Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970), 281, and Karen A. Winstead, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 9–10, 137–38. 10 Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 37, described in M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), 24–25. 11 The Lydgate prayers are “Prayers to Ten Saints” (NIMEV 529), Sidney Sussex, MS 37, fols. 142r–145r; “St. Leonard” (NIMEV 2812), fols. 145v–147r; “St. Ursula” (NIMEV 4243), fols. 147r–148r; and “St. Zita” (NIMEV 1050), fol.148r–v. The poems are printed in John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part I, Religious Poems, ed. H. N. MacCracken, EETS e.s. 107 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1911), 120–24, 135–37, 144, 137. The seamless incorporation of the English prayers into this manuscript, presented as quasi-prose in the same format as the traditional Latin prayers in the Hours, is discussed by A. S. G. Edwards, “Fifteenth-Century English Collections of Female Saints’ Lives,” Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 131–41, at 132.

The Fisher Miscellany  171 12 In addition to the four saints’ prayers, there is a prayer to the Virgin (NIMEV 2556), Sidney Sussex, MS 37, fols. 145v–48v, and a version of the “Fifteen O’s,” fols. 130v–39r, which differs from Lydgate’s version (NIMEV 2469; Minor Poems, 238–43) and other versions recorded in Robert E. Lewis, N. F. Blake, and A. S. G. Edwards, Index of Printed Middle English Prose (New York: Garland, 1985), 489. 13 Linne R. Mooney summarizes the scholarly debate on the extent of speculative manuscript production in the mid-fifteenth century in “Locating Scribal Activity in Late Medieval London,” in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. Margaret Connolly and Linne Mooney (York: York Medieval Press, 2008), 170–95. 14 Linne R. Mooney, “Scribes and Booklets of Trinity College, Cambridge, Manuscripts R.3.19 and R.3.21,” in Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions, Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. A. J. Minnis (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), 241–66. 15 Trinity College Cambridge, MS R.3.21, Booklet V, fols. 157r–72v. Its contents are listed in Mooney, “Scribes and Booklets,” 243. 16 Sidney Sussex, MS 37, fol. 144r; Lydgate, “Prayers to Ten Saints,” Minor Poems: Part I, lines 57–62. 17 Sidney Sussex, MS 37, fol. 147v, Lydgate, “St. Ursula,” Minor Poems: Part I, lines 13–16. 18 Sidney Sussex, MS 37, fol. 144v, Lydgate, “Prayers to Ten Saints,” Minor Poems: Part I, lines 83–85. 19 William C. Ewing, “Notices of the Norwich Merchant Marks,” Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society 3 (1852): 177–228, at 213, Plate IX, no. 7; E. M. Elmhirst, Merchants’ Marks (London: Harleian Society, 1959), 6, no. 1216. 20 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 80r. Other ownership inscriptions are described in John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 8 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 1:128; M. C. Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1995), 1:133. 21 PRO C1/19/333. It seems unlikely that this is the same William Fisher noted by Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1:126, who died on 29 September 1497 and is recorded as holding land in Clapham, Surrey: Public Record Office, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1898), no. 315. Manly and Rickert do not record the subsequent dispute over this land (see PRO C1/201/48), which records William’s son and heir, Henry Fisher, as 20 years old at the time of his father’s death. 22 The mark occurs on fol. 101v, twice on fol. 105v, and as an offset on fol. 43v in Pepys MS 2030. 23 The exception is the Festial extract, which is in a fourteenth-century hand and on paper not used elsewhere in the manuscripts. Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1:126, identify the Festial watermark as a fleur-de-lis not found in C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600 (London: Quaritch, 1907). Damage on the extract’s outer leaves indicates that it spent time as an unbound quire. The final fourteen stanzas of Peter Idley’s Instructions are written in a different hand; see Pepys MS 2030, fols. 131r–33v. 24 The main watermark in CUL, MS Ee.2.15 is a couronne similar to Briquet 4645 (1459–69), found on leaves 18–68 and 96–112. An anneau similar to Briquet 689 (1457–74) is on leaves 69–72 and 81–94, and a faint, almost unreadable mark is on leaves 73–80, which Seymour, Catalogue identifies as a ciseaux with no identified form in Briquet. Pepys MS 2030 has the same couronne mark on leaves 1–18 and the anneau on leaves 19–132.

172  Joni Henry 25 Charles Owen, The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), 112, argued against a planned collection and contended that CUL, MS Ee.2.15 was originally made up of separate booklets based on the damage to the Man of Law’s Tale. This explanation is unconvincing and ignores other codicological evidence. While a booklet scenario could explain the damage at the start and end of the Man of Law’s Tale and one of the Confessio Amantis extracts, it does not explain similar damage within these and other texts. For example, the Man of Law’s Tale is missing lines 463–686 (approximately four leaves) and lines 742–98 (one leaf), and St. Edmund is missing three single leaves (l.344– 462, 792–847, 2227–96). 26 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fols. 19v, 23r, 79r, 81r. Julian Marshall, The Annals of Tennis (London: “The Field” Office, 1878), 52–64, and T. Todd, The Tennis Players: From Pagan Rites to Strawberries and Cream (Guernsey: Vallancey Press, 1979), 17–28, outline tennis’s precursors in England. 27 Pepys MS 2030, fol. 16r; cf. CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 79r. 28 Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1:128. 29 Rosamond McKitterick and Richard Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, ed. Robert Latham (Cambridge: Brewer, 1992), 48. 30 Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1992). 31 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 81r. 32 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 18r. Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Man of Law’s Tale,” in The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry Benson, 3rd edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), lines 134–35. All line references are to this edition. Quotations are from the manuscript unless lines are missing, in which case the edition is used. 33 Chaucer, “The Man of Law’s Tale,” lines 122–33, at 123. 34 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 20r, lines 181–82. 35 Sheila Lindenbaum, “London Texts and Literate Practice,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 301–03. 36 Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 106–36 surveys the boat motif. 37 Chaucer, “The Man of Law’s Tale,” lines 438–511, 799–945, 946–70. Some lines are missing from CUL, MS, Ee.2.15 due to damage: lines 463–511, 820– 26 are completely missing, lines 450–62, 848–49 are fragmentary. However, enough of each passage survives to indicate that they were originally included. 38 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 89v; John Lydgate, John Lydgate’s “Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund” and the “Extra Miracles of St. Edmund,” edited by Anthony Bale and A. S. G. Edwards (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009), lines 2391–408. 39 CUL, MS Ee.2.15., fol. 92r; Lydgate, Edmund and Fremund, lines 2515–84. 40 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 91r; Lydgate, Edmund and Fremund, line 2486. 41 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fols. 38r–46r; John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Russel A. Peck (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), lines 2142–59, 3117–334. 42 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 60v; Lydgate, Edmund and Fremund, lines 1282–322. 43 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 21r; Chaucer, “The Man of Law’s Tale,” lines 295–301. 44 John A. Yunck, “Religious Elements in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale,” ELH 27 (1960): 249–61 discusses divine providence in this tale. 45 Yunck, “Religious Elements,” 250, argues that Chaucer carefully excised Constance’s militant sanctity from his source. 46 The Naples manuscript is described in Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1:376–77; Seymour, Catalogue 1:149–50.

The Fisher Miscellany  173 47 For the equivalent section, see John Mirk, John Mirk’s Festial, ed. Susan Powell, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 334–335 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 2:12–44. 48 For hand and paper, see note 24. 49 CUL, MS Ee.2.15, fol. 10r; Mirk, Festial, 2:30. 50 Winstead, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century; Sarah James, “‘Doctryne and studie’: Female Learning and Religious Debate in Capgrave’s Life of St. Katherine,” Leeds Studies in English ns 36 (2005): 275–30; Karen A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). On Lydgate’s political commentary in Edmund and Fremund, see Winstead, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century, 116–37; Winstead, “Lydgate’s Lives of Saints Edmund and Alban”; Fiona Somerset, “‘Hard Is with Seyntis for to Make Affray’: Lydgate the ‘Poet-Propagandist’ as Hagiographer,” in John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006); Katherine J. Lewis, “Edmund of East Anglia, Henry VI and Ideals of Kingly Masculinity,” in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004).

Bibliography Unprinted sources Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2030. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 37. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21. Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.2.15. London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B.ii. London, British Library, Harley MS 2278. Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29.

Printed sources Bahr, Arthur, and Alexandra Gillespie. “Medieval English Manuscripts: Form, Aesthetics, and the Literary Text”. Chaucer Review 47 (2013): 346–60. Bale, Anthony. “Introduction: St. Edmund’s Medieval Lives”. In St. Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, edited by Anthony Bale, 1–25. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009. Bale, Anthony, and A. S. G. Edwards. “Introduction”. In John Lydgate’s “Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund” and the “Extra Miracles of St. Edmund”, edited by Anthony Bale and A. S. G. Edwards, 1–29. Middle English Texts 41. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. Boffey, Julia. Manuscript and Print in London, c. 1475–1530. London: British Library, 2012. Boffey, Julia, A. S. G. Edwards, and Carleton Brown. A New Index of Middle English Verse. London: British Library, 2005. Briquet, C. M. Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600. Facsimile edition of 1907 edition. 4 vols. London: Quaritch, 1907. Amsterdam: Paper Publications Society, 1968. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion Books, 1992.

174  Joni Henry Capgrave, John. The Life of St. Norbert, edited by C. L. Smetana. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1977. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Man of Law’s Tale”. In The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry Benson, 87–104. 3rd edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Cooper, Helen. The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Dane, Joseph A. Abstractions of Evidence in the Study of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Farnham & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. Edwards, A. S. G. “Fifteenth-Century English Collections of Female Saints’ Lives”. Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 131–41. Elmhirst, E. M. Merchants’ Marks. London: Harleian Society, 1959. Ewing, William C. “Notices of the Norwich Merchant Marks”. Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society 3 (1852): 177–228. Flannery, Mary C., and Carrie Griffin. Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Gerould, Gordon Hall. Saints’ Legends. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916. Gillespie, Vincent. Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Gower, John. Confessio Amantis, edited by Russell A. Peck. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. Horobin, Simon. “A Manuscript Found in the Library of Abbotsford House and the Lost Legendary of Osbern Bokenham”. English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 14 (2008): 130–62. James, M. R. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895. James, Sarah. “‘Doctryne and Studie’: Female Learning and Religious Debate in Capgrave’s Life of St. Katherine”. Leeds Studies in English ns 36 (2005): 275–30. Kelly, Stephen, and John J. Thompson, eds. Imagining the Book. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Lewis, Katherine J. “Edmund of East Anglia, Henry VI and Ideals of Kingly Masculinity”. In Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, edited by P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, 158–73. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004. Lewis, Robert E., N. F. Blake, and A. S. G. Edwards. Index of Printed Middle English Prose. New York: Garland, 1985. Lindenbaum, Sheila. “London Texts and Literate Practice”. In The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, edited by David Wallace, 284–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lucas, Peter. From Author to Audience: John Capgrave and Medieval Publication. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1997. Lydgate, John. John Lydgate’s “Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund” and the “Extra Miracles of St. Edmund,” edited by Anthony Bale and A. S. G. Edwards. Middle English Texts 41. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. Lydgate, John. The Life of Saint Alban and Saint Amphibal, edited by J. E. Van der Westhuizen. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Lydgate, John. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part I Religious Poems, edited by H. N. MacCracken. EETS, e.s. 107. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1911. Manly, John M., and Edith Rickert. The Text of The Canterbury Tales. 8 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

The Fisher Miscellany  175 Marshall, Julian. The Annals of Tennis. London: “The Field” Office, 1878. McKitterick, Rosamond, and Richard Beadle. Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, edited by Robert Latham. Cambridge: Brewer, 1992. Mirk, John. John Mirk’s Festial, edited by Susan Powell, 2 vols. EETS o.s. 334–335. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Mooney, Linne R. “Locating Scribal Activity in Late Medieval London”. In Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, edited by Margaret Connolly and Linne Mooney, 170–95. York: York Medieval Press, 2008. Mooney, Linne R. “Scribes and Booklets of Trinity College, Cambridge, Manuscripts R.3.19 and R.3.21”. In Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, edited by A. J. Minnis, 241–66. York: York Medieval Press, 2001. Nichols, Stephen G. “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture”. Speculum 65 (1990): 1–10. Nichols, Stephen G., and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Owen, Charles. The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer Studies 17. Cambridge: Brewer, 1991. Pearsall, Derek. John Lydgate. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970. Pearsall, Derek. John Lydgate (1371–1449): A Bio-bibliography. Victoria: University of Victoria, 1997. Pearsall, Derek. “The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscellanies and Their Modern Interpreters”. In Imagining the Book, edited by Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson, 17–29. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Public Record Office. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office. Vol. 2. London: HMSO, 1898. Scott, Kathleen L. “Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages”. In Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, edited by Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall, 150–77. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Seymour, M. C. A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts. 2 vols. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995. Somerset, Fiona. “‘Hard Is with Seyntis for to Make Affray’: Lydgate the ‘PoetPropagandist’ as Hagiographer”. In John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, edited by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson, 258–78. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Todd, T. The Tennis Players: From Pagan Rites to Strawberries and Cream. Guernsey: Vallancey Press, 1979. Whatley, E. Gordon, Anne Thompson, and Robert Upchurch. “St. Jerome: Introduction”. In Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections, edited by E. Gordon Whatley, Anne Thompson, and Robert Upchurch, 103–18. TEAMS. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004. Winstead, Karen A. John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Winstead, Karen A. Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

176  Joni Henry Winstead, Karen A. “Lydgate’s Lives of Saints Edmund and Alban: Martyrdom and ‘Prudent Policie’”. Mediaevalia 17 (1994): 221–41. Yearbook of English Studies: Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies 33 (2003): 1–340. Yunck, John A. “Religious Elements in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale”. ELH 27 (1960): 249–61.

Part III

Holy protectors for merchant corporations

9

London’s goldsmiths and the cult of St. Dunstan, ca. 1430–15301 Gary G. Gibbs

Saints served a variety of functions in pre-Reformation culture. Most importantly, of course, they received the prayerful invocations of the faithful, but saints also provided symbolic representations of ideas, values, and communities. They also proved useful in political and social discourses. Given that certain groups in London developed special associations with specific saints, it seems likely that – depending on the group and neighborhood – devotions to certain saints would have been concentrated in specific areas of the city. Such correlations of saintly veneration to place created part of an everchanging spiritual landscape for the city, a landscape that was anchored firmly by the city’s parish churches, monasteries, chapels, and approximately four anchorites located along the city’s walls. The relationship between the city’s goldsmiths and their patron saint, St. Dunstan, illustrates the complex and dynamic nature of this spiritual landscape. Goldsmiths tended to concentrate in the western part of the city, meaning that images, symbols, and altars related to St. Dunstan tended to be located there as well. In fact, the multiplicity of St. Dunstan symbols in churches and chapels situated near the Goldsmith’s Hall emphasized the integration of these areas with the practitioners of the craft. When goldsmiths promoted their association with St. Dunstan, they ultimately promoted their piety in the public sphere, which, in turn, also evinced qualities that held potential ramifications for their economic and social importance in late medieval urban culture. Dunstan’s images and cultic sites could further empower goldsmiths in areas where they were a minority by rendering additional visible proof of their urban significance. The saint also added emphasis to numerous spiritual concerns of the goldsmiths, especially their remembrances for their departed fellow goldsmiths languishing in purgatory. Goldsmiths could be found throughout the late medieval and Tudor city, but many of them lived in and around Cheapside in the parishes of St. John Zachary, St. Matthew Friday Street, St. Peter Westcheap, and St. Vedast Foster Lane. Several factors encouraged this pattern. First, Goldsmiths’ Hall was located on nearby Foster Lane, in the parish of St. John Zachary. Second, Goldsmiths’ Row sprawled across four parishes along Cheapside, creating a well-known and highly visible venue for the buying and selling

180  Gary G. Gibbs

Figure 9.1 From the 1270 map of London, an extract of the area near Westcheap from St. Paul’s Cathedral to Wood Street, with the addition of Goldsmiths’ Hall (1) and Goldsmiths’ Row (2), both of which would have been present in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Parish churches are also identified. Adapted from a map in the British Historic Towns Atlas, vol. 3, “The City of London to c. 1520,” (c) Historic Towns Trust 1989.

of gold and silver as well as forming a highly desirable location in which members of the craft might live. Third, this part of the city – Westcheap – had been a location for goldsmiths stretching back to the end of the twelfth century.2 Goldsmiths, individually and collectively, expressed devotion to St. Dunstan, their patron saint, in their hall and in their parish churches, and therefore a concentration of Dunstan devotions resulted in the appearance of altars, images, banners, and liturgical items devoted to honoring the saint. As the association between goldsmiths, location, and saint developed,

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  181 Dunstan’s image grew as a symbol connected to the craft and livery. Thus, in the years leading up to the Reformation, those devotions to St. Dunstan spilled out into the neighborhoods around Westcheap, helping to establish the area as uniquely connected to that specific saint, as well as to the craft and associated company. This chapter will analyze an area of the city where cultic sites devoted to St. Dunstan existed in their highest concentration, which is not the same thing as a monopoly. Images of St. Dunstan existed elsewhere, of course. Two London parish churches were dedicated to him, St. Dunstan in the East and St. Dunstan in the West, both located some distance away from the area under discussion here, and both of which undoubtedly contained images of the saint – and probably altars too. At St. Dunstan in the West, the 1523 will of Margaret French mentions a Dunstan light, and Margaret Denham’s will of 1539 mentions a Dunstan altar and a fraternity dedicated to the saint.3 At St. Dunstan in the East, the parish had a fraternity dedicated to their patron saint and another one co-dedicated to Mary and Dunstan, while the Edwardian inventory of 1552 lists a vestment and a cope with image of St. Dunstan (all of which strongly suggests a Dunstan altar).4 Other parishes might also have Dunstan vestments; for example, the 1552 inventory for St. Nicolas Cole Abbey lists a “cross cloth of green silk with a picture of Jesus, St. Peter, and St. Dunstan with fishmongers’ arms.”5 Thus, one may find evidence of St. Dunstan in areas of the city that were not situated near Cheapside, but the fact remains that most parishes make no mention of the saint. Furthermore, this study cannot demarcate with surgical precision the exact boundaries for this area of expressive Dunstan veneration since source survival is uneven. It seems likely that St. Leonard Foster Lane should be included in the parishes listed above, and it most certainly did provide a home for numerous goldsmiths and perhaps even contained devotional sites dedicated to St. Dunstan. However, the only parish record from the preRestoration era is the Edwardian inventory of 1552, which does show several items being purchased by goldsmiths, but which makes no mention of St. Dunstan.6 St. Michael Wood Street and Allhallows Bread Street leave no churchwardens’ accounts until a later period. For St. Michael le Querne, the churchwardens’ accounts begin in 1514 and, along with wills and two inventories from 1539 and 1552, suggest that the parish lay beyond the Cheapside neighborhood since there is no mention of St. Dunstan and only a few references to goldsmiths.7 In fact, an altar to St. Erasmus, perhaps an image of the saint, and a fraternity of St. Erasmus set the devotions of St. Michael le Querne quite apart from the adjacent goldsmith/St. Dunstan area.8 For the four parishes of St. John Zachary, St. Matthew Friday Street, St. Peter Westcheap, and St. Vedast Foster Lane, however, there is evidence of goldsmiths in the pews and veneration of St. Dunstan. Dunstan was an attractive character for this craft. He had lived in the tenth century, during the era of Benedictine reforms, Anglo-Saxon kings,

182  Gary G. Gibbs and Viking raids. He was the son of a noble family who was educated at Glastonbury, and he became part of the court of King Æthelstan as a young man, but his spiritual inclinations caused difficulties with the other young noblemen of the day.9 Dunstan either left or was expelled from the court, returned to Glastonbury, built a small cell, and dedicated himself to God.10 He became a metalworker, and one of the most famous anecdotes in Dunstan’s vita tells how he threw a demon out of a church after seizing it by the nose with a pair of red-hot tongs.11 He was a monk and a priest, eventually becoming Abbot of Glastonbury, then Bishop of London, and, finally, Archbishop of Canterbury.12 Dunstan’s vita tells stories of his important role as an advisor to kings, a role not always appreciated in his own day. Dunstan’s cult enjoyed periods of popularity, but in oddly localized ways. In the fifteenth century, both Henry VI and Henry VII emphasized Dunstan’s efforts as a royal counselor as they directed his image to be included in royal building projects.13 He emerged as a patron saint of the Goldsmiths’ Company almost from its inception and, more generally, as a patron saint of goldsmiths and metal workers. St. Dunstan meant something specific in an area of the city socially and economically dominated by goldsmiths, becoming ultimately a symbol of not only their company, community, and craft, but perhaps even a justification of their economic activity. The goldsmiths worked with precious metals, and sometimes with precious and semi-precious stones, buying and selling expensive objects while seeking profits and keeping account of their money and inventories of goods; goldsmiths also participated in the rich medieval religious world. St. Dunstan, the saint who crossed similar boundaries, proved such things were possible. The symbolic manipulation of a particular saint by members of a particular London company presents a highly speculative field of analysis, but the records of the Goldsmiths’ Company, wills of several prominent goldsmiths, and the records from several parishes near Goldsmiths’ Hall allow for a mapping of devotions to the saint.14 There is sufficient, but uneven, proof that goldsmiths invested in promoting the cult of St. Dunstan as a craft-related devotion in a specific area of the city and that this action occurred over a lengthy period of time. A great deal of the evidence is also circumstantial, meaning simply that goldsmiths occupied areas and there were images of the saint in the churches. Susan Brigden has noted the importance of patron saints in the culture of pre-Reformation London, writing that “[t]he citizens of London often wished to be buried beside their own patron saints in their churches.”15 There are some examples of such requests from London goldsmiths, but mostly the evidence demonstrates a more prevalent pattern. When St. Dunstan was honored by the company, those collective devotions developed much more social and cultural significance because they occurred within a wider public arena. When the Goldsmiths’ Company promoted the symbol of St. Dunstan, they participated in collective behavior that expressed ideas formed in the intersection of their own sense of identity, the social structure of the City, and the theology of the late medieval church.

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  183 Goldsmiths prayed for souls in purgatory, of course. They could do this as individuals, as part of the congregation of their parish, as members of a parish religious or city fraternity, or as a member of their livery. The fraternal associations were typically dedicated to one or more saints and brought folks together in works of charity and prayer. Goldsmiths would also have prayed for departed liverymen as a part of their duties to the company, especially as specific bequests had been made and endowments established, and the fifteenth-century wardens’ accounts of the company are filled with proof of these obligations. When a member of the company established an image of or altar to St. Dunstan in a parish in the region being studied, it was more significant than the parish fraternity of another saint establishing a light. The context was everything. Yet the Goldsmiths’ Company was much more than a religious fraternity; it was also an organization possessed of wealth, power, and a degree of authority for regulating the quality of product and resolving disputes. It was one of the twelve great livery companies of the medieval city, whose members frequently jockeyed for civic importance. Like all wealthy merchants and craftsmen of the later Middle Ages, the goldsmiths negotiated a spiritual landscape that presented them with a basic conundrum: their money and, often, the manner by which they generated their wealth, sat uneasily with the traditional teachings of the Church. Given their craft and their stores of precious metals and gems, goldsmiths occupied a position fraught with potential moral danger because they had to be concerned with materials and methods that were usually associated with avarice, but that were also such an integral part of the production of chalices, rosaries, and numerous other objects that filled the churches. As Lester Little has noted, such urban professionals faced unique spiritual dangers: A monk of Evesham … tells about a goldsmith who had cheated his customers on earth. This evil creature was thrown into a heap of burning gold coins. Once burned externally, he next had to swallow the coins. And once burned internally, he had to disgorge the coins in order to count them and to begin the punishment again.16 The rise of mendicant spirituality, which “put more emphasis on piety than on preaching,” may have helped many urban merchants negotiate these tensions, but the church also accepted the rule of the “just penny” in the marketplace, and moral language and concerns infused the culture of medieval urban merchants.17 Goldsmiths could aim to be proper Christians and good goldsmiths who also turned a profit. They, like medieval merchants in general, sought to integrate their economic goals with religious teachings and therefore maintained active roles in urban parishes as well as in the marketplace. When the post-plague era witnessed a diversification of saints and a proliferation of devotional expressions, especially images of the Virgin, it was merchants who helped to fund many of those transformations in urban settings such as London.18

184  Gary G. Gibbs Within London society, the Goldsmiths were unique among the liveries in the centuries prior to 1500 because, in the words of T. F. Reddaway, “[they] had gradually received responsibilities which were national, rather than local.”19 Many of the more significant members found themselves dealing with royal officials, parliamentary representatives, and civic officials. The fact that so many goldsmiths worked at the royal mint, served terms as aldermen and mayors, served as envoys, and made seals for government offices rendered their symbolic connection to Dunstan even more germane, especially given the saint’s historical role as a royal advisor and figure in the corridors of power.20 Furthermore, Dunstan also moved into positions that required greater international dealings when he was translated from the bishopric of Worchester, first to London for few months, and finally to Canterbury as Archbishop for which he traveled to Rome to receive the pallium.21 More significantly, Dunstan offered an example of a man who grew in holiness, power, and authority while maintaining a proper perspective about precious metal. In the Gesta Regum Anglorum, William of Malmesbury relates Dunstan’s prophecy about the future trouble of King Æthelred, who, in addition to numerous character flaws, failed to maintain a proper perspective and “preferred silver to God.”22 St. Dunstan’s appeal stemmed from themes emphasized in his vita – such as a young man’s rise to power and holiness, his knowledge of metallurgy, and his greater service to kingdom and church – all of which would have been meaningful in the lives of the goldsmiths who lived in the area of Westcheap. A judicious emphasis on St. Dunstan as patron may have added an extra emphasis to the goldsmiths’ concerns in those parishes where they may not have constituted a majority. Parish records indicate that parishioners tended to pursue a variety of economic activities. In the 1480s, the parishioners of St. Mary at Hill, located some distance away from Westcheap, plied more than twenty trades, from baker to woolmonger.23 Other parishes exhibited similar variety, but craft concerns could make some areas more desirable locations than others. For example, in the shops and tenements situated on Goldsmiths’ Row, tenancy would have been coveted by the families of goldsmiths.24 Other goldsmiths were spread throughout the City, although parishes close by the Row and Goldsmiths’ Hall possessed a higher concentration of them than did those farther away. The Goldsmiths’ Company maintained chantry priests for deceased members in the parishes of St. Vedast Fosters Lane, St. Michael Crooked Lane, St. Matthew Friday Street, Allhallows Bread Street, St. John Zachary, and St. Dunstan’s Chapel in St. Paul’s Cathedral.25 Likewise, obits were held for deceased members at St. Thomas Acon and St. Peter Westcheap.26 With one exception, all of these parishes were adjacent, located close by Goldsmiths’ Hall or Goldsmiths’ Row. In such a social milieu, the promotion of their patron saint could elevate the social and cultural visibility of the goldsmiths. Throughout the wardens’ accounts of the Goldsmiths’ Company, entries suggest that meetings on the feast day of St. Dunstan occurred so that

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  185 members could attend to company business, especially business concerning mortuary endowments, and engage in other ritual celebrations of group identity that extended back centuries. Of course, meetings also occurred on other days as well, and some of those meetings might reference the saint, but an examination of the meetings on Dunstan’s feast, or its eve, reveals a proliferation of activities over time, with some rituals becoming rather elaborate. The 1336 accounts acknowledge “bell-ringing at noon on St. Dunstan’s Day and other expenditures”; it is possible that the great bell at St. Paul’s Cathedral was dedicated to St. Dunstan and known as the Dunstan Bell.27 The 1339–41 accounts acknowledge payments “for 2 standards at St. Paul’s” and “for the bell-ringing at noon and for drink at St. Paul’s.”28 Similar entries appear in subsequent years, until 1343–44 when the maintenance of a light appeared, most probably kept in the Dunstan Chapel of St. Paul’s cathedral. In 1380–81: Firstly, for ringing the great bell of St. Dunstan in St. Paul’s church – 3s. 4d. Item, for the light in the church of St. John Zachary, for fifteen candles and 2 torches – total 8s. 10d. Item, for bread and ale and cheese at the said bell-ringing – total 3s. 4d.29 In 1393–94, the wardens paid to ring the great bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral and for bread, cheese, ale, and wax.30 By the fifteenth century, the Feast of St. Dunstan was a major observance for London’s goldsmiths. On Dunstan’s Day 1438–39, the wardens of the Goldsmiths’ Company were chosen, along with apprentices and other officials, including four chantry priests: John Pomys, priest in the church of All Hallows, singing for Wapole Nicolle Baunt, priest in the church of Saint Matthew, singing for Thomas Polle31 Richard Wareyn, priest in the church of Saint Fosters, singing for John Mapulsdene and William Stamildene & Alice vxore eorundem – juratus.32 Such actions demonstrated the company faithfully maintaining its obligations for mortuary endowments to past members while simultaneously establishing an idealized standard that members of the livery should strive to achieve. There may, however, also have been more to the company’s observances of the feast of their patron saint than election of wardens and the appointment of chantry priests, since numerous records provide evidence of far-ranging company activity. By the early Tudor period, Dunstan’s Feast Day and the eve of that feast had become a most important time for celebrating the group’s collective

186  Gary G. Gibbs identity. A memorandum delineating the company’s celebration of St. Dunstan’s Eve, ca. 1515–16, describes a ritual procession of liverymen and four of their chaplains “in their velvet gowns and cloaks.” The goldsmiths would meet with the “6 wardens” of the Fishmongers, also in their liveries, at St. John Zachary to be served with delicacies such as spice bread, buns, cakes, ale, and wine.33 The processional route would end up back at the Goldsmiths’ Hall, but only after taking the liverymen down Wood Street, which meant passing the entrance to St. Peter Westcheap, turning onto Cheap Street, passing Cheap cross, then passing by the entrance to Friday Street, processing on to St. Paul’s, and then returning to Goldsmith’s Hall via Foster Lane, thus having passed the church of St. Vedast. This ritual statement of civic power and importance helped to establish the members of the company as people of significance to whom others should offer respect and perhaps even deference. The procession on Dunstan’s Eve also marked St. Peter Westcheap as the southeast boundary of their corner of the city, and the cathedral as the southwest marker. The Wardens’ Account from the company tends to show entries of the celebration of St. Dunstan’s Eve and Day, right until it came to an end: [1534] Also it was agreed by the whole livery that on Saint Dunstan’s Eve shall be kept a drinking at Goldsmiths’ Hall and on the morrow that is to say on St. Dunstan Day shall be kept a dinner for all the fellowship of the livery and for such other as shall please the wardens of the old and ancient custom.34 “Old and ancient customs” were being redefined by then, and while that phrase was commonly employed in the Tudor era, it might also suggest that they knew the practice was under attack. Regardless, the area on Cheapside near Goldsmiths’ Row localized the vast majority of the documented devotional sites dedicated to the saint within the late medieval city. Adjacent to this general area was the chapel dedicated to St. Dunstan in St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was located at the east end of the south aisle, built by the early fourteenth century, and the Goldsmith’s company maintained it in the years leading to the religious changes of the 1530s.35 The Goldsmiths were not unusual in this cathedral presence. While most of the devotions of the city’s companies seem to have been focused mainly on the city’s parish churches, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries several companies established special relationships to particular chapels within the cathedral, mostly for masses to be sung on special days; the tailors had the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, the coopers (dedicated to the Virgin) met in the Lady Chapel, and so on.36 What makes the goldsmiths different was their proximity to the cathedral. Their hall and Goldsmiths’ Row were located nearby, as were the parishes that bordered the eastern edge of the cathedral close – all of which emphasized the presence of the craft. In fact, the celebrations of the goldsmiths, such as the procession on St. Dunstan’s Eve described above,

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  187 made an alternate cultic arena that either rivaled or aggregated those established by the parish churches. The devotions of the goldsmiths defined the area for London’s veneration of St. Dunstan as Westcheap, and the evidence from the parish churches located there demonstrates how this was so. St. Matthew Friday Street contained an altar dedicated to Dunstan prior to the reign of Edward VI. The churchwardens’ account of 1547 has an entry that reads, “Received of Mr. Alderman Dobbis for old tabernacles and a table which stood on Saint Dunstan’s altar and for other old trash in the rode loft sold within the time of this account…. iiij s. vj d.” [1547– 48].37 Of course, at this parish as with the others discussed below, Dunstan would have been one of several saints with dedicated devotional space. At St. Matthew’s, there was also an image of Mary, as probably was the case for every parish church in London: in 1345, John Brabasoun’s will left 3 s. 4 d. to illuminate an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary.38 The fourteenthcentury parish possessed one fraternity dedicated to Mary and another to St. Katherine.39 The Dunstan altar was undoubtedly tied to the significant presence of goldsmiths in the parish, a social fact that ran through the late medieval and Tudor eras. Nicholas Twiford, parishioner, goldsmith, and former Lord Mayor, donated to the parish a brew house named the Griffon on the Hoop.40 Stow records numerous monuments in the church, including one for Thomas Polle, goldsmith (1395); Robert Johnson, goldsmith and alderman; and John Twiselton, goldsmith and alderman (1525).41 Monuments to non-goldsmiths existed in the church as well, but the goldsmiths mattered at St. Matthew’s. In 1568–69, fifty percent of the children baptized in the registers were the children of goldsmiths, while the company’s coat of arms was displayed in the church’s windows during the Elizabethan era.42 St. Vedast Foster Lane was situated much closer to Goldsmiths’ Hall than was St. Matthew Friday Street. The 1369 will of Adam de Eylesham, goldsmith, left money for tapers to burn “at his funeral and at his obit before the image of the Virgin and the Rood in the church of St. Vedast.”43 In 1396, William Stamelden, also a goldsmith, requested “[t]o be buried in the chancel of St. Dunstan within the church of St. Vedast, under the marble slab where lies Alice his late wife”; his will also mentioned an image of “St. Dunstan in the chancel.”44 In addition to a High altar, and most certainly a Mary altar, there was also an altar dedicated to St. Nicholas.45 Later, in 1509, Henry Coote, goldsmith, funded the building of a chapel to Saint Dunstan.46 Richard Wethyhale (1427), goldsmith, requested the maintenance of a chantry and obit.47 Thomas Polle (d. 1413), a parishioner of St. Matthew Friday Street who had been a company renter warden in 1373, company warden in 1378 and 1388, and a prime warden in 1395, endowed chantries and/or obits at St. Matthew Friday Street, St. Vedast Foster Lane, and (with fellow goldsmith John Forster) St. Peter Westcheap.48 In 1493, the Goldsmiths’ Company “admitted and swore” a priest named Sir John West to sing for the soul of Thomas Polle in St. Peter Westcheap.49 Polle’s strategy of endowing intercessory prayers across several parish boundaries provides further proof of a

188  Gary G. Gibbs mental world that equated these parishes with his craft; the presence of cultic sites for the craft’s patron saints equates the area with Dunstan. St. John Zachary contained an image of St. Anne, to which John Howlett wished to be buried as close “as nigh possible” in 1510.50 The Goldsmiths’ Company maintained “St. Dunstan’s light” at the church, proving the presence of an image of the saint there as a focus of goldsmith devotion.51 There was also “[a] great pillar with Crests and an image of Jesus all gilt upon wood,” but any specific signifiers located on the crests are not identified.52 Stow suggests that the foundation of this parish church may have been tied to Nicholas Twiford, goldsmith and Lord Mayor (1388); to his wife Margery; and to “others of their race,” meaning other goldsmiths.53 Of the thirteen memorials identified by Stow, nine were for goldsmiths and one was for a gold beater. The Goldsmiths’ Company maintained a chantry at the church for Drue Barayntyn and his wife in 1423–24, as well as for Robert Butler but, as the Masters and Wardens explained in Star Chamber in 1540, the priest could not be paid because the income for the chantry had been stolen.54 The company also maintained other chantries at St. John Zachary.55 As we have seen, the parish was a crucial location for the company’s celebrations of the eve of Dunstan’s feast. Because of the survival of fifteenth-century inventories and churchwardens’ accounts, more information may be discerned concerning the fourth parish: St. Peter Westcheap. John Stow described St. Peter Westcheap as “a proper Church lately new built.” He then added that “John Sha, Goldsmith, [Mayor] … appointed by his Testament, the said church and steeple to be newly built of his goods, with a flat roof.”56 It was upon that flat roof that the Waites would be playing during a 1557 royal entry by Mary and Philip.57 St. Peter’s Westcheap possessed a chapel dedicated to St. Dunstan as early as 1427 when the will of Richard Wethyhale, goldsmith, requested burial there.58 The 1431 inventory mentions a variety of church cloth for the Dunstan altar, as well as latten candlesticks and some items given by goldsmiths.59 It is possible that the parish possessed two altars dedicated to Dunstan, one in the chapel and one not, but it is more likely that the accounts apply inconsistent language that interchangeably employs altar and chapel in different years. By 1521, there were also chapels dedicated to St. George and to St. Mary, but the church had previously dedicated an altar to Mary on 7 Feb 1434.60 The 1431 inventory mentions a “rood altar” several times, without a clear association with a saint. The several different altar cloths that went with this rood altar contained a variety of images of women saints such as St. Mary, St. Katherine, St. Helen, and St. Margaret, as well as assorted angels.61 Lastly, an altar dedicated to the Holy Trinity existed “in the nave of the church, near the entrance to St. Dunstan’s chapel,” and the chaplain for the fraternity of the Holy Cross said mass there.62 It is difficult to explain the appearance of multiple altars and chapels to Dunstan and Mary, but there may have been a proliferation of both altars and chapels, or a re-arrangement of cultic spaces in the post-plague era.

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  189 The 1431 inventory contains information that may help identify the images on the rood screen. In a section entitled vestes quadragesimales, or Lenten cloths, a series of entries provides a way to identify the images on the rood screen.63 These Lenten cloths would have covered images and statues throughout the forty days of the season and thus homogenized the interior of the church during that penitential season.64 They were sometimes decorated with symbols of the specific images which they covered, as was the case at St. Peter Westcheap, allowing the church’s saints to be identified. The inventory’s structure suggests the location of the saints being covered, because the order goes from the Lady Chapel (mention of the Lady altar) to the Dunstan Chapel (mention of the Dunstan altar) to the rood altar and High altar, and the rood cross (cloths for Mary and John the Baptist). Then follows a series of cloths which must have been the saints on the rood screen: one with “a sword and a wheel” (St. Katherine), followed by cloths with “a castle for St. Barbara,” “beads for St. Sithe,” “a head St. Dunstan,” and a “mitre of St. Nicholas.”65 St. Anne, who is mentioned next, may or may not have been on the rood screen; a change in language employed in the inventory makes this identification unclear. These saints, along with Mary, Peter, and Paul, were the saints who were most prominently honored in the parish church. St. Dunstan clearly had a prime place, with a chapel, an image, and perhaps multiple altars. He also stands out in another way since the rest of the saints tend to be traditionally found in late medieval English pieties, but not Dunstan, whose appeal was more specific and localized. Symbols – and saints are symbols – are multi-referential by their very nature and can mean many things at the same time. Eamon Duffy has argued that images on the rood screen referenced stories of God’s mercy, while images of God’s justice were typically displayed in doom paintings.66 The rood images at St. Peter Westcheap do that as well; however, they also appear to have functioned in a variant fashion in that they may be seen to have referenced the goldsmiths. St. Dunstan and St. Nicholas were two saints associated with gold. Dunstan, the one-time metalworker and patron saint of the company, dominated the iconography of this parish; his image and altars were more prevalent than even those of the parish’s patron St. Peter.67 Not surprisingly, Goldsmiths’ Hall possessed an image of the saint, further making cross-imagery connections between St. Peter Westcheap and space that belonged to the goldsmiths: St. Dunstan honored at both church and Hall. St. Nicholas was a protector with many concerns, including merchants.68 Representations of St. Nicholas typically include his attributes of a crosier and miter, representing his status as a bishop, and three gold balls, representing his gift to poor maidens in need of a dowry. Once again, this particular hagiographic reference represented the transformation of a source of potential danger – gold with its potential to bring a soul to avarice – into a miraculous gift that helps to bring a poor maid into the sacrament of marriage. St. Nicholas was a popular saint in late medieval London. There

190  Gary G. Gibbs exists wide-spread evidence (including at St. Peter Westcheap) concerning boy bishop celebrations on St. Nicholas Day, and his image was to be found throughout the city.69 In St. Peter Westcheap, however, the image of St. Nicholas stood next to an image of St. Dunstan, on the rood screen, visible to a significant group of goldsmiths, thereby further conveying messages of masculinity, gold, leadership, and virtue (or holiness). These messages were re-enforced by the larger presence of Dunstan in the church. If the image of St. Nicholas did contain the golden balls, or gold coins, a greater emphasis connecting the saint’s cult to the craft would have been established. Nevertheless, most of the parishioners would surely have known of these stories even if the visual cues were lacking. If the women saints were presented on the roodscreen as listed in the parish records, from left to right, then they faced the parishioners in chronological order of their supposed earthly lives: Katherine (late third–early fourth centuries), Barbara (eighth century), and Sitha (twelfth century). Katherine of Alexandria was a queen, or at least of royal lineage, and was typically displayed with a martyr’s crown. A virgin martyr, she was promised marriage to Christ as a reward for the sufferings she endured on earth; thus, she is frequently seen with a gold ring. She aided poor women seeking husbands and thus she had an association with Nicholas on the far side of the rood screen, further establishing symbolic connections between gold, goldsmiths, masculinity, and virtue. The gold ring and gold crown, symbols of her martyrdom, virginity, and holiness, were typical of her iconography, but in this particular parish, such items drew connections with the elite men who produced and sold such items. These symbols perhaps even promoted marriage to such men in this particular parish. While the multiple locations of altars and images of St. Dunstan suggest his importance in this parish’s devotion, he was, once again, in a space with other saints empowered by other contexts. For example, St. Katherine appeared throughout the city in numerous medieval calendars and prayer books and was invoked in numerous popular prayers and chants that emphasized her relationship with Christ; thus, her presence at St. Peter Westcheap was strengthened by her general popularity.70 For Dunstan to matter in the area dominated by goldsmiths, his cult had to rival or even surpass such significance. St. Barbara had been locked in a tower by her soldier father – Caxton’s translation of The Golden Legend presented him as a wealthy man – who feared that her beauty would lead to scandal.71 A devout Christian, she requested, received, and in fact organized her baptism, which proceeded against her father’s orders. Tortured and brutalized because of her faith, she was paraded through town before being beheaded by her father. Barbara was also represented in some iconography with a martyr’s crown. Yet, as the work of Megan Cassidy-Welsh has demonstrated, Barbara’s symbol, the tower, which she was frequently depicted as holding, was sometimes understood to symbolize a chalice, another gift of the goldsmiths that proved central to the saint’s iconography as well as to the mass.72 By the early Tudor

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  191 era, Barbara could be constructed as a wealthy urban woman whose status and wealth empowered her conversion. St. Sitha (or Zita) was a new saint for England. Her iconographic representation with rosary beads promoted what had become an established devotional custom in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Lucca, and in other places on the continent, but which had only become a practice in England in the fifteenth century, at the moment that St. Sitha’s cult and image became popular.73 The creation of rosaries was a concern of goldsmiths, even if they were made by paternosterers. Rosaries tended to be made and sold on “Paternoster Row and Ave Marie Lane,” but goldsmiths frequently oversaw the quality of imported precious and semi-precious beads that were frequently employed for their production.74 The requisite material for their creation, for example, is contained in the 1392 inventory of a London goldsmith named Adam Ledyard.75 At St. Peter Westcheap, all of the saints who appear to have been represented on the rood screen were connected to the goldsmiths’ trade in some fashion. Even if these saints were not on the rood screen, they were still featured prominently in the church. Regardless of the placement of St. Anne at St. Peter Westcheap – either on the rood screen or adjacent to it in some fashion – she offered an interesting message to a late medieval congregation dominated, as it was, by goldsmiths and their families. St. Anne, the mother of Mary, was first mentioned in the second-century Protevangelium of James, which describes the infancy of Jesus.76 While venerated throughout the Middle Ages, St. Anne grew in popularity in England after the mid-fourteenth century and, as the work of Virginia Nixon demonstrates, her cult transformed in the post-plague years into regionally specific expressions.77 In East Anglia, constructions of St. Anne as a wealthy urban widow with a very precocious grandchild appeared in plays and devotional texts; she also sometimes appeared as a pious merchant’s wife who employs her wealth and status to nurture Christ. As Gail McMurray Gibson observes, a St. Anne, who had several husbands and daughters, belonged to a family that mattered and which would have resonated with urban merchants; she was like them.78 Like St. Anne, the cultural construction of all of the saints changed over time and place. The parish saints at St. Peter Westcheap did as well, and people undoubtedly responded to the saints based on their gender and status. Parishioners encountered rather fixed images of the saints surrounded by other images displayed on the parish’s impressive collection of cloth, which, according to inventories, was abundant and ever-changing in supply and available in a spectrum of colors, decorated with stars, birds, flowers, and even more saints. Banners with images of St. Peter and St. Paul, or with Mary and St. John the Evangelist, were available for display in certain seasons or specific locations as the liturgy required. These images swirled around the goldsmiths and rood saints with their goldsmith-friendly presence. Smaller images also were displayed, such as a table of the Five Joys of the Virgin (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation, and Finding in

192  Gary G. Gibbs the Temple [Disputation]) on the High altar, donated in 1434 by Thomas Purchace, a goldsmith who had also served as a churchwarden.79 The parish possessed other such images painted with representations of the Trinity, the Salutation (Mary and St. Elizabeth), and anthems of Our Lady.80 There were also several pieces of silver and latten. Lastly, the parish’s five chalices (1431 inventory), numerous books, and a relic of the True Cross contained in silver would have been known to parishioners.81 This impressive and glittering world of saints afforded the goldsmiths the opportunity to create a variety of connections between the liturgical year and local devotions. In the aggregate, they created the setting for the encounter with the sacred. Recent research on the lives of women saints, especially the virgin martyrs, emphasizes the rather fluid and situational nature of their stories and cults. In the fifteenth century, St. Margaret, according to Karen Winstead, once “one of the most pugnacious virgin martyrs in earlier Middle English hagiography,” had evolved “into a model of humility and piety.”82 St. Barbara similarly transformed over time, especially in artistic representation. Winstead employs the word decorous to describe the more passive and humble representations of the saints, a word also employed by Christine Peters, who argues that Margaret’s battle with demonic forces had become less significant than long-suffering, quiet patience and the assurance of Christ’s love.83 The values of the more humble, pious, long-suffering, and decorous virgin martyrs undoubtedly fit better with gender norms of the wealthy and significant merchant culture of the parish. Because saints such as Katherine, Barbara, Margaret, and Lucy came from families of wealth and privilege, perhaps their newly appreciated quiet contemplation found a culturally specific audience in the obvious paternalism of the city’s freemen. Sts. Barbara and Katherine also evinced qualities of devotion and intelligence, and St. Sitha modeled praying the rosary, which would have possessed a special appeal to the wives of the goldsmiths.84 By 1526 the parish possessed an image of St. Roch, another rather new saint in the late medieval church.85 All that is known of the location of this image is that the parish built a stage for their annual passion play under their image of St. Roch in that year. He may have been outside the edifice because it was not unusual for such a stage to be located on a church porch, and because these specific accounts also mention nails and laths for the church door.86 Roch supposedly lived near Montpellier in the fourteenth century, where he espoused the mendicant movement of the High Middle Ages by giving away the wealth of his powerful family and going on pilgrimage, but he was unjustly imprisoned as a spy and died in jail. Devotion to his cult was an example of popular piety in the late medieval church.87 He was a saint who assisted plague victims and those who suffered from other diseases, including dental problems, but his appeal to the goldsmiths in St. Peter’s parish probably related to his mendicant spirituality, given the presence of several plague saints already honored in the body of the church. Lester Little argues that the appearance of urban saints who preached to the poor

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  193 and demonstrated voluntary poverty “formulated an ethic that justified the principal activities of the dominant groups in urban society.”88 Accordingly, prosperous urban merchants, such as the goldsmiths, were attracted to such a message and found comfort in devotions expressed to late medieval saints such as Sts. Francis, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, and Roch. The emphasis in these saints’ lives on charitable donations and care for the poor was much preferable to being subjected to finger-wagging about merchant preoccupation with stores of gold and silver, jewels, and the interest being charged for money due. If Roch’s image was on the exterior of the church, which seems likely, then he made a very prominent statement about the benevolence of the goldsmiths both within and without the church. The benefactors who paid for and requested specific saintly images displayed at St. Peter Westcheap are mostly unknown, but the unifying theme of gold and the social dominance of the goldsmiths and their craft provide strong circumstantial evidence of the audience to which they appealed. The rood saints at St. Peter Westcheap faced numerous wealthy goldsmiths and members of their households. Similar but variant situations would also have been found in the parishes of St. Matthew Friday Street, St. John Zachary, and St. Vedast Foster Lane. Another unique attribute of St. Peter Westcheap, however, was images of the wild men of the wood that adorned the central aisle of the church after a renovation in the reign of Henry VII. Stow commented on these images: “the roof of the middle aisle is supported by Images of Woodmen.”89 A goldsmith named Thomas Wood (d. 1504) had caused these wild men of the woods to be placed in the church, and he also had them placed on Goldsmiths’ Row, thereby creating a visual link between the spaces dominated by the goldsmiths on Cheapside and the church on Wood Street. These images were also a symbol of the patronage of one particular goldsmith. Thomas Wood served his apprenticeship with Robert Boteller, also a goldsmith and parishioner, and was accepted to the livery in 1467.90 He took nineteen apprentices during his career and inherited “three houses and three shops in Cheapside” from Boteller. Wood also served as a renter warden in the Goldsmith’s Company in 1472, as a warden in 1475 and 1479, and as a prime warden in 1485, 1490, 1496, and 1502.91 Wood’s expanded operation of “four shops in Cheapside” exceeded the rules of the company and thus forced the payment of fines. Wood also served as an alderman for eight years and as a sheriff in 1491.92 The legacy of his patronage remained, and a century later John Stow commented upon it. The wild men of the woods remained a unique focus, however, while St. Dunstan was the dominant symbol for the Westcheap area. Dunstan had been a worker of metals, an ardent Christian, and a man who spoke to kings. On certain occasions, the goldsmiths would meet in their hall, which contained a jeweled statue of the saint, and they drank to the saint’s memory from a common cup called “the Dunstan cup.”93 He was a saint who would appeal to several of them, especially to men such as

194  Gary G. Gibbs John Shaa (or Shawe), the goldsmith and mayor. John Shaa started serving as an apprentice in 1469 with his uncle Edmund Shaa (d. 1488), eventually becoming Edmund’s heir. John Shaa was accepted to the livery in 1480 and served as a renter warden for the company in 1482.94 Both uncle and nephew worked as engravers at the Royal Mint in the Tower, with John Shaa serving as a master at the mint in 1489, 1492, 1498, and 1499.95 He lived on Wood Street, sponsored thirteen apprentices between 1480 and 1503, and served as a warden in 1484 and a prime warden in 1492, 1498, and 1499.96 Shaa provided Henry VII with jewels, met Catherine of Aragon (at Cheap cross) during her first procession through London, and was knighted in 1497.97 He sat in the Commons in 1495, and served as an alderman in 1496–1504, as sheriff in 1496–97, and as London’s mayor in 1501–02.98 He died in 1504, but he was just one of several powerful, wealthy merchants who were active in the service of their church, kingdom, and company.99 As a symbol, St. Dunstan worked to maintain a coherent and integrated community among the goldsmiths in several ways: (1) members had community and spiritual obligations to attend to on certain days associated with Dunstan; (2) many of them saw visual reminders, in images of Dunstan and other saints, of their economic and social uniqueness whenever they went to church; (3) Dunstan empowered goldsmiths to integrate divergent aspects of their lives: to know wealth, power, and status without the loss of a faith that centered on a savior who knew none of those attributes. If one wished to be a good goldsmith, the path was clear. By the succession of Henry VIII, St. Dunstan connected Goldsmiths’ Hall (Dunstan’s image, celebrations of Dunstan’s eve and feast, and Dunstan’s cup) and the adjacent parishes of St. Matthew Friday Street (altar), St. John Zachary (image and chantry maintained by the Goldsmiths), St. Peter Westcheap (altar, image, chapel), St. Vedast Foster Lane (image in the chancel and chapel), and of course, St. Paul’s Cathedral (chapel maintained by the Goldsmiths after 1400, perhaps the name of a bell). The whole interior of these four parish churches gave symbolic and glittering proof of the significance of the goldsmiths. Furthermore, if we assume that many goldsmiths maintained their own private devotions and possessed their own symbols of the saints in their shops and homes on Goldsmiths’ Row, the place where many objects originated that eventually ended up at the hall or the churches, then the Row must have been a major anchor of his image in the city. The evidence demonstrates the promotion of the image and cult of St. Dunstan by leading members of the Goldsmiths’ Company in a certain part of London over the span of centuries. The area was where many of them lived and/or worked, and where many goldsmiths had been buried and had established mortuary endowments. The Goldsmiths were an empowered group in this sector of the city, and they manipulated a sacred symbol as part of a larger spiritual/political discourse that centered on the themes of wealth, power, significance, and piety. St. Dunstan spoke to the power, wealth, and the Christian merits of the goldsmiths. Thus,

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  195 St. Dunstan empowered the goldsmiths, especially when they dealt with the numerous other freemen who occupied their parishes. The goldsmiths’ promotions of St. Dunstan provided numerous messages. On the one hand, collective and individual devotions to the saint demonstrated the piety of the goldsmiths, their concern for souls in purgatory, and their upkeep of church fabric. Yet their patronage, perhaps even extravagance, was also a statement demonstrating the social and economic power of the group; it challenged other groups, such as the drapers or fishmongers, to do likewise. Lastly, the high concentration of cultic sites for veneration of Dunstan demonstrated that the area around Westcheap was their turf, as made clear when London’s Goldsmiths marched in their livery from St. John Zachary Church, to Wood Street, south to Cheapside, turned toward the Cathedral, walked to Foster Lane, turned north, and walked on to their own hall for a night of celebration. They had also marked out a large rectangular area from which survives the major documentation for St. Dunstan’s images, lights, and altars within the City. St. Dunstan was a symbol continually being redefined to integrate and empower the members of the company and to disempower those who did not belong. St. Dunstan was their patron saint, and he was a symbol of their idealized role in a Christian, urban society since he provided proof that the goldsmiths were a moral force in the marketplace and in a Christian city. Gold glittered from altars and from crowns, and it was the goldsmiths who made those items for both bishops and kings. Like St. Dunstan, the goldsmiths exercised a wide range of duties and obligations, and, of course, they possessed the courage to move into corridors of power. St. Dunstan, a malleable and potent symbol in London’s spiritual landscape, led the way.

Notes 1 I wish to thank Cynthia Turner Camp, Katherine L. French, Louise Hampson, Valerie Hitchman, Wendy Larson-Harris, and James M. Ogier for their comments, encouragement, and suggestions at various stages of writing this chapter. Caroline M. Barron and John Schofield provided assistance regarding use of the map (Figure 1). Parts of this chapter draw upon information previously published in Gary G. Gibbs, “Four Coats for Our Lady: Gender, Space, and Marian Devotion in the Parish of St. Stephen Coleman Street, London, 1466– 1542,” Reformation 13 (2008): 1–49, and in “London Parish Records and Parish Studies: Texts, Contexts, and the Debates over Appropriate Methods,” in Views from the Parish: Churchwardens’ Accounts, c. 1500–c. 1800, ed. Valerie Hitchman and Andrew Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), 63–88. 2 Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 199, 201. 3 LMA, Comm. Wills, Tunstall, 1522–39, LMA MS 9171/10, fol. 34v. There was also a fraternity dedicated to Our Lady and St. Dunstan at St. Dunstan in the West; see LMA, Comm. Wills, Harvy, 1489–1502, LMA MS 9171/8, fol. 6v. TNA PRO PROB 11-27-396, Margaret Denham (1539), widow. 4 TNA PRO PROB 11-19-360, William Parsons (1520); TNA PRO PROB 11-27-282, Joan Evererd, widow (1538); TNA PRO E 117/4/98; H. B. Walters,

196  Gary G. Gibbs London Churches at the Reformation (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1939), 248, 252. 5 TNA PRO E 117/4/54; Walters, London Churches, 532. 6 TNA PRO E 117/4/78; Walters, London Churches, 336–43. 7 For example, goldsmiths assisted the parish in the acquisition of a silver cross in 1514. LMA, the CWA of St. Michael le Querne, 1514–1604, fol. 2r. 8 In addition to the Erasmus devotions, the parish maintained a Lady Chapel, a fraternity dedicated to St. Mary, and another one to St. Katherine. See LMA, the CWA of St. Michael le Querne, 1514–1604, fols. 5v (altar/image of St. Erasmus), 17r (Lady altar), and 20v (Lady Chapel); TNA PRO PROB 11-147, Roger Bryknell, grocer (1422) for the altar of St. Erasmus, fraternities of St. Erasmus, St. Mary, and St. Katherine; and TNA PRO PROB 11-15-243, Thomas Huddleston, mercer, (1506) for the fraternity of St. Mary. For more on English devotion to Erasmus, see Camp’s Chapter 3 in this volume. 9 Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge, ed. and trans., The Early Lives of St. Dunstan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), xvii–xix, 15–23; Sarah Foot, Æthelstan. The First King of England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 34, 36; Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks, The Image of Saint Dunstan (Canterbury: The Dunstan Millennium Committee, 1998), 5. 10 Ramsay and Sparks, Image of Saint Dunstan, 5. 11 Francis Bond, Dedications and Patron Saints of English Churches: Ecclesiastical Symbolism, Saints and Emblems (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1914), 67; N. B. Brooks, “The Career of St. Dunstan,” in St. Dunstan: His Life, Times, and Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Timothy Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), 2–3; John Crook, English Medieval Shrines (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 36. 12 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, trans. And ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) makes no mention of Dunstan being bishop of London. 13 Ramsay and Sparks, Image of Saint Dunstan, 33. 14 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 15; John Paul Mason, “Saharan Saints: Sacred Symbols or Empty Forms?” Anthropological Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1974): 390–405; Robert Murphy, The Dialectics of Social Life: Alarms and Excursions in Anthropological Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 231–44; Charles Phythian-Adams, “Ritual Constructions of Society,” in A Social History of England, 1200–1500, ed. Rosemary Horrox and W. Mark Ormond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 369–82; Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and AntiStructure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), esp. 52. 15 Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 9–12. 16 The story may be found in Roger of Wendover’s Flores Historiarum, as discussed in Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty in the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 39–49. 17 James Davis, Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 410–19, 454; Rik Van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 170. 18 Gibbs, “Four Coats for Our Lady,” 37; Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2004), 121; Gary Waller, The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 32. 19 T. F. Reddaway, “The London Goldsmiths circa 1500,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (1962): 49.

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  197 20 McEwan argues that “artisans who specialised in engraving seals were a type of specialist goldsmith.” John McEwan, “Making a Mark in Medieval London: The Social and Economic Status of Seal-Makers,” in Seals in their Context in the Middle Ages, ed. Phillipp Schofield (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015), 84. 21 Winterbottom and Lapidge, The Early Lives of Dunstan, 81–83, 83ff. 22 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 271. 23 LMA, The CWA of St. Mary at Hill, 1442–1556; Henry Littlehales, ed., The Medieval Records of a London City Church (St. Mary-at-Hill) A.D. 1420–1559, 2 vols. (London: Early English Text Society, 1904). 24 T. F. Reddaway, “Elizabethan London – Goldsmith’s Row in Cheapside, 1558– 1645,” Guildhall Miscellany 11, no. 5 (1963): 185. 25 Goldsmiths’ Hall, MS 1520, fols. 81, 89, 244, 339, & passim. 26 Goldsmiths’ Hall, MS 1520, fols. 7, 31. 27 Lisa Jefferson, ed., Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London, 1334–1446 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), xxxv–xxxvi, 6–7. 28 Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts, 14–15. 29 Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts, 190–91. 30 Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts, 240–41. 31 See also TNA PRO PROB 11-2A-432. 32 Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts, 492. 33 A similar celebration occurred in 1460. William Chaffers, Gilda Aurifabrorum: A History of English Goldsmiths and Pewterers, and Plateworkers (London: Allen, 1883), 19; William McMurray, ed., The Records of Two City Parishes: A Collection of Documents Illustrative of the History of SS. Anne and Agnes, Aldersgate, and St. John Zachary, London (London: Hunter & Longhurst, 1925), 31. 34 Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1523, fol. 47. 35 John Schofield, St. Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (Swindon: English Heritage, 2011), 127–28, 130–31, 145. 36 Caroline M. Barron and Marie-Hélène Rousseau, “Cathedral, City and State, 1300–1540,” in St. Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004, ed. Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, and Andrew Saint (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 38–39. 37 LMA, the CWA of St. Matthew Friday Street, 1547–1648, fol. 1v. 38 Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London, A.D. 1258–A.D. 1688 (London: John C. Francis, 1890) 1:477. 39 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 1:685; 2:154–55. 40 John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. (London, 1603; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 1:323. 41 Stow, Survey, 1:322. 42 J. C. Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts (London: Methuen, 1913), 86–89; Bruce A. M. Bannerman, ed., The Register of St. Matthew Friday Street, London, 1538–1812, and the United Parishes of St. Matthew Friday Street and St. Peter Cheap, Marriages, 1754–1812 (London: John Whitehead and Son, 1933), 6. 43 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 2:119. 44 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 2:321; Gustav Milne and Andrew Reynolds, “St. Vedast Church Rediscovered,” London Archaeologist 7 (1993): 68; John Schofield, “Saxon and Medieval Parish Churches in the City of London, a Review,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 45 (1994): 131. 45 Walters, London Churches, 624. 46 Stow, Survey, 1:314. 47 He also established chantries in St. Matthew Friday Street and St. Vedast Foster Lane. Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 2:109, 245, 317, 377, 445–46.

198  Gary G. Gibbs 48 Goldsmiths’ Hall, MS 1520, fol. 81; T. F. Reddaway and Lorna E. M. Walker, The Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company, 1327–1509 (London: Edward Arnold, 1975), 302. 49 Goldsmith’s Hall, MS 1520, fol. 329. 50 TNA PRO PROB 11-12-39. 51 Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts, 9ff; Charles Pendrill, Old Parish Life in London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 160. 52 TNA PRO E 117/4/80; Walters, London Churches, 310. 53 Stow, Survey, 1:305. 54 Brigden, London and the Reformation, 387; Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts, 420. 55 Brigden, London and the Reformation, 395. 56 Stow, Survey, 1:314. 57 Henry Machyn, “A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550–1563,” ed. Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Library), 129–30, 738; W. Sparrow Simpson, “Notes of the History and Antiquities of the United Parishes of S. Matthew Friday Street and S. Peter Cheap, in the City of London,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 3 (1870): 348. 58 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 2:445. 59 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 174r; W. Sparrow Simpson, “Inventory of the Vestments, Plate, and Books, Belonging to the Church of St. Peter Cheap, in the City of London, in the Year 1431,” The Journal of the British Archaeological Association 24 (1843): 157–58. 60 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 175r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 158; W. Sparrow Simpson, “On the Parish of St. Peter Cheap, in the City of London, from 1392 to 1633,” The Journal of the British Archaeological Association 24 (1868): 252. 61 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 174r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 157–58. 62 Simpson, “Inventory,” 153. 63 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 175r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 158. 64 Percy Dearmer, The Parson’s Handbook Containing Practical Directions Both for Parsons and Others as to the Management of the Parish Church and its Services According to the English Use as Set Forth in the Book of Common Prayer, 4th ed. (Milwaukee, WI: The Young Churchman, 1902), 443, 443ff. 65 The sword and wheel are traditional symbols for St. Katherine, and she is named elsewhere in the inventory. John Vince, Discovering Saints in Britain (Aylesbury: Shire, 1979), 11. LMA, the CWA and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 175r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 158. 66 Eamon Duffy, “The Parish, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval East Anglia: The Evidence of Rood Screens,” in The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600, ed. Katherine L. French, Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kümin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 148–49. 67 Bond, Dedications and Patron Saints, 67; Brooks, “Career of St. Dunstan,” 2–3; Crook, English Medieval Shrines, 36. 68 Not all of the stories associated with St. Nicholas were popular in England, which makes the association with gold coins for dowries more likely. Joel Fredell, “The Three Clerks and St. Nicholas in Medieval England,” Studies in Philology 92 (1995): 181–202. 69 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 1:179, 656; 2:208, 22, 209, 226, 315. 70 Sherry L. Reames, “St. Katherine and the Late Medieval Clergy: Evidence from English Breviaries,” in St. Katherine of Alexandria; Texts and Contexts

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  199 in Western Medieval Europe, ed. Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 201–20, 203–04. 71 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 172. 72 Megan Cassidy-Welch, “Prison and Sacrament in the Cult of Saints: Images of St. Barbara in Late Medieval Art,” Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009): 371–84. 73 Caroline M. Barron, “Medieval Pilgrim Badges of St. Sitha,” in Hidden Histories and Records of Antiquity: Essays on Saxon and Medieval London for John Clark, Curator Emeritus, Museum of London, ed. Jon Cotton et al., London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Special Paper 17 (London: London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, 2014), 91–96; Caroline M. Barron, “‘The Whole Company of Heaven’: The Saints of Medieval London,” in European Religious Cultures: Essays Offered to Christopher Brooke on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Miri Rubin (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2008), 137–40. 74 John Cherry, Medieval Craftsmen: Goldsmiths (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 23; Edward A. McGuire, “Old Irish Rosaries,” The Furrow 5 (1954): 98. 75 McGuire, “Old Irish Rosaries,” 97–98. 76 Virginia Nixon, Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2004), 11. 77 Barron, “‘The Whole Company of Heaven,’” 134–36; Nixon, Mary’s Mother, 17–18. 78 Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 84. 79 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 23r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 154. 80 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 172r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 160. 81 LMA, the CWA, and VM of St. Peter Westcheap, fol. 172r; Simpson, “Inventory,” 159. 82 Karen A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 122. 83 Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 111. 84 Many of these female saints also appear in other parish contexts associated with merchants and sometimes their wives; see further Kelley, Barniol López, and Keelmann in this volume. 85 Simpson, “On the Parish,” 263. 86 Pendrill, Old Parish Life, 53. 87 He was declared a saint in 1629 by Pope Urban VIII. Christine M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence; Iconography and Iconology (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2000), 57. 88 Little, Religious Poverty, 213, 216. 89 Stow, Survey, 1:314; Reddaway and Walker, The Early History, 316. 90 He began as an apprentice with John Gregory in 1452 but transferred to Boteller. Reddaway and Walker, The Early History, 315. 91 Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1520, fols. 253, 261, 305, 313, 345, 347, 391, 399; Reddaway and Walker, The Early History, 143. 92 Barron, London in the Middle Ages, 347; Reddaway and Walker, The Early History, 143, 315–16. 93 Chaffers, Gilda Aurifabrorum, 19.

200  Gary G. Gibbs 94 Liverymen emerged in the fifteenth century and were the more significant members of a London company. Barron, London in the Middle Ages, 214. 95 Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1520, fols. 295, 321, 357, 363; Chaffers, Gilda Aurifabrorum, 288. 96 F. G. Hilton Price, A Handbook of London Bankers, with some of their Predecessors, the Early Goldsmiths (London: The Leadenhall Press, 1890), 149. 97 Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, Chronicles of London (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), 215, 246. 98 Barron, London in the Middle Ages, 348. 99 The entire section on John Shaa draws from Reddaway and Walker, The Early History, 307–08.

Bibliography Unprinted sources Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1520: Wardens’ Accounts & Court Minutes, Book A, 1444–1516. MS 1523: Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minutes, Minute Books E & F, 1532–1541. London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) London Commissary Wills, Harvy, 1489–1502, LMA MS 9171/8. London Commissary Wills, Tunstall, 1522–39, LMA MS 9171/10. The Churchwardens’ Accounts of St. Mary at Hill, 1442–1556, LMA MS P69/ MRY4/B/005/MS01239/001/001. The Churchwardens’ Accounts of St. Matthew Friday Street, 1547–1648, P69/ MTW/B/MS01016/001. The Churchwardens’ Accounts of St. Michael le Querne, 1514–1604, P69/ MIC4/B/005/MS02895/001. The Churchwardens’ Accounts and Vestry Minutes of St. Peter Westcheap, 1441– 1602, LMA MS P69/PET4/B/006/MS00645/001. The National Archives (TNA)/Public Record Office Inventories of London Churches, 1552:    PRO E 117/4/54.    PRO E 117/4/78.    PRO E 117/4/80.    PRO E 117/4/98. Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Wills:    PRO PROB 11-2A-432.    PRO PROB 11-12-39.    PRO PROB 11-14-7.    PRO PROB 11-15-243.    PRO PROB 11-27-282.    PRO PROB 11-19-360.    PRO PROB 11-27-396.

Printed sources Bannerman, A. M. Bruce, ed. The Register of St. Matthew Friday Street, London, 1538–1812, and the United Parishes of St. Matthew Friday Street and St. Peter Cheap, Marriages, 1754–1812. London: John Whitehead and Son, 1933.

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  201 Barron, Caroline M. London in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Barron, Caroline M. “‘The Whole Company of Heaven’: The Saints of Medieval London”. In European Religious Cultures: Essays Offered to Christopher Brooke on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Miri Rubin, 131– 47. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2008. Barron, Caroline M. “Medieval Pilgrim Badges of St. Sitha”. In Hidden Histories and Records of Antiquity: Essays on Saxon and Medieval London for John Clark, Curator Emeritus, Museum of London, edited by Jon Cotton, Jenny Hall, Jackie Keily, Roz Sherris, and Roy Stephenson, 91–96. London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Special Paper 17. London: London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, 2014. Barron, Caroline M., and Marie-Hélène Rousseau. “Cathedral, City and State, 1300–1540”. In St. Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004, edited by Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, and Andrew Saint, 33–44. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Boeckl, Christine M. Images of Plague and Pestilence; Iconography and Iconology. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2000. Bond, Francis. Dedications and Patron Saints of English Churches: Ecclesiastical Symbolism, Saints and Emblems. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1914. Brigden, Susan. London and the Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Brooks, N. B. “The Career of St. Dunstan”. In St. Dunstan: His Life, Times, and Cult, edited by Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Timothy Tatton-Brown, 1–24. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992. Cassidy-Welch, Megan. “Prison and Sacrament in the Cult of Saints: Images of St. Barbara in Late Medieval Art”. Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009): 371–84. Chaffers, William. Gilda Aurifabrorum: A History of English Goldsmiths and Pewterers, and Plateworkers. London: Allen, 1883. Cherry, John. Medieval Craftsmen: Goldsmiths. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Cox, J. C. Churchwardens’ Accounts. London: Methuen, 1913. Crook, John. English Medieval Shrines. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011. Davis, James. Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Dearmer, Percy. The Parson’s Handbook Containing Practical Directions Both for Parsons and Others as to the Management of the Parish Church and its Services According to the English Use as Set Forth in the Book of Common Prayer. 4th ed. Milwaukee, WI: The Young Churchman, 1902. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400– 1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Duffy, Eamon. “The Parish, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval East Anglia: The Evidence of Rood Screens”. In The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600, edited by Katherine L. French, Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kümin, 133–62. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Foot, Sarah. Æthelstan. The First King of England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

202  Gary G. Gibbs Fredell, Joel. “The Three Clerks and St. Nicholas in Medieval England”. Studies in Philology 92 (1995): 181–202. Gibbs, Gary G. “Four Coats for Our Lady: Gender, Space, and Marian Devotion in the Parish of St. Stephen Coleman Street, London, 1466–1542”. Reformation 13 (2008): 1–49. Gibbs, Gary G. “London Parish Records and Parish Studies: Texts, Contexts, and the Debates Over Appropriate Methods”. In Views from the Parish: Churchwardens’ Accounts, c. 1500–c. 1800, edited by Valerie Hitchman and Andrew Foster, 63– 88. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2015. Gibson, Gail McMurray. The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Jefferson, Lisa, ed. Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London, 1334–1446. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003. Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge. Chronicles of London. Oxford: Clarendon, 1905. Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty in the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Littlehales, Henry, ed. The Medieval Records of a London City Church (St. Mary-atHill) A.D. 1420–1559. 2 vols. London: Early English Text Society, 1904. Machyn, Henry. “A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550–1563, by Henry Machyn: Manuscript, Transcription, and Modernization”. Edited by Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Library. Accessed April 19, 2017. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/machyn/. Marks, Richard. Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England. Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2004. Mason, John Paul. “Saharan Saints: Sacred Symbols or Empty Forms?” Anthropological Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1974): 390–405. McEwan, John. “Making a Mark in Medieval London: The Social and Economic Status of Seal-Makers”. In Seals in their Context in the Middle Ages, edited by Phillipp Schofield, 77–88. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015. McGuire, Edward A. “Old Irish Rosaries”. The Furrow 5 (1954): 97–104. McMurray, William, ed. The Records of Two City Parishes: A Collection of Documents Illustrative of the History of SS. Anne and Agnes, Aldersgate, and St. John Zachary, London. London: Hunter & Longhurst, 1925. Milne, Gustav and Andrew Reynolds. “St. Vedast Church Rediscovered”. London Archaeologist 7 (1993): 67–72. Murphy, Robert. The Dialectics of Social Life: Alarms and Excursions in Anthropological Theory. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Nixon, Virginia. Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2004. Pendrill, Charles. Old Parish Life in London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937. Peters, Christine. Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Piety in Late Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Phythian-Adams, Charles. “Ritual Constructions of Society”. In A Social History of England, 1200–1500, edited by Rosemary Horrox and W. Mark Ormond, 369–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Price, F. G. Hilton. A Handbook of London Bankers, with some of their Predecessors, the Early Goldsmiths. London: The Leadenhall Press, 1890.

London goldsmiths and cult of St. Dunstan  203 Ramsay, Nigel and Margaret Sparks. The Image of Saint Dunstan. Canterbury: The Dunstan Millennium Committee, 1998. Reames, Sherry L. “St. Katherine and the Late Medieval Clergy: Evidence from English Breviaries”. In St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, edited by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis, 201–20. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Reddaway, T. F. “The London Goldsmiths circa 1500”. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (1962): 49–62. Reddaway, T. F. “Elizabethan London – Goldsmith’s Row in Cheapside, 1558– 1645”. Guildhall Miscellany 11, no. 5 (1963): 181–206. Reddaway, T. F., and Lorna E. M. Walker. The Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company, 1327–1509. London: Edward Arnold, 1975. Schofield, John. “Saxon and Medieval Parish Churches in the City of London, a Review”. Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 45 (1994): 23–146. Schofield, John. St. Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren. Swindon: English Heritage, 2011. Sharpe, Reginald R., ed. Calendar of Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London, A.D. 1258–A.D. 1688. 2 vols. London: John C. Francis, 1890. Simpson, W. Sparrow. “Inventory of the Vestments, Plate, and Books, Belonging to the Church of St. Peter Cheap, in the City of London, in the Year 1431”. The Journal of the British Archaeological Association 24 (1843): 150–60. Simpson, W. Sparrow. “Notes of the History and Antiquities of the United Parishes of S. Matthew Friday Street and S. Peter Cheap, in the City of London”. Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 3 (1870): 332–91. Simpson, W. Sparrow. “On the Parish of St. Peter Cheap, in the City of London, from 1392 to 1633”. The Journal of the British Archaeological Association 24 (1868): 248–68. Stow, John. A Survey of London. Edited by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. London, 1603; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Van Nieuwenhove, Rik. An Introduction to Medieval Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Vince, John. Discovering Saints in Britain. Aylesbury: Shire, 1979. Waller, Gary. The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Walters, H. B. London Churches at the Reformation. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1939. William of Malmesbury. Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings. Translated and edited by R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Winstead, Karen A. Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Winterbottom, Michael, and Michael Lapidge, ed. and trans. The Early Lives of St. Dunstan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012.

10 Success, salvation, and servitude Tallinn’s Brotherhood of the Black Heads and its relationship with local and regional saint cults1 Lehti Mairike Keelmann In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Hanseatic League oversaw a vital trade network in the Baltic Sea region, which had impact in the commercial, political, social, and even religious spheres. Operating within the bustling Hanseatic port town of Reval (modern-day Tallinn, Estonia) in the eastern Baltic territory of Livonia (Estonia and northern Latvia) was the Brotherhood of the Black Heads (Schwarzenhäupter). The majority of the Brotherhood’s members were the sons of prominent merchants and town councilors who belonged to Reval’s most elite organization, the Great Guild (Grosse Gilde).2 Brethren were expected to utilize their tenure in the Brotherhood to establish themselves socially and economically and seek marriage, which made them eligible to enter the Great Guild and thus become full citizens. The Brotherhood’s goals were based on the corporation’s multifaceted identity as a merchant, religious, and civic organization, charged with brokering trade, sponsoring local churches and monasteries, and ultimately sacrificing its members’ lives in the defense of the town as its militia. These men sought to make their mark in the social, economic, and religious landscape of Reval. The town was part of the London–Bruges– Lübeck–Reval–Novgorod trade axis and served as a crucial Hanseatic thoroughfare and mediator of exchange with Novgorod and the Orthodox East. During a time when ideas, people, goods, and laws were filtering in from western Europe, the Brotherhood is significant for its roots as a local, as opposed to transplanted, organization. The Brotherhood’s art commissions, including altarpieces and ceremonial wares, evince the permeation of saint cults within the corporation’s lived life. This article will shed light on the religious expression of the Brotherhood of the Black Heads through an examination of the corporation’s patron saints depicted in its coat of arms, as well as in the two pentaptychs co-commissioned by the organization and the Great Guild: the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece (1478–81, oil on panel and polychrome oak sculpture)3 by Lübeck artist Hermen Rode, and the Mary Altarpiece (before 1493, oil on panel)4 by the Master of the Saint Lucy Legend from Bruges, which are currently on display at the Niguliste Museum in Tallinn, Estonia. The Brotherhood’s Livonian origins and noble, chivalric undertones will be

Success, salvation, and servitude  205 explored through the corporation’s coat of arms, which features a profile of patron St. Mauritius on an escutcheon. The Brotherhood’s reverence for saints who connect to the organization’s roles in the economic and civic spheres of Reval will also be investigated, focusing on the first and second positions of the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece. This will be followed by a closer examination of the second state of the Mary Altarpiece, featuring a scene of the Double Intercession, which is a unique choice for a large-scale retable because it alludes to the salvation and redemption of humanity on a pronounced level by including a doubled display of atonement – Mary baring her breast, ostentatio uberum, and Christ exhibiting his wounds, ostentatio vulnerum. Both pentaptychs illustrate the Brotherhood’s devotion to local and regional saints’ cults, while also linking to the organization’s various roles within Reval and its relationship with the Great Guild. The altarpieces point to the desire of Brotherhood members to promote themselves as wealthy merchants with links abroad but, above all, to demonstrate their piety and devotion as servants of God seeking salvation. As liturgical objects, the retables are tailored to the corporation’s religious needs, and their visual programs hinge on the corporation’s core values of piety and civic duty as a Livonian organization with connections abroad.

St. Mauritius and the heraldic crest of the Brotherhood St. Mauritius is intimately intertwined with the corporate identity of the Brotherhood as an organization that fashioned itself as a guild of pious and chivalrous men. The name of “Black Heads” or, in Middle Low German, swarten hoveden,5 refers to the organization’s Ethiopian military patron saint.6 Correspondingly, St. Mauritius is featured in the coats of arms of the corporation. The organization’s veneration of the soldier-saint is connected to his military, crusader, and aristocratic associations. The life of Mauritius is narrated in the Passion of the Martyrs of Agaunum, a fifth-century text written by Eucherius, Bishop of Lyon.7 As one of the principal commanders of the Theban Legion, a legendary group of approximately six thousand Roman soldiers from the third century, Mauritius was a fitting patron saint. Under his leadership, the legion’s men collectively converted to Christianity and were subsequently martyred, dying for the sake of their faith.8 Mauritius rose to popularity in the German lands as a patron saint of the Holy Roman Emperors beginning towards the end of the ninth century, but he also served more generally as a guardian of noble warriors and soldiers.9 Mauritius provides a compelling example of a saint distinctively visualized as an African. As scholars note, the representation of Mauritius as a black man was first introduced in the middle of the thirteenth century and extended to the sixteenth century.10 The Theban commander was highly venerated in Magdeburg, a city he watched over as the patron saint, and one of the earliest and most prominent examples of his depiction as an African man with black skin is a sandstone sculpture in Magdeburg Cathedral,

206  Lehti Mairike Keelmann where he appears as an armored knight (c. 1250–1260). The Magdeburg statue signals a break from the stereotypical depiction of African saints during the medieval period with European physiognomy, cloaked in a dark complexion. As Geraldine Heng points out, Mauritius’ life and veristic portrayal rejects the trope of the “virtuous heathen”.11 He is clearly identified as an exalted human, as opposed to an exoticized individual. Mauritius is both a saint and knight whose dual role exudes potent sacred and secular agency, while his story and influence also symbolize the geographical reach of Christianity.12 This pictorial convention of visualizing Mauritius as a sanctified African saint and knight with black skin was selectively spread across the northern German-speaking lands and reached as far as Livonia, where the Brotherhood venerated the holy figure and embraced his image as its emblem. The religious fervor of Mauritius’ militia has resonances with the origins of the Brotherhood as an organization allegedly born from a group of defenders of the Church against a pagan enemy in Livonia. Furthermore, the Theban soldiers connect not only to the corporation’s military duties and crusader origins but also to the espousal of communal bonds and piety, values that the Brotherhood sought to promote in its ranks. The introduction of the saint’s cult into Livonia occurred via the Teutonic Knights during the Christian colonization of the territory in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries (c. 1198–1290).13 The clearest testimony to the saint’s veneration in Livonia is a reference dating to 1431, which refers to a banner with an image of the black soldier in armor. This heraldic flag was displayed with the banner of the Virgin and Child that belonged to the Master of the Livonian Order, who was the leader of the regional branch of the Teutonic Knights.14 As the patron saint of the Brotherhood, Mauritius served a primarily heraldic function. The coat of arms or vaepen of the corporation includes a profile of the saint in the form of a Moor’s head wearing a headband or diadem comprised of interwoven red and white ribbons.15 The escutcheon adorned silver gilt chalices, liturgical vestments, regalia, and the corporation’s grave slab.16 Jean Devisse remarks that Mauritius was “not a people’s saint but a companion of those in power.”17 The saint’s association with knighthood and aristocracy, embodied in his role as an imperial and Teutonic divine protector, suggests that the Brotherhood sought to characterize itself as an organization of noble character and status. The corporation may have chosen the saint owing to Mauritius’ connection to regal leaders and valiant Christian crusaders. As the leader of a large company of men, Mauritius would have been a figure of inspiration for young Brotherhood brethren. He commanded an army loyal to the Roman Emperor Diocletian against the Gauls, but he was also instrumental in inspiring his military company to convert to Christianity. The religious bond that Mauritius promoted among his men was also one shared by Brotherhood brethren who were connected by their shared desire for religious salvation and the protection of Livonia, the Terra Mariana.18

Success, salvation, and servitude  207

Corporate identity and the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece: Sts. Nicholas, Victor, and George Similar to the Brotherhood’s association with its patron St. Mauritius, the patronage of altarpieces by the organization also helped to bolster its image as a corporation invested in its town and in the religious devotion of its members. As one of two major pentaptychs that the organization cocommissioned with the Great Guild in the later fifteenth century, the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece by Hermen Rode constructs the Brotherhood’s identity as closely connected to Reval’s status and function as a port town within the Hanseatic League. The corporation’s commercial stakes are visualized as inherently interlaced with the Brotherhood’s devotion to a select group of saints who would protect the organization, its livelihood, and its hometown. Additionally, the retable elucidates the bond shared between the Brotherhood and its father organization, the Great Guild. St. Nicholas of Myra was one of the most commonly venerated saints in the Hanseatic League, and many churches across the Baltic Sea region were consecrated in his name.19 The cult of St. Nicholas originated in the Greekspeaking world, from whence it spread to the rest of Europe.20 St. Nicholas’ pilgrimage led him to Myra, where he embarked on a lifetime of service to the church and was ordained as a bishop.21 In Reval, the parish church of St. Nicholas was also home to the aforementioned Saint Nicholas Altarpiece.22 Produced for the high altar, the nature of the retable as a joint commission between the Brotherhood and its father organization, the Great Guild, is visualized by the inclusion of both sets of coats of arms, which are emblazoned on the closed, painted panels of the altarpiece (Figure 10.1). The Saint Nicholas Altarpiece is a painted and sculpted pentaptych, featuring a double set of side wings, harkening to the preferred, most deluxe format in northern German centers. The visual program melds religious themes with commercial references and focuses on the lives of Sts. Nicholas of Myra and Victor of Marseille, a Roman soldier turned martyr who was also the patron saint of medieval Reval. Both saints feature in all three positions of the pentaptych. The retable’s closed exterior wings display the first painted view, which was seen on a daily basis outside of liturgical services. The targes of the Great Guild and the Brotherhood, a white cross against a red shield and the head of St. Mauritius on a white escutcheon, respectively, hang on an illusionistically rendered limestone plinth in the foreground that extends across both wings. Two groups of three saints stand on the platform with their attributes in a unified, continuous setting: on the viewer’s left wing, St. Catherine of Alexandria, the Madonna and Child, and St. Barbara, and on the viewer’s right wing, Sts. Victor of Marseille, Nicholas of Myra, and George of Lydda (Cappadocia).23 The brigade of saints comes together in the presence of the Virgin and Child. With the first position displayed outside most liturgical services and, thus, seen on a regular basis, the pentaptych in its closed

Copyright: Niguliste Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.

Figure 10.1 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, first position (closed), oil on panel and polychrome oak sculpture.

Success, salvation, and servitude  209 state also functions in part as a heraldic device for the Brotherhood and Great Guild. The coats of arms and patron saints of the two associations visualize corporate and familial bonds, represent social status and ambitions and, most importantly, convey strong religious devotion and dedication to Livonia. The choice of saints signifies local and more regional cults. The three female saints in this first position had their feast days celebrated in Reval as totum duplex, the highest Dominican rite.24 Catherine and Barbara serve as Mary’s maiden attendants in a scene that conflates the subjects of the sacra conversazione, the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, and the Virgo inter virgines. As two of the most venerated virgin martyrs in Flanders and the Germanic regions, Catherine and Barbara belonged to the Fourteen Holy Helpers and featured prominently in the cult of the Virgines Capitales (Catherine, Barbara, Margaret, and Dorothy).25 Therefore, their inclusion in the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece may not be solely tied to their cults in Reval, but also to their popularity as effective universal intercessors, suggesting comparisons with the co-redemptrix of humanity, the Virgin Mary.26 On the opposite panel, Sts. Victor, Nicholas, and George declare the Brotherhood and Great Guild’s dedication to Reval. The assemblage of the two crusader knights and a widely venerated intercessor of the burgher class in the Hanseraum, Nicholas, is a reflection of the Brotherhood’s duties and responsibilities as a merchant body, town militia, and confraternity. Nicholas is the saintly representative of the Hanseatic League in this first position and serves as the counterpart to the Madonna, who is the celestial delegate for Livonia. Fittingly, the shield of the Brotherhood, placed directly below this grouping of saints, creates a strong visual association of the corporation with the saints above. While the figures in this position serve to incite religious devotion and intercessory prayers, they also function as representatives of the Great Guild and the Brotherhood in the absence of donor portraits. In Reval, Sts. George and Victor were often visualized together as a chivalric pair. St. George was considered a very important patron saint of guilds in the Baltic Sea region.27 The number of polychrome wooden sculptural groupings of “St. George Defeating the Dragon” attest to the saint’s veneration in the region, such as an over-life-size grouping made for the Storkyrkan in Stockholm by the Lübeck master Bernt Notke (1489, in situ).28 The altar in the Rigan chapter of the Brotherhood’s chapel in the St. Peter Church was also most likely dedicated to St. George. His relic was housed in a wooden polychrome sculpture of the saint, and later an ornate silver gilt reliquary by Bernt Heynemann from Lübeck was commissioned (1507, Holstentor Museum, Lübeck).29 St. Victor, as the patron saint of medieval Reval, was often depicted holding a shield with the town’s coat of arms. His cult did not gain momentum in Reval until the second half of the fifteenth century, around the time that the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece was commissioned. Three statues from Lübeck of the saint (1487) were placed

210  Lehti Mairike Keelmann at the gates of the town, making him a prominent fixture of the townscape. Both Reval’s St. Nicholas and Holy Spirit churches housed altars dedicated to St. Victor.30 He appears with Reval’s shield in Bernt Notke’s Altarpiece of the Holy Kinship (1483), commissioned around the same time as the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece for the town’s Church of the Holy Spirit. In the Brotherhood’s Mary Chapel in the Dominican monastery of St. Catherine, St. Victor was featured in the Mary altar’s antependium, the earlier introduced Mary Altarpiece, and upon a silk liturgical robe.31 Notably, the Mary Altarpiece’s third and final position of the Sacra Conversazione features Sts. Francis of Assisi, George of Lydda, Victor of Marseille, and Gertrude of Nivelles converging around the Virgin and Child (Figure 10.2). Mary and the infant Christ are flanked by St. George, who holds his attribute and stands on top of the mangled slain dragon, and St. Victor, who grasps a Crucifix. Victor’s sable fur cape, which links to the Baltic fur trade, is fitting given the saint’s local significance. Clad in ceremonial armor and carrying their heraldry, Sts. George and Victor are not poised to enter into battle. They are summoned to the Virgin’s court on behalf of the Brotherhood and are pictured here as her knightly escorts. The pairing of Sts. George and Victor mirrors the way in which the Brotherhood wanted to be perceived, as

Figure 10.2 Master of the Saint Lucy Legend, Mary Altarpiece, before 1493, third position (second opening), the Sacra Conversazione, oil and tempera paints on oak panel. Copyright: Niguliste Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.

Success, salvation, and servitude  211 an organization with a strong dedication to its locality, yet also being regionally active and looking outward to exchange. While St. Victor represents a local saint cult in Reval, St. George speaks to a more regional network. This chivalric pair of Sts. George and Victor parallels the Brotherhood’s namesake, St. Mauritius, and connects to the organization’s crusader origins. As the Brotherhood’s saintly proxies, Sts. George and Victor’s role as ceremonial guards and Christian soldiers for Livonia, the Terra Mariana, is emphasized. Ultimately, Sts. George and Victor reminded the organization’s members who were viewing the altarpiece of the Brotherhood brethren’s duty to defend their town as its militia and the corporation’s devotion to the Terra Mariana. When the outer wings of the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece are opened, they reveal two sets of eight compartmentalized painted narrative scenes from the lives of St. Nicholas of Myra, on the viewer’s left, and St. Victor of Marseille, on the viewer’s right (Figure 10.3).32 This second position would have been displayed during Mass. The hagiographic accounts are divided into four scenes on each panel, which are further compartmentalized by a gilded border encasing vegetal designs.33 The lives of both saints conclude with their deaths. St. Nicholas’ soul goes to heaven, while St. Victor is martyred on the millwheel and angels recover his body for burial and his subsequent ascent to heaven. The panels provide a visual narrative of the lives of the church’s patron saints to the congregation and represent the urban dimension of the parish community.34 As Elina Gertsman and Elina Räsänen posit, St. Nicholas guards the “professional identity” of Reval’s merchant body, while St. Victor “exemplifies their urban, lived body.”35 This second position then is meant to appeal to the wider congregation, but it also functions to further tailor the experience of Mass to the needs and expectations of the members of the Brotherhood and the Great Guild. The scenes make visual reference to the Brotherhood and Great Guild’s mercantile ambitions and to their geographical position within the greater scheme of the Hanseatic League. The imagery is calibrated to display the religiosity of the two organizations in a manner that speaks to their roles and responsibilities and that echoes the customized visual programs of altarpieces placed in private chantries across late medieval Europe. Just as with the pentaptych’s first position (Figure 10.1), the Brotherhood and Great Guild demonstrate their close association with these titular saints of the high altar in the second position configuration (Figure 10.3). The scenes from the life of St. Nicholas follow iconographic precedents based on the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine (late thirteenth century).36 Rode’s visual exegesis of the text is quite literal. For instance, when Nicholas saves three innocent men, three men kneel blindfolded and the saint is depicted stopping the sword from beheading the innocent. The text of the Legenda describes the event in almost identical terms.37 The scenes from the life of the bishop-saint begin with the top row on the outermost left panel and move from the viewer’s left to right. The narrative of St. Victor

Copyright: Niguliste Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.

Figure 10.3 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, second position (first opening), oil on panel and polychrome oak sculpture.

Success, salvation, and servitude  213 is arranged differently. In contrast to Nicholas, there was no template from the Legenda Aurea for the life of Victor of Marseille.38 This may also explain the distinctive arrangement of the scenes. The images pertaining to Victor follow a sequence that can be recognized by the subject matter and identified by the text bands at the bottom of each scene. The inner panel on the viewer’s left displays the events of St. Victor’s persecution and judgment in the form of four separate scenes, while the right wing encompasses the four compositions depicting the soldier’s punishment and martyrdom. For brevity, two scenes, one from each saint’s life, will be highlighted in greater detail from this second position. In one vignette, St. Nicholas is shown saving a ship in distress in a dramatic episode from his vita (Figure 10.4).39 The placement of this scene towards the middle of the central panel is a prominent location relative to the rest of the altarpiece.40 The imagery featured is a customized interpretation of the saint’s legend, which is intimately tied to the retable’s co-patrons and their role as part of a larger merchant body within the Hanseatic sphere. The commercial role of the Brotherhood and Great Guild is also visualized as rooted in deep religiosity. A disproportionately large figure of St. Nicholas blesses the distressed ship from his position on land. The saint is not here to guarantee safe passage for the ship, which has already succumbed to the storm with its main mast crashing down. Instead, he is here to intercede on behalf of the ship’s crew and protect their lives. The vessel in the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece is explicitly linked to the Brotherhood and the Great Guild, with the inclusion of their coats of arms lining the forecastle, which also promote the organizations’ role in Revalian trade.41 Through the shields on the ship, Rode can portray St. Nicholas as interceding specifically on behalf of the Brotherhood and Great Guild. As a patron saint of the two associations, Nicholas is their sacred maritime guardian, protecting the Brotherhood and Great Guild’s livelihood and their members’ lives. The boat depicted here appears to be battling choppy waves and strong currents on what seems to be an estuary as opposed to the open sea. The body of water cuts through a mountainous terrain marked by a series of cliffs. The strange, rocky landscape is not typical of Lübeck and suggests that the carrack was perhaps en route to a destination in the eastern Baltic. St. Nicholas’s divine intercession has calmed the storm. However, the ship is in danger of not making it to its destination, presumably the red brick townscape in the distance, and the vessel heads toward a collision with the closest parcel of land. The crow’s nest tilts and sailors scramble to pitch barrels of goods overboard. At this crucial moment, is the crew trying to save the ship from sinking and spare their lives? Or are they also looking to float the barrels and bushels of wares to the nearby shore, in an attempt to save their earthly goods and salvage their seafaring mission? One figure stands at the forecastle, hands clasped in prayer, calling out to St. Nicholas. While the other members of the crew appear youthful, this man is older. His balding head is sparse with grey hair. His dress indicates that he may be a merchant,

Figure 10.4 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, second position (first opening), detail of the scene of Saint Nicholas saving the ship. Copyright: Niguliste Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.

Success, salvation, and servitude  215 acting as the master of his ship, as members of the Brotherhood and Great Guild did on occasion. He wears a tunic with a rich sable fur collar and carries a coin purse, symbols of his wealth. This figure may represent the Brotherhood and its father organization, the Great Guild, appealing to St. Nicholas on their behalf for protection and salvation. In the scene, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of merchants, intervenes to protect the Brotherhood and Great Guild as well as their seafaring livelihood within the Hanseatic trading enclave. At the same time, he also represents a larger cult, as one of the most venerated saints by members of the Hanseatic League. He is the universal custodian of Hanse merchants everywhere. Here, he protects the Great Guild and the Brotherhood, and by extension, the commercial sphere of Reval and the larger Hanseatic network in which the town participated. The saint’s role as a protector of burghers and sailors is appropriate given Reval’s status as a Hanseatic port town on the London-Bruges-Lübeck-Reval-Novgorod trade axis.42 Together with George of Lydda, he was one of the most venerated saints among individuals, groups, and towns in the Hanseatic League whose livelihood and economic prosperity depended on maritime trade.43 In the altarpiece, he represents the Hanse more broadly as a saint with a wider regional veneration along the Baltic littoral. In contrast to the tame scenes from the life of St. Nicholas, including his dignified death, the images pertaining to St. Victor emphasize torture and brutality but conclude with themes of redemption and resurrection. The narrative of persecution, martyrdom, and subsequent resurrection parallels Christ’s Passion and brings Reval’s patron saint into closer association with the Savior. At the same time, the scenes highlight the bravery and valor displayed by Victor as a Christian knight. In the bottom left scene that depicts the saint in stocks and in prison, Jesus appears to him in a vision in the company of two angels. After St. Victor’s refusal to worship the pagan idol in the adjacent scene, represented as a bronze sculpture, and the statue’s toppling from its column, the soldier-martyr is subsequently paraded into a town square, which appears as if located in Lübeck. The bound knight remains steadfast in his faith as he is pushed, prodded, and dragged in front of gabled buildings, one of which bears a resemblance to the Hanseatic capital’s Rathaus with miniature, copper-roofed spires accentuating its façade. Anu Mänd first drew attention to Victor of Marseille’s role as the patron saint of Reval during the medieval period.44 According to his vita, his body was thrown into the sea, but then miraculously recovered and given a Christian funeral.45 As a Roman soldier turned martyr, this sea-based miracle suggests that he was also a patron saint for travelers and seafarers. St. Victor’s veneration was particularly strong in France, especially in the town of Marseille, where an abbey was built upon his gravesite and he was venerated as a patron saint of sailors.46 While his cult was not prominent in the Germanic or Scandinavian lands, it grew at this time in Trier and Metz.47 The Chronicle of Reval, written by town councilor and Great Guild member

216  Lehti Mairike Keelmann Johann Gellinckhusen, is a particularly revealing source in corroborating St. Victor’s importance as a patron saint of Reval.48 However, it also demonstrates that in Reval, the feast day of St. Victor of Xanten (October 10) was conflated with that of Victor of Marseille (July 21). In a document dated to October 10, 1503, the councilmen assembled in the guildhall to celebrate the feast of their patron St. Victor.49 It appears that while Reval celebrated the cult of St. Victor of Marseille, the town unconventionally honored his feast day on October 10.50 The scenes that present St. Victor of Marseille’s vita in the first opening of the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece dispel any doubt of his veneration in the town. The miracle of St. Victor, located in the lower right corner of the panel depicting the vita of the soldier-martyr, serves as a counterpart to the miracle of St. Nicholas discussed earlier (Figure 10.5). Presented as a continuous narrative, two peasants in the foreground discard the beheaded body of St. Victor into a river after his martyrdom on the millwheel. The river winds into the distance where, in the middle ground, angels recover the body, which will subsequently be given a Christian burial. A recognizable townscape of Lübeck is depicted in the background of the narrative.51 While the artist, Hermen Rode, may have been paying homage to his famous hometown,52 Lübeck’s inclusion also reinforces the regional bond between Reval, represented here by its patron saint, and the Hanseatic capital. Victor’s martyrdom and the miraculous recovery of the saint’s body are firmly established within the context of the Hanseatic queen city. The spire-dotted background includes fortifications, such as the city’s Burgtor tower. One can also make out religious landmarks, including the Domkirche and Marienkirche, the latter of which was the city’s tallest building with its double towers in the middle.53 The Wakenitz River, which connects the town to the sea, winds into the distance, its short, choppy waves giving way to calm waters and a pair of swans. The text below the scene specifies that the saint’s body is thrown into the sea, a detail that is not always included in accounts of the life of Victor of Marseille.54 In this regard, the retrieval of Victor’s body for his heavenly resurrection is represented as a seaside miracle both in text and image. Reval adopted Victor of Marseille as its patron saint perhaps because of the connection of his miracle to the sea. Reval’s maritime association with the saint is demonstrated by the town council’s purchase of a ship in 1465 that was named after Victor. The vessel was not only acquired for trade-based transport, but it was armed with cannon, which suggests that it was also meant to have a military or defensive function.55 Mänd posits that the saint may have been venerated in a similar manner as St. George in Sweden, whose cult rose in popularity during the fifteenth century because of tensions with Denmark against the Kalmar Union.56 A similar geopolitical scenario could explain the patronage of St. Victor in Reval. As a soldier-saint, Victor may have been relevant in the aftermath of the Christian colonization of the town and Livonia, which was a significant and fairly recent development.

Figure 10.5 Hermen Rode, St. Nicholas Altarpiece, 1478–1481, second position (first opening), detail of the scene of the miracle of Saint Victor. Copyright: Niguliste Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.

218  Lehti Mairike Keelmann Furthermore, Livonia was subject to ongoing threats from Kievan Rus’.57 Therefore, St. Victor may have appealed to Reval’s community because of his role as a knight, especially given that the Brotherhood and Great Guild already venerated other chivalric saints, including Mauritius and George, as discussed earlier. Technical analysis has revealed that there were originally three ships, including a cog in the distance, in the scene from Victor’s life.58 Perhaps these vessels were omitted in the final design in order to draw a stronger visual connection between Victor’s martyred body in the foreground and the townscape of Lübeck in the background. While not all members of the St. Nicholas Church’s congregation would recognize Lübeck,59 the retable’s patrons, the Great Guild and Brotherhood, were burghers with well-established trade routes who would have traveled to the city on occasion. This setting would have appealed to the merchant membership of the church congregation and the pentaptych’s co-patrons.60 As merchants and journeymen, Great Guild and Brotherhood members conceivably served as intermediaries for the dissemination of products sourced almost exclusively from Livonia and northern Russian lands to western Europe, including Baltic fur, such as marten and northern grey squirrel. This scene of profound religiosity illustrates not only Reval’s local veneration of St. Victor but affirms the devotion of the town and its merchants to the regional Hanseatic network. However, Reval’s relationship with Lübeck was not only trade-based. The eastern Baltic town and the Hanseatic capital also both shared the Lübeck law. With Victor’s recovery by angels, Reval is resurrected both spiritually, as a town within the Terra Mariana, and economically, as a major port in a trade network that hinges on the very city in which the saint’s miracle is represented. The scene is transformed into a maritime miracle that reaffirms Reval’s bond with Lübeck and that binds the two centers together in faith, trade, and mutual dependency on one another, like the duo brachia crucifixi.61

Divine intervention and the Mary Altarpiece: A double intercession The multi-dimensional piety expressed in the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece is echoed in the second of two large-scale pentaptychs co-commissioned by the Brotherhood, the earlier introduced Mary Altarpiece by the Master of the Saint Lucy Legend. Since 1400, the Brotherhood maintained its own wellappointed chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Reval’s Dominican church of St. Catherine. Among the luxury wares amassed for the sacred space was the Mary Altarpiece. The retable arrived in Reval sometime before 1493, over ten years after the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece had been shipped to the town. When the exterior wings of the Mary Altarpiece are opened, they reveal the second position with the Double Intercession (Figure 10.6), which would have been displayed on Sundays during Mass. While the intercessory

Copyright: Niguliste Museum, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.

Figure 10.6 Master of the Saint Lucy Legend, Mary Altarpiece, before 1493, second position (first opening), the Double Intercession, oil and tempera paints on oak panel.

220  Lehti Mairike Keelmann powers of the Virgin were specifically at work for the Brotherhood in its chapel, the corporation’s desire to seek divine intercession from Mary on behalf not only of its members but also of its hometown, is strikingly visualized in the Mary Altarpiece’s Double Intercession. Images of the Double Intercession generally depict God the Father as the supreme ruler with a tiara, orb, and scepter. Christ kneels as the Man of Sorrows beside the Lord’s throne. Mary, either opposite or adjacent to Christ, exposes her naked breast.62 In the Mary Altarpiece’s rendition of the Double Intercession, thirty-six figures inhabit a unified, sumptuous interior with a meticulously represented tile floor and textile background. The corpus features the Trinity of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, God the Father, and Christ, alongside two attending angels. God sits on a sculpted throne framed by a gold Cloth of Honor and a fringed red, white, and black canopy. As the Almighty Lord, he is adorned with worldly luxuries sourced from multiple trade networks, which convey his absolute status and visually associate the Brotherhood with international mercantile circles and wealth. Christ kneels in an orans position on the viewer’s left side but on God’s right (the dexter) side, revealing his stigmata to His Father and to the Holy Spirit, represented as a dove on the viewer’s right. The retable’s image of Christ with his wounds has strong Eucharistic overtones. Christ is shown with the arma Christi, including the whipping column, which are used here as instruments of mercy and intercession.63 The two ageless, fresh-faced angels behind Jesus wear diadems studded with rubies and sapphires, and they hold some of the Instruments of Christ’s Passion – the cross and nails, the spear, and the Crown of Thorns. On the wings, thirty members of the Brotherhood kneel at the feet of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. Mary and St. John plead to God on behalf of the corporation. The well-appointed men of the Brotherhood are privy to a visionary gathering of the Trinity, Mary, and St. John. They kneel with hands raised in gestures of prayer.64 The Double Intercession was a unique choice for a large-scale altarpiece because it included not only Christ with his wounds but also Mary. As Beth Williamson remarks, an “intercession of the Virgin was regarded not only as effective, but as practically foolproof,” so having both Mary and her son pleading on behalf of their earthly companions was particularly efficacious.65 In the altarpiece, both Christ and Mary appear in supplication. They ritually gesture toward those parts of their bodies from which flowed the fluids that set in motion the process of Redemption – Mary’s milk in her ostentatio uberum and Christ’s blood in his ostentatio vulnerum.66 Since Mary’s milk was believed to be formed from her blood, in nursing Christ she becomes physically bound to his sacrificial blood. The “bodily symmetries” of mother and son,67 in the form of the double ostenatio, are central to the co-redeeming powers of Mary and Christ.68 The concept of the Double Intercession originates from Ernaldus of Chartres’s (died after 1156) Libellus de Laudibus Beatae Mariae Virginis.69 It was subsequently incorporated into and popularized in chapter thirty-nine

Success, salvation, and servitude  221 of the late medieval theological treatise, Speculum Humanae Salvationis (S.H.S.) (c. 1309–1324).70 The choice of this subject for the second position may have been made in collaboration with the Dominicans in Reval, especially since it is likely that the Speculum had a Dominican origin.71 The S.H.S. became a book of popular piety with a wide circulation. It focused primarily on events from the New Testament that were typologically connected to the Old Testament. Although an uncommon subject for monumental Netherlandish paintings at the time, the Double Intercession was typically invoked in medieval sermons.72 Commissions for images of the Double Intercession were typically reserved for times of hecatombic trauma, such as famine or the plague. A number of Double Intercession paintings in the Bavarian and Alpine regions suggest the subject matter’s ubiquity in the German speaking lands, including the works of the circle of Conrad Witz (c. 1450, Kunstmuseum, Basel) and the Master of the Lower Rhine (1506, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe).73 As a civic, religious, and merchant organization, the Brotherhood had responsibilities and expectations that bridged various spheres of Revalian life. The Double Intercession may have been suggested by the Dominicans as a subject that could accommodate the Brotherhood’s various paths to salvation, as well as the civic, mercantile, and religious spheres in which they existed. Along with facing various challenges to its commercial sector and military threats from the forces of Rus, late-fifteenth-century Reval was in the throes of multiple outbreaks of the plague. Death and salvation, themes resonant within the Mary Altarpiece, were on the minds of the Baltic German community in Reval, who commissioned a large-scale Dance of Death (after 1463, Niguliste Museum, Tallinn) from the Lübeck artist Bernt Notke for their aforementioned parish church of St. Nicholas.74 The Brotherhood’s presence in the Mary Altarpiece’s Double Intercession suggests that it was, as a corporation, seeking divine intervention in the name of its town, while also praying for the salvation of its members’ souls.75 According to Dominican principles espoused by, among others, Thomas Aquinas, the Trinity was interwoven with the Eucharist and Salvation.76 In the Double Intercession, the Trinity is emphasized by a pyramidal arrangement of the Holy Spirit above Christ and an enthroned God the Father.77 However, it is also conflated with another religious image present in this second position. God as the father; Christ as his son; Mary as mother, daughter, and bride; and the Holy Spirit create a divine family portrait.78 With the inclusion of St. John the Baptist, Christ’s cousin, the Double Intercession becomes an assemblage of Christ’s lineage. As a relative of Mary and Christ’s cousin, St. John the Baptist in the Mary Altarpiece’s Double Intercession reinforces familial ties. Though not typically included in the Double Intercession, he appears in the retable on the right-side wing, wearing a rustic camel skin or hide robe. The Brotherhood’s request to include St. John in the Double Intercession posed a dilemma for the Master, who was forced to compromise on the traditional triangular arrangement of

222  Lehti Mairike Keelmann Mary and Christ kneeling in front of God the Father.79 In order to achieve a symmetrical and balanced composition, the Master situates Mary and St. John on the wings and divides the members of the Brotherhood into two clusters of fifteen to flank them. The mirroring gestures of Mary and St. John create harmony and continuity; both extend their hands in supplication. While archival documents do not specifically cite St. John the Baptist as one of the Brotherhood’s patron saints, he played a central role in the organization’s Mary Chapel as the co-patron of the other altar in the space, which was jointly dedicated to the Holy Trinity.80 It is likely that the Dominicans, in working with the Brotherhood on the subject matter of the altarpiece’s Double Intercession, suggested the inclusion of St. John the Baptist. It was not uncommon for patrons of altarpieces to consult with religious figures or orders about subject matter. For instance, the surviving contract for Dieric Bouts’ Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament (1464–68, Museum Leuven, Leuven) reveals that the altarpiece was commissioned on behalf of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament by four of its principal masters. Notably, the contract specified that the artist be required to consult with two theologians on the typological program of the Old Testament on the wings and the Last Supper on the corpus,81 a rare subject for Netherlandish altarpieces. St. John’s presence in the Double Intercession generates, in effect, a Triple Intercession, which also creates the Deësis, a prominent Byzantine religious image of Christ in Majesty flanked by Mary and St. John the Baptist, commonly found in Last Judgement imagery. The Double Intercession thus becomes simultaneously an intercession, a display of the Trinity, and the Deësis. This fusion of these themes is not unique to the Mary Altarpiece, which suggests that a Double Intercession could be tailored to patron desires, combining the imagery with other subjects.82 St. John cradles the Lamb of God, which represents the saint’s proclamation about Christ’s coming and sacrifice.83 Reinforcing St. John’s role in preaching the Word of God, the lamb rests upon a red, leather-bound gospel book with ornate clasps. St. John is central to Christian salvation through his role in baptism and its forgiveness of sin – making him not only a logical choice for the altarpiece, but also one who adheres to a doctrine of universal, Christian redemption.84 With St. John’s presence in the Double Intercession, the imagery serves as a somber premonition of the Last Judgement, and not only elevates the theme of intercession, but also alludes to the end of the world and the judgment of humanity. However, the saint’s combination with the Lamb of God also reminds the viewer of the redemptive qualities of faith and the sacrificial nature of Christ’s Passion. Brotherhood members located at the feet of St. John could correspondingly benefit from the intercessory powers of Christ’s blood embodied in the Lamb of God.85 Mary’s central role within the Double Intercession endows her with an agency that is appropriate in light of the chapel’s dedication. Mary is Christ’s nurturer and represents his human body that she conceived and bore in her womb. During Mass, when this second position of the altarpiece

Success, salvation, and servitude  223 was displayed, Christ’s body became the Bread of Life.86 The Brotherhood members kneeling before Mary were able to “benefit from the purifying property of her milk.”87 As both the Queen of Heaven and the earthly mother of Christ, she transcends earthly and divine spheres in being able to simultaneously communicate with God in heaven and believers on earth.88 Her role, like that of the Brotherhood as a merchant organization, militia, and confraternity, is multivalent. She is at once protector, intercessor, and redeemer of both the Brotherhood and the town of Reval. In the altarpiece, Mary’s bond with humanity materializes on a local level and corresponds to the Brotherhood’s veneration of the Virgin, as Livonia was dedicated to her during the Livonian Crusade.89 Brotherhood members are invited to invoke the Virgin in their prayers and, at the same time, to envision themselves amongst their pious and contemplative painted counterparts in the altarpiece, who serve as role models. The recitation of the Ave Maria (whether silent and internalized or vocal) is visualized through one of the foregrounded members of the Brotherhood on the viewer’s right, who clutches a rosary. While many donors were depicted with rosaries in paintings of the time, the Dominicans may have advised the inclusion of at least one beaded rosary in order to foster a very active veneration of the Virgin, especially since it was believed that the Rosary was based on a miraculous vision of the Virgin experienced by St. Dominic.90 When the Mary Altarpiece was being commissioned, the Dominicans were widely promoting the cult of the Rosary under the direction of two monks, Alanus de Rupe (c. 1428–75) and Jakob Sprenger (c. 1436–95).91 In the retable, the Brotherhood member is in the midst of moving his fingers through the rosary beads. This visualization of the Rosary’s recitation may have mobilized members into collective prayer in the name of the Virgin during and also outside of Mass. In this regard, the rosary’s role is instructional. As Henry Luttikhuizen notes, “praying the Rosary not only offered indulgence, like a spiritual pilgrimage, it helped the devout meditate on the life and death of Christ in preparation for union with the divine.”92 While the Brotherhood members are painted as physically within God’s heavenly court, their gazes suggest that they are, however, spiritually “outside the threshold.”93 Their eyes gaze beyond the pictorial field.94 As earthly inhabitants rather than members of God’s court, they are unable to directly witness the Double Intercession.95 Instead, they enter into a state of prayer and begin to look inward, experiencing a spiritual as opposed to a physical vision of the Double Intercession. Typical of religious donor portraits in altarpieces, the members are also distinguished from their divine counterparts through the use of a hieratic scale.96 The Brotherhood brethren are subordinated and presented as humble, penitent servants of God. Given the fact that Reval was in the midst of a series of plagues that ravaged the population,97 the pictorial deputies of the Brotherhood are not only praying for ultimate salvation (and, of course, a continued life on earth), but are also remembering their deceased Brotherhood brethren.

224  Lehti Mairike Keelmann Similar to a chantry chapel, a central function of the organization’s Mary Chapel was the commemoration of the dead.98 Memoria was central to building communal identity, and it is conceivable that the Double Intercession was displayed during the memorial masses of the Brotherhood and played a commemorative role.99 In attending Mass and praying as a group, Brotherhood members would engage in collective remembrance of their dead, which would strengthen their corporate bonds. The Double Intercession could thus have functioned like a tomb effigy or epitaph, which were popular throughout Europe and installed above or near graves to commemorate the dead.100 In close vicinity to the altarpiece, deceased members of the Brotherhood were buried under grave slabs that took up a portion of the chapel floor.101

Conclusion The visualization of both local and regional saint cults in the Brotherhood’s altarpieces reveals a desire to carefully curate the organization’s image as a corporation loyal to Reval while also looking outward to regional exchange. The Brotherhood’s patron saints echo the corporation’s multiple responsibilities and its multivalent religious goals. The organization claimed a select group of saints: military saints who harkened to the Brotherhood’s local pride and duty as a town militia, and patron saints of merchants and travelers who connected to the association’s role in the Hanseatic trade network. Whether members were embarking on maritime travel under the protection of St. Nicholas of Myra, defending their town in the name of St. Victor of Marseille, seeking protection from St. George of Lydda, or praying for salvation through the Virgin Mary to whom the Livonian Crusade was dedicated, the Brotherhood’s activities were intimately associated with the organization’s patron saints. A Double Intercession featuring thirty Brotherhood members, courtly and chivalrous saints with the Brotherhood’s coat of arms, and a maritime miracle are some of the ways in which the organization visually expressed its devotion to saints and fashioned its religiosity in the altarpieces it commissioned. A mediation of earthly and spiritual desires, the altarpieces commissioned by the Revalian corporation were meant to simultaneously save Brotherhood members’ souls and sell their image, with the organization’s beloved patron saints close by their side.

Notes 1 The author would like to thank her advisor, Dr. Achim Timmermann, as well as her dissertation committee members, Dr. Elizabeth Sears, Dr. Megan Holmes, and Dr. Helmut Puff, for their support and guidance. All transcriptions and translations are the author’s own unless otherwise noted. 2 The Brotherhood had chapters throughout Livonia (modern-day Estonia and northern Latvia). For the Great Guild, see Mariann Raisma et al., eds., Tallinna Suurgild ja gildimaja (Tallinn: Eesti Ajaloomuuseum, 2011).

Success, salvation, and servitude  225 3 The three positions of the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece are St. Catherine of Alexandria, the Virgin and Child, St. Barbara, St. Victor of Marseille, St. Nicholas of Myra, and St. George of Lydda (left to right) on the closed, painted wings; scenes from the lives of Sts. Nicholas and Victor in the first opening (painted); a heavenly forecourt with saints in the second opening (polychrome sculpture). The altarpiece’s third position, reserved for saint feast days and the holiest days in the liturgical calendar such as Christmas, Easter, and Corpus Christi, features two tiers of oak polychrome sculptures placed against a gilded background. Saints and apostles surround the Blessing of the Virgin by Christ on the upper register and St. Anne with the Virgin and Child (Anna Selbdritt) on the lower level. The figures are identified by their attributes, which are also sketched as underdrawings directly behind each statue onto the panel background. The retable is being cleaned and conserved as part of a multi-year project, undertaken by the Niguliste Museum, entitled, “Rode Altarpiece in Close-Up” (2013–2016). For the project website, see https​ ://ni​ gulis​ temuu​ seum.​ ekm. e​e/en/​on-vi​ew/on​-view​/rode​-alta​rpiec​e-in-​close​-up/ (accessed 20 July 2018). See also Merike Kurisoo, Tallinna Niguliste Kiriku Peaaltari Retaabel (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstimuuseum/Niguliste Muuseum, 2015); Hilkka Hiiop, “What is Under the Paint Layer of the Rode Altarpieces?” Baltic Journal of Art History 9 (2015): 239–53; Anneli Randla and Hilkka Hiiop, “Medieval Painted Saints Meeting Modern Media,” Baltic Journal of Art History 7 (2014): 171–80. For a project overview, see Lehti Mairike Keelmann, “Exhibiting Altarpieces: Technical Art Examination in Focus,” International Center of Medieval Art Newsletter 2 (2014): 22–23. Recent scholarship on the pentaptych includes Anja Rasche, Studien zu Hermen Rode (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2013), 97–152; Anu Mänd, “Symbols that Bind Communities,” in Art, Cult and Patronage. Die Visuelle Kultur im Ostseeraum zur Zeit Bernt Notkes, ed. Uwe Albrecht and Anu Mänd (Kiel: Ludwig, 2013), 119–41; Anu Mänd, “Kes on kes Niguliste kiriku peaaltari retaabil,” Kunstuteaduslikke Uurimusi 18, no. 1–2 (2009): 7–34. 4 The three positions of the Mary Altarpiece are the Annunciation on the closed wings, the Double Intercession in the first opening, and the Sacra Conversazione in the second opening. The three positions correspond to the liturgical calendar and increase in ornamentation. The first, closed position of the altarpiece includes an Annunciation scene and would have been displayed on a daily basis outside liturgical services. The second position opens the first set of side wings and shows the Double Intercession. Christ poses with angels in front of the enthroned God the Father. A breast-showing (ostentatio uberum) Mary and St. John the Baptist flank the portraits of fifteen members of the Brotherhood on each of the side wings. The Double Intercession would have been displayed on Sundays during Mass. The third and final position reveals the second set of side wings, which comprises a Sacra Conversazione with the Virgin and Child, surrounded from left to right by four saints: Francis of Assisi, George of Lydda, Victor of Marseille, and Gertrude of Nivelles. This final position would have been reserved for feast days dedicated to saints, including the Assumption of the Virgin, and the holiest events in the liturgical calendar such as Easter and Christmas. For recent studies of the altarpiece, see Kerttu Palginõmm and Ivar Leimus, “Der Marienaltar der Bruderschaft der Schwarzenhäupter vor dem Hintergrund des Wertes der abgebildeten Luxusgrüter,” Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 24, no. 3–4 (2015): 49–85; Kerttu Palginõmm, “Der dem Meister der Lucialegende zugeschriebene Revaler (Tallinner) Retabel – kostbare Stoffe und ein unbekannter Meister?” Baltic Journal of Art History 4 (2012): 127–36; Kerttu Palginõmm, “Luxusartikel auf dem Revaler Retabel des Meisters der Lucialegende als eine Einladung in die Stadt Brügge,” Baltic Journal of Art

226  Lehti Mairike Keelmann History 3 (2011): 89–114; Anu Mänd, “The Altarpiece of the Virgin Mary of the Confraternity of the Black Heads in Tallinn,” Acta Historiae Artium Balticae 2 (2007): 35–53. 5 Staatsarchiv Hamburg Collection 612-2/6, E1, 2r. Hereafter, the Staatsarchiv Hamburg Collection is referred to as HStaH. HStaH 612-2/6 encompasses the archival collection pertaining to the Brotherhood of the Black Heads at the Hamburg State Archive, including the altar book for the corporation’s Mary Chapel in the Dominican monastery of St. Catherine (HStaH 612-2/6, E1). 6 See also Anu Mänd, Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic, 1350–1550 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 32–33. The first mention of the Black Heads was in 1399/1400. For more information on St. Mauritius in general, see Gude Suckale-Redlefsen and Robert Suckale, Mauritius, Der heilige Mohr (Houston: Menil Foundation, 1987). 7 Jean Devisse, “A Sanctified Black: Maurice,” trans. William Ryan Granger, in The Image of the Black in Western Art, ed. David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., vol. 2, From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery,” pt. 1, From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood (Houston: Menil Foundation, 1979), 139. For Eucherius’ text, see Bernard de Montmélian, Saint Maurice et la Légion Thébéenne, vol. 1 (Paris: Plon and Nourrit, 1888), 213– 21; Bruno Krusch, ed., Monumenta Germaniae historica: Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum, vol. 3 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1896), 20–41. 8 See also Suckale-Redlefsen and Suckale, Mauritius; Devisse, “A Sanctified Black: Maurice,” 139–96. 9 Devisse, “A Sanctified Black: Maurice,” 139–50. 10 Devisse, “A Sanctified Black: Maurice,” 139–96. 11 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 224 and more generally 222–27. 12 Heng, The Invention of Race, 222–24. 13 See Mänd, Urban Carnival, 32–34; Herbert Spliet, Geschichte des rigischen Neuen Hauses, des später sogenannten König Artus Hofes, des heutigen Schwarzhäupterhauses (Riga: Ernst Plates, 1963), 2–7; Georges Wrangell and Friedrich Amelung, Geschichte der Revaler Schwarzenhäupter (Reval: Wassermann, 1930). 14 See Sven Ekdahl, Die “Banderia Prutenorum” des Jan Długosz – eine Quelle zur Schlacht bei Tannenberg 1410. Untersuchungen zu Aufbau, Entstehung und Quellenwert der Handschrift (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1976), 274–75; Anu Mänd, “Saints’ Cults in Medieval Livonia,” in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. Alan Murray (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 204–05. 15 The headband/diadem worn by Mauritius corresponds to the colors of the Revalian town shield that consists of a white cross against a red background. 16 The grave slab dates to 1559. Non-extant liturgical objects referenced in the altar book of the Brotherhood were adorned with an image of St. Mauritius or the “shield of the black heads.” See HStaH 612-2/6, E1. 17 Devisse, “A Sanctified Black: Maurice,” 148. 18 For history on the Brotherhood, see for example Urmas Oolup and Juhan Kreem, eds. Tallinna Mustpead. Mustpeade Vennaskonna Ajaloost ja Varadest /Die Revaler Schwarzenhäupter: Geschichte und Schätze der Bruderschaft der Schwarzenhäupter (Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, 1999); Māra Siliņa, ed., Melngalvju nams Rīgā/Das Schwarzenhäupter Haus in Riga/The Blackheads House in Riga (Riga: Rīgas Vēstures un Kuģniecības Muzejs, 1995); Wrangell and Amelung, Geschichte der Revaler Schwarzenhäupter; Gotthard Tielemann, Geschichte der Schwarzen-Häupter in Riga, nebst einer Beschreibung

Success, salvation, and servitude  227 des Arthurhofes und seiner Denkwürdigkeiten: Nach handschriftlichen Nachrichten (Riga: Wilhelm Ferdinand Häcker, 1831). 19 Churches in Lübeck, Wismar, Greifswald, Rostock, and Schwerin are among those dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra. For St. Nicholas, see for example Martin Echon, Saint Nicholas: Life and Legend (New York: Harper and Row, 1975); Matthias Zender, “Heiligenverehung im Hanseraum,” Hansische Geschichtesblätter 92 (1974): 1–15; Karl Meisen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch im Abendlande: Eine kulturgeographisch-volkskundliche Untersuchung (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1931). 20 See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 21–26; Echon, Saint Nicholas, 9–15. 21 Echon, Saint Nicholas, 9–15. 22 The St. Nicholas Church has been converted into the Niguliste Museum, a branch of the Art Museum of Estonia (K.U.M.U.). The Saint Nicholas Altarpiece is displayed in situ, where the high altar would have been located. 23 The altarpiece will be described from the viewer’s perspective, i.e. the viewer’s left, unless otherwise noted, e.g. God’s dexter side. 24 Mänd, “Symbols that Bind Communities,” 123. See for more information, Tiina Kala, “The Church Calendar and Yearly Cycle in the Life of Medieval Reval,” in Quotidianum Estonicum: Aspects of Daily Life in Medieval Estonia, ed. Juhan Kreem and Juri Kivimäe (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1996), 103–10. 25 Stanley Edward Weed, “The Virgin inter Virgines: Art and Devotion to Virgin Saints in the Low Countries and Germany, 1400–1530” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2002), 157–59 and 165–67. For an overview of Sts. Barbara and Catherine, see Weed, “Virgin inter Virgines,” 157–71; Weed, “Venerating the Virgin Martyrs: The Cult of the ‘Virgines Capitales’ in Art, Literature, and Popular Piety,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 41, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 1065– 91. See also Ellen Muller, “Saintly Virgins: The Veneration of Virgin Saints in Religious Women’s Communities,” in Saints and She Devils: Images of Women in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Lène Dresen-Coenders and Petty Bange (London: Rubicon, 1987), 83–100. Conceivably, the inclusion of the female martyrs also appealed to the women in St. Nicholas Church’s congregation. 26 For instance, the role of Catherine and Barbara as members of the Fourteen Helpers, a group of saints venerated for their intercessory powers against diseases, may have resonated with the St. Nicholas congregation, which commissioned Notke’s Dance of Death (after 1463, Niguliste Museum, Tallinn) in response to the plague ravaging Reval in the fifteenth century. 27 Included in these guilds is the Artushöfe in Prussia. 28 For images see Anu Mänd, ed., Bernt Notke. Uuenduste ja Traditsioonide Vahel (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstimuuseum – Niguliste Muuseum, 2010), 75–79. There is also a St. George polychrome wooden grouping displayed in the St. Annen Museum in Lübeck. Sweden venerated St. George, especially during the conflict of the Kalmar Union. More recently, the Soomepoisid (Finnish Boys) – Estonian members of the Finnish army during World War II – unveiled a monument to St. George. 29 The sculpture was placed on the altar. See Dokumentesammlung des HerderInstituts in Marburg/Lahn (DSHI), Schwarzenhäupter Riga, 120, Das Hauptbuch der Schwarzenhäuptervikarie 1481–1585, N. 7, 306a–306b. Listed in this inventory for the Rigan Brotherhood of the Black Heads (DSHI 120–7) is a large relic of St. George. The kind of relic is not specified. 30 See Anu Mänd, “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn?/Püha Viktor – Talinna kaitsepühak?” Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 12, no. 3–4 (2003): 28.

228  Lehti Mairike Keelmann 31 See HStaH 612–2/6, E1, 28r: “Item so sid dar schilde gemakzt de men uppe de ornate setten (priest’s robe) sal also sunte victors schild und swarten hovede de stain i fl und iiii mark tho makende (with the shields of Saint Victor and Brotherhood applied to the vestment).” This entry dates to 1440. 32 For Anja Rasche’s analysis of the scenes, see her “Lübeck und Reval: Zwei Altarretabel Hermen Rodes im Vergleich,” in Die Stadt im europäischen Nordosten: Kulturbeziehungen von der Ausbreitung des Lübischen Rechts bis zur Aufklärung. September 10–13, 1998, Tallinn, ed. Robert Schweitzer and Waltraud Bastman-Bühner (Helsinki and Lübeck: Aue-Stiftung, 2001), 508– 512; Rasche, “Werke des Lübecker Malers Hermen Rode im Ostseeraum,” in Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas, ed. Dietmar Popp and Hanna Nogossek (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2001), 129–30; Rasche, Studien zu Hermen Rode, 102–06, 123–27. 33 Anja Rasche, “Das Hochaltarretabel der Nikolaikirche,” in Gotik im Baltikum, ed. Uwe Albrecht, vol. 6, Baltisches Seminar 1994 (Lüneburg: Carl-SchirrenGesellschaft, 2004), 79. 34 Elina Räsänen and Elina Gertsman, “Locating the Body in Late Medieval Reval,” in Locating the Middle Ages: The Spaces and Places of Medieval Culture, ed. Julian Weiss and Sarah Salih (London: Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, King’s College London, 2012), 146. 35 Räsänen and Gertsman, “Locating the Body,” 146. 36 Voragine, The Golden Legend, 21–26. 37 The inscription below the panel, derived from the Legenda Aurea, reads: “Hir loset sunte nycolaus dre vnschuldighe mynschen van dem dode dat seghen dre ridere vnd bekerde sic.” (Here Saint Nicholas saves three innocent men from death). For the text in the Golden Legend, see the translated passage by William Ryan Granger in Voragine, The Golden Legend, 23: “… during the saint’s absence, the Roman consul, corrupted by a bribe, had ordered three innocent soldiers to be beheaded. As soon as the holy man heard of this, he asked his guests to accompany him, and they hurried to the spot where the execution was to take place. There he found the condemned men already on their knees, their faces veiled, and the executioner brandishing his sword over their heads. Nicholas, afire with zeal, threw himself upon the headsman, snatched his sword from his hand.” 38 See also Felix Rütten, Die Victorverehrung im christlichen Altertum: Eine kulturgeschichtliche und hagiographische Studie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1936), 11–15, 66–68, 181–82; the Acta Sanctorum, Mensis Julii, vol. 5 (Antwerp: Apud Jacobum du Moulin, 1727), 135–36; Lieselotte Schütz, “Viktor,” in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Günter Bandmann, vol. 8 (Rome: Herder, 1976), 557; Hermann von Bruiningk, Messe und kanonisches Stundengebet nach dem Brauche der Rigaschen Kirche im späteren Mittelalter (Riga: Häcker, 1904), 573. 39 See Voragine, The Golden Legend, 21–26. 40 The accompanying text, added at a later date, reads: “Hir lyden schyplude groter not van storm vnd winde vnd se repen sunte nyclaus an vnd he halp en” (Here lies a ship caught in a great storm, and the passengers repent to St. Nicholas for help). 41 For the efficacy of linking saints to specific locations, see Gerhard Jaritz, “Nähe und Distanz als Gebrauchsfunktion spätmittelaltericher religiöser Bilder,” in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter. Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Munich: Fink, 2002), 331–46; Kateřina Horničková, “Contextualizing and Visualising Saints in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 62 (2011): 21–40. Similar views are espoused by Anu Mänd in her “Symbols that Bind Communities,” 119–41.

Success, salvation, and servitude  229 42 See also Rasche, “Lübeck und Reval,” 508–12. 43 See Echon, Saint Nicholas; Meisen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch; Zender, “Heiligenverehung im Hanseraum,” 1–15. As noted earlier, nearly every Hanseatic town including Lübeck, Stralsund, Reval, and Wismar had churches consecrated in the saint’s name. 44 See Mänd, “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn?” 9–29. 45 See Mänd, “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn?” 9–29; Mänd, “Symbols that Bind Communities,” 123. 46 See Jean-Pierre Pelletier and Michel Fixot, Saint Victor de Marseille: Études archéologiques et historiques; Actes du Colloque Saint-Victor Marseille, 18–20 novembre, 2004 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). A hagiographer added details based on the Passion of St. Phicas, a patron saint of sailors in the Black Sea and Mediterranean, to the account of St. Victor of Marseille. As a result, Victor became aligned with seafarers in Marseille. See Mänd, “Symbols that Bind Communities,” 125; Rütten, Die Victorverehrung im christlichen Altertum, 66–68. 47 For St. Victor, see Rütten, Die Victorverehrung im christlichen Altertum, 11–15, 181–82; Acta Sanctorum, 135–36; Schütz, “Viktor,” 557; Bruiningk, Messe und kanonisches Stundengebet, 573. 48 Mänd, “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn?” 24; for Gellinckhausen’s authorship of the Chronicle, see Norbert Angermann, “Die mittelalterliche Chronistik,” in Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung, ed. Georg Rauch (Cologne: Böhlau, 1986), 3–20 passim and 19. 49 See the transcription of Tallinna Linnaarhiiv (TLA), Tallinna Magistraat/Der Revaler Magistrat (1237–1889), 230, N. 1, Aa 23b, 1. 21v in Mänd, “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn?” 24. Hereafter, Tallinna Linnaarhiiv is referred to as TLA. TLA 230 includes the records of the Tallinn magistrate: Eugen von Nottbeck, Beiträge zur Kunde Est-, Liv- und Kurlands, vol. 4 (Reval: Franz Kluge, 1894), 450–68 passim and 462. 50 This date was celebrated as a festum duplex. See Tiina Kala, “Tallinna dominiiklaste kalendar reformatsioonieelse ajakasutuse peeglina,” Vana Tallinn 2 (1992): 18, 24; Mänd, “Saints’ Cults in Medieval Livonia,” 204. 51 The city is shown from the east since the choirs of the churches are pointing toward the viewer. Previously, this was thought to be the oldest view of Lübeck that survives; however, scholars have pointed out that Notke’s 1463 Dance of Death featured a Lübeck townscape. Although non-extant, photographs of the work do survive. 52 And perhaps as part of a competition with Notke, who had already painted a Lübeck townscape. For a comparison of the two townscapes, see Rasche, Studien zu Hermen Rode, 126–27. However, as noted by Gertsman, there is a marked lack of specificity in the Dance of Death commissioned for Reval, which makes the Reval Dance of Death an interesting counterpoint to the Saint Nicholas Altarpiece that does feature a recognizable Lübeck townscape. See Elina Gertsman, “The Dance of Death in Reval (Tallinn): The Preacher and his Audience,” Gesta 42, no. 2 (2003): 146. 53 A comparison can also be made to the representation of Lübeck in the Weltchronik of 1493, which is very similar. 54 Only a few accounts describe the seaside location of the saint’s miracle. See the Acta Sanctorum, 136, 143, 147. The text below the scene of the miracle reads: “Hir werpen se synen lycham in dat mer und de engele brochten en to lande und wart erliken begrauen” (Here they cast his body into the sea and angels brought it to the land and it was honorably buried). 55 See Friedrich Georg von Bunge, ed., Liv-, Est- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 12 (Reval: Kluge and Ströhm, 1855), 312, as transcribed in Mänd, “Symbols that Bind Communities,” endnote 47.

230  Lehti Mairike Keelmann 56 Mänd, “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn?” 26. For the saint’s cult in Sweden, see Jan Svanberg and Anders Qwarnström, Sankt Göran och draken (Stockholm: Raben Prisma, 1993, 1998); Tracey Sands, “‘Riddar Sancte Orrian’: Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George,” in The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen, ed. Thomas DuBois and Susan Brantly (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 6–19. 57 For the Livonian Crusade, see Anti Selart, Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 58 See Hiiop, “What is Under the Paint Layer,” 246. 59 It is possible that ephemera such as a drawing or woodcut of the town made its way to Reval, especially since books were exported from Lübeck to Reval. 60 For those unfamiliar with Lübeck, the scene may have provoked a similar response as with Notke’s Dance of Death. The imagined Hanseatic town in the background of the latter work would have connected with the viewer more generally speaking by incorporating elements that were familiar as opposed to entirely foreign to Revalian audiences. 61 “As like the arms of crucified Christ, we must also stay united and keep each other.” See Konstantin Höhlbaum, ed., Hansisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 1, 975–1300 (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1876), note 527 on page 186; Bunge, ed., Liv-, Est- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch, 215 (Regesten 243 zu 1250). See also Heinz von zur Mühlen and Paul Johansen, Deutsch und Undeutsch im mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Reval (Cologne: Böhlau, 1973), 37. This phrase derives from a letter dating from 1252 between the towns of Reval and Lübeck. 62 Heather Flaherty, “The Place of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis in the Rise of Affective Piety in the Later Middle Ages” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2006), 321–23; Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 261–63. 63 The column transforms into a platform that elevates the kneeling Christ. Christ’s foregrounded stance and gesture, as well as the sharply foreshortened whipping column on which he kneels, seem to have been taken from the TurinMilan Hours Trinity attributed to the Master of the Parement de Narbonne, an artist closely linked to the circle of Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1410, RF 2025, Louvre, Paris). The Turin-Milan Hours Trinity also features a brocade backdrop, which is held up by angels. 64 Their inclusion in this second position meant that they were visible every Sunday during Mass, as opposed to the third position, displayed on feast days. 65 Beth Williamson, “The Cloisters Double Intercession: The Virgin as Co-Redemptrix,” Apollo 465 (2000): 49–50. As Williamson notes on pages 49–50, “The Virgin has the power, and the inclination, to intercede for human souls … illustrat[ing] the effectiveness of her intercession by showing Christ interceding with God the Father, and the Father, by implication, bestows his blessing on Christ’s request, by the sending down of the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove.” In this vein, Christ’s blood and Mary’s milk share in the sacrificial message of Christ. 66 Williamson, “The Cloisters Double Intercession,” 50–51. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 2011), 106–08; Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 270–71; Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 123–24.

Success, salvation, and servitude  231 67 See also Räsänen and Gertsman, “Locating the Body in Medieval Reval,” 143. 68 Williamson, “The Cloisters Double Intercession,” 50. 69 Ernaldus of Chartres, “Libellus de laudibus beatae virginis Mariae,” in Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, vol. 189 (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1890), 1725–32. 70 Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, eds., A Medieval Mirror: Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 1324–1500 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Flaherty, “The Place of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis”; Williamson, “The Cloisters Double Intercession,” 49. 71 Flaherty, “The Place of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis,” 5, 35, 39, 47–48, 50, 53, 236–303; Ann Roberts, “The Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy: A Catalogue and Critical Essay” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1982), 166. Since the Dominicans amassed a large library in Reval, it is likely that they owned a copy of the Speculum. A broadleaf woodcut image of the Double Intercession may have even been circulated in the town. The Dominicans would have participated in the printing and selling of religious images, as evidenced by a fragment of a printing plate of the Ecce Homo, now in the Tallinn City Museum. 72 See Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul, 102–41 passim and 123. 73 In addition to sharing the same subject matter, both renditions employ shallow pictorial planes and highlight a pronounced interest in surface ornament or the expression of tactile, textured backgrounds. The Master of the Lower Rhine’s rendition features a stamped gold leaf background, while the painter from the circle of Conrad Witz includes a pearl embroidered textile backdrop. The use of an ornamented backdrop was not exclusive to artists in the German-speaking lands. It was also employed by Netherlandish masters including Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and in particular, Robert Campin. For an example, see Robert Campin’s Saint Veronica, c. 1430, oil on panel (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main). See also Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabric in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 97–147, and 128 for an image of Campin’s Saint Veronica. 74 Plague and salvation were themes represented in the popular imagery of the “Dance of Death.” See Elina Gertsman, “Death and the Miniaturized City: Nostalgia, Authority, Idyll,” Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 43–52; Gertsman, “The Dance of Death in Reval,” 143–59; Mänd, ed., Bernt Notke, 20–28. 75 Documented plague years in Reval around the time of the Mary Altarpiece commission were 1464/65, 1474, 1481/82, 1495, and 1503/04. See Anu Mänd, “Church Art, Commemoration of the Dead and the Saints’ Cult: Constructing Individual and Corporate Memoria in Late Medieval Tallinn,” Acta Historica Tallinnesia 16 (2011): 3–30, esp. 9; Raimo Pullat, Brief History of Tallinn (Tallinn: Estopol, 1998), 67. 76 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, vol. 3 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), especially question 73. See also Kristen van Ausdell, “Art and Eucharist in the Late Middle Ages,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, ed. Gary Macy, Ian Christopher Levy, and Kristen van Ausdell (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 596–601. 77 The Trinity is not only central to the Double Intercession, but it also connects to the Mary Chapel’s other altar dedicated to the Holy Trinity. 78 Mary is the honorary member of the holy family of the Trinity (God the father, Christ his son, and the Holy Spirit). As Barbara Newman notes, late medieval images of God without the Virgin were rare: Newman, God and the Goddesses, 247. 79 Williamson, “The Cloisters Double Intercession,” 48–54.

232  Lehti Mairike Keelmann 80 He was also featured as a polychrome wooden sculpture in the chapel. See HStaH 612-2/6, E1, 33r: “Item gegeven marquard dem melre (marquard the painter) vor sunte johans belde (an image of Saint John) to snyden (to carve) und to malen (and to paint) xiii mark.” 81 See Wolfgang Stechow, Northern Renaissance Art: Sources and Documents, 1400–1600 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 10–11. 82 Another prominent example of a Double Intercession adapted to include an additional saint is Benozzo Gozzoli’s Saint Sebastian fresco painted in 1464 for the church of Sant’ Agostino in San Gimignano (1464, in situ). The fresco, which was commissioned in response to the Black Death that ravaged Tuscany during the 1460s, dramatically fuses the Double Intercession with the image of an intercessory St. Sebastian, the patron saint of plague victims. See Diane Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 142–45; Louise Jane Marshall, “‘Waiting on the Will of the Lord’: The Imagery of the Plague” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1989), 232–33. For an image, see Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 143. 83 John 1:29: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (English Standard Version Bible). 84 One of the feast days that is frequently mentioned in the Brotherhood’s altar book is that of John the Baptist. 85 See also Räsänen and Gertsman, “Locating the Body in Medieval Reval,” 137–58. 86 Williamson, “The Cloisters Double Intercession,” 51. 87 See Räsänen and Gertsman, “Locating the Body in Medieval Reval,” 143. 88 See Newman, God and the Goddesses, 247; Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul, 102–41 passim and 110–12, 128. 89 This dedication has a legacy in Estonian choral music (both nationalistic and religious) where Estonia is referred to as “Maarjamaa” or Mary land. For a history of the Livonian Crusade, see Selart, Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades. 90 Scholars have since argued that St. Dominic was mistakenly identified as the creator of the Rosary. See Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). 91 See Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 72. 92 Therefore, the recitation of the Rosary was connected to Christ’s Passion and the Eucharist. See Henry Luttikhuizen, “Early Dutch Painting and the Dynamics of Faith,” in Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. Laura Gelfand and Sarah Blick, vol. 1 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 211. Pope Sixtus IV granted indulgences associated with the recitation of the Rosary. It is unlikely that the Mary Altarpiece was specifically an indulgence altarpiece (as evidenced by the lack of inscription), but rather espoused some of the similar goals for religious devotion and instruction. For indulgence altarpieces, see Amy Morris, “Art and Advertising: Altarpieces in Germany,” in Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. Laura Gelfand and Sarah Blick, vol. 1 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 325–45. 93 See Lynn Jacobs, Opening the Doors: The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 40–41 and, for the placement of donors in Netherlandish triptychs, 163–68. There is an implication that even more Brotherhood members kneel beyond the visible parameters of the altarpiece, especially since some of the figures are cut off on the edges of the wings. 94 The gaze of donors beyond the altarpiece was not uncommon during the late medieval period.

Success, salvation, and servitude  233 95 This separation distinguishes the Brotherhood members as earthly souls whose religious devotion operates within an earthly, as opposed to celestial, realm. 96 This is also noticeable with the patrons in Hugo van der Goes’ Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1475, Uffizi, Florence). 97 Fifty members of the Great Guild passed away between Christmas and Shrovetide during the plague of 1464–65. See the account book of the Table Guild, TLA 191-1/2, 20v–72r; see especially 31r as quoted by Mänd, “Church Art,” 9. 98 See also Simon Roffey, Chantry Chapels and Medieval Strategies for the Afterlife (Stroud: Tempus, 2008). 99 See also Mänd, “Church Art,” 5–11. 100 Like in the Canon van der Paele Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck (c. 1436, Groeninge Museum, Bruges), the Brotherhood members’ gaze in the Mary Altarpiece is inward and contemplative. Scholars argue that the Canon van der Paele Altarpiece functioned akin to a wall epitaph, especially since its frame includes a commemorative inscription. See Douglas Brine, “Jan van Eyck, Canon Joris van der Paele, and the Art of Commemoration,” Art Bulletin 96, no. 3 (September 2014): 265–267. While an inscription is absent from the Mary Altarpiece, the grave slabs on the floor did include inscriptions that memorialized the specific individuals buried there. 101 The grave slabs are first specifically mentioned in the altar book in 1447. See HStaH 612-2/6, E1, 35r: “… vor de likestene effen to blien vor unser leven vrouwen” (tombstones to be leveled, evened out).

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234  Lehti Mairike Keelmann Brine, Douglas. “Jan van Eyck, Canon Joris van der Paele, and the Art of Commemoration”. Art Bulletin 96/3 (September 2014): 265–87. Bruiningk, Hermann von. Messe und kanonisches Stundengebet nach dem Brauche der Rigaschen Kirche im späteren Mittelalter. Riga: Häcker, 1904. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 2011. Devisse, Jean. “A Sanctified Black: Maurice”. Translated by William Ryan Granger. In The Image of the Black in Western Art. From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery”. From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood, Volume 2, Part I, edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 139–96. Houston: Menil Foundation, 1979. Echon, Martin. Saint Nicholas: Life and Legend. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. Ekdahl, Sven. Die “Banderia Prutenorum” des Jan Długosz – eine Quelle zur Schlacht bei Tannenberg 1410. Untersuchungen zu Aufbau, Entstehung und Quellenwert der Handschrift. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1976. Ellington, Donna Spivey. From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. Ernaldus of Chartres. “Libellus de laudibus beatae virginis Mariae”. In Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, Volume 189, edited by Jacques Paul Migne, 1725–32. Paris: J. P. Migne, 1890. Flaherty, Heather. “The Place of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis in the Rise of Affective Piety in the Later Middle Ages”. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2006. Gertsman, Elina. “The Dance of Death in Reval (Tallinn): The Preacher and his Audience”. Gesta 42/2 (2003): 143–59. Gertsman, Elina. “Death and the Miniaturized City: Nostalgia, Authority, Idyll”. Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 43–52. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Hiiop, Hilkka. “What is Under the Paint Layer of the Rode Altarpieces?” Baltic Journal of Art History 9 (Spring 2015): 239–53. Höhlbaum, Konstantin, ed. Hansisches Urkundenbuch, 1: 975–1300. Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1876. Horničková, Kateřina. “Contextualizing and Visualising Saints in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”. Medium Aevum Quotidianum 62 (2011): 21–40. Jacobs, Lynn. Opening the Doors: The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Jaritz, Gerhard. “Nähe und Distanz als Gebrauchsfunktion spätmittelaltericher religiöser Bilder”. In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter. Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, edited by Klaus Schreiner, 331– 46. Munich: Fink, 2002. Kala, Tiina. “Tallinna dominiiklaste kalendar reformatsioonieelse ajakasutuse peeglina”. Vana Tallinn 2 (1992): 16–28. Kala, Tiina. “The Church Calendar and Yearly Cycle in the Life of Medieval Reval”. In Quotidianum Estonicum: Aspects of Daily Life in Medieval Estonia, edited by Juhan Kreem and Juri Kivimäe, 103–10. Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1996.

Success, salvation, and servitude  235 Keelmann, Lehti Mairike. “Exhibiting Altarpieces: Technical Art Examination in Focus”. International Center of Medieval Art Newsletter 2 (August 2014): 22–23. Krusch, Bruno, ed. Monumenta Germaniae historica Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum, 3. Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1896. Kurisoo, Merike. Tallinna Niguliste Kiriku Peaaltari Retaabel/Altarpiece of the High Altar of Tallinn St Nicholas’ Church: Rode Altar. Tallinn: Eesti Kunstimuuseum – Niguliste Muuseum, 2015. Luttikhuizen, Henry. “Early Dutch Painting and the Dynamics of Faith”. In Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Volume 1, edited by Laura Gelfand and Sarah Blick, 199–225. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. Mänd, Anu. “St. Victor – the Patron Saint of Tallinn? / Püha Viktor – Talinna kaitsepühak?” Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 12, no. 3–4 (2003): 6–29. Mänd, Anu. Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic, 1350–1550. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Mänd, Anu. “The Altarpiece of the Virgin Mary of the Confraternity of the Black Heads in Tallinn: Dating, Donors, and the Double Intercession”. Acta Historiae Artium Balticae 2 (2007): 35–53. Mänd, Anu. “Kes on kes Niguliste kiriku peaaltari retaabil”. Kunstuteaduslikke Uurimusi 18, no. 1–2 (2009): 7–40. Mänd, Anu. “Saints’ Cults in Medieval Livonia”. In The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, edited by Alan Murray, 191–226. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. Mänd, Anu, ed. Bernt Notke. Uuenduste ja Traditsioonide Vahel. Tallinn: Eesti Kunstimuuseum – Niguliste Muuseum, 2010. Mänd, Anu. “Church Art, Commemoration of the Dead and the Saints’ Cult: Constructing Individual and Corporate Memoria in Late Medieval Tallinn”. Acta Historica Tallinnesia 16 (2011): 3–30. Mänd, Anu. “Symbols that Bind Communities: the Tallinn Altarpieces of Rode and Notke as Expressions of the Local Saints’ Cults”. In Art, Cult and Patronage. Die Visuelle Kultur im Ostseeraum zur Zeit Bernt Notkes, edited by Uwe Albrecht and Anu Mänd, 119–41. Kiel: Ludwig, 2013. Marshall, Louise Jane. “‘Waiting on the Will of the Lord’: The Imagery of the Plague”. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1989. Meisen, Karl. Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch im Abendlande: Eine kulturgeographisch-volkskundliche Untersuchung. Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1931. Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabric in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1500. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Montmélian, Bernard de. Saint Maurice et la Légion Thébéenne, Volume 1. Paris: Plon and Nourrit, 1888. Morris, Amy. “Art and Advertising: Altarpieces in Germany”. In Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Volume 1, edited by Laura Gelfand and Sarah Blick, 325–45. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. Mühlen, Heinz von zur, and Paul Johansen. Deutsch und Undeutsch im mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Reval. Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit nd Gegenwart 15. Cologne: Böhlau, 1973. Muller, Ellen. “Saintly Virgins: The Veneration of Virgin Saints in Religious Women’s Communities”. In Saints and She Devils: Images of Women in the Fifteenth and

236  Lehti Mairike Keelmann Sixteenth Centuries, edited by Lène Dresen-Coenders and Petty Bange, 83–110. London: Rubicon, 1987. Newman, Barbara. God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Nottbeck, Eugen von. Beiträge zur Kunde Est-. Liv- und Kurlands, 4. Reval: Franz Kluge, 1894. Oolup, Urmas, and Juhan Kreem, eds. Tallinna Mustpead. Mustpeade vennaskonna ajaloost ja varadest/Die Revaler Schwarzenhäupter. Geschichte und Schätze der Bruderschaft der Schwarzenhäupter. Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiiv, 1999. Palginõmm, Kerttu. “Luxusartikel auf dem Revaler Retabel des Meisters der Lucialegende als eine Einladung in die Stadt Brügge”. Baltic Journal of Art History 3 (2011): 89–114. Palginõmm, Kerttu. “Der dem Meister der Lucialegende zugeschriebene Revaler (Tallinner) Retabel – kostbare Stoffe und ein unbekannter Meister?” Baltic Journal of Art History 4 (2012): 127–36. Palginõmm, Kerttu, and Ivar Leimus. “Der Marienaltar der Bruderschaft der Schwarzenhäupter vor dem Hintergrund des Wertes der abgebildeten Luxusgrüter”. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 24, no. 3–4 (2015): 49–85. Pelletier, Jean-Pierre, and Michel Fixot. Saint Victor de Marseille: Études archéologiques et historiques; Actes du Colloque Saint-Victor Marseille, 18–20 novembre, 2004. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Pullat, Raimo. Brief History of Tallinn. Tallinn: Estopol, 1998. Raisma, Mariann, Marta Mannisalu, Anu Mänd, Rein Loodus, and Ivar Leimus, eds. Tallinna Suurgild ja gildimaja. Tallinn: Eesti Ajaloomuuseum, 2011. Randla, Anneli, and Hilkka Hiiop. “Medieval Painted Saints Meeting Modern Media. Project: ‘Rode Altarpiece in Close-Up.’” Baltic Journal of Art History 7 (2014): 171–80. Räsänen, Elina, and Elina Gertsman. “Locating the Body in Late Medieval Reval”. In Locating the Middle Ages: The Spaces and Places of Medieval Culture, edited by Julian Weiss and Sarah Salih, 137–58. London: Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, King’s College London, 2012. Rasche, Anja. “Lübeck und Reval: Zwei Altarretabel Hermen Rodes im Vergleich”. In Die Stadt im europäischen Nordosten: Kulturbeziehungen von der Ausbreitung des Lübischen Rechts bis zur Aufklärung. September 10–13, 1998, Tallinn, edited by Robert Schweitzer and Waltraud Bastman-Bühner, 466–525. Helsinki and Lübeck: Aue-Stiftung, 2001. Rasche, Anja. “Werke des Lübecker Malers Hermen Rode im Ostseeraum”. In Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas, edited by Dietmar Popp and Hanna Nogossek, 126–36. Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2001. Rasche, Anja. “Das Hochaltarretabel der Nikolaikirche”. In Gotik im Baltikum. 6. Baltisches Seminar 1994, edited by Uwe Albrecht, 67–106. Lüneburg: CarlSchirren-Gesellschaft, 2004. Rasche, Anja. Studien zu Hermen Rode. Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2013. Roberts, Ann. “The Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy: A Catalogue and Critical Essay.” PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1982. Roffey, Simon. Chantry Chapels and Medieval Strategies for the Afterlife. Stroud: Tempus, 2008. Rütten, Felix. Die Victorverehrung im christlichen Altertum: Eine kulturgeschichtliche und hagiographische Studie. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1936.

Success, salvation, and servitude  237 Sands, Tracey. “‘Riddar Sancte Orrian’: Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George”. In The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen, edited by Thomas DuBois and Susan Brantly, 6–19. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Schütz, Lieselotte. “Viktor”. In Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 8, edited by Engelbert Kirschbaum and Günter Bandmann, 557–58. Rome: Herder, 1976. Selart, Anti. Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Siliņa, Māra, ed. Melngalvju nams Rīgā/Das Schwarzenhäupter Haus in Riga/The Blackheads House in Riga. Riga: Rīgas Vēstures un Kuģniecības Muzejs, 1995. Spliet, Herbert. Geschichte des rigischen Neuen Hauses, des später sogenannten König Artus Hofes, des heutigen Schwarzhäupterhauses. Riga: Ernst Plates, 1963. Stechow, Wolfgang. Northern Renaissance Art: Sources and Documents, 1400– 1600. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966. Suckale-Redlefsen, Gude, and Robert Suckale. Mauritius, der heilige Mohr. Houston: Menil Foundation, 1987. Svanberg, Jan, and Anders Qwarnström. Sankt Göran och draken. Stockholm: Raben Prisma, 1993 and 1998. Tielemann, Gotthard. Geschichte der Schwarzen-Häupter in Riga, nebst einer Beschreibung des Arthurhofes und seiner Denkwürdigkeiten: Nach handschriftlichen Nachrichten. Riga: Wilhelm Ferdinand Häcker, 1831. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan with an introduction by Eamon Duffy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Weed, Stanley Edward. “The Virgin inter Virgines: Art and Devotion to Virgin Saints in the Low Countries and Germany, 1400–1530”. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2002. Weed, Stanley Edward. “Venerating the Virgin Martyrs: The Cult of the ‘Virgines Capitales’ in Art, Literature, and Popular Piety”. The Sixteenth Century Journal 41, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 1065–91. Williamson, Beth. “The Cloisters Double Intercession: The Virgin as Co-Redemptrix”. Apollo 465 (2000): 48–54. Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, eds. A Medieval Mirror: Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 1324–1500. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Winston-Allen, Anne. Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Wrangell, Georges, and Friedrich Amelung. Geschichte der Revaler Schwarzenhäupter. Reval: Wassermann, 1930. Zender, Matthias. “Heiligenverehung im Hanseraum”. Hansische Geschichtesblätter 92 (1974): 1–15.

11 Reanimating the power of holy protectors Merchants and their saints in the visual culture of medieval and early modern Venice Karen Rose Mathews Introduction Venice’s close relationship with its saintly patrons began already in the ninth century when Mark’s relics arrived from Alexandria and the evangelist supplanted Theodore as the city’s holy protector. Merchants played a central role in establishing and promoting Mark’s cult in Venice, as they were responsible for the appropriation of the saint’s relics from Egypt in 827. From that time forward, various merchant constituencies employed the cult of saints to define their role in Venetian society as well as their relationship with political and commercial allies and rivals across the Mediterranean. Relics flowed into Venice in unprecedented numbers throughout the medieval and early modern periods, purchased, plundered, or stolen by Venetian merchant warriors as they traversed the sea. Though Venice’s merchants had myriad saints from which to select their holy protectors, they chose to rediscover and repurpose old saints rather than develop new cults. This privileging of continuity over novelty has been overlooked, as the medieval and early modern hagiographic traditions in Venice are rarely studied in tandem. In this chapter, I will focus on three saints – Mark, Isidore, and George – whose cults were periodically resuscitated by various merchant groups from the ninth to the sixteenth century. Analyzing merchant devotion through this extended chronological overview will demonstrate how disparate social groups and institutions could associate themselves with venerable saints that possessed longstanding cults in the city while redefining the holy protector’s power to serve the particular objectives of noble, citizen, and foreign traders in Venice.

Trade, crusade, and Venetian merchant endeavors In medieval and early modern Venice, every segment of society participated in trade, and it was this shared interest in mercantile endeavors that contributed to the social cohesion of the city. There was no need, then, for a Venetian merchants’ guild given the ubiquity of commercial practice among the Venetian population. Three merchant constituencies played a significant

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  239 role in art patronage – nobles, citizens, and foreigners – and their trading activities will be summarized here. Their shared mercantile mentality defined how these disparate social groups interacted with the saints, which patrons they chose, what assistance they requested from their holy protectors, and how they portrayed their relationship with the sacred in visual form. At the top of the Venetian hierarchy was the nobility, a group of 150 or so families that dominated the city’s politics, elected the doge, and actively participated in maritime trade. Such international commerce was extraordinarily lucrative, and the Venetian state, run by patricians, ensured that noble families had the most advantageous conditions for conducting business.1 Only patricians could lead the state-owned galleys that sailed across the Mediterranean at regular intervals, elite families exercised monopolies on the sale of certain commodities, and patricians served as the diplomats and ambassadors who negotiated commercial treaties with foreign powers to their own benefit. As both political and economic actors, Venetian elites ensured their domination by controlling the city’s maritime commerce. The doge was a member of this elite, but his position in the city manifested the tension between a personal monarchy and the republican ideals of the patrician class.2 The doge enjoyed great prestige, but his actual exercise of power was constrained by the magistracy. Though his role in the city became increasingly symbolic as the personification of the state, he did continue to pursue commercial activities while in office, served as the commander of the city’s military forces, and had extraordinary autonomy in the embellishment of the Basilica of San Marco, his private ducal chapel.3 The Venetian doge, then, embodied all of the qualities of the merchant population in the city; he combined the attributes of trader and warrior with those of an art patron, and he was instrumental in commissioning artworks to honor the saintly patrons of the mercantile elite. The second group, the cittadini or citizens, was a far more amorphous segment of the population that blended with the nobility above and the popolani below, but one that established its wealth and fame predominantly through trade. The government theoretically excluded cittadini from participation in international maritime commerce, but as patrician merchants pursued other investment opportunities, Venetian citizens were able to secure for themselves trading positions across the Mediterranean.4 They were also active in land-based trade and in the sailing of private rather than state-owned galleys, and some Venetian citizens amassed fortunes that even surpassed the wealth of their noble merchant counterparts. Though barred from holding political office, an honor reserved for the nobility, they could hold positions in the government bureaucracy as a way to enhance their collective prestige. More importantly, however, wealthy cittadini merchants were central figures in the city’s confraternities or lay brotherhoods.5 Founded initially as democratic institutions that included members from all levels of society, the Scuole grandi in particular soon developed an oligarchic leadership modeled on the Venetian government, where a small group

240  Karen Rose Mathews of wealthy cittadini monopolized the governance of the city’s confraternities. The administration of the scuole became an arena for the display of cittadino wealth and pride, and the Scuola Grande di San Marco discussed below held a special place in Venice as an institution that united noble and citizen elites in their devotion to St. Mark. The last group, even more loosely defined than the cittadini, consisted of foreigners in Venice who did not enjoy the privileges of citizenship. They were political refugees who had come to Venice from all over the Mediterranean and the mainland or immigrants seeking new economic opportunities in the city. Foreigners, like Venetian citizens, could not reap the extraordinary profits reserved for the patriciate through international commerce, but they conducted more modest local trade and participated in the international political and economic arena as mariners on patricianowned ships.6 Most notably, they served the Venetian state as warriors fighting for Venice against the republic’s greatest enemy in the early modern period, the Ottomans. The confraternities established by foreigners in Venice, though not numbered among the great scuole, were places nonetheless where immigrants could show pride in their national origin while demonstrating their loyalty to Venice through participation in the mercantile economy and military campaigns undertaken to protect trade routes and Venetian territorial possessions in the Mediterranean.7

St. Mark and Venetian belonging in the eastern Mediterranean More than any other Venetian saint, St. Mark was reinvented repeatedly in both textual and visual sources, serving as a model for the malleability and continued efficacy of Venice’s holy patrons. The cult of St. Mark from the outset addressed the interests of the doge and the city’s mercantile aristocracy in establishing a Venetian economic presence in the Mediterranean and integrating the Italian republic into the vibrant cultural and commercial exchange across the sea. Whereas the saint’s cult in the ninth century was employed to forge connections with Muslim polities, by the eleventh century, Mark had become a holy patron who highlighted connections with the Byzantine Empire. In his early modern reincarnation, the evangelist once again served as a symbol of the Venetians’ close trading relationship with the Mamluk Empire and the significance of trade with the East for a variety of social strata in the city. St. Mark’s association with the city of Alexandria, in particular, bridged various historical periods, establishing a mythic Venetian connection to the Egyptian port from antiquity to the early modern period. The foundation of Mark’s cult and its subsequent revivals demonstrated Venice’s peaceful and highly lucrative integration into the eastern Mediterranean and the essential role that the city played as a cultural, political, and economic intermediary between East and West. The translatio of Mark’s relics from the Muslim-controlled city of Alexandria in the ninth century inaugurated a tradition of relic theft by

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  241 the Venetians. The theft and its accompanying narrative established the template for subsequent translationes as well as the moral justification for thievery and the other illicit activities that accompanied the theft.8 The thieves were two merchants who had come to Alexandria with a fleet for commercial purposes. When a Muslim ruler threatened the church where the saint’s remains resided, the merchants ingratiated themselves with the shrine’s custodian and smuggled the body out of the church. The thieves cunningly camouflaged the body of St. Mark with pork to deter the Muslim customs officials from investigating the Venetians’ merchandise. In spite of their ingenious theft, the merchants were reluctant to return to Venice as they had flaunted a papal and ducal ban on trade with Muslims to conduct business in Alexandria.9 The possession of these holy relics, however, served to justify their means of acquisition, and the doge welcomed the two traders with their sacred plunder upon their arrival in Venice and constructed a special chapel for Mark’s remains within the ducal church. The narrative of St. Mark’s theft evocatively conveys the complexity of Mediterranean politics and trade in the early Middle Ages. Only a few, enterprising maritime merchants (predominantly from Venice and Amalfi) ventured into waters controlled by Muslim and Byzantine fleets. The lucrative commercial markets in Islamic territories, in particular, provided the tantalizing promise of great riches, but both religious and secular authorities had banned trade with Muslims. The pious theft of Mark’s relics demonstrated the Venetians’ knowledge of Muslim customs – hiding the body in a pork barrel – while sanctifying prohibited commercial activity. Under the cover of Christian piety, the commercial fleet of Venice could visit Muslim ports, and the doge expediently ignored the unlawful visit to Alexandria in order to exalt the arrival of a new saintly protector into the city. In the late eleventh century, the body of St. Mark played a central role again as the doge was in the process of rebuilding the ducal chapel of San Marco. Mark’s remains had been hidden ostensibly to protect the saint, but the hiding place had been forgotten. In 1094, a miraculous apparitio occurred as the body was discovered behind a marble pillar in the church.10 The reaffirmation of the miracle-working powers of Mark and his role as patron saint of Venice was then incorporated into the mosaic decoration and liturgical furniture of the San Marco. Mark features in some of the earliest preserved mosaic decoration on the basilica, with images of the saint adorning the main entrance and the eastern apse. In addition, two separate chapels in San Marco have mosaics depicting scenes from the life, martyrdom, and translatio of St. Mark; the San Pietro chapel to the left of the main apse depicts Mark’s life and death, while the San Clemente chapel to the right contains images of the theft of Mark’s relics from Alexandria and the solemn ceremony that celebrated the arrival in Venice of the saint’s remains and their placement in San Marco (Figure 11.1).11 The Pala d’oro, or golden altar frontal, commissioned by Doge Ordelaffo Falier in 1105, also honored St. Mark and displayed scenes from his vita on the side panels of the

Photo credit: Per gentile concessione della Procuratoria di San Marco.

Figure 11.1 Venice, San Marco, Chapel of San Clemente, mosaics depicting the theft of Mark’s relics, twelfth century.

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  243 lower part of the Pala (Figure 11.2).12 The saint’s rediscovery in the eleventh century thus coincided perfectly with the rebuilding of the basilica and its elaboration with mosaic decoration and luxurious liturgical furnishings, honoring Mark as patron saint of the city, the doge, and the merchants who sought to increase Venice’s prosperity through international maritime trade.

Figure 11.2 Venice, San Marco, Pala d’oro, detail of scenes from the Life of St. Mark, 1105. Photo credit: Per gentile concessione della Procuratoria di San Marco.

244  Karen Rose Mathews In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, then, Mark’s relics associated Venice with another Mediterranean power, that of Byzantium. Scenes of Mark’s life, preaching, and martyrdom in the early Christian period complemented the representations of his theft from Muslim-controlled Alexandria. Mark’s connection to Alexandria came to the fore in the Byzantine-style mosaics that adorn the church as well as in the enamels on the Pala d’oro that were made in the Byzantine capital. Venice was proud of the role it played as “beloved daughter of Byzantium” and showcased this relationship in an array of Byzantine artworks. The Venetians had also signed in 1082 a comprehensive trade agreement with the Byzantine Empire that gave Venice favored status in Byzantium and considerable commercial advantages over its Italian maritime rivals. The resurrection of Mark’s cult through the Byzantine media of mosaic and enamel displayed visually the integration of Venice into the eastern Mediterranean and the privileged position the city enjoyed in the Eastern Christian empire.13 After a long hiatus, St. Mark once again returned to the limelight in the context of one of Venice’s great lay confraternities, the Scuola Grande di San Marco. This scuola had been founded in the thirteenth century with Mark as its patron and counted among its members some of the most important merchants, diplomats, and travelers in Venice.14 The most influential forces in this and other confraternities in Venice, however, were wealthy citizens or cittadini, not the merchant aristocracy that had dominated Venetian international trade for centuries. The Venetian scuole were the central arena for the cittadini to exercise power; barred from holding government positions because of their non-noble status, they were able to monopolize the administration of the city’s highly popular lay confraternities. Many of the scuola’s leaders were well-to-do merchants who had achieved an extraordinary level of success in spite of their exclusion from the mercantile patriciate. Mark’s patronage of merchants and mercantile endeavors continued through the sixteenth century, but his support in the early modern period expanded to include middle-class traders in addition to the nobility.15 In the late fifteenth century, the Scuola Grande di San Marco constructed a new meeting place for the confraternity and subsequently commissioned a set of monumental canvases depicting the life of Mark. The prestige of the scuola allowed its leaders to secure the participation of some of the greatest painters in Venice, including Gentile and Giovanni Bellini.16 The painting cycle, created between 1504 and 1534, featured depictions of Mark’s preaching, miracles, and martyrdom. The iconography of the scuola paintings thus replicated imagery in the ducal basilica from four hundred years earlier, but differed in its use of a new artistic medium employed in the context of a lay confraternity to highlight the close connection between the scuola’s patron saint and the mercantile concerns of a membership that comprised a range of social classes.17 The earliest canvas in the series, Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria, was begun in 1504 by Gentile Bellini and completed by his brother Giovanni.18 The modern, European medium of oil on canvas had now replaced the

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  245 Byzantine techniques of mosaic and enamel employed in the ducal basilica. The canvas displays an unusual scene in Mark’s hagiography, his missionary work in Alexandria, which allowed Gentile Bellini to fabricate a vision of the Egyptian port city so closely associated with Venice’s patron saint. In the image, St. Mark stands on a platform as he preaches to the people of Alexandria, who wear a variety of sixteenth-century dress – Venetian, Ottoman, but predominantly Mamluk. On the left behind Mark stands a group of Venetians that included members of the scuola as well as Gentile Bellini, distinguished by his red robe and golden chain.19 Immediately before St. Mark, attentively listening to the sermon, is a single figure in Ottoman dress, sporting the distinctive turban of white cloth wrapped around the tall red cap or taj. This is the only readily identifiable Ottoman figure in the painting, whereas the vast majority of the audience is in Mamluk costume.20 The physical setting for Mark’s preaching is an eclectic assemblage of architectural elements meant to evoke an Alexandrian locale. The delineation of space is taken directly from Bellini’s earlier painting Procession in the Piazza San Marco, while the architectural backdrop includes elements of the Basilica of San Marco combined with various eastern structures. There is no consensus as to the origins of the fantastical building in the center of the canvas – it could reference Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, or even religious structures in Alexandria. Ancillary buildings in the scene, however, clearly depict Alexandrian landmarks, including Pompey’s Pillar, the famed Lighthouse, and an obelisk brought to the city by Augustus. Other Egyptian architectural references include the minaret of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo with its distinctive spiral staircase. Though combined with some fantastical elements, the artists attempted to recreate a recognizable Egyptian cityscape, combining structures from the Mamluks’ central port and capital city.21 Venetians had been trading in Alexandria since the ninth century, but their commercial relationships with the Mamluk Empire (1250–1517) played an essential role in furthering Venetian ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean.22 The Venetians provided naval strength to protect Mamluk territories and supplied their trading partners with strategic materials like wood and metals. The Mamluks for their part allowed Venetian ships to bring pilgrims to the holy sites under their control and sold raw materials to Venice’s traders for the European production of manufactured goods. A highly profitable symbiosis existed between these two Mediterranean powers that resulted in a concerted Venetian presence in Mamluk lands. Venice had two fondachi and a consulate in Alexandria, and its citizens also frequented the capital of Cairo and the empire’s second major city of Damascus. In spite of moments of political and economic tension caused by Christian crusade ventures, piracy, papal bans on trade with non-Muslims, and frequent changes of Mamluk regimes, the close and positive relationship between Venice and the Mamluk Empire continued in official form from the early fourteenth century to the end of the empire in 1517.23

246  Karen Rose Mathews However, Venetian relations with the Muslim territories along the Mediterranean changed dramatically at the very time that the imagery for the Scuola Grande di San Marco was being created. The Ottomans conquered the Mamluk Empire in 1517, incorporating Egypt and Syria into their already vast empire. The status quo that Venetian merchants had established with the Islamic territories of the Mediterranean now entered a new phase, where the more formidable and aggressive Ottomans replaced the Egyptian Mamluks, who had been longstanding and trusted trading partners.24 The canvas of Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria, begun before the defeat of the Mamluks, highlighted Venetian belonging in the eastern Mediterranean and the familiarity of cities like Alexandria to Venice’s merchants and diplomats. The veristic style of the painting depicted in a compelling manner a locale that was likely frequented by members of the scuola themselves, alluding to the role they played in maritime commerce and diplomacy across the Mediterranean.25 The scene of Mark’s preaching transferred both the saint and the confraternity members from Venice back to Alexandria, a site that had been intimately associated with the Venetians’ political prestige and economic prosperity up until the early sixteenth century. With the dissolution of the Mamluk Empire, however, the cityscape of Alexandria garnered new and more ambivalent connotations, indexing anxiety over Ottoman rule, the threat to lucrative trade agreements, and nostalgia for the close connections to Egyptian lands that now seemed irrevocably lost. This image, created at a pivotal moment in Mediterranean history, celebrated the embeddedness of Venice in the East as a central element in the identity of its heterogeneous merchant population and the commerce with Egypt that was an essential part of the Venetian economy. Mark was a saint, then, who experienced numerous revivals throughout the medieval and early modern period, and his continual redefinition served as an index of his symbolic significance. As the patron saint of the city, brought to Venice in an audacious act of theft by two enterprising traders, Mark was associated from the outset with the merchant elite and the power of the doge. His cult expanded in the Middle Ages to incorporate Byzantium as an Eastern culture with which Venice wished to be associated through political alliances and commercial agreements. However, by the third incarnation of Mark’s cult, Venetian maritime trade was in a state of flux. The city’s mercantile aristocracy no longer exercised a monopoly on international commerce, and the patronage of St. Mark encompassed social classes and religious institutions other than the patriciate and the ducal Basilica of San Marco. As the Ottoman advance threatened the Venetian stato da mar, Venice needed St. Mark’s protection more than ever. The cult of the city’s patron, then, grew through a process of accumulation; his association with the city of Alexandria continued through ancient Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim control of the Egyptian port. In the medieval representations of the saint, the ducal patrons strove to celebrate the worthiness of Venice as the resting place for the relics of an Eastern saint.

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  247 Mark was depicted as bestowing his blessings and miraculous powers on a devoted Venetian audience. In the early modern period, he did not lose his association with the doge but gained the powerful patronage of some of Venice’s most influential merchants, both nobles and citizens, from the Scuola Grande di San Marco. The traditional iconography of St. Mark’s miracles and martyrdom remained in the scuola paintings but was redeployed in a completely new medium and artistic context. The Bellini brothers created a lifelike though fantastical stage on which to reanimate the evangelist’s cult, firmly grounded on Egyptian soil. Mark, in essence, experienced a reverse translatio, as his connection to Alexandria became just as important as his presence in Venice. In a combination of textual and visual sources – a thrilling theft narrative, mosaic and enamel decoration, and monumental canvases – St. Mark served as the essential link between Venice and the eastern Mediterranean, celebrating Venetian mercantile identity and the maritime commerce that was a mainstay of the city’s political and economic life since the triumphal reception of Mark’s relics in the early Middle Ages.

St. Isidore and triumph over Venice’s Christian rivals If Mark was a saint whose cult emphasized Venice’s peaceful interaction with eastern Mediterranean territories, then Isidore’s cult came to the fore when the Venetians took up arms to protect their commercial empire. The veneration of Isidore in Venice was modeled closely on devotion to Mark: both had their relics acquired through theft, and an accompanying narrative recounted the exploits of the pious thieves; both were venerated in the Basilica of San Marco with the doge as the primary supporter of the cult; and both were the recipients of lavishly decorated spaces in the basilica with narrative cycles depicting their martyrdom and translationes to Venice.26 Isidore, however, was a warrior saint, a soldier from Alexandria who converted to Christianity on the island of Chios and was martyred for his faith. It was his persona as a soldier and holy warrior that the Venetians constructed in the twelfth century and rediscovered and elaborated in the fourteenth century to visualize the relationship between warfare and commerce and to assist Venetian merchant warriors in triumphing over military adversaries and commercial rivals in the Mediterranean. Isidore’s relics were stolen from Chios in 1125 by the Venetian cleric Cerbanus Cerbani, who also composed the narrative of the theft.27 Venetian warriors were in the Aegean after participating in the successful conquest of Tyre and chose to winter on Chios before returning to Venice. Cerbani had discovered that the relics of St. Isidore were on the island, and, through threats, intimidation, and outright violence directed towards the Greek custodians of the saint’s remains, he acquired the relics. The doge leading the crusading army, Domenico Michiel, heard of the cleric’s acquisition and initially chastised him for such an unholy act before acquiescing to the relics’

248  Karen Rose Mathews transport to Venice. After the requisite calming of the storm miracle, Isidore arrived in Venice, where the doge took possession of his relics and created a chapel for them adjacent to the Basilica of San Marco. Isidore thus received the honor of being the only Eastern saint whose remains rested in proximity to the city’s illustrious patron, St. Mark.28 The motive for Venetian presence in the eastern Mediterranean was the crusade against Levantine Muslims, where Venice’s fleet provided military support for the Christian armies in return for commercial concessions in the new crusader territories.29 This comingling of warfare and trade determined the acquisition of Isidore’s relics as well, as the theft took place against the backdrop of an economic stalemate with the Byzantines. Soon after the death of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Comnenos in 1118, Doge Michiel led a Venetian delegation to Constantinople to reaffirm Venice’s highly favorable commercial privileges in Greek territories.30 Alexios’ successor, John II Comnenos, refused to renew the concessions, and the Venetian fleet retaliated with raids and attacks on a number of Byzantine islands and ports. Among the plunder seized in these raids was the body of Isidore, characterized by the Venetians as spoils of war taken from the Greeks as punishment for their recalcitrance.31 Unlike the remains of Mark, stolen from Alexandria during a peaceful trade venture, Isidore moved from East to West in the context of war caused by an economic dispute. Almost immediately after its arrival in Venice, however, the body of Isidore was lost or forgotten, misplaced or ignored until the mid-fourteenth century. It was the Doge Andrea Dandolo who rediscovered the body in an inventio reminiscent of that associated with St. Mark’s body and its miraculous reappearance in 1094. A saint, then, whose theft coincided with crusading ventures in the eastern Mediterranean became the centerpiece of a new architectural commission begun in 1350, the Cappella di Sant’Isidoro, located in the north transept of the Basilica of San Marco.32 The chapel commissioned by the doge was decorated with a cycle of mosaics in the barrel vault that depicts the martyrdom, inventio, and translatio of the saint (Figure 11.3).33 In the lunette on the east end, Christ sits enthroned, flanked by Mark on his right and Isidore on his left. The chapel’s vaults feature mosaic decoration on the south wall representing Isidore’s martyrdom and the saint’s translatio to Venice on the north. The two registers of mosaics depicting St. Isidore’s vita and passio have just a few short captions to identify key figures; the lower register portrays the high point of the narrative, showing the various ways Isidore cheated death before being decapitated. The translatio mosaics on the north wall, however, were the true focus of the decorative program and feature extensive inscriptions recounting the narrative of Isidore’s travels from Chios to Venice.34 In the twelfth-century translatio text, the cleric Cerbanus Cerbani was the person responsible for the theft and therefore was the protagonist in the furtum narrative he penned. However, in the fourteenth-century mosaics within the chapel, it is the doge who plays the central role in the saint’s translatio.35 The Venetian

Photo credit: Per gentile concessione della Procuratoria di San Marco.

Figure 11.3 Venice, San Marco, Cappella di Sant’Isidoro, mosaics depicting St. Isidore’s translatio, begun 1350.

250  Karen Rose Mathews ruler appears alongside Cerbani in almost every scene, readily recognizable with his distinctive red gown and headgear (the corno ducale). The repetition of “Domenico Michiel dux” immediately above the head of the doge further emphasizes his centrality in the narrative, and by the last scene, Cerbani has disappeared entirely, as the doge alone supervises the transport of the body into the Basilica of San Marco. The reinvigoration of Isidore’s cult in the 1340s by the Doge Andrea Dandolo followed the model of saintly reanimation established with other Venetian holy figures. Through the theft narrative, the miraculous inventio of the saint’s relics, and the commissioning of a lavish chapel, Dandolo could connect a relatively obscure martyr with the city’s patron, elevating Isidore through his proximity to Mark. Isidore, however, had other qualities that recommended him for rediscovery in the mid-fourteenth century. His status as an Eastern warrior saint, associated with morally justified warfare conducted by powerful doges, made him an ideal holy figure to reintroduce into the spotlight. Through his association with Isidore, Dandolo could connect himself to a venerable Venetian past characterized by strong ducal leadership, military might, and expanding commercial horizons while addressing a number of contemporary political and economic concerns that overshadowed his reign.36 The mid-fourteenth century was a tumultuous time in Venice as constitutional reform reshaped the city’s ruling oligarchy and redefined the role of the doge himself.37 The Serrata, or the Closing of the Great Council, rigidly defined the aristocratic families eligible to hold high office in the city and participate in international commerce. The strengthening of the Council came at the expense of the doge, who became increasingly a ceremonial figure rather than an active ruler. The mercantile elite from which the doge was chosen, then, was a class in transition as new social distinctions developed among aristocratic families and between nobles and cittadini. Compounding this political instability were significant impediments to Venetian Mediterranean commerce. The papal ban imposed on trade with Muslims from 1320 to 1344 threatened to cut off the city’s economic lifeblood at the same time that Venetian-Byzantine relations vacillated between alliances and open conflict. By far the greatest commercial challenge came from Genoa, a maritime republic with a formidable fleet that vied with Venice for trade concessions at lucrative ports and possession of strategic islands across the Mediterranean. The Venetians’ seafaring nature made them particularly vulnerable to the plague that descended upon Europe and the Middle East in 1348, decimating populations and exacerbating the already dire political and economic situation in Venice.38 In these difficult circumstances, the commission of the Cappella di Sant’Isidoro refashioned the doge’s persona and the image of contemporary Venice by evoking a glorious Venetian past, when the city’s powerful and aggressive rulers advanced into the Mediterranean to defeat political foes and commercial rivals, returning home with war trophies in celebration of these great victories.39 In the chapel’s mosaics, Doge Domenico Michiel was the hinge providing a visual connection in the mosaics between doges past and present.40 Michiel

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  251 ruled Venice when the dogeship was a position of power and prestige. He was a celebrated military leader, heading Venetian crusading forces and presiding over the city in an era of political stability and economic prosperity. The republic’s great crusading victories were a distant memory in the fourteenth century, but Andrea Dandolo revived this glorious moment in Venetian history through the translatio scenes on the chapel walls.41 At a time of great upheaval, the doge called upon the power of a saint who had languished in obscurity for two centuries but was rediscovered miraculously. The retrospective aspect of the chapel commission and decoration connected Doge Dandolo to the city’s illustrious past and reminded contemporary Venetians of the earlier glory and fame achieved through the strong leadership of the doge. The chapel imagery also addressed the longstanding and acrimonious rivalry between the Venetians and the Genoese, their greatest competitor in Mediterranean commerce.42 Since the twelfth century when Genoa began to assert itself as a maritime power, the two Italian cities battled incessantly on land and sea over new markets, financial assets, and sovereign territories. In the mid-fourteenth century, a key area of dispute between Genoa and Venice was the island of Chios.43 The Genoese had captured Chios in 1346, and, as a result, the island associated with Isidore’s relics was in enemy hands when the mosaic cycle was created. Chios was one of a number of strategic islands in the Aegean over which Venice and Genoa fought bitterly for centuries; its natural resources and central location for maritime trade made its loss all the more significant.44 From Chios, the Genoese could impede Venetian access to other important commercial ports and establish trading monopolies in areas like the Black Sea. The elevation of Isidore at this time demonstrated that though Genoa possessed the island, it was Venice that enjoyed the protection of this valiant warrior saint. A saint stolen from one commercial adversary, the Byzantines, served as a symbol of hope for victory over another rival two hundred years later. With Isidore’s protection and support, Venetian merchant mariners could fight to reconquer the island and safeguard Venice’s commercial routes from Genoese attacks. The cult of St. Isidore became intimately connected with the doge and his basilica as Venetian rulers highlighted the qualities that had made Venice great in the earlier Middle Ages: its commitment to crusade and the commercial benefits won from holy war. Isidore’s connection to crusade could also legitimize conflicts with Christian adversaries; taken from the Byzantines, he could symbolize Venice’s predominance over Genoa as the two maritime cities engaged in continuous conflict over territories and trade routes across the Mediterranean. In the political turmoil of the mid-fourteenth century, Doge Andrea Dandolo appended Isidore’s veneration to that of St. Mark, and this cumulative holy power combined with the retrospective references to victorious crusading doges provided the foundation for the restoration of the city’s greatness. Isidore’s presence in San Marco celebrated the uniqueness of the figure of the doge in Venice, and the promotion of his cult served as a call for more activist leadership by the city’s ruler in a time of political and economic challenges.

252  Karen Rose Mathews

St. George as holy warrior in the eastern Mediterranean Like Isidore, George was a military saint, a member of the Roman army whose championing of Christianity led to his persecution and martyrdom. He came from the East, either Syria/Palestine or Cappadocia, and his relics were taken from Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Isidore’s cult in Venice, however, was associated with one sacred location in San Marco and two distinct time frames, while devotion to George spanned seven centuries and involved three different religious institutions. George’s military persona, connection to crusade, and great popularity across the Mediterranean spurred Venetian veneration of this holy warrior in the face of competing claims to his protection. Venice’s deployment of his cult and iconography bridged East and West and referenced a variety of political situations where Venice wished to assert its superiority over adversaries who also venerated this military saint.45 George’s cult had widespread appeal, and Venetian lay and religious institutions combined relic inventiones with artistic commissions to bolster their appropriation of the protection and spiritual power of this great miles christianus. The cult of St. George first appeared in the Venetian lagoon in the early ninth century when members of the ducal Partecipazio family created a chapel dedicated to the saint on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.46 A century later, another doge founded the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, after which the island was named. The monastery maintained the dedication to St. George over the centuries, but no new impetus occurred to promote the cult there until 1462. At that time, the doge ordered sea captains traveling to Greece to search for the saint’s head that was rumored to be on the island of Aegina.47 The head was duly found and housed in the monastery of San Giorgio, where it remained the principal relic of the saint. In spite of these propitious conditions for reaffirming George’s cult in Venice – ducal patronage, a dedicated monastic community, and even the head of the saint himself – the military saint’s veneration never flourished at the island monastery. The Venetian doges chose instead to honor George in their ducal Basilica of San Marco, and, in the thirteenth century, the warrior saint achieved a level of distinction in the basilica’s decoration in association with events of the Fourth Crusade.48 Among the numerous relics brought back to Venice after the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 was the arm of St. George (Figure 11.4).49 Placed in the treasury with other sacred spoils, it became an object of heightened devotional interest in 1231 after the treasury suffered a devastating fire. Miraculously saved from destruction were George’s arm and relics from the time of Christ: vials of Christ’s blood, pieces of the True Cross, and the skull of John the Baptist.50 Over thirty years after the fire, the Venetian doge wrote to the pope to have the miraculous preservation of these relics authenticated, and the doge inaugurated a campaign of artistic commissions related to the cult of St. George. A relief plaque was sculpted

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  253

Figure 11.4 Venice, San Marco, Treasury, arm reliquary of St. George. Photo credit: Per gentile concessione della Procuratoria di San Marco.

that represented the relics saved from the fire, with George’s oblong arm reliquary prominently displayed on the upper right of the panel (Figure 11.5).51 The relic itself received further elaboration as its reliquary was embellished in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. A saint who had been

Photo credit: Per gentile concessione della Procuratoria di San Marco.

Figure 11.5 Venice, San Marco, relief plaque depicting relics saved from Treasury fire, c. 1265.

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  255 overlooked for centuries thus became the object of a reinvigorated cult and extensive visual display in the thirteenth century. George’s elevation as a saintly protector can be directly connected to Venice’s adversarial relationship with commercial rival Genoa. The Ligurian city had long claimed St. George as a patron, with a church dedicated to the saint already in the eleventh century. The church of San Giorgio was honored as the structure in which the Genoese housed their standard or battle flag. It was also the location where important military trophies from Genoese naval campaigns were placed on display; the church, then, had a longstanding connection to Genoese triumphalism in relation to Mediterranean rivals.52 In the mid-thirteenth century, Genoa’s city hall was dedicated to St. George, and soon thereafter the Genoese cleric and author Jacobus de Voragine began writing his Legenda aurea, in which he greatly elaborated the hagiography of St. George and his epic battle with the dragon. The 1260s saw the political and economic ascent of Genoa at the expense of Venice as the Venetians lost their imperial capital of Constantinople to a Byzantine-Genoese coalition. The territorial conquests and trade prerogatives Venetians had enjoyed as rulers of the Byzantine capital disappeared, and the Genoese denied Venice’s traders access to the very markets they had so recently monopolized. Faced with grave economic challenges, the Venetians took solace in their patron saints, particularly George, whose sanctity they appropriated from a hated and feared rival.53 It was necessary, then, for Venetian merchant warriors to demonstrate that George’s thaumaturgic power functioned exclusively for Venice and that this military protector, long venerated in Genoa, had shifted his alliance to the lagoon city. If Isidore’s connection to the conflict between Venice and Genoa was oblique, with the two Italian cities fighting over an island associated with the saint, then the competition for George was far more direct and confrontational. Genoa’s claim had tradition and hagiographic propaganda behind it, while Venice touted the miracle-working powers of the saint for their sole benefit. In the second half of the thirteenth century, however, Venice may have won the battle for the saint’s protection, but Genoa won the economic war, and George’s thaumaturgy was not compensation enough for the devastating losses of Mediterranean markets to Genoese control. At the same time that the doge was scouring the Mediterranean for George’s head, a new patronage base for the saint developed within a Venetian confraternity, the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni.54 As the name implies, the lay confraternity consisted of Slavs, particularly immigrants from Dalmatia, who resided in Venice. The confraternity members were middle-class merchants and sailors who traveled and traded along the borders of Venetian and Ottoman territories.55 Their homeland was a strategic battleground between the two polities, and the merchants from Dalmatia had seen the effects of Ottoman aggression firsthand. The San Giorgio scuola had forged close ties with a military group famed for its crusader zeal, the Knights of St. John, and the Dalmatians aided the knights

256  Karen Rose Mathews when the Turks threatened their island base. Scuola members stalwartly protected Venetian territories in eastern Europe from Ottoman encroachment and participated in plans for crusade ventures against the Turks in the fifteenth century. Their patron saint was aptly chosen, then, as George had been the protector of Christian armies in crusades against Muslims since the First Crusade.56 The crusading zeal of the confraternity members reaped great spiritual rewards as the scuola received several indulgences from the pope. The gift that cemented devotion to St. George, however, came from a layman. Paolo Vallaresso, a renowned Venetian general and commander of the strategic fortresses of Methoni and Koroni in Greece, presented the Dalmatians with an unspecified relic of George in 1502.57 The general made the donation soon after the fortresses under his command fell to the Ottomans in 1499, so the intent of the gift may have been to encourage the confraternity’s participation in an offensive to reclaim these strategic sites. Such a counterattack did not take place, but the relic donation did inspire the commissioning of three monumental canvases depicting the life of St. George by the artist Vittore Carpaccio. Carpaccio’s three paintings, Saint George fighting the Dragon, the Triumph of Saint George, and George baptizing the Selenites, dating to 1502–7, honored St. George by portraying his miraculous deeds and Christian triumph over non-believers in a fantastical Eastern setting.58 The first canvas depicts the blighted desert landscape where George battled the dragon that had been consuming the inhabitants of the city of Silene (Libya). The saint ultimately subdued the dragon, and this miraculous occurrence caused the entire city to convert to Christianity en masse.59 In the scene of George’s triumph, the inhabitants sport costumes from a number of Eastern locales, and the architecture juxtaposes elements from a variety of Eastern buildings in the Levant – a structure based on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is in the center, flanked by a version of the mosque of Ramla to its immediate left, and in the far left-hand corner is a structure modeled after the Holy Sepulchre.60 The miraculous conversion of Selenites culminated in their baptism by George in the last canvas by Carpaccio. Here, a throng of Easterners in exotic costumes eagerly waits to be initiated into the Christian faith. The most poignant element of the scene is the Ottoman turban that sits, discarded, upon the steps. In Carpaccio’s Oriental fantasy, the Turks abandoned their turbans to embrace Christianity; the painting offers a triumphant scenario where the power and sanctity of George, Christianity’s prototypical warrior saint, neutralized the Turkish menace so greatly feared by western Europe in the sixteenth century.61 This evocation of a subdued, docile, Christianized Turk was of particular significance to the members of the Scuola di San Giorgio in the early years of the sixteenth century. The second war between the Venetians and Ottomans had just begun in 1499 and resulted in a resounding defeat for Venice. The Ottomans seized strategic islands from the Venetians, captured the fortresses

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  257 of Methoni and Koroni in the Peloponnese, and advanced on Albania and Dalmatia, the homeland of the scuola’s brothers.62 The Dalmatians had fought against the Turks in a sanctified war and keenly felt the suffering and devastation caused by the Ottoman attacks on their territory. Demand for images of a Turkish “Other” grew precisely in times of conflict, and it was military and religious antagonism towards the Ottomans that the scuola chose to emphasize in the canvases painted by Carpaccio.63 George reprised his role as crusading saint, not only defeating the enemies of Christianity but converting them as well. In contrast to the recognizable Alexandrian cityscape depicted in Bellini’s image of Saint Mark Preaching, Carpaccio did not elect to represent a factual Turkish space from the sixteenth century for the Dalmatian confraternity commission. Rather, he fabricated a hybrid fantasy of an Eastern locale as a retreat from the harsh realities of the recent Ottoman victory and the fear of more military advances into Venetian territories.64 These paintings were not about knowing the Ottomans in any accurate or ethnographic manner; rather, they provided a comforting myth of how relations with the Turks should be along the long border shared by the Venetian republic and the Ottoman Empire. Carpaccio’s paintings, however, only depicted one facet of Venetian– Ottoman relations, and the scuola members and the Venetian merchant community would have also experienced other perspectives on the Ottoman Empire. In the time period between 1453 and 1517, the Venetians saw two of their most important trading partners – the Byzantine and Mamluk empires – fall to the Turks. In order to maintain their lucrative commerce in Alexandria and Istanbul, Venice’s diplomats hastened to the Ottoman court to reaffirm pre-existing trade privileges.65 Rather than Venice and the Ottoman Empire being in a constant state of war in the second half of the fifteenth century, long periods of peaceful commerce and diplomatic and cultural exchange were punctuated by brief episodes of violence and military confrontation. The Venetian republic actually entered into a number of alliances with the Ottomans against mutual enemies, and Venice took on the role of the cultural conduit through which knowledge about this great empire spread to western Europe.66 In the Ottomans, the Venetians perhaps saw a mirror of themselves as people possessing qualities to be admired and feared, but they were also confronted with the complexity of defining a Turkish identity.67 Just as the definition of who a Venetian was changed dramatically during the medieval and early modern periods, so it was equally impossible to essentialize the Turks, who were at turns military adversaries, trading partners, naval rivals, and political allies. In representing Venice’s ambivalent relationship with the Ottomans, George could be deployed to index similarity and difference simultaneously. As a crusading warrior saint, he epitomized Christian triumphalism. He originated from territories that were controlled by the Ottomans; as such, the Venetians could claim success in appropriating this holy warrior to support Christian military campaigns. More importantly, however, St. George could serve as a

258  Karen Rose Mathews bridge between cultures as a holy figure revered by Muslims and Christians alike.68 His cult and miraculous powers were legible to both the Venetians and their Ottoman counterparts, and his bravery, honor, and sanctity transcended religious and cultural boundaries. St. George, then, was a malleable saint who allowed Venice to define itself in relation to a number of different political adversaries and commercial competitors. His relics were appropriated from the Byzantines in the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 but provided the Venetians with the saintly ammunition to challenge Genoa’s sole claim to the holy warrior’s protection. Fueled by the acquisition of new relics, his cult was renewed in the context of a lay confraternity whose members dedicated themselves to crusade in order to protect their economic interests. Originally the object of ducal devotion, George became the military pendant to Venetian commercial activities. Venetian merchants were also warriors who fought to protect their ships, territorial possessions, and trade routes from encroachment. In order to justify military aggression in crusade-like terms, the Venetians employed George as their patron saint and role model. George was an Eastern saint who had been transplanted to the West, and his saintly patronage was then directed towards maintaining Venice’s presence in the eastern Mediterranean. George’s Eastern pedigree was the foundation for Venice’s, and the power of the saint was directed against anyone who challenged the Venetians’ claim to sovereignty (however fictive) over eastern waters in the pursuit of commerce.

Conclusion These three Venetian saints, then, all had close connections with the city’s maritime merchants who deployed holy protectors to safeguard international commerce and maintain Mediterranean dominance. They all shared a similar and violent means of acquisition, each stolen from adversaries at various times in the Middle Ages. Initially, then, they defined a position of superiority for the Venetians over their longtime Eastern ally and rival, and the city’s authors penned narratives that described and justified these audacious thefts and lauded the miracles performed by the newly acquired saints on Venetian soil. Once seized from their enemies, each saintly patron was repositioned by the Venetians to protect their merchants from new adversaries – Levantine Muslims, the Genoese, and the Turks – in subsequent centuries. A tried and true method for enhancing a saint’s luster in Venice was to lose and find his relics or forget and remember the miracles he performed. Subjected to a process of selective forgetting and remembering, the saint augmented his protective power and garnered new devotees to his cult. The definition of who a Venetian merchant was underwent a series of transformations from the ninth to the sixteenth century, and the visual and textual means through which Venetian traders defined their relationship

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  259 to the saints displayed extraordinary variety as well. Translatio narratives, historical chronicles, missives to the pope, mosaics, enamel and precious metalwork, stone sculpture, and oil painting reflected the most compelling and contemporary means of enhancing the prestige of the saint and rebranding him for new generations of believers. The renewed interest in a pantheon of medieval saints reflected the shifting historical realities of early sixteenth-century Venice, where a declining Mamluk Empire and an Ottoman power on the ascent threatened the thalassocracy the lagoon city had painstakingly erected throughout the Middle Ages. In these challenging circumstances, Venice’s merchants – patrician, middle-class, and foreign – needed the saints more than ever to help the city triumph over a feared, intractable, and seemingly invincible adversary, and the holy protectors were redeployed to demonstrate Venice’s continued centrality in international Mediterranean trade.

Notes 1 For the economic prerogatives of the patrician class, see in general Gino Luzzatto, “Les activités économiques du Patriciat vénetien (Xe–XIVe siècles),” Annales d’histoire économique et sociale 9, no. 43 (1937): 25–57. See also Eric Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 42; Jean-Claude Hocquet, Venise et la mer, XIIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2006), 22–24; Dennis Romano, The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373–1457 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 10–11; Claire Judde de Larivière, Naviguer, commercer: Économie maritime et pouvoirs à Venise (XVe–XVIe siècles) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 28–29, 50–52. 2 Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 251–89, addresses the paradoxical nature of this office. See also Frederic Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 91; Romano, The Likeness of Venice, xix–xxi. 3 Luzzatto, “Les activités économiques,” 26–27; Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic, 52–53; Muir, Civic Ritual, 261; Benjamin Kedar, Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 58, 68. 4 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 48; Kiril Petkov, Anxieties of a Citizen Class: The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370–1480 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 2. 5 James Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 342; Petkov, Anxieties of a Citizen Class, 4–7. 6 See Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 52–60, for a discussion of the role of foreigners in Venetian trade in the sixteenth century. He notes that as patrician and cittadini merchants chose to run their businesses from Venice, foreigners traveled in their stead to conduct international trade. 7 Patricia Fortini Brown, “Le ‘scuole’,” in Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. 5, Il rinascimento: Società ed economia, ed. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1996), 310, 340; Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 69–70.

260  Karen Rose Mathews 8 Giorgio Fedalto and Luigi Andrea Berto, Chronache (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 2003), 468–85, provides an edition and translation of the “Translatio Sancti Marci.” See also the earlier edition by Norman McCleary, “Note storiche ed archeologiche sul testo della ‘Translatio Sancti Marci’,” Memorie storiche forogiuliesi 27–29 (1931–33): 238–64. 9 Thomas Madden, Venice: A New History (New York: Viking, 2012), 44. 10 Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, in Rerum Italicarum scriptores, vol. 12, bk. 1, ed. Ester Pastorello (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1938), 219; Thomas Dale, “Stolen Property: St. Mark’s First Venetian Tomb and the Politics of Communal Memory,” in Memory and the Medieval Tomb, ed. Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 206–07. 11 Renato Polacco, “The Mosaics: Styles and Periods,” in St. Mark’s: The Art and Architecture of Church and State in Venice, ed. Ettore Vio (New York: Riverside Book Company, 2001), 190–210; Joachim Poeschke, Italian Mosaics, 300–1300 (New York: Abbeville Press, 2010), 314–19; Otto Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 15–22, 28–38. 12 See David Buckton and John Osborne, “The Enamel of Doge Ordelaffo Falier on the Pala d’Oro in Venice,” Gesta 39, no. 1 (2000) for recent literature on the Pala d’Oro. See also Donald Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 65–66; Wolfgang Volbach, “Gli smalti della Pala d’oro,” in La Pala d’oro, ed. Hans Hahnloser and Renato Polacco (Venice: Canal & Stamperia Editrice, 1994); Margaret Frazer, “The Pala d’Oro and the Cult of Saint Mark in Venice,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 32, no. 5 (1982): 273–79; Sergio Bettini, “Venice, the Pala d’Oro, and Constantinople,” in The Treasury of San Marco, Venice (Milan: Olivetti, 1985). 13 See Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, 50–67, for the high point of this relationship. See Daphni Penna, Byzantine Imperial Acts to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, 10th– 12th Centuries (Den Haag: Eleven International Publishing, 2012), 17–99, for the advantageous trade privileges accorded to the Venetians for their service to the Byzantine Empire from the tenth to the twelfth century. 14 As one of the major scuole in Venice, the Scuola Grande di San Marco has been the subject of a number of scholarly works; see Pierandrea Moro, Gherardo Ortalli, and Mario Po’, La Scuola grande di San Marco e le scuole in Venezia tra religiosità laica e funzione sociale (Rome: Viella, 2015); Phillip Sohm, The Scuola Grande di San Marco, 1437–1550: The Architecture of a Venetian Lay Confraternity (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982); Richard Goy, Building Renaissance Venice: Patrons, Architects and Builders c. 1430–1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 191–215. 15 Ermanno Orlando, “La Scuola di San Marco nel basso medioevo,” in La Scuola grande di San Marco e le scuole in Venezia tra religiosità laica e funzione sociale, ed. Pierandrea Moro, Gherardo Ortalli, and Mario Po’ (Rome: Viella, 2015), 54; Gabriele Matino, “Il ciclo narrative per la sala dell’albergo della Scuola grande di San Marco: Contesto e contenuti,” in La Scuola grande di San Marco e le scuole in Venezia tra religiosità laica e funzione sociale, ed. Pierandrea Moro, Gherardo Ortalli, and Mario Po’ (Rome: Viella, 2015), 92–93; Isabella Botti, “Tra Venezia e Alessandria: I teleri belliniani per la Scuola Grande di San Marco,” Venezia Cinquecento 3 (1992): 55–57; Sohm, The Scuola Grande di San Marco, 11. 16 For the Scuola and the commissioning of the canvases, see Loren Partridge, Art of Renaissance Venice, 1400–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 51–54; Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli, “‘Orientalist’ Painting in Venice, 15th–17th Centuries,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 126–29; Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 73–76, 291–95.

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  261 17 Partridge, Art of Renaissance Venice, 53; Sohm, The Scuola Grande di San Marco, 27; Goy, Building Renaissance Venice, 191. Many of the Venetian scuole had patrician members, but they were not able to hold administrative positions in the confraternity. 18 Antonietta Gallone and Olga Piccolo, “La ‘Predica di San Marco ad Alessandria d’Egitto’ di Gentile e Giovanni Bellini: Nuovi contributi dalle indagini tecniche,” Arte Lombarda, n.s. 146/148 (2006): 73–93; Botti, “Tra Venezia e Alessandria”; Schmidt Arcangeli, “‘Orientalist’ Painting in Venice,” 128–29; Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 203–09, 292–95; Brian Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 158–64. Other paintings in the cycle include The Martyrdom of Saint Mark, Saint Mark Healing Anianus, The Baptism of Anianus, and Three Episodes in the Life of Saint Mark. 19 See David Kim, “Gentile in Red,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 18, no. 1 (2015): 165–78, for a discussion of Gentile Bellini’s role in this painting. 20 Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 208–09; David Carrier, “A Renaissance Fantasy Image of the Islamic World: Gentile and Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria’,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 28, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 16. 21 For this relationship between Oriental fantasy and historical accuracy, see Botti, “Tra Venezia e Alessandria,” 42–46; Schmidt Arcangeli, “‘Orientalist’ Painting in Venice,” 128–29; Paul Wood, “Art in Fifteenth-Century Venice: ‘An Aesthetic of Diversity’,” in Locating Renaissance Art, 2, ed. Carol Richardson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 243–46; Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance, 159–60. 22 For Venice’s close relationship with the Mamluks, see Deborah Howard, “Venice and the Mamluks,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Georg Christ, Trading Conflicts: Venetian Merchants and Mamluk Officials in Late Medieval Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Maria Pia Pedani, “Bahr-i Mamluk-Venetian Commercial Agreements,” in The Turks, vol. 2, Middle Ages, ed. Hasan Celal Güzel, C. Cem Oguz, and Osman Karatay (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Publications, 2002); Sylvia Auld, “The Mamluks and the Venetians Commercial Exchange: The Visual Evidence,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 123 (1991): 84–102; Francesco Gabrieli, “Venezia e i Mamelucchi,” in Venezia e l’Oriente fra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966). 23 Benjamin Arbel, “The Last Decades of Venice’s Trade with the Mamluks: Importations into Egypt and Syria,” Mamluk Studies Review 8, no. 2 (2004): 37–39, 68–69; Howard, “Venice and the Mamluks,” 75–78, 86; Botti, “Tra Venezia e Alessandria,” 47–48; Auld, “Mamluks and Venetians,” 96. 24 Jean-Claude Hocquet, “Venice and the Turks,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), and Julian Raby, “The Serenissima and the Sublime Porte: Art in the Art of Diplomacy, 1453–1600,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), both address Venetian interaction with the Ottoman Turks. See also Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 196–97, and Deborah Howard, “Venice, the Bazaar of Europe,” in Bellini and the East, ed. Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 16–19, for Venetian anxiety about Ottoman expansion. 25 Botti, “Tra Venezia e Alessandria,” 55–57, provides a list of confraternity members and their commercial dealings in Egypt. See also Schmidt Arcangeli, “‘Orientalist’ Painting in Venice,” 128. 26 Rona Goffen, “Paolo Veneziano e Andrea Dandolo: Una nuova lettura della pala feriale,” in La Pala d’oro, ed. Hans Hanhloser and Renato Polacco (Venice:

262  Karen Rose Mathews Canal & Stamperia Editrice, 1994), 184; Michele Tomasi, “Prima, dopo, attorno alla cappella: Il culto di Sant’Isidoro a Venezia,” in Arte, Storia, Restauri della Basilica di San Marco a Venezia: La Cappella di Sant’Isidoro (Venice: Marsilio, 2008), 19; Enzo De Franceschi, “I mosaici della cappella di Sant’Isidoro nella basilica di San Marco a Venezia,” Arte veneta 60 (2003): 9. 27 Cerbanus Cerbani, Translatio mirifici martyris Isidori a Chio insula in civitatem Venetam, Jun. 1125, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, 5 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1895). Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, 234–35, also describes the theft of Isidore’s relics. 28 Giorgio Cracco, “I testi agiografici: Religione e politica nella Venezia del Mille,” Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. 1, Età ducale, ed. Lellia Cracco-Ruggini, Giovanni Cracco, and Gherardo Ortalli (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1992), 955; Tomasi, “Prima, dopo, attorno alla cappella,” 16. 29 David Jacoby, “The Venetian Privileges in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century Interpretations and Implementation,” in Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed. Rudolf Hiestand, Benjamin Kedar, and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), 155. 30 Penna, Byzantine Imperial Acts, 35; Silvano Borsari, Venezia e Bisanzio nel XII secolo: I rapporti economici (Venice: Deputazione Editrice, 1998), 16–18; Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, 77–78; Giulia Rossi Scarpa, “I mosaici del secolo XIV nel battistero e nella cappella di Sant’Isidoro,” in San Marco: La basilica d’oro, ed. Renato Polacco, Giulia Rossi Scarpa, and Jacopo Scarpa (Milan: Berenice, 1991), 281. 31 The Greeks were deemed sinful as well, and they lost this saint and many others because of their moral transgressions; see Cerbani, Translatio mirifici martyris Isidori, 331: “Nos quidem haec et pejora pro peccatis nostris meremur” (We [the Greeks] deserve this and more because of our sins). 32 See in general Arte, storia, restauri della Basilica di San Marco a Venezia: La Cappella di Sant’Isidoro (Venice: Marsilio, 2008). See also Debra Pincus, “Andrea Dandolo (1343–1354) and Visible History,” in Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, 1250–1500, ed. Charles Rosenberg (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 191–97; Holger Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice, ca. 1200–1400,” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 207–09, 221–25; Debra Pincus, “Venice and its Doge in the Grand Design: Andrea Dandolo and the Fourteenth-Century Mosaics of the Baptistery,” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 250. 33 For a study of the iconography and style of the mosaic imagery in this chapel, see De Franceschi, “I mosaici della cappella,” and Rossi Scarpa, “I mosaici del secolo XIV,” 278–82. The lunette on the west represents the Virgin Mary in the center with John the Baptist to her right and St. Nicholas to her left. 34 Tomasi, “Prima, dopo, attorno alla cappella,” 18. 35 Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice,” 207–09; Pincus, “Venice and its Doge,” 250; De Franceschi, “I mosaici della cappella,” 9; Pincus, “Andrea Dandolo and Visible History,” 196–98. 36 Pincus, “Andrea Dandolo and Visible History,” 198; Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice,” 207–09; De Franceschi, “I mosaici della cappella,” 9. 37 Gerhard Rösch, “The Serrata of the Great Council and Venetian Society, 1286–1323,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore:

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  263 Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Debra Pincus, “Hard Times and Ducal Radiance: Andrea Dandolo and the Construction of the Ruler in Fourteenthcentury Venice,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 90–91. 38 Isidore had protected the Venetians who were on the ship where his relics were located from the plague in the twelfth century, and it was hoped that he would provide the same protection in Venice as well; see Tomasi, “Prima, dopo, attorno alla cappella,” 19–20; Rossi Scarpa, “I mosaici del secolo XIV,” 282. 39 See particularly Pincus, “Hard Times and Ducal Radiance,” 94–99, 111, for her discussion of Andrea Dandolo’s “newly orchestrated ducal persona.” 40 Dandolo highlighted his association to the lineage of Venice’s doges in other artistic commissions such as the Pala d’oro, where he took particular pains to connect himself with Venetian leaders that possessed crusading credentials. See Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice,” 209; Pincus, “Andrea Dandolo and Visible History,” 196–97; Goffen, “Paolo Veneziano,” 184; De Franceschi, “I mosaici della cappella,” 9. 41 The historicity of Isidore’s translatio is debatable, as there is no evidence from the twelfth century that places his relics in Venice or indicates any particular devotion to the saint in the city; see David Perry, Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 172–74. 42 For an overview of this contentious relationship, see Michel Balard, “La lotta contro Genova,” in Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. 3, La formazione dello stato patrizio, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi, Giorgio Cracco, and Alberto Tenenti (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997); Gherardo Ortalli, “Venezia-Genova: Percorsi paralleli, conflitti, incontri,” in Genova, Venezia, il Levante nei secoli XII–XIV, ed. Gherardo Ortalli and Dino Puncuh (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2001). See also Karen Mathews, “Holy Plunder and Stolen Treasures: Portable Luxury Objects as War Trophies in the Italian Maritime Republics, 1100–1400,” in More Than Mere Playthings: The Minor Arts of Italy, ed. Julia C. Fischer (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 70–74, for the visual manifestations of this rivalry. 43 Tomasi, “Prima, dopo, attorno alla cappella,” 20; Pincus, “Andrea Dandolo and Visible History,” 191–92; Goffen, “Paolo Veneziano,” 184; Rossi Scarpa, “I mosaici del secolo XIV,” 283; Perry, Sacred Plunder, 173. 44 Perry, Sacred Plunder, 173; Tomasi, “Prima, dopo, attorno alla cappella,” 20; Rossi Scarpa, “I mosaici del secolo XIV,” 283. 45 David Perry, “St. George and Venice: The Rise of Imperial Culture,” in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, ed. James Robinson and Anna Harnden (London: British Museum Press, 2014), 16, 21; Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 20–21. 46 For the early history of the cult, see Muir, Civic Ritual, 95–96; Perry, Sacred Plunder, 163. 47 Muir, Civic Ritual, 96; Kenneth Setton, “Saint George’s Head,” Speculum 48, no. 1 (1973): 9–10. 48 George played a minor role in the iconography of the basilica’s twelfth-century mosaics and the contemporaneous Pala d’oro as one holy figure in an extensive pantheon of saints deployed in those two ducal artistic commissions; see Perry, “St. George and Venice,” 18–19; Volbach, “Gli smalti della Pala d’oro,” 53–54; Muir, Civic Ritual, 96. Other representations of George on San Marco’s west facade include a depiction of George on horseback on the Porta Sant’Alipio and

264  Karen Rose Mathews an image of the saint in battle dress that served as a pendant to a similar image of Demetrius, an Eastern warrior saint. 49 Thomas Dale, “Cultural Hybridity in Medieval Venice: Reinventing the East at San Marco after the Fourth Crusade,” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 161; Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice,” 217; Debra Pincus, “Christian Relics and the Body Politic: A Thirteenth-Century Relief Plaque in the Church of San Marco,” in Interpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale editrice, 1984), 44, 46. Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, 280, mentions the arm relic of St. George. See also Martina Bagnoli, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 92, for the arm relic. 50 Pincus, “Christian Relics,” 39, 48–50; Marina Belozerskaya and Kenneth Lapatin, “Antiquity Consumed: Transformations at San Marco, Venice,” in Antiquity and its Interpreters, ed. Alina Payne, Ann Kuttner, and Rebekah Smick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 88. 51 Dale, “Cultural Hybridity,” 178; Perry, Sacred Plunder, 164. Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium,” 217, argues for dating the panel slightly later, between 1283 and 1325. Renato Polacco, “Proposte per una chiarificazione sul significato e sulla funzione del ‘bassorilievo delle reliquie’ dell’andito Foscari in San Marco a Venezia,” in Hadriatica: Attorno a Venezia e al Medioevo tra arti, storia e storiografia: Scritti in onore di Wladimiro Dorigo, ed. Ennio Concina, Giordana Trovabene, and Michela Agazzi (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2002) argues for a connection between the relief and liturgical processions in San Marco. 52 Chiese di Genova, 7 (Genoa: Sagep Editrice, 1986), 5–16; Clario Di Fabio, “Le capsule eburnee arabo-normanne di Portovenere e documenti per l’arte islamica a Genova nel Medioevo,” in Le vie del Mediterraneo: Idee, uomini, oggetti (secoli XI–XVI), ed. Gabriella Airaldi (Genoa: Edizioni Culturali Internazionali Genova, 1997), 35; Rebecca Müller, Spolien und Trophäen im mittelalterlichen Genua: Sic hostes Ianua frangit (Weimar: VDG, 2002), 63, 85–86, 204–05. 53 Perry, Sacred Plunder, 164; Perry, “St. George and Venice,” 18; Pincus, “Christian Relics,” 46. 54 Partridge, Art of Renaissance Venice, 65–66; Linda Borean, “The Major Pictorial Cycles,” in Carpaccio: The Major Pictorial Cycles, ed. Stefania Mason (Milan: Skira, 2000), 110–13; Stefania Mason, “La Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni,” in Carpaccio: Pittore di storie, ed. Giovanna Nepi Scirè (Venice: Marsilio, 2004), 73–77; Vittorio Sgarbi, Carpaccio (New York: Abbeville Press, 1994), 41–42. 55 Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 69; Mason, “La Scuola,” 73; Sgarbi, Carpaccio, 41–42; Harula Economopoulos, “Prosopografia di un eroe: Giorgio Castriota Scanderbeg nel Battesimo dei Seleniti di Vittore Carpaccio,” Storia dell’arte 89 (1997): 28. 56 See Emily Albu, The Normans in Their Histories: Propaganda, Myth, and Subversion (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001), 174–75, for George’s miraculous assistance at the Battle of Antioch. 57 Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 70, 288; Borean, “Major Pictorial Cycles,” 110–11; Economopoulos, “Prosopografia di un eroe,” 28; Partridge, Art of Renaissance Venice, 66. 58 For the canvases in general, see Partridge, Art of Renaissance Venice, 66–67; Mason, “La Scuola,” 88–93; Borean, “Major Pictorial Cycles,” 110–13; Sgarbi, Carpaccio, 42–59; Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 69–70, 287–90. 59 The sequence of events in Carpaccio’s canvases differs from de Voragine’s version where George insisted that the people of Silene convert to Christianity first before he dispatched the dragon.

Reanimating the power of holy protectors  265 60 Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 210–13; Stefania Mason, “Carpaccio: A Painter of ‘Istorie’,” in Carpaccio: The Major Pictorial Cycles, ed. Stefania Mason (Milan: Skira, 2000), 21. 61 Partridge, Art of Renaissance Venice, 66; Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 196; Economopoulos, “Prosopografia di un eroe,” 32; Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, 17–18. 62 Howard, “Venice, the Bazaar of Europe,” 19; Mason, “La Scuola,” 73–74. 63 Bronwen Wilson, “Reflecting on the Turk in Late Sixteenth-Century Venetian Portrait Books,” Word & Image 19, nos. 1–2 (2003): 40; Deborah Howard, “Venice as an ‘Eastern City’,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 67. 64 Wood, “Art in Fifteenth-Century Venice,” 241. 65 Raby, “The Serenissima and the Sublime Porte,” 92; Howard, “Venice, the Bazaar of Europe,” 16. 66 Hocquet, “Venice and the Turks,” 48; Raby, “The Serenissima and the Sublime Porte,” 91–2, 114. 67 Bronwen Wilson, “Foggie diverse de vestire de’Turchi: Turkish Costume Illustration and Cultural Translation,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 1 (2007): 104–05, 130–31; Wilson, “Reflecting on the Turk,” 52; Raby, “The Serenissima and the Sublime Porte,” 113. 68 Jerry Brotton, “St. George between East and West,” in Re-Orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East, ed. Gerald MacLean (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 52–55.

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Part IV

Patterns of saintly intercession in the late medieval world

12 The service of merchants Politics, wealth, and intercessional devotion in later medieval Italy Janine Larmon Peterson

One of the foundational premises of hagiographical studies is that the basis of all veneration is faith. Since assessing faith is impossible, often scholars do not consider how intercessional relationships are formed, what factors might affect the saint–supplicant relationship, and how the result a devotee expected might affect his or her chosen method of expressing veneration. The specific devotional activities of artisans, merchants, and tradesmen in the later Middle Ages, as described in this volume’s chapters, are a welcome opportunity to re-evaluate the processes, and expectations, of saintly intercession within this demographic. The detailed chapters in this volume demonstrate that merchants’ families or communities became devoted to specific saints (Chapter 5 by Kelley, Chapter 6 by Courts, Chapter 7 by López, and Chapter 8 by Henry) and that saints became particular patrons for specific mercantile and commercial activities (Chapter 2 by Whitehead, Chapter 3 by Camp, Chapter 4 by Anderson, Chapter 9 by Gibbs, Chapter 10 by Keelmann, and Chapter 11 by Mathews). This devotion often manifested itself through material goods such as artwork, altarpieces, shrines, and manuscripts, or through the funding or founding of charitable organizations. All of the chapters reflect upon how these devotional acts impacted the social status of the mercantile class, particularly those wealthy merchants who had the ability to commission objects. On the surface, it might seem that the production of devotional objects was the specific way in which merchants believed that their intercessory prayers might be answered. A closer examination, however, shows that members of this demographic expressed their devotion and asked for saintly aid in a variety of ways. Affluent merchants, the main subject of this book, paid for devotional objects, but other members of the commercial and artisanal classes, such as those in the northern half of the Italian peninsula, instead offered their personal labor to a saint. There was no single model for mercantile intercessional devotion. Political context and socio-economic status are two factors in particular that affected religious devotion. The mercantile saint–supplicant relationship in the Italian peninsula in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (excluding the Venetian territories and lands controlled by the Holy Roman Emperor) demonstrates a very

274  Janine Larmon Peterson particular type of intercessory devotion. Lesser merchants, craftsmen, and artisans offered their service in the form of personal labor to saints but expected a return on their investment or they would break their “contract” with the holy person. This process, detailed in saints’ vitae and miracula, displays a transactional nature that reflects the post-commercial revolution merchant-merchant relationship. In some ways, this model resonates with many studies in this volume that reveal that there was an implicit quid pro quo in merchant supplication, thus reflecting Cynthia Turner Camp’s analysis of the “cost-benefit” aspect of mercantile intercession.1 It may be possible, therefore, to suggest there existed a prevailing attitude within merchant spirituality that was similar across region and time. In other ways, the Italian examples of mercantile devotion diverge somewhat from the studies in this collection. For instance, the emphasis on gaining social status or displaying prestige through religious devotion, which is an underlying theme in most of these chapters, seems to be missing in this slightly earlier period in northern and central Italy, where there is more evidence regarding lesser merchants and artisans. Distinctions like this one demonstrate the nuances of intercession even within a concise demographic. After outlining some general intercessory models, focusing on those that are most prevalent within the commercial classes and function as a characteristic of mercantile devotion, I suggest that differences in the forms and expectations of supplication can be attributed to two factors. The first factor is political instability in later medieval Italy and the consequent types of saints that became popular, which I argue partly explains the divergence between what I call the “transactional” form of intercession as opposed to that which was prevalent in varied areas of Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as described in this collection. The second factor is the relative prosperity of the supplicants, which influences the form and expectations of intercessional devotion for those engaged in commercial endeavors. The political instability and lesser social status of merchant devotion as recorded in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian sources resulted in these supplicants desiring assurances that the saint would be a trustworthy patron, a guarantee that wealthier merchant families with more stable social networks did not seem to require.

Intercessory models in comparison Creating typologies can be problematic, as they can mask underlying similarities and/or fluidity between categories. Nevertheless, the Italian examples outlined below and the chapters in this volume demonstrate that there were different modes of expressing one’s devotion and levels of expectations for subsequent saintly intercession within the mercantile class, even if they cannot be cataloged into strict hermeneutical categories. There appear to be two main forms of intercession for those engaged in commercial enterprises or mercantile activities: pledging one’s personal labor, of which the

The service of merchants  275 transactional model in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy is one form; and pledging one’s assets, a model that is prevalent in many of these studies. There are other intercessory models that are not as closely detailed in this collection but are of equal importance. The miracles of St. Foy, for example, abound with stories of people who are rewarded for their loyalty and fidelity without providing either service or goods (or punished if they are found lacking in these qualities).2 Pope Gregory I’s Dialogues often demonstrate a similar mode of intercession, in which those individuals who are deemed worthy receive benefits and those who are not are admonished; in both of these collections, regularly the individual did not ask for intercession at all.3 In contrast, many of the miracles of the Virgin Mary that occur as exempla in English texts after the rise of her cult in the twelfth century are granted after some form of devotion by the supplicant. Sometimes the devotee even proves him- or herself spiritually unworthy of divine aid, but the intercession still occurs without prejudice.4 In all these cases, a miracle is freely given and is not dependent upon some form of offering or payment, even if one may have been present. There are no ties that bind the saint, only ties that bind the supplicant once the miracle is dispensed. The mercantile classes seemed to engage in a different form of intercession in which the supplicant initiates ties with the saint to intercede by offering his or her service through either labor or capital. The model of pledging one’s personal labor to a saint in expectation for intercession had many parallels in medieval social, economic, and political arrangements. A similar promise and expectation were made, for example, in feudal and manorial relationships. Within this service-oriented intercessory model in Italy, however, is a contractual understanding that seems more specific to a later medieval commercial mindset than the feudal pledge of service and loyalty. This characteristic is unsurprising since most of the Italian peninsula did not participate in the feudal system. Rather, a slightly different form of economic and social relations known as incastellemento prevailed in southern Italy, while northern Italy’s early shift to communal governments circa 1100–1250 dismantled feudal arrangements remaining from Ottonian and Salian rule far earlier than occurred in other parts of Europe.5 The saint–supplicant relationship of later medieval northern and central Italy was a transactional one that seems to have been influenced more by a mercantile than a feudal (or feudal-type) model. It was based on labor service in which there are ties that bind both saint and supplicant. What delineates this form of devotion is that the saint and his or her devotee formed a contract, one that could be broken by either party. A saint could always refuse to intercede for someone of questionable piety, orthodoxy, or merit. In “transactional” intercession, the supplicant chose to become a devotee of one particular saint and, most importantly, made his or her own arrangements to leave the saint’s service if the relationship was not satisfactory. Devotees had faith that saints could intercede miraculously and so placed themselves in service, yet they wanted assurance that they could trust the particular saint

276  Janine Larmon Peterson they chose to venerate to respond efficaciously. The connection between this devotional relationship and commercial ones in the era of growing uses of the bill of exchange and commenda is suggestive, especially considering that the vitae and miracula almost always describe a male devotee engaging in this type of intercession. It is not possible to connect this relationship to saints tied to a particular commercial activity, nor are the supplicants always committing their labor to a saint connected to their specific craft. Nevertheless, the parallels between the mutually beneficial yet contractually limited aspects of mercantile endeavors to this form of saintly intercession demonstrate a deep penetration of business relationships into the religious landscape of later medieval Italy. Two brief examples demonstrate this form of intercessional devotion: one from the Life of Facio of Cremona and one from the list of miracles of Armanno Pungilupo of Ferrara. In 1272, members of the commune and cathedral chapter of Cremona combined efforts to compile a canonization dossier, including a vita and list of miracles, for Facio of Cremona. Facio was a goldsmith from Verona who moved to Cremona and died in 1271.6 As a goldsmith, Facio was a member of the upper artisan class, as detailed by Gary G. Gibbs in Chapter 9 about the London cult of St. Dunstan (Chapter 9). Facio’s trade similarly would have placed him at the top of the guild hierarchy in many Italian towns.7 There is no evidence that Facio was a member of a Cremonese guild, although if he lived later, such as in the late fourteenth century, as an orafice or craftsperson working with gold, he would have been required to be a guild member.8 During his own lifetime, if he had lived in Florence instead of Cremona, Facio would have been considered a member of the Arte della Seta, those who were silk weavers, merchants, and those who otherwise worked with gold and precious metals, which was one of the highest arts and wealthiest professions. He would have been in the guild of Por Santa Maria as a member of the Arte Maggiore, or the highest seven arts. There would be a representative from this guild in the communal government likely from the popolo minuto, or those who were not from elite families, like Facio.9 His life thus presumably reflected the “ambivalence” that Camp and Kelley note in their introductory chapter for those whose “professions inhibited spiritual perfection” because of the prosperity and prestige that such professions conferred, in antipathy to Christianity’s message of humility, asceticism, and rejection of material wealth.10 Like the London goldsmiths discussed in Chapter 9, Facio found his own way to reconcile this ambivalence. After a conversion experience, Facio kept his occupation but shifted his priority from creating works for profit to donating them to churches.11 This charitable endeavor allowed him to become one of the voluntarily poor in the famous model of St. Francis of Assisi, who threw his merchant father’s money into a piazza.12 As a result, Facio was able to use his skills for spiritual merit and to serve as a model for others of his community, thus counteracting any ambivalence about his craft, former affluence, and participation in trade.

The service of merchants  277 While still alive, Facio gained devotees, including a particular acolyte named Mathaeus. Mathaeus acquired Facio of Cremona as his personal protector through the usual process of supplication. Suffering from a grave illness, Mathaeus sought out Facio. Facio prayed to God on Mathaeus’ behalf and his prayers were granted.13 Mathaeus became a follower, accompanying Facio on travels to a certain “Bughiano” (possibly Buggiano, between Lucca and Pistoia), where they were held captive, and then onwards via sea travel to Genoa. During this voyage, Facio’s prayers saved them from shipwreck for the first of two times.14 Between these events, Mathaeus seemingly had a recurrence of his illness. Once finally fully healed, “brother Mathaeus with his entire will, along with all his kin, was converted to God on account of this miracle, and afterward he stayed faithful right up to his death.”15 The timeline and terminology used in this account are interesting and suggest a quid pro quo understanding of their relationship, at least at first. Matheus had been suffering for nine years and had been to both a physician and a priest to undergo penance for a cure before he first asked for Facio’s intercession. Facio healed Mathaeus who, in return, committed himself to Facio’s service. It is seemingly after the second affliction and healing that Mathaeus fully pledged his own loyalty “with his entire will,” as well as that of “all his kin,” to both Facio and God. Mathaeus required proof that Facio could deliver and really was holy. He agrees to the implicit saint–supplicant relationship, but he does not fully “buy in” until the second miracle, which Facio is happy to provide because of Mathaeus’ loyal service. So, it is only at the time of the second thaumaturgical miracle that Mathaeus declared he is fully a converted and faithful servant and offered “all his kin” as a type of collateral for his new devotion. Both Facio and Mathaeus had duties and responsibilities towards the other that had to be maintained and proved. If not, presumably the partnership could be broken. The contractual nature of these saint–supplicant relationships is even more clearly outlined in the story of Petrus, one of the devotees of Armanno Pungilupo (d. 1269). Armanno is not a classic “merchant saint,” since his vocation remains a mystery. He seems to have traveled extensively in northern Italy; there is witness testimony placing him at Vicenza, Verona, Sirmione, and Rimini going back twenty-five years before his death. The relative breadth of the areas he traversed highly suggests he was a lesser member of the merchant class. His miracula, compiled at the request of the bishop of Ferrara, demonstrates that certainly members of the merchant class traveled to his tomb in the Ferrarese cathedral. These merchant petitions included a man from Pergamon (merchatore pergamensi), near modern-day Bergama in Turkey, who was residing in Venice when he went to Ferrara in 1270 to pray for Armanno’s intercession.16 These circumstances, along with the general prevalence of new lay saints from the merchant/ artisan class in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy (discussed below), makes Armanno’s identification as part of this group likely.

278  Janine Larmon Peterson One of the miracles gathered by the cathedral chapter of Ferrara recounts a postmortem miracle that Armanno granted a man named Petrus. Petrus’ left side had been paralyzed for two years when he heard of Armanno’s death. As soon as the canons of the cathedral had formally translated his body to the cathedral for burial, Petrus immediately went to the saint’s tomb “and offered to him his likeness in wax in the same place and [the vow that] for one year he would serve him in ringing his bells.”17 Armanno subsequently freed Petrus from his affliction in response to this promise. The episode reveals that in the relationship between the saint and the devotee both parties were to benefit, for Petrus’ pledge to the postulant saint had a price. The expectation was that if he served Armanno by ringing his bells, he would receive the restoration of his health in recompense. If not, Petrus would look for another holy intercessor. The promise of mutual aid in this case was fulfilled. Petrus regained his health and testified to that fact before the canons of Ferrara. Both examples show that the ties between saint and supplicant in Italian urban life mimicked the terms of commercial partnerships and business contracts. In Facio’s case, he had to “produce the goods” – i.e., perform miracles – before he gained a devotee fully willing to offer his labor on behalf of the saint. This was an issue of trust, not of faith. Mathaeus had faith that Facio was holy. His first miracle was enough to prove to Mathaeus that Facio was a true intercessor, and so he offered himself in service as the latter’s companion. It was only after Facio rewarded Mathaeus’ service with subsequent miracles that the latter fully committed himself to Facio with full trust and “all his will.” The example of Petrus and Armanno exhibits an additional feature: if one could say these relationships were transactional, they could also be conditional, or at least contractually limited. Petrus’ prayers of intercession to Armanno Pungilupo placed a time limit of one year on how long he would ring the bells for his holy patron. After Petrus was healed, if his health deteriorated during the period that he had vowed to ring the bells, Petrus had the option to withdraw his service and cease offering his labor to Armanno. The saint would have broken the contract by not living up to his end of the bargain. In both cases, the contractual nature of the saint–supplicant relationship, the result of an appeal and an answering miracle, cemented the trust and loyalty of a devotee and consequently solidified his or her faith. In doing so, this form of intercession simulated in part the nature of merchant business transactions and joint commercial ventures. The offering of one’s labor in the saint–supplicant relationship briefly outlined for Italy is not as clearly delineated in the chapters in this volume. Instead, we find a service model of intercessional devotion focused on the production of material goods rather than personal labor. In this form of intercession, preferred by the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century merchants from various regions of Western Europe discussed in this volume, devotees would use their wealth as an offer of supplication and to obtain saintly patronage. The devotee would commission objects or commit to charitable

The service of merchants  279 donations that would presumably place the saint in the donor’s “debt.” The gift would promote the saint’s cult and presumably goodwill while concomitantly reflecting positively on the piety – and social status – of the supplicant. The devotees chose the saint and freely offered the profits of their vocation without any expectation of long-term service. There is no contract; there is rather both faith in the saint’s holy powers and trust that the saint will reciprocate by favoring them, their family, guild, confraternity, or city. If the transactional nature of intercessional devotion, and the contractual expectation that one would receive a tangible benefit in return, was specific to the Italian peninsula circa 1200–1400, a new devotional ethos based on wealth rather than labor seems more prevalent in north-central Europe in the following two centuries. Wealthy merchants and commercial brotherhoods served as patrons for religious art, altarpieces, shrines, and manuscripts. The expectation was that in doing so out of generosity and devotion, they would receive in return spiritual patronage, which would ensure physical and material benefits like success or social prestige (see López, Whitehead, Keelmann, and Mathews). This occurred for individuals and families, as discussed in Chapter 5 by Kelley, Chapter 6 by Courts, and Chapter 8 by Henry, or for an entire vocational or social group, as in the contributions of Gibbs (Chapter 9), Mathews (Chapter 11), and Keelmann (Chapter 10). Money spent on a devotional object equated to the expectation of saintly favors with no guarantee requested. Sometimes the very act of commissioning a manuscript or artwork seemed to be enough for complacent, prosperous merchants to feel that their material success and riches sufficed to be the recipient of a saint’s – and therefore God’s – favor. For instance, families commissioned manuscripts including saint’s lives for secular pursuits such as pleasurable reading (Chapter 8), legitimizing their noble past (Chapter 6), or championing their city and their family’s place in it (Chapter 4). This description might seem to impose a too-utilitarian ethics upon these merchants. But the spiritual and the worldly were quite intertwined, and monetary success could easily lead to the assumption of one’s spiritual worthiness. Thus, the wealthy merchant had both faith and trust in the saint, unlike that of a slightly earlier period in parts of Italy.

Political instability and local devotion What could account for this divergence in how merchants as a whole approached devotion and what they expected from saintly intercession? One factor is that later medieval Italy saw a proliferation of (a) very local cults of those who (b) were recently deceased. This differs from the majority of cults discussed in this volume; the chapters here demonstrate a preference for traditional saints with a history of veneration. While all the studies in this volume address local cults, the saints themselves by and large were neither local nor near-contemporaneous to their devotees. The mercantile class in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century northern Italy favored saints that

280  Janine Larmon Peterson were therefore dissimilar to those venerated in other areas of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This comparison suggests that there were geographical and chronological reasons that led members engaged in the same vocation, broadly construed, to believe that different kinds of saints would be more efficacious intercessors. In Italy, political fragmentation and internecine warfare contributed to highly individualized hometown cults that favored recent pious citizens over more common saints. One point that Kelley and Camp make in this collection’s introduction is that merchants and others who engaged in commercial endeavors tended to favor universal, traditional saints. This assessment is evident in the many chapters that mention St. Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers, who became one of the most successful pan-European saints when diverse regions in Europe imported and appropriated his cult. There is frequent reference as well in these studies to the Virgin Mary and St. George, two other favored universal saints. Even when a saint was connected to a city’s foundation myth, that saint had a centuries-old lineage of veneration, such as Mathews discusses for St. Mark in Venice. There are some cases of seemingly more circumscribed veneration, such as St. Victor of Marseilles for Reval (Chapter 10); St. Cuthbert (Chapter 2) and St. Dunstan for England, the latter particularly with respect to London goldsmiths (Chapter 9); or St. Birgitta for Lübeck (Chapter 4). Some local cults were later connected to traditional saints, as in the case of Erasmus (Chapter 3), Birgitta, and Cuthbert, the last re-envisioned as a “new Nicholas” of the North.18 Yet there is chronological or geographical distance even for these local cults. For example, Dunstan, Birgitta, and Cuthbert were reinvented to appeal to merchant’s interests, or their cults developed slowly over time as a particular patron saint of an industry. St. Victor, like Nicholas, was imported. In contrast, mercantile devotion in north-central Italy focused on new cults of recently-deceased laypeople. Italian towns all had their special patron saints connected to their past as well as a particular veneration to a universal saint, such as the Virgin Mary or one of the apostles.19 Rather than repurposing ancient or widely venerated saints for specific merchant’s needs, such as St. Cuthbert, St. Birgitta, or the traditional patron saints of Venice, contemporary saint’s cults joined these traditional devotions as a marker of a town’s identity as forged in the very near past. Many of the saints who emerged in Italy between 1200 and 1400 were individuals who had lived in the communities that subsequently championed their holiness and who functioned as “living saints” while alive.20 Many of these later Italian saints were laypeople or individuals loosely tied to the Third Orders, which developed after the early thirteenth-century emergence of the mendicants.21 Those who had the will to live the vita apostolica, but not the ability or desire to join an official order, could participate in the apostolic life through a lay alternative to the mendicant orders as tertiaries, or members of the Third Orders. Tertiaries took limited vows of poverty and chastity in accordance with the ideals of the respective mendicant order, but they remained part

The service of merchants  281 of the laity and did not live under a specific rule. They were not required to live in a community; they often worked to support themselves and to provide resources for their charitable endeavors after a conversion experience.22 Although the mendicant orders theoretically were responsible for the conduct of the tertiaries, in reality many seem to have functioned with little official supervision.23 André Vauchez asserted that “hyper-local” saints like these in this period were popular because people believed that holy persons who were temporally and spatially proximate were more accessible.24 This belief appears to connect to the transactional nature of the saint–supplicant relationship in Italy, described above. New saints might have a greater understanding of a devotee’s concerns but less of a proven track record for performing miracles. This idea could have resulted in a desire for assurances that the saint could be trusted as a spiritual benefactor. In addition, the Italian peninsula was extremely fragmented, well into the Renaissance and beyond. War, plague, and internecine disputes within the many political entities that comprised the peninsula in the later Middle Ages greatly benefited some but hampered many others. Those who were involved in mercantile activities suffered under interdicts when regions rebelled against papal overlordship, supported the wrong political side in the ongoing dispute between popes and Holy Roman Emperors, or got caught in the crossfire in the struggles between popes and local lords – or local lords versus local lords – who were trying to expand the territory under their control.25 A number of towns in this period shifted from communal governments to city-states lead by signori, scions of noble families who became the power-brokers who ruled solely over their city and the surrounding countryside in the Renaissance, such as the Medici, the Sforza, and the Este. These signori engaged in frequent warfare, rendering roads impassable or dangerous for landlocked merchants.26 Some merchants profited from war, popularly portrayed in the iconic scene in the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon, when St. Francis’ father displays the loot he obtained from refugees that cost him “less than nothing.”27 For others who engaged in commercial activity and who could not obtain safe conduct, political conflict meant a disruption or halt in trade. The historical context perhaps affected mercantile veneration in rendering more appealing individuals that one could relate to through shared experience and collective memory. Since these saints were less proven, however, in this context of shifting political alliances and disrupted trade, members of the commercial class wanted a guarantee of the saint’s fidelity and effectiveness. These contemporary saints were largely active members of the community who lived fully in the world during their lifetime. They conformed to the model of what Diana Webb terms the “lay charitable activist.”28 These new saints provided lesser merchants and tradesmen two benefits. First, he or she was a known entity, a person who one’s friends might have known or who one felt particularly connected to through a shared vocation. As Pietro da Montarone’s vita of Pier Pettinaio of Siena (d. 1289), a humble

282  Janine Larmon Peterson comb merchant, claimed, “because his fame was already widespread, not only in the city of Siena but also in the contado [i.e., countryside], almost everyone who wanted to buy combs flocked to Pier (and out of devotion, too).”29 These merchant saints who were so pious in life allowed others to hope the saint would be a particularly empathetic intercessor after death. As Pier’s vita goes on to describe, after the other comb merchants were losing business, Pier vowed to sell his merchandise only after Vespers, out of compassion towards their plight.30 Charity demonstrated in life was a hopeful precursor to charity exhibited after death. One’s devotion to these near-contemporary and local holy men (and women) was based on a very personal connection, but the saint’s effectiveness and reciprocity were in some doubt. Therefore, sources demonstrate that supplicants wanted to “test-drive” a relationship with a saintly patron who might be particularly sympathetic. Second, new mercantile saints were a draw for ready-made groups of loyal constituents that could pool their meager resources to form the basis of a civic cult, such as in the case of Albert of Villa d’Ogna (d. 1279), a wine carrier in Parma. Under the impetus of his fellow wine porters, the brentatores, the parish of S. Matteo in Cremona, near where he was born, quickly constructed a chapel for Albert after his death. The nearby towns of Reggio and Parma, where he had lived, also claimed him as their spiritual patron.31 His cult helped to give these communities, at the time in the midst of political unrest, the ability to shape and, as Mathews describes it, “celebrate” a town’s “mercantile identity.”32 The faction in Parma who supported the Holy Roman Emperor (the Ghibellines) in his struggle with the pope had been exiled in 1274. In 1279, the year of Albert’s death, the exiled Ghibelline Lambertazzi faction initiated a war against the Guelph Geremei faction in Parma from their new base at Faenza. With the whole Po plain in chaos, Pope Nicholas III placed Parma under interdict and tried, but failed, in his attempt to restore order before his death in 1280.33 The contemporary Franciscan chronicler Salimbene de Adam remarked on how these events affected the motives for the citizens of Parma’s veneration of Albert Villa d’Ogna: The exiled of the Imperial party hoped to arrive at a peace settlement with their fellow citizens [of Parma] through these new miracles [of Albert] so that they might come again into their own and not have to travel through the world as vagabonds.34 Poorer members of the merchant class, such as the wine porters, could band together to contribute to a cult that enhanced their spiritual worth and social prestige, as well as ensuring their own ability to make a living through mending their politically-fractured communities through the miraculous gifts of one of their own. Local saints in the Italian peninsula seem to have had more popularity around the emergence of the reform of the vita apostolica and when

The service of merchants  283 institutional authorities did not closely monitor pious conversi. In addition, during this time the papal canonization process was still becoming bureaucratized and was occasionally challenged, allowing for more latitude in choosing one’s holy patron.35 Finally, it occurred in a region that was highly politically fragmented, where there was already a strong sense of loyalty to a town (campanilismo) rather than a larger region, “nation,” or ruling dynasty.36 It is possible that new saint’s cults served as a locus of communal pride in the factional and dispersed communes and city-states of the period. New, local saints also had the potential of granting members engaged in lesser commercial endeavors power and patronage to which they would not otherwise have had access.

The effect of wealth and status on forms of intercession The socio-economic status of devotees was another consideration that affected forms of intercessory devotion. The amount of money at a merchant’s disposal impacted his mode of asking, or expectation for receiving, intercessory prayers. Many chapters in this volume focus on the devotional activities of the upper echelons of the merchant class: a merchant family of noble lineage in France, patrician families in Lübeck, or wealthy merchants of Burgos and Barcelona. While some mention saints’ cults to which seamen (Chapter 2 and 7) or those of the lesser trades and artisans (Chapter 3) were particularly devoted, most of the chapters understandably examine how wealthy families or confraternities or guilds venerated a saint. Those with higher socio-economic status were the ones who left wills, art, and manuscripts and who documented their sponsoring of altarpieces, chapels, and charitable foundations. As a result, this group is a rich source for examining late medieval acts of veneration. The majority of supplicants in the Lives and lists of miracles of many Italian saints from the tumultuous thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, were predominantly lesser merchants, artisans, or craftsmen. A comparison of these sources indicates that affluence and prestige, or lack thereof, are factors in explaining the difference in how those engaged in commercial activities asked for and expected intercession. A person’s monetary resources shaped how he or she asked for intercession with the divine. The title of this book articulates its emphasis on intercession “between the wealthy and divine.” Indeed, a hierarchy emerges from these chapters and this brief outline of intercession in Italy, one based on monetary resources and status. If an individual or family had disposable income, they could spend it for their spiritual benefactor and show everyone they were able to do so. The expectation that one’s patron saint would intercede when needed was predicated on faith, loyalty, and, as emphasized in this chapter, one’s service. That service was much easier to provide if it involved financial support for devotional art and charitable endeavors rather than physical labor. Spending money could also increase one’s social prestige in tandem with one’s spiritual worth.

284  Janine Larmon Peterson The traditional or universal saints favored by the mercantile elite in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the powerful, tried and true saints, as Kelley notes in Chapter 5. Many merchants did not spare expense to obtain their spiritual benefaction. Some, like St. Nicholas, were already connected to a vocation, such as seafaring. Thus, it is logical that seamen from the North Sea (Chapter 10) to the coast of the Iberian Peninsula (Chapter 7) would venerate Nicholas and that those towns in which mercantile activities were a main source of income would embrace him as a holy patron. But unlike the poor seamen who prayed at shrines placed above shipwrecks, or humble merchants who created private devotional chapels at home, those with money, power, and prestige could craft forms of devotion to encourage further these most powerful saints to respond to their intercessory prayers through expensive offerings. They could even insert themselves into aspects of a saint’s vita or find parallel stories from their own experience that could be expressed artistically, as in manuscript commissions described by Kelley, Courts, and Henry. The sign of ownership through a coat of arms, miniature, or other visual cue was a marker of wealth and status, but also a symbol of possession. It declared that “this saint is my saint, and my saint is one of the most powerful and beloved saints.” Such objects had the dual purpose of exhibiting an individual or family’s social worth to both the town and their saint and of encouraging intercession from this perceived saintly elite. As noted, one could band together with others in a vocational or social group to increase the potential of obtaining a saint’s patronage. Guilds, confraternities, and similar organizations allowed lesser merchants, artisans, or craftsmen to pool their resources for a similar result. This practice allowed the corporate entity jointly to provide for the saint in the same way as the patrician or merchant elite, only on a larger and more public scale. If wealthy merchants could pay for manuscripts and altarpieces, guilds could fund chapels or found charitable organizations, like hospitals. If rich individuals gained prestige through charitable “conspicuous giving,” to use a modern term, so too did those of middling or lesser status when they worked in unison to support feast days at churches with candles and other offerings clearly given by the organization.37 These collaborative efforts resulted in power and prestige as the result of the “urban significance” of the “spiritual landscape” they created through their efforts.38 While speculative, the evidence suggests that the mercantile elite and those who aspired to be part of it thought that their grandiose efforts secured the saintly patronage of these popular saints. Poorer members of the mercantile class such as those who appear in the Italian sources did not have the time, money, or social standing to commission material objects to display their devotion. Instead, they explored intercessional strategies such as personal pilgrimages to shrines, the donation of votive offerings signifying one’s trade, and of course the pledge of personal labor to secure saintly patronage. The new saints of later medieval Italy were not as overworked with prayers

The service of merchants  285 as, for instance, the Virgin Mary or St. Nicholas. They were therefore more approachable, not only because many were merchant-friendly through shared interests and/or vocation, but also because they might accept more humble offerings of devotion. When possible, lesser merchants or craftsmen could band together to champion a saint from their midst just as the wine carriers of Parma did for Albert of Villa d’Ogna in the hopes of intercessory prayers. This approach is similar to the more significant offerings of later guilds and confraternities discussed in this volume. One’s net worth and liquid capital were determining factors in both how one expressed one’s spirituality and what one expected in return from a saint. This fact could be connected to the distinction made between the voluntary and involuntary poor, a crucial debate during the century or so after the vita apostolica. The discussion centered on the worthiness of being poor like the apostles. Institutional authorities suggested that spiritual worth derived from those who had money and freely chose to give it away, not those who happened to be poor by circumstance of birth. For instance, most of the saints canonized between 1198 and 1431 were of royal lineage or mendicants who were born into affluence and went through a conversion experience that prompted the distribution of their wealth.39 One’s moral virtues, an important element in the papacy’s profile of holy persons, became embodied in the sacrificial act of becoming voluntarily poor.40 The legacy of this belief can perhaps still be identified in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in concerns about the unsavory nature of engaging in trade, an ambivalence particularly present in the studies of Whitehead and Camp (Chapters 2 and 3). Overall, however, wealthy merchants seem excused from their ostentatious production of devotional offerings, even when a concern about one’s status as “urban aristocrats” seemed of equal if not more importance than holy intercession.41 Both elite merchants and lesser artisans and craftsmen offered their service for the same goal: to attain spiritual favors from a saint. The wealthy did so through objects they could buy or commission. Those of lesser means did so through labor they could physically provide. The major difference in the transactional model described above in the Italian cases is the contractual nature of the relationship with the saint. Examples like those of the devotees of Facio and Armanno briefly outlined above suggest that lesser merchants wanted assurances from their spiritual benefactors. I suggest several reasons why this could have been the case. As noted, trade was precarious and often halted in north-central Italy. There was regular warfare and frequent papal interdicts. Merchants who found themselves part of the “wrong” political faction could be exiled. The saint Facio of Cremona himself was exiled from Verona and later imprisoned.42 Politically, members of the mercantile class wanted to know that their intercessor would stick to the bargain and be efficacious in helping them maintain their health, life, livelihood, and family. In addition, lesser merchants and tradesmen perhaps desired to obtain a guarantee of spiritual help due to concerns regarding the worth and thus

286  Janine Larmon Peterson spiritual merit of their labor, what they could humbly afford to offer a saint. Perhaps they also worried about how being physically in service to a saint would affect their family and livelihood, a concern that wealthier merchants could avoid by spending their fortune rather than their time and effort. As a consequence, they wanted a way to break their contract in order to find another holy patron who would. They did not take life, or spiritual intercession through prayer, for granted. It was their version of a cost-benefit analysis of spiritual reckoning.

Notes 1 Above, ch. 3, pp. 46–47. 2 Pamela Sheingorn, ed. and trans., The Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). 3 Gregory the Great, Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmerman, O. S. B., The Fathers of the Church, vol. 39 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959). 4 For an overview of the English Marian material, see Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Miracles of the Virgin in Medieval England: Law and Jewishness in Marian Legends (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 13–15. 5 Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400– 1000 (Ann Arbor: MacMillan Press, 1989 [1981]), 163–67. 6 Andrè Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque aux XIIIe siècle: la vie du bienheureux Facio de Crémone,” Mélanges d’École français de Rome. Moyen Âge 84 (1972): 17. 7 Ubaldo Meroni, “Cremona fedelissima.” Popolazione, industria e commercio, imposte camerali, commercio dei grani, moneta e prezzi a Cremona durante la dominazione spagnola, Annali della Biblioteca Governativa e Librerea Civica de Cremona 10 (Cremona: Athenaeum Cremonense, 1957), 14. 8 Storie di Mercati, mercanti ed artigiani in Cremona dal Trecento all’Ottocento: L’Arte degli Orefici (Cremona: Camera di Commercio di Cremona, 2005), 9. 9 John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 35–39. 10 Above, ch. 1, p. 8. 11 “Life of Facio of Cremona” in Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque,” 37. 12 Thomas of Celano, “The First Life of St. Francis,” in St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, 4th rev. edn., ed. Marion A. Habig (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 229–37. 13 “Life of Facio of Cremona,” in Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque,” 39–40; “Miraculum in vita,” in Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque,” no. XI, 46. 14 “Life of Facio of Cremona” in Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque,” 40–41. 15 “Propter hoc miraculum iste frater Mathaeus cum tota voluntate sua conversus est ad Deum cum omni sua parentela, et stetit postea eius fidelis usque ad mortem” (“Miraculum in vita,” in Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque,” no. XII, p. 47). 16 Gabriele Zanella, Itinerario ereticali patari e catari tra Rimini e Verona, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi Storici, fasc. 153 (Rome: Nella Sede dell’Istituto, 1986), 66. 17 “Ac offeret ibidem ymaginem unam cere et eidem uno anno serviret in pulsatione tintinabuli.” Zanella, Itineraria ereticali, 80. 18 Above, ch. 2, p. 32. 19 Diana Webb, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (New York: I. B. Taurus Publishers, 1996), 7–8.

The service of merchants  287 20 Gabriella Zarri, “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, eds. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 219–303. 21 For a description of this new spirituality, see Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. Steve Rowan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995 [1935]), 69–74. For a discussion of how the desire to live like the apostles manifested itself in Italy, see Franco Dal Pino, Il Laicato italiano tra eresia e proposta pauperistico-evangelica nei secoli XII–XIII (Padua: Università di Padova, 1984). 22 Prior to 1289 the Third Orders were called the Orders of Penitence. For their history, see G. G. Meersseman, Dossier de l’Ordre de la pénitence au XIIIe siècle (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1982 [1961]); André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 119–27; Vauchez, “Pénitents au Moyen Âge,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1984), XII, cols. 1010–23. 23 Augustine Thompson, O. P., Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 69–102. 24 André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (1198–1431), cited in English translation, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 133, 278. 25 Stefan K. Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. 90–116; Peter D. Clarke, The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 26 For a general overview of this context, see Trevor Dean, “The Rise of the Signori,” in Italy in the Central Middle Ages, ed. David Abulafia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 104–24. 27 Brother Sun, Sister Moon, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (1972; Los Angeles: Paramount, 2004), DVD. 28 Diana Webb, Introduction to Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 10. 29 Pietro da Montarone, Vita del B. Pietro Pettinaio sanese del terz’ordine di San Francesco, in Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy, ed. and trans. Diana Webb (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 196. 30 Montarone, Vita del B. Pietro Pettinaio, 196. 31 Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, 2 vols., ed. Guiseppe Scalia (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 2:733–34. English translation: The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, eds. and trans. Joseph L. Baird, Guiseppe Baglivi, and John Robert Kane, (Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1986), 512–13. On his cult, see Thompson, Cities of God, 204–05; Lester K. Little, Indispensable Immigrants: The Wine Porters of Northern Italy and Their Saint, 1200–1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 32 Above, ch. 11, p. 247. 33 Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal States in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), 276. 34 Salimbene, Chronicle, 514. 35 Vauchez, Sainthood, 33–58; on challenging papal authority, Janine Larmon Peterson, “Holy Heretics in Later Medieval Italy,” Past and Present 204 (2009): 3–31.

288  Janine Larmon Peterson 36 For an overview, see Daniel Waley and Trevor Dean, The Italian City-Republics, 4th edition (Edinburgh: Pearson Education, 2010), esp. 105–27. 37 Margrit Talpalaru, “Blake Mycoskie, Toms, and Life Narratives of Conspicuous Giving,” Biography 37, no. 1 (2014): 168–90. 38 Above, ch. 9, p. 179. 39 Vauchez, Sainthood, 266. 40 Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Susan Singerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 126–48. 41 Above, ch. 8, p. 166. 42 “Life of Facio of Cremona” in Vauchez, ed., “Sainteté laïque,” 36; Salimbene, Chronicle, 514.

Bibliography Boyarin, Adrienne Williams. Miracles of the Virgin in Medieval England: Law and Jewishness in Marian Legends. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli. 1972. Los Angeles: Paramount, 2004. DVD. Clarke, Peter D. The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Dal Pino, Franco. Il Laicato italiano tra eresia e proposta pauperistico-evangelica nei secoli XII–XIII. Padua: Università di Padova, 1984. Dean, Trevor. “The Rise of the Signori”. In Italy in the Central Middle Ages, edited by David Abulafia, 104–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Gregory the Great. Dialogues. Translated by Odo John Zimmerman, O. S. B. The Fathers of the Church, vol. 39. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959. Grundmann, Herbert. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages. Translated by Steve Rowan. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995 [1935]. Kleinberg, Aviad. Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Translated by Susan Singerman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Little, Lester K. Indispensible Immigrants: The Wine Porters of Northern Italy and Their Saint, 1200–1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Meersseman, G. G. Dossier de l’Ordre de la pénitence au XIIIe siècle. Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1982 [1961]. Meroni, Ubaldo. “Cremona fedelissima”. Popolazione, industria e commercio, imposte camerali, commercio dei grani, moneta e prezzi a Cremona durante la dominazione spagnola. Annali della Biblioteca Governativa e Librerea Civica de Cremona 10. Cremona: Athenaeum Cremonense, 1957. Najemy, John M. A History of Florence, 1200–1575. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Partner, Peter. The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal States in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance. London: Eyre Methuen, 1972. Peterson, Janine Larmon. “Holy Heretics in Later Medieval Italy”. Past and Present 204 (2009): 3–31. Pietro da Montarone. Vita del B. Pietro Pettinaio sanese del terz’ordine di San Francesco. In Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy, edited and translated by Diana Webb, 191–241. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.

The service of merchants  289 Salimbene de Adam. The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, edited and translated by Joseph L. Baird, Guiseppe Baglivi, and John Robert Kane. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 40. Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1986. Salimbene de Adam. Cronica. Edited by Guiseppe Scalia. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998. Sheingorn, Pamela, ed. and trans. The Book of Sainte Foy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Stantchev, Stefan K. Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Storie di Mercati, mercanti ed artigiani in Cremona dal Trecento all’Ottocento: L’Arte degli Orefici. Cremona: Camera di Commercio di Cremona, 2005. Talpalaru, Margrit. “Blake Mycoskie, Toms, and Life Narratives of Conspicuous Giving”. Biography 37, no. 1 (2014): 168–90. Thomas of Celano. “The First Life of St. Francis”. In St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, 4th revised edition, edited by Marion A. Habig. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983. Thompson, O. P., Augustine. Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Vauchez, Andrè, ed. “Sainteté laïque aux XIIIe siècle: la vie du bienheureux Facio de Crémone”. Mélanges d’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge 84 (1972): 13–55. Vauchez, André. “Pénitents au Moyen Âge”. In Dictionnaire de Spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1984, XII, cols. 1010–23. Vauchez, André. The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, edited by Daniel E. Bornstein. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. Vauchez, André. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Waley, Daniel, and Trevor Dean. The Italian City-Republics, 4th edition. Edinburgh: Pearson Education, 2010. Webb, Diana. Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States. New York: I. B. Taurus Publishers, 1996. Webb, Diana. Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400–1000. Ann Arbor: MacMillan Press, 1989 [1981]. Zanella, Gabriele, ed. Itinerario ereticali patari e catari tra Rimini e Verona. Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi Storici, fasc. 153. Rome: Nella Sede dell’Istituto, 1986. Zarri, Gabriella. “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century”. In Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, edited by Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, 219–303. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italic denote figures, bold denote tables. Abdon and Sennan, saints 141 Acanthus mollis 110, 111, 112, 119 Acuña, Luis de, bishop 4, 91 Aelwin of Farne 29 Æthelstan of England 182 Agnes, saint 98 Albert of Villa d’Ogna and Cremona, saint 8, 17n52, 282, 285 Alexandria 238, 240, 241, 244, 245, 246, 247, 257 Alexios I Comnenos 248 Alexius, saint 167 altarpieces 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 89, 91–97, 99, 100, 135, 137–38, 139, 141, 142, 204, 205, 211, 220, 222, 223, 224, 273, 279, 283, 284; see also under individual artists Amand, saint 112, 123, 124, 125, 126, 126n1 Ampney Crucis, Wiltshire 63n85 Andrew, apostle and saint 93, 95; Scottish shrine 32 angels 98, 126n1, 166, 188, 215, 216, 220 Anne, saint 9, 80, 126n1, 158, 189, 191; chapel to 136; confraternity 80; image of 188 Anthony of Egypt, saint 2, 32, 94; confraternity 79 Anthony of Padua, saint 94 Antonin, saint 14n20 Antwerp 73, 90, 95 Apollonia, saint 98, 126n1 Ars moriendi 91, 98 Audelay, John 62n71 Augustine of Hippo, saint 93, 138 Augustinian friars 138

bakers 49, 60n50, 184 Balderic, saint 128n35 Baltic Sea 29, 71, 74, 204, 207, 209, 215, 218 Barbara, saint 9, 126n1, 135, 143, 144, 189, 190, 191, 192, 207, 209; relics of 143 barbers 49, 60n50, 60n51 Barcelona 4, 10, 134–37, 139, 141, 142, 143, 283 Barcelona Cathedral: chapels in 136–37 Barclay, Alexander 157 Bartholomew, apostle and saint 9, 94, 136; relics 104n34 Bartholomew of Farne 27, 28, 29, 35, 36 Basilica of San Marco, Venice, 239, 241, 242, 243, 247, 248, 252, 254; Cappella di Sant’Isidoro 248, 249, 250–51; chapel of San Clemente 241; Pala d’oro 241, 243, 244 bear’s claw see Acanthus mollis Bede 34; prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti 35 Bellini, Gentile, Procession in the Piazza San Marco 245; Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria 244–45, 246, 257 Bellini, Giovanni 244 Benedictine order 27, 30, 31, 35, 122, 181, 252 Benedict of Nursia, saint 32 Bernard, saint 50, 141 Bernat des Puig 138 Birgitta of Sweden, saint 5, 9, 10, 70, 71, 73, 78, 80, 280; as an authority 72, 79, 81; canonization of 71, 73 Birgittine Order 71–72, 81

292 Index Black Sea 229n46, 251 Bokenham, Osbern 157; Golden Legend 46 Book of Margery Kempe 47 books of hours 5, 7, 11, 45, 110, 115, 116, 118, 119, 157, 158, 159; as treasure 116, 118–19; see also Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins Botolph of East Anglia, saint 39n14 Bouts, Dieric, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament 222 Bradshaw, Henry, Life of Werburge 5, 157 Brampton, Thomas, Seven Penitential Psalms 160 branca ursina see Acanthus mollis Brandis, Lucas 72, 74 Brandis, Matthäus 74 brentatores see wine porter Brethren of the Common Life 75 Bristow, John 54, 56, 62n84, 63n85 Brotherhood of the Black Heads 4, 10, 11, 204, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224; Mauritius as patron of 205–6; military duties of 206, 211 Bruges 29, 35, 74, 204, 215; confraternity 3–4 Burgos 4, 7, 10, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 283; confraternity 90 Burgos Cathedral 100; chapel of Santa Anna 91 Bury St Edmund’s Abbey 7, 28,157 butchers 47, 49, 60n50 Byzantine Empire 240, 241, 244, 246, 248, 250, 251, 255, 257, 258 candle makers 55 canonization 70, 71, 73, 80, 276, 283, 285 Capgrave, John 157, 168 Carpaccio, Vittore 256, 257; George baptizing the Selenites 256; Saint George fighting the Dragon 256; The Triumph of Saint George 256 Castile 90, 91, 98 Castro, Juana García de 92 Castro de la Hoz, Fernando 90, 92–94, 95, 96, 97, 99 Catalonia 10, 139, 141, 142 Catherine of Alexandria, saint 9, 44, 89, 95, 98, 99, 100, 158, 135, 137, 144, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 207, 209; confraternity of 187; image of 188

Catherine of Aragon 194 Catherine of Siena 193 Caxton, William 15n28, 157; Golden Legend 46, 190; Mirrour of the World 50 Cecilia 167 Cerbani, Cerbanus 247–48, 250 chantries 184, 185, 187, 188, 194, 211, 224 Charlemagne 122, 123 Charles V of France 112 Charles VI of France 123 Charles VII of France 110, 113, 115, 119, 123, 126 Chaucer, Geoffrey 5, 55, 165; “Man of Law’s Tale” 157, 160, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168; “Second Nun’s Tale” 167 Chevalier, Étienne 118 “Childe of Bristowe” 47, 55 Chios 247, 248, 251 Christ 6, 30–31, 33, 44, 70, 75, 78, 95, 96, 97, 135, 139, 144, 158, 166, 181, 188, 190, 191, 205, 210, 215, 220–23, 248; blood of 252; Crucifixion 126n1; Holy Wounds 126n1; as Man of Sorrows 92, 220; Passion of 72, 215, 220, 220 Christina, saint 159 Christopher, saint 94, 126n1, 135, 159 Chronicle of Fredegar 125 Church of San Lesmes, Burgos, 94, 95 Church of San Nicolás de Bari, Burgos 96 church time 45, 49–51, 52, 53 Cirencester, Gloucestershire 54–55, 56, 64n85 Cirera, Jaume 138, 141 Cistercian order 30, 31, 71, 81 Clare of Assisi, saint 98, 136, 141 clothmakers and merchants 29, 36, 54, 64, 90, 91, 110, 112; see also trade, in textiles; wool workers and traders Clovis I of the Franks 115 Cofradía de los Reyes Magos 90, 93, 94 Colonia, Francisco de 96 comb makers 8, 281–82 confraternities 3–4, 79, 181, 187, 188, 239, 240, 244, 255, 284; as art patrons 3, 204, 207, 279; definition 14n17; military duties of 204, 206, 211, 240, 255–56; prayers for deceased members 93, 223–24; see also under individual saints

Index  Constantinople 33, 245, 248, 252, 255, 258; see also Istanbul Consulado del Mar 90, 91 Consulate of the Sea, Perpignan 10, 139, 141; altarpiece 140 coopers 186 Corpus Christi: confraternity 79 Cosimo and Damien, saints 2 Cosimo de Medici 2 Cosimo de’Medici, Piero de 5 crusading 205, 206, 211, 245, 247, 248, 251, 255, 256, 257, 258; Fourth Crusade 252, 256; Livonian Crusade 223, 224 Cursor Mundi 55 Cuthbert, saint 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 27–30, 32–37, 39n14, 40n28, 280 Dagobert I 125 Dalmatians 255, 257; confraternity 255–56, 257 Dance of Death 77, 221 Dandolo, Andrea 248, 250, 251 Datini, Franscesco 1, 12 Datini, Marco 5 Denis, saint 122 de Sassoferrato, Bartolus 40n40 de Vitry, Michelle 112 devotio moderna 75, 76, 81 Digby Mary Magdalene play 47 Dives and Pauper 48, 51–52 De doctrina cordis 30 Doctrine of the Hert 47 Dominic, saint 126n1, 193, 223 Dominican order 4, 30–31, 137, 209, 210, 218, 221, 222, 223; devotional writing 31, 221 Donation and Rogatian, saints 126n1 donor portraits 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 137, 138, 142, 209, 223 Dorothy, saint 44, 98, 209 draper 15n28 Dunois Master 110, 118, 120, 125; see also Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins Dunstan, saint 181–82, 189–90, 193–95, 276, 280; altar to 181, 187, 188, 189; bell for 185, 194; chapel to 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 194; church dedications 181; confraternity of 181; feast day 184–86; images of 181, 187, 194; light to 181, 188; patron of London goldsmiths 4, 8, 11, 179, 180–81, 182–84

293

Durham Priory 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37 dyers 5, 55 Edmund of Bury, saint 9, 28, 33, 34, 38n10, 39n14, 40n25, 167, 168; see also Lydgate, John, Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund Eiximenis, Francesc, Book of Angels 97; Regiment de la cosa pública 137 Elisenda de Montacada of Aragon 138 Elizabeth Woodville of England 54 Eloi de Navel 135, 142 England 2, 9, 10, 27, 28–29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 44, 46, 54, 56, 70, 71, 90, 112, 113, 156, 191, 280 Enrique IV of Castile 90 Erasmus of Formia, saint 8–9, 44–46, 53–54, 56, 139, 141, 142, 144, 280; altar to 181; churches dedicated to 141; confraternity of 181; ships named for 141; wall paintings of 45, 54–55, 63n85; see also Life of Erasmus eremeticism 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 93, 122, 125, 141, 166 Ernaldus of Chartres, Libellus de Laudibus Beatae Mariae Virginis 220 ethics of reckoning 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54, 55, 56 Eucherius of Lyon, Passion of the Martyrs of Agaunum 206 Euphrosyne, saint 136 ex voto 284; candle wax, 35, 36, 37; coca (cog) 141–42 Facio of Cremona, saint 8, 276–77, 278, 285 Falier, Ordelaffo 241 Farne Island 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37 Ferrer, Vincent, saint 98 Fifteen Oes 160 Fisher, William 7, 11, 160 Fisher Miscellany 5, 11, 55, 157, 159–60, 160, 161–62, 164–68; see also manuscripts by shelfmark, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ee.2.15; manuscripts by shelfmark, Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 2030; fishmongers and fishing 33, 49, 181, 186, 195 Flanders 2, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 36, 37, 74, 90, 95, 209

294 Index flax workers 36, 60n50 fletchers 60n50 Florence 2, 5, 91, 135, 276 Fouquet, Jean 110, 118 Fox, Richard, bishop, Contemplacion of Synners 50 Franciscan order 4, 137 Francis of Assisi, saint 17n52, 136, 139, 193, 210, 276, 281 Fremund, saint 166, 168; see also Lydgate, John, Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund fullers 60n44

Gower, John, Confessio Amantis 160, 166, 168 Great Guild 10, 11, 204, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 218 Gregory the Great, saint 95, 275 grocers 14n20, 49 Grönhagen family 80–81 Grosse Gilde see Great Guild guilds 2, 11, 47, 79, 276, 284; as art patrons 7, 207; definition of 14n17; prayers for deceased members 183, 185; processions 185, 195; see also under individual professions

Galla Placidia, Empress 120–21 Gau, John 46 Gellinckhusen, Johann, Chronicle of Reval 215–16 Genoa 250, 251, 255, 258, 277 Geoffrey of Durham, Vita Sancti Bartholomaei Farnensis 28 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae 40n41 George of Cappadocia, saint 4, 6, 8, 11, 207, 209, 210, 211, 215, 216, 218, 224, 238, 252–58, 280; chapel to 188, 252; confraternity of 255–56, 257; relics 252, 253, 256, 258 Germain of Auxerre, saint 11, 110, 111, 112, 119–21, 126, 126n1 Gertrude of Nivelles 98, 210 Ghotan, Bartholomäus, printer 71, 74, 82n8; printing of the Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae 71–72, 78, 81 gift giving 121 Giles, saint 11, 93, 94, 112, 121, 122–23, 126, 126n1 girdle makers 49 glovemaker 60n44 Godo, saint 128n35 Godric of Finchale, saint 17n50, 27, 32, 33 goldsmiths 3, 47, 49, 180, 187–93, 194, 276; London parishes of 179, 181, 184 Goldsmiths Company of London 2, 4, 8, 10, 182, 184, 193–95, 280; devotion to Dunstan 8, 11, 179–80, 182–88, 194; political role of members 184, 193–94 Goldsmiths Hall 179, 180, 184, 186, 189, 194 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin 33, 38n10

Hanseatic Leage 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 29, 71, 74, 75, 81, 204, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 216, 218, 224 hatters 60n44 Helen, saint: image of 188 hemp workers 60n50 Henry VI of England 48, 168, 182 Henry VII of England 55, 182, 193, 194 Henry VIII of England 55, 194 heraldic crests and arms 54, 89, 92, 94, 114, 115, 118, 136, 138, 141, 160, 161, 165–66, 181, 187, 188, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 213, 224, 284 Herman the Archdeacon 33, 38n10 hermits see eremeticism Hert, William 55, 56, 63n97 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto 28, 38n10 Holy Cross: confraternity of 188 Holy Kinship 80 Homobonus of Cremona, saint 8 hospitals 14n20, 94, 95, 137, 138, 284 Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins 110, 111, 119–20, 121, 122–23, 124, 125–26 Idley, Peter Instructions to his Son 160, 164 indulgences 45, 46, 57n18, 75, 232n92, 256 intercession 2, 5–6, 8, 11, 44, 46, 55, 56, 80, 89, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 119, 121, 126, 138, 142, 156, 187, 213, 220, 273, 274, 277, 278, 283, 284, 286; Double Intercession (iconography) 205, 209, 218, 219, 220–24; terms of 274, 275; transactional model of 274–76, 277–78, 279

Index  Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France 123 Isabel I, Queen of Castile 4, 91, 100 Isidore of Alexandria, saint 6, 8, 11, 238, 247–48, 249, 250–51, 252; chapel for 248; relics of 248, 251 Istanbul 257; see also Constantinople Italy 11, 71, 274–85; saint-supplicant relationship in 275, 278, 279, 281 James the Greater, apostle and saint 5, 95 Jaume II of Aragon 138, 143 Jean, Duke de Berry: Grandes Heures 116, 117; Petites Heures 116; Très Riches Heures 116, 118 Jean le Mercier 112 Jerome, saint 94 Joachim, saint 126n1, 136 John, Duke of Bedford 117, 118 John II Comnenos 248 John the Baptist, saint 2, 126n1, 189, 220, 221, 222; chapel to 186; fraternity of 14n20; relics of 252 John the Evangelist, apostle and saint 2, 95, 191 joiners 55 Jouvenel des Ursins, Guillaume 110, 114, 118, 123 Jouvenel des Ursins, Jacques 5, 7, 8, 11, 110, 112–14, 115, 118, 119–23, 126 Jouvenel des Ursins, Jean I 112, 118 Jouvenel des Ursins, Jean II 113, 114, 123; Traité du Chancelier 114, 123 Jouvenel des Ursins family 2, 4, 110, 113–15, 118–19, 125 Julian the Hospitaller, saint 95, 99, 100, 126n1 Katarina of Sweden, saint 70, 73, 78, 80 Keldermans, Lauris 95 Kistener, Kunz, die Jakobsbrüder 5 Knights of St. John 255–56 Lawrence Deacon, saint 93 Leonard, saint: confraternity 79 Liber de translationibus et miraculi sancti Cuthberti 28 Libre dels Mariners 139 Life of Erasmus 5, 7, 10, 44–47, 52–56; see also Erasmus of Formia, saint Lindisfarne 27

295

Litchfield, William, “Complaint of God” 55 Livonia 204, 206, 209, 211, 216, 218, 223 Llibre del Consolat de Mar 139, 141 Lloberas family 138 Llonye, Antoni 4, 137 London 3, 11, 49, 55, 179, 180, 182, 183, 189, 194, 204, 215; Allhallows Bread Street parish 181, 184; All Hallows-the-Great church 55, 185; St. John Zachary parish 179, 181, 184, 185, 186, 188, 193, 194, 195; St. Leonard Foster Lane parish 179, 181; St. Mary at Hill parish 184; St. Matthew Friday Street parish 179, 181, 184, 187, 193, 194; St. Michael Crooked Lane parish 184; St. Michael le Querne parish 181; St. Michael Wood Street 181; St. Peter Westcheap parish 179, 181, 184, 186, 187, 188–90, 191, 193, 194; St. Thomas Acon parish 184; St. Vedast Foster Lane parish 179, 184, 187, 193, 194; Westcheap 180, 181, 184, 187, 193, 195; see also Goldsmiths Company of London longbowmen: confraternity 3–4 Long Charter of Christ 160 Lorens d’Orléans, Somme le Roi 31 Louis d’Orlèans 123 Louis IX of France, saint 122 Louis XI of France 123 Lübeck 5, 10, 29, 71, 73–76, 79, 81, 204, 209, 213, 215, 216, 218, 280, 283; confraternities 79, 80 Lucy, saint 99, 192 Luis de Acuña 4, 91 Lüneburg 74, 80–81 Lupus, saint 128n35 Lydgate, John 5, 55, 157–58, 165, 168; Life of Our Lady 55; Lives of Saints Alban and Amphibal 157; Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund 157, 160, 164, 166, 167, 168 verse prayers to saints 157–59 Macra, saint 128n35 Magdeburg Cathedral 205–6 Magi 92, 93; confraternity 94 Mamluk Empire 240, 245, 246, 257, 259 Manual de Mercaderia 134, 138 manuscripts: marginal drawings 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165; reinforcing

296 Index political power 116, 119, 125, 126; owned by merchants 55, 115, 157, 160, 164 manuscripts by shelfmark: Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS 456 128n35; BnF MS Lat. 4915 128n36; BnF MS Lat. 18014 116; BnF MS n.a. Lat. 3113 128n36; BnF MS n.a. Lat. 3226 128n36; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.1.1 57n12, 62n83; Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2030 159, 160, 161, 162, 163; Harley MS 1671 57n14; Harley MS 2382 55, 57n11; Huntington MS HM 1140 57n18; Huntington MS HM 1159 57n15, 57n17; London, British Library, Add. MS 36983 55, 57n13; Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29 167; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.487 57n15; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlingson poet. 34 57n11; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 919 116; Royal MS 8.C.x 62n84; San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 142 57n18; Sidney Sussex College, MS 37 157–58, 159; Trinity College, MS R.3.21 158; University Library, MS Ee.2.15 159, 160, 161, 161–62, 163, 164, 167 La marchandise spirituelle 7 mare communalis 34 Margaret, saint 12n5, 44, 192, 209; image of 188 Mark, apostle and saint 4, 11, 238, 240–42, 243, 244–47, 248, 250, 251, 280; chapels for 241; confraternity 239; patron of Venice 246–47; translation of 240–41 Marseille 215 Martin of Tours, saint 32 Mary 6, 9, 78, 80, 92, 126n1, 135, 138, 139, 141, 144, 158, 166, 189, 191, 206, 207, 209, 210, 220, 221–23, 224, 275, 280, 285; altar to 187; chapel to 186, 188, 210, 218, 222, 224; confraternity 79, 181, 187, 196n8; image of 78, 187, 188, 191, 192 Mary Magdalene, saint 89, 95, 97, 98–99, 100, 135, 144; as protector of mothers and children 99 Mary of the Annunciation: confraternity 79

Mastery of the Saint Lucy Legend 204, 222; Mary Altarpiece 204, 205, 210, 218, 219, 220–24 Mauritius of Thebes, saint 8, 11, 205–6, 207, 211, 218 Mediterranean Sea 1, 9, 33, 134, 135, 139, 143, 144, 238, 239, 240, 241, 244–48, 250–51, 252, 255, 258, 259 mendicant orders 3, 30, 71, 76, 137, 192, 280–81, 285; merchant devotion to 137, 192–93 Mendoza, Mencía de 91, 100 Mendoza family 4 mercantile metaphors for salvation 7, 30–31 mercenaries 6, 29, 37, 47 mercers 3, 15n28, 47, 49, 50, 55, 196n8 merchants: and almsgiving 7, 9, 96–97, 193; as art patrons 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 90–91, 92, 116, 125, 144, 239, 273, 279, 283, 284; attaining noble status 112; avariciousness of 29–30; becoming saints 8, 17n52, 282; book ownership among, 4–5, 7, 55, 79, 80–81, 115, 157, 160, 164, 283, 284; burial locations of 187, 188, 224; chapels 114, 135, 136–37; concern for afterlife 89–90, 96, 97, 100, 101, 136, 137, 183, 185, 195; concern for disease 94, 96, 221; concern for travel 47, 95, 97, 134, 138–39, 144; confession of sin 98; domestic furnishings of 125, 144; donations of property to parishes 187; economic precarity of 11, 47, 284, 285; education of 4, 99; emulating nobility 4, 91, 114, 116, 125, 126, 134, 144; lesser traders and artisans 47, 48, 274, 282–83, 285–86; liturgical furnishings funded by 3, 7, 114, 135, 144, 180, 181, 188–89, 191–92, 195; and mendicants 137, 192–93; military activity of 6, 238, 240, 247, 248, 251, 255, 258; moneylenders and investors 90; as morally upstanding 195, 279; and name saints 94, 98, 136; ostentation displays of piety 7–8, 136, 137, 157, 205, 283; piecework 47; pledging labor to saints 273, 274–75, 278, 279, 283, 284–85; pledging wealth to saints 275, 278–79, 283, 284–85; political power of 2, 90, 110, 112–14,

Index  125–26, 184, 193–94, 239–40; producing devotional objects 183, 191, 192; property investments of 90–91; as readers 4–5, 55, 81, 91, 97, 164, 165; and relics 135, 143, 144, 241, 246, 247; spiritual precarity of 6–7, 29–30, 32, 47, 55, 97, 183, 189, 193, 276, 285; wills 10, 93, 94–95, 96, 100, 135, 136, 138, 142, 182, 187, 188, 283; as writers 4, 5; see also trade; under individual professions merchants’ children 4, 9, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 138 merchants’ marks 160, 161, 162, 165–66 merchants’ wives 4, 9, 35, 92, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100–1, 106n76, 192 merchant time 10, 45, 49–50, 52, 53, 54, 61n62 Michael the Archangel 8, 89, 95, 97–98, 99, 135, 144 Michiel, Domenico 247, 248, 250–51 millers 60n50 De mirabilibus Dei modernis temporibus in Farne insula declaratis 28, 35, 36, 37 miracles 5, 9, 28, 29, 32, 34, 37, 119, 167, 216, 217, 218, 244, 247, 258, 275, 281; of healing 36, 99, 120, 277, 278; of protection 35, 36, 211, 252, 254; of rudderless boat 166, 167; at sea 6, 9–10, 29, 31, 33–34, 40n25, 93–94, 142, 213, 214, 215, 216, 224, 248 Mirk, John 52; Festial 160, 167–68 Mohnkopf Press 5, 9, 10, 72, 73, 76–78, 81 Mombritus, Boninus, vita Erasmi 46 Monastery of Miraflores 91, 100 Monastery of San Isodoro 91 Monica, saint 138 Nicholas III, Pope 282 Nicholas of Bari, saint 2, 6, 9–10, 11, 32–33, 34, 89, 96–97, 100, 112, 139, 141, 142, 144, 167, 189–90, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 216, 224, 280, 284, 285; altar to 187; confraternity 3; parish church dedicated to 207, 209, 218, 221 Nicholas of Cusa 77 Nicholas V, Pope 113, 125 Nicolas of Tolentino, saint 138, 142 Nicolau, Bertran 137–38, 142

297

noblesse de robe 112, 127n6 Northern Homily Cycle 54 North Sea 2, 6, 7, 10, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35, 71, 74, 284 Norway 2, 24n15, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34 Norwich 10, 55, 159, 160, 165 Notke, Bernt 209, 210, 221; Altarpiece of the Holy Kinship 210 Onuphrius, saint 9, 93–94, 97, 100, 139, 142, 144 Ottoman Empire 240, 245, 246, 255, 256–58, 259 Palmerio, Raymond, of Piacnza, saint 8 Parlement de Paris 110, 112, 113 Paston family 49 paternosterers 191 Paul, apostle and saint 93, 189, 191 Pedralbes Monastery 93, 138, 142 Peter, apostle and saint 93, 95, 125, 181, 189, 191; chapel to 241; church dedicated to 209; see also London, St. Peter Westcheap parish Pettinaio, Peter, of Siena, saint 8, 281–82 Phicas, saint 229n46 Pietro da Montarone, vita of Peter Pettinaio 281–82 pilgrimage 6, 27, 32, 33, 70, 95, 192, 207, 223, 245, 284 pirates see mercenaries Polanco, Gonzalo López de 10, 91, 93, 96–97, 98, 99 Polanco, Leonor de Miranda 99, 100 Pontifical of Poitiers 115, 116, 117, 118, 125 pouchmakers 60n44 Prelatte, William 54, 56 prevôt de marchands 112, 114, 118 printing: of devotional texts 5, 50, 75, 76, 91, 97, 231n71; in Lübeck, 71, 72, 73–74, 76, 81; merchant involvement in 4, 139; owned by merchants 79, 80–81; of saints’ lives 5, 46, 71, 91, 93, 157; as spiritually beneficial 76–78; in the vernacular 76; woodcuts 78 Protevangelium of James 191 Pungilupo, Armanno, of Ferrara, saint 276, 277–78, 285 Ragobert, saint 128n35 Ramon Nonat, saint 136

298 Index Real Cofradía de los Caballeros del Santísimo y Santiago 91 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus 28, 29, 32, 33, 34; Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici 32, 33 Regula mercatorum 3 relics 11, 32, 192, 238, 252, 254, 253, 256, 259; see also translation of relics; under specific saints relic theft 241, 242, 246, 247–48, 250, 252, 258 relic trade 10, 135, 143, 144, 238 Remigius, saint 115; chapel to 114, 126 retables see altarpieces Reval (Tallinn, Estonia) 4, 6, 8, 11, 74, 75, 204, 205, 207, 209, 211, 215, 216, 218, 221, 223, 224, 280 Revelationes Sanctae Birgittae 5, 9, 10, 70, 71, 72, 78, 80; as devotional text 81; as divinely inspired 79; translation into German 71, 72 Roch, saint 193; image of 192; confraternity 79 Rodbourne Cheney, Swindon, Wiltshire 54, 63n85 Rode, Hermen 204, 213, 216; Saint Nicholas Altarpiece 204, 205, 207, 208, 209–11, 212, 213, 214, 215–16, 217, 218 rood screen 189–91 rosary 183, 191, 192, 223 Rostock 75 St. Catherine’s Church, Reval 210, 218 St. Paul’s Cathedral 180, 184, 185, 186, 194 St. Remi chapel, Notre-Dame de Paris see Remigius, saint, chapels saints: almsgiving 9, 46, 47, 53; contemporary to devotees 279, 280–81; as exemplars 45, 53, 126; local 279–80, 281, 282–83; with merchant origins 8, 17n52, 282; as military figures 206, 209, 216, 218, 247, 250, 252; noble origins 112, 182, 285; prayers to 45, 46, 139, 157–59; submission to God’s will 168; torture of 44, 46, 190, 215, 216; universal 284; wall paintings of 45, 54–55, 63n85; see also under individual saints saints’ lives: as fashionable entertainment 55, 156–57, 164,

165, 168; in legendaries 156; in manuscripts 45, 46, 160, 164–68; in miscellanies 156; in print 46, 72–73, 78–79; see also under individual authors and texts Salamanca, Diego de 95 Salamanca, García de 90–91, 94–96, 97, 99 San Gil Church, Burgos 93; Chapel of the Buena Mañana 92; Chapel of the Kings 92; merchant patronage of 103n24 San Giorgio Maggiore monastery 252 Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona 136, 137, 144 Schwarzenhäupter see Brotherhood of the Black Heads Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni 4, 255–57 Scuola Grande di San Marco 4, 240, 244, 245, 246, 247 Sebastian, saint 94; confraternity 3–4 Sermó del Bisbetó 139 sermons 3, 6, 30, 51, 52, 53, 54, 72, 76, 79, 98, 137, 167–68, 221 Shaa, John 3, 188, 194 shoemakers 8, 49, 60n50 shrines 32, 36, 241, 273, 279, 284; as navigational aids 139 Sitha, saint 17n52, 189, 190, 191, 192 skinners 55 Snell, Johann 74 Sorel, Agnès 123 South English Legendary 160, 166 Speculum Humanae Salvationis 221 spiritual accounting see ethics of reckoning Spitzer Hours see Hours of Jacques Jouvenel des Ursins Stecknitz Canal (Elbe-Lübeck Canal) 74 Stephen protomartyr, saint 4, 126n1, 136, 142, 168 suffrages to saints 5, 45, 110, 113, 119, 121, 159 Sunday Letter 51, 54 Sunday List 51, 53, 54 Sunday observance 45, 47, 48, 50–53, 54, 56; and servile labor 48; and needful labor 48; enforcement of 48–49 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe (printed by Ghotan) 72, 78 Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe (printed by Mohnkopf Press) 5, 9, 10, 72, 73,

Index  77, 78–81; as a devotional text 78–79; readership 78–79, 80–81 swarten hoveden 205 Sweden 71, 73 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio 28 tailors 8, 60n50, 186 Tecla, saint: relics of 143; cathedral of 139 tertiaries 8, 280–81 Teutonic Knights 206 Theodore of Amasea 238 Thomas, apostle and saint 136 Thomas Becket of Canterbury, saint 39n14, 167; confraternity 3 time, economic value of 47, 49–50, 52; spiritual value of 52, 53; see also church time, merchant time trade: in animal products 29, 218; bans on 37, 245, 250; in books 74–75; growth of 2; injunctions against on Sundays 48–49; with Islamic territories 241, 245, 250; markets 30, 31, 47, 48–49; physical danger of 6, 47, 138–39, 144, 281, 285; public visibility of 49; in relics 135, 143, 144, 238; as spiritually detrimental 6–7, 8, 30, 31–32, 48, 49, 55, 183, 189, 276, 285; in storytelling 165; in textiles 29, 31, 35–36, 37, 47, 54, 90, 91, 134, 112; as an unstable activity 32, 47, 281; victualling 47, 48, 49; in wool 29, 31, 54, 90, 91; see also under individual professions translation of relics 27, 32, 135, 143, 144, 238, 240–41, 246, 247–48, 249, 250, 252, 258, 259, 278; see also relic trade, relic theft translation of texts 5, 46, 50, 71, 72, 78, 91 Trinity 96, 192, 220, 221; altar of 188, 222; chapel of 54 Trondheim Cathedral 39n14 Troyes 10, 11, 110, 112, 128n35 Twiford, Nicholas 187, 188

299

Universidad de Mercaderes, Burgos 90 Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins 158, 159 Vallaresso, Paolo 256 Venice 2, 6, 74, 238, 277, 280; cittadini 239, 240, 244, 250; confraternities in 4, 8, 11; control over Mediterranean trade 240–42, 250, 251, 258–59; mercantile identity of 238–40; and military activity 247, 248, 250; patrician governance of 239; political restructuring 250; relationship with Byzantine Empire 244; relationship with Genoa 251, 255; relationship with Islamic territories 245–46, 257 Veronica 95 Victor of Marseille, saint 6, 11, 207, 209, 210, 211, 213, 215–16, 217, 218, 224, 280; altar to 210; as patron of Reval 207, 211 Victor of Xanten, saint 216 Vigarny, Filipe 92 virginity 99, 190 vita apostolica 280, 282, 285 Voragine, Jacobus de, Legenda Aurea 5, 9, 91, 97, 98, 119, 255; life of Amand 123, 125; life of Erasmus 46; life of Germain 119–20; life of Giles 122; life of Mary Magdalene 98, 99; life of Nicholas 211; read by merchants 115; sermons 54; translation into vernaculars 46, 91, 93 weavers 37, 54, 60n50, 276 Westminster Abbey 62n81 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 184 wine porters 17n52, 282, 285 wine sellers 5 Wood, Thomas 193 wool workers and traders 5, 29, 31, 54–55, 90, 91, 134, 184; see also clothmakers and merchants; trade, in textile