The Route of the Franks: The Journey of Archbishop Sigeric at the Twilight of the First Millennium Ad 9781803273662, 9781803273679, 1803273666

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The Route of the Franks The Journey of Archbishop Sigeric at the Twilight of the First Millennium AD Cristina Corsi

The Route of the Franks: The Journey of Archbishop Sigeric at the Twilight of the First Millennium AD Cristina Corsi

Archaeopress Archaeology

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com

ISBN 978-1-80327-366-2 ISBN 978-1-80327-367-9 (e-Pdf) © Cristina Corsi and Archaeopress 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

To Frank The most amazing journey is the one I took with you

Table of Contents List of Figures.............................................................................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................................................................... vi Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................... vii Clearing the ground. Archaeological research vs merchandising and branding.............................................. vii Note......................................................................................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey................................................................................................................................1 Theoretical framework and methodological issues: Defining ‘travelscapes’........................................................1 Conceptualising the journey..............................................................................................................................................5 Landscapes of movement....................................................................................................................................................6 Phenomenology of travel: Landscapes of the mind......................................................................................................7 Landscape perception and space representation.........................................................................................................9 Conceptual geography: A one-dimensionality of space?..........................................................................................10 Epistemology of space and time: the cultural perception of distance ...................................................................11 On the way… of constructing an identity......................................................................................................................13 Identity vs ethnicity........................................................................................................................................................14 The feeling of alienation................................................................................................................................................14 Certifying identity...........................................................................................................................................................14 An insight into the confrontation of groups of different nature...........................................................................14 Sociological aspects and cultural challenges .............................................................................................................14 Social otherness and sameness.....................................................................................................................................15 Impassable linguistic boundaries?................................................................................................................................15 Hospitality and protection grants................................................................................................................................16 Pilgrimage.............................................................................................................................................................................16 On the edge of danger........................................................................................................................................................17 Chapter 2. The Historical Framework...................................................................................................................................19 The geo-cultural definition..............................................................................................................................................19 The Franks........................................................................................................................................................................19 The Carolingians..................................................................................................................................................................21 The Treaty of Verdun......................................................................................................................................................22 The Vikings.......................................................................................................................................................................24 After 887............................................................................................................................................................................24 The tenth century...............................................................................................................................................................25 Before and after the year 1000.........................................................................................................................................27 The socio-political scenario...........................................................................................................................................27 The Kingdom and the Duchy of Burgundy..................................................................................................................28 The relationship between the royal houses and the Church....................................................................................30 Economic and cultural matters.....................................................................................................................................30 The communication network...........................................................................................................................................31 Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury........................................................................................................................................33 Archbishop Sigeric and his time: Eschatology for the end of a millennium and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom..................................................................................................................................................33 Primary sources for Sigeric’s life and historical context..........................................................................................36 The text: Its transmission and editions........................................................................................................................36 The text: Its authorship and content...........................................................................................................................38 Paving the way: Sigeric’s predecessors and epigones ..............................................................................................39 Canterbury calls Rome: Building an identity...............................................................................................................41 Canterbury in the Early and High Middle Ages...........................................................................................................43 Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration.......................................................54 Routes, roads and infrastructure....................................................................................................................................54 Travels from England to Rome ........................................................................................................................................57 A range of possibilities: Routes and roads through medieval France....................................................................64 i

Orienteering and mapping................................................................................................................................................67 Itineraries and guides........................................................................................................................................................79 Motivations for reporting.................................................................................................................................................81 Scheduling, duration, distance, pauses, means of transport: The routine of travel.........................................83 Hospitality and accommodation.....................................................................................................................................87 Rome..................................................................................................................................................................................90 Internal structure and composition of the parties....................................................................................................91 Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric...................................................................................................................................92 On the (Roman) road. The itinerary across modern France.....................................................................................92 LVI Antifern......................................................................................................................................................................94 LVII Pontarlier (Punterlin).............................................................................................................................................94 LVIII Nods (Nos)...............................................................................................................................................................97 LIX Besançon (Bysiceon)................................................................................................................................................97 The road around Besançon-les Buis.......................................................................................................................97 The town ....................................................................................................................................................................98 The suburbium.........................................................................................................................................................101 LX Cussey-sur-l’Ognon (Cuscei)..................................................................................................................................103 LXI Seveux-sur-Saône (Sefui)......................................................................................................................................103 LXIII Oisma .....................................................................................................................................................................103 LXIV Blessonville (Blæcuile) .......................................................................................................................................105 LXV Bar-sur-Aube (Bar)................................................................................................................................................105 LXVI Brienne-la-Vieille (Breone)................................................................................................................................106 LXVII Donnement-sur-Meldançon (Domaniant)......................................................................................................107 LXIX Châlons-en-Champagne (Catheluns)................................................................................................................107 LXX Reims (Rems).........................................................................................................................................................114 The city centre.........................................................................................................................................................118 The cathedral...........................................................................................................................................................119 The canons’ cloister................................................................................................................................................122 The school.................................................................................................................................................................122 The suburbium ........................................................................................................................................................122 LXXI Corbény (Corbunei).............................................................................................................................................123 LXXII Laon (Mundlothuin)...........................................................................................................................................123 LXXIII Martinwæꝺ/Martinwaeth (Martini Vadum) = Seraucourt-le-Grand?......................................................125 LXXIV Doingt-sur-la-Cologne (Duin) .........................................................................................................................125 LXXV Arras (Aꝺerats/Atherats)..................................................................................................................................125 LXXVII Thérouanne......................................................................................................................................................127 LXXVIII Guînes (Guisnes, Gisne) ................................................................................................................................129 LXXIX Sombre (Sumeran)............................................................................................................................................130 Chapter 6. A Cross-section of Continental Europe at the End of the First Millennium AD..................................131 Towns and centres.............................................................................................................................................................131 Episcopal complexes.....................................................................................................................................................131 Fortifications..................................................................................................................................................................132 Palaces ............................................................................................................................................................................132 Suburbia..........................................................................................................................................................................132 Trade and exchange......................................................................................................................................................133 Churches, abbeys, sanctuaries and artistic trends...................................................................................................133 France..............................................................................................................................................................................133 England............................................................................................................................................................................134 The cultural scenario....................................................................................................................................................135 Around the year 1000. At the dawn of a new era?.....................................................................................................135 Conclusion. Landscapes of movement at the twilight of the first millennium.................................................136 The road network..........................................................................................................................................................136 Sigeric’s choices.............................................................................................................................................................137 Journey as exploration..................................................................................................................................................137 Landscape perception and medieval journey............................................................................................................139

ii

Bibliography..............................................................................................................................................................................141 Primary Sources Editions And Commentaries...........................................................................................................156 Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names.......................................................................................................158 Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources.............................................................................................................................170 Index of Manuscripts..............................................................................................................................................................171

List of Figures Figure 0.1: Canterbury, Christ Church. The milestone indicating the start of the Via Francigena to Rome. Photo Author.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ix Figure 2.1: The Frankish expansion 356-795. After Hallam 1980: fig. 1.2.��������������������������������������������������������������������������20 Figure 2.2: The empire of Charlemagne. Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1988: 194. ����������������������������������������������22 Figure 2.3: Division of Charlemagne’s kingdom after 843 (Treaty of Verdun). Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1987: 18.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������23 Figure 2.4: The rise of territorial principalities in the French Kingdom of the tenth century. Elaboration A. Panarello.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������26 Figure 2.5: The effective control of Hugh Capet over the Kingdom of France at the end of his reign (dotted) vs the areas of influence of the Counts of Blois and of Vermandois (grey). Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1987: 19, map 3.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������27 Figure 2.6: The political division of Europe around the year 1000. Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1987: 42.����29 Figure 3.1: Sigeric’s itinerary manuscript: British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.V, f.23v. © The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/itinerary-of-archbishop-sigeric#. Public Domain.��������������������37 Figure 3.2: Canterbury. Schematic map of the town around the time of Sigeric’s election. The Marlowe area is highlighted in grey. Elaboration Author after Brooks 2000: fig. 28. ����������������������������������������������������������44 Figure 3.3: Canterbury, cathedral. Hypothetical reconstruction of the plan and section of the earlier Anglo-Saxon phase (2A). After Blockley 2000: fig. 16. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������45 Figure 3.4: Canterbury, cathedral. Phased plan of Anglo-Saxon remains (periods 2A-2C). After Blockley 2000: fig. 6. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46 Figure 3.5: Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey. General plan with location of the mound at the southeastern edge. After Jenkins 1991: 2, fig. 1.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������47 Figure 3.6: Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey. Reconstruction of the churches of SS Peter and Paul and of St Mary. A: seventh century; B: beginning of the eleventh century. After Gem 1992: 60, 62, figs. 5-6.�������������48 Figure 3.7: Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey. Plan of the excavated structures attributable to the AngloSaxon period (seventh-eleventh centuries). After Gem 1992: 58, fig. 4.����������������������������������������������������������������49 Figure 3.8: Canterbury. Comparative table with the plans of the churches of Christ Church (A), St Martin (B), SS Peter and Paul (C) and St Pancras (D). After Blockey 2000: fig. 14. Courtesy of Durham University e-theses service.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������50 Figure 4.1: Schematic map of the road network in north-western France and the river Seine basin during the Carolingian age, with indication of the main centres (dot: centre, vicus), religious settlements (cross: abbey, monastic borough), smaller monastic settlements (triangle) and route toponyms (square). Elaboration A. Panarello after Bruand 2002: 94, map 1. �������������������������������������������������������56 Figure 4.2: Schematic map of the river Seine basin during the Carolingian age, with indication of the main centres (dot: centre, vicus), religious settlements (cross: monastery, monastic borough), smaller monastic settlements (triangle) and route toponyms (square). Elaboration A. Panarello after Bruand 2002: 99, map 2.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������57 iii

Figure 4.3: Schematic map of the road network in Burgundy during the Carolingian age, with indication of the main centres (dot: centre, vicus), religious settlements (cross: monastery, monastic borough), smaller monastic settlements (triangle) and route toponyms (square). Elaboration A. Panarello after Bruand 2002: 107, map 4.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������58 Figure 4.4: Plan of Canterbury Cathedral and its priory (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 17, 1 ff. 284v285). The earliest known English map of a monumental complex, produced at Canterbury in the mid-twelfth century, although very detailed and functional in showing the newly installed water system, it lacks the concept of a ground plan and does not respect any cartographic conventions like scale. © Creative common Licensed (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eadwine_ psalter_-_Waterworks_in_Canterbury.jpg)�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������69 Figure 4.5: Nevern, Wales (UK). A cross carved in the rock along the path leading to St David’s shrine. © Creative Commons Licensed.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������70 Figure 4.6: Segment of the facsimile by Miller 1887 of the Tabula Peutingeriana, showing a large part of Gallia in the central portion. Original in the Biblioteca Augustana der Fachhochschule Augsburg; © Creative commons Licensed (http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost03/ Tabula/tab_pe00.html).�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������71 Figure 4.7: Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, the itinerary from London to Beauvais. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, f. 1r. After Sansone 2009, fig. 2. Courtesy of S. Sansone, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������74 Figure 4.8: Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, the itinerary from Mâcon to Montcenisio. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, f. 2r. After Sansone 2009, fig. 5. Courtesy of S. Sansone, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������75 Figure 4.9: Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, the itinerary from Pontremoli to Sicily. London, British Library, MS Royal 14 C VII, f. 4r. © The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ matthew-paris-itinerary-map. Public Domain.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������76 Figure 5.1: Schematic overview of Sigeric’s itinerary across France. Elaboration A. Panarello.������������������������������������93 Figure 5.2: The itinerary from A: Saint-Maurice d’Agaune to St Benignus of Dijon; B: from Pontarlier to Salins via the Chaux d’Arlier. After Malfroy, Olivier and Guiraud 1985: 25, fig. 4. ����������������������������������������������95 Figure 5.3: The area around Pontarlier in LiDAR imagery, with small (A) and large (B) scale territorial frames. 1: Protohistoric necropolis of Arlier; 2: Merovingian necropolis of Grande Oye; 3: ancient settlement of Ariorica; 4: strongholds of Joux and Mahler (lock of Joux); 5: milestone of FontaineRonde; 6: pass of Étroits; 7: ancient sanctuary of Chasseron; 8: ancient sanctuary of Covatannaz; 9: series of ancient roads at Vuiteboeuf. The three red rectangles indicate the areas where LiDAR survey has allowed the individuation of ancient roads. After Bichet et al. 2019: fig. 1.���������������������������������������96 Figure 5.4: The area around Pontarlier in LiDAR imagery, with indication of traces of ancient roads in the plain. After Bichet et al. 2019: fig. 5.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������97 Figure 5.5: Schematic map of the road network between Jougne and Besançon. Elaboration Author after Jeannin 1972: 182, fig. 4.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������98 Figure 5.6: The ancient road network around Besançon. Elaboration Author after Frézouls 1988: 118, fig. 4.�����������99 Figure 5.7: Besançon. Schematic map of the town inside the ‘Boucle’, with indication of the most important monuments. Elaboration A. Panarello. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������100 Figure 5.8: Besançon. Hypothetical reconstruction of the cathedral in the ninth century. Elaboration Author after Tournier 1967. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������102 Figure 5.9: Schematic map of the road network between Besançon and Châlons-en-Champagne. Elaboration Author after Nouvel 2010: 13, fig. 4.�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������104 Figure 5.10: St Geosmes. Plan of the church in phases I-III. Elaboration Author after Thévenard 1996. �������������������105 Figure 5.11: Bar-sur-Aube. Schematic archaeological map of the town and its surrounding. 1: town, 2: western suburbium, 3: val de Thors, 4: oppidum of St Germain, 5: valleys of Queue de Renard and Provenchevaux, 6: Roman villa of Etifontaine. Elaboration Author after Tomasson 1994a: 205, fig. 2.���������106 Figure 5.12: Brienne-la-Vieille. Extent of the Gallo-Roman settlement, crossed by the road linking Langres to Reims. After Tomasson 1994a: 205, fig. 5.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������107 Figure 5.13: The communication network in the Marne region in Roman times. Elaboration A. Panarello after Chossenot 2004: 123, fig 34.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108 iv

Figure 5.14: Châlons-en-Champagne. The so-called Plan Varin, an ancient map of the town by Nicolet Picard 1661. After Chossenot 2004: 285, fig. 173.�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������110 Figure 5.15: Châlons-en-Champagne. The church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux in the eleventh century. Elaboration Author after Collin et al. 1981: 192.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113 Figure 5.16: Châlons-en-Champagne. Plan of the excavations in the area of the Hôtel-Dieu. Elaboration Author after Chossenot and Lenoble 1992: 274, fig. 2.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������114 Figure 5.17: Reims. Schematic plan of the Roman road network. Elaboration A. Panarello after Chossenot 2004: 139, fig. 46.�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������115 Figure 5.18: Reims. Schematic plan of Reims and its suburbium during Late Antiquity. A: first cathedral of the Apostles; B: second cathedral; C: bishop’s residence; D: Porte de Mars; E: Porte Bazée. Possible location of the funerary churches of 1: St Christopher; 2: St Julian; 3: St Timothy; 4: St Martin; 5: St Sixtus; 6: SS Agricola and Vitalis; 7: St John. In grey, the area of the Roman forum. After Ajot et al. 1998: 105.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������116 Figure 5.19: Reims. Schematic plan of the old town and the new borough in the Middle Ages. After Heers 1990: 196, fig. 60.�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������117 Figure 5.20: Reims. Schematic map of the old town with indication of the location of the main monuments and of the different wall circuits. 1: cathedral; 2: St Remigius; 3: St Nicaise. The dotted line indicates the limits of the castellum, the dashed line the limits of the Urbs, the solid line the limits of the medieval wall circuit. Elaboration Author after Chédeville 1980: 96.�����������������������������118 Figure 5.21: Reims. Hypothetical reconstruction of the cathedral. A: Schematic reconstruction of the succession of the three late antique (grey rectangle in the middle), Carolingian (smaller church with dashed apse) and high medieval churches (outer church with large apse) on the basis of the Gothic building (in pale grey). B: Hypothetical reconstruction of the church of ninth-tenth century, with indication of the segments of preserved walls (in black). After Balcon, Berry and Neiss 1996: 26, 30.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������120 Figure 5.22: Reims. The episcopal palace ‘Tau’. 9 indicates the Great Hall, 11 the chapel. After CrepinLeblond 1994: 168, fig. 1.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������121 Figure 5.23: Laon. Schematic map of the town at the beginning of the thirteenth century. After SaintDenis 1983: plate 1.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������124 Figure 5.24: Arras. Schematic map of the Gallo-Roman oppidum with 1: the cathedral; 2: the borough with the Abbey of St Vaast; 3: petit place; 4: grand place. After Chédeville 1980: 110. ������������������������������������126 Figure 5.25: Thérouanne. Sketch of the town in the seventeenth century by Malbrancq J. De Morinis et Morinorum rebus, Tornaci Nerviorum, 1647, reporting on some ‘excavations’ carried out in the sixteenth century. After Bernard 1985: fig. 1A.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������128 Figure 5.26: Thérouanne. Schematic plan of the episcopal complex, with hypothetical indication of the ramparts according to Bernard. After Ajot et al. 1998: 276. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������129

v

Acknowledgments In the first 25 years of my career, one of the dominant research interests has been the study of roads and communication networks in the Roman world, in late antique Mediterranean, and in medieval Italy. Trained in the methodologies of ancient topography, I recently applied the whole panoply of instruments for the newly defined ‘archaeology of roads’. However, although my hope is to have contributed to a growth in knowledge concerning road axes and mainly road stations, with a shift in my interest towards the theme of ‘mobility’, my attention has been diverted to travel-related aspects, in Antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages. The modalities, the practicalities and the motivations of a journey of the past have engaged me in the exploration of the many factors that played a role in the planning and undertaking of a long-distance transfer, and the effects that interaction with an unknown environment would have had on the traveller. Those ideas took shape during a post-doc fellowship that I enjoyed at IMéRA, the institute of advanced studies of Aix-Marseille Université. I will be forever grateful to the scientific and administrative staff of the institute and to the fellows who shared that wonderful experience with me and from whom I received many stimuli. The idea of promoting a different perspective on the renowned journey of Archbishop Sigeric was developed together with Elisabetta De Minicis, with whom I co-authored a book devoted to the study of a segment of the Via Francigena north of Rome. That study, embedded in the theoretical framework and methodological approach of the archaeology of roads, a branch of landscape archaeology that has been shaped by Elisabetta De Minicis’ contribution, disclosed the many possible readings of a medieval itinerary and showed us a multitude of paths to follow. The project that we designed together, then, wishes to tackle the many features of that journey, destined – on the basis of the brief report of its stages – to become the template for one of the most important cultural itineraries of Europe. Our hope is to complete the framework of that project shortly through the publication of a second and final volume in the series. This will focus on the southern segment of the itinerary, from Switzerland to Rome, and on methodological issues regarding the archaeology of roads. The number of things I learnt from Betta is only inferior to the pleasure I had working together and my esteem for her. The part of the bibliographic research conducted in Italy was carried out at the library of the École Française of Rome. I am most grateful to its director and staff, who generously share the inestimable patrimony of books with a large group of readers. A considerable part of the bibliographic research about medieval journeys took place in the library of the MOM of Lyon, during a visiting professorship at the École Normale Supérieure in 2019: I was hosted by Claire Fauchon who, together with Marie-Adeline Le Guennec, coordinates several international projects centred on hospitality in the ancient and late antique Mediterranean. Claire, Marie-Adeline and all the colleagues collaborating with the project HospitAM and those that followed have been of inexhaustible inspiration. The book was finalised during a fellowship residency that I enjoyed at the Foundation Camargo in Cassis. Despite the difficulties of the times, burdened with the practical and emotional constraints of the pandemic, I can’t find the right words to express how much that experience enriched me and my perspective, how the stunning environment and the amazing interaction with the staff and the other fellows contributed substantially to transform those involuted notes into the manuscript that I deliver here. Of all the people who inspired me, a special mention goes to Heindrick Sturm, artist randoneur, who enthusiastically guided me through the aspects of perceptions and exploration of space. Among the many colleagues who inspired me and to whom I owe so much is Carlo Citter. Our discussions, his patient reading and commenting on some chapters and his milestone and innovative writings played a pivotal role in the definitive version of this manuscript. Most of the images have been elaborated by Adolfo Panarello, colleague of the Laboratory of Archaeology of the University of Cassino. I’m very grateful for his collaborative enthusiasm and endless patience. I could have not completed the illustrations without him. My sincere thanks go to Mike Schurer at Archaeopress, who very patiently and thoroughly edited the text, providing a deeper insight into the many topics addressed here and improving the fluency of the reading. Last but not least, many thanks to my dear friend Maleka Raniwalla, who patiently corrected these notes. This work, however, would not have seen the light without the loving support of my partner, who – regardless of seeing me take a detour from traditional ways of tackling landscape studies – encouraged me to take the unbeaten tracks and never failed to be by my side. Frank, you are the best travel companion I ever dreamed of. vi

Introduction This book has a twofold goal. On the one hand, it presents a scientific study of the journey that Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury undertook at the end of the first millennium of our era from the British Isles to Rome, in particular the segment included in the territory of modern France. The archaeological survey is rooted in the tradition of landscape archaeology and medieval topography, and tries to reconstruct not only the route that Sigeric followed within modern France but also to take an archaeological snapshot of the urban and architectural developments of the centres that he crossed at the twilight of the first millennium AD.

fields of geography, social sciences, anthropology, environmental behavioural studies, phenomenology, spatial analysis, ICTs and cognitive studies, laying emphasis on how movement affects the perception of landscapes and how mobility patterns socio-cultural phenomena. Geographical and chronological limits will be extended, even considerably when there is a need to find information that is missing for the phase in question. Although I am aware that this information cannot be automatically projected onto an earlier period, I believe that both Antiquity and the early modern period can provide us with useful data to complete the picture.

Sigeric’s journey, undertaken for reasons connected to his office, is framed within the historical context of the contemporary Anglo-Saxon world. The special relationship joining Rome and Canterbury during the Early Middle Ages is also analysed and an archaeological overview of the archbishop’s town is attempted.

In summary, this book aims to offer an insight to the conceptualisation of the journey and to the different approaches used to investigate it (chapter 1). It reviews the other scattered testimonies and sources that describe similar journeys undertaken before and after the journey of Sigeric, providing an overview of medieval roads and infrastructures, and analysing all the above listed aspects of the medieval journey (chapter 4). This quest is interspersed with a brief historical framework (chapter 2), an outline of the figure of Sigeric and of the relationships between the Churches of Rome and Canterbury, and a presentation of the short text reporting the itinerary (chapter 3). The final chapters are devoted to an account of the topographical and monumental data available for the places where Sigeric and his retinue stopped along the journey (chapter 5), attempting the reconstruction of the stretches of roads that separated them, and finally endeavouring to depict the landscapes and townscapes that appeared before Sigeric’s eyes (chapter 6).

On the other hand, drawing on my long experience in the ‘archaeology of roads’ and in the analysis of communication networks in Roman times and in the Middle Ages, the experience of Sigeric is framed in the historical context of medieval journeys from England to Rome and the Holy Land. Building upon hodeoporics (travel literature and culture) and travel-narratives, an analysis of the modalities and practicalities of travel in the Middle Ages is attempted, together with an overview of the many other possible routes across France and of the reasons which determined Sigeric’s choice. It has been decided, then, to extend the historical framework for post-classical France to a longer period, which comprises the phases of the deconstruction of the Roman empire and the formation of the new barbarian kingdoms. This will allow the contextualisation of many of the journeys included in this narrative.

Clearing the ground. Archaeological research vs merchandising and branding

This contextualisation leads to a third topic: the conceptualisation of travel in the past, the study of how it affected the identity of the traveller, how individuals and groups interacted in the peculiar framework of displacement, therefore including a sociological and an anthropological perspective. For this analysis, the chronological range will also be stretched to include medieval visual representations of travel itineraries. Despite the time that elapsed between Sigeric’s journey and this figurative production, it is considered very indicative of the mentality and perception of travel that a scholar might have had in that historical period.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for year 989 (to be corrected to 990), reports an event that, although memorable enough to be recorded, would have not attracted the attention of such a large audience were it not for the connection with another manuscript.1 The record concerns a high-ranking prelate named Sigeric or Siric, just elected archbishop of Canterbury, the mother church of the Angles and the one that boasts the closest umbilical relationship with Rome. Canterbury was soon to become a pilgrimage destination itself with the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket, as memorably told by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. The passage mentions that Sigeric undertook the long journey from the seat of

The fourth part of this book seeks to radically innovate the study of mobility in the past, by trying to apply theoretical frameworks developed in the

1 

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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 989 (= 990), p. 82.

his see to Rome, where he received the pallium, a woollen cloak worn as an ecclesiastical vestment embodying his role and symbolising the special bond with the city of the Apostles, from the hands of the pope himself. We do not know the details and the whereabouts of this journey or its modalities. We do not know how many people made up the archbishop’s retinue, what means of transport were used, how long the journey was expected to last under normal conditions, how the stops were organised and what resources were deployed to complete the undertaking. Moreover, this trip would have remained unnoticed by posterity if someone from Sigeric’s entourage had not taken the care to record the list of the churches visited by Sigeric in Rome and the stops made on the return journey de Roma usque ad mare, from the capital of Christianity to the Channel, enumerated as 79 submansiones, and if this text had not been fortuitously preserved in the British Library in London.

familiar to the public, the idea of a European cultural route has gained popularity, and the ‘branding’ of many itineraries has spread in every region of the Continent and southern Britain, to the point that there is almost no hill or mountain top, no crossroads or trail where the ubiquitous road signs do not direct walkers to a ‘tamed’ pathway. Unsurprisingly, on the one hand, among the many possible routes undertaken by travellers from the British Isles to Rome, the one described by Sigeric grew to embody the Via Francigena ‘par excellence’; on the other hand innumerable trails, roads and country paths have been ennobled with the title of Via Francigena. This definition is currently used in a wide variety of meanings to address any sort of pilgrimage route, with the peculiarity that even the sense of devotional path is often lost, overwhelmed by touristic interest. A very large number of initiatives have been undertaken, at scientific, amateur and institutional level, to expand, disseminate and make the knowledge of different pilgrimage routes joined – sometimes improperly – under this denomination more accessible and attractive. In the last twenty years, hence, study initiatives on pilgrimage routes multiplied, many proposals for the recovery of the devotional itinerary were put forward, with a wide production of ‘guides’ of all kinds (for travellers, cyclists, nature lovers or gourmets, etc.),2 and the brand Via Francigena has been intensively exploited for the promotion of tourist itineraries. Websites, sometimes ‘official’, occasionally superficial and sensationalist, peppered with inaccuracies and platitudes, proliferated to the point that even a strategy video game called Sigeric: the travel has been released by a British company, inspired by the account of the journey of the archbishop of Canterbury.3

In brief, the document sketches what seems a standard route connecting Rome through Tuscany (via the Lombard ‘capital’ Lucca), across the Apennines by the Cisa Pass to the main towns of Lombardy such as Piacenza and Pavia, across Piedmont via Vercelli and northward to the Alps via Aosta and the Great St Bernard Pass, skirting Lake Geneva (Lac Léman), and across the Jura to Besançon and Langres. It further runs through the region of Champagne through Reims and approaches the Channel via Arras and Thérouanne. As anticipated, the journey of Sigeric would have been counted among the many hundreds of this kind, by people – monks, prelates, pilgrims, traders, kings, queens and any other sort of political or military leaders, intellectuals, relics hunters, artists and adventurers – who undertook a trip from northern countries to Rome and the Holy Land, and his name would be unknown to most. Then again, the activity of philologists and historians who, between the mid-nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, published and commented on the brief record of the itinerary followed by Sigeric’s group at the end of the first millennium, raised a growing interest. Two articles describing the author’s journey following in Sigeric’s footsteps were published by D. Hill in Popular Archaeology in May 1985 and December 1985/January 1986. The approach of the thousandth anniversary of the journey and the nearing of the Jubilee of the year 2000 turned the spotlight on this document and made it the milestone on which a phenomenal cultural and media interest was built. Indeed, the concept of Via Francigena, literally the ‘Route of the Franks’, attracted growing interest in the scholarly environment as well as among amateurs. Especially in Italy, a broad interest has invested the simplified itinerary described by Sigeric and later any sort of pilgrimage itinerary. In a short space of time, the term Via Francigena has become

The explosion of interest around the theme of the Via Francigena was universally recognised in 1996 with the launch of the project ‘The Via Francigena: Great Cultural Route of the Council of Europe’, which included, among other things, the publication of a Guide-vademecum, Via Francigena, in 2002. A milestone signalling the starting point of the route of around 1600km or 1000 miles has been placed in front of the south porch of Christ Church, Canterbury’s cathedral (Figure 0.1), while arrows and road signs have been spread all over England, France, Switzerland and Italy to direct the growing crowds of walkers, cyclists and motorists. 2 

A good English language walking guide for the segment from Canterbury to the Great St Bernard Pass is A. Raju, The Via Francigena Canterbury to Rome - Part 1: Canterbury to the Great St Bernard Pass, republished several times in the series Cicerone Guides. For francophone readers the guide by G. Jean-Yves, Via Francigena de Canterbury à Rome, published by Édition Ouest France, can be a good starting point for tourist exploration. 3  Entertainment Game Apps, Ltd., viewed 14 January 2022, .

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Indeed, following the growing interest in European cultural routes, several segments of the French Grandes Randonnées (a network of long-distance footpaths and trails in Europe, situated mainly in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain) have been accredited as sections of the Via Francigena.9 Although sometimes based on effective walks, these reports, blogs and guides are almost exclusively targeted at practical or touristic aspects of the trail: lodging and food, pathways and their signage, local products and traditions, sight-seeing and leisure, outdoor activities and, last but not least, devotion and pilgrimage, ultimately the lay search for internal growth and selfhood, as already popular along the other major pilgrimage route of Europe, the Way of St James. Somehow, this popularisation has implied an impoverishment of the topic, and at this stage it is hard to distinguish valuable contributions from promotional materials, chiefly since the testimony of Sigeric has been addressed as the most relevant source to reconstruct the Via Francigena (Jung 1904).

Figure 0.1: Canterbury, Christ Church. The milestone indicating the start of the Via Francigena to Rome. Photo Author.

However, very few websites deserve the attention of a scientific publication as part of the ‘webography’: besides that of the Council of Europe,4 which includes the link to the bilingual magazine Via Francigena,5 also worth mentioning is the portal of the Association Internationale Via Francigena - AIVF.6

Among the many studies on Sigeric and his journey, a special mention is due to those by Francis Peabody Magoun (1940a and 1940b) and Veronica Ortenberg (1990), although the commentary of the latter ‘concentrates essentially on the elements of interest from the devotional point of view, which pilgrims would have come across in the various places they visited’, rather than on the practicalities and technical aspects of the journey (Ortenberg 1990: 206).

In France enthusiasm was more moderate, and most of the ‘local’ websites that can be listed have a focus on the reactivation of the devotional routes,7 with the exception of http://www.laviafrancigenaenfrance. fr/, a page nested in a more general site http:// lesroutesduterroir.com/ (viewed 14 January 2022), aimed at touristic promotion of inland territories. By his own admission, the same blogger, Charles Myber, learned about the existence of the Via Francigena in Tuscany only in the summer of 2011. Since then, the site has been supporting a petition to award the UNESCO label to the Voie des Français.8

The works that have been more relevant for this research are rather older and newer essays on travels from the British Isles to Rome or other ‘southern’ destinations. They start with the essay of Wilfrid Moore centred on the Saxon pilgrims and their institutional hospitality in Rome (Moore 1937), via the extensive but not very systematic work of George Bruner Parks about English travellers to Italy, which covers the sources from the origins to the sixteenth century (Parks 1954). This is followed by the similar approach of Stephen Matthews (Matthews 2007) and ends with the essay by Christopher Loveluck and Aiden O’Sullivan (Loveluck and O’Sullivan 2016), passing by two short but informative papers by David Pelteret (2011 and 2014). The latter, although centred on the seaways from Ireland to Atlantic Europe, investigates, on the basis of new archaeological evidence, exchange between Ireland and continental Europe via the Channel and the principal river ‘transport corridors’ leading to the

4 

Viewed 14 January 2022, . Magazine via Francigena, viewed 14 January 2022 ; hardly distinguishable from the website , devoted to pilgrims and only in Italian. Viewed 14 January 2022. 6  Viewed 14 January 2022, , recently merged with the Associazione Europea delle Vie Francigene (AEVF) to create the International Committee Via Francigena (CIViF). It includes the Swiss association IVS. 7  E.g. Le pélerin , viewed 14 January 2022. 8  Incidentally, an inaccurate translation, since it should be more properly termed ‘la voie des Francs’: Les routes du terroir , viewed 14 January 2022. Oddly, France is not joining the coordinated efforts of the other four countries involved (United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy and the Holy See) for the nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List (June 2020). The Board of Directors of the Italian National Commission for UNESCO has already endorsed the candidacy of the ‘Via Francigena in Italy’ in the National Tentative List (), viewed 14 January 2022. 9  E.g.: a segment of 130km of the GR 145® in the Department HauteMarne has been officially accredited in 2012 as the segment of the Via Francigena across the region of Champagne-Ardenne, centred on the town of Langres.

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Mediterranean basin between the fifth and eleventh centuries.

a deeper understanding of the gradual ‘sedimentation’ processes (infra, pp. 2, 54-57) that led to a continuity that was occasionally broken only at the beginning of the second millennium AD, when a new polarisation followed the definition of the high medieval habitat, including the parcel system. The remodelling of the post-classical landscape and especially of the road network appears, therefore, heavily imprinted by the former parcelling of the land.

The work of Matthews has several contact points with this book, since it is focused on travellers from England to Rome in the period between the arrival of the Roman missionaries at Canterbury, at the end of the sixth century, and the end of the Anglo-Saxon era, in the course of the eleventh century, trying to determine ‘the who, the why and above all the how of Anglo-Saxon travel to Rome’ (Matthews 2007: 2). Matthews’s book has the advantage of reporting – alas, almost invariably in English translation – the passages of medieval sources that report on these journeys, preserving their narrative for the reader’s sake, and it is one of the first attempts to investigate what is there termed as the ‘mechanics’ of medieval travel. On the other hand, a predictable but still regrettable quasi-exclusivity of English language literature affects the completeness of the general picture, although the choice of delimiting the essay to a well define time span is uncontroversial.10 Additionally, as much as my research of the last 25 years has been concerned with the modalities and practicalities of travel, and as long as I will also try to enquiry here whether Sigeric and his peers were informed about the ‘right time’ to take off and if they ‘were aware of and prepared for the physical hazards of the journey’ (Matthews 2007: 5), my questions are centred around other matters, such as orienteering and path finding, space and landscape perception.

As anticipated, in Italy the Via Francigena turned into a media phenomenon and it is impossible to provide even a superficial review of what has been published in the last twenty years. Suffice it to mention the many publications (and re-editions) by Renato Stopani11 and the papers collected in the journal De strata Francigena edited since 1993 by the Centro di Studi Romei. Essays are concentrated on Tuscany and Lazio. The research which I published with Elisabetta De Minicis is focussed on the latter,12 worth mentioning because we aimed at framing the methodological issues related to the analysis of road networks in post-classical times following the practice of the ‘archaeology of roads’, a branch of topographical studies and landscape archaeology characterised by a strong connection between landscape and mobility. This research also tries to clarify the difference between the ‘materiality’ of medieval roads and the ‘immateriality’ of pilgrimage routes, between the ‘Route of the Franks’ of medieval sources and the many vie Francigene or Francische which up to the threshold of the modern age appeared in the documentation to indicate long-distance or simply main roads, not necessarily linked to devotional destinations (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 21-26).

A rich contribution to this study comes from the literature investigating medieval travel. In addition to what is referred to in the following chapters, I wish to mention here the seminal book edited by Arthur Percival Newton as part of The History of Civilization series (Newton 1926).

Other scholars have extended the study of the Via Francigena to the whole route travelled by Sigeric, but most of them remain in the range of publications halfway between tourist guides, travel blogs and journalistic reportage. Such can be considered the work of Giovanni Caselli, starting from the first report of his pedestrian survey of the route from Canterbury to Rome on the steps of Sigeric (Caselli 1990), followed by other scattered papers, of which English versions are available in the repository Academia , although they lack bibliographic coordinates.13

A very relevant part of the state of art on research on ancient roads in France is taken by the so-called school of archaeogeography, a branch of landscape archaeology heavily influenced by geography (Robert 2011). For the part that we are concerned with here, its methodology for the study of pre- and post-Roman roads highlights the role that the protohistoric network had on the development of late-republican and imperial roads, and their legacy in the post-classical communication system centred on those nodes regardless of modifications due to the rise of new centres (Robert 2009). Thanks to a large scientific production concentrated between the last decade of the twentieth and the first decade of the twentieth-first century, the idea that there was a rupture between ancient and post-classical communication systems has been progressively abandoned in favour of

The Via Francigena has predictably also attracted the interest of scholars applying digital technologies such as GIS analyses but, besides the unpublished master dissertation by Andrea Patacchini,14 the work of Alessio 11 

E.g.: Stopani 1986, 1988, 2006. Corsi and De Minicis 2012. 13  E.g.: Discovering the ‘Via Francigena’, largely, but not entirely, an English translation of the introduction to the book of 1990, and The Resurrection of the Saxon’s Way from Canterbury to Rome. 14  Entitled Predittività, postdittività e viabilità: la via Francigena fra Italia e Francia, Dissertation University of Siena 2014-2015. 12 

10  As expected in an academic work, I checked all the sources in their original language. When not explicitly indicated, the translation is that of the Author.

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Innocenti limits the application of GIS approaches to the production of maps linked to a database, mainly developed for touristic heritage management (Innocenti 2017).15

same destination, the support necessary for orienteering and route-finding, the organisation of financial aspects, the measures taken for safety, the food and drink supply, and the maintenance of means of transport whether vehicles or animals, must have remained a constant concern.

Although the widest possible number of publications on pilgrimage routes and pilgrimage in general have been consulted, it was decided not to present here the state of the art on the topic, since this study does not concern specifically pilgrimage but rather travel in a selected period between the Early and the High Middle Ages.

The structure of the Route of the Franks dates back to the core period of the Lombard domination of Italy, and it is with the name of strata Langobardorum, the route of the Lombards, that we address the original stretch connecting the Po plain to the Lombard Duchy of Tuscany, via the Apennine pass of Monte Bardone. The latter, in fact, does not owe its name to the typical cane or walking stick that is considered one of the attributes of pilgrims (bardone), as is sometimes erroneously affirmed, but rather to a corruption of the toponym Mons Langobardorum (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 23-25).

Furthermore, it is relevant to underline that the journey of Sigeric, as with those of his predecessors and many other members of the clergy, was not purely a ‘pilgrimage’ but rather was undertaken as a political and diplomatic act. Even the impressive tour-de-force that Sigeric seems to have endured during his short (?) stay in Rome, visiting 23 churches in two and a half days, gives the impression that devotion to the holy shrines was a parallel aspect and we cannot exclude a component of curiosity or cultural interest.16

The growing links between the kingdoms on the two sides of the Alps would already have led, at the end of the Early Middle Ages, to the designation of a direct connection between Italy and France, named Via Francigena for the first time in a document of 876 (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 23). As demonstrated by the fact that other travellers, before and after Sigeric, favoured other routes, the concept of ‘route’ has to be intended as generic if not blurred: many factors played a role in the choice of which itinerary was followed, ranging from security to seasonality,17 from infrastructure for sustenance and access to hospitality to personal connections and interests. Again, the designation of Via Francigena for the route followed and registered by Sigeric is a fortuitous event, and we cannot guarantee that medieval travellers departing from the same region considered it to be the preferable way to reach Rome.

On the other hand, we have to acknowledge the mixed nature of most of these journeys. Even when (ecclesiastical) politics or the delivery of payments from England to Rome (initially occasional alms, pious offerings and gifts, later regular fees paid to the Church), this was often intertwined with pilgrimage (Tinti 2020: 353). As a matter of fact, even if pilgrimage is undoubtedly one of the phenomena that characterises late antique and medieval societies, all the routes leading to Rome or to other devotional destinations, like the Holy Land or Santiago de Compostela, were gradually established over a long period, in most cases incidentally or purposely generated by political inputs or economic needs. Pilgrims, like other travellers, made use of the existing infrastructure, from roads to staging posts, and only from the late Roman period onwards, a process of ‘Christianisation’ of travel is perceivable in the modalities of displacement (Corsi 2005, 2016a, 2016b). Yet, even if stops were planned on the basis of different criteria, and the certainty of finding staging posts along the Roman roads, in villages and at the periphery of towns was replaced by confidence in getting hospitality at ecclesiastical institutions of different kinds, the basic knowledge of the possible alternatives to get to the

Note The personal names have been translated in English, the geographical names of places have been usually left in their ‘local’ form (e.g. Reims in French and not Rheims in English, Gent in Dutch and not Ghent in English) but when they are very common (e.g. Rome and not Roma). Names and dedications of churches and abbeys have been usually translated in English (e.g. St Stephen and not St Étienne) but when they are part of a composed toponym (e.g. Saint-Étienne-du-Mont).

15 

Countless contributions have been devoted to the possible exploitation of the cultural route for (sustainable) tourism and local development; several interesting papers are collected in the volume edited by Bambi and Barbari in 2015. 16  As we will see later (chap. 3), given that the direct bestowal of the pallium may not yet have been mandatory, it is possible that Sigeric and a few of his predecessors were also moved by religious devoutness.

17  The Great St Bernard Pass, for instance, was exposed to Saracen raids until a few years before it was chosen by Sigeric: infra, chap. 4.

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Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey Abstract: Diverse paths and different approaches, from anthropological to geographical, from historical to phenomenological, lead to the analysis of the concept of ‘journey’. Theoretical framework and methodological issues concur in illustrating ‘travelscapes’, and tenets related to ‘mobility’ lead to the definition of ‘landscapes of movement’. Indeed, the application and development of original and integrated methodologies for the investigation of historical and cultural landscapes should lead to new perspectives on the journey through unknown landscapes, and should help us understand how medieval travellers built their mental maps and experienced the surrounding space, as well as how they constructed their landmarks and reference points. These concepts are closely linked to the investigation of how space was perceived, represented and made accessible in the past, of how geography was conceptualised, adopting an epistemological approach to study how space and time were culturally understood. On the other hand, sociological aspects related to travel are explored, starting from how it affected individual and group identity, how social interaction and grouping was modified in the course of a journey, why it triggered cultural challenges and implied confrontation between social otherness and sameness. Furthermore, some aspects of the traveller’s personal experience are commented upon, included feelings of alienation and the difference between real and perceived danger. Finally, a short overview of a very specific type of travel is offered: pilgrimage is briefly introduced, mainly in regard to motivation and identity-related aspects.

picture of the landscapes that Sigeric crossed and of the routes that he took; on the other hand, we will seek to use the geographical and historical narratives from that period to understand how mobility concurred with the construction of Romanesque culture and how mobility shaped and influenced the medieval perception of landscape.

Theoretical framework and methodological issues: Defining ‘travelscapes’ The original interpretation of travel in the past that we aim to develop and apply relies upon the convergence of different approaches deployed in a plethora of disciplines, ranging from landscape archaeology to anthropology, from geography to social sciences, from phenomenology to environmental behavioural studies, from spatial analysis and ICTs to cognitive studies and environmental psychology.

The intention with the more historical approach is to highlight how communication networks functioned, in the past more than in contemporary societies, as formidable channels through which people, goods, news, ideas and cultures were transferred, to the point that they can be addressed as the ‘circulatory system’ of regions, states and continents. They are means through which social, economic and cultural patterns are conveyed, and languages, traditions, religions, habits, fashions, musical practices and material culture are transmitted. So far, medieval road networks have been studied mainly in their devotional context as pilgrimage routes. Innumerable publications investigated these aspects and highlighted the role played by these medieval ‘highways’ in building the cultural identity of Europe.1 This approach is grounded in a historical perspective, rooted in the research of Johan Plesner, first published in 1938. This methodology was refined with the book by Thomas Szabó in 1992, and ‘steered’ towards a more structured archaeological-

Fundamentally, this chapter will try to merge a more traditional approach with a new vision of the journey as a way of exploring the landscape. The former is aimed at documenting and reconstructing the topographical and material evidence of routes in the past, and specifically the road connecting southern England to Rome as described by Archbishop Sigeric in AD 990 during his homeward journey from Rome to Canterbury, investigating the aspects linked to the narratives, practicalities and modalities of a medieval journey. The latter is an attempt at understanding the way in which medieval travellers sought to make sense of their surroundings, how they socially and culturally structured the space. In other words, we will try to analyse the modalities of a medieval journey, including its practicalities and knowledge-related aspects (such as mapping and orienteering), trying at the same time to grasp the emotional and phenomenological facets associated with space and landscape perception, cultural challenges and introspective implications. Indeed, in this book we will try to reconcile two different approaches: on the one hand, we will attempt to draft a

1  However, although pilgrimage journeys will be occasionally included in the debate and will be the focus of a short section (infra, pp. 14-16), we will not devote specific attention to the religious implications of pilgrimage; literature on the topic is abundant and exhaustive.

1

The Route of the Franks topographical approach mainly thanks to the works of Tiziano Mannoni (1983, 1992).

A general reappraisal of the approach to the study of communication networks in the past is necessary, since in the last few decades landscape theory itself has been experiencing an evolution in its conceptual framework. In a nutshell, we could say that geographical space has stopped being considered simply as the backdrop to human activity, the neutral and inactive background to history rather than a dynamic actor playing a distinctive role in the course of time. The very definition of ‘landscape’ has been updated, enshrined in Article 1 of the European Landscape Convention, signed in Florence on 20 November 2000.4

Since the end of the twentieth century, then, archaeologists and surveyors have shown so much interest in ancient communication systems that the term ‘archaeology of roads’ has come into use (De Minicis 2012). In this approach, the ‘context’ is a theoretical framework where material and cultural elements merge to create the holistic dimension of our analysis. The latter is then focused on cultural landscapes, envisaged as the palimpsest where history and environment interrelate. Communication networks are the threads of the web that connects places; trails and paths, and roads trigger interactions and generate social, economic and political trends.

Other suggestions come from environmental studies, mainly from environmental psychology. The focus of the latter, initiated by the influential work of Kevin Lynch (1960, 1972), lies in the examination of how people acquire information about their surrounding environment, and how observers understand the ‘landscape’. Here, the focus is therefore shifted to the way in which medieval travellers experienced their journey and navigated the surroundings, distinguishing those elements that drove and influenced the way in which they perceived the space. These elements can be categorised into the linear (paths, itineraries, edges, boundaries, etc.), punctual (destinations, crossroads, nodes, intersections, loci) and volumetric (villages, agglomerations, religious buildings and sanctuaries, markets, resting places, etc.) constituents of the activity of movement.5

Within the framework of a discipline embracing many aspects of the relationship between humans and geographical space commonly referred to as archaeogeography, the very prolific working group gathered in Besançon around Gérard Chouquer has produced special contributions devoted to the study of road networks.2 These ‘archaeo-geographers’ developed a conception of space in pre-modern society based on an essentially analogical mode. Contrary to modern societies, where perception follows two parallel paths, one being logical, the other temporal,3 in nonmodern societies the experience of the surroundings is defined as analogic-spatial. This means that from an epistemological point of view humans perceived their surroundings mainly on the basis of analogies and similitudes (Chouquer 2011: 4).

Further enhancement of our analysis can rely upon an experimental application of the configurational theory proposed by Bill Hillier in 1984 (Hillier and Hanson 1984). This theory establishes relationships between components of the urban environment affecting the ‘logic’ of space and therefore can be extended to the analysis of how movement through the non-urban landscape influences the configuration of space (Hillier 2007). Essentially, this application of the space syntax theory builds upon this method of transforming the effects on space perception into mathematical expressions, so as to understand the human cognition process (Hillier 2007: VI). The different methodologies developed so far thus function ‘to show not only that human movement was spatially guided by geometrical and topological rather than metric factors but also to clarify why a powerful impact of space structure on movement was to be mathematically expected’ (Hillier 2007: VII).

The debate concentrated first on theoretical issues related to the study of roads as opposed to communication axes. Roads can be studied and analysed in their materiality and morphological shape, communication axes in their functionality. The morphological approach includes the study of systems of material objects (the scattered evidence and segments of road or infrastructure) and of the imprint that roads left on the ground. This imprint is the outcome of an uninterrupted practice of regular passing-overs, a sort of incremental flux that shapes the route itself. Where the flux is not sufficiently intense to imprint distinctly a path and the sedimentation of passages is not evident, the expert traveller – eventually a guide – follows the landmarks, a series of passage points that work like the dots to be connected in a drawing (Chabaud et al. 2000).

4 

Council of Europe, European Treaty Series no. 176. Council of Europe, Treaty Office , viewed 14 January 2022. 5  The urban theory of Kevin Lynch has inspired research in the field of urban studies and so far has also been tentatively applied to the study of Roman urbanism (Favro 1996; Haselberger 2000; Paliou 2014: 4).

2  E.g. by É. Vion, S. Robert, C. Marchand, S. Leturcq, M. Watteaux, etc.: see Robert and Verdier 2009; Chouquer 2011; Watteaux 2011. 3  I.e. things have an established nature, but their meaning can be tuned to the specific context in which they happen: rain is materially H2O but immaterially it can be a disaster or a blessing.

2

Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey The core of this theory is that places are much more than physical locations, definitely much more than the dots on the distribution maps that landscape archaeologists use to display their research (Witcher 1998: 63). Rather – having special meanings and values for each person – places are the cornerstones on which individuals build their identity. The same place is different in each individual’s perception. Therefore, the act of moving from one place to another acquires different meanings and feelings, and pathways turn into the skeleton of daily life and lived landscape. The latter can be described as the individual notion of landscape and environment in which people move, orienting themselves ‘in relation to familiar places or objects… and make decisions regarding further action’ (Tilley 1994: 16). In this context, roads and communication networks have to be understood as systems to ‘order places and the ways in which they are encountered’ (Witcher 1998: 4).

In general terms, the school of Space Syntax headed by Bill Hillier has been engaged in demonstrating that ‘space’ is not simply the background against which environmental and architectural volumetric objects are plotted and chiefly not the ‘neutral framework’ in which material existence is performed. Rather, space is the component shaping human behaviour, since movement, encounters, interacting and avoiding, gathering and settling, producing and consuming not only ‘happen in space [but] in themselves they constitute spatial patterns’ (Hillier 2007: 20). An additional approach is represented by the extension to this type of cultural itinerary of the theoretical approach developed by Frank Brown, who investigated the way in which Roman urban space was shaped by rituals, whether political or religious (Brown 1961), analysing how spatial constraints and environmental characteristics influence movement and activities. In this way, we will attempt to approach the subject from an environmental behaviour studies (EBS) perspective. The latter can be considered as a stand-alone discipline, both humanistic and scientific, as it is concerned with developing an explanatory theory of environmentbehaviour relations (EBR) (Rapoport 1990). Basically, then, the theory would make sense of how human behaviour is affected by surrounding spatial elements, providing a general interpretation for this interaction.

This interpretative perspective, manifestly very useful for the study of trails, paths, and roads, as the work of Adrian Chadwick has proven (e.g. Chadwick 2004), has only exceptionally been used to study roads and communication networks in the past (see e.g. Witcher 1998; Malmberg 2009; Östenberg, Malmberg and Bjørnebye 2015), but it undoubtedly has extraordinary potential in understanding the factors of ‘movement’ and ‘navigation’ through time and space.

Moving ahead from traditional topographical and geo-historical studies, the ‘road’ walked by Sigeric, the ‘Route of the Franks’, instead of being considered merely as an artefact, as a physical structure enabling movement to a destination, will also be investigated with a more phenomenological approach, where the stress is on the subjective aspects of ‘perception’, of how human beings experience and understand their surroundings when moving through the landscape. Thus, roads and communication networks turn into much more than lines on a map. They come to embody ideology, power and identity.

Even if some criticism about the application of this theoretical framework to archaeology has arisen (e.g. Fleming 1999; Brück 2005),7 due to the fact that it is difficult to read the archaeological evidence in the light of the concept that experience is a social construct (Snead, Erickson and Darling 2009c: 15), this approach has proved to be stimulating for discussion and has generated interesting outcomes, like the analysis of Roman roads in Italy performed by Ray Laurence (1999). For the Middle Ages, although aspects of mobility are left in the background, the work of Sarah Semple shows how landmarks like barrow burials were perceived as markers to define territorial boundaries (Semple 2008).

This inherent anthropological approach relies mainly upon the work of the British archaeologist and anthropologist Christopher Tilley, whose Phenomenology of Landscape (Tilley 1994) was a groundbreaking event in landscape archaeology. Phenomenology can be defined as a vision of the external world, not in its materiality but rather in the meanings that it acquires for people time after time; the stress is thus on how things are perceived rather than how they ‘objectively’ are.6

However, so far only a few experiments in sensorial archaeology have been carried out to create a more phenomenological picture of the landscapes of movement in the past. They have in common a nonprioritisation toward vision to the detriment of the other senses. The synergy of the five senses should indeed be needed to describe more fully the perception of space through movement, acknowledging the multisensorial qualities of human experiences of landscape. This leads to the conclusion that ‘a landscape is simultaneously a

6 

Coherently, there is no single ‘school’ of phenomenology and, since its first definition, no authoritative ‘body of teaching’ has been established (Audi 1999: 578-579). Unanimously, the publication of Henri Lefebvre’s work in 1974 set the ball rolling, drawing upon the concept of space as a social product (Lefebvre 1974).

7  A broader discussion of archaeological theory can be found in Bintliff 2011.

3

The Route of the Franks visionscape, a touchscape, a soundscape, a smellscape, and a tastescape’ (Tilley 2010: 272).

can be reprocessed and form part of a broader debate. Intensive prospections supported by remote sensing, GIS processing and predictive modelling allow the collection of heterogeneous archaeological evidence, whose interpretation emphasises the physical and temporal context on multiple topographical and chronological scales.

This approach leads to the concept of ‘travelscape’, which I defined as the experience of the journey, in its material and immaterial aspects, ranging from landscape perception and the modalities and practicalities of travel to all of the emotional and mental factors of navigation through time and space, building a multi- and hyper-sensorial experience.

Eleftheria Paliou has relatively recently summarised how many possible approaches have been developed for analysing human behaviour and movement in space, with a particular focus on the methodologies that make extensive use of ICTs, laying a special emphasis on space syntax as the principal tool for analysing social space (Paliou 2014). The inherent factor in the application of these spatial analyses is that they consider the metrical properties of space, establishing a direct link between human behavioural responses and the mathematical and quantifiable properties of the surroundings, intended as built space (Paliou 2014: 4).

This revolutionary approach to the study of communication networks has been paralleled by an innovative application of landscape theory (supra), with an increasing emphasis laid on the aspect of ‘movement’. It has been fertilised by the introduction of the mobility paradigm, first developed within geographical studies. Indeed, the latter were substantially rejuvenated by what is called ‘the mobility turn’ (i.e. the adoption by several disciplines of this paradigm as the central core of the interpretation of phenomena), which is unanimously acknowledged to have been initiated by the publication of Axioms for Reading the Landscape by Pierce Lewis (1979). The new theoretical framework is thus built upon the tenet that further theoretical deepening has been pluralised in ‘mobilities’, in which the focus is on how movement (of people, things and ideas) affects contemporary and past societies, and how those movements generate social implications (Sheller and Hurry 2006). The rising recognition of the importance of movement on individuals and society led to ‘new ways of theorising about how these mobilities lie at the center of constellations of power, the creation of identities and the microgeographies of everyday life’ (Cresswell 2011: 551). Beginning in the 1990s, the mobilities paradigm has been adopted in the broader field of social sciences, with the development of theoretical frameworks in which the concept of ‘mobility’ is crucial to the interpretative process. Most importantly, developments in the theoretical framework that defines space as a social construct (Lefebvre 1974), exponentially amplified by the publication of The Social logic of space (Hillier and Hanson 1984), have substantiated the idea that movement through space determines patterns of encounter and avoidance, in this way shaping social relationships.

‘Landscapes of movement’ are thus a perfect field of application for these quantitative methods, and routes and paths have been processed and ‘predicted’ using methods such as network analysis, viewshed analysis, and with the tools collected under the name of costsurface analysis, which includes the friction layer and least-cost path techniques, among others (Paliou 2014: 10). The latter methodology is built upon a theoretical framework that is largely different from those relying upon the space syntax paradigm (supra), in that the analysis of human movement is based on the axiom that mobile individuals are sensitive to metric properties of space, and therefore they move consciously or unconsciously seeking ways to spare energy, avoiding as much as possible expending effort, while saving time and expense (see e.g. Gietl, Doneus and Fera 2008; Van Lanen et al. 2015). The Network Friction Model (NFM) is a digital tool for assessing the level of accessibility of each individual cell of a given map. The accessibility (or inaccessibility) is assessed on the basis of data linked to each cell. The data are of an environmental or archaeological nature and essentially visualise how ‘obstructive’ to connection the specific area is. In this sense, the network friction ‘uses the principle of locating landscape obstacles (push factors) in order to reconstruct zones potentially containing routes’ (van Lanen 2017: 34).

By the end of the twentieth century, the mobility paradigm had been introduced in historical disciplines, and the first innovative studies about sea and land transportation and circulation had appeared, also triggering new visions of communication and connectivity in the past, emphasising how ancient societies and material culture had been influenced and shaped by them (Laurence 2011).

Predictably, all these tools and methodologies are biased by unresolvable issues, like the consistency of pre-existing knowledge on the part of the human group moving in that landscape, by the difference between seasons and meteorological and geo-hydrological conditions, by technological developments in

Thanks to a renewed approach to landscape archaeology, a huge amount of archaeological data 4

Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey individuals and the environment, one of the most efficient ways to explore the surrounding space.

road engineering and means of transport, by the complexity of cognitive processes and particularly by the unpredictability of individual differences and characteristics.

At the same time, journey is defined by a double nature: in its ‘materiality’ it implies an immersion in the geographical milieu, in its ‘intangibility’ it alienates the individuals from their own cocoon and familiar contexts. Consequently, undertaking a journey normally implies the exploration of material and immaterial characteristics of the surroundings, an exploration performed with the body and the mind, with the five senses as well as our feelings.

Furthermore, most of the case studies in cost-surface analysis performed so far are biased toward elevation and fail to account for dynamic landscapes. To mitigate this limitation, it has been proposed to design layers where all sorts of ‘pull and push factors’ are measured and mapped, attempting to define friction layers of social and economic elements or of cultural attractors.8 In this case, the accessibility/inaccessibility of each surface unit (i.e. its surface cost) is weighed against a set of environmental and human factors assessed positively (attractors or facilitators) or negatively (detractors or obstacles) (Citter 2019, with references).

Indeed, the simple act of ‘moving’ from one place to another, albeit at the core of the mobility paradigm (supra), does not completely match with the definition of ‘journey’ adopted here. By ‘journey’, we mean an action deliberately undertaken by individuals, even at the request or in the interest of third parties, performed as movement towards a near or distant destination, a destination from which it is consciously decided to come back once the activity objective of the trip itself is completed. This action, however, is not exhausted in the physical dimension of ‘displacement’, rather it implies the questioning of habits, the change of customary behaviours, the challenge of entrenched convictions and rooted beliefs.

The biases and limitations connected to the application of quantification to human behaviour and numerical properties to settlement dynamics that are inherent in such an approach (e.g. Herzog 2014) can be bypassed by structuring the research methodology in three phases. The first consists mainly in the construction of a predictive model based on a top-down approach. This is followed by a second, more analytical phase where the model is analysed and ground-truthed, case by case, in its cultural context. The procedure ends with a postdictive evaluation, where a bottom-up approach is adopted. The reasons behind the settlement strategies and choices in the communication network are further investigated and contextualised at this point (Citter 2019: 336-339; Citter and Patacchini 2018 for Italian language readers).9

As Parks acutely pointed out, ‘the English word travel is the same as travail, and means toil’ (Parks 1954: XI), thus highlighting the component of sacrifice, privation and hard labour that is implied in the enterprise.11 It should not be forgotten that there are a multiplicity of types of travellers as there are a wide variety of forms of travel, ranging from ‘professional’ travellers, i.e. those for whom travelling is an essential part of their activity (like ambassadors, messengers, traders, sailors, couriers…), to those who undertake a trip sporadically, most times as a free choice, for tourism, religious purposes, adventure or other occasional motivations. The former are focused on the goal of their displacement and do not devote special attention to the travel itself; the latter, on the other hand, lay the same emphasis on the time spent at the destination as on the journey (Malamut 2000: 189). Like contemporary business travellers, the professional travellers of the Middle Ages rarely engaged with the local culture and traditions.12

Conceptualising the journey In a common dictionary like the Oxford Learner’s, where the noun ‘journey’ is described as ‘an act of travelling from one place to another, especially when they are far apart’,10 movement is subtly connected to its finality, the goal of reaching a destination, rather than to the action itself and to the space that separates the departure and arrival points. Conversely, journeying can be considered one of the most practical kinds of interaction between 8 

Dwelling on these considerations, a very interesting test has been performed by Rowin Van Lanen for modelling Roman and early medieval routes in the Netherlands. The adopted method is an integrated data processing of network friction layers. Basically, the method tries to merge layers locating ideal environmental conditions for routes as well as landscape obstacles (i.e. push factors) and other layers reporting the archaeological (therefore, cultural) data, and the poles that could have played the role of attractors (i.e. pull factors): Van Lanen 2017. 9  An application to a segment of the Italian itinerary followed by Sigeric is in Bertoldi 2013. 10  Oxford Dictionary online: , viewed 14 January 2022.

11 

Coulet 1996: 13-15 provides a bibliographical review of historiographical approaches to the topic of travel and travellers in late medieval France, underlying the need to distinguish the study of the ‘actors’ and their motivations. 12  A few examples show how the precariousness, the estrangement and the feeling of being alien to the land where they were carrying out their business endangered their own lives: Malamut 2000: 190 with case-studies.

5

The Route of the Franks Considering that the nature and the identity of the people engaged in mobility in medieval times, whether at long or short distance, whether occasional or regular, whether constrained or undertaken of one’s own free will, are still very tentatively known, it is at the very least inexact and too generic to affirm that medieval journeys lacked freedom of choice and awareness (Mazzi 2000: 317-318). On the contrary, as proven by the list of Canterbury’s archbishops who undertook the journey (infra, pp. 39-41), although the collection of the pallium at the papal court in Rome was an associated element of their divine ministry, only a few archbishops actually journeyed to Rome, implying that, besides specific impediments like poor health or advanced age, aspects of personal inclination and individual decision were determinant. Therefore, anticipating the discourse about the relationship between travel and identity, it can be stressed that the factor of ‘free choice’, of intentionality, is definitely an element upon which identity is built.

on which the link between identity and place is built and ordered (Janni 1984), regulating the interaction of individuals and groups (Tilley 1994: 30). The application of this conceptual framework to the past implies that the best – or even the only – way of investigating the modalities of exploration of the landscape is the study of the material pathways, roads and tracks that have been progressively engraved in the physical landscape. By means of the material record of the communication networks we can understand human landscapes as a system, determining how people at different times in history, and by different patterns, orientate themselves and even make themselves part of the landscape (Tilley 1994: 27-31). The evidence of roads, paths, tracks and other routes left on the terrain over the course of time, their engineering or their basicness, their naturalness or artificiality reflect the different ways in which people moved in the landscape, and explain how space was structured by social travelling. Hence, landscape archaeology plays a key role in distinguishing and analysing the web of social, cultural, and historic determinants and agents that structured those specific ‘travelling spaces’ (Guttormsen 2007: 95).

A journey, with all its dangers, challenges, ups and downs, discomforts and pleasures, is a formidable way to promote introspection, endowed with a feeling of detachment rather than closeness. A journey represents interaction but also solitude, a suspended space where consequently regulation is equally transient and labile. Travellers are exposed to ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ (W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene 1), at the same time being and not being part of the society they come across.

Essentially, all identified routes are manifestations of human movement through the landscape. Understanding their logic, the socio-political organisations, the economic forces and the cultural factors that shaped them leads to comprehending ‘the way that trails, paths, and roads materialize traditional knowledge and engineering, world views, memories, and identity’ (Snead, Erickson and Darling 2009b: XV).

Landscapes of movement Building our discourse upon the above, we can infer that the identity-making process is also constructed upon mobility. Since the ‘mobility structures’ located in the landscape constitute the framework in which geographical awareness is expressed, the study of the historical traces of the ways in which people moved in the landscape is the key to understanding this process (Guttormsen 2007: 104).

In this sense, roads play a crucial role in which landscape perceptions can be manipulated and influenced. The most glaring example is undoubtedly the way in which ancient Rome dealt with communication networks. Conquest, colonisation, cultural change, economic subordination and military subjection were all enforced by means of a formidable web of roads that progressively but relentlessly changed the landscape perception of local populations, interconnecting each thread of the web to the capital. Thus, their focal point was recentred and geographical space recompacted, creating a sort of artificial unity, a whole body whose circulatory system pumped back and forth from its heart, Rome.

Indeed, being physically or socially connected to a landscape implies moving through it; the primary way of experiencing the surroundings and gaining knowledge of the landscape is therefore the action of movement (Guttormsen 2007: 95). Appreciation of the material and immaterial characteristics of a given place can be achieved only via movement to and from it, further assessing relationships with other places (Tilley 1994: 31). On the other hand, the action of movement is materialised in geographical space in the form of pathways or roads. As Robert Witcher synthesised, ‘by physically and symbolically linking places together, paths order places and the ways in which they are encountered as part of everyday social praxis’ (Witcher 1998: 63). Roads and pathways turn into the scheme

Each stretch of road, newly built or readapted from an existing path, was landscaped and ‘architectured’ or ‘engineered’ to be loaded with new meanings, new references, a new emotional perception and new social construct. Movement in space was dragged into the Roman cultural and political sphere, starting from urban streets to extra-muros roads, from long distance routes to local and secondary axes, ordering and organising everyday life and social activity (Witcher 1998: 67). 6

Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey The debate about the agency and the level of awareness of the dominant groups in this operation of structuring power relationships by means of the ideology underlying the construction of the road network has been fruitful and enriching when dealing with Rome and its empire. In this perspective, indeed, the construction of a road can be seen not only as a mode of remodelling the landscape in its material aspect, but also a way of conveying an ideological view of space, eventually entering into conflict with pre-existing understandings (Witcher 1998: 63). In other words, roads became ‘a device of power that produced a distinctly Roman space across Europe and the Mediterranean’ (Laurence 1999: 199). But what about medieval roads? Since in the medieval communication network most routes were derived from pre-existing infrastructures, can the component of intentionality or agency for their implementation still be stressed? After the fall of the Roman imperial authority, were there still powers able to draw – consciously or unconsciously – these landscapes under their control? And, on top of this, was landscape perception and appropriation still so heavily driven by external agents? How did territorial powers manage to give a strong imprint to landscape identity just by readapting existing tracks and including those naturally spawned and not engineered? Indeed, even if the communication network made use of existing Roman roads, the re-use of short or longer segments has always been driven by the need to compose a new network, to establish new connections and new ‘constellations of power’ (supra).

pointed out by other scholars – how the inhabited space was perceived as ‘safe’, contrary to the ‘unhallowed periphery evoking an untamed wilderness’ (Blair 2018: 76), although he acknowledges that each generation remoulded its own interpretation of the spiritual ‘imbibition’ of the landscape. Thus, leaving the merry and secure inhabited space would have meant not only leaping into the unknown but also venturing into environments populated by monstrous creatures and mysterious entities. Of course, this is a simplified view. A deeper analysis of the tenth-century documentation in England shows how much the periphery was integrated into people’s lives and proves that positive meaning could be assigned to supernatural presences in the untamed environment, although the Christian faith has often demonised spaces and elements linked to indigenous deities, to the point that even the remains of prehistoric earthworks were considered a cursed manifestation of devilish creatures. Nonetheless, the whole Anglo-Saxon age offers testimonies of how much people’s ‘landscape of the mind’ was populated by ancestors and mythical heroes, turning it into a ritual landscape forging group and individual identity (Blair 2018: 76-77). This is particularly interesting for the analysis of Sigeric’s journey, since Blair’s study seems to demonstrate that, while until the end of the sixth century monumental evidence from the past was continuously reworked as a heritage carrying a sense of inclusiveness and as the expression of a shared history, after the beginning of the tenth century these ‘relics’ of the past were pushed to the margins of the cultural perception of the habitat, loaded with unhallowed meanings (Blair 2018: 84-85). At the same time, however, part of the monumental heritage that imprinted the landscape was reprocessed and dragged into the new definition of powers, with dominating dynasties appropriating prehistoric, protohistoric and Romano-British moats, forts, tumuli, mounds, and other defensive and funerary structures, by building churches, implanting monumental burials and erecting fortresses.

Probably the genesis of these new routes, composed of chains of stretches of roads adapted to serve novel needs and fulfil other requirements, was less piloted from the top and less imbued with ideology, but we can still imagine how deeply movement along these axes influenced and patterned landscape perception. We could sum up by saying that a bottom-up process replaced a top-down one, meaning that social structures were not imposed from above but were composed by individual actions and singular initiatives.

Provided that, as we shall see later (chap. 4), direct sources like ancient maps and travel literature can deliver a good deal of information on aspects of the relationship with the landscape and perception of the surrounding space, the inherent difficulties and obstacles of this insider’s personification are obvious, all the more so if we think about reviving the perceptions of people in the past. However, it is possible to streamline this theoretical framework with a more practical approach, leading our investigation back to the two essential components of human landscapes, i.e. places and paths, and to focus our analysis on the way in which people experience the former by moving along the latter, alternating movement and stasis (Tilley 1994). The acknowledgement that the vision and the perception of places is therefore influenced by

Phenomenology of travel: Landscapes of the mind Given the above theoretical framework, which introduces a phenomenological approach to landscape archaeology, we can attempt to re-enact the experience of the subject, collecting as many ‘sentimental’ perceptions as possible, attempting to embody the experience on the part of the subject (see Tilley 1994, 2004; Thomas 2006). This approach can be expanded to include John Blair’s study of ‘landscapes of the mind’, although his focus is the perception in the Anglo-Saxon world of ‘consciousness of the built environment’ (Blair 2018: 73-100). Building on documentary evidence (texts and illuminations of early medieval England), Blair highlights – on the basis of what was previously 7

The Route of the Franks the way in which we reach them and navigate through them becomes then more immediate, given that there are multiple ways of approaching each location in the landscape.

Going back in time, we can highlight how relevant this ‘phenomenological approach’ is to some of the most renowned journeys of Antiquity and Late Antiquity, reported in travel accounts. An excellent example is the elegiac tale of the return to his homeland of Rutilius Namatianus14 at the beginning of the fifth century, where the few references to the landscape are imbued with melancholy, a sense of decay and a feeling of estrangement.

After all, the notion of ‘emotional geography’ is gaining ground in contemporary geography theory, with the recognition that shared feelings in particular generate a strong connection with the geographical space, triggering ‘landscapes of sensations’, which, in turn, shape and pattern the habitat (Persi 2010; see also Bruno 2002).

The feeling of insecurity and the disorientation that results from confrontation with alien landscapes and unknown environments turn into real terror when the traveller is literally swept away by the force of unfamiliar natural elements and phenomena. The account of the terrifying crossing of the Great St Bernard Pass in the depth of the winter of 1188, by John de Bremble, monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, is one of the most impressive. The group is held back by adverse weather conditions in the village of Restopolis (currently Etroubles), at the foot of what is called Mount Jove, after the tradition of the Sanctuary of Jupiter at its top. After a few days, the party decides to undertake the ascent anyway with the help of some specialised mountaineer guides, named marones (on which, see infra, p. 81), and is able to reach the village of Saint-Remi, at the top of the mountain, which is said to be crammed with ‘throngs of pilgrims’. There, they are caught by the first avalanche. A huge mass of snow crashes from the highest peaks ‘carrying away everything it encounters’, and sweeps away the crowds of pilgrims still seeking lodging in the houses of the village. Those that are outside are suffocated, some of those in the buildings are ‘crushed and crippled’. The terrified survivors spend several days ‘in this illomened village’, praying intensely for their safety, until ‘the marones of the mountains’ offer their services again ‘for a large reward’. Equipped with hats, mittens and high boots with iron spikes on the soles, they attempt to open the road, but they are caught by another avalanche; ‘an enormous mass of snow like a mountain slips from the rocks and carries them away, as it seemed to the depths of Hell’. An attempt is made to rescue them. ‘Those who had become aware of the mysterious disaster had made a hasty and furious dash down to the murderous spot, and, having dug out the marones, were carrying some of them back quite lifeless, and other half dead, upon poles, and dragging others with broken limbs in their arms… When the poor pilgrims came out of church they were terrified by this horrible

Contrary to what Tilley argued, we think that written and archaeological sources can concur in defining our understanding of landscape perception in the past, especially when dealing with reports of ancient travels, to the point that our sources greatly influence our vision, filtered through their feelings, interpretation and representation, and shape our understanding of how medieval people ‘viewed the world in which they lived and how they travelled in it’ (Adams 2001a: 1). Among the récits de voyage in poetic form, the report of the journey that the bishop of Pavia, Magnus Felix Ennodius, undertook at the beginning of the sixth century to his native Gaul sheds some light on aspects of perception. Ennodius was charged – most probably by Lawrence, bishop of Milan – with performing a diplomatic mission to the court of the Burgundian King Gondebaud (or Gondoval), at the castle of Briançon (Brigantia) in the region of Dauphiné (Carini 1988: 164-165). We can delineate part of his trip, which probably included the crossing of the Alps at the Col de Montgenèvre and stops at Arles and Vienne in the Rhone Valley, but the order in which these places are listed in the poem is sparse and inorganic, to the extent that any topographical reconstruction is hindered. It seems indeed that the main interest of Ennodius was not the accurate reconstruction of the itinerary but rather the transmission of the emotions and sensory experiences felt by the traveller: the heat and the cold suffered in the course of the same day, the harshness of the path, the freshness of the mountain rivulets, the impressive sanctuaries of Torino, etc. The narrative is constructed in such a way as to magnify the escalating tension, until it dissolves with the accomplishment of the mission; it is broken, fragmented and makes use of communicative expedients such as flashbacks. In other words, Ennodius does not report on ‘a’ journey but about ‘his’ journey, loaded with all the vivid experiences and the dangers with which he was confronted.13

14. 14 

Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, an important political figure belonging to a large family of landowners from Gallia Narbonensis, returned to his homeland in the fall of 417 (?) after having completed his mission as prefect of Rome. He recounts his voyage by sea in the elegiac poem De Redito suo, preserved only in its first part. The poem boasts a very extensive literature, although its aspects of landscape perception have still to be analysed. In general, see Carcopino 2012.

13 

Among the contemporaries of Sigeric, only the biographer of St Gerald of Aurillac and especially Richer, chronicler of a History of France who reported his journey from Reims to Chartres, delivers some information about the practicalities of travel (infra, chap. 4), although the words of Bede about the death of Ceolfrid remain the most significant for describing the feeling of estrangement: infra, p.

8

Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey accident, hesitated a little while, and then fled back to Restopolis as fast as they could… There they spent the feast of Epiphany. Then having waited for fine weather, they hired the marones, and returning to the deathdealing village, fear of death lending them wings, now crawling, now stumbling, managed at last to reach that day a point halfway up the mountain. On the following day, plucking up courage, they escaped from the horrid sanctuary of Jove, and setting out in the direction of their own land, reached home without great difficulty’ (text quoted in the translation of Coolidge 1889: 6-8; see Tyler 1930: 27-29). It is hard to imagine a more powerful description of the ‘continual state of death’, of awe at the ‘mysterious disaster’ (people native to the gently rolling lands of southern England surely had never seen ranges of such high and wild mountains, let alone avalanches!), of horror of being confronted with casualties and severe injuries. In a letter that John himself wrote to his subprior Geoffrey, apologising for not having written earlier, blaming his delay on the difficulties of that journey, the wording he uses to describe the experience is again very imaginative and effective: ‘on the one hand looking up to the heavens of the mountains, on the other shuddering at the hell of the valleys, feeling myself so much nearer heaven that I was more sure that my prayer would be heard’ (Tyler 1930: 29). We could say that the extreme landscapes are perceived as a manifestation of God’s omnipotence and greatness.

verge of departing for a new military campaign to supply themselves with itineraries, not only in a written version but also in a pictorial form. Most probably, this quote refers to the two types of route calculators known from Antiquity: the written lists of places displayed along a given route including indications of the distance separating them, named itineraria (something very similar to the list of ‘stops’ that is handed down under the name of Sigeric);15 and an illustrated version of the road network, similar to what is thought to be the archetype of the Tabula Peutingeriana.16 However, when we read the whole passage of Vegetius,17 it becomes evident that the term ‘itinerary’ does not denote a basic list of place names with an indication of the distances between them, at least it is not only that. It is a more informative document, where there are data about the condition of the roads, the shortcuts, the crossroads and – more interestingly – some information 15 

The surviving itineraria are texts written on a broad variety of supports, from the list of places incised on the four milestone-shaped silver cups from Vicarello, reporting the itinerary from Gades to Rome, to the milestone from Tongeren, in Belgium; from the manuscripts of the Itinerarium Antonini, an extensive collection of overland roads and one sea route, the chronology of which is still discussed, to those of the Itinerarium Burdigalense (named after Burdigala, Bordeaux, the starting point) or Hierosolimitanum (named after Jerusalem, the destination) of AD 333. It is essential to stress that, although in most publications the itineraria are presented unproblematically and are uncritically linked to the central bureau of the administration that in late imperial times took the name of cursus publicus (charged with handling all the traffic of people, goods and information that circulated for official reasons: Corsi 2000, 2020a), with the exception of the above-mentioned Itinerarium Burdigalense, reporting a journey effectively carried out in AD 333 from Burdigala-Bordeaux to Jerusalem, the nature of these documents is unknown to us. We cannot assess whether they were merely erudite compilations for private entertainment or collations of official documents, although the example of the silver cups of Vicarello opens up the possibility that the donor of this precious offering in the sanctuary had commissioned the unique pieces of art providing the craftsman with the itinerary of the route that he was going to take, with the clear intention of advertising the magnitude of his effort. Their use must have been relatively widespread, at least as far as can be deduced from the mentions made by some late Latin authors (e.g. Hist. Aug., Alex. Sev. 45; Ambr. Sermo 5.2; in Psalm. 118, 5.2.2-3), although these sources report the habit of planning a journey by deciding the itinerary and the places at which to stay over: see Corsi 2000: 43 and note 91. In general, on the itineraria see the updates in Basso 2016, with earlier references. 16  The Tabula Peutingeriana, a unique medieval copy of a late Roman (?) document, probably derived from an early imperial archetype, will be more extensively discussed at pp. 71-72. 17  Veg. epit. r. mil. 3.6: ‘Primum itineraria omnium regionum in quibus bellum geritur plenissime debet habere perscripta, ita ut locorum intervalla non solum passuum numero sed etiam viarum qualitate perdiscat, compendia, deverticula, montes, flumina ad fidem descripta consideret, usque eo ut sollertiores duces itineraria provinciarum in quibus necessitas gerebatur non tantum adnotata sed etiam picta habuisse firmentur, ut non solum consilio mentis verum aspectu oculorum viam profecturus eligeret’; ‘First, he should have itineraries of all regions in which war is being waged written out in the fullest detail, so that he may learn the distances between places in terms of the number of miles and the quality of roads, and examine short-cuts, by-ways, mountains and rivers, accurately described. Indeed, the more conscientious generals reportedly had itineraries of the provinces in which the emergency occurred not just annotated but illustrated as well, so that they could choose their route when setting out by the visual aspect as well as by mental calculation’; translation by Milner 1996: 73.

The most renowned travel account in Latin literature, the satirical tale of Horace’s trip from Rome to Brindisium (38 or 37 BC), reports on a ‘full-monty’ traveller’s experience, including the mosquito bites and typical diseases. In other passages, we inhale the smoke, the smell of the crackling pans in sordid taverns full of servants busy cursing and swearing; we are deafened by the bustling of men and the trampling of animals; we sweat in the crowded and dusty yards busy with carriages and horses. These brushstrokes provide us with a more corporeal yet multicoloured picture of the experience of a journey. These testimonies tell us about the smells, the noises, the tastes, the body’s wellbeing or discomfort, the sweat and the cold. In other words, the soundscape, the smellscape and the other bodily responses to external elements, in tandem with the visionscape, compose the travelscape. Landscape perception and space representation We have to go back in time, to late Roman society, to get an insight into the relation between landscape perception and its representation. Although aimed at giving practical advice, the overview provided by Vegetius, a writer specialised in military treaties, otherwise ignored by scholars, is deeply revealing, especially when analysed in its context. Vegetius gives instructions to the most zealous commanders on the 9

The Route of the Franks about the geographical features, essentially mountain ranges and watercourses, faithfully described.

The complexity of the topics and the lack of consensus among scholars advise against attempting to summarise the discussion, suggesting instead that we should only stress a few points and propose some lines of research. Moreover, challenging some well-established and consolidated views, it has been argued that Romans did not make common use of maps, at least not for practical purposes, unless the formae that were displayed in public monuments, like the famous map by Agrippa affixed to the Porticus Vipsania of Rome, are to be intended as real maps or other sorts of representations of the extent of the Empire (Brodersen 2004: 185; Albu 2014: 112).19

This can be interpreted as an isolated proof of evidence of the interest in the landscape. It is, of course, a finite form of interest: geographical features are taken into account as long as they are considered obstacles to overcome in the course of the military march. However, this cue sheds some light on a new reading of documents like the Tabula Peutingeriana, where the presence of geographical features (coastlines and bodies of water, mountains and rivers), rather than being ‘regarded as merely “decorative” elements, turns out to be an important indication for the traveller’ (Talbert 2010a: 89).

Undoubtedly, the common thread linking the surviving documents not linked to cadastral purposes is the centrality of the road network, to the point that the pictorial documents show a ‘topological understanding’ of space (Brodersen 2001: 16-18). As mentioned above, topology is a branch of mathematics that essentially accepts the preservation of geometrical properties of space and objects when subjected to deformation, as long as this deformation is continuous. In the field of cartography, the definition of ‘topological map’ applies to a highly simplified map that preserves spatial relations while sacrificing scale and shape. Introduced in GIS, a topological approach allows the insertion of lines bordering two neighbouring areas only once, establishing unique relationships between each set of neighbourhoods delimited for each point (Isaksen 2008).

Supposedly, then, we are confronted with a navigation tool that combines technical information about the length, facilities and infrastructure of a road with perceptual aspects of fatigue and the difficulties of the journey. The contextualisation of Vegetius goes still deeper. He stresses the need for visualisation of the lands that the explorers will cross, and goes as far as suggesting the construction of a mental model of the landscape that they will survey. This idea of ‘full immersion’, of an experience that is performed with the totality of the body and senses, is occasionally featured in medieval texts, e.g. in the introduction to the twelfth-century travel account of John of Würzburg, where John describes the emotion of not simply having seen those places with his eyes but also of having had an embodied experience of them (‘intuitu corporeo’: Huygens 1994: 79, lines 2027). Something similar could be attributed to the expression ‘que nondum senserunt nec viderunt’, which Wilbrand van Oldenburg, author of a travel account of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem undertook in 1212, used to justify his decision of writing about his experience. He aimed at helping those that were not able to leave for the Holy Land to learn about those things that ‘they were not able to sense nor see’ (Laurent 1873: 162).

In the Tabula Peutingeriana and in similar examples (like the papyrus from Antaiupolis, dated to the first century BC: Brodersen 2001: 18), this representation of ‘topological’ relations of spaces would result in a ‘linear understanding’ of space, a sort of unidimensional view where movement is along the line that guides and of the book by Janni (1984), can be followed in Whittaker 2002; Talbert 2008: 21-22; 2010b: 262; 2019. The discussion is particularly relevant assuming the way that Romans viewed (and represented) the world they lived in is the point of comparison for medieval space perception. A good basis for further enquiry is the assessment of the awareness of geographical features (coastlines, mountain ranges, rivers, borders, forests, etc.) expressed in Roman as well as medieval textual and pictorial itineraries. Patrick Gautier Dalché suggested considering mappae mundi, a typical medieval modality of representation of geographical space, a hybrid product annulling the dichotomy between line and surface, between itinerary and map, between one- and bi- dimensional space perception (e.g. Gautier Dalché 2008: 53). 19  Conversely, other scholars accept that the Roman surveyors mastered the hallmark concepts and tools of cartography, a theory based on the fact that, as we shall see later (pp. 66-79), cadastral (therefore to scale) maps were ‘widely understood in the Roman period’: Harvey 1991: 10. On the other hand, there are very sparse indications that a few medieval scholars were acquainted with the graphic conventions and techniques of Roman surveyors. Such is the case, e.g., for Bishop Arculf who addressed to his friend Abbot Adomnan of Iona an account of his journey to the Holy Land in 670, attaching a sketch of the complex of the Holy Sepulchre. The sketch discloses the knowledge of cadastral maps similar to the Roman Forma Urbis. The same applies to the famous plan of the monastery of St Gall: infra , pp. 67-68.

Conceptual geography: A one-dimensionality of space? A wide debate has examined the questions of how profound geographic knowledge was in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages and whether the few ‘pictorial’ and illustrated images of lands and urban layouts that survived could be properly considered as maps. Additionally, we have to refer to the theory assuming that the ‘Roman’s sense of space and visual perspective were shaped by the horizontal, linear movement of itineraries over land and sea’ (Whittaker 2002: 87).18 18 

The progressively enriching debate, started with the publication

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Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey patterns the perception of the landscape.20 For the Roman world, the acknowledgement of this concept of linear space led to a very interesting analysis of the way in which the Roman conquest, centred on the establishment of a capillary road network, emphasised the importance of connectivity between cities, magnifying the pivotal role of Rome, placed at the centre of the web. Becoming points along a line, towns and villages are not only ordered but also connected and made dependent on each other, reaching an increasing level of similarity and cohesiveness (Laurence 1999: 197-198).

globalisation process (e.g. in Juvenal’s work: Umurhan 2018), while for the Middle Ages the debate has been limited to the way in which scholars made use of graphical supports to link the narrative of the text and order the events into a geographical milieu. In other words, to connect space and time (supra, pp. 10-11). Some consideration, however, should be given to the first question, i.e. if travellers were aware of the distances they had to cover. An initial answer can be searched for in the itineraria (supra, pp. 9-10), the pathfinding tools of Roman and medieval times, although the assumption that each placename listed along the route corresponded to a stop effectively made – that each placename indicated an overnight stay – is totally undemonstrated. Whether the itineraria had a practical use or were just official registers of the central office, it is evident that they are derived from route-finder tools, based on the above-discussed unidimensional concept of space, thereby relying upon a ‘linear’ definition of intermediate points that separated the origin from the destination.21 In other words, the spatial description of a road had to be done listing all the places that were crossed or skirted by the road, its main crossroads and key landmarks. The indication of a name at the end of each road segment functions to orient the travellers, giving information about the distance between the places they have to bypass to reach their destination. The placename is therefore a ‘stage’ of the itinerary; it can be a town, a village, a crossroads, a station, or a geographical feature (river, pass, mountain, lake…).

As suggested above, the construction of an efficient road network increased connectivity and enhanced the cultural identification of the new subjects with Roman values, since the remodelling of the landscape and the ability of the new mobility to alter the nature of space affected the perception of a novel cultural unity. Above all, the creation of a centralised and engineered net enabled the reduction of the time taken to travel from one place to another, altering the temporal distance and the perception of the spacing itself. It is a fact that the places recorded from Rome to the Channel in the document attributed to Sigeric, defined as submansiones, are all reachable in a day of travel, sometimes even in a shorter time, giving the impression that the temporal distance between the locations mentioned in the text was taken for granted in the eyes of a medieval user/reader. The same could apply to the itinerary of Nikulas of Munkathvera of mid-twelfth century (infra).

In the Roman world, the few surviving documents confirm that the indication of distance was an essential piece of information for their use. Conversely, in the list of 79 stops provided by Sigeric, the mention of the distance between two sequential stages is not given. In another very popular source, the travel ‘diary’ of Nikulas of Munkathvera, who is traditionally thought to have made the amazing journey from Iceland to the Holy Land between 1150 and 1154,22 albeit in a nonhomogeneous form, the indication of each distance in mileage is alternated with information on the distance measured by the day’s journey.

Epistemology of space and time: the cultural perception of distance Thus a question arises: how deeply aware were travellers of the distances that they were expected to cover? Were they able to understand that each change in the route and in the efficiency of the network affected not only the duration of their journey but also the degree of connectivity between the places that they were about to cross? Did they sense that the shrinking of their world thanks to the improvements of the road network brought the advantage of an increased connectivity alongside the disadvantage of a dangerous proximity to those outside their own world?

21  Whittaker 2002: 87; Paliou, Lieberwirth and Polla 2014: 20; additional bibliography in Talbert 2010a: 86-87. 22 19 Jung 1904; Magoun 1940a and 1944 (on the identification of a few places mentioned in the text) and 1943 (on the featuring of Germanic legendary heroes in the text). The text, in Old Icelandic, is transmitted in its entirety only in a late fourteenth-century manuscript, now preserved in Copenhagen, and also in individual parts in other codices. A general overview of the itinerary, its chronology and linguistic peculiarities can be found in Raschellà 1985-1986: 541-552. This source is especially important for its relatively high date among the otherwise not too numerous medieval itineraries and for the overall reliability of the information it reports. As we shall see later (pp. 79-82), the definition of ‘travelogue’ and the very attribution to Abbot Nikulas have recently been questioned, but the alternative interpretation of the genesis and framing of the genre of the text does not invalidate the considerations that are brought forth here.

For the early imperial age, suggestive analysis has explored how the increased interconnectivity among places in the empire was perceived and processed in a novel understanding of Roman imperialism and the 20  This thesis was anticipated by the publication of the book by Pietro Janni in 1984, where he argued that Romans did not represent space in two dimensions but rather just uni-dimensionally (Janni 1984), and was reinforced by Kai Brodersen’s studies (Brodersen 1995: 268-287).

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The Route of the Franks The Middle Ages also bequeathed a ‘pictorial’ document illustrating the itinerary from London to the Holy Land, authored by Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk who wrote, among other things, historical works that he illuminated himself, work that was completed around the mid-thirteenth century at St Albans cathedral in Hertfordshire.23 Produced in different versions, attached to his Historia Anglorum and to the Historia Minor, Matthew’s work displays a different form of visualisation. The suggested itineraries from London to Apulia and possibly the Holy Land assume the form of what can be called a ‘sequential map’ or a ‘strip-map’, meaning an itinerary arranged in a diagram marked by a double red and blue or green line. The long itinerary is cut into several segments, depicted next to each other, flowing from the bottom to the top of the page, developed on different sheets glued together.

geographer Guido, who assembled a geographical text partially directly inspired by the Chorographia Ravennatis, predictably did not provide any sort of assessment of the distances between his lists of places.26 What are the reasons behind this disappearance? Several explanations are possible, starting from the fact that the work of the Unknown Ravennese and consequently that of Guido are just scholarly compilations, without any practical use, and therefore the indication of distance is not considered useful information. Naturally, this explanation implies that conversely the Roman itineraria had a practical use, an assertion upon which – as we have seen – there is no consensus. Of course, the fact that no central authority was able to collect and disseminate information about the network, to take care of maintaining the infrastructure and organise services along the roads, including the display of milestones and the registering of their distribution (all activities that we can logically think of being performed by the imperial office of the cura viarum),27 could easily explain why these data are missing, but still does not explain why figures of the distance between places were not included by the scholars that accessed and copied the original documents. Eventually, the itineraria lost their practical function, if they ever had one.

The places crossed by this route – castles and towns – are pinpointed by ‘idealised’ illustrations, ideograms of settlements by type, where the dimension of the icon defines the importance of the site.24 The distance between them is given in ‘day’s walk’ (in old French jurnee), confirming that in the absence of a central authority managing the road network and providing tools for calculating the distance, the essential information for travellers was the time needed to cover the distance between two given locations, what we have defined as the ‘temporal distance’. Adding the dimension of time is undoubtedly a way to thicken and enrich the concept of movement through landscape in the past, thus assessing the relationship between speed of travel and spatial dimension, adding a deeper understanding of the nature of ancient space-time perception.

In the High Middle Ages, when something comparable to the Roman itineraria reappeared with the work of Guido, examples of lists of places disconnected from a practical use are very rare, while the report of Sigeric is the first of a kind of lists of places actually crossed in the course of a real journey. But then, can we automatically infer that each sub-mansio, as places are defined in Sigeric’s list, were separated by a day of travel and, again, that they were not just geographical reference points given to guide the traveller along that road? Or vice versa, does the fact that in medieval documents the distance is not specified imply that travellers were confident that that distance between two successive places could be covered in a day of travel?

One difference between the Roman and the medieval documents jumps out: distance is no longer provided as measures of distance but rather in units of time, imposing a new vision of mobility. It was back in the Early Middle Ages that re-elaborations of ancient itineraria ‘lost interest’ in displaying an indication of the distance separating two sequential places along the line that symbolises the route. In the Chorographia by an anonymous author based in Ravenna (therefore unimaginatively designated the Unknown Ravennese), compiled in the mid-seventh century, the part reporting the lists of place names ordered according to the road they appear on is clearly inspired by the Roman itineraria, although no indication of the mileage separating each two locations is given.25 Likewise, the

As we shall see in chapter 4, pp. 83-87, it is incorrect to estimate the duration of each trip simply by equating the number of stops to the number of days, but at the same time we have to accept that, given these ‘itineraries’ were meant to support wayfarers in finding their way but also in arranging the logistics of their trip, it might have been taken for granted that each place mentioned along the route was reachable, at least in normal conditions, in one day. Thus, ‘temporal distance’ would have fully replaced ‘spatial distance’.

23  On Matthew Paris’ biography and cartographic production see pp. 72-79. 24  An analysis of Matthew’s map grounded on the urban theory by Lynch is performed at pp. 71-72, 78. 25  The editio princeps of the text of the Cosmographia is the one by Parthey and Pinder 1860, the most recent is by Schnetz 1942. An investigation of the possible sources and a contextualisation of the

document are offered by Staab 1976. 26  The scientific edition of Guidonis Geographica can be found in the two works cited above. A critical edition and comment (in Italian) has been recently published by Campopiano 2008. 27  On which see, e.g., Eck 1992.

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Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey to address a physical space where people’s activity ordinarily occurs, in the same way in which he defined the action of ‘dwelling’ as a modality of occupying a place that generates dynamic identities, the material embodiment developing into praxis and social structure (Guttormsen 2007: 95). Since it implies the sharing of common experiences and symbolic meanings, people’s identification with places and landscapes leads to the overlapping of the concepts of place and identity (Tilley 1994: 15). Places are never neutral spaces. Besides being meaningful matrices for those who live there, they are markers of identity because of the historical and symbolic relationships that connect them to individuals. Moreover, this identity is, on the one hand, individual, while on the other it is rooted in the deep meanders of the cultural and collective memory of the community (Li Causi 2007: 63-64). In this sense, identity, rather than being connected to ethnicity, relies upon this feeling of belonging, although, as we shall see later, a sort of ‘ethnicity sentiment’ will have an effect on certain practices of hospitality (infra, chap. 4, pp. 89-91).

Actually, the concept of temporal distance has always been present in the assessment of the effort needed to reach a destination, and is also very common in contemporary society, although we tend to think that it is the spatial distance that matters in our behaviour. In fact, when we choose to travel by train or plane, we focus on the time needed to reach the destination rather than caring about how far that destination is. Even in the context of urban mobility and commuting, the efficiency of the transport system is assessed by measuring the time needed to go from one place to another rather than measuring the actual mileage. In this sense, the digital tools allowing the measuring of the ‘cost’ of a certain route (e.g. the ‘least-cost path’, supra, pp. 4-5) prove to be very useful for distinguishing the most favourable paths not according to the physical distance but to the time and effort needed to walk them. On the way… of constructing an identity The result of detachment from everyday routine and customary space would be a ‘dematerialisation’ of the reality of travellers, automatically projected in a new mental dimension and a new landscape, therefore in a different societal embedding. This leads us to the complex matter of ‘identity’. The original identity, which, it should not be forgotten, is a dynamic characteristic of individuals and groups, and is generated by the progressive confrontation of interiority with exteriority,28 is annulled by the desegregation of the very same exteriority: ‘In the course of a journey, individuals are transported into a space where, no longer being recognised by those around them, they lose their identity’29 (Malamut 2000: 207).

However, given this direct relationship with the place of origin, identity is usually studied in spatially and chronologically ‘closed’ contexts, and – consequently – the concept of identity does not automatically match the fluid, open, diachronic and transversal context of a journey. Since identity is commonly connected with belonging to a spatially circumscribed group, the link between identity and travel requires a stretch of the imagination that, in any case, brings us to the core of the topic.30 The discussion can be summarised in the contrast between the attachment to places and mobility, brilliantly expressed in the contrasting meanings of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (Gustafson 2001), leading to the concept of ‘landscape identity’ (Guttormsen 2007: 104). The connection with a physical place and harmonious integration with it, generating the feeling of belonging, are considered positive factors, a supportive pillar of social cohesion, whereas people on the move have been considered in the past as asocial individuals, and their lack of sedentariness and the experience of unrooting were judged as socially disruptive phenomena (Gustafson 2001: 668-669). Predictably, this categorisation is an extreme simplification, and it seems impossible to distinguish between the two attitudes so sharply, considering that human experience and the construction of social structures rely upon both these modes of experiencing space (Gustafson 2001: 681),

From a theoretical point of view, the construction of an identity is an ontological phenomenon. We could describe the structuring of an identity as a form of understanding and decoding of reality. The process implies identifying certain elements (objects, spaces, relationships, and so on) and building on them a sense of belonging that gives coherence to a multitude of different experiences (Barrett 1997: 52, 59). The theoretical framework can be tracked back to Heidegger, who used the concept of ‘being’ (dasein in German) 28  Identity, in the modern definition, is not considered as part of the essence of society but rather as the outcome of decisions consciously taken by individuals over time (Renfrew and Bahn 2000: 9), resulting not in a status but rather in a condition that is negotiated day by day, and which is also defined above all through interaction with the other (Revell 2009: XII). The concept of identity, though, remains ambiguous, since it can be applied both to an individual and to a group (Barnard and Spencer 1996: 292). Indeed, the feeling of identity is inextricably linked to the sense of belonging, belonging to a group but also to a place. 29  Author’s translation from French: ‘Le voyage transporte l’individu dans un espace où, n’étant plus reconnu par son entourage, il perd son identité’.

30 

An exception could be made for the Jews, since ‘departure’ is considered the very founding act of the Hebrew people, and ‘movement’ in the form of ‘diaspora’ can be referred to as one of the binding forces of their history and a strongly connecting element, contrary to other cultures of the past that were firmly attached to the idea of homeland and geographical belonging: Moatti 2000: 925.

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The Route of the Franks simplified in the actions of ‘nestling’ and ‘moving’ into it.

chap. 4, p. 91) but also of the locals: ‘For it was almost impossible to avoid weeping to see part of his company continuing their journey without the holy father. Part of his travel companions, then, abandoning their original intentions, returned home to relate his death and burial, while others still lingered in sorrow at the tomb of him who had died among strangers speaking an unknown tongue…’ (Bed. Hist. Abb. 21; see Parks 1954: 58-59).

Identity vs ethnicity The concept of identity is often linked, if not confused, with the less elusive concept of ethnicity, definable as appurtenance to a group characterised by the same national, racial or cultural origins, or more simply as belonging to what is labelled a ‘race’, to the extent that ‘ethnicity’ transcends biological factors and also implies aspects of mentality and culture.

Certifying identity All past societies developed some instruments to control people movement and took certain measures to facilitate, stop, select, impede or regulate (fiscally, military and socially) the flows of people and goods.

In any case, ‘ethnicity’ is also a parameter that is heavily influenced by mobility, again because it is a dynamic process that involves the feeling of belonging to a group, and therefore is modified when an individual is displaced or ‘decontextualised’. In general, identity becomes more specific when individuals are dealing with others that share at least part of their own ‘ethnic’ feeling, for instance when they are confronted with people definable as ‘countrymen’. A general definition of belonging (to a country, to a large group) is sufficient to distinguish and characterise a person when (s)he is confronted with another manifestly different from him/herself (e.g. it would be sufficient for Sigeric to define himself as an Englishman when asked by people of another ‘nationality’, but he would be asked to specify that he is from Canterbury when among other Englishmen). In the end, displacement influences the perception of our own identity.

Analysing the testimonies of medieval travellers, a wide range of measures appear to have been taken in asking permission to leave the traveller’s own premises and to cross other lands to ensure the smoothness of diplomatic, religious and personal relationships. Furthermore, a series of edicts and dispositions confirms that certain institutions like monasteries and abbeys and a few categories of people like pilgrims were exempted from the payment of charges, tolls and fees, besides being eventually granted some basic services like hospitality. It goes without saying that to enjoy this immunity, voyagers – whatever their nature or status – had to prove their identity by means of letters of recommendation or introduction, sigilla, signet rings and other safe conducts (Matthews 2007: 29-33 with references to earlier works).

The feeling of alienation Closely tied to the question of identity and the feeling of belonging is the opposite feeling of alienation, of ‘not belonging’ to a place embodying a community with its own identity. A condition not infrequently linked to the condition of traveller, the sentiment of estrangement is particularly acute at the moment of death, as is well synthesised in the expression ‘dying on foreign shores’. In Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, it is usually applied to a community, delimited geographically, culturally and linguistically, that is wider than in Roman times.

An insight into the confrontation of groups of different nature Sociological aspects and cultural challenges When interpreted in all its facets, the journey is also a time of opening up to different social and cultural contexts, beginning with fellow travellers. Indeed, travellers constitute an ‘open society’, since a journey brings together people and groups who are used to living in separate compartments. This ‘decompartmentalisation’ of society incorporates the whole duration of the trip, extending well beyond the stopping places that shelter all sorts of people, who – predictably – are not in the habit of spending time together (Malamut 2000: 211). No matter what, during a journey very different types of travellers are found side by side. In other words, ‘le voyage fait découvrir à celui qui l’entreprend un monde inconnu, où les références spatiales, temporelles et sociales sont entièrement nouvelles’ (Malamut 2000: 189). However, speaking in more general terms, the simple act of moving together or in the same direction does not automatically make people more equal or look

An exemplary case is that of Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, who, after retiring from his office, undertook a last journey to Rome in 716. Having started his journey at the ‘venerable age’ of 74, and having been on his way for many weeks even before crossing the Channel, he only made it to Langres, where he was buried, just halfway to Rome (infra, chap. 4, p. 91). Bede reports with unusual emotion the sorrowful farewell to his brothers, the seven hour span of his agony, the magnificence of the burial ceremony in the church of the three twin martyrs and the mourning not only of the impressively large entourage (eighty people, see 14

Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey alike; on the contrary, mobility can amplify diversity, can highlight differences and inequality (Salazar and Smart 2011: III). This is the case with medieval travel: the availability of certain means of transport (mounts or vehicles) , the possibility of being hosted by peers and acquaintances, the number of accompanying staff or the composition of the retinue (guards, secretaries, servants, butlers, relatives or confreres, etc.), the access to funds during the journey, the possession of laissezpassers or other ‘diplomatic’ documents allowing for special treatment (a sort of VIP voyager), etc., are all factors that could have played an important role in underlining the different status of the travellers.31

the powerful waves of missionaries from the British Islands of the sixth-eighth centuries brought a triple confrontation: between insularity and continent, between Christian faith and traditional beliefs, between the language of the converters and those of the people to be converted.

Nevertheless, one of the aspects insistently underlined in essays about pilgrimage is that pilgrims do feel part of a community, as their detachment from their customary lives is compensated for by inclusion in a wider spiritual communion with people who share the same objective and who experience the same difficulties and privations, as well as the same joys and rewards.

For instance, it is evident that interaction between groups of different natures was always a tricky affair and that on a few occasions engagement with ‘others’ gave way to friction and hostility. Indeed, the review of the frequent trips from the British Isles to Rome carried out in this book (chap. 3, pp. 39-41 and chap. 4, pp. 57-64) shows that even if the itinerary was often chosen on the basis of the opportunities to stop over at monasteries or bishops’ residences along the route, where it was known that a certain special connection would have granted assistance and hospitality, the relationships between the party of guests and the hosts were not always idyllic.

Once we can rely upon the relatively informative reports of journeys undertaken by monks and churchmen and the intense exchange of messages, embassies and information that the fragmentation of power had made necessary in continental Europe, our understanding of these confrontations improves considerably.

Social otherness and sameness A traveller ‘decontextualised’ from his environment and therefore turned into a ‘stranger’ has to expose himself to the attitude of a counterpart, who might be benevolent (therefore, accueilant) or provocative (i.e. hostile). In fact, a journey implies the establishment of a relationship between the traveller and their host(s), the construction of an ephemeral social space for encounters and interaction. In Roman times and in Late Antiquity, this relationship was mainly modulated by social convention and in most cases implied an interaction between ‘peers’. However, considering the peculiar status of the traveller discussed above – a stranger suspended in the condition of no longer being in his own environment but not yet having reached his destination – several factors did play a decisive role in the construction of the identities of guest and host.

On some occasions, for instance, political confrontation is transposed to foreign shores, since local civil or ecclesiastical authorities can be dragged into personal or political conflicts developed in their homeland. The unusual story of the ambush plotted against Bishop Wilfrid, who left the islands embarking with his company and clergy, to seek the Holy See, is a very good example.32 Having drawn the wrath of several important people upon himself, Wilfrid was the target of a conspiracy. His enemies bribed the king of the Franks, Theodoric, and Ebroin, duke at the Neustrasian court, for an ambush to be plotted against him along the route that he was expected to take during his journey to Rome (in 678 or 679). Luckily for Wilfrid, another bishop from Lichfield, named Winfrid, took up the journey in the same period and along the same route, which was considered the most direct, and was therefore mistaken for Wilfrid. Thus, he was ‘robbed and left in misery, while many people of his entourage are slaughtered’ (Vita Wilfr. 28; Parks 1954: 62-63).

Furthermore, as will be discussed in more detail later (chap. 4, p. 91), given the eminence of most of these travellers, the journey was undertaken with the support of a large entourage. Inevitably, then, these transfers turned into confrontations between groups, raising the issue of otherness and acceptance, and the challenge of forced proximity to each other. Naturally, confrontation was not limited to social class. Especially with the ‘revolution’ in mobility triggered by the process of Christianisation (Corsi 2005, 2016a), with pilgrimages and the proliferation of missionary movements, other types of encounters took place along the routes of the decaying empire. For instance,

Impassable linguistic boundaries? When dealing with interaction between travellers and locals, it is opportune to wonder about communication issues: while in the Roman world knowledge of Latin

31  A review of the different elements of the journey that could have implied different ‘classes’ of travellers is in Corsi 2019.

32 

The several trips of Wilfrid will be analysed from a different perspective again in chap. 4.

15

The Route of the Franks and Greek must have been widespread even among the lower levels of the population, with the Germanic infiltration and the progressive fragmentation of the Romance languages, the missionaries of the Early Middle Ages must have dealt with an endless series of local dialects, generated by very different inputs (Banniard 2000: 165). Sometimes this happened even between bordering countries (e.g. Romance vs Germanic language speakers: Coulet 1996: 23-24).

after (Sawyer 1968, no. 197 (a. 848); Nelson 2000: 398). At the same time, Charlemagne had to establish a patrol of guides at St Wandrille, Quentovic and Saint-Josse monasteries, so that messengers arriving from across the Channel could be escorted to the court (Leo III Epist. 3.91-92). Pilgrimage Pilgrimage, as a characteristic phenomenon of late antique and medieval Europe, has been analysed, debated and documented thoroughly and extensively, and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss and comment on it further here, mostly since the journey at the core of this essay, that of Archbishop Sigeric, cannot be properly considered as a pilgrimage, although the route that he followed and reported has become one of the most popular pilgrimage itineraries of the Continent. However, beside the other high prelates who undertook the journey to Rome as part of their office, a large number of the documented journeys from the British Isles to Rome that will be analysed here were commenced as pilgrimages; their practice and characteristics are therefore part of this study (e.g. Aronstam 1975 for English penitential pilgrimage to Rome). Moreover, most of the interventions taken by central authorities to facilitate and support people’s circulation were addressed to pilgrims. Such is the case, for example, for the initiatives of Charlemagne ‘piloted’ by Alcuin, the most influential intellectual of the Royal Court, incidentally an English native.34

Some passages in the sources confirm that learned people like Benedict Biscop were asked to act as interpreters, while some missionaries carried out their apostolate via the intermediation of an interpreter (Matthews 2007: 36) and some pastors who arrived from Latin countries were not able to interact with the chiefs of their own people (e.g. Bishop Agilbert and his king: Bed. Hist. Eccl. 3.7). The problem of communication escalated further in southern Britain after the Conquest, when understanding was impeded even between the kings and their subjects (Matthews 2007: 37). Predictably, large monasteries providing hospitality for people from many walks of life, like St Gall, had to make arrangements to simplify communication and exchange with a multiplicity of other languages, as can be evinced by bilingual lists of useful words in Latin and Old German,33 mainly listing words related to body parts and their translation. However, a few devotees do not appear disoriented or strained by the isolation and the impossibility of communicating; rather, some of them considered this feeling of estrangement a complement to their religious experience (Matthews 2007: 124).

Furthermore, there are some basic elements of the pilgrimage that are very interesting for the purpose of shedding light on the practicalities of travel in the Middle Ages. For instance, departure was preceded by a series of acts ‒ on the one hand, meant to fix practical matters, and on the other, coated with symbolism. First, both clergy and laymen had to apply for the consent of their superiors; married people had to ask for the consent of their spouse; all economic and financial matters had to be settled before departure, and a will had to be filed (Cherubini 2000: 551). These practical measures were loaded with a spiritual meaning, since they implied detachment from daily ordinary life and the removal of bindings; they marked the gateway though which the pilgrim entered the new dimension of wayfarer, the new connection and novel belonging to a different ordo (Cherubini 1998: 64-65, 170-173).

Hospitality and protection grants Just because the role of messengers was no longer universally acknowledged and their safety was no longer guaranteed, some chieftains and local lords had to adopt regulations for hospitality to endorse this exchange. For example, the king of Mercia, in the English Midlands, decreed that the messengers (praecones in Latin) and Anglo-Saxon emissaries, who arrived in large numbers at the monastery of Breedon following the rivers Humber and Trent, had to be fed if they arrived between the third hour and midday, while if they arrived after the ninth hour they had to be offered lodging for the night (noctis pastum), so that they would be able to resume their journey the day

Basically, pilgrimage is envisaged as a journey through atonement and purification, a path to salvation paved with insecurity, dangers, privation and sacrifice

33 

The manuscript Vatican MS 566, lines 15-21, 71-76 (Steinmeyer and Sievers 1879, Codex S. Galli 913), a leaf of the manuscript stored at the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, MS Lat. 7641, can be defined as a phrasebook, translating expressions like ‘where do you come from?’, ‘I’m thirsty’, ‘have you fodder for the horses?’ or ‘where are we going to overnight, my companion?’, of outmost importance for any traveller.

34 

E.g. the letter that Alcuin wrote in Charles’ name to Offa, king of Mercia, remarking the ‘protected status’ of pilgrims, specifically referring to those travelling to Rome (Alc. Epist. 100.16-21); see Frauzel 2013: 1089.

16

Chapter 1. Conceptualising the Journey (Cherubini 2000: 551). The solitude and the feeling of estrangement are paradoxically the factors that push individuals to share. Fear drives the pilgrims to join forces, not only to counter material dangers, like assaults by robbers, but also to fight discouragement and the feeling of abandonment (Oursel 1978: 45).

almost captured by pirates during the crossing of the Channel from Dover to Wissant (Southern 1962: 98-99; see Parks 1954: 47, 56). The feeling of insecurity seems invariably to match the physical nature of the discomforts, enveloping the whole experience of the trip in a patina of suffering.

If following a route walked by pathfinders and predecessors can be described as the action of entering a spatial and spiritual theatre, pilgrimage ascends to a form of emulation, even of identification with the saints and martyrs who have walked those routes and crossed those landscapes, whether rural or urban, before us (Darling 2009: 61-62). Moreover, the destinations of pilgrimage journeys, the ‘holy places’, were expected to facilitate embodiment into a higher spiritual dimension, also achieved through the material, tactile and multisensorial contact with the places themselves (Webb 2000: IX) and the immaterial immersion into the same environments that witnessed the actions and the mysticism of Christ, of the Apostles, of the protagonists of the Scriptures, of the martyrs and saints.

On the other hand, we should be able to isolate the component of the literary topos, of the plot device that guided authors of the narrative, whether the traveller themself or biographers of the traveller, to emphasise the bravery of the protagonist or to highlight the magnitude of God’s intervention in saving the voyager.35 Indeed, starting from the fourth century, sources increasingly stress the dangerousness of a trip, probably allowing political considerations to influence their writing or just making use of rhetorical devices, but also to accentuate the merits of the traveller-pilgrim himself and even the role that he played in a certain historical context. For instance, the vicissitudes of St Martin of Tours related by Sulpicius Severus (c. 363 c. 425), a historian who extensively reported about the life of the saint, are probably intended to emphasise the role played by St Martin in the Christianisation and pacification of the Alpine regions, formerly populated by the savage brigands that captured the saint during his solo crossing of the mountains (Pottier 2016: 137138). The celebratory intent could indeed be betrayed by the fact that in the course of the same century, the same Alpine populations did not appear as threatening; on the contrary, they provided a guide service through the mountains (Amm. Hist. 15.10.3-5; see Pottier 2016: 138).

Likewise, we can stress some peculiarities of pilgrimage travels in respect to identity. Indeed, when pilgrimage is the main motivation for the departure, the concept of the ‘spiritual journey’ can be extended to the idea of a long path leading to the recovery of lost identity, with the transitional space of travel embodying a sort of rite of passage (Ribella 2011: 4). Furthermore, it is clear that in the dynamic mechanism of identitymaking, the decision to undertake a pilgrimage journey is an imposing act, a conscious choice that triggers radical changes to identity itself, also shifting the feeling of belonging towards a different group identity, specifically that of pilgrim, a person on the path of salvation and atonement.

One of the measures that voyagers could take to limit the risks was travelling in groups. Written sources testify sufficiently to this safeguard, mainly when the search for a company implied delays to the expected departure date (e.g. a cleric at the service of the bishop of Mayence had to ask his master for authorisation to prolong his stay in Rome since he was not able to find travel companions with whom to undertake the journey: Albert 1999: 265) or because of the unusual composition of the party (e.g. a Saxon pilgrim who had to join a group of Angles for the journey to Rome: Einhar. Transl. SS Marc. et Pet. 239).

On the edge of danger Medieval sources and modern scholarship have insistently stressed how many risks and dangers travellers faced, from meteorological hazards to brigands, from sickness and exhaustion to pirates and political conspiracies. Even a stay at the papal court in Rome was often considered an unpleasant ordeal, given the corruption, licentiousness and animosity that regularly led to conspiracies and political plots. Besides being considered a sin city, Rome was feared because of its climate, favouring the transmission of sicknesses, and even for its wine, causing fevers (Albert 1999: 266267).

Somehow, then, we should distinguish ‘actual’ danger from ‘perceived’ danger, an element that definitely plays 35 

Such is the case for Canterbury Archbishop Ælfheah who journeyed to Rome in 1007 to obtain the pallium. While he was staying overnight in a village on the Alps, he was attacked by ‘a crowd of rustics’, who robbed him. Following the crime, the village took fire. Once the villagers realised that this was a divine punishment for their misconduct, they asked for Ælfheah’s pardon and returned him all his stolen belongings. Then, the archbishop put out the fire just with the sign of the Cross: Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 76.

Literature is saturated with references to bloody episodes, unfortunate events and critical situations that in a high percentage of cases brought fatal consequences for the travellers, as nearly happened to St Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, whose ship was 17

The Route of the Franks a central role in the construction of travelscapes, where threats influence much more deeply the perception of the surroundings than the geographical landscape or cultural context. One example is the letter that Gerbert of Aurillac wrote in 984, informing his friend that he intended to undertake the journey from Reims to Rome between the beginning of November and Christmas, without showing any concern for the hazards of the climate (Mariani 2016).

barely compensate for the feeling of being endangered by sickness and other dangers to health, and – for those like Sigeric who had to deal with the papal court – of being exposed to its viciousness and immorality. However, once framed in the historical effectiveness of these threats, it is evident that travel literature, intended in the widest sense of written sources reporting directly or indirectly on trips undertaken by people for the most diverse motivations and in the most varied modalities, is more concerned with the emotional aspects of the journey, consciously or unconsciously distorting the reality of the travel in a narrative that unevenly highlights the experience of the traveller rather than the travel in itself.

This dichotomy is particularly evident during the travellers’ stay in Rome: the fascination of the Holy City, of its oldest churches loaded with the history of early Christianity, charged with the sanctity of their relics and magnified by the splendour of their architecture, can

18

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to provide a synthetic geo-historical framework for Sigeric’s journey. Therefore, the aim is to outline the main cultural character and political organisation of a large area corresponding to contemporary northern and central-eastern France at the end of the first millennium AD. Thus, most parts of the Duchy of Burgundy are included, but not the Duchy of Aquitaine. Special attention will be paid to the geo-cultural definition of the vast regions crossed by Sigeric; their characterisation is rooted in the period of the dramatic dissolution and transformation of the Roman Empire. A snapshot of more general western European economic and religious assets will be also attempted. On the other hand, this brief introduction will omit the historical context of England and Kent, since these topics are briefly discussed in chapter 3, especially the relationship between the Church of Canterbury and Rome and the political situation in Kent and in the Kingdom of England. Sigeric’s journey took place in one of the most troubled periods for the entity that would evolve into the modern kingdom of France, since the division of the vast realm built by Charlemagne and the conflicts between his heirs in their various capacities had left room for fragmentation and claims on the side of lay and religious powers. In more detail, the political definition of the continental regions crossed by Sigeric is rooted in the treaty of Verdun, which in turn was the outcome of a long process of cultural definition of the Frankish gens under the Carolingian dynasty.

At the same time, other Germanic groups settled permanently in the frontier land that Caesar had established between Gallia and Germania, with the Burgundians, originally settled on the left bank of the Rhine (in the area of Worms), pushed by the Roman general Flavius Aetius in 443 into the region called Sapaudia (i.e. Savoy), from where they built the RomanoBarbarian kingdom of Burgundia. The latter lasted until 532/534, when it was incorporated into the rising Regnum Francorum by the successors of Clovis (Destemberg 2017: 14-15). Although it refers to a region whose borders shifted significantly over the course of time, the name of Burgundia, evolved into the French Bourgogne, still persists.

The geo-cultural definition The geo-cultural definition of the Hexagon, as we have come to call that vast part of continental Europe between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic, the Rhine and the northern Mediterranean, was originally characterised by the Iron Age layer of Celtic populations, generically addressed as the Galli, and was heavily influenced by Roman domination, which progressively extended from the Mediterranean coast to the Low Countries. This substrate was substantially enriched in the long phase of migrations of ‘barbarian’ gentes from northern and eastern Europe, mostly between the third and the fifth centuries AD (Bührer-Thierry, Mériaux and Biget 2010: 31-33, 43-45). In particular, it was a sort of league of Germanic peoples joined under the name of Franks (i.e. ‘those free from the Roman domination’) that, having settled on the right bank of the lower Rhine, would give the most important imprint to future developments. Known historically since the mid-third century AD, when they fought the Roman emperor Postumus, the cluster of Franks included tribes of Catti, Bructeri and Tencteri among others (Wood 1994: 35-36). The Franks also clashed with the emperor Julian the Apostate between AD 357 and 360, when they were already geo-culturally divided into two entities. The tribes that remained in the area of the Rhine were then called Franci Ripuari, whilst those settled in the valley of the river Ijssel, known in ancient times as Sala, took the name of Franci Sali (Bührer-Thierry, Mériaux and Biget 2010: 53-57). Turned into allies of the Romans with the status of foederati, the Franks were not able to avoid the further infiltration of Germanic populations like the Vandals, Alans and Suevi (AD 406) (Destemberg 2017: 10-11).

The Franks With the progressive dissolution of Roman control, the Salian Franks occupied the regions of Tournai and Cambrai, between modern Belgium and the Netherlands, while the Ripuarian Franks expanded their domain to the area between the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Moselle, having as its capital the Roman town of Colonia (Köln) (see Figure 2.1) (Wallace-Hadrill 1982: 148-163). It was the leader of the Salian Franks, Clovis, son of Childeric I (the first acknowledged Merovingian king), who in the last twenty years of the fifth century started the process of unifying all of the Frankish tribes, imposing his authority on a multitude of chieftains. He also established the principle of inheritance of power to direct heirs, resulting in the creation of the first Merovingian royal dynasty.1 After the battle 1  Two important contributions dedicated to Clovis and his time were published in 1997, the monograph by Renée Mussot-Goulard and the

19

The Route of the Franks

Figure 2.1: The Frankish expansion 356-795. After Hallam 1980: fig. 1.2.

part of western continental Europe, from the Low Countries to the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean (James 1982: 18-20).

of Soissons in 486, fought between a partnership of Frankish leaders headed by the young successor of the ruler of Tournai and the last resistance by the Roman general Syagrius, Clovis extended his control not only over the Frankish tribes but also came to incorporate the territories of some groups of Alemanni on the eastern border of what was to become modern France and the Visigothic kingdom of Aquitania in the southwest (Figure 2.1) (Wood 1994: 42-44). At the end of his expeditions, Clovis had expanded his control to a large

However, this unification under the leadership of Clovis was not to last long: a first division into four parts among his children was effected after Clovis’ death, traditionally in 511 but more probably in 513 (Collins 1991: 110-115), resulting in the kingdoms of Reims, Orléans, Paris and Soissons. Hence, a tradition was inaugurated; it cyclically led to partition and disunity and characterised the first five centuries of the ruling dynasties of modern France, affecting the Merovingian as well as the Carolingian and partially the Capetian kingdoms.

proceedings of the international colloquium held in Reims in 1996 edited by Michel Rouche (respectively, Mussot-Goulard 1997 and Rouche 1997).

20

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework over Austrasia, inaugurated the long dominion of the Carolingians, a name derived from the Latin version Carolus of many of the male members of the lineage.3

An important legacy for future political and cultural developments given by Clovis, who had not established an official capital, derived from his will to be buried in the Abbey of St Genevieve in Paris, which promoted the town as the spiritual core of the kingdom, a role that was to be respected in the coming years in spite of partitioning and divisions (Boucheron et al. 2017: 8586).

At the death of Charles Martel in 741, who was still ruling aside the nominal king Childeric, effective power was again divided between his sons Pippin III the Short and Carloman, but was swiftly reunified in 747, upon Carloman’s abdication. In 751, Pippin the Short deposed the last king, Childeric III, and – with the support of Pope Zacharias – had himself crowned, initiating the Carolingian dynasty (McKitterick 1983: 33-38). At the death of Pippin, in 768, the kingdom was once again divided between his sons Carloman and Charles. The latter, on the death of his brother in 771, inherited the whole kingdom which he ruled until his death with the name of Charlemagne. Crowned emperor at St Peter’s in Rome by Pope Leo III at Christmas in the year 800, Charlemagne, having defeated the Lombards, established a papal state in central Italy, and extended his control over Germany and other eastern European lordships (Maurois 1957: 9). On the other hand, as would be the case with the Duchy of Provence, despite the frictions between the Franks and the Lombards, and regardless of the decreased volume of trade in this phase of the Early Middle Ages, the Alps remained permeable, as confirmed by the fact that in the partition of the kingdom of 806 each of the resulting realms included zones on both sides (Duparc 1971: 184).4

Another partition among heirs occurred in 561 at the death of Chlothar I, one of the four sons of Clovis, who had inherited the westernmost kingdom and who had spent his life trying to extend his domain to the neighbouring realms. Outliving his brothers, he succeeded in reuniting under the same crown the whole of western continental Europe, at the same time expanding the Merovingian kingdom to include the kingdom of the Burgundians (534) and the lands of Raetia (537) and subjugating most of the tribes of the Alemanni, Bavarii and Saxons in Germany (Bradbury 2007: 4-5). Split among Chlothar’s four sons and continuously fought for among brothers, uncles and nephews, the Merovingian kingdom was often fragmented into different political entities, the most important of which were the kingdoms of Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy and Aquitaine. The increasing role of ceremonial ritual often elevated the mayors of the palaces to the role of competitors to the kings, repeatedly involved in conspiracies and attempted power grabs. Particularly successful among them was Pippin II of Herstal, who ascended from his role of mayor of the court to become ruler of the Austrasian realm, defeated his counterpart at the Neustrian palace, Ebroin,2 and came to control the entire Frankish realm in 687 (Wood 1994: 234-238). At his death in 714, his illegitimate son Charles Martel took over the control of the Merovingian kingdom, still nominally in the hands of the kings Dagobert III and Theodoric IV. When the latter died in 737, Charles Martel, mayor of his court, let the throne remain vacant and acted as ruler until his death in 741 (Collins 1998: 23-33). In 732, at Poitiers, heading an infantry army, Charles defeated the invading Arab forces from Spain (Duby 1988: 191-192).

During his long reign, Charlemagne managed to reinforce royal authority, mainly in Aquitaine, a region that was considered crucial because of its strategic position at the dangerous border with Spain, where Frankish forces might be ambushed with blitz attacks, as they were by the Basques at the Roncesvalles Pass where the Frankish rearguard under Roland was massacred (Mussot-Goulard 2006). At the end of Charlemagne’s life, in 814, the Carolingians controlled a domain that extended well beyond ancient Gaul (Figure 2.2). Conversely, military campaigns in Brittany were never successful and neither Charlemagne neither his successors were able to include the peninsula in the Frankish kingdom. The unity of the crown, preserved until the death in 840 of Charlemagne’s only surviving son Louis the Pious, was again compromised by the tradition of dividing

The Carolingians

3 

John M. Wallace-Hadrill’s work (originally published in 1962) is still an irreplaceable resource for English language readers to get a panorama of Carolingian France, but its review ends one century before the extinction of the Carolingian Dynasty, at the turn of the ninth century: Wallace-Hadrill 1982. 4  Even with the crisis following the death of Charlemagne, communications between western Italy and south-eastern France were ensured by political maneuvering, as in the case of Rudolph king of Burgundy, who, although a supporter of Arnulf of Germany, entrusted to the Burgundian Anscar the government of Aosta: Barelli 1907: 73.

The seizure of power by Charles Martel, member of the very influential Frankish family of the Pippinids, who in the course of the seventh century struggled with the opposing clan of the Arnulfings for primacy 2  We shall see in chap. 4, p. 63, Ebroin played an important role in the vicissitudes of a very active English traveller, Wilfrid, and another unfortunate almost homonymous traveller, Winfrid.

21

The Route of the Franks

Figure 2.2: The empire of Charlemagne. Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1988: 194.

power among all the king’s heirs (McKitterick 1983: 241248).5 The fratricidal struggle involved the elder son of Louis, Lothar, and the cadet children Louis the German, Charles the Bald and Pippin I of Aquitaine (and his son Pippin II, after his death in 838), and implicated most of the aristocratic leaders, pulled from side to side. The escalation of violence lead to the bloodiest battle of the century, fought at Fontenoy, in the vicinity of Auxerre, in 841, finally leading to an agreement between the three contenders (MacLean 2003: 213).

The Treaty of Verdun

5  The relatively long reign of Louis was, however, affected by insubordination and discontent on the side of the aristocracy, which burst out in 830 and led to a period of revolts, instability and even civil wars, until Louis’ death in 840: Duby 1988: 196-197.

It was the grandson of Charlemagne, Nithard, who, commenting on the negotiations held to reach agreement among the brothers, warned against the

With the Treaty of Verdun in 843 (Figure 2.3), the Frankish kingdom was divided between Charles II the Bald, who got Francia Occidentalis, Louis II the German, who inherited Francia Orientalis, and Lothar, who ruled over a kingdom called Francia Media, which included the Italian provinces and Rome and the title of emperor (McKitterick 1983: 172-187). This event marks the birth of two of the largest modern European states, France and Germany (Maurois 1957: 9), while at the same time triggering the long-lasting dispute between the two for the control of the buffer state of Lotharingia (modern Lorraine, infra; Bradbury 2007: 16-20).

22

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework

Figure 2.3: Division of Charlemagne’s kingdom after 843 (Treaty of Verdun). Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1987: 18.

Merovingian kingdom (Wood 1994: 5-19). In this case, their neglect resulted in, shortly after the treaty, the birth of seven different kingdoms, France, Navarre, Provence, Burgundy, Lorraine, Germany and Italy (Maurois 1957: 9).

dangers and consequences that the division would bring, starting with the impoverishment of the formerly very wealthy kingdom. Nithard anticipated the events that followed, characterised by the repeated attempts of the family branches that were prevented from accessing the richer ancestral region of the Rhineland, included in the domain of Lothar, and therefore renamed Lotharingia, to gain control of wealthier areas (Dunbabin 2000: 1-2). Furthermore, regardless of the geographical coherence of his share, Charles the Bald struggled with ethnic frictions, for instance, in subjugating the peoples of Gascony and Brittany, of different origin and language. He also experienced trouble in relations with other Germanic groups, like those deriving from the former realms of the Burgundians and the Visigoths. These ethnic differences, proudly fostered as the basis for shaping identity and invoked when dealing with rights and dispensation of justice, had been substantially taken into account in the preceding partitions of the

Moreover, the fragmentation of the Carolingian kingdoms was not at an end; with the death of Lothar in 855, several attempts were made by his surviving brothers to take over from his three illegitimate sons, of whom only Louis II was to get a chance to succeed. With the Treaty of Meersen (870), the geographical delimitation between Francia and Germania was defined following the main rivers, the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saône and the Rhone, but predictably the borders fluctuated and regions like Lorraine remained in the balance between the influence of the two (Parisse 1990: 63-64). 23

The Route of the Franks In these turbulent decades, royal authority survived mainly thanks to two factors: one was rooted in the interest of the Church in supporting the royal family as the guarantor of its benefits and domains, and the other was inherent in the divisions and conflicts among the local elites, who were incapable of overcoming the interests of small groups and internal competition (Wallace-Hadrill 1983). These political partitions weakened the whole system and gave way to the establishment of new powers coming from abroad, with the Norman and Saxon invasions (infra).

The Vikings The presence of Northmen (or Norsemen) raiding the Atlantic coasts had already been recorded over the course of the eighth century, but their frequency increased during the ninth century and involved larger flotillas that occasionally sailed up the rivers, resulting in bloody massacres in Nantes in 843, in Paris and along the Seine in 845, in Chartres in 858 and in Beauvais in 859. The fleet ended up at the Bouche-du-Rhone after having sailed and pillaged the whole European Atlantic coast and circumnavigated the Iberian Peninsula to reach the core of the western Mediterranean (Duby 1988: 232).

One of the more radical changes was the introduction of the figure of count, which, although already documented in earlier phases, was systematically imposed in the West Kingdom, and soon generated clusters of counties. They were joined under the guidance of a leader, who could have been appointed as dux, prince, marchio, or comes, sometimes uniting under his power groups of people whose origins were traced back to the ethnic units of pre-Carolingian Gaul (Dunbabin 2000: 12). This process is defined as the rise of the ‘territorial principality’ (Dhondt 1948). Charles the Bald’s response to this centrifugal force to an extent acknowledged these internal divisions with the grant to the local lords of semi-independent ruling power of specific regions, such as Aquitaine. In this way, the decomposition of Charlemagne’s inheritance was further accelerated. The situation became even more explosive after the premature death of Charles’ son Louis the Stammerer in 879 and during the following weakening of Western France in the domains of his sons, Louis III and Carloman, and in the domains of the rebellious lords who were expected to defend the king’s authority (MacLean 2003: 102-103). Upon the death of both kings (Carloman last in 885), the crown of Western Francia was offered to the king of East Francia, Charles the Fat; however, he endangered the hold of royal authority by awarding privileges and rights to several aristocrats before being overwhelmed by Viking raids and being obliged to abdicate in 887.6 His son Charles, later named the Simple, had to wait until he had reached the age of majority to step into the contestants’ arena. But his deposition marks the end of the direct Carolingian lineage and the definitive dissolution of its empire. The intermittent return to power of members of Carolingian descent was not as impactful as expected (Nelson 1992: 278-285). Ultimately, the continuous struggle among the heirs and the other pretenders that followed each royal death, implying the acquisition of support by means of concessions and donations, progressively debilitated the royal authority, which was not to regain control over the many principalities until its final extinction.

Military and political factors continued to render the Frankish reaction ineffective, with the first expedition of 857 led by King Charles the Bald, supported by Lothar II, almost prevailing until Pippin of Aquitaine, nephew of Charles the Bald, decided to take command of the Viking forces in 864 (Matthew 1983: 61). Following this internal struggle, King Charles attempted to change strategy and neglected armed campaigns in favour of the payment of tributes and the fortification of all possible targets. In the long run, however, the presence of the Northmen generated trade and exchange, and this process of interaction lead to the permanent settling of the successors of those raiders, headed by Rollo, in the region that would take the name of Normandy. Rollo, probably a chief of Norwegian origin of an increasingly structured group composed mainly of Danes, headed an invasion in 896, getting acknowledgement of their settlement in 911 from King Charles the Simple (Eckel 1899: 72-75). Although a lively debate about the consequences of the invasions has engaged scholarship, and some positive effects have been highlighted, one of the outcomes that affected the ecclesiastical and cultural community was the decline of the activities of the monastic scriptoria. Monasteries in areas exposed to the attacks, like Tours, Corbie, Saint-Denis, St Bertin at Saint-Omer, St Vaast at Arras and Ferrières, saw their activity decrease dramatically. Some groups of monks sought shelter at better protected sites like Reims, triggering their flourishing in the tenth century (Dunbabin 2000: 39). After 887 An uprising by the local lords of the German part of the Empire led to the deposition of Charles the Fat, to the benefit of Arnulf of Carinthia, while the French lords chose Odo (Eudes in French), count of Paris, as their new king, opting for a noble descending not from the Carolingian dynasty, but from the Robertians, of Germanic origin, later called the Capetians (Dunbabin

6 

An extensive discussion of the activity of Charles the Fat and of his times is in MacLean 2003.

24

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework 2000: 27-28; Bradbury 2007: 23-26). These initiatives predictably opened the way for other detachments and divisions, the most important of which are probably those of Provence and Burgundy (infra), and later – when the fight between the last legitimate Carolingian heir, Charles the Simple, and the elected king Odo resumed – the Marquisate of Flanders (Sassier 1987: 27-71). These divisions were rooted in Carolingian territorial organisation in marquisates and counties, which were in turn the outcome of those ‘ethnic’ and linguistic differences to which we have drawn attention on several occasions.

find shelter at her father’s court in England. The young king took the name of Louis IV of France, nicknamed ‘d’Outremer’ or ‘Transmarinus’. In 942, when both the Duke of Normandy was assassinated and the Count of Vermandois died, the king, hoping to gain the succession to both, sought the support of the Count of Paris, Hugh (later known as the Great), awarding him the titles of Duke of France, Burgundy and Aquitaine (Duby 1988: 246). In the following years, Hugh was very active in consolidating and expanding his power, plotting with the German emperor, Otto the Great, and becoming involved in the escalating conflict of the latter with Louis and the Church. However, at the death of Louis, in 954, Hugh wasn’t able to make any claim on the succession, and all his work resulted only in allowing the young Germanic King Lothar to enter the dispute. When he died in 956, his children, like those of Louis, were too young to bid for the vacant throne. Thus the battle moved on to the widows of Louis and Hugh, both sisters of King Otto and of the archbishop of Köln and Duke of Lotharingia Bruno (later also known as the Great), who manipulated them both, keeping one side from prevailing over the other, for the benefit of the German House. Upon the death of Louis’s spouse Gerberga of Saxony in 969, the stalemate was broken, and her son Lothar in 978 moved openly to gain the throne of Lorraine, relying upon the support of the new Duke of France, Hugh Capet (the son of Hugh the Great), who in turn hoped to trigger a conflict between Lothar and the king of Germany, Otto II. As we shall see, his plan would not succeed (infra, p. 28).7

Only the region between the Loire and the Scheldt, the area where the Carolingians resided longer and the authority of the royal dynasty was more deeply rooted, was an exception to this process. There, the strongest competition to the kings for power was embodied by the bishops, who managed to progressively seize control of towns, taking over comital prerogatives from the secular authorities (Matthew 1983: 73). In this area, the richest abbeys gained an almost total independence, while in the territories of Aquitaine and Burgundy, they had fallen into the control of the prince. From the ashes of the Neustrian kingdom, the Duchy of France would rise. Upon his death, King Odo appointed the legitimate Carolingian heir Charles the Simple as his successor. Odo’s brother Robert was then compensated for the ‘loss’ of the crown with the region between the Loire and the Seine as a principality, extending from the Atlantic to Burgundy, downgrading the counts of the region to the position of vassals (Bradbury 2007: 32-34).

The opponent of this reconstituted ‘French’ kingdom was the Ottonian–Salian Empire; at its core was Lotharingia, the successor of the old Carolingian Middle Kingdom (i.e. Francia Media), and it included the Rhineland, the duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria, the Kingdom of Burgundy and Italy.

The tenth century The reign of Charles the Simple was not to end uneventfully, for he had to fight internal opposition and revolts. In 922 he clashed with a large group of rebellious lords, headed by Robert, elected king by the opponents. Although Robert died in the battle, Charles lost his authority and ended his days in prison in 929 (Sassier 1987: 74-87). The way was thus open for a new king, Rudolph, duke of Burgundy, elected in 923. His lack of interest in keeping control of Lorraine and in imposing his authority in Neustria left room for the expansion of the Marquisate of Flanders, the Duchy of Normandy and the Counties of Vermandois and Champagne, growing with the enlargement and consolidation of the archiepiscopal (e.g. Reims) and comital (e.g. Troyes, Meaux, Sens) lordships (Parisse 1977: 142) (Figure 2.4).

As we have seen, prior to the early tenth century Lotharingia had shifted from one side to the other, tipping the balance alternatively in favour of the French or German king. In 924, however, it had fallen into the latter’s hand, although it maintained a sort of independence in the hands of its dukes (Ortenberg 1992: 41-43). Established in 962 with the coronation of the duke of Saxony and German king, Otto, later named the Great, son of Henry the Fowler, the Empire was in reality the outcome of the very ambitious plan of Henry’s predecessor Otto I duke of Saxony, who nourished the dream of re-establishing the Roman Empire and

At the death of the childless King Rudolph in 936, the lords of France opted to enthrone the young son of Charles the Simple, who survived the ruin of his House thanks to the fact that his mother had managed to

7  Many scientific contributions and popular publications were devoted to Hugh Capet in 1987, for the thousandth anniversary of his accession to the throne. A long list is presented by Barral I Altet 1987b: 15.

25

The Route of the Franks

Figure 2.4: The rise of territorial principalities in the French Kingdom of the tenth century. Elaboration A. Panarello.

extending imperial control from the western Atlantic to the central Mediterranean.

On the French side, the feudal order was progressively taking over control from the weakening Carolingian royal house, challenged by the rising power of another family, descending from Robert the Strong, the count of Anjou and Blois, which was thus initially named the Robertian (later Capetian) family. They exercised control over the region between the Seine and the Loire (Maurois 1957: 10). Indeed, although in 987 Hugh Capet, whose father Hugh the Great had played a very important role in the first restoration of the Carolingian dynasty with Louis d’Outremer (supra), had won control of Francia against the last Carolingians, his power was effective only in the Île-de-France (Sassier 1987: 89230). After his death in 996, his son Robert II of France (named the Pious) engaged himself in reinforcing his authority at the expense of the Duchy of Burgundy, incorporating it into the royal domain at the death of

During his long reign, which started in 936 as king of Germany and was amplified with the title of emperor in 962 until his death in 973, Otto the Great was able to extend his control to the neighbouring duchies of western France, including Burgundy, which he sized marrying Adelaide of Burgundy, widow of King Lothar II. Their son Otto II did not live long enough (he reigned from 973 to 983) to fulfil his dream of restoring the empire, placing Italy at the core of his domain. However, his wife Theophanu and his mother Adelaide were able to guard the throne until the majority of his son Otto III in 996 (Hallam 1980: 21-24). 26

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework

Figure 2.5: The effective control of Hugh Capet over the Kingdom of France at the end of his reign (dotted) vs the areas of influence of the Counts of Blois and of Vermandois (grey). Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1987: 19, map 3.

a mutually destructive clash between the two, the war among the contenders was open. At the death of Lothar, in 986, and at the death of his son Louis IV only one year later, Hugh Capet managed to impose himself as king of France, marking the definitive extinction of the Carolingian lineage represented by Charles of Lorraine (at the Council of Senlis in 987). However, in the decades which followed, his grip over the reduced powers of his domains had progressively faded; he was destined to be another powerless sovereign, last in a long line of weakened rulers (Duby 1988: 247).

Duke Henry in 1002 (Hallam 1980: 64-72; Locatelli 2012: 68). The Capetian kingdom was in reality an unstable domain, where the supporters of the king effectively limited his authority, and it was destabilised by ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity, ranging from Norman to Celtic to langue d’oc (Maurois 1957: 10). The weakness of the first four Capetian sovereigns (Hugh (987-996), Robert the Pious (987-1031), Henry I (1027-1060), and Philip I, enthroned when he was only eight years old)8 is paralleled by the poorness of our sources. With the exception of Robert, for whom we have the detailed biography of Rodulfus Glaber, their political activity is ill-known. Most information regards their engagement in dynastic disputes and marriage arrangements and their indefatigable touring of northern France trying to impose their authority. Nonetheless, their power remained less than the power of the lords and princes.

Before and after the year 1000 The socio-political scenario The last decade before the year 1000 saw the end of a very troubled period, marked not only by political instability and unremitting clashes between leaders and lords but also by relentless invasions and raids, attacking Europe from the north (with the Vikings), east (with the Magyars) and south (the Arabs). The end of this long period of migrations, which lasted more than eight centuries – although raids and attacks were still carried out until much later – generated in France a phase of rebirth and growth, loaded with expectations

When King Lothar signed an agreement with his German counterpart Otto II, frustrating Hugh Capet’s hopes for 8 

The overlapping in the periods of reign is due to the habit of coronating the appointed heir before the death of the king, in the attempt to facilitate the transfer of power.

27

The Route of the Franks for the flourishing of a new era (McKitterick 2003: 108-113). This new vision of the ‘Era of the year 1000’ is mainly based on the scale of the building activity promoted by kings and local lords.

reignited the conflict between the two powers over the control of Lotharingia and even Burgundy, with the Empire prevailing in both cases (supra, p. 24). Indeed, since his enthronement, the new German emperor Otto III, with the strong support of Pope Sylvester II, was trying to revitalise Otto I’s plan, attempting to establish a universal empire, under the slogan of Renovatio imperii Romanorum, relegating the Capetian King Robert II the Pious to the background and taking the lead in the opposition to Muslim expansion in the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula (Locatelli 2012: 66-69). The driving force of this master plan was in Otto’s eyes the synergy of political and religious powers, and the apex of this operation was the election of his mentor Gerbert of Aurillac as pope in 999. Alas, the pursuit of these objectives came to a sudden halt with the death of the emperor and of the pope in the course of a few months in 1002. His successor Henry II (1002-1024) renounced such ambitious goals but did not give up on the wish to expand his control to the bordering states, including Lotharingia-Lorraine and Burgundy (Locatelli 2012: 69).

Contemporaries such as Richer and Helgaud acknowledged respectively the building activities of kings such as Hugh Capet and Robert the Pious. Rodulfus Glaber, in turn, reveals the admiration of contemporaries for this wave of architectural renewal: ‘in the third year after the year 1000, in all the lands, but above all in Italy and France, the churches were remodelled, even when they did not need renovation works. Every Christian community competed with the others to have the most sumptuous church compared to their neighbours’.9 As, we shall see later (chap. 5), very little of this extraordinary wave remains untouched by subsequent transformations, and often only the crypt is partially preserved in this pre-Romanesque style. The cultural landscape was indeed pervaded by a strong aspiration for the reform of the Church and a regeneration of its original mission; the sociopolitical landscape was instead characterised by the establishment of new relationships between the members of a new elite class of military lords, who would build their authority upon the exploitation of the humble classes. This process, labelled as feudalism, would also imply the fragmentation of power. One of the major changes that affected the West, starting in the tenth century, feudalism can be defined as a new form of social organisation. The initial phase, lasting from the end of the ninth to the mid-tenth century, involved the establishment of practically independent territorial principalities, either grouping together many ancient villages and their territories under the seigneury of the chief among them (e.g. the Duchies of Burgundy, Normandy and Aquitaine) or consisting of only one centre and its lands (e.g. the counties of Maine and Anjou). The diffusion of power had as a countereffect an explosion of energy that regenerated society. The concentration of military, fiscal, legal and economic powers led to an increase in the efficiency of the production process, overcoming the regime of selfsufficiency and generating the production of a surplus. The latter was destined to be used for the revitalisation of public monuments, churches and monasteries. Their ‘allure’ would have thus increased the prestige of the centre of that territory.

Nonetheless, the incisiveness of the governmental activity of the Capetians was severely judged by the contemporary intelligentsia; their ineptitude was patent in nearly all aspects of associated life, from ‘international’ and internal policy to the administration of justice.10 They were unable to control local squires, always on the point of trying to free themselves from central control (Dunbabin 2000: 133-140). The Kingdom and the Duchy of Burgundy As described above, the fragility of the sovereigns’ authority and dynastic clashes prompted the fragmentation of the Carolingian kingdom, which by the early tenth century was divided into several principalities. These realms were soon to be partitioned into smaller power units to the point that in the course of the eleventh century, multiple castellanies arose. The core of the Kingdom of France, centred in the Île-de-France, was then surrounded by the County of Flanders, the Duchies of Brittany and Normandy, the County of Champagne, Lotharingia-Lorraine and the Duchy of Burgundy. To the west were the County of Blois and the County of Anjou, whilst in the south-west was the Duchy of Aquitaine, which included Poitou and the Limousin. Finally, east of Reims, the regions that the pilgrims to Rome were to cross on their way ad limina Petri belonged to the Kingdom of Burgundy.

The political scenario (Figure 2.6), with the ascent to the throne of France of the Capetians and the consolidation of the Ottonian dynasty in Germany, 9 

10 

Rodulfus Glaber Hist. 3.4. See Pognon 1947: 89 for a French translation. Rodulfus (a.k.a. Raoul) Glaber (c. 985 - c. 1047) was one of the most important chroniclers of the Medieval Ages; he finalised the compilation of his Historia at the monastery of Cluny.

Jean-François Lemarignier has highlighted a transformation of the modalities of signing diplomas starting from 988, showing a change in the political practice of Hugh and the Capetians (Lemarignier 1965: 42-43).

28

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework

Figure 2.6: The political division of Europe around the year 1000. Elaboration A. Panarello after Duby 1987: 42.

The gestation of the Kingdom of Burgundy started in the same period, soon after the reunification of the Carolingian kingdoms under Charles the Bald (875877), out of centrifugal forces embodied by imperial dignitaries, which resulted in the establishment of the ‘Kingdoms’ of Provence by Boso in 87911, and Upper Burgundy (also known as Transjurane) by Rudolph I in 889.12

The unification of the two took place at the death of the Burgundian King Rudolph II (912-937), when the Provencal King Hugh of Arles tried to profit from the fact that Rudolph’s son Conrad was too young to take the lead and married the widow queen. At the same time, the French King Louis IV also manifested an interest in incorporating the young kingdom, eliciting the opposition of the German King Otto I, who in 940

11  Boso was the brother-in-law of Charles the Bald and made use of this position to win the king’s trust and obtain the domains of Provence and Italy that he would use after the deposition of Charles in 887 as a base for his rise to power: Duby 1988: 238. 12  The kingdom created by Rudolph between the Jura and the Alps is

only conceptually connected to the Roman-barbaric kingdom founded by the Burgundians, already absorbed into the possessions of the Merovingian kingdom at the beginning of the sixth century, although it is true that that kingdom always maintained its own identity: Poupardin 1907: 1.

29

The Route of the Franks imposed the authority of the young King Conrad on the newly founded Kingdom of Burgundy, until his death in 993, when his son Rudolph III inherited the crown, which he held until his death in 1032. However, at the death of Rudolph, the inherent weakness of the kingdom and of its leader lead to the incorporation of the kingdom into the Germanic Empire (Poupardin 1907: 66-87).

the canons and their new residences in the main towns were among the most impactful factors. Especially from the reign of Charles the Bald, with the flourishing of the cultural revival known as the Carolingian Renaissance, the urban episcopal complexes also came to include the new cathedral schools (Duby 1988: 211-220). The Capetians followed the notion of the sacredness of the king and of his office, considering the king to be a representative of Christ on Earth, anointed by God. This implied a strong involvement of the sovereigns in ecclesiastical matters and heavily affected the organisation of ecclesiastical institutions in France. In particular, comparing the map of the religious foundations that benefitted from royal privileges in the time of the Carolingians and during the rule of the Capetians (Duby 1988: 258), it is evident that the control of the latter was restricted to the area between Orléans and Lille, while the Carolingian dynasty exercised its power all over continental France as well as part of Catalonia.

Although from the geographical point of view, the new kingdom roughly included the Rhone Valley and the valleys of its principal tributaries, like the Saône, in practice it was very inhomogeneous from the environmental and cultural points of view (Locatelli 2012: 71). Nonetheless, leveraging its position at the borders of France, Germany and Italy, its dynasty managed to increase their influence and tip the balance, also making use of the fact that some of the most important ‘international routes’ crossed its territory. This role of crossroads was enhanced by the policy of involving the most powerful abbeys and especially the ‘mother’ church of Cluny in providing the necessary assistance to travellers by a network of relais, as highlighted by the intense travelling of Cluny’s Abbot Maiolus between 954 and 994.13

Economic and cultural matters The long Carolingian age, embracing two centuries if we include the intermittent role as sovereigns of the last members of the family, was an economically uneven period, with a discouraging retrenchment of agricultural production to the status of a subsistence economy, but at the same time with a revitalisation of trade and exchange. One of the main axes of these medieval trade routes corresponds in broad outline to the route of the Franks, as we are investigating it. It travels from England to the Atlantic shore of France, at Boulogne or Quentovic or at the mouth of the river Canche, via Rouen and the Champagne, to the Alps, and on to the towns of northern Italy, eventually reaching the Balkans and Constantinople.

Located west of the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Duchy of Burgundy is one of those new political entities with which the English Church came into contact. Its creation is attributed to Count Richard (878-921), but it always lacked territorial and political compactness. The rising power of local lords, both lay and ecclesiastical, of whom the most powerful was the abbey of Cluny, resulted in a dissipation into counties and castellanies over the course of the eleventh century (Ortenberg 1992: 223). Nonetheless, two of Richard’s successors, the Dukes Raoul (923–936) and Robert II (996–1031), made use of their connections with the Capetians to ascend to the throne of France (Hallam 1980: 30-31).

Complying with the aim of this chapter of providing a geo-historical and cultural framework for the journey of Sigeric, we will briefly discuss only the facts that impacted the ecclesiastical organisation and that had consequences for the ecclesiastical network of the tenth century. They ranged from the re-establishment of pontifical authority over the clergy and of the ecclesiastical hierarchies to the creation of a direct link transforming the bishop into an auxiliary of the king. Naturally, monastic reform and – most importantly for the effect on the urban tissue – the reorganisation of the episcopal clergy that resulted in the institution of

The Hexagon profited less than Italy or Germany from the possibilities of trade enhanced by the Saracen presence in the Mediterranean, but from the ninth and even more intensely from the tenth century, the Norman and – to a lesser extent – Magyar invasions triggered new trends in the economy, marked by the circulation of silver (with the introduction of a silver coinage upon the initiative of Pippin the Short), the establishment of new markets and the rise of new burgs (Duby 1988: 248-250). As paradoxical as it might appear, the regions that were more heavily afflicted by raids in the early tenth century – Flanders, Normandy, the Gascon coast – were those that by the end of the same century were prosperous and thriving (Dunbabin 2000: 141-142).

13  Maiolus’s indefatigable journeying endangered his life while attempting the crossing of the Alps at the pass of Great St Bernard, when he was kidnapped by a gang of marauders, allegedly of Saracen origin: infra, chap. 4, pp. 60-61.

The need for ecclesiastical reform started to be felt and loudly demanded. An answer came with the foundation of the Abbey of Cluny in 910, upon the

The relationship between the royal houses and the Church

30

Chapter 2. The Historical Framework initiative of the Duke of Aquitaine, William I, called the Pious; its abbots Odo (926) and Maiolus (948-994) initiated a restoration of the founding values of the church, a return to poverty and dignity, promoting a reconciliation with society and with the crowds of the poor abused by the lords. Northern France and Flanders were at the forefront of this process of moral reform and of spiritual recuperation of the original spirit of St Benedict. The work of St Gerard of Brogne in the first decades of the tenth century was completed a century later by Richard of Verdun at the monastery of St Vanne in Lorraine, ultimately paving the way for the expansion of the reformist movement started at Cluny. Eventually, even in the face of the cultural impoverishment of the ecclesiastical ranks after the apogee of the reign of Charles the Bald, the last decades of the tenth century saw the awakening of the monastic intellectual elites with the opening of several schools of ethics and logic: the transfer of the pope-to-be Gerbert to the school of Reims in 972 is a clear indication that western civilisation was incubating its rebirth.

count of Auxerre. By then Châlons was already a very popular market, with traders coming from Italy and other far-flung regions, opening the period of the fairs of Champagne that would be very popular during the next three centuries (Ortenberg 1992: 222). The communication network Although in the High Middle Ages, the term ‘Franks’ was used mainly by Greeks, Turks and Arabs to generically address all of the people of western Europe and specifically its Catholic populations, the origin of the designation Via Francigena, ‘the Route of the Franks’, can be traced back to the later phase of the Lombard domination in Italy and to the fact that this route embodied generically the idea of a sort of ‘transnational’ communication axis between the Italian Peninsula and the Oltralpe. With the Carolingian conquest, the route to Rome became one of the most frequented itineraries on the continent The road, which was progressively equipped with resting places and accommodation facilities for pilgrims, was indicated in one direction as the Romeward road or strata Beati Petri Apostoli, in the other as strata Francorum or via Francisca (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 22-23).

The leading force of these reforms remained, however, the monastic orders; the secular clergy in general and the bishops in particular were too engaged with royal power and too involved in the feudal regime to be seriously committed to a real restructuring. Conversely, they were compromised by the mechanism that brought them to impose the principles of heredity to the episcopal throne and domains and to enforce seigneurial patronage.

Focusing on the implications for travel, in addition to the political instability in England, with the succession of King Edgar and a new wave of Scandinavian invasions, we can underline the impact that the fragmentation of the former Carolingian kingdom, split into a multitude of small realms and polities, especially in north-eastern France, had on mobility, although Sigeric’s trip was contemporary with the reign of Hugh, the first Capetian king (Ortenberg 1990: 206).

The anxiety that pervaded Christianity, which was about to celebrate the millennium anniversary of the birth of Christ, also manifested itself through an insistent presence of death not only in religious manifestations but also in everyday life. The topics of Apocalypse, Antichrist, Satan and hell were central to most cultural expressions, in figurative as well as in the literary arts. Famines, pandemics, deviations among the members of the Church, the spread of heresies and the collapse of the western control of the Holy Land were all indications of the imminent end of the civilization as it was known. People were led to think that salvation from all the evils of this world and of the afterlife was to be found in fighting sin as a militia, reversing their anguish and terror onto heretics, Jews and Muslims… But this is the story of the eleventh century and of the time that followed.

One example can be drawn from the expedition of the German King Arnulf (formerly known as Arnulf of Carinthia). In 894 he descended to Italy, probably through the Brenner Pass, since he stopped in Verona. Intending to go to Rome, he was opposed by Marquis Adalbert of Tuscany, who forced him to return to Germany. Already on the Brenner route, he changed direction and headed instead to the Great St Bernard, probably intending to show that he was still able to exercise control over Burgundy. However, the opposition to his plan was still strong. Arnulf besieged Ivrea and perhaps won it, but he failed to overcome the fortress that controlled the road in the vicinity of Bard. Having decided to go around the obstacle, passing through an alternative route that turned out to be very painful for his army, Arnulf still managed to reach Saint-Maurice, which his soldiers mercilessly plundered (Poupardin 1907: 23).

The County of Champagne, situated east of the Kingdom of Francia, also features regularly in English sources and travel accounts. Nearly all the main towns of the region (e.g. Laon, Langres and Reims) were governed by bishops with comital power, rather than being under the control of the Count. At the time of Sigeric, only Châlons-en-Champagne was under the control of the

The conditions of insecurity were amplified by the Viking raids (infra, chap. 4, pp. 57-64) and by internal struggles between powers, but it cannot be ruled out 31

The Route of the Franks that the violence of the clashes between factions of nobles in Rome worried travellers the most.

of Otto I, the Holy Roman Emperor from Saxony, who came to Rome and attempted to depose him, in his turn commencing further hostilities. The latter lasted well beyond John’s death in 965, with massacres and bloody fights that affected a large region of central Italy and ceased momentarily only in 998, with a truce under John the Patrician, brother of Crescentius the Younger, the leader of a fierce attempt to take control of Rome during the reign of Emperor Otto III, still an infant at the time of his coronation (Gatto 1999: 274-276).

Indeed, after the beginning of the tenth century, the train of violence was started by Alberic, a member of one of the most influential aristocratic families in Rome, who seized power and endorsed the election of his own son as the next pope. Upon the death of Pope Agapitus II in 955, Alberic’s son was effectively elected pope with the name of John XII, triggering the reaction

32

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury Abstract: The historical figures of Sigeric and his mentor St Dunstan allow a detailed reconstruction of the history of southern England, of the rise of the Anglian kings and of the vicissitudes of their opposition to the Vikings during the long period between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, until the seizure of power by the Danes headed by Cnut. At the same time, the central role of the archbishops of Canterbury in these developments is highlighted. The fact that Canterbury hosted the first mission sent from Rome by Pope Gregory to Britain established a special relationship between the Kentish clergy and the Church of Rome, to the point that this direct ‘filiation’ was stressed as one of the main elements constituting its identity. In this framework, the ritual journey of the newly appointed archbishops from Canterbury to Rome to receive the pallium (i.e. a ceremonial cloak) from the hands of the pope himself, as a symbol of the strong relationship between the two, was institutionalised and an increasing number of archbishops undertook it. Their failure or success and the limited information that can still be collected about these journeys are, therefore, commented upon here. The analysis of the historical events and developments in the ecclesiastical and cultural environment in Kent is set against the reconstruction of the early and high medieval archaeological landscape of Canterbury and of its churches and abbeys. In addition, a brief overview of the history of the transmission of the text, of its first scientific editions, its philological analysis and interpretations is provided.

Dunstan, a child of Somerset, scion of a lineage of high prelates, including his uncle Athelm, the first bishop of Wells and later archbishop of Canterbury (923-925), was trained by the Irish monks who occupied the ruins of the abbey of Glastonbury, proving himself a very gifted illuminator, with special skills in metalworking (Lapidge 1999, 2004).4 After taking minor orders, Dunstan’s growing fame as a learned man earned him the right to serve at the court of King Æthelstan, but his popularity also led to plots and conspiracies that attacked him not only from a moral point of view, with accusations of witchcraft and black magic, but also left him with severe physical injuries (Deanesly 1961: 298). His political involvement with the court continued to affect the career of Dunstan, even after he took holy orders in 943. However, his burgeoning reputation and some miraculous events prompted King Edmund5 to put him on the abbatial throne of Glastonbury (943 or 944), where Dunstan promoted reform aimed at restoring the austerity of the original Benedictine Rule.6 After many vicissitudes linked to the turbulent successions of the kings of Wessex and after enduring a period of exile in Flanders, Dunstan restored his reputation at the court

Archbishop Sigeric and his time: Eschatology for the end of a millennium and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom The bilingual annals (Old-English and Latin) transcribed on MS Cotton Domitian A. VIII (fol. 58v, British Museum, more widely known as the ‘F’ Text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) report for the year 989 (to be corrected to 990) an event1 that, regardless of its importance, would not normally have attracted the attention of such a large audience, since it accounts for one of the many journeys to Rome that the archbishops of Canterbury had to endure to receive their consecration by the pope (Magoun 1940a: 268-269).2 This notification, however, has become something far more important since (probably, someone from the retinue of) the archbishop in question, Sigeric the Serious, left a series of notes reporting on his sojourn in Rome and the return travel from Rome to the Channel. The earliest information regarding the life of Sigeric, also known as Siric,3 records his taking vows at the abbey of Glastonbury, probably in the 940s, under the abbacy of St Dustan, whom he succeeded as abbot of the same abbey in 974 or 975 (Lapidge 2004).

4  The birth date of Dunstan has been widely discussed, since the passages in primary sources seemed interpolated and the date that has been traditionally handed down – AD 924 or 925 – clashes with other information that is known of the biography of the saint: Toke 1913. Most probably, he was born at the beginning of the tenth century. 5  Edmund was one of the successors of the King of Wessex Alfred the Great, who at the end of the ninth century led the expansion of his kingdom to the detriment of the Kingdom of Mercia, also extending his control over Kent. Edmund’s successor Eadred (946-955), in turn, spread his influence over Mercia itself, the Danelaw (a Scandinaviancontrolled region) and even Northumbria: McKitterick 2003: 56. 6  Cross and Livingstone 1997. The collection of essays edited by David Parsons in 1975 about the tenth century (Parsons 1975) still represents a mine of information about the effects of the spirit of the Reform on Anglo-Saxon and European art and society.

1  Hic consecratus est Siricus ad archiepiscopatum Cantie… hic Siricus [partly erased] ivit ad Romam pro palio. 2  The entry can be paralleled with a similar one in the Easter Table in British Museum MS Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 132v (from Canterbury) (Liebermann 1879: 3). 3  A full list of occurrences of the name of the archbishop is provided in the database of the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England available at: http://pase.ac.uk/jsp/index.jsp (viewed 14 January 2022). Under the entry ‘Sigeric 9’, there is a list of ten variants of the name attested by twenty different documents, and a list of documents recording his activity, authorship, personal relationships, related events and factoids.

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The Route of the Franks and was elected bishop of Worcester (957), to which the see of London was joined the year after.7 In 958, Ælfheah (or Alphege), new archbishop of Canterbury, died in the Alps while he was attempting to reach Rome to receive the pallium, a woollen cloak worn as an ecclesiastical vestment by the highest prelates.8 In 960, Dunstan replaced Ælfheah’s successor Brithelm by decree of the new King Edgar (Toke 1913), undertaking his successful journey to Rome in the same year (infra).

His formative and long stay at Glastonbury and the likely influence of St Dunstan played a role in his reformist political orientation, expressed by the expulsion of the secular clerks from Christ Church, Canterbury, and in his attitude towards the Viking invasion. Indeed, like other high-ranking prelates such as Ælfheah, bishop of Winchester, and probably in accordance with the ealdormen Æthelweard and Ælfric, perhaps already after the defeat at Maldon (991), Sigeric advocated to King Æthelred II the Unready the strategy of paying tributes and ransoms to the invaders (Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 1.20, p. 33 ed. Hamilton 1870; Wil. Malm. Gest. Regum 2.10).9 This policy has been severely judged by both contemporaries and historians,10 as in the short run it led to the termination of the dynasty of Cerdric, and in the long run, with the consolidation of the one-off bribe into a yearly tax to the Danes (the so-called Danegeld), it turned into an odious servitude (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 991 (see Plummer 1892: 125-127); Flor. Wig. 991).11 However, a reassessment of King Æthelred’s ‘foreign policy’ carried out upon the thousandth anniversary of his accession to the throne12 pointed at his strategy of eroding the cohesion between Danes and Norwegians, eventually patronising the leader of the latter, Olaf, to Christian conversion.13 Predictably, the Christianisation of some of the Norwegian Vikings worked only to a limited

In this framework, the most relevant aspect of Dunstan’s life is his long tenure of the see of Canterbury (959-988), during which his reforming activity allowed a revitalisation of the prominent role that the see played in the history of the English Church, one of the most important legacies that Dunstan left to Sigeric. In fact, the paths of Sigeric and Dunstan were to cross again, when, in c. 980, Sigeric was elected abbot of St Augustine’s at Canterbury, receiving the benediction from Dunstan (at the time archbishop of Canterbury). Sigeric left the appointment a few years later (AD 985) when he was made bishop of Ramsbury and Sonning, again through the influence of the man who would become one of the most venerated English saints (Hook 1860: 431; Mason 2004). During this office, Sigeric is said to have favoured the see of Sonning, where he seems to have resided in the palace and to have donated to the cathedral a relic of its patron, Cyriacus (Thacker 1992).

9 

It is the surviving text of the treaty that refers to the participation of the two West Saxon ealdormen, although no convincing explanation is found in the sources for the involvement of magnates from Hampshire and Devon: John 1977: 184. The reporting of the events that led to the battle is a topic for historical debate, since the manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle use slightly different wording. In texts C, D and E, it accounts expressively for Sigeric’s initiative of pricing the tribute at 10,000 pounds (and indirectly shaming him for this), while text A seems to mix the events of the years 991 and 993: Roach 2016: 119-121. 10  Enough to say that William of Malmesbury, one the more informed source of the post-Conquest period, considered the reign of Æthelred as ‘cruel in the beginning (because of the supposed murder of his half-brother Edward), wretched in the middle, and disgraceful at the end’: Andersson 1987: 289. 11  On the other hand, Leonard Neidorf recently provided an original insight into the poem The Battle of Maldon, thoroughly discussing its politics and socio-cultural backgrounds: Neidorf 2012. His reinterpretation of contemporary and later sources like the poem, the chronicles and the document known as II Æthelred, builds upon the innovate reading of the events and of the king’s strategy offered by Simon Keynes (Keynes 1980). Keynes reinterpretation of the sources compares the historiographical process that led the figure of the ‘looser’ King Æthelred to be compared with the ‘winner’ King Alfred (not casually named ‘the Great’), who was able to contrast the menace of the Vikings one century earlier (Keynes 1986). 12  E.g. the papers edited by David Hill after the Conference of the Millenary (Hill 1978), the paper by Theodore Andersson (Andersson 1987) and more recently the historical revision offered by Catherin Cubitt (Cubitt 2020). 13  Sawyer 1987: 299-300 building on previous studies. See also Andersson 1987: esp. 289-290, where the diplomatic success of the king in establishing an agreement with the Normans is discussed in the light of the defeat at Maldon. The political and military events on the regional and ‘international’ scale that preceded and followed the battle are thoroughly accounted for and analysed by Eric John, who also makes use of the historical sources to reconstruct the social and cultural background (especially of the reform movement) to the long reign of King Æthelred: John 1977.

At the end of year 989 or at the beginning of 990, Sigeric climbed to the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury, which he held until his death on 28 October 994, as recorded in Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum with the laconic entry ‘Siricius. V Cal. Novembr. obiit piae memoriae Siricius Archiepiscopus Cantuariae’ (Anglia Sacra I.54).

7  Dunstan’s stay at St Peter’s Abbey in Gent fostered close-knit relationships between the Flemish reformed abbey and the English Church, as at least one letter from the Flemish Count Arnulf II was sent to him when he was archbishop of Canterbury asking for his support in restoring diplomatic relations with King Edgar. Another letter by Abbot Wido of St Peter’s, written between 980 and 986, was addressed to Dunstan with a request for financial aid, at the same time referring to a previous mission: Vanderputten 2006: 219-225. 8  The history, the characteristics and the privileges associated with the pallium are thoroughly analysed by Francesca Tinti, including the study of the late Anglo-Saxon pontificals which reports some details about the ritual for its conferment: Tinti 2014c: 307-309. The most complete essay on the pallium in the ecclesiastical and political history of Europe is by Steven Schoenig (2016). Aiming at mapping the papacy’s exercise of power though the pallium, this work scrolls through the ‘myriads’ of references to the pallium in medieval textual sources, ‘since this garment acquired with time a meaning in liturgical use, canonical requirements, political relationships and religious interpretations’ and that it ‘worked as an instrument of papal influence’ (Schoenig 2016: 3). For the period 882-1046, Schoenig traces the evolution in symbolism but also in practice of the transmission of the pallium, discussing the several episodes of granting and deprivation, up to the act of stripping of the sacred garment. Towards the end of the tenth-beginning of the eleventh century, however, we register the ‘routinisation’ of the procedure, showing how much the impact of this conferral shifted from personal to ecclesiastical aspects: Schoenig 2016: 179-226. See also Nolan 1953.

34

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury extent in containing further attacks, and a new treaty was necessary. Although the majority of historians agree in dating the agreement between the Vikings headed by Olaf, Jostein and Guthmund, among others, to 991, it is possible that the Treaty was signed only in 994, after Sigeric’s death, since Sigeric is mentioned among the negotiators but also as one of those that concluded local truces before the general peace was agreed (Sawyer 1987: 300). On the other hand, it is also possible that a second tribute was paid on Sigeric’s initiative in 994 to stop the Danes from burning down Canterbury Cathedral (Mason 2004). In this context, we should frame the sale of a property of the Church of Canterbury in 994, in order to raise money to pay off the Vikings (Roach 2016: 221).

disposition toward reform, manifested in a series of charters issued in favour of religious houses, were the most visible expressions of this stance, in which the increasing influence of Sigeric might have played a role (Roach 2016: 130-137, 153-154). On the other hand, Sigeric’s rapid ascent and his participation in a few diplomatic actions, such as the involvement of the pope in the peace treaty with Normandy signed in 990, is proof of why he can be considered one of the ‘architects of the new politics of the 990s’ (Keynes 2013: 110, 122). With fewer political implications came Sigeric’s suggestion to King Æthelred to honour the memory of the king’s brother Edward the Martyr, murdered in 978,14 by establishing Cholsey Abbey and by giving him a sumptuous burial at Shaftesbury Abbey (Mason 2004). The dedication of these ecclesiastical foundations by Æthelred, paralleled by those promoted by his mother Ælfthryth at Amesbury and Wherwell, was steeped in the monastic revival movement (infra), which also had implications for the architectural expression of worship (Gem 1978: 105).

Regardless of the bitterness of the contemporary and of later historiography, however, the decision to pay the Vikings taken by the king and his entourage of advisors was not new in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, as it had already been taken by King Alfred the Great. Moreover, from the list of subscribers to the agreement, it is evident that the tribute was not simply intended to ‘pay off ’ the raids and sackings but rather to hire mercenary troops among the same loose groups of Vikings (Ryan 2013: 345-346). The strategy worked as long as Sigeric was alive. The Viking attacks resumed only in 997, with raids hitting the coast of Devon, Cornwall and Wales, with a few inland forays; Kent was attacked again in 999, and violent episodes occurred across most of southern Britain and Normandy, until the final defeat of the English in 1014 (Ryan 2013: 346-347).

Rather than an act of piety towards his half-brother, the move by Æthelred can be seen as an attempt to reinforce his power and regain the ground lost with his subjects, who had been quite severe in judging him inadequate to succeed his beloved father, considering him ‘ill-prepared and ill-counselled as demonstrated by the soubriquet “the Unready” already attested in the twelfth century’ (Ryan 2013: 335).

Whether on Sigeric’s advice or not, Æthelred tried to counter the Viking menace, entering into an agreement with the Duke of Normandy, Richard (AD 990 or 991), whose daughter Emma Æthelred was to marry in 1002 (Andersson 1987: 287-292).

The last years of Æthelred’s reign were to be marked by violence, bloodshed and destruction, to the point that in 1011 Danish troops took Canterbury after a siege, and captured Archbishop Ælfheah, who was brutally killed in 1012 (Ryan 2013: 349-350). Æthelred’s reign had begun with the assassination of his half-brother, continued with his enthronement regardless of his illegitimacy and was terminated in 1016 by the invasion of the Danes headed by Cnut, whom he so weakly opposed.

Another politico-diplomatic intervention by Sigeric is recorded in an undated charter of King Æthelred who had to counter the betrayal of Æthelric of Bocking, accused of conspiring with the Viking chief Sweyn. In his capacity as Canterbury’s archbishop, Sigeric oversaw the bequeathing of the estate of Bocking to Christ Church (Sawyer 1987: 300-301).

In spite of this political instability and of the revival of Viking pressure on southern Britain, the last decades of the first millennium and the beginning of the eleventh century are considered periods of intellectual vibrancy, of social renewal and fair economic growth. This is especially true for some cultural achievements, such as manuscript illumination, paintings, sculpture and Old English poetry (Ryan 2013: 352-359). A large part of this Anglo-Saxon cultural flourishing had

The inclusion of Sigeric in the pool of Æthelred’s advisors is framed by the crisis generated by the death of Byrhtnoth, one of the senior ealdormen, and of the disaster at Maldon, apparently completely unexpected, but is anticipated by Sigeric’s involvement in some royal family business. Indeed, the unfortunate events of the late 980s and of the early 990s had pushed King Æthelred to adopt a more responsible attitude towards his subjects and to seek for atonement of his sins. Reconciliation with his mother and a more open

14  Suspicion was cast by the king’s contemporaries that he was behind the assassination ‒ an unlikely possibility, as Æthelred was only nine years old at the time of the murder: Andersson 1987: 289.

35

The Route of the Franks matured in the reformed Benedictine environment, the outcome of the long process of the Benedictine Reform already promoted in the 930s that – with its ups and downs, hovering between political support and strong opposition and expropriation – had been animated by giants of the age like Dunstan and Oswald (supra).

the mid-twelfth century, alongside the histories of the ‘mother abbeys’ such as Glastonbury and Canterbury, compiled ‒ for the period concerned ‒ by William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 – c. 1143), Gervase of Canterbury († c. 1210), Giso of Wells (1060-1088) and Symeon of Durham († after 1129).16 Also very useful are the chronicle attributed to John of Worcester (early twelfth century) and the biographies of the kings and of the bishops of England compiled by William of Malmesbury, complemented by the series of biographies of the archbishops of Canterbury by Gervase, to which the stories of saints and leading figures of Christ Church, Canterbury, written by Eadmer († c. 1130),17 should be added.

Other signs of a new era were manifested in those decades, with a more blurred distinction between classes, as an indicator of an increased social mobility, and most of all with the rise of what can be called ‘gentry’. These phenomena were marked by an increase in consumption and a growth in exchange and trade, paralleled by a revolution in landholding (Ryan 2013: 365-369). We shall see how this cultural and economic renovation affected monumental churches like Canterbury Cathedral (infra, pp. 43-46).

Obviously, relevant chronicles and historiographic compilations from the Continent can also contribute substantially to our understanding of the events and developments of the period; among them, the History of France by Richer, together with the Annals and the History of the Church of Reims by Flodoard are the most essential and prominent.18

Sigeric, formerly a monk of Glastonbury and then abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, was consecrated bishop of Ramsbury in 985, and became archbishop of Canterbury at the end of 989 or at the beginning of 990, after the death of Archbishop Æthelgar (Keynes 1980; Scott 1981: 136-137). The nickname of ‘the Serious’ might have been gained thanks to Sigeric’s erudition and his love of books. Indeed, he bequeathed to the cathedral a valuable collection of books (Gerv. Cant. Act. Pont. Cant. s.v de Sirico, p. 357), and at least one book – of Latin translations of homilies by Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham, called the Grammarian – was dedicated to him, a book that Sigeric was also asked to proofread (Thorpe 1844-1846; Pope 1967-1968; Godden 1979. For an historical reading of the Homiliae see Ryan 2013: 354355).

In addition to the accounts written within monasteries, a few secular annals can be used to shed light on the events of the second half of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries, such as those authored by the Ealdorman Æthelweard († 998). The text: Its transmission and editions The wide popularity of Sigeric’s trip is undoubtedly due to the fact that a synthetic account of the central and last part of the journey (‘one of nearly one hundred such journeys to Rome by kings and prelates from the British Isles’: Cathy Magnay) survives in a single manuscript, preserved in the British Library of London (Figure 3.1) and classified as Cotton Tiberius B. V, fols 23v–24r.

According to his biographers, Sigeric was meticulous and fond of ceremonial pomp, to the point that he left very detailed instructions for the conduct of his funeral, held in the autumn of 994. He also bequeathed to the cathedral seven pallia to be used as hangings for the occasion (Hook 1860: 438-439).

The text of interest to us was included in a miscellany assembling texts of different natures (e.g. De Rebus in Oriente mirabilibus, Cicero’s Aratea, Aelfric’s De temporibus annis and a selection of texts on astronomical topics),

Regardless of this fame, Sigeric’s longest-lasting work is the account, probably written by someone from his retinue, of his journey to the apostolic city in 990 to collect his pallium from Pope John XV (985-996), which stands as the earliest detailed report of the journey (infra, pp. 36-39).

the form of annals, while later copies register the events until the year 1154 (Thorpe 1861). Notwithstanding some concerns about the trustworthiness of some entries, the Chronicle stands out as an exceptional document to grasp the elements that wove the relationships between the Anglo-Saxon and Roman Church and to understand the factors that generated the ‘umbilical cord’ binding them (Frauzel 2013: 1089-1090). 16  See the list of editions of primary sources in the bibliography. 17  Lamb 1971. Eadmer, who served as monk at the cathedral, incidentally described it in several of his works (Vita Sancti Bregowini; De Reliquiis Sancti Andoeni; Liber miraculorum Sancti Dunstani; Epistola ad Glasoniemes de corpore S. Dunstani; Historia Novorum in Anglia; and Vita Sancti Wilfrithi), giving details especially about the altars and the relics they included: Biddle 1986: 7. Taylor, however, warned against the many possible interpretations of the text: Taylor 1975: 154. 18  See the list of editions of primary sources in the bibliography.

Primary sources for Sigeric’s life and historical context The main reference source for the period is the AngloSaxon Chronicle, an anonymous compilation started in the ninth century,15 which had continuations until 15 

The Chronicle, striving to recount the whole history of ancient Britain starting with a standard year 0, is known in an earlier manuscript that recorded the events until the ninth century in

36

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury

Figure 3.1: Sigeric’s itinerary manuscript: British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.V, f.23v. © The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/itinerary-of-archbishop-sigeric#. Public Domain.

The contents are mainly related to timekeeping,

including episcopal and regnal lists, some of which are illustrated with painted miniatures (McGurk 1983a). 19

Old English manumissions; fol. 76r-v: leaf of a gospel-book in Latin containing a record in Old English; fols. 78v–86v: De Rebus in Oriente mirabilibus; fol. 87r-v: apocryphal legend of Mambres and Jannes; fol. 88r–v: notes relating to Battle Abbey. Apart from the Vita metrica sancti Nicholai (added in the early twelfth century) and the notes on Battle Abbey (added in the third quarter of the twelfth century), the manuscript is believed to have been copied mostly by one scribe in the second quarter of the eleventh century, and cannot be therefore attributed to Sigeric, although, as anticipated, he might have had a role in the composition of the collection and might have been the ‘carrier’ of the list of popes and obviously the ‘promotor’ of the itinerary: McGurk 1983b: 30. More recently: Gneuss and Lapidge 2014: no. 373; Breay and Story 2018: no. 101; Tinti 2021: 173-175.

19 

A complete list of the contents is: fol. 1r-v: early modern table of contents; fols 2r–19r: computistical, historical and astronomical miscellany with a metrical calendar; fols 19v–22r: lists of popes, emperors, bishops, archbishops of Canterbury and kings of England; fols 22r–23v: Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies; fols 23v–24r: the ‘Itinerary of Archbishop Sigeric’; fols 24r–28v: Ælfric, De temporibus anni; f. 29r: Macrobian zonal map; fols 30r-32r: two prayers and a brief compilation on the Sun and Moon; fols 32v–49v: Cicero, Aratea and a Greek astronomical poem; fol. 56v: a map of the world; fols 57r–73r: Priscian, Periegesis; fols 55r-56v, 73r–v, 77r: Vita metrica sancti Nicholai; fol. 74r-v: fragment of a gospel-book containing documents relating to Ely Abbey; fol. 75r-v: leaf of a gospel-book in Latin, containing

37

The Route of the Franks astronomy and geography and, regardless of the diversity of the places and periods where they were transcribed, all in all they give the impression of a coherent whole, relating to knowledge of the world.

not attempt to identify the places mentioned in the itinerary. Not much later, William Stubbs provided the first scientific edition included in his edition of the Memorials of St Dunstan, which is still considered the reference for any philological discussion (Stubbs 1874: 391, no. 1). Although Stubbs offered a first tentative identification of the places mentioned along the route, he did not try to reconstruct the tour of the Roman churches visited by the archbishop during his stay in the city. Konrad Miller only published the text covering the return journey (Miller 1895: 156157). In 1940, Francis Peabody Magoun devoted two separate papers to Sigeric’s text; the first (Magoun 1940a) was devoted to the churches of Rome, the second discussed the return journey (Magoun 1940b). Magoun (Magoun 1940a and 1940b), Pesci (Pesci 1936) and many others reported parts of the text which were relevant to their respective commentaries, but only Veronica Ortenberg has touched on philological issues (Ortenberg 1990). Other scholars have dealt with specific segments of the itinerary (e.g. Jung 1904; Gougaud 1933; Lestocquoy 1947a).

MS Cotton Tiberius B. V, fol. 21 reports a list of Canterbury archbishops where Sigeric is inserted in the 24th position. Fol. 23v includes a list of popes, from John X to John XV (914-989, although John XV died in 996); it has been argued that this list was brought to England by Sigeric himself (Pesci 1936: 58; Tinti 2020: 349-351). In the twelfth century, the manuscript was completed with the addition of poems and annalistic texts. It is considered an early copy of the original and dates to the mid-eleventh century; it was probably copied in England (Dumville 1983: 57-58).20 It was written mainly by one scribe, who however had uneven hand. He made use of pure English caroline minuscule but occasionally adopted Insular letter forms and wrote small and large letters (McGurk 1983b: 30). Several characteristics of the writing, of the organisation of the pages and illumination show that it was written at one scriptorium. Its identification has been central to many essays (references collected in McGurk et al. 1983); the identification with Winchester, however, has been contested by David Dumville, who rather suggested Canterbury. His opinion is motivated by the evidence that the original from which MS Tiberius V was copied remained at Christ Church at least until the twelfth century, when it was transferred to Battle Abbey (McGurk 1983c; see also McGurk 1983b: 27-28, 33). Instead, the prominence given to Swithun’s name in the bishops’ list might indicate an earlier derivation from a Winchester manuscript.

The text: Its authorship and content Although very brief, the so-called diary is generally accurate, suggesting that it was compiled soon after the journey, probably relying upon notes taken during the trip (Magoun 1940a: 270). As already observed by Konrad Miller (Miller 1895: 31), the wording of the opening of the text to anticipate the ‘arrival of the archbishop in Rome (‘Adventus archiepiscopi nostri’), allows conjecture. First of all, it is probable that Sigeric was still alive at the time of the first redaction, and therefore the text was finalised before the autumn of 994, the year of the archbishop’s death. Furthermore, since the word adventus is preferably used to describe someone’s arrival, it has been suggested that the editor of the itinerary lived in Rome until Sigeric’s visit, and then went to England with him. This eventuality could be framed in the wider context of the existence of assistants, guides and messengers who accompanied the most important travellers (infra, chap. 4, pp. 7981).

The reference to Sigeric as the last name in the lists of the archbishops of Canterbury and the bishops of Ramsbury (lists included in the manuscript among those mentioned above) is one of the main arguments for this interpretation. Furthermore, the few texts that also appear in Cotton Vespasian B.VI and Corpus Christi 183 have led to the suggestion that Sigeric himself brought the manuscript with him when he left Ramsbury to ascend to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury in 990. At Canterbury this core group of texts would have been augmented with fols 10-11, which Sigeric would have brought with him from Rome (Dumville 1983: 57).

The document starts with a sort of ‘abstract’ of the contents: the text accounts for the journey from Rome to the Channel, ‘usque ad mare’, including a list of eighty stop-overs (in Latin ‘submansiones’). The description of the stay in Rome informs us that the party probably arrived there early in the day, and first rushed to the see of Peter (ad limina Petri) and to the Schola Anglorum at the church of St Mary, where the voyagers probably took up residence, before undertaking an intensive tour of the main churches of the city.

The first edition of Sigeric’s itinerary was incorporated into the monumental study of the biographies of archbishops of Canterbury published by Walter Hook (Hook 1860: 434), who, however, did 20 

Only Stubbs (1874: 391) has attributed the manuscript to Sigeric himself and therefore to the years 990-994. Others (e.g., Pauli and Liebermann 1879: 637; Duchesne 1892: XV) proposed the end of the tenth or the very beginning of the eleventh century.

We will not consider the matter of the identifying the many churches listed in the document, since this 38

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury Other trips to Rome for consecration are recorded in these early centuries, such as those of Berhtwald in 692 (Tinti 2014c: 311); Tatwin, Nothelm and Cuthbert in the eighth century; Wulfred (805-832) and Æthelred († 888) in the ninth; Plegmund, who brought back relics of St Blaise, establishing one of the most popular cults at Canterbury,22 Wulfhelm (926-941), who went to Rome in 927, Oda (941-958),23 Ælfsige (who died in the Alpine snow while attempting the journey in 958 or 959), Dunstan in 960,24 Æthelgar, Sigeric and Ælfric in the tenth century; and Ælfheah,25 Æthelnoth, Eadsige, Robert of Jumièges (Matthews 2007: sources 45.13, 45.15) and Lanfranc in the eleventh century (Parks 1954: 20). Archbishop Lyfing went to Rome in 1020 and delivered letters and messages addressed to King Cnut (Matthews 2007: sources 68.3).

has been the topic of targeted essays (e.g. Pesci 1936; see also Tinti 2020: 361-364), but we will stress two elements. First of all, although the number of churches is high and it is hard to believe that the group achieved such a fatiguing tour-de-force, the text explicitly refers to a stay of only two days. This is at least what we have to conclude from the mention of the ‘lunch meeting’ with the pope during the second day. It is highly likely that mounts were available for the party. Additionally, it is evident that Sigeric is not interested in the monuments of the glorious Urbs’ past but only in its Christian heritage (Pesci 1936: 50-58). Although Sigeric’s Roman tour attests that some traces of earlier itineraries for pilgrims, like the ones of Malmesbury, the collection known as De locis sanctis and the Itinerary of Einsiedeln, and that other previous experiences of pilgrims to Rome might have been used, his report shows an original interest, mainly in the long list of extramural churches.21 This is relatively surprising, considered that, once the translation of saint’s relics from the suburban sanctuaries to intramural churches had begun, interest in the shrines of the martyrs faded.

The custom was, however, very occasional. As can be inferred on the basis of two formulae of the Liber Diurnus, normally the pallium would have been sent from Rome to Canterbury – as well as to the other metropolitan sees that required it – upon reception of a formal request and of a professio fidei delivered to the pope by a legate of the newly elected archbishop awaiting consecration (Tinti 2014c: 311).26 As a matter of fact, if the choice was relatively free, at least in the early days, we can imagine that mainly those candidates who were weaker and in need of political support sought the conferral of the pallium by the pope in person. Notwithstanding the concerns arising about such a costly and demanding enterprise, the growing solemnity with which the return of the archbishop from Rome with the pallium was greeted and his enthronement sumptuously celebrated show how relevant it was for the Canterbury community of the High Middle Ages in stressing its superiority over the other Churches, by highlighting the closeness of their direct ties with Rome (Tinti 2014c: 336).

A thorough discussion of the different literary genres connected to journeys in the past will be carried out in chapter 4, but in commenting on Sigeric’s text we must stress that it can be defined as a proper itinerary, ‘an itinerary in the narrower sense’ (Howard 1980: 20, 68). Although no information is provided about the distances, if it is assumed that each location along the line can be reached in a day’s travel, it does describe an authentic route. Regardless of the lack of details, the itinerary across Europe and in Rome can be accurately traced on a modern map. Paving the way: Sigeric’s predecessors and epigones As mentioned above (supra, introduction), the importance of the ties binding the primate archbishopric of Canterbury and the Holy See was highlighted by the bestowing of the pallium, the white woollen band marked with crosses embodying the authority transferred directly from the hands of the pope to the archbishop. For this reason, Sigeric and his peers had to face the fatigue and danger of such a journey. The custom is recorded for the first time with Archbishop Wighard in 667, probably because of the unusual outcome of the enterprise: with Wighard and most of his company having died of plague on their arrival at Rome, the pope replaced the party with a new group of missionaries headed by Hadrian of Africa and Theodore of Tarsus, the latter consecrated as the new archbishop of Canterbury on his arrival in England.

Indeed, in the course of the eleventh century, the customary trip for consecration turned into a political weapon in the hands of the popes. The refusal by Pope Leo IX to bless the appointment by King Edward of the new Archbishop Stigand in 1052 – instead acknowledged by the anti-pope Benedict X with the conferral of the pallium in 1058 – could be interpreted as one of the first clashes between the Church and the secular powers in the Investiture Controversy (Ortenberg 2012: 150-151). 22 

Gerv. Cant. Act. Pont. Cant. 2.350-1. Actually, there is no certainty that Oda undertook the journey. However, his name is inserted in a list of Englishmen travelling to the Continent in the early 940s reported in the Liber Vitae of Pfäfers: Tinti 2014c: 312. 24  See, for example, the ‘Author B’ Vita S. Dunstani, pp. 38-40. 25  On the archbishop’s journey see supra, chap. 1, p. 17. 26  Somehow, the fact that the journey was undertaken personally by the archbishop or by one legate does not affect the analysis of the practicalities of the journey notwithstanding the paucity of details reported for the trip of the latter. 23 

21  Information and details about these documents are provided in chap. 4, p. 79.

39

The Route of the Franks In fact, at the turn of the ninth century, complaints were made against the practice, which was considered too costly not only in terms of labour but also because of the extortionate fees claimed by the Roman Church (Haddan and Stubbs 1871: 559-560).

259-260; see Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.29.104-107). The English clergymen seemed to be particular devotees of St Peter and his successors, the bishops of Rome, starting from Gregory the Great, the pope who at the end of the sixth century had sponsored the evangelisation of Britain, the founder of the monastery where St Augustine had been prior before his mission to establish the Church of Canterbury. The reverence shown toward the pope is, moreover, evident in Sigeric referring to Pope John XV as dominus (Ortenberg 1990: 202-203).

Uneasiness arose, especially among the archbishops of the other metropolitan see of Britain, York, who started to undertake the journey to fetch the pallium only later and more openly protested about the cost of the deed, as in the case, for example, of Archbishop Wulfstan the Homilist (1002-1023). The charges pressed against the pontifical court went far beyond greed and avarice and were sensationally reported by the historians of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with accusations of bloodthirstiness, licentiousness and iniquity.27

At the beginning of the seventh century, the participation of Bishop Mellitus of London in the synod held in Rome in the year 610 can be addressed as the first record of an official mission from England to Rome (Parks 1954: 20). As is well documented by Ortenberg, a great variety of sources bear witness to the popularity of the Roman pilgrimage throughout the Anglo-Saxon period (Ortenberg 1990: 202).28

The discontent led in the eleventh century to the drafting of a letter in which the bishops from Britain expressed a wish for the reintroduction of the old tradition that allowed for the pallium to be sent from Rome (Tinti 2014c: 336). These more direct complaints demonstrate a different attitude of the clergy of York towards the Holy See (Noble 2014). Even King Cnut lamented the greediness of the ‘offering’ that was expected to be received in Rome.

In fact, starting from the sixth century, a growing number of pilgrims chose Rome as the final destination of their devotional path, laying the foundations of what would be later known as the Romeo pilgrimage. For the seventh century we can surely invoke ‘technical motivations’ for the popularity of Rome, since the fall of the Holy Land into Muslim hands made pilgrimage to the Holy Land very difficult, but a role might have been played earlier by Irish monasticism, which promoted the concept of the mortification of earthly existence as a pathway to salvation, while at the same time promoting the action of peregrinatio as voluntary exile and asceticism, rather than as a ‘tourist’ experience (Vauchez 1976: 71-72). Most importantly, starting from the eighth century, the idea that penance could be repeated and even bought turned pilgrimage into a perfect form of atonement, and lured the greed of the popes, who ruled on the form that the penance took (Vauchez 1976: 73-74).29

However, it has been argued that this practice turned into an obligation for English archbishops only in the later Anglo-Saxon period, whereas previously the pallium had been sent to them (Levison 1946: 241-248). It is possible, hence, that Sigeric and the others went through this great labour additionally motivated by genuine devotion, or at least by resourcefulness and cultural interest (Ortenberg 1990: 206). After all, the practice of an investiture in Rome, together with a devotional tour of the home of the Apostles and of the many venerable shrines along the route, also became popular among other English clergymen. It is likely that Theodred, bishop of London, journeyed via the ‘direct’ route of the Great St Bernard, since he stopped over at Pavia, where he bought the chasubles that he later mentioned in his will (Anglo-Saxon Wills, p. 5). Possibly also Ælfstan, abbot of St Augustine’s at Canterbury (1022-1047), followed the route via Champagne, the Rhineland, Burgundy, Besançon and Saint-Maurice d’Agaune (Gos. Hist. Transl. S. Aug. 13-46).

Moreover, an increasing number of travellers from all walks of life swelled the ranks of people travelling from the British Isles to the continent and southern Europe, ranging from kings to crusaders, mercenaries, 28 

Ortenberg lists W.J. Moore, R. Cramp, C. H. Lawrence, R.L.S. BruceMitford, M. Deanesly and W. Levison as the scholars who have contributed most to the analysis of English pilgrimage to Rome. 29  Between the tenth and eleventh centuries, then, conflicts of jurisdiction were sparked between local ecclesiastical authorities and the Church of Rome since many sinners decided to appeal independently to the pope for the imposition of their penance. Several councils were held to re-establish the obligatory nature of the intercession of one’s bishop. However, since the list of serious sins for which the direct intervention of the pontiff was required kept on expanding (ranging from sexual offences to homicide and sacrilege), an increasing crowd of criminals joined the ranks of the lowest population of Rome, ‘worsening its reputation as a place of perdition and abomination’: Vauchez 1976: 74.

Additionally, the close relationship with the Church of Rome infused in the English clergy enthusiasm for hunting relics, and a few trips to Rome had already been carried out at the end of the sixth century not only to venerate the holy places and churches but also to gather relics to take back to their homeland (Thacker 2000: 27  See, e.g., Hook 1860: 433 reporting the words of Caesar Baronius (1600-1612: ad a. 879, 4; ad a. 900, 1-3; ad a. 908, 7; ad a. 912, 9-11).

40

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury twofold goal of celebrating an individual achievement and providing support for those undertaking similar enterprises surely motivated some of these travellers to put down on paper (or rather parchment) their own experience (Birch 1998: 41).

merchants and artists. Their motivations spanned from Church and political business to trade, pilgrimage, cultural interest and even medical needs (Matthews 2007: 12-17). Among the kings, we can enumerate a few who reigned over the East Saxons. They are said to have travelled to Rome in the seventh century or in the early eighth, like Cædwalla of Wessex, who left for Rome in 688 and died there;30 Cendred of Mercia, who abdicated and took the King-to-be Offa with him in 709 (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 5.19; Yorke 1985: 2, 23-34); and Ine of Wessex, who also died there in 726. An East Saxon king named Sigeric is reported to have travelled to Rome in 798 (Yorke 1985: 3, 24).31 Between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, other kings are reported to have undertaken the pilgrimage to Rome: Æthelwulf of Wessex, his son Alfred and King Cnut (Ortenberg 1990: 203, with references to sources and earlier literature; Story 2003: 225).

Canterbury calls Rome: Building an identity It was the Benedictine monk Bede who, from his scriptorium at the monastery of St Peter in Northumbria, known simply as MonkwearmouthJarrow Abbey, gave weight to the idea that the Churches of Rome and Canterbury were bound by close links, insistently highlighted in Bede’s writings and in his milestone Ecclesiastical History (Tinti 2014b: 1). The origin of this connection was traced back to the fact that the evangelisation of Canterbury (which, however, already boasted a Christian community: infra) was carried out by a monk named Augustine, who arrived at Canterbury with 40 brothers in 597 directly from the monastery founded by Gregory the Great on the Clivius Scauri, on the Caelian Hill, carrying the pallium as a symbol of direct descent.34

In general, an average of 50 to 100 Englishmen going annually to Rome is estimated by Parks for the centuries preceding the year 1300, when the institution of the Jubilee might have lifted this number to 200 to 750 per year (Parks 1954: XI), an impressive figure given the high cost in terms of effort, time and money.

If the existence of an early Christian church on the site of the cathedral is doubtful (infra), a few archaeological finds seem to confirm that some (at least) of the Canterbury elites had been converted to the Christian faith.35

Indeed, Bede noted an increase in the flux of pilgrims to Rome at the time of Ceolfrid’s last journey, when nobles and commons, layfolk and clergy, men and women toured the churches of Rome (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 5.7; Parks 1954: 28).32

The choice of Canterbury as metropolitan see was probably an ‘adaptation’ of Pope Gregory’s wish to establish two metropolitan sees in Britain, one in London and one in York. Augustine’s decision was reasonably grounded in the fact that the King of Kent, Æthelberht, was married to a Christian princess, Bertha, who was accompanied by Bishop Liudhard,

As we shall see later in greater detail (chap. 4, pp. 6467), whether it was out of free choice, devotion or institutional duty, having decided to undertake the journey to Rome, the traveller had to make many preparations and gather information about the possible alternative routes. The entourage of the archbishops of Canterbury must have kept a dossier collecting all possible materials useful for the planning of the trip. Undoubtedly, the uneven experience of those that took up the journey was somehow recorded and processed, and updates to the political situation and security conditions were sought. Oral tradition surely played a dominant role in the earliest phases and word was passed down from monasteries to courts, from traders to messengers and military staff.33 However, the

the Middle Ages, as in Roman times, the transmission of news and information could be entrusted to professional messengers as well as to other travellers that were bound for the destination of the missives (Matthews 2007: 15-16). An interesting scenario is depicted by a letter of AD 801 from Alcuin, from which it can be evinced that it was usual to entrust letters to groups of English travellers journeying from Rome to Troyes, from where the dispatches would have found their way to Tours by means of ‘the hands of Alcuin’s people’: Alc. Epist. 120 (= Allott 1974: 128). 34  The principal sources for the Gregorian mission remain the letters of Pope Gregory I: Greg. Epist. 6.51-55, 57, 59-60; 8.29; 11.34-42, 4445, 47-48, 50-51, in addition to the above-mentioned account by Bede in Hist. Eccl. 1.23-33. Thanks to this intense epistolary exchange, it is possible to account for the vicissitudes of the missionary group, including internal resistance to undertaking such a risky mission, and some of the practicalities of the long journey, which included paving the way by means of introductory letters to rulers in France and the co-optation of Frankish interpreters: Robinson 1926: 226-228; Deanesly 1961: 41-50. 35  On the finding of silverware incised with the chi-rho monogram see Wilson and Wright 1963: 158, 163, pl. XVI. The sources about early Christianity in Britain are collected and discussed by Margaret Deanesly, mainly for what concerns ‘the human angle perspective’: Deanesly 1961: 1-19.

30 

He was buried in the Vatican Basilica, and his tomb became a pilgrimage site for English pilgrims: Ortenberg 1990: 203. 31  A second king of the East Saxons named Sigeric is recorded in the sources, as successor (?) of the first Sigeric’s successor Sigered. He was still ruling the East Saxons in 825: Yorke 1985: 6-10, 24. 32  See also Bed. De Temp. Ratio. col. 571: ‘many Englishmen, nobles and commons, men and women, rulers and private persons, led by heavenly love, began the custom [Latin: consueverant] of travel to Rome from Britain’. 33  Matthews provides a review of the documented exchange of information, in written as well as verbal form, remarking that in

41

The Route of the Franks as her chaplain. The two made use of a small chapel dedicated to St Martin, prudently located just next to the city walls of Canterbury, although – as we shall see later – an edifice for Christian worship is supposed to have already existed where the cathedral would be built.

with the absorption of the existing British population by the Anglo-Saxon newcomers, who would have seen their language, Old English, replacing the Primitive Welsh, already doomed to disappear by the early seventh century (Brooks 2000: 232-242). It is possible, indeed, that the direct spread of the Christian faith from the centre of Christianity, driven by the conversion of the people of King Æthelberht – married, as we have seen above, to the Frankish Christian princess Bertha – soon after the arrival of the Roman delegation, enhanced the fusion between the British and Anglo-Saxon populations leading to an ‘English’ identity (Brooks 2000: 222). This goal was to some extent facilitated by the failure of King Æthelberht to extend his own control beyond the region of Kent, placing Canterbury at the centre of the young kingdom, but was soon endangered by the upswing of pagan forces after the death of the king (616 or 618). This ‘resistance’ forced several bishops to flee to Frankish Gaul, although the fact that the bishop of Canterbury remained in his see turned the spotlight on the town as the stronghold of Christianity and the only survivor in the direct lineage from Rome (Brooks 2000: 225-226). The first bishop of English origin, elected in 653 once the direct lineage of the first group of monks was exhausted, died in Rome during what we can refer to as the first investiture journey, and was promptly replaced by a bishop of Greek origin, in this way re-establishing the Roman descent (supra, pp. 3941). Rome’s support was even more necessary when a couple of Mercian kings tried to unseat Canterbury from the role of metropolitan see (Brooks 2000: 229).

Among other things, Roman ancestry was testified to by the relics deposited at the core of the altar of the new church (Thacker 2000: 259).36 Even the churches’ dedications prove the emphasis laid on the town’s twinning: the foundation outside the urban perimeter of Canterbury of SS Peter and Paul echoed the dominance of the two Apostles among Roman devotees, just as the dedication of Canterbury’s Cathedral to Christ was meant to imitate the contemporary titulature of the Lateran Basilica of the Holy Saviour (Taylor 1969).37 The imitatio of the Lateran complex went further with Archbishop Cuthbert and the dedication of the new baptistery to St John the Baptist (infra, p. 46). As we shall see later in detail, even more general aspects of the Christian topography of Canterbury and of the spatial organisation of the religious complexes may be derived from a Roman model.38 On the other hand, the ‘cultural domination’ of Rome over the Anglo-Saxon people seems to have been a straightforward connotation for eighth- to tenthcentury English society (Howe 2008). Bede’s version was probably intended to reinforce the political role of the metropolitan see while at the same time strengthening the identity of the gens anglorum, built around a sort of imitatio Romae and with the aim of overcoming the contemporary political divisions. At the time, indeed, the process was in full development,

The Roman inspiration went further, involving many aspects of material and immaterial culture, conveyed as it was by an intensifying flow of exchange, also involving a stronger ‘perception’ of Romanitas as key in better understanding Britain’s past.39 For instance, as convincingly argued by Jane Hawkes, the use of stone in the construction of churches in southern England, traditionally simply linked to ecclesiastical patronage, can be rather ‘identified and actively employed as a visible expression of the physical establishment of the Church of Rome’ (Hawkes 2003: esp. 71-77).40

36 

The deposition had probably already been performed by Augustine upon the foundation of the church in 597; in any case, we are informed that Pope Gregory the Great arranged for relics of the Apostles to be dispatched with the second groups of missionaries arriving from Rome in 601 headed by Mellitus: Thacker 2000: 259. On the miraculous powers attributed to relics, see Webb 2000: 6. 37  Additionally to this Roman inspiration, some architectural features of SS Peter and Paul could suggest influence from certain major complexes of France, mainly ‘Parisian’ monuments, for instance the buttresses framing the entrance to the porch at Canterbury’s church, similar to one of St Bartholomew church at Saint-Denis. This connection can be stretched to argue for a direct participation of Merovingian masons in the construction of Kent’s first missionary religious sites: Cambridge 1999: 226. For Frankish involvement in the mission see Wood 1999. 38  See Cambridge 1999: 211-212; Brooks 2000; Thacker 2000: 256-258; Hawkes 2003: 72-73; Blair 2005: 66; and for further suggestions on the Roman inspiration in the design of SS Peter and Paul see Mauskopf Deliyannis 1995: 115. A very thorough review of the possible implications of the relationship between England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages is offered in the collective work edited by Francesca Tinti in 2014 (Tinti 2014a), which also provides new insights in matters related to pilgrimage, cultural exchange, politics and diplomacy (Tinti 2014b: 7).

With time, this Romanitas shaped the ceremonial and liturgical tradition of the Canterbury community, and possibly determined the choice of an extramural site 39 

Tinti 2014b: 3-4, highlights how much the state of the art has evolved from the pioneering work of Levison (1946), with an innovative approach that goes beyond historical or archaeological research into documented exchange of people and objects, and rather delves into the analysis of how this Romanitas was perceived and enacted in the newly established ‘English’ community. 40  Setting up the comparison between the more Scotorum (in wood) and the more Romanorum (in stone), Bede himself seems to take it for granted that the fact that the churches of Wearmouth and Jarrow were built in stone was due to their ‘Roman-ness’: Hawkes 2003: 75.

42

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury construction of the monastery dedicated to SS Peter and Paul.

for the cathedral, allowing the burial of kings to respect the Roman use of a separation between the space of the living and the space of the dead. This ‘championing of Roman practice in the Canterbury liturgy’ (Brooks 2000: 227-228) was embodied by the pallium and by the direct handing down of tradition.

Early scholarship engaged in understanding the organisation of the ecclesiastical community of Canterbury and its evolution, from the origin to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. It has been convincingly argued that Bede’s account of the exchange between Augustine and Pope Gregory shows that a clergy was already supporting the bishop at the time. The two groups of monks and deacons, however, shared the habit of common life and occasionally their roles overlapped and conflicted, although the rule of recruiting the archbishop from the monastic order was considered such at least until the archiepiscopate of Ælfric at the very end of the tenth century (Robinson 1926).42

Cultural transmission was indeed one of the most tangible outcomes of the Anglo-Saxons’ journeys to Rome. Undoubtedly the ‘orgy’ of artistic manifestations to which pilgrims and travellers were exposed in Rome influenced the way in which art was produced and appreciated in England (Ortenberg 2014), to the point that even the pictorial decoration and graffiti decorating the catacombs of Rome are said to have had an impact on Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture (Izzi 2014).

An archaeological re-examination of all the data collected about the foundation, construction, transformations and history of the Anglo-Saxon churches of Canterbury was undertaken by Kevin Blockley in 2000 (Figure 3.2). We will refer to that study for most works published before 2000, inserting only updates from the most recent contributions.43

Pilgrimage to Rome and to the Holy Land unquestionably paralleled the cultural exchange prompted by trade and diplomatic missions. It stood out as one important channel for the circulation of precious goods and valuable objects such as illuminated manuscripts and books, which were the most common object for exchange and offering as gifts (Ortenberg 1992: 18, 127-196 more generally about the spiritual and cultural relationships between England and Rome).

Textual and archaeological evidence shows that many Anglo-Saxon monasteries and churches of different categories and architectural forms went through renovation works in the middle and late Anglo-Saxon periods. Some of these structural changes were due to the newly restored esprit of the Benedictine Reform, as the material alterations substantiated the spiritual regeneration (Gittos 2013: 57-58).

The traffic in relics generated the establishment of new cults; the frequency or the relevance of churches and shrines dedicated to certain saints along the way encouraged the spread of their veneration (e.g. St Remigius of Reims, St Vaast of Arras, and St Maurice of Agaune, St Christine of Bolsena and St Caprasius of Aulla) (Ortenberg 1992: 18).

This is undoubtedly true for Canterbury, where Archbishop Wulfred, a crucial figure in the reform process, embodied the changes of the Rule in architectural form, especially at the cathedral. The earliest church, founded by Augustine, only hypothetically preceded by a Romano-Britain construction (supra), has been partially excavated beneath the later cathedral44 and

Canterbury in the Early and High Middle Ages As we have seen, the Christian faith was already rooted in Canterbury at the time of the arrival of Augustine’s mission, and the presence of a bishop is postulated at least from the beginning of the fifth century, given that Canterbury was one of the civitates-capitals of Roman Britain (Brooks 2000: 231). Indeed, it is Bede himself who informs us that Princess Bertha and her bishopchaplain Liudhard used the chapel of St Martin to pray, and that after the conversion of King Æthelberht in 597, Augustine was given another church, which he rebuilt and consecrated to Christ, the Holy Saviour (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.33).41 Soon Augustine also started the

of Early Anglo-Saxon churches show proximity to Roman buildings, most probably mausolea: Blockley 2000: 104-105. 42  In one of the sources, it is said that it was Sigeric who reintroduced the monks at Christ Church and not his successor, but considering that this entry is found only in one of the codices it is probably a mere accidental interpolation: Robinson 1926: 240. 43  The former studies, like Tatton-Brown 1975 and Gem 1992, underlined that while a great deal of data can be collected about the ecclesiastical complexes of Canterbury and its urban and rural topography starting from the early Norman period (i.e. from the second half of the eleventh century), not much was known of the period of Dunstan’s and Sigeric’s archbishoprics: Tatton-Brown 1992: 76. Many data can be retrieved browsing the most recent numbers of the journal Archaeologia Cantiana, which includes an ‘annual bibliography of Kentish archaeology and history’, and is available online (freely for issues older than three years) at https:// www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/research/arch-cant/by-year, viewed 14 January 2022. An updated overview with excellent images and reconstructions is in Foyle 2013: esp. 18-29. 44  Indeed, no visible remains of the Anglo-Saxon constructions survive today. The only evidence, consisting in wall-foundations

41 

The existence of a church that would have preceded Augustine’s construction of the cathedral is still debated, since no remains of the earliest phase were detected in the excavations. Kevin Blockley (2000: 85) argues that possibly Bede, who wrote when the cathedral had already undergone total reconstruction, was misled by the presence of spolia and the extensive use of stone blocks in the masonry. This does not exclude, however, that the king donated an existing building together with land within the walls to Augustine. Indeed, the presence of a third-century Roman temple under the chapel of St Gabriel is suggested by 1993 excavations, and several other examples

43

The Route of the Franks

Figure 3.2: Canterbury. Schematic map of the town around the time of Sigeric’s election. The Marlowe area is highlighted in grey. Elaboration Author after Brooks 2000: fig. 28.

This building would have approximately followed the orientation of the Augustinian church, expanding significantly only on the west side, reaching a total length of around 57m, the main body having a length of 43.6m, to which c. 6m for the annex to the west and a probable eastern apse of unknown size have to be added. On the eastern side (almost archaeologically unknown), the existence of a crypt is considered highly probable (Blockley 2000: 106-107). The western annex was later (late tenth-early eleventh century: infra) transformed into a sophisticated chapel, with a rounded interior and polygonal exterior; it was raised and included an entrance, although the main entrance of this later period is known to be on the southern side (Blockley 2000: 106-107) (Figure 3.4).

belongs to the architectural model that seems to have been most popular for the Anglo-Saxon churches until the 670s (although archaeological finds span between 450 and 850), as it displays a single nave surrounded by a porticus (Blockley, Sparks, and Tatton-Brown 1997: 12–14, 22–23, 95–100). As in many other constructions of the period, walls made use of a large quantity of reused material, mainly Roman bricks.45 A substantial remodelling took place in the early ninth century, most probably in connection with the archiepiscopate of Wulfred (c. 808–813), although the excavation data suggest only a date before the midtenth century.46 The new cathedral presented a nave with aisles, a choir, and a square western ‘forebuilding’ (Blockley, Sparks and Tatton-Brown 1997: 14-18, 100106, 110-111 (period 4A); Gem 2013: 30-36) (Figure 3.3).

Not long before Sigeric’s archiepiscopate, the cathedral underwent renovation promoted by Archbishop Oda between 942 and 958.47 However, the entity of Oda’s work is very difficult to assess by means of archaeological evidence. Furthermore, following some misleading passages in Eadmer’s text (supra, note 17), a dispute has arisen as to whether Dunstan undertook a reworking

brought to light below the present cathedral, rather shows that the Anglo-Saxon cathedral and the adjacent buildings were demolished to ground level in the 1070s, when they were replaced by the Norman cathedral: Blockley 2000: 29. 45  For a detailed review of excavation data, comparison with the sources and general interpretation of this Phase 1 see: Blockley 2000: 103-106. 46  Blockley 2000: 112-113. The revision by Gem 2013 identified some evidence attributable to Wulfred’s project that led him to argue that ‘Wulfred’s new cathedral at Canterbury must have been a key monument in early-ninth-century England’ (Gem 2013: 37).

47  This is the phase described by Eadmer, before the devastating fire of 1067. Information about these works can be found in Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Life of St Oswald, a biography written in the late tenth century that extends the narration of the life of St Oswald to include a description of Oswald’s uncle Oda’s renovation of Canterbury’s cathedral (Graves 1975).

44

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury

Figure 3.3: Canterbury, cathedral. Hypothetical reconstruction of the plan and section of the earlier Anglo-Saxon phase (2A). After Blockley 2000: fig. 16.

Either way, the western side of the church, which by that time had included a sort of forebuilding (supra), was altered once more between the tenth and eleventh

of the eastern end of the cathedral, which would have been completed only after his death and dedicated in 990 (Gem 1992: 71-73 with references to other scholars’ positions).48

eliminating the controversial points, admittedly provides a quite imprecise picture of the monumental layout of Christ Church and of the church of St John: Taylor 1975: 155-158.

48 

An attempt to reduce Eadmer’s information to its essentials has been carried out by Taylor; the consequent scheme, although

45

The Route of the Franks

Figure 3.4: Canterbury, cathedral. Phased plan of Anglo-Saxon remains (periods 2A-2C). After Blockley 2000: fig. 6.

century. Although the construction of a large apse flanked by polygonal towers at the cathedral’s west end can be framed in the architectural trends of the Benedictine Reform movement, this activity is difficult to date and it is not possible to narrow down further than between 900 and 1067 (Blockley, Sparks, and Tatton-Brown 1997: 18–23, 106–11). Recent reexamination of archaeological and documentary evidence seems to indicate the first decades of the eleventh century, probably after the fire due to the Danish sacking of 1011, or after the enthronement of King Cnut in England. Therefore, most probably this was not the architectural setting of Sigeric’s office.

Cuthbert as a burial place (contrary to the tradition of the archbishops being buried at St Augustine’s outside the walls) and for judicial ordeals, in addition to functioning as a repository for books and other documents (Gittos 2013: 75 with sources, 94-95. For discussion see Brooks 1984: 39–40, 81–82). The fact that this is the only separate baptismal church in England reinforces the impression of Canterbury’s clergy being ‘fanatical’ about stressing the direct link with Rome and the original liturgy, an attitude that is understood better in the climate of the reform promoted by Cuthbert, whose main goal was to reinforce the centrality of the bishop’s role, pursuing a return to the dignifying roots of the Roman womb (Blair 2005: 202).

The cathedral complex is composed of a nave, an apsidal sanctuary (1016: Blockley 2000: 117), a crypt (the similarity of this element with Old St Peter’s Church in Rome is further stressed by Eadmer, who compares the crypt to a Roman-style confessionary: Biddle 1986: 7), a choir, two square towers on the eastern side (added in the first half of the eleventh century), and the oratory of St Mary (at the western end of the church, detected by means of excavations and described as a polygonal apsidal chapel with flanking hexagonal stair-turrets: Blockley 2000: 80).

The other Canterbury ecclesiastical pole gathered around the monastery of St Augustine, just outside the walls, can also be interpreted as a ‘manifestation’ of the reform movement and as a material expression of the pervading spirituality directly stemming from the Augustinian mission. In fact, it should not be forgotten that this was the only surviving Benedictine abbey at the time of St Dunstan, since all the other abbeys had been destroyed and their estates confiscated by the main ecclesiastical houses (Tatton-Brown 1992: 7677).49 However, we have to stress that, while written documents are very informative about the first phases and the renovation of the eleventh century (infra), sources about the crucial period of the reform movement are surprisingly and disappointingly scarce (Taylor 1975: 153-154).

There is documentary evidence – a land grant of King Coenwulf of Mercia (798-821) – to support the tradition attributing to Archbishop Cuthbert (740-760) the construction of a second church, dedicated to John the Baptist, built immediately east of the cathedral, ‘so close as to be almost touching’ (Gittos 2013: 75-76, 95).

49  The reconstruction of the vicissitudes of the abbey’s domain, of the first attempts to reconstitute its patrimony and the first efforts to restore and investigate its monumental heritage, including the first excavations are traced in Sparks 1984.

As made explicit by its dedication, the church functioned as a baptistery, but at the same time it was used by 46

Figure 3.5: Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey. General plan with location of the mound at the south-eastern edge. After Jenkins 1991: 2, fig. 1.

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury

47

The Route of the Franks

Figure 3.6: Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey. Reconstruction of the churches of SS Peter and Paul and of St Mary. A: seventh century; B: beginning of the eleventh century. After Gem 1992: 60, 62, figs. 5-6.

nave enclosed by porticus (Figure 3.6 A), two of which, accessible from the porch at the west end, had a funerary function,51 while, according to Bede (Hist. Eccl. 2.3), an altar dedicated to Gregory the Great occupied the central space of the northern porticus. Augustine himself was buried there (as well as the first five archbishops who succeeded him); his tomb was in the northern porticus until it was transferred to the centre of the octagon built on the initiative of Abbot Wulfric in the mid-eleventh century (infra).52 The first church had a nave, a western narthex, and a north and a south porticus, altogether measuring 29 by 17.5m. In contrast to the cathedral, where the narthex might have stretched only for one third of the width of the nave, here it equalled the nave’s width (Blockley 2000: 118). On the northern side, the church was completed by a sort of cloister, leaning against the northern porticus; this addition should post-date the beginning of the eleventh century (Blockley 2000: 122).

St Augustine Abbey is also an excellent case study for a characteristic phenomenon of the Anglo-Saxon period, the ‘church group’, i.e. the presence of multiple churches at the same site, where frequently the main church was dedicated to an apostolic saint and was later paralleled by a second church dedicated to the Virgin (Gittos 2013: 55-102)50 (Figure 3.5). Indeed, at St Augustine’s, the church of SS Peter and Paul, which was surely underway when Augustine died in 604/605, had already been ‘doubled’ by the dedication of a chapel to St Mary between 616 and 624. Originally meant as a burial place for the Kentish kings and the archbishops of Canterbury, the construction of the Abbey of St Augustine was started – probably in 598 – outside the city walls by Augustine himself, but was not still completed when the bishop died, being consecrated only by his successor Lawrence at an uncertain date (ranging from 604 to 619: Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.33, 2.3; see Gittos 2013: 61).

The church from the initial missionary period underwent works that included an addition to the west, with the partial abolition of the wall dividing the narthex from the nave, the extension of the northern porticus and the addition of a wall across the east end of the nave (Blockley 2000: 118-120) (Figure 3.6 B). The dating of this phase is not clearly definable, ranging from the mid-eighth century to 978 or even to the early eleventh century, when the church was rededicated, although a re-examination of all the evidence could

Like most churches built during the so-called ‘conversion period’, covering the first three quarters of the seventh century, the church of SS Peter and Paul was rather basic, composed of one or a maximum of two units. Like the other church built on the initiative of Augustine (supra), it adopted the model of a single 50 

In the case of the church of St Martin, although it has been suggested that it belonged to a church group centred around St Augustine, the tight relationships with the cathedral and the fact that at least by Dunstan’s time it was served by an independent clergy rather testify for a gravitation towards Christ Church, despite the topographical proximity to the Abbey (Brooks 1984: 34, 251, 295-296, 300). A brief review of the topic of church groups in Britain is offered by Jones 1996.

51 

Gem 1992: 59–61; Gem 1997: 95–101. For parallels for the buttresses at SS Peter and Paul: Cambridge 1999: 217, and for a nave surrounded by porticus: Cambridge 1999: 218-219, figs. 10.8, 10.9. 52  The translation was anyway finalised only once the octagon was completed, by initiative of Abbot Wido in 1091: Biddle 1986: 7.

48

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury

Figure 3.7: Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey. Plan of the excavated structures attributable to the Anglo-Saxon period (seventheleventh centuries). After Gem 1992: 58, fig. 4.

indicate the latter date as being most probable. A review of the earliest excavations was patiently carried out by Richard Gem, who at the beginning of the 1990s proposed an interpretative plan of the abbey complex, where, in addition to the phasing of the Anglo-Saxon period, a sharp critical analysis was attempted with the aim of ‘separating fact from fiction’ (Gem 1992: 59). Indeed, in Figure 3.7, only the shaded features can be considered archaeologically documented.

addition of a narthex to the west of the original church (Taylor 1975: 153-154). However, the most notable works would have been undertaken through the initiative of Abbot Ælfmaer (1006-1023x1027) after another Viking sacking in 1011 (Gem 1992: 63-67). Thus, although in the late seventh and eighth centuries the church of SS Peter and Paul was affected by changes mainly intended to find a more emphatic location for the display of the precious relics or to accentuate the prominence of the royal burials, and leaving aside the remodelling by Dunstan, Sigeric would have frequented a building that had been already standing for more than 370 years (see Figure 3.6 B).

On the basis of this re-examination, it has been possible to distinguish some rebuilding attributable to St Dunstan, who was undoubtedly interested in reactivating monastic life at St Augustine’s after the Viking sack of the mid-ninth century. This remodelling in the light of his reforms is clearly referred to in the historical record, on the occasion of the dedication of the church of the Apostles and St Augustine in 978 (Gem 1992: 61). These alterations could have comprised the

Immediately after its foundation, following an intervention by King Eadbald of Kent, who was buried there as the first of a series of Kentish kings, a second church was built on the eastern side of SS Peter and 49

The Route of the Franks

Figure 3.8: Canterbury. Comparative table with the plans of the churches of Christ Church (A), St Martin (B), SS Peter and Paul (C) and St Pancras (D). After Blockey 2000: fig. 14. Courtesy of Durham University e-theses service.

Paul, and was dedicated to St Mary by Archbishop Mellitus between 616 and 624 (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.6); Gem 1992: 59, 61). This is the first known case of a subsidiary church devoted to the Virgin supplementing the existing main church, thus representing the first example of a church group in England (Gittos 2013: 94). On the other hand, church dedications were also meant to underline special relationships if not an effective dependency between minsters.53 It is possible that this chapel, whose surviving walls are built with reused

Roman bricks, was intended to be used by King Eadbald as a mausoleum; in that case, we can envisage a direct inspiration from the so-called Probus chapel of Old St Peter’s in Rome (Gittos 2013: 64). Although data are scarce, it is assumed that this chapel had an apse at the eastern end, and perhaps a porticus to the north and to the south (Blockley 2000: 121-122). Construction of an octagonal structure began on the initiative of Wulfric around 1050, to link the church of SS Peter and Paul with the chapel of St Mary; it was not completed by the time of Wulfric’s death in 1059 (Blockley 2000: 123).

53  A minster is a major or ‘mother’ church. Blair argued that minsters originated from monasteries in the seventh-eighth centuries and later developed into larger and more complex settlements (Blair 1992).

50

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury A third church, dedicated to St Pancras, was build east of St Mary’s. No documentary evidence supports any hypothesis about its foundation, although the connection with the activity of Pope Honorius I (62538) in spreading the cult of the saint might suggest a date as early as the second quarter of the seventh century (Gem 1997: 101-104; McClendon 2005: 62-64) (Figure 3.8 D).

(Tatton-Brown 1992: 77-80 with references). Also, in the surrounding lands, in the proximity of the so-called St Martin’s House, later renamed Priory, important archaeological traces of an Anglo-Saxon settlement were found. They include a series of sixthand seventh-century burials and a series of pits filled with animal bones, some pottery, residual Roman building material and industrial waste, datable to the late eighth to ninth centuries. They can be attributed to a settlement replacing a Roman building, possibly a small domestic complex or a monumental fountain or a mausoleum (Sparey-Green 2015: 31-32). In the Anglo-Saxon period a small hamlet occupied the area next to Richborough Road south of the church, also spreading uphill and north-east. The whole district between this area and the walls must have been occupied by ironworking activities, as proven by archaeological finds and documentary evidence, at least until the middle Anglo-Saxon period. The period of the Viking incursions might have affected its prosperity, since almost no traces of ninth- to eleventh-century occupation are to be found in the area (Sparey-Green 2015: 31-32), although written sources confirm that the church remained an important place of worship (Brooks 1984: 32).

Between the late seventh and the early eighth centuries, the chapel of St Pancras was rebuilt with the addition of a porticus on the northern and the southern sides, halfway down the nave, and an entrance was set up on the west side (Gem 1997: 101-104). On the initiative of St Dunstan, a central tower was probably built at St Augustine’s, although the remains of the so-called ‘south-west tower’ are attributed to a donation of the mid-eleventh century (Gem 1992: 67). Another tower, hypothetically classified as a campanile, was built atop the mound at the southern edge of the abbey’s precinct, on the Longport side. Excavated in the 1960s, it has been described as a rectangular construction composed of two compartments, built only partially in stone and completed in timber. Two building phases have been identified, the earlier of which is assigned to ‘an early medieval date’, though corresponding to the early twelfth century (Jenkins 1991).

Focusing on the period 800‒950 in England, we can stress that reduced investments limited the number of new constructions, promoting instead additions or remodelling at existing churches or subsidiary chapels, inspired by the new Carolingian canons, which aimed at designing a more harmonious and compact ensemble (Gittos 2013: 85-86).

The panorama of the ecclesiastical landscape of Canterbury at the time of Sigeric would not be complete without a mention of the architectural phasing of the church of St Martin (Figure 3.8 B). The building is probably an old Roman mausoleum already adapted to Christian worship before the arrival of the Gregorian missionaries (supra), located half a kilometre east of the city walls, on the southern side of the Roman road leading to Richborough, below a small spur on the east of the Stour Valley (Sparey-Green 2015: 17. See also Brooks 2002: 803-806).

By the beginning of the tenth century, aesthetic choices and political and economic conditions had changed again. The construction of clusters of churches went slightly out of fashion (Blair 2005: 121–134) but had a revival in the second half of the tenth century, as testified in Canterbury by the construction of new buildings at St Augustine’s (Saunders 1978: 38-44, 5152; Sherlock and Woods 1988: 82-83).54

It was taken over by Augustine, who possibly added a nave to the west. With a charter of 867, King Æthelred I awarded a seat in the church and a villula nearby (a small property?) to the priest Wighelm, suggesting that the church was used by a group of secular priests who resided in the compound (TattonBrown 1992: 77). After Sigeric’s death, the complex turned into the seat of a series of suffragan bishops, who supported the archbishop in his complex office; after the Norman Conquest it was transformed into a parish church (Tatton-Brown 1992: 77). Although St Martin’s is one of the few buildings preserving traces of the early Anglo-Saxon phases, in the nave and the chancel, no traces are detectable of the tenthcentury interventions, as the inscription on the west side of the chancel is probably from an earlier date

Furthermore, it is possible that starting from the beginning of the ninth century, reform of the canonical houses might have necessitated the addition of new communal buildings, as recorded at Canterbury Cathedral in around 808-813 on the initiative of Archbishop Wulfred (Brooks 1984: 155-160). All these Anglo-Saxon projects would appear very outmoded after the Norman Conquest, since they did not match up to their continental equivalents, which had been substantially renewed following the trends 54  The expansion of the church group included the construction of a chapel, a little more than 2m west of the main church, dated by archaeological evidence to the mid-eleventh century.

51

The Route of the Franks of the Carolingian artistic renaissance. Only the chapel of St Pancras, bordering the eastern cemetery of SS Peter and Paul, was left untouched, probably because the chapel assumed a funerary role (Tatton-Brown 1992: 77. For the survival of the porticus of St Gregory and perhaps a western tower see Sherlock and Woods 1988: 82-83).

seventh century, burials were located in the Marlowe area. It is likely that they were connected with a timber church that would have preceded the wooden church with a connected cemetery built here in the early Norman period (Blockley 2000: 151-153). This apparent anomaly, it being traditionally accepted that burials within the town walls of Canterbury were allowed only after papal authorisation to build the baptistery was brought back from his trip to Rome by Archbishop Cuthbert in 740/741 (Brooks 1984: 3435, 81-82), is nowadays paralleled by archaeological evidence for early medieval burials in several towns of Britain. However, at Canterbury most of the AngloSaxon burials have been located outside the walls, in continuity with the Roman cemeteries along the main roads, outside the Westgate and at Christ Church College, also outside the walls (Blockley 2000: 153-155). At the latter site, several pits containing waste from metalworking dating from the mid-eighth to mid- to late ninth centuries have been recorded. A marketplace is recorded in the sources at Queningate in 762 (Brooks 1984: 26).

The same applies to the churches of Canterbury’s Diocese, which went through a ‘wholesale replacement after the Norman Conquest’, leaving only very rare testimonies to the (wooden) Anglo-Saxon churches in Kent (Tatton-Brown 1992: 83) (see Figure 3.2). The Roman town of Durouernum Cantiacorum, a name that underlined its direct lineage from the existing Britannic settlement of Durouernum and the fact that it controlled the region that would take the name of Kent, was founded in the first century AD with a regular street grid and with substantial provision of public infrastructure (at least: the forum, a theatre, a temple, and public baths), including a surrounding wall added in the second half of the third century that enclosed a surface of around 52.6ha (Frere, Stow and Bennett 1982: 19). Large parts of the town were deserted and some buildings dismantled between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries, although some alterations and possible changes of function were still made at some complexes like the public baths in the second half of the fourth century. Moreover, the depth of the dark earth layers detected in most of these areas seems to testify in favour of a rather intentional landfill activity, probably for gardening (Blockley 2000: 144-146). Most importantly, the dark earth deposits together with the debris of the collapsed buildings increasingly covered and erased the urban layout, leaving in use only the extra-urban road networks. When the town was resettled after the mid-fifth century, a new street system was progressively put in place. This set out the layout of the Anglo-Saxon town, of which around fifty buildings (mainly ‘sunken featured structures’) have been located and partially excavated (dating from c. 450 to c. 1050 and for the most part in the Marlowe area; see Figure 3.2), showing – at this stage of research – that the area north-west of the river Stour was not settled, nor the southern zone (Blockley 2000: 148).

The archaeological record seems to point to a gap in occupation between c. 725 and 850, at least in the Marlowe area where, between c. 875 and 900, a new large timber building interpretable as a smithy was built, while other sectors were reorganised after the mid-ninth century with the introduction of cellared structures (Blockley 2000: 150). In the area of Longmarket, between the cathedral and the Marlowe sites, a series of sunken-featured structures and larger cellar-like buildings dating to the ninth-tenth centuries (Rady 1991: 16-17) were excavated; finds of loom weights attest that here, as in the Marlowe area, weaving activities took place. The ninth century, with an economic expansion, led to the establishment of a spatial – with house frontage displayed along the streets and the rear of the blocks occupied by pits and cellars – and civic order, with governance bodies and guilds (Brooks 1984: 28-30). A charter of Dunstan’s time records the existence of a port in Canterbury, probably replacing the preViking trading area located in the north-eastern part of the town (Tatton-Brown 1992: 80). In the second half of the tenth century, the main city markets could be located in the area south of St Augustine’s Abbey, known as Longport, and along one of the new main urban axes, known as High Street, connecting the Westgate to the new gate named Newingate and later St George Gate. Other markets are documented outside the walls: a cattle market and the Wincheap, outside the Worthgate, along the road leading to Wye (Tatton-Brown 1992: 80). The archbishop’s market

Archaeological data get richer and more detailed with the fourth phase (first half of the seventh century), when so-called ‘earthfast’ timber buildings appeared, to be replaced in the second half of the same century by more complex sunken-featured structures (Blockley 2000: 149-150).55 From the beginning of the 55 

An earthfast building is a construction using vertical roof-bearing timbers lodged in post-holes in the ground (also called ‘post in ground construction’).

52

Chapter 3. Sigeric and Canterbury was situated around his estate, beyond the river Stour in the western suburb of the city, along a road (nowadays St Dunstan’s Street) leading to Seasalter and Whitstable (Tatton-Brown 1992: 80).

The last phase of Anglo-Saxon Canterbury saw an intensive reuse of stone blocks from Roman buildings; starting only in the mid-eleventh century, it was over by its end (Blockley 2000: 151).

53

Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration Abstract: This chapter provides a broad introduction to the nature and characteristics of post-classical roadnetworks, including a description of the material infrastructure that supported mobility in the past. To this introduction is added a detailed overview of a large number of journeys undertaken from the British Isles to Rome and other Mediterranean destinations in the centuries before and after the year 1000. The practical aspects of these journeys are analysed, such as their duration, organisation, means of transport, the composition of travellers’ groups, the opportunities for overnight accommodation during stops, the tools used for orienteering and mapping, and the measures taken for security and self-defence. The possible routes from southern England to the borders of eastern France are described and the different choices of medieval travellers, as documented by the travellers themselves or other sources, are reviewed. The reasons behind the choices made by some of the travellers, including Sigeric, explaining their itinerary and describing their travel experience, are discussed.

by a dominant historical view. In several cases, traces of ancient roads have been automatically attributed to the Roman period, and technical characteristics (e.g. cart-ruts) and traffic-related finds (e.g. horseshoes with scalloped edges) have been considered Gallo-Roman, attributions later disproved (Jeannin 1972: 146-155). An approach driven by art history has also been applied, detached from topographical materiality and mapping circulation through the distribution of artefacts, artistic trends and iconographies (e.g. Hubert 1948-1949 and 1952 for the late Merovingian route connecting Italy and France).

Routes, roads and infrastructure Although the linear development of the road network that covered medieval Europe was inferior to that of the Roman imperial age, the medieval system was no less important in terms of the political, economic and cultural contributions it made to creating medieval society. Undeniably, however, the conception of a ‘road-network’ was different after the fall of the Roman empire. It did not envision a web spreading efficiently to every corner of the lands controlled by Rome, generating an astonishing connectivity between north and south, east and west, inner lands and Mediterranean regions, inexorably converging toward the centre of the web, the Urbs. In other words, centralism and dirigisme were not the superintendent powers. The post-classical political bodies did not possess the resources, abilities or simply often did not last long enough to make an impact on the communication network, and were probably not even interested in doing so. The number and quality of long-distance routes decreased rapidly; only connecting routes between settlements within the same political entity were maintained, and only a few local and service roads remained clearly marked (Mannoni 1983: 213-214).

The same biases that affected the study of the Roman golden age have affected the study of medieval roads, however, as they are often reconstructed as idealised and immutable lines. In actuality, the road is a living organism in every historical phase, uninterruptedly subject to at least minimal or more significant variations, which ‘corrupt’ (i.e. change) the materiality of the artefacts. The variations can be due to historical, economic, cultural, geomorphological or hydrogeological factors; inevitably, they lead to substantial changes in the historical significance of that itinerary. The road and the territory it passes through are inextricably connected in a dynamic relationship and interaction. When tackling the study of a road, therefore, the main objective should be to distinguish the variants and unravel why they were generated, determine which variations represent real innovation in landscape dynamics and settlement patterns, and which changes lead to a topographical rupture with the former system, and with the historical framework.

The decrease in the architectural complexity of road infrastructure has meant that the interest of scholars has equally waned. Medieval roads are much less considered as artefacts, and more often analysed regarding their historical meaning and role. In fact, researchers have generally taken a different approach to the study of medieval roads than to the analysis of the Roman communication network, with limited application of the archaeological methodology labelled the ‘archaeology of roads’, and characterised instead

It is also necessary to revise the conventional view that considers the medieval road network a mere derivation from the Roman one, and where continuity is the driving force impeding substantial transformations in the road 54

Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration system.1 Although it is undeniable that Roman roads continued to be the backbones of the communication system until at least the ninth century, and that they only blended into the new landscape management in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries (Bruand 2002: 91), a new perspective has been gaining ground, especially in France, with clear evidence of the differences between the two systems, manifest not only in new foci of road organisation (villages, castra, fairs and markets, monasteries and pilgrimage destinations), but also in the proliferation of paths, and in their decreased stability and structural complexity (Szabò 1992: 15-17). The concept of curvilinearity supplanted that of straightness; fragmentation of itineraries replaced the functionality of long-distance routes. Ultimately, Roman roads went straight through obstacles, whereas medieval roads bypassed them (Esch 2001: 426).

the Early Middle Ages, often built in wood and therefore barely traceable archaeologically, yet occasionally recorded in sources and in place names,2 as are fords and ferries. Bridges have a twofold nature: as much as they join and facilitate communication, they are also formidable check- and tax-collection points, and can easily be turned into barriers to stop enemies travelling up rivers. As the Norman invasions demonstrate, many rivers were navigable, and certainly the Carolingians equipped them with river flotillas. Despite the fact that ‘international traffic’ was increasingly disinterested in waterways (infra), it is reasonable to expect that the local powers took measures to ensure at least local transport along rivers (Bruand 2002: 92). Given the political fragmentation characterising these phases, it was probably the geographical ‘bottleneck’ – ideal as a checkpoint – that characterised the bridges of the period and shaped the economic profile of the settlements around them. Indeed, it was along the Roman roads, and often where they crossed a watercourse, that the Carolingians had fortresses built to counter the Normans in the second half of the ninth century, fulfilling the provisions of the capitularies (Hubert 1959a: 530-558; 1959b: 43-78). Moreover, the military needs that had led to the construction of the Roman roads in Gaul were the same as those of the Carolingians; it is not accidental that the ancient Roman roads are described in some documents as via publica et dilapidata (Vita Ansberti 5, p. 639, a. 811).

In essence, then, although medieval routes often made use of segments of pre-existing roads, the combination of these segments generated conceptually new axes, connecting new settlements or centres that had risen in the hierarchy of settlement patterns, and that acquired a brand new political or religious relevance. The ‘Route of the Franks’ or – even better – the ‘Routes of the Franks’ fall into this category, where a patchwork of existing viable stretches joins together to create something new, in its materiality as well as in its perception and use.

This scenario was about to change radically, starting from the eleventh century, and reaching its maturity only in the thirteenth century, with the so-called ‘rivoluzione stradale del Dugento’, masterfully described by Johan Plesner in 1938 (Plesner 1938). With this epithet, the Danish historian encompassed the transformations in the modalities of travel, triggered by improvements in the architectural elements of the road-network, by changes in the means of transport and by advances in the mastery of cartography. This ‘revolution’ in the communication network resulted in an economic boost, paralleled by changes in Europe’s social, economic, cultural and anthropological assets (Gensini 2000b: VII-VIII).

Of course, this does not mean that the medieval road network did not bear the heavy imprint of its predecessor, but, again, its general conception met different needs and achieved diverse goals. It structured itself more spontaneously, more fragmentedly, and more ‘locally’, even if interventions by local authorities aimed at controlling and stabilising the infrastructure are already relatively well documented from the Early Middle Ages. The interaction between communication and the new socio-cultural landscape attracted other types of settlements along the roads, such as hermitages, several of which evolved rapidly into monastic foundations and monasteries (Heuclin 1988).

In continental France, medieval sources testify to the increased use of the term chemin for main roads, almost invariably associated with the term pèlerin. Contrary to modern use, in the Middle Ages the term chemin seems to have been connected to a Roman road, eventually in a broad range of variants: e.g. chemenot (at Sassenay, Saône-et-Loire, along the road connecting Chalon-surSaône and Langres), cheminette, cheminot, beauchemin

As already argued elsewhere (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 36-37), the idea that medieval roads were insufficiently cared for, and that travellers could not rely upon road infrastructure has had to be substantially revised in the light of the most recent research. One crucial point is the existence of bridges: although not comparable in number and engineering to the achievements of the Roman era, bridges still punctuated roads throughout

2  A peculiarity of northern and eastern France is the frequency of place-names derived from the Gaulish word for bridge, briva, resulting in the very frequent Brienne, Brive, Brèves Briennon, etc.: Gendron 2006: 68-69.

1 

This conventional vision is expressed, for instance, in Reverdy 2006: 11-15.

55

The Route of the Franks

Figure 4.1: Schematic map of the road network in north-western France and the river Seine basin during the Carolingian age, with indication of the main centres (dot: centre, vicus), religious settlements (cross: abbey, monastic borough), smaller monastic settlements (triangle) and route toponyms (square). Elaboration A. Panarello after Bruand 2002: 94, map 1.

as N 341) in the region Nord-Pas-de-Calais (see e.g. Vannérus 1938).

(between Reims and Langres) (Gendron 2006: 26-27). Other odonyms underlined the architectural nature of a road, predictably when it was a legacy of Roman times (e.g. chaussée and estrée as a reference to metalled roads). On the other hand, the fact that a certain route was frequented by pilgrims to Rome generated the frequent combination of the word chemin and the qualification of Romeo. The many Chemin Roumieu or Romieu or Romieux became – like the adjective francisca in Italy – synonyms for ‘pilgrimage route’, including the Way of St James. A more generic reference to pélerin(s) was also very common (e.g. chemin de pélerins, fontaine de pélerins, pont de pélerins, route de pélerins, etc.: Gendron 2006: 144-146).

A general overview of the network in northern France and in Flanders shows that continuity with Roman roads is strong in the Somme area, probably because the Merovingians exploited the accessibility of main river valleys, especially when the demographic curve began to rise again. There were some local modifications, following changes in the hierarchy of a few settlements, as happened at Boulogne-sur-Mer, which was unseated by Quentovic (Bruand 2002: 95, see Figure 4.1). The so called via Barbarica connecting the Atlantic coast to the Alps crossed Amiens and Reims (Vercauteren 1934: 451-460). The other important northern axis is the route of the Rhine, with two main variants: one via Thérouanne, Tournai and Tongeren; the other via Arras, Cambrai, Bavay, Gembloux and Liège (Vercauteren 1934: 451-460; Hubert 1959b).

Another marker of ancient origin and the use of a road as a main axis during the Middle Ages is the recurrence of the odonym linked to the legendary Frankish queen Brunehaut (i.e. Brunhilda of Austrasia), resulting in a series of Chaussées Brunehaut spread all over France but chiefly concentrated in the former Gallia Belgica (Duparc 1971: 183; Laborde 1983). Related to our research is, for example, the presence of a road still officially named Chaussée Brunehaut linking Arras to Boulogne-sur-Mer via Thérouanne and Desvres (corresponding to the modern D 341, formerly known

These long-distance axes were composed of a series of segments linking the settlements, some of ancient origin, to other new foundations. For the most part, these sites were the outcome of the evangelisation of the sixth and seventh centuries (e.g. Saint-Ouen, 56

Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration

Figure 4.2: Schematic map of the river Seine basin during the Carolingian age, with indication of the main centres (dot: centre, vicus), religious settlements (cross: monastery, monastic borough), smaller monastic settlements (triangle) and route toponyms (square). Elaboration A. Panarello after Bruand 2002: 99, map 2.

of several studies, starting from that of Parks in 1954 to that of Loveluck and O’Sullivan in 2016, via the extensive research of Matthews in 2007 and Pelteret’s 2014 paper, also including the essay of Levison (1946), focused on the eight century. Most of these works are grounded in sources contemporary with, or a little later than, the periods in which the journeys took place, sources that are – alas – for the most part lacking in information. Notwithstanding this ‘reticence’, we will try to extrapolate as many details as possible about the routes, the modalities of travel, the conditions of the journey and the contexts in which these travels were undertaken.

St Amandus, St Vaast) or were heir of a curtis (e.g. all those settlements whose name ends in -court). Between Bavay and Reims continuity allowed the conservation and proliferation of many toponyms connected to the road: e.g. Froidestrées, Étréaupont and La Chausséed’Étréaupont not far from Arras, and Estrée-Blanche between Thérouanne a Cambrai. Moreover, around Reims we detect greater continuity with Roman roads, although not many toponyms connected to them survived (see Figure 4.2).3 At the same time many monastic settlements, which also provided hospitality to pilgrims, rose along the road: e.g. the cellae at Auchy and Ferfay, Irish foundations explicitly meant to assist pilgrims heading to Rome; Chuchy-à-la-Tour, Estrée-Cauchy and the monastery of Mont-Saint-Éloi; beyond Arras, Wancourt, Vis-enArtois and the monastic settlement of Baralle, at the burial place of St Vaast (Bruand 2002: 95-96).

A first consideration is that sources show that the number of travellers progressively increased from the sixth century and peaked between AD 1100 and 1500 (Parks 1954: X-XI). Parks estimates that between 50 to 100 English people went to Rome annually, with a peak of at least 200 to 750 persons in the jubilee years starting from 1300. These are definitely impressive figures when considered against the duration (an average of 7 weeks if the traveller was provided with a mount), harshness and dangers of the trip, not to mention the complex logistics and the costs.4 There are similar statistics for

Among toll points at bridges, we can list those at the crossing of the rivers Canche and Bresle, between Thérouanne and Rouen (Bruand 2002: 96). Travels from England to Rome Travels from the British Isles to Rome and other south Mediterranean destinations have been the subject

4  It is via witnesses like Bede, Paul the Deacon and Alcuin that the growing dimension of the phenomenon can be assessed: see Frauzel 2013: 1089 with references to sources. Epigraphic sources, like graffiti of Anglo-Saxon or other Nordic pilgrims at holy shrines, are useful, especially for the sanctuary of Monte Gargano in Apulia: see Frauzel 2013: 1089-1090.

3  The same applies to Burgundy: Bruand 2002: map 4, p. 107, see Figure 4.3.

57

The Route of the Franks

Figure 4.3: Schematic map of the road network in Burgundy during the Carolingian age, with indication of the main centres (dot: centre, vicus), religious settlements (cross: monastery, monastic borough), smaller monastic settlements (triangle) and route toponyms (square). Elaboration A. Panarello after Bruand 2002: 107, map 4.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration ‘French’ travellers: Lambert, bishop of Arras, travelled to Rome for the first time to be consecrated directly by the hands of the pontiff in 1091-1092. He returned to Rome in 1099 to attend the Lateran Council, confirming that, in the eleventh century, this Romeward journey could have been undertaken at short intervals, probably more often than in the centuries to come (Lestocquoy 1957: 182-184).

Among the earliest journeys for which we have enough detail, those of Benedict Biscop vary surprisingly in their choice of route, as one of his first travels included a long leg by sea (from Ostia to Marseille), while the following trips were almost exclusively by land (infra). Indeed, there seems to be a general trend that, with the exception of the Channel, which was of course unavoidably crossable only by ship, over the course of time, starting from Late Antiquity, fewer and fewer travellers decided to make use of waterways where it was possible. What could be behind this disaffection towards seafaring?

Obviously, there were many possible major routes to Rome, each with many further variants and alternatives. The political situation, as well as conditions of security and convenience, but also personal attitudes and individual options for obtaining support for the practicalities of the trip, shaped the many journeys we are told about by the travellers themselves, or their biographers.

Issues of security on the Channel crossing might have convinced travellers not to continue their journeys by sea: in addition to the hazards of weather (King Cnut nearly died through the vagaries of the weather upon his return journey from Rome: Pelteret 2014: 18), the Viking raids that began to affect the region from the end of the eighth century added risk to the experience.

As has been mentioned (chap. 3, pp. 38-39), there is no earlier testimony going into the detail of listing all the stops on the homeward journey (not necessarily identical to the outward leg) to that attributed to Sigeric, but some other experiences can be compared with his. For instance, a journey undertaken in the course of the ninth century to translate the relics of SS Marcellinus and Peter has some relevant contact points, at least for the southernmost part of Sigeric’s route, since Eginhard’s messengers stopped in Pavia, crossed the Alps at the Great St Bernard Pass, and reached Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, from where they headed north (Lestocquoy 1947a: 38).

Sea routes might also have been rejected for technical reasons, as the Anglo-Saxon boats of the seventh and eight centuries were not suited for travel on the high seas, unlike late Roman boats that frantically sailed from south-western French harbours such as Burdigala (modern Bordeaux, inland at the head of the Gironde estuary of the Garonne-Dordogne river system) to the Irish Sea, and even circumnavigated the Iberian Peninsula from the Mediterranean basin (Pelteret 2014: 17-20). Indeed, the ‘nautical perspective’ (Pelteret 2014: 20) appears to be the most obvious to the modern observer, who would probably consider the most efficient route from a topographical point of view the journey by sea from southern England to Bordeaux, and then along the river Garonne to Toulouse, where travellers could connect with Narbonne, from where it would have been possible to continue the journey over the Tyrrhenian Sea to Ostia or Centumcellae.

Other scattered similarities and dissimilarities can be noted with the much less documented travels of Sigeric’s peers and forefathers, raising interesting questions. We could start with the evangelising father of Canterbury, St Augustine from the monastery of St Gregory in Rome, who – like most of the early travellers – seemed to favour the waterways, and in 596 crossed the Mediterranean and went up the Rhone from Arles on his way to Britain (Parks 1954: 48). This favouring of the sea routes also applies to French and Irish travellers, such as those from Angers who boarded ships in Nice in 580 and continued their journey by sea (Greg. Tur. Hist. Franc. 6.6, pp. 274-275); or St Amandus who in 630, like contemporary cruise passengers, sailed from France to Civitavecchia, considered the port of Rome (Vita Amandi episc. 5, p. 435); and Romanus, bishop of Rochester, who in 633 drowned ‘in the Italian Sea’ on his way to Rome (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.20). Hadrian and Theodore, accompanied by Benedict Biscop, also travelled by waterways when they went to renew the mission on British soil; in 668 they left from Rome and sailed first to Marseille, from where they reached Arles, Paris and Quentovic following the Rhone and the Seine Valleys (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.1; see infra).

Nonetheless, Benedict’s trip seems to be the last known journey by waterways until the later Middle Ages, which is remarkably puzzling.5 What reasons can there be for explaining the progressive abandonment of waterways? 5 

A well-documented exception is the journey of Lambert of Guînes, bishop of Arras, to Rome in 1092-1093. Once in Lyon, Lambert and his travel companions had to wait at least six days for the flooded Rhone to attenuate, strongly suggesting that they were going to travel on a river boat. The gap in the source regarding the journey between Lyon and Rome can be bridged thanks to the narration of the return. They left on the Friday after Easter, embarking from Ostia, and stopped in Pisa, escaping a storm. From Pisa, where other travellers (the archbishop of Aix and a group of pilgrims) joined them, they resumed the sea route to Genoa, probably retracing their outward journey along the Rhone until Lyon (Lestocquoy 1957: 182-184).

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The Route of the Franks Did waterways simply lose their attractiveness or new political scenarios make the land routes more convenient or – conversely – the waterways less recommendable? Considering that most boat journeys involved ‘getting a lift’ on trade boats, did the decrease in trade that affected the whole of the Mediterranean from the seventh century affect mobility in this manner? Undoubtedly, the evolution of political circumstances played a role in the progressive decline of river navigation, such as when the watershed between rivers became a boundary.

as dangerous as the waterways. As well as their environmental hazards, the Alpine passes were thus under threat of Saracen raids, and the Mont Cenis and Great St Bernard passes at least fell under the control of those groups of raiders.7 Flodoard reports a ‘slaughter’ of English pilgrims to Rome in 921 and 923, and of mixed groups in 939 (when the cloister at St Maurice Abbey north of the Great St Bernard Pass was also destroyed) and 940, with all these events described as happening ‘on the Alps’.8 The testimony of Flodoard has to be more critically contextualised, however, since he mentions only a handful of episodes of violence against English travellers despite their huge numbers, which does not support the traditional reading of the total impossibility of crossing the Alps (Lestocquoy 1947a: 38; Wiblé 1998b). We must therefore not overestimate the real dimensions of the phenomenon, as only five instances of Saracen attacks at the passes are described in almost sixty years (919-978), and the 951 instance mentions only that a droit de passage was requested by the Saracens.9 We also have to take into consideration that sources and historiographies were heavily biased by a simplification of the causes that led to the abandonment of settlements and abbeys, invariably blamed on the ‘heathens’.

On the other hand, for at least the ninth and tenth centuries, the insecurity that affected the Mediterranean following the expansion of Saracen control over the seas and the main river valleys certainly played a role in discouraging seafaring (Ortenberg 1990: 204). According to contemporary sources, a large contingent of Saracens had settled on the Côte d’Azur, in a place called Fraxinetum, traditionally identified with La Garde-Freinet and more recently hypothesised as on the Saint-Tropez Peninsula, not far from the current locations of Arab shipwrecks (Ballan 2010, with earlier references). It has, however, also been argued that these marauders were not of Arabic origin, but were gangs of criminals of the Christian faith who eventually became the Andalusian Romance-speaking Corsairs (Settia 1987: 142-143). Either way, the emphasis placed by contemporary sources on the virulence of pirate attacks on maritime trade and coastal settlements is another factor potentially explaining the progressive decrease in sea traffic and river transport.6

Undoubtedly the bloody incidents of the years 921 and 923, and the killing of the bishop of Tours on his way ad limina in 931 (Lauer 1905: 48), not to mention the commotion generated by the kidnapping of St Maiolus, abbot of Cluny, returning from ecclesiastical business in Rome in July 972 via the Great St Bernard Pass, strongly impressed their contemporaries.10 These

The incursions of Scandinavian marauders affecting large segments of the coast and rivers of France have to be added to these hazards from the mid-ninth century. These troubles persisted even after the Scandinavians were granted settlement in Normandy in 911, to the point that the people of Francia and Burgundy paid ransoms to the Northmen as late as 926 (Pelteret 2014: 29). In the same years, bands of Magyars started to raid through a large part of western Europe, plundering and devastating northern Italy, Burgundy, Francia and Aquitaine (Pelteret 2014: 31).

7 

In AD 911, the Bishop of Narbonne was prevented from leaving for Rome for urgent matters by the insecurity of the roads, caused by the presence of the Saracens: Reinaud 1836: 164. 8  Flod. Ann. 369 (a. 321), 373 (a. 323), 386 (a. 939). Interestingly, contemporary sources portray the groups of Saracens who settled in the Alps as people adapted to the environment, suggesting that at least some of them were Berbers native to the Atlas mountains: Pelteret 2014: 30. 9  Lauer 1905: 132: ‘Sarracem meatum Alpium obsidentes, a viatoribus Romam petentibus tributum accipiunt, et sic eos transire permittunt’. 10  This was shocking for the chronicler Syrus to the point that – regardless of the fact that many details are reported, including the exact day of the event the night of 21 to 22 July) – the year is overlooked (Vita Maioli 653-654). Between the two possible dates of 972 and 983, Paul Amarguier prefers the earlier one, considering it most probable that Maiolus was in Italy between February 969 and September 972, when he would have promoted the reform of the monasteries of the Saviour and St Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna: Amarguier 1963: 318. This earlier date for the Burgundian expedition explains better why Sigeric dared to cross the Alps at the Great St Bernard Pass, showing that the route was by then securely viable. At least during the outward leg of what was Maiolus’s second journey to Italy, the saint would have crossed the Alps at Coire, where he would have met Bishop Apertus. On his return journey, it is likely that the choice of risking the crossing via the Great St Bernard Pass was due to his haste to return to his monastery (Amarguier 1963: 318-319). His captivity lasted a few weeks, while waiting for the ransom being delivered from Cluny. For a comment on the sources see Bourdon 1926.

In the course of the same tenth century, the Moors also penetrated so far inland as to threaten the Alpine crossings (supra), making the land routes almost 6 

The written sources dealing with the presence and actions of Saracens in continental Europe are collected and commented by Luppi 1952: 11-65. Among them, the chronicles by Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, are the most reliable and detailed, since Liutprand himself lived most of his life at the court of Hugh of Provence, one of the protagonists of the first expedition against Fraxinetum in the mid-tenth century. Liutprand acquired many first-hand information from his acquaintances who lived at the court of Louis the Blind, king of Provence at the end of the ninth century: Luppi 1952: 13. The end of the Saracen settlement was an achievement of William I in the 970s: infra.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration episodes led the king of Burgundy to react by securing the way through the Great St Bernard Pass, and Count William of Provence to eradicate the problem at the root, destroying Fraxinetum itself. This upsurge of the continental forces against the Moors, triggered by the shock of the political and intellectual elites at Maiolus’s kidnapping, led to the expulsion of the Saracens (Amarguier 1963: 317-8). Their eviction from Burgundian-Provençal territories also meant that the route which was rapidly becoming most popular among travellers from the north-western regions to Italy was safeguarded, as confirmed by the words of Maiolus’s biographer: ‘Sic Omnipotens, sui famuli meritis praecipitatis impiis, deliberavit cunctis viam romani itineris’ (Vita Maioli 654.7).

that implied a sort of temporary ‘entry visa’ that had to be matched by an ‘exit visa’.11 Ceolfrid, one of Benedict Biscop’s successors as abbot of Wearmouth, could have been one of the exceptions to earlier English travellers, who normally avoided crossing the Alps at the St Bernard Pass, but since he died in Langres in 716, almost four months after departing from his abbey – his travel was slowed by the many stops he made in England, so that he embarked at the mouth of the Wear as late as mid-August – we can only hypothesise that he intended to take the ‘direct’ route via the Great St Bernard Pass, which Sigeric followed later (Parks 1954: 49).12 Climatological conditions could also explain this wariness towards the Alpine crossing in Late Antiquity and the very Early Middle Ages, as it has been demonstrated that the average temperature only began to increase and the yearly snowfall to decrease in the mid-eighth century, thereafter progressively following the same trajectory until the Late Middle Ages (Le Roy Ladurie 1967: 240; Mangini, Spötl and Verdes 2005; Büntgen et al. 2006; Wilhelm et al. 2013).13 This resulted in a perceptible improvement of the environmental conditions, allowing the crossing of the north-western Alpine passes for a prolonged period of the year (Janin 1970: 49; Pellegrini 1973; Rothlisberger 1974). These climatological conditions transformed the route of the Alps into one of the most frequented ‘highways’ of the central centuries of the Middle Ages, generating political, religious and economic effects (Pinna 1969).14

In summary, we cannot exclude land routes being favoured in the ninth and tenth centuries because of the problems caused by the Saracens, Vikings and pirates on the sea. Although an envoy accompanying King Eardwulf was captured while crossing the Channel on his journey back to Rome (Scholz and Rogers 1970, ad a. 809, p. 89-90), and hordes of Vikings were chronicled roaming around Paris along the Seine and the Marne, other travellers are recorded as having travelled unproblematically from northern France to Rome, showing that warfare and insecurity were local phenomena in the time-span of our research (Matthews 2007: 7, with sources). In the case of the Alpine crossing, the choice was not usually between the fastest or more direct route, but normally the easiest ascent. For this reason, for example, the route via the Mont Cenis Pass was often favoured against the Great St Bernard Pass: the Jura massif, which could be traversed at the Jougne Pass, made the ascent of the Alps somewhat less arduous (Tyler 1930: 21-22).

11 

Law of King Ratchis of the Lombards: ‘strangers who plan to go to Rome come to our borders, the judge should inquire diligently whence they come. The judge should issue a passport (clusarius syngraphus), placing it on wax tablet and setting his seal upon it, so afterwards the travellers may show this notice to our appointed agents. After this notice has been sent to us, our agents shall give the travellers a letter to enable them to go to Rome. When they return from Rome, they shall receive the mark of the King’s seal ring’ (Ed. Lang. Rat. c. 13). See Mckitterick 2003: 119. 12  Ceolfrid was on his second trip to Rome, having completed the first by the side of his master Benedict: supra. 13  The data collected in the 1960s and 1970s with a more historical approach are confirmed by the sophisticated analysis of the last decades, corroborating the Medieval Climate Anomaly or Medieval Warm Period (a. 800-1300) detected in a large part of the Mediterranean basin. The historical record can be very useful to narrow the field both geographically and chronologically, as with the Alpine crossing of Gerbert of Aurillac in 984: Mariani 2016. 14  The mildness of the climate during this period is also suggested by the fact that St Bernard decided to build a hospice for pilgrims at the top of the pass, and not at the beginning of the ascent, like the Carolingian Abbey of Bourg-Saint-Pierre on the Swiss side of the mountain range. Moreover, the importance of the hospice for the efficiency of the international route connecting Italy to the Champagne fairs is demonstrated by the donation that Henry I, count of Champagne, made in 1171: Bergier 1980: 201. The history of the ‘Maison du Grand Saint-Bernard’ and of the relationships between the monastery of Bourg-Saint-Pierre, the hospice, St Bernard and the royal dynasties was first reconstructed by Quaglia 1972. For the earlier phases see Haldimann 1998.

It is also possible that early English travellers avoided (or simply ignored) the Great St Bernard Pass for other reasons, since there is evidence that it was crossed by travellers from France, such as Bishop Bonitus of Clermont, who went to Rome in 701 via Lyon, and stopped at Saint-Maurice, the village at the foot of the Swiss side of Mount St Bernard, and Pavia (Zettinger 1900: 71-72). Abbot Austrulph of St Wandrille in Normandy died in Saint-Maurice in 752 on his return from Rome (Zettinger 1900: 83). It might seem strange that French travellers attempted to cross those regions of northern Italy that were so firmly controlled by the Lombards, since relations between the Lombards and the Carolingians were not really trusting, but it is possible that ‘nationality’ was less important when it came to the control of mobility. Indeed, a paragraph in a Lombard edict issued by King Ratchis in 746 gives instructions about admitting people travelling to Rome to the borders of the kingdom, a complex procedure 61

The Route of the Franks Once the Saracen threaten was removed, the northwestern Alpine passes gained rapidly in popularity, given the directness of the itinerary and the ease of access they provided to the attractive northern Italian cities.

Eccl. 4.16, 18; 5.19, 21, 24). In 653 he was accompanied by Wilfrid with whom he split at Lyon, and in 665 or 666 he travelled on private business, when he stopped at the monastery of the Lérins Islands on his return journey. Again in 667, departing from the monastery of St Honoratus, he had the official task of leading the new primate Theodore and Abbot Hadrian from Rome to England, as requested by Pope Vitalian. As mentioned earlier, on the latter occasion, the party is known to have sailed from Rome to Marseille, where it split; Theodore reached Canterbury by crossing at Quentovic after a long stay in Paris (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.1).

Whatever the reason for the disaffection with seafaring, it is evident that in the second half of the seventh century, north-central France became a crossroads for travellers heading south from the northern countries. Since the Christianisation of the German tribes along the Rhine was not completed until the late eighth century, the central-eastern European lands were preferably avoided (Parks 1954: 48).

Benedict’s monastic devotion was not sufficient to stop him, and in 671 he undertook his fourth trip to Rome, again with the main goal of collecting books to enlarge his library of sacred literature. The fact that some of these books were entrusted to friends who delivered them back to him in Vienne suggests that this trip also made best use of the waterways in the Tyrrhenian Sea and along the river Rhone (Matthews 2007: 46).

Among the briefly mentioned journeys of the period, is that of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop in 653 to go to Italy by way of Lyon. Thanks to the testimony of Wilfrid’s friend and biographer, Eddius or Stephanus of Ripon,15 beside the incorrect statement that ‘none of our nation had ever made this journey before’, we learn that on this journey, undertaken upon request of the king, Benedict and Wilfrid were guided by a nobleman ‘bound for the Apostolic See’, who however did not go further than Lyon (Vita Wilfr. 3). It was thus timely that the bishop of Lyon, who interestingly appears to be their host, provided the party with equipment and further guides for the journey. In 671, on his return, Benedict passed by Vienne (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.18). In this case, it is likely that Benedict attempted the crossing of the Alps by the pass of the Little St Bernard, rather than going upriver along the Rhone Valley after having sailed across the Tyrrhenian Sea as in his first journey (supra). From Lyon, the passes of the Little St Bernard (to Aosta), Montgenèvre (to Torino, like the Pilgrim of Bordeaux), or even the pass of the Mont Cenis (to Torino) are the more convenient.

Upon his return, having convinced King Ecgfrith of Northumbria to found a new monastery at Wearmouth, Benedict embarked on his fifth journey to Rome in 678 and returned ‘loaded with... spiritual merchandise: books, relics in quantity, a number of wall-paintings of the Virgin and the Apostles, of the saints and of the last judgment, and finally the Roman mode of chanting, singing, and ministering in the church’ as embodied in the person of the arch-cantor of St Peter’s’ (Parks 1954: 22). Despite the lack of details about his itinerary, it is possible to argue that he, accompanied by Ceolfrid and the abbot of St Martin, John, who was expected to spend some time at the Abbey of Wearmouth to teach the Roman way of chanting, chose the route on the western side of the Rhone, following the Loire, because John, who died during the trip, was then buried in Tours (Matthews 2007: 46-47). The journey was repeated in 685, when, having persuaded the king to endow another monastery at Jarrow, Benedict left for Rome where he acquired books and pieces of art to complement the new abbey (Parks 1954: 57-58 with translation of the essential parts of Bede’s Historia Abbatum, 2-4, 6, 9).

Benedict Biscop’s strong personality and a kind of ‘restlessness’ pushed him to travel relentlessly back and forth from England to Rome, sometimes charged with diplomatic missions, sometimes motivated only by a greed to acquire books, relics and any sort of art, and made him a ‘pioneer of Romeward travellers’ (Parks 1954: 21). Of noble origins and a pupil of Bede, who described his journeys in the Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and the Historia Abbatum (an historical work devoted to the history of the monastery of Jarrow), Benedict travelled to Rome six times in total (Bed. Hist.

Wilfrid, bishop of Northumbria, known as St Wilfrid of York, having begun his career as a traveller at the side of Benedict Biscop (supra), is considered one of the most important case-studies for the study of the modalities of travel, since he undertook three journeys to Rome, the first in 653 before he was twenty. On his return journey, having made his vows in the monastery of St Andrews (probably the one on the Caelian Hill) in Rome, where he was befriended by Boniface Consiliarius, who presented him to the pope, and having taken with him the holy relics which he had collected, he stopped in Lyon for three years, under the protection of his ‘patron’ the archbishop of Lyon (Vita Wilfr. 5). Wilfrid

15 

The identification of the author of the Vita Sancti Wilfrithi with a scholar mentioned by Bede as Æddi cognomento Stephanus recently underwent a review, and it is no longer unanimously accepted. The Vita is a hagiographic text that reports much information not only about the life of the Northumbrian Bishop Wilfrid, but also about the politics of the Northumbrian Church and the history of the monasteries of Ripon and Hexham. Wilfrid’s travels are commented on in Colgrave 1927: 10-13, 66-67 and 120-121. See Story 2003: 39-40 for cultural relationships between the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish worlds.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration Although King Dagobert had by now died, Wilfrid, always accompanied by a large entourage, managed to reach his homeland unharmed (Vita Wilfr. 34; Parks 1954: 64).

returned to England around 657, after the archbishop’s martyrdom ‘which he himself narrowly escaped’, safely sailing across the Channel (Vita Wilfr. 7), unlike in 666, when Wilfrid was returning from France where he had been consecrated as bishop. His ship was caught in a storm and the passengers cast ashore in the land of the South Saxons. Wilfrid and his travel companions were attacked by pirates, who rejected the offer of a ransom in exchange for the safety of the travellers (Vita Wilfr. 13). The following description of the fight between Wilfrid’s 120 companions and the pirates provides very interesting suggestions about the composition of such ‘travelling parties’, and although highly ranking ecclesiastical personalities were not expected to travel alone, such a retinue, moreover armed and capable of battle, is very remarkable. The additional contribution of Wilfrid’s prayers and a miraculous earlier tide ensured the safe return of the party to the port of Sandwich (Parks 1954: 61-62).

Wilfrid undertook his third journey around 703, aged 70, to lodge another appeal to the pope against his excommunication by a council of the English Church. In Eddius’ words (if he is to be identified with the author of the Vita Wilfr. 1 a. 703?; 4 a. 704, for the return) it is clear that on this occasion the biographer was not part of the group since the source reads: ‘with the holy bishop they went aboard ship and reached the southern shore… Then traveling overland on foot, after a long but safe journey they arrived… at the Holy See’. According to Matthews, it is possible that this outward journey also involved an eastern detour, since it seems that Wilfrid visited his friend Willibrord in Frisia, this time probably motivated by personal choice rather than obligation (Matthews 2007: 47). Wilfrid might have opted for a more direct route through France for the return journey, however, for once he fell ill, he was carried in a litter at Meaux, east of Paris. Miraculously recovering through the intervention of St Michael, Wilfrid resumed his journey and safely reached his homeland (Parks 1954: 48), showing that by the end of his life he did not risk incurring personal attacks on French soil and was able to take a more ‘central’ route across France.

Almost ten years later, when Wilfrid’s career met strong opposition, and his elevation to the episcopate of York, achieved in 664, was withdrawn by the reformist archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, he decided to appeal to the Roman papacy, undertaking a second journey to Rome in 678 or 679, at the age of 45 (Pelteret 2014: 22). Alas, his strong personality and his dogmatic attitude had alienated some of the political authorities, among them Ebroin, the Frankish mayor of the palace of Neustria. This impeded Wilfrid’s ability to cross northern continental France, forcing him to detour via Frisia and Austrasia.16 Having spent a winter with the Frisians at the court of Dagobert in the company of his pupil Willibrord, starting a Christian mission with the support of Boniface, Wilfrid resumed his journey, charged by the king of the Franks with a diplomatic mission to the Lombard King Perctarit. He probably headed south following the Rhine Valley, continued south-westwards to Bern and Freiburg, and crossed the Alps at a central or even eastern pass, with the support of Bishop Deodatus of Toul, sent by King Dagobert as a guide (Matthews 2007: 46; infra). Wilfrid delivered a good number of gifts to the Lombard King Perctarit, who in exchange, acknowledging his role as messenger, provided guides to the Apostolic See for him and his company (infra, p. 80). In Rome, Wilfrid held several meetings with the pope, soliciting an answer to his appeal, at the same time visiting churches and shrines, collecting relics and memorabilia (Vita Wilfr. 33).17 Like the outward journey, his homeward leg was also eventful: Wilfrid had to escape other attempts to harm him and fortuitously thwarted other assaults.

The expedition of another ecclesiastical traveller, named Wynfrith but better known as Boniface (c. 675– 754),18 was probably also shaped by political factors although of a different nature. In fact, having gained experience abroad during his missionary journey in Frisia by the side of Wilfrid (supra), he was asked to act as ambassador of the Wessex King Ine at Berhtwald archbishop of Canterbury; he was later summoned to continue his trip to Rome. He stopped at the Lombard court of Liutprand in Pavia, where Boniface may have deployed his diplomatic skills to improve the relationships between the Lombards and the papacy, or even to establish relations between the increasingly powerful Charles Martel and the Lombards (Pelteret 2014: 24). Once in London, Boniface bought a passage on a boat to Quentovic, for himself and part of his retinue (a. 718; Pelteret 2014: 22-23). Boniface’s biographer reveals a few interesting details about the arrangements and practicalities of the trip: Boniface took care to obtain introduction letters, and he and his travel companions pitched camp19 in Quentovic, waiting for others to join them. Since winter

16  We have seen in chap. 1, section f.2, how Wilfrid’s ploy rebounded against another Anglo-Saxon bishop and his entourage, who had the misfortune of undertaking the same itinerary thorough France. 17  Curiously, Eddius defined the people who provided Wilfrid with the relics as ‘suitable persons’ instilling the possibility that disreputable agents were dealing with illicit trafficking.

18  The first Life of St Boniface was composed after his death by Willibald of Mainz, who probably derived his information from an older companion of Boniface: Pelteret 2014: 22. 19  The Latin expression is castra metati sunt: Willibald, Vita Bonif., in Levison 1946: 20; see also Talbot 1954: 120.

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The Route of the Franks was approaching, the group left as soon as everybody had assembled. The biographer then summed up the trip by saying that the rest of the journey was carried out under God’s protection, since ‘they visited churches on their way to pray that by the help of Almighty God they might cross in safety the snowy peaks of the Alps, find greater kindness at the hands of the Lombards and escape with impunity from the savage ferocity of the undisciplined soldiery’.20 It has been suggested (Pelteret 2014: 24, on the basis of Theodor Schieffer’s interpretation) that Boniface’s itinerary passed from Quentovic to Brimeux, Amiens, Soissons, Reims, Langres, Besançon, Lausanne and the Great St Bernard Pass, following in broad outline the Roman road to Aosta, Ivrea and Vercelli and thence to Pavia, the Lombard capital, a route remarkably similar to that taken by Sigeric, and that he retraced for his return in 722.21

Royal 14 C VII fol. 2r).23 Once on the continent, Matthew draws three possible routes from the northern French coast to Beaune: one starting from Boulogne, and heading to Champagne via Paris, Nogent-sur-Seine, Troyes and Bar-sur-Seine; a second, which runs parallel to this on the north-eastern side from Calais, which is in broad outline the route followed by Sigeric; and a third that also departs from Boulogne but skirts Paris on the eastern side, then turns south towards Sens, Auxerre, Vézelay, Beaune, Chalon-sur-Saôn, Mâcon and Lyon, continuing over the Alps by the Mont Cenis Pass (Parks 1954: 47). Even excluding the option of travelling part of the journey by water (supra), travellers crossing the English Channel were confronted with many options for their routes, starting from the landing point on the French northern coast, and even the departing harbour on the English coast. At least in the earliest Anglo-Saxon period, it seems that sailors chose the shortest possible route across the Channel, the Straits of Dover, and that it was possible to land on the opposite coast between Calais and Boulogne, where eventually travellers heading to the southernmost ports of Quentovic were able to arrange for a stopover. Benedict Biscop, who preferred to travel over land to Kent to sail across the Channel rather than boarding a ship in the much closer ports of Jarrow or Whitby, chose this option (infra).

In the same period, the already mentioned Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow-Wearmouth and successor of Benedict, with whom he had made a first journey in 678, resigned the abbacy in 716 and – at the age of 74 – set out for Rome, hoping to end his days in the capital of Christianity, but sadly finding death at Langres, where he was buried (see chap. 1, p. 14). We shall see later how the reports of his journeys provide information about some of the practicalities of travel.

Despite their succinctness, a few sources concur in showing how many possible alternatives were available for crossing the strait. On his homeward journey from Italy, once he had miraculously recovered from the illness that had laid him half-dead in Meaux (supra, section b), Bishop Wilfrid energetically resumed his journey and crossed the Channel, landing in an unspecified place in Kent. Directly from Bede, we learn that a common ferry connected Richborough to Boulogne (Hist. Eccl. 1.1), but this does not seem to be the shortest crossing. It has also been argued that at the time of the Saxon invasion (fifth and sixth centuries), the eastern end of the Channel was considered unsafe, and that the sea-routes to Brittany were favoured (Parks 1954: 47). This is disproved, however, by an account of the journey of the mission of St Augustine in 596, which reached the easternmost part of Kent, at the time still detached from Britain and known as the Isle of Thanet (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.25), probably sailing from one of the ports near Boulogne.

A range of possibilities: Routes and roads through medieval France Judging from the surviving testimonies, which we have briefly reviewed above (section b), the principal routes to Rome from the British Isles did not change greatly from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries (Birch 1998: 43),22 with a higher rate of travellers choosing the socalled ‘direct’ route (infra). Among the thirteenth century documents, the exceptional ‘strip-map’ by Matthew Paris (infra, pp. 72-79), delineates the route from London to Rochester, Canterbury and Dover, where travellers would have boarded a ship to cross the Channel (British Library MS

20  ‘[M]ultas […] sanctorum ecclesias orando adierunt, ut tutius, opitulante altithrono, Alpina nivium iuga transcenderent Langobardorumque erga illos humanitatem mitius sentirent mili tumque malitiosam superbiae ferocitatem facilius evaderunt’: Willibald, Vita Bonifatii, in Levison 1946: 20; for the translation see Talbot 1954: 120. 21  In that year he was elected bishop by Pope Gregory II. Pope Gregory III later promoted him to archbishop although without a see. In 745, as leader of the mission to the Germanic areas of the Frankish kingdom, Boniface was installed as archbishop of Mainz. He was martyred in Frisia, and his relics were brought to Fulda, where he was venerated as the ‘apostle of Germany’ (Parks 1954: 25). 22  A substantially different route is recorded in the manuscript British Library MS Harley 2321, fols 118v-121v, of the fifteenth century: Birch 1998: 43.

Landings around Boulogne, the Roman naval base Gesoriacum, seem to have been very popular in the seventh century, starting from the year 600, when the tragic drowning of Abbot Peter of Canterbury is recorded offshore of Amfleat, probably to be identified 23 

The nature and the possible uses of the maps authored by Matthew Paris are discussed infra, pp. 72-79.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration Eddius in describing the ambush awaiting Wilfrid seem to confirm that this ‘direct’ route from the Channel to the Alps, along which indeed the ambushers sneaked up on poor Winfrid, was already established by the end of the seventh century (Matthews 2007: 46).

with Ambleteuse north of Boulogne (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.33). Most documented crossings start or end in the area of Quentovic,24 south of Boulogne, however, such as that by Theodore and Hadrian in 668 (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.1 see supra), and Boniface in 718 (Vita S. Bonif. 5, col. 613). Later, at least from the time of Sigeric, the more northern port of Wissant, south of Calais, become the preferred landing. Occasionally more eastward crossings are recorded to Frisia and the Rhine estuary (e.g. Wilfrid in 678, and the imaginary (?) journey of Alcuin in 780: Parks 1954: 47).

A slight diversion might have been taken after the Viking sacking of Quentovic (at the very end of the ninth century), with a new continental starting point near Saint-Omer (Grierson 1940). Although there is no surviving documentary evidence about the journey of Sigeric’s immediate predecessor, the short-lived Archbishop Æthelgar, the letter that he received from Abbot Fulrad of St Vaast in Arras (between 988 and 990), and a missive from Odbert, abbot of St Bertin, both requesting donations and financial support, showing the excellent relationships between Canterbury and the Flemish monasteries, spell out the choice of route (Vanderputten 2006: 226-232).

Fewer details are given about landing places in Britain: for instance, it is not known when the Roman harbour of Rutupiae-Richborough was replaced by Sandwich, where Wilfrid once landed (Vita Wilfr. 13), or Dover, which seems to attain the status of favourite port, since that crossing is considered the shortest (Vita Wilfr. 25 about Wilfrid’s journey in 678). On a few occasions, we can hypothesise departures from London itself, as with Boniface, if we trust his biographer (supra, p. 80).

A more ‘central’ route, ideally starting in the vicinity of Abbeville, ran to Paris and entered the Rhone Valley, crossing the Alps at one of the southernmost passes of Piedmont or Liguria. In this case, travellers would have followed the Roman road designed by Agrippa via Amiens, Dijon, and Lyon from the Atlantic coast (Pelteret 2014: 21). From Vienne, south of Lyon, roads followed the Rhone Valley on both banks. Travellers were able to choose whether to continue southward, to Avignon, Arles and Marseille, where they could sail to the ports of Rome, or to take the Roman road called the via Iulia Augusta following the Tyrrhenian coast (although this option is never explicitly mentioned). Alternatively, they could have crossed over at the Mont Cenis Pass, although this is not mentioned in ancient sources before the early eighth century. However, control of the subalpine area to the east had fallen into the hands of the king of the Burgundians in 574, probably making use of this connection between the two versants of the Alps (Pelteret 2014: 20). A hint about its use is given by the itinerary followed by the army of Charlemagne in 773, crossing at Mont Cenis, where the Carolingian kings would later (around 825) establish a hospice on the initiative of Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (Amati 1868: 297). From Late Antiquity, the use of the Mont Cenis Pass had increased to the detriment of the passes of Montgenèvre and Little St Bernard, the latter being affected by the decline in importance of the axis connecting Milano to Lyon (Duparc 1971: 183).

More westerly alternatives were possible, from the mouth of the river Hamble, near Portsmouth, to Rouen in the Seine estuary, as recorded for Willibald in the summer of 721 (Vita Willibal. 3). Having established that the shortest crossing of the Channel from south-eastern England ended up in Quentovic-Étaples or Canche, near the mouth of the homonymous river,25 we may better understand why travellers streamed along what has been termed the ‘direct’ route across eastern France, via the Jura, Besancon, Pontarlier, over the Jougne Pass to Lausanne, Vevey, Saint-Maurice d’Agaune in the Valais, Martigny, Bourg-Saint-Pierre, the Great St Bernard Pass, Saint-rhemy-en-bosses and Val d’Aosta, then across Lombardy, Tuscany and central Italy to Rome (Moore 1937: 86-89). The difficult relationship with Ebroin might have played a role in Wilfrid’s choice for the route of his second journey to Rome, in 678-679, when he sailed to Frisia (supra, p. 63). The words used by 24 

Quentovic was a Frankish emporium, an important trade centre that was open to the Channel. The toponym, probably traceable back to the ancient name of the river Canche, points at a site at the mouth of the river, where archaeological research led by David Hill has brought to light some remains attributable to the Early Middle Ages (municipality of La Calotterie, east of Étaples): Hill et al. 1990. Alternatively, the toponym would derive from the generic name vicus, later Quentowicus, or simply Wis. The Roman vicus would be identifiable with the nameless stop indicated in the Tabula Peutingeriana along the road connecting Bononia to Grauinum (Le Bourdelles 1983: 257-267). Quentovic was a flourishing emporium until the ninth century. The frequency of Viking raids on the several ports that were very active on either side of the Channel (especially on Dorestad, and even London) weakened them. Quentovic was among the more vulnerable ones, especially since it was established in an unstable alluvial plain open to silting: Lebecq and Gautier 2010: 20. 25  Archaeological research has documented a lively exchange between the two shores of the Channel already in the Bronze Age: Desfossés and Philippe 2002.

An interesting comparison can be established with the ‘Roman journey’ of Odo Rigaldus, bishop of Rouen and spiritual adviser of King Louis IX during the Seventh Crusade, who embarked on a trip to Rome with the goal of resolving the conflicts he had become involved in thanks to his reform of the Norman clergy (Renouard 1962: 408-410). Odo left from Paris in 1253 immediately after the Christmas celebration, accompanied by some 65

The Route of the Franks ten people, including clerks, secretaries and servants. Manifestly not in a hurry, he followed an itinerary that allowed him to visit places, institutions and sanctuaries that he seems to have particularly cared about. His account is not very informative in describing the technical aspects of the trip beyond recording its stages (occasionally explicitly including more than one overnight stay in the same place) and describing the celebrations of the great religious feasts. Nonetheless, there are some details about the mountain passes and about some particularly demanding passages: for example the snow preventing travellers from crossing the western Jura escarpment, the Revermont, and forcing the party to spend three days in Salins, where one of the attendants was sent back since he was sick; the ascent of the Alps up to the Simplon Pass at the beginning of February; the shipwreck during the crossing of the Adda river in Trezzo; the crossing of the Apennines at the Bracco Pass on July 24; and the passage through Mont Cenis Pass during his return (Renouard 1962: 415).

skirted the lake of Léman and crossed the Jura by the Jougne Pass between Portarlier and Orbe, converging at the Great St Bernard Pass along the upper Rhone Valley (Renouard 1962: 462).26 An alternative route from north-eastern France would have followed the Saône Valley, crossed Burgundy and traversed the Alps at the Little St Bernard or Mont Cenis Pass. Predictably, this route traced one of the main axes of Roman origin, almost invariably labelled as the Agrippan Way27, from the Lake of Geneva to Orbe, across the Jura to Besançon and Lyon, following the western bank of the river Saône up north to Chalon-sur-Saône, until the ‘fork’ at the suburbium of Langres, where the road to the Channel would have continued to Reims, crossing the Marne at Châlons-en-Champagne, and then, via Amiens, to Boulogne-sur-Mer (Holland 1919: 22-23).28 In summary, excluding the earlier travels of Archbishop Theodore, Abbot Hadrian and Benedict Biscop, who sailed from Ostia to Marseille by sea and up the Rhone Valley, the ‘direct’ route, which was safer after the defeat of the Lombards at the hands of the Franks in 774 and was secured in the second half of the tenth century with the expulsion of the Saracens from the Alpine areas, was the more popular. It included a variant via Saint-Josse-sur-Mer, Ponthieu and Moutiers-en-Puisai, south of Auxerre, which seems to have been designed especially for supporting pilgrims from Britain, who joined the ‘direct’ route at Besançon. The so-called ‘central’ route’, which was followed – for instance – by Wilfrid, passed via Paris, Lyon, Chambéry, the Mont Cenis Pass, Torino and Vercelli.

Odo reached Rome by March 1254 but got his response from Pope Innocent IV only on 11 July. Deeply disappointed with the outcome of his audience, Odo undertook the return journey avoiding the detours and digressions of the first leg, but in any case only partially following the traditional routes described above (e.g. from Vienne to Lausanne: Renouard 1962: 415-417), and conversely showing not only a certain intellectual attitude in the selection of paths (e.g. he wanted to visit Bologna for its rising educational role) but also the emergence of a new cultural scenario, as the town of St Francis, Assisi, became irresistible for devotees and monks of the new Franciscan order, such as Odo. On the other hand, the narrative of Odo's journeys confirms that many factors played a role in defining which itinerary to follow, including very personal reasons. Although part of Odo's itineraries in northern France follows the popular merchant route from Milano to the Champagne fairs, his choice could also have been motivated by the wish to stop at his family’s castle in Courquetaine, and to visit his sister, who was a nun at the Abbey of the Paraclete.

This choice could have been driven by many factors, from knowledge of former experiences, through personal inclinations, the urgency of the travel, political or economic factors (Pelteret 2014: 17-18), sanitary and seasonal conditions, to preferences for 26 

An updated overview of the Alpine roads during the imperial time is provided by Puéjean 2018: 127-183. Although the road from Chalon-sur-Saône to Langres is one of the better-known Roman roads of Gaul, easily traceable on the terrain linking a half-dozen very straight segments, the identification of its name has been long disputed: see, e.g. Gras 1958. It would be eventually be the ‘third’ Roman road of Gaul bearing the name of Agrippa, and it would link the Gallo-Roman centres of Asa Paulini (Anse), Ludna (Saint-Georges de Reneins), Cabillodunum (Chalon-surSaône), Augustudunum (Autun), Autessiodurum (Auxerre), Agendicum (Sens), Caesaromagus (Beauvais), Samarobriua (Amiens), Gesoriacum/ Bononia (Boulogne-sur-Mer), representing – between Chalon-surSaône and Reims – an alternative to the more eastern road described below: Chevallier 1997: 210-211. This variant is probably older than the road passing via Amiens. 28  The segment from Châlons southwards was taken by the Carolingian King Charles when he travelled quickly to Rome in 875: Holland 1919: 40. More than a century earlier, Pope Stephen II met King Pippin III at Ponthion, following the same itinerary (but probably crossing the Alps at the Little St Bernard Pass), skirting Lake of Geneva, crossing the Jura at Romainmôtier near Orbe, and continuing along the well travelled road to Besançon and Laon. The same route was most probably taken by Pope Leo III in 804-805 (Holland 1919: 52). 27 

Irish travellers seem to have favoured a more eastern route leading to the Rhine and crossing the Alps centrally (as far as the Simplon or St Gotthard passes). Conversely, the western route, which departed from the mouth of the Seine, passed Tours and the Rhone Valley, and crossed the Alps at their south-western edge, or alternatively sailed from the Bouche-du-Rhone to Italy, was not popular among English voyagers, at least after the end of the eighth century (Matthews 2007: 39-40). Similar if not coinciding routes were followed by French travellers and pilgrims: those coming from the region north of the Languedoil usually passed via Paris or the Champagne fairs, through an itinerary that 66

Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration assistance options and even individual wishes to meet certain people or visit specific places.

Orienteering and mapping Although the discussion about the importance of mobility in medieval Europe has been less animated than that involving the Roman world, which is progressively and relentlessly enriching, there has been a relatively substantial debate about geographical knowledge in the medieval world, and stimulating new analyses of pilgrim guides and textual and pictorial itineraries. It is not possible to deal with the extensive literature covering Antiquity and the Middle Ages here, but we can stress a few points. The surviving sources (e.g. the cadastre of Orange,32 the Forma Urbis Severiana33 and its antecedent so-called Map of via Anicia34) and the amazing remains of the land division programmes put in place in very sizeable regions of the Roman Empire35 testify to the mastery of the Roman gromatici (i.e. surveyors) in the practice of topographic survey, including the ability to deal with altimetric obstacles and handle three-dimensional landscape features. Given the fact that obscure and complicated texts such as those collected in the Corpus agrimensorum Romanorum were not only copied but also updated in the medieval scriptoria, it is evident that we should accept that – regardless of the diffusion of geographical knowledge (see supra, chap. 1, pp. 10-11) – cultural elites, at least in the Roman Era, were able to understand the meaning and probably the use of two dimensional devices to represent space.36 In the medieval world,

One of the reasons that this so-called ‘direct’ land route could have been favoured over the longer but easier trail following the Rhone Valley up the Mont Cenis Pass, is the fact that it appears – at least at the beginning of the eleventh century – to be well structured, secure and equipped with facilities. This is the impression we get from a treaty signed by King Cnut in 1027, in which arrangements are taken ‘in viam Romam’ to safeguard the border crossings for English and Danish travellers across the lands of the Emperor, the Pope, King Rudolph III of Burgundy and other unspecified nobles (sources edited by Whitelock, Brett and Brooke 1981: I.1.509; see Darlington and McGurk 1995, no. 6). The wording of this treaty does not dispel any doubt that Cnut was addressing a specific route and not the general custom of being heading to Rome, however. The agreement was signed when Cnut met King Rudolph and negotiated with him; on that occasion, Cnut himself was on his way to Rome, on a pilgrimage that he combined with participating in the coronation of Conrad II in Rome.29 As shall be seen in detail later (pp. 87-91), the popularity of this route can be explained by the availability of monasteries open to hosting pilgrims, and hospices, a few of which were expressly dedicated to English travellers (e.g. St Josse (a saint better known in English as St Judoc) in the region of Ponthieu and Moutiers-enPuisaie, south-west of Auxerre: Ortenberg 1990: 204, supra). As detailed above, the decreased documented popularity of the ‘western’ and ‘central’ routes among English travellers30 can also be explained by the expansion of the Saracens raids, not only in coastal areas but also inland regions, conveyed as they were through river valleys. In addition to the danger, the fact that Saracens imposed tolls and fees on the critical passages of these routes might have also played a key role in the choice of one itinerary over another. It is interesting to note, albeit beyond the chronological range of this research, that the so-called routes d’Italie played a role in the diffusion of chivalric romance, in particular of the Chanson de Geste in Italy.31

32  The so-called Cadastre of Orange is an ensemble of fragmentary marble slabs that reproduced, to scale, the rural cadastre of the Roman town of Aurasium, in Gaul. The land registry is plotted on the background of the territory of the colony, with the essential geographical features that work as landmarks, the river Rodanus, the Rhone, in the first place: Piganiol 1962; Decramer et al. 2003. This document, dated to the second half of the first or the beginning of the second century AD, is probably the only survival of similar documents that should have been displayed in the central, public areas of Roman towns all over the Empire. It is likely a copy of the original cadastres deposited in the central archive at Rome, the latter almost certainly incised on bronze plates, thus explaining their loss due to the reuse of metal: Vermeulen 2019. 33  Also known as the Severan Marble Plan, the Forma Urbis Severiana is a massive marble cadastral map of ancient Rome, realised under the emperor Septimius Severus, between 203 and 211. It measured 18 by 13m, at the scale of 1:240 (in Roman units, 1 foot = 1 actus), and was incised on 150 Proconnesian marble slabs, of which only a percentage of the original is preserved. It was displayed on a wall of the Temple of Peace, the imperial forum built by the initiative of the Flavian dynasty. In general, see: Rodríguez Almeida 1981; Coarelli 1991; Nicolet 1991; Rodríguez Almeida 2002; Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 2006; Meneghini 2016; Reynolds 1996 and Trimble 2008 for an overview in English. 34  Coarelli 1991; Tucci 2013. 35  Contemporary knowledge of land division programmes in the Roman Empire is so extensive that it is impossible to sketch a state of the art. A milestone work for the methodological setting remains that of Oswald Dilke of 1971, and that by Campbell 2000 for English readers. See also the volume edited by Salvatore Settis in 1985, reedited in 1993, for a review of case-studies. 36  Probably, the most authoritative work on the topic remains the one by Oswald Dilke (1985), with the volume edited by Brian Harley and David Woodward in 1987 (Harley and Woodward 1987) as a milestone for the state of the art; see Talbert 2008 and, more in general, Talbert and Unger 2008 for an analysis of these contributions. See also: Lozovsky 2000, 2010; Raaflaub and Talbert 2010; Talbert

29 

On this occasion, the two crowned heads exchanged luxurious presents and probably planned the marriage of their children, the Danish princess Gunnhild/Cunigunde, and Conrad’s son Henry, who was about to become Emperor Henry III (Ortenberg 1992: 59). 30  Indeed, it should not be forgotten that travellers and messengers of other nationalities continued sailing from Rome to southern France when heading north, mainly to avoid crossing the territory of their arch-enemy, the Lombards. 31  A role already highlighted by Joseph Bédier at the beginning of the twentieth century (Bédier 1907 and 1908), and more recently thoroughly analysed for the region north of Rome, where the phenomenon is widely attested: Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 30-31. In general, on matters of hospitality in the Chansons de Geste see Rossi 1976.

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The Route of the Franks this proficiency was clearly nourished in the scriptoria of the monasteries, as demonstrated by the idealised plan of a monastery, probably produced at the Abbey of Reichenau, in Germany, which ended up in the library of the Abbey of St Gall, in Switzerland, where it is still preserved. Here, the series of buildings and complexes are drawn to scale on the basis of a modular grid as a cadastral plan, following the Roman tradition (Harvey 1991: 12-14) (Figure 4.4). That mastery is clearly lost in another ‘plan’ of an ecclesiastical complex, that of Canterbury Cathedral, realised in the mid-twelfth century and probably directly inspired by the plan of St Gall, but where the concept of a ground plan is completely lost, as is the expertise in cartographic techniques and conventions (Harvey 1991: 13).37

Let us now examine aspects of mapping and navigation devices. To narrow the field of our research to tools for supporting long-distance travellers, and ruling out the simple lists of places passed in the course of a journey, like Sigeric’s text, which we will review in the next section, we will focus on illustrated documents, seeking to understand the process of mapping and concept of space that were used in these representations. Although maps are currently seen as objective ways of representing geographical space, respecting conventions, symbolism and scale, it has been argued that ‘all maps come loaded with the ideologies that conditioned and informed their creation’ and that ‘there is no truly neutral representation of the world’ (Connolly 2009: 1). In other words, maps are not selfevident ‘statements of geographical fact produced by neutral technologies’ (Edney 1996: 187). It is rather the selection of the representative elements, the (unconscious?) attempt to focus attention on specific presences, and the effort of making that map informative about the landscape framed within that reveal many details about the nature of the ‘mapmakers’ (or of their commissioner), their cultural background, their perception of the landscape that they are representing and even their ideology, since the map itself is loaded with meaning.

The complexity of the question of proficiency in mapping in early medieval Europe and of the heritage of Roman pictorial orientation devices (whether they can be technically called ‘maps’ is an extensive topic of discussion in itself),38 is paralleled by the assertion that these ‘maps’ were certainly unavailable to normal travellers, whether or not they were of any use. As is formidably made clear by Vegetius, a late Roman author who instructed military leaders to become acquainted with the regions that they commanded and to supply themselves with devices for route-finding (supra, chap. 1, pp. 9-10), the needs of travellers were eventually fulfilled by simple lists of stages or landmarks that had to be progressively reached. Whether they indicated the distance between these terminals and the intermediate stops is a matter of debate. In any case, travellers in the Roman world could rely upon a dense and efficient network of infrastructure for assistance, and they were undoubtedly confident that board and lodging for the night would be easily found and that there were many road signs and much information available along the route. Conversely, although the ’speaking stones’ of the Roman roads, the milestones, which contained plenty of information, and any other type of signpost were probably unknown to medieval travellers, there may have been other markers to guide travellers on their way; such as the cross carved in the rock along the path leading to St David’s shrine in the Pembrokeshire village of Nevern (Matthews 2007: 28-29) (Figure 4.5).

Medieval maps are a perfect example of this interpretation: whether in the form of diagrams or of pictures, they were intended to transform every other sort of relationship into spatial relationships, such as a sequence of events, administrative links, philosophical or theological meanings, or anthropological or zoological information (Harvey 1991: 7, 19). Since most medieval maps were drawn to illustrate a specific topic and fulfil a specific purpose, they were addressed to specific users. It is therefore necessary to contextualise medieval maps in order to determine their intended use. At the same time, the study of medieval maps inserted in books shows that most of these maps ‘were designed to encompass concepts of time as well as space’ (Edson 1999: VII). Mappa mundi in particular were frameworks where information was displayed visually.39 They were produced for one purpose and they served that purpose, distorting reality less because of their technical limitations (which were undoubtedly there) but mostly because of their intention to visualise a certain fact.

2019. No bibliographical review can be considered complete without a special mention of the work of Patrick Gautier Dalché (e.g. Gautier Dalché 1997, 2008, 2013a, 2013b, 2015). 37  Among the few ‘cartographic’ achievements of the end of the Early Middle Ages we can still list the famous Iconographia Rateriana, a map of Verona of the mid-tenth century. It highlights the contemporary perception of urban environment mainly in the component of heritage of the Roman past, with the emphasis on the walls and the ancient monuments: Caillet 2001: 81. 38  Those who argue that real maps did not exist in the Roman and medieval world note that the Latin language did not have a word for ‘map’ in modern terms: Harvey 1991: 7.

From a cultural point of view, Sigeric’s concept of mapping was probably limited to the influential work of Bede (c. 673-735), which was synthesised in two essays, perhaps both written in 703, where space and 39  The fact that they included geographical data progressively led to their designation as ‘world maps’.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration

Figure 4.4: Plan of Canterbury Cathedral and its priory (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 17, 1 ff. 284v-285). The earliest known English map of a monumental complex, produced at Canterbury in the mid-twelfth century, although very detailed and functional in showing the newly installed water system, it lacks the concept of a ground plan and does not respect any cartographic conventions like scale. © Creative common Licensed (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Eadwine_psalter_-_Waterworks_in_Canterbury.jpg)

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The Route of the Franks

Figure 4.5: Nevern, Wales (UK). A cross carved in the rock along the path leading to St David’s shrine. © Creative Commons Licensed.

the discourse on landscape perception, we can infer that these orientation devices, like the itineraries that the good general should have carefully studied, were meant to support the creation of a mental map, an accurate reconstruction that is performed ‘with the mind and even with the eyes’ (Veg. epit. r. mil. 3.6). Contrary to what happens in contemporary society, where a mental map is built on experiencing the surroundings and is an individual concept, the creator of a map in the past was not expected to have gained a previous knowledge of places. We should instead imagine a mental mapping construction based on someone else’s experience and interpretation of space.

time were discussed separately (i.e. De natura rerum and De Temporibus).40 We can now consider how people acquire information about their surrounding environment, and how observers understand the ‘landscape’. This process is naturally driven by consistent and predictable behaviours, relying upon the construction of mental maps. Cognitive mapping processes are based on the understanding of subjective, ‘geopsychological representations of place’, and therefore they can be studied to decode the type of conception of space that superintends them (Powell 2010: 543). If we link this contemporary paradigm to the quote by Vegetius (supra, and chap. 1, pp. 9-10) and engage with

As explained in chapter 1, the construction of mental maps and the way in which one uses space are driven by linear (paths, itineraries, edges, boundaries, etc.), punctual (destinations, crossroads, nodes, intersections, loci…) and volumetric (villages, agglomerations, places of worship and sanctuaries, markets, resting places, etc.) constituents of the activity of journeying. Five of these distinctive elements (paths, nodes, edges,

40  The connection between the two concepts was clearly understood by the copyists, since the two works are often bound together. In 725, Bede reworked the contents of the two synthetic dissertations, producing a new book entitled De temporibus ratione, which incorporated materials from both, and that discussed mainly the calculation of time. This book became the handbook for calendrical schools in many scriptoria of medieval Europe (Edson 1999: 50-51).

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration

Figure 4.6: Segment of the facsimile by Miller 1887 of the Tabula Peutingeriana, showing a large part of Gallia in the central portion. Original in the Biblioteca Augustana der Fachhochschule Augsburg; © Creative commons Licensed (http://www.fhaugsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost03/Tabula/tab_pe00.html).

The long vellum depicts the whole road-network of the Empire and beyond, designed from left to right in a very deformed projection that stretches the longitude of the land from northern and western Europe (Britannia and the Iberian Peninsula) to the central Asian regions and India; the roads are symbolised by a line broken with corners, each representing a place, and some (more important) places are symbolised using conventional representations, typified in a few recurrent categories. It is regularly claimed in both scientific studies and popular publications that the Tabula dates to the fourth or fifth century AD, and that the version which survived for us was copied in the course of the twelfth or thirteenth century42 (Figure 4.6).

districts, and landmarks) identified by Lynch as keys to decoding human cognition and movement through the built environment can be found in the pictorial manuscripts that represent the road network, such as the Tabula Peutingeriana mentioned previously, and the strip-map by Matthew Paris (supra, chap. 1, pp. 11-12, and infra). A monument to historical landscapes in itself, the Tabula Petingeriana,41 a unique road-map of the Roman ecumene, originally designed on a single scroll of parchment (680 by 33cm) that was transformed into an album of at least 12 sheets, the first one(s) of which is lost, is still a very controversial document. There is no consensus about its chronology, nature, use or scope; and its position among the ‘maps’ or the ‘diagrams’ is still animatedly contested.

42  Predictably, the literature about the Tabula is very extensive, therefore it will be opportune to refer here only to the latest and more general publications and rely upon the bibliographic reviews presented there: Albu 2008, 2014; Talbert 2010a, 2019 to be integrated with Prontera 2003 for non Anglo-Saxon literature. For the stimulating hypothesis of Emily Albu that the archetype of the Tabula was originally elaborated in the Early Middle Ages in the scriptorium of the Benedictine monastery of Reichenau on Lake Constance, see

41 

The document was first published by the humanist Konrad Peutinger in 1507, hence the name Peutingeriana.

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The Route of the Franks Although there is no doubt that changes were made in the fourth century to the version that was copied later, it is equally certain that the archetype on which the parchment draws is much older. In fact, besides those – very ostentatious – updates from the postConstantinian age (the chapel of Peter and the column of Constantine which could have already been added during the fourth century; and the captions for the Mount of Olives or Mount Sinai, which could have also been inserted in medieval times) and other more limited updates from the mid-imperial age (Matthews 2006: 70-77), altogether very limited in number, many more elements dating to the early imperial phase are present in the scroll (e.g. the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in spite of their destruction in AD 79). It is clear, therefore, that the Tabula shows a stratified landscape, in which new elements are added without obsolete ones being removed. The result is an extraordinary taphonomic construction, in which some elements accumulate while others are transformed, as is characteristic of cultural landscapes, in a process that is technically termed ‘cumulative’ (Corsi 2020b: 15-16). Here we must lay the groundwork for understanding the ‘topological use’ of such tools for route-finding, and frame them in the pre-modern practice of travel. Their conceptual basis lies in a process of mental mapping, where locations are displayed according to their mutual relationships rather than their actual position in geographical space. The navigation of geographical space is therefore undertaken according to the identification of the elements identified by Lynch as constituents of the exploration of the surrounding space, with the linear object – the road – being the dominant factor, paralleled by nodes (crossroads), punctual (the points along the lines) and volumetric (the important settlements pictured in the vignettes) elements. The essence of ‘landmarks’ clearly features in the Tabula, with the special thumbnail sketches of monuments that were evidently well-known to most viewers, and thus attracted their attention, such as the port of Ostia with its lighthouse, the seat of St Peter in Rome, the imperial palace in Constantinople, the lighthouse of Alexandria, etc.

only in 1217 when he was already at St Albans, where he took his vows. The ‘surname’ Parisiensis, sometimes de Parisus, which he added himself to signatures on manuscripts, patently suggests French origins, but, since the frequent use of Anglo-Norman French as an alternative to Latin was not an unusual characteristic for the English monks of the time, he may simply have trained in a French monastery, as suggested by recurrent references to the University of Paris in the Chronica Maiora and especially by his handwriting and his mastery of French sources (Lewis 1987: 3). The Chronica Maiora is Matthew’s most important historical work, preserved in a few illustrated autograph manuscripts: MS 26 at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (annals from the Creation to 1188; it includes a mappa mundi at the end), MS 16 also at Corpus Christi college (annals from 1189 to 1253), and MS Royal 14 C VII at the British Library (with the entries from 1254 to Matthew’s death in 1259). This latter manuscript also contains a version of another lesser work, the Historia Anglorum, mentioned here because it contains some ‘cartographic’ illustrations. Comparative material for the vignettes of towns, villages and castles which we will see are interspersed along the itineraria, can be found in another minor work, the Additamenta (Lewis 1987: 54). One of the main characteristics of Matthew’s work is its dual nature, the interaction between text and illustration that brings the narrative to life.43 Given its richness and multifaceted polysemy, the analysis of Matthew’s production has attracted more and more interest among scholars studying mobility and the modalities of journeys in the past. It is very thoughtprovoking, especially considering its textual, historical, art-historical and more comprehensively cultural implications. Since these latter aspects have been exhaustively and thoroughly examined, and many efforts have been made in communicating the message of Matthew’s chronicles, I will focus only on the specific aspects related to the ‘itineraria’ attached to the historical reports, analysing aspects of the perception of space and orienteering.

Dwelling on the topic of route-finders, but moving to the later Middle Ages, we meet the extraordinary personality of Matthew Paris. Matthew was a Benedictine monk based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire, who worked indefatigably as chronicler, manuscript illuminator and ‘cartographer’, and stands out as one of the most multifaceted and fascinating figures of medieval England. Although his personality strongly shaped the thirteenth-century cultural profile of the abbey at St Albans, there is little available information about his biographical details. He was probably born around the year 1200, but we meet him

The four different versions of the route from London to Apulia are inserted in different historical works, the most important of which is the autograph version of the Chronica Maiora preserved in manuscript MS 26 CC (from Cambridge), where the ‘strip-map’ occupies

43 

Milestone research has been conducted on both these aspects of textual and art-historical analysis, starting from the magisterial study by Richard Vaughan (1958) of the Chronica Maiora, Matthew’s masterpiece; by Suzanne Lewis (1987); to the more recent monographic essays by Connolly 2009 and Sansone 2009. An early attempt to identity Matthew’s cartographic skills, considered as a new start for medieval cartography, is in Mitchell 1933.

the critique of Patrick Gautier Dalché 2008: 49-50.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration the first five pages (Lewis 1987: 323).44 In a sort of ‘unidimensional’ version of road-diagrams like the Tabula Peutingeriana, the itinerary is designed as a series of vertical lines, laid out in columns separated by coloured bands, interspersed with vignettes of the towns and the villages that are touched upon along the route45 (Figures 4.7-4.9). Each place is captioned, and towns are symbolised by crenelated walls and other conventional buildings, such as towers and churches. Rome and London are clearly highlighted as the most important terminals of the itinerary, and a schematic plan is provided (Lewis 1987: 323). The distance between two consecutive locations on the itinerary is given in day’s journey. As we will explain in more detail, potential detours from the main route are taken into account on several occasions.

a colourful sketch where each element has a meaning: the captions of places where important events occurred are eyecatching, the dimensions of regions which played the most relevant roles are exaggerated, and the ‘plans’ of the urban centres are enlarged out of scale compared with the surrounding countryside (Wright 1925: 247-249). The ideograms of the Iter are also ‘scaled’ to the hierarchical position of the place, not only in the dimensions of the vignette but also in its complexity (Sansone 2009: 35). Predictably, the illuminator adopts several conventions and takes recourse in a series of conventional symbols, vignettes and legends, but Matthew’s work stands out as revolutionary, not only in his innovative shift of the orientation of the drawing with the north in the upper part of the page, but also in his accuracy in indicating more specifically relevant buildings in some towns through drawings and captions. Undeniably, these four versions of the Iter de Londinio cannot be described as maps strictu sensu, since they are inextricably linked to the idea of travel (Sansone 2009: 5).

In three of the four manuscripts, a sketch of the main sites in Palestine and Syria follows the itinerary from London to Apulia, suggesting that the route was originally intended to extend to the Holy Land; however, the analysis performed by Konrad Miller at the end of the nineteenth century has disproven this idea (Miller 1895: III, 85). The fact that Matthew emphasised the connection by sea travel between the harbour of Otranto and Acre in this version of the manuscript MS CC 26, however, is a clear hint that he himself considered the two maps to be conceptually linked (Lewis 1987: 325).46

Matthew’s map also indicates alternative routes, in the form of a nicked line branching off the direct one, to which the detached segment re-joins after having crossed one or more places displayed along a different route (see Figure 4.8); these detours are clearly not meant as shortcuts but rather as cultural choices (to visit one site rather than another): for example, from Faenza to take the road to Siena and Florence instead of following the road to Forlì, Bagno di Romagna and Rieti (MS Royal 14 C VII fol. 4r). Going into detail,47 catching up with the road from Rochester,48 Matthew’s itinerary crosses Kent and reaches Canterbury, depicted conventionally as a walled town with two gates, but enriched with significant details like the high watchtower and especially the peculiar triple-towered Christ Church and, in the suburbium, the silhouette of the Abbey of St Augustine, probably known to the reader since it is captioned only in MS Royal 14 C VII fol. 2r and not in MS CC 26 fol. 1r (Figure 4.7). From Canterbury, the line drives directly to Dover Castle, where the Channel crossing is suggested by a drawing of two large ships. On the French shore, the landing is at Wissant, indicated by the vignette of a tower and a large building in MS Royal 14 C VII, while in MS CC 26 it is a more conventional walled town with two prominent towers. Back to the bottom of the page, the route resumes from Boulogne (captioned as Notre Dame de Baloinne) in MS Royal 14 C VII, and from Wissant in MS CC 26, proceeding from bottom upward, although it is specified that it is heading eastward. After

The different specimens of the strip-map, however, are not the only cartographic productions that can be attributed to Matthew, who also authored two maps of England, the above-mentioned three maps of Palestine and a mappa mundi. Always attached to his main historical works, the maps are clearly intended to ‘illustrate’ the chronicles, and to guide the reader in understanding historical events. Indeed, rather than maps, they can be described as ‘diagrammatic sketches converted into illustrations’, that function ‘as visual history’ (Lewis 1987: 321-322). Somehow, the author confers a spatial dimension to the historical events in the maps, and provides them with spatial coordinates, at the same time designing the map so as to order and schematise their relationships. The map thus results in 44 

The other three versions are also preserved in autograph manuscripts: MS Royal 14 C VII fols 2-4 (Figure 4.9), also containing the Historia Anglorum; an incomplete version attached to MS 16 CC as fol. 2; and an abbreviated version depicted on MS Cotton Nero D I, fols 183v-184 of the Liber Additamentorum: Lewis 1987: 324. Some particular material aspects of one of the other versions (MS Royal 14) show that the several parchment folios were originally intended to be glued together to compose an uninterrupted roll about 175cm in length, allowing the continuous reading of the itinerary from left to right, from London to Palestine (Lewis 1987: 332). 45  The vignettes are labelled as ‘ideograms’ by Salvatore Sansone (2009, 2010). 46  Most scholars do not contest the tight connection between the two parts, considering these road-maps as an Iter de Londinio Terram Sanctam (e.g. Sansone 2009).

47 

The itineraries and their variants as depicted in MSS CC 26 and Royal 14 C VII are commented on in Sansone 2009: 7-21; MSS CC 16 and Cotton Nero D I in Sansone 2009: 21-27. 48  From Rochester an alternative route to the ‘coast and the sea’ is given via Favesham: Lewis 1987: 335.

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The Route of the Franks

Figure 4.7: Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, the itinerary from London to Beauvais. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, f. 1r. After Sansone 2009, fig. 2. Courtesy of S. Sansone, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration

Figure 4.8: Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, the itinerary from Mâcon to Montcenisio. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, f. 2r. After Sansone 2009, fig. 5. Courtesy of S. Sansone, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo.

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The Route of the Franks

Figure 4.9: Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, the itinerary from Pontremoli to Sicily. London, British Library, MS Royal 14 C VII, f. 4r. © The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/matthew-paris-itinerary-map. Public Domain.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration From Sens another detour is suggested via Auxerre, Nogent, and the shrine of Mary Magdalene (indicated with the abbreviation Mag) at Vézelay.

a journey of four days with overnight stops at Montreil, Saint-Riquier, Poix and Beauvais (Figure 4.7), it heads to Beaumont where it crosses the Oise river and SaintDenis, also depicted as a crenelated walled town.

From Mâcon on the Seine the itinerary proceeds to Lyon, depicted in very realistic way with two different parts of the town on the opposite banks of the river Saône (with a stronghold and a fortified burg). South of Lyon, the road bifurcates again: on one side, it takes the direction of Valence, Vienne, and Saint-Gilles along the Rhone (captioned as the route to Provence); on the other side, heading east, the itinerary reaches La Tour de Pin. At the bottom of the next column on the right, however, we have only an indication of a single road leaving from Chambéry at the bottom of the second column to Aiguebelle, Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, Termigno, and finally to the pass of Mont Cenis, at the foot of which is indicated the hospital (‘le hospital en pe du munt’: Lewis 1987: 338).

From there, in a short leg, the traveller reaches Paris, where the vignette, although conventional, clearly indicates a distinctive knowledge of the town, depicted with the Ile encircled by the Seine, and the walled circuit. From Paris the route proceeds on a four-day journey to Sens, captioned as ‘Sanctonas in Burgundia’ and leads to Provins, Troyes and Bar. North of Saint-Denis, the location of Luzarches is indicated, but in MS CC 26 there seems not to be a road connection; that is instead indicated as a detour south of Paris, to Moret near Fontainebleau.49 From Bar, the main road resuming from the bottom of the page in the column on the right passes via a large sanctuary indicated by a building flanked by two towers crowned by a hooked cross and ends at the top of the page at Chalon-sur-Saône, reached via Châtillon-surSeine, Chanceaux, Fleury and Beaune.

Amazingly, in addition to those generically sketched elements of the physical landscape such as rivers, coastlines and islands, all the architectural elements of the vignettes south of Lyon are positioned atop stylised heights, simulating the mountainous terrain, escalating until the alpine range that is depicted as a corrugated brown block (Lewis 1987: 338). As will be argued later, these itineraries may thus have derived from a pictorial archetype, intended to be twodimensional representations of geographical space in a manner similar to the maps of Britain that Mathew himself realised, which featured the most fundamental elements of the landscape (rivers, mountain ranges, coastlines, large bodies of water).

An itinerary closer to the one followed by Sigeric is given in continental France from Calais on a 5 ½ -day journey with stops at an uncaptioned place in MS Royal 14, firmly identified as St Bertin Abbey at Saint-Omer in MS CC 26, and then to Arras, Saint-Quentin and Reims. This more northern route reaches Châlons-sur-Marne, approaching the borders of Alemainne, passing via two other towns symbolised by architectural vignettes without caption.

Naturally these geographical elements could also have been inserted following textual indications and comments; given the richness of some details and the touristic and practical information scattered here and there, it is also evident that it was based on first-hand accounts of (contemporary?) travellers, integrating the available documentation on the basis of which the itinerary was designed (Parks 1954: 179-180). But then, might the differences between the successive versions indicate that, each time Matthew worked on a version, he made use of its predecessor(s), but also checked and/ or integrated it with new material that had become available?

The text adds information, details and instructions about the cardinal direction to take (e.g. ‘de vers orient par autre chemin’), how to proceed correctly at crossroads and junctions (e.g. ‘le chemin a senestre vers orient landroit’), and which country is bordering the region we are crossing (e.g. ‘un chemin a senestre de vers orient ki puis repoire en lautre ki est plus a destre mais cest chemin est plus pres de Alemainne’). These are unequivocal proofs that Matthew was facing an illustrated original very similar to a map. Thanks to his innovative skills and a ground-breaking creativeness, he decided to transform that original document into a new format of path-finder, a term that properly also describes its creator.

Indeed, the same observations can be made regarding Matthew’s three versions of the map of Britain, which is probably derived from a Dover-Newcastle itinerary. The differences in the delineation of regions can be effectively ascribed to new information acquired in the course of time elapsed from the first edition to the last. This derivation of the map from an itinerary is the basis of some inconsistencies, since Rochester, Canterbury and Dover are placed directly south of London on the

49  The route appears somewhat different in MS Royal 14 C VII, since an alternative itinerary leaves from Abbeville and reaches Luzarches, Moret (here, clearly connected to Paris by a road), Sens, Auxerre, Vézelay and joins the central line at Beaune.

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The Route of the Franks map, with Dover occupying a central position along England’s southern coast, as if to emphasise its central role in communication between the two shores of the Channel, inevitably causing distortions with respect to geographical reality (Lewis 1987: 367).

the holy shrines in the footsteps of Christ and his first followers, although not textually documented, explains many expressions of monastic life.52 This interpretation is based on the paradigm of the embodiment of a spiritual path through the construction of ritual and performative space, turning the map into a tool to facilitate this mental journey (Connolly 2009: passim).

As anticipated, the discussion of Matthew’s cartographic skills and the innovation that he introduced to the field50 would bring us too far, but we can still make some remarks.

This leads us back to Lynch’s theory and guides us through the itineraria and their constituents of movement along them: the lines, of course, connect the points and volumetric elements represented by the illustrations, the edges embody the rivers and the mountains, the nodes the junctions of alternative routes, and the landmarks are the non-conventional vignettes: for example, Christ Church and the suburban abbey of St Augustine in Canterbury, the two burgs of Lyon, the monuments of Rome.

A few scholars have argued that – contrary to contemporaneous portolans51 – this ‘cartographic production’ was not meant for practical use but rather for a ‘discursive purpose’, and that it was meant manly as a support for linking history with geography by means of ‘a more speculative discussion on the historical significance of various places and how they fit into God’s plan’ (Gaudio 2000: 52). In this reading, Matthew’s maps are considered closer to mappamundi, a sort of visual representation of history, and they are considered driven by the common thread of the crusades, which would constitute the organising principle of the thirteenth century vision of history, with the Holy Land considered as the terminus of mankind’s passage on the earth (Gaudio 2000: 53).

Some additional light on Matthew’s perception of the time/space relationship is shed by his ingenious design of one of the so-called Easter-Tables, attached together with liturgical calendars to his principal works. The Easter Tables are simple systems to calculate the date of Easter in each year. They entered the historical tradition of the monastic chronicles because of the habit of annotating each Easter date with information about the events of that period. Matthew’s innovative system can be described as a circular slide rule calculator joining disks reporting the lunar cycles, the epact and other reckoning data; the disk was cut from another piece of vellum and pinned to fol. 5 in MS CC 26 with a metal pin so that it could be rotated (Lewis 1987: 11).

However, although Matthew himself admitted that his map of Britain was not able to respect scale, given the limited dimension of the folium, he bends the parchment to his needs in two versions of the itineraries, and creates a sort of interactive tool with which to navigate the geographical space by sticking additional pieces of vellum to the main page. He sewed a flap along the itinerary from Pontremoli to Apulia in the manuscript British Library, MS Royal 14 C VII fol. 4, for instance, to accommodate the large vignette of Rome, and another triangular piece of vellum is attached to introduce the map of Sicily (Figure 4.9). Although these expedients can be interpreted as ways of stressing the textual authority of the representations, and claiming the dominance of history (Gaudio 2000: 53), the intention to ‘drag’ the viewers into that geographical context and make them navigate the space is equally evident. Indeed, these itineraries are somehow familiar to us, reproducing very closely highway diagrams or written instructions for the navigator; at the same time the engagement of the users in ‘folding and unfolding’ the flaps implies their involvement in the depicted geographical space, guiding them through an imaginary pilgrimage in the steps of the Crusaders (Connolly 1999: 598).

If this sort of pictorial itinerary is derived from and has contributed to the written texts guiding pilgrims, their link with travel has to be accepted. Furthermore, if Matthew’s effort to order and interpret the relationship between space and time is clearly evident, it is not completely true that the lines connecting the places along the itinerary can be seen only as a means to drive our interpretation in the direction of the author’s interpretation. In fact, the suggestion of the time needed to reach each destination demonstrates that there was a practical intention behind this sequence of locations, as there is a clear practical goal in offering the directions for alternative routes. The fact that Matthew offers short alternatives to the main route has two implications. First, I dare say that this is a manifest indication that the itineraries are derived from a sort of map, if a putatively similar document to the Tabula Peutingeriana can be labelled as such. The indication of the direction to take, ‘on the left’ or ‘on the right’, and the occasional references to compass directions (‘to the east’, ‘to the south’, etc.) can

This idea of a meditative practice of peregrinatio in stabilitate, i.e. an internalisation of the long journey to 50 

A study devoted to Matthew’s ‘cartographic’ production and space perception is in preparation by the author. 51  E.g. the Carte Pisane of late thirteenth-century: Harvey 1991: 39-49.

52 

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Theory firstly formulated by Jean LeClercq in 1961.

Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration these strip-maps used in the same way that current travellers use diagrams of the Underground or outlines of highways to travel to a place? (Adams 2001a: 2) Or did navigation for travellers rely upon different tools? Resuming the debate about landscape perceptions, were these itineraries able to prevent travellers from feeling or getting lost? Would there have been enough information about finding a place listed in an itinerary to proceed further just by asking directions to the next location on the list? (Adam 2001b: 168).

in my view only be derived from the vision of a twodimensional representation of geographical space. On the other hand, the availability of options implies that the traveller/pilgrim was able to make choices neglecting other parameters that might have affected the cost of that detour and following their cultural, devotional or practical interests (e.g. a wider range of accommodation, personal connections, potential to carry out business, etc.). Matthew’s map can therefore also be used to highlight another very important point for understanding mobility in the past, a point that is neglected in most studies aiming at the reconstruction of roads and pathways with computer aided spatial techniques. Although GIS applications are founded on the assumptions that when people travelled they were seeking to keep ‘friction’ to the minimum, trying to avoid effort and cost, and basically considered movement simply ‘a cost and dead time’, what emerges from these documents and specifically from Matthew’s production, is that many other factors, mainly rooted in historical and cultural issues, played an important role in the choice of the route to take, rather than people being simply driven by the ‘least effort principle’ (supra, chap. 1, pp. 4-5).

Indeed, the latter seems a concrete option, notwithstanding the fact that it is not easy to find explicit sources. For instance, in the passage of the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours quoted above (p. 59), it is clearly stated that a Frankish deacon asked St Hospicius for an ‘introduction to any local sailors whom he might know’ (Greg. Tur. Hist. Franc. 6.6, p. 274). Although the writing of support and ‘guidebooks’ for pilgrims has continued seamlessly since the Early Christian period and found a reference in Bede’s De locis sanctis (Itineraria et alia geographica 1965: 247), their increasing production in the Middle Ages is directly linked to the growing phenomenon of pilgrimage. The popularity of the genre is paralleled by the paramount importance of the peregrinatio ad limina Petri, and the Itinerarium of Einsiedeln is a milestone in its study, a compilation of suggested itineraria to visit Carolingian Rome, written at the end of the eighth/beginning of the ninth centuries and preserved in the library of the Benedictine monastery of Einsiedeln in Switzerland (Santangeli Valenzani 1999, 2001). Moreover, the origin of this type of document is deeply rooted in the tradition of the Roman itineraria, with the Itinerarium Burdigalense representing the bridge between this form and a typical Itinerarium ad loca sancta (Milani 2002: 38).55 As extensively discussed above, the derivation of some of these itineraria from pictorial representations of the road network (like the Tabula Peutingeriana) or even from real maps has been authoritatively contended, although it remains hypothetical.

Moreover, when we analyse the accounts of Christian pilgrimages, as well as pagan authors who wrote about both fictional adventures and cathartic journeys, like the Methamorphosis of Apuleius,53 we are confronted with journeys that are enjoyed in themselves, rather than being considered as hassling wastes of time and energy. Conversely, travel is the strongest part of the experience, a journey into the inner mind, a spiritual awakening, and an opportunity for self-discovery. Itineraries and guides Building on the above discussion about perceptions of the landscape and the options for representing it and mapping space, we can say that an itinerary was constructed on the basis that movement through landscape could be schematised in series of points deployed along a conceptual line, and that this line could be transposed into a textual list of places along a certain route. We can thus tackle the question of how knowledge about routes was communicated. How did people know how to get from A to B?54 Did the inheritors of Roman written itineraries serve as route-finders? Were these lists of places and the so-called strip-maps sufficient to guide travellers to their destination? Were

In this framework, the aforementioned work of Nikulas Bergsson of the mid-twelfth century (chap. 1, pp. 12-13) remains in the traditional reading a hybrid version of a travel account of a journey effectively carried out, and a pilgrim’s guide.56 Abbot of Thingor, Nikulas Bergsson 55  From a more philological point of view, the large family of texts related to medieval pilgrimage can be divided into pilgrims’ guides and pilgrims’ accounts. Whereas the first are meant to supply pilgrims with practical information (e.g. the Liber S. Jacobi, on which see infra), the latter are personal reports of pilgrimages individually carried out (Richard 1981: 15-19). 56  This definition is thoroughly contested by Marani, who argues that Leiðarvísir cannot be framed in the category of travel accounts or diaries, and that it should instead be classified as an impersonal guide. The critic goes so far as to question the attribution to Nikulas and the chronological contextualisation to the mid-twelfth century,

53 

Considered as one of the very few surviving Roman novels, the work, also known as The Golden Ass, written in the second century AD, is textured with references to the journey to the afterworld and to imaginary, symbolic travels. 54  This issue, rightly considered very central in the debate about mobility in the past (Brodersen 2001: 7), has been nonetheless neglected even in recent essays (e.g. Raepsaet 1999).

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The Route of the Franks is considered the author of this Leiðarvísir (‘itinerary’ in Icelandic),57 which lists the places crossed along the route from Iceland to the Holy Land, disclosing a significant number of changes to the common route (in Italy) when compared to Sigeric’s itinerary58 in the 150 years that elapsed between them.59 Leiðarvísir og borgarskipan, translated from Old Norse as ‘A Guide and List of Cities’,60 seems to merge the genres of travel account (since the fact that Nikulas personally travelled to Rome and the Holy Land has not been questioned until recently) and travel guide, with the integration of data about Norwegian regions acquired from other sources, intended to provide pilgrims and travellers with useful information. This included the distance between the stops on the suggested route, always calculated in time (day’s journeys), alternative routes, churches and sanctuaries to visit, blessings to implore, how frequented the roads are, climatological data, indications about possibilities for lodging and ‘colourful notes’ like the indication that Lake of Geneva is the place ‘where the paths of the Franks, Flemish, Welsh, English, Germans, and Scandinavians, those men who go to the Great Saint Bernard towards the south, meet’ (itiner. 53, ed. Werlauff 1821).

for instance, in the episode of the man from Chartres who supported Richer and skilfully helped him in the most complicated passages of his journey, such as the misfortune of a horse that died of exhaustion and a tricky bridge crossing on the river at Reims in the darkness (see infra, p. 85).61 As discussed above when commenting on the first journey of Wilfrid (supra, p. 65), there is evidence that some travellers relied upon (professional) guides, or at least were accompanied by an experienced person who had already undertaken that specific trip, perhaps a number of times, who knew the direction to take and could probably suggest where assistance and lodging could be found. This was indeed the case for Wilfrid, to whom support was offered by King Dagobert who ‘commanded’ Bishop Deodatus to escort the party, at least as far as the court of the Lombard King Perctarit in Pavia, where Wilfrid was charged with a diplomatic mission. It is clear that Deodatus had already travelled that route, probably acting as ambassador for the Frisian king. The acknowledgement of this diplomatic function and the respect given to Wilfrid and his ‘sponsor’ are openly expressed by Perctarit, who awards Wilfrid and his company guides to the Apostolic See. Again, it is evident that these ‘guides’ are available for specific routes, probably those more travelled by the messengers and ambassadors of each polity (Vita Wilfr. 28).

This genre is so unique that it became the basis of the ‘travelogue’; it was very popular until the nineteenth century, especially for exotic lands such as Palestine (see, e.g., the catalogue by Röhricht 1890). As we have already seen, the use of guides and scouts is adequately documented in the medieval sources,

More details can be found in the arrangements that were taken in 801 to facilitate the journey of Archbishop Æthelheard, who solicited Alcuin for support, from Canterbury to Rome. Alcuin sent him a saddle (a weird detail, since later it is explained that Alcuin had sent ‘also a horse to carry the saddle and you sitting on it’!) and informed him that he was going to be met by a ‘boy’, Alcuin’s courier, at St Josse (Alcuin Epist. 200 ad a. 801 = Allott 1974: no. 51, p. 66). Eventually, the ‘boy’ was going to guide the group to an undisclosed destination, possibly Rome itself. Alcuin also wrote to Charlemagne, petitioning worthy hospitality for Æthelheard and his retinue (Story 2003: 143). Very interestingly, in his letter to the king, Alcuin specified that he felt an obligation to return the protection offered by the archbishop on the occasion of his own journey and the good treatment of his ‘boys’ (Alcuin Epist. 201 = Allott 1974: no. 52, p. 68).

suggesting instead that the text is the result of a scholar’s work, eventually integrated with later additions by other medieval copyists. For our purposes, however, we will stick to the conventional view, without denying the possibility that Marani’s thesis is sustainable and worthy of further study. Marani’s position, however, does not take into account the fact that in late Roman times, at least starting from the Itinerarium Burdigalense, the boundaries between the two genres were substantially nuanced. 57  As already mentioned (chap. 1, pp. 11-13), the traditional interpretation of this text is that it is an account of a journey practically undertaken, and the fact that Nikulas decided to stay longer in certain places (e.g. Rome, probably Montecassino and other unspecified sites in the Holy Land) has not been questioned until recently: Hill 1983: 176. 58  Nikulas opts for the so-called ‘Eastern itinerary’, which crosses present Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to enter Italy at the Great St Bernard Pass, where it merges into the ‘traditional’ Francigena way. This route is an alternative to the western one, which from the Scandinavian Peninsula or Iceland implied a predominantly maritime voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and the Strait of Gibraltar to the Mediterranean or reached Normandy by sea and followed the route of the Franks as delineated here: Springer 1950: 101-106. 59  Raschellà 1995. The journey of Abbot Nikulas followed the ones of his predecessors, such as Isleifr (1053-1058), and Gizur (1082): Springer 1950: 95-96. 60  Without any claim to completeness, in addition to the literature suggested in note 22 of chapter 1, we can recommend: Hill 1983 (on the stretch from Rome to the Holy Land); Raschellà 1985-1986 (on the Italian itineraries); Simek 1990 (also with German translation); Lönnroth 1992; Marani 2006 (on the stay in Rome); Waßenhoven 2008; Marani 2009 and 2010 (with Italian translation of the text). The first scientific edition of the document is in Werlauff 1821.

We are also informed that grants were given to ecclesiastical institutions in exchange for services for voyagers, including the service of escorts offered at the beginning of the tenth century by the staff of Bishop

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However, despite that fact that the man from Chartres is said to be ‘accustomed to travel’ and quite skilful, he was not able to stop the party from getting lost in ‘the winding paths of the woods’ outside Meaux: Richer Hist. Franc. 4.50.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration Zink’s comparison between this text and other late medieval travel accounts offers an interesting insight into the dynamics of the transmission of the récits de voyage to the Holy Land. The first, an anonymous report of the First Crusade written in Latin soon after the event (therefore, at the end of the eleventh-beginning of the twelfth century) appears to have been dictated by a knight of Italian origin to a cleric who intervened heavily in the introduction, and in several parts of the text, forcing the nature of the text towards a libellum supporting the ideology of the crusade itself and overshadowing the military reporting. The other is also an itinerary of the Holy Land, written in French in 1480, entitled Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem. It is a picturesque and detailed travel account, where the main goal is less to provide information about the places that the pilgrims will visit, than to provide practical advice, specifically on the matter of where it is possible to gain more indulgences. In general, therefore, we can say that sometimes the motivation for reporting given in the laborious introductions is rhetoric and conventional, and that the real reasons the authors decided to put their experience on paper are to be discovered between the lines (Zink 1976).

Denewulf of Winchester, thanks to a donation from King Edward (Matthews 2007: 23 with sources). A sort of ‘guild’ of professional guides is recorded in the twelfth century on the Alpine pass of the Great St Bernard, with the name of marones; given the specialism of their services, they were paid handsomely (Coolidge 1889: 157-159).62 Whether their competence did not cover long distance routes or they were not expected to endure the long return journey required, these guides seem to be available only for a specific stretch of road. Unfortunately, the question of whether guides were provided due the lack of documents tracing the best route to follow, or whether it was just another customary form of ‘navigating’ strange lands, remains unanswered. Motivations for reporting The question of the transmission of knowledge can be more easily answered, since a few medieval sources adopt an explanation similar to that profusely detailed by Galen, the physician at the imperial court in the second century AD. Reporting on a bad experience he endured when he was shipped to the wrong part of the island of Hephaistias because of his poor geographical knowledge of the island, Galen, who we might considered a ‘learned man’, decided to write about his journey ‘and the stadia [that is, the annotation of nautical distances] extensively, so that anyone, who might – like me – want to visit Hephaistias, knows its location and can arrange for the journey accordingly’ (Galen, De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis, 9; see Brodersen 2001: 7-9).

Another late medieval example is from a commercial environment: Barthélemy Bonis, a merchant from Montauban in Languedoc who survived the Black Death of 1348, undertook a pilgrimage to Rome in the year 1350, supported by a servant and accompanied by other people from his native town, recounting his journey in a manuscript known as the Grand Livre (Forestié 18901894: XXI). The instructions for travellers intending to follow the same path and ‘go to Rome to visit St Peter, St Paul, St John and the other holy bodies’ are noted down on loose sheets inserted in the manuscript, seemingly written in Barthélemy’s handwriting. The directives follow the scheme of the pilgrim’s guides, and detail where it is possible to stay overnight (e.g. the pilgrim ‘must go from here [his native town Montauban] to Avignon; in the evening sleep in Avignon’) and where it is best to get a meal (Renouard 1962: 422-425).

Contemporaries of Sigeric and Sigeric himself are less explicit, but it is evident that in addition to an (auto) biographical intention there is an implied purpose of providing information to future travellers. This was true for John of Würzburg, who made his pilgrimage from Germany to the Holy Land around 1160, and who invited his friend Dietrich to follow in his footsteps (Huygens 1994: 29). In that case, John’s hope is that ‘all the things which I have described for you will meet your eyes as if they were known to you, easily and without the delay and the difficulty of searching for them’ (Huygens 1994: 79, lines 20-27).63

This ‘didactic attitude’ may derive directly from the pilgrim guidebooks that spread from the mid-twelfth century onwards in the wake of the popularity of the guide for pilgrims travelling to Santiago de Compostela inserted as Book V in the Liber S. Jacobi, a compendium of works devoted to St James traditionally attributed to the cleric Aimery Picaud, and preserved in the archive of the cathedral Chapter of Compostela under the name of Codex Calixtinus (Vielliard 1938; Caucci von Saucken 1995; Herbers and Santos Noia 1998; Berardi 2008). However, although Book V aims to provide practical advice to pilgrims arriving from different regions of

62  Gerard Sitwell hypothesises that they were the epigones of the Saracens who caused so many problems for travellers in the ninth and tenth centuries: Sitwell 1958: 61. 63  Elsewhere we have stressed how this expression might imply that John reported his journey as a fully-immersive experience: supra, chap. 1, pp. 9-10. The work of John is permeated by literary intent. The dedication to his friend Dietrich, identified with the future Bishop Theodoric of Würzburg, implies a huge effort on the part of the author to offer his dedicatee the experience of a real pilgrimage

by transferring the esprit of the journey, making this work less a guide to material but rather to spiritual pilgrimage: Zink 1976.

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The Route of the Franks France, identifying five main routes, it does not detail the time needed to reach the destinations, merely listing the places that are unmissable for devotees. Eventually, it adds information about the saint who is buried or venerated at a specific location, and the correct way of adoring the relics (e.g. Lib. S. Jac. 5.8: ‘First of all, those who go to Santiago on the way to Saint-Gilles must visit the body of blessed Trophimus in Arles…’). On the other hand, although the Liber falls into the broad category of the devotional hodoeporic genre, it stands apart because of the emphasis that it places on ‘the road’, on the path rather than on the final destination (Sabbatini 2009).

Apart from pilgrim guidebooks, we can state with a degree of certainty that in most cases the authors of these travel reports were not professional writers, and for this reason they chose familiar ‘literary genres’, such as letters or moralising fiction, and in a few examples (e.g. a French report of a journey to the Holy Land carried out in 1480), the intent is not to deliver a description of the sights, because that would be achieved by the pilgrims themselves in the course of their trip, but rather to provide pilgrims with practical information to facilitate the completion of their enterprise and ‘sourtout dissiper en eux la peur de l’inconnu, qui pourrait le dissuader de partir’ (Zink 1976: 239-249).

The opposite motivation pushed John de Bremble, a monk of Canterbury, to report on his dreadful experience (supra, chap. 1, pp. 8-9). Shocked by natural phenomena such as avalanches that were as mysterious as they were deadly, John tells his friend Geoffrey about his prayer to God, to be restored to his brethren, so as to be able to warn them ‘that they come not into such a place of torment’ (Tyler 1930: 29).

In this way, it is clear that the outcome is much closer to that of a contemporary blog than an official guidebook, since guidebooks aspire to being objective and impersonal. This reasoning could definitely be behind the record of Sigeric’s itinerary, considering that Canterbury’s archbishops were aware that they were just one link in a long chain of predecessors and successors who would have undertaken the same journey. A simple list of places to be reached along a conceptual line, even with no indication of the distance that separates them, was a successful method for organising a travel plan. A further indication that this is the correct explanation for Sigeric’s itinerary is that we only have a record of the return journey: is it possible that Sigeric and his entourage decided that this itinerary was more efficient than the outward journey, or that after having successfully performed the trip to Rome along that route they decided that it was worth putting it in on paper for future use?

We have already had the opportunity to argue that, although the definition of the differences between ‘travel books’ (or travelogues) as a literary genre that is chiefly non-fictional, and ‘travel writing’ (or travel literature) as a large and diverse group of texts that deal with travel as their main topic (Borm 2004: 18-19)64 can be very useful, and is generally adopted in academic environments (as in Francophone literary criticism with its distinction between littérature de voyage and récit de voyage), in this context the genre distinction is blurred and not apparently helpful. Indeed, we chiefly investigate the ‘attitudes’ of travellers, their feelings and perceptions of unknown surroundings and eventually how they attempt to transfer those impressions to readers. It is therefore not essential to establish whether a journey was practically undertaken, entirely imaginary, or was constructed on the basis of a collage of different sources, as long as the narrative intends to communicate about that specific journey. The habit of misleading readers by asserting the nonfictional nature of the work was also very popular among medieval writers and often clearly stated in the introduction, where occasionally details about the date of the journey narrated in the following pages were added to substantiate the reality of the storytelling (Richard 1981: 20-21; Huschenbett 2000: 123).

Approaching the matter in a more philological way, we can say that the larger category of texts that are meant to provide information for very diversified groups of users, ranging from the pilgrims to men-atarms, from traders to diplomatic staff and messengers, can be classified into several types. Among the ‘theoretical itineraries’, describing idealised journeys, we can further distinguish ‘fictional’ ones, proposed by professional writers (e.g. the Annales Stadenses, released by Albert de Stade in 1256)65 or by chroniclers/ cartographers/illustrators such as Matthew Paris, and those reported in documents relating diplomatic missions or trade routes and presented as being most suitable or authorised (e.g. the itinerary for commercial

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The definition of ‘travel writing’, which refers to a very heterogeneous group of texts ‘both predominantly fictional and nonfictional whose main theme is travel’, is not even properly classifiable as a ‘genre’ (Borm 2004: 13). An ample discussion of questions related to medieval travelogues is offered by Marani 2012: 61-110, see also supra, pp. 79-80. On the other hand, one distinction could be fixed at the use of the first person (singular or plural) for the narration of the trip: Marani 2012: 79.

65 

The text, which reports a fictional dialogue between two characters and includes indications about routes heading to Italy and their possible alternatives, was copied in the mid-thirteenth century but the original could be dated to 1152. It is edited in G.H. Pertz (ed.), Annales Stadenses auctore Alberto, MGH, Scriptores, XVI, Hannoverae 1859: 271-379; Annales Stadenses (-1256) - Albertus Abbas. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration exchange attached to the treaty that Amadeus V, Count of Savoy, made with Genoa in 1300). The second type, itineraries reporting trips effectively carried out, can be assimilated into travel literature (in French, récits de voyage). The group includes examples such as the report of the itinerary followed by Philip II (Augustus) of France returning from the Third Crusade (Renouard 1962: 405), and of course the one by Sigeric. The historical and geographical reliability of these accounts allows their delineation on a small-scale map and even a ‘calendarisation’ of their development (see Renouard 1962: 411-417).

reporting the fear of being lost in the woods in bad weather conditions and at the fading of daylight, emphasising the pouring rain and the sky darkened by black clouds in the incumbent night; by describing the agony of the dying horse; by narrating the difficult crossing of the dilapidated bridge; and by reporting the desperation of his ‘servant who had not adjusted to the difficulties of the journey, and was worn out, just laying on the ground looking as if he had died along with the horse’. Estimations of the duration of these journeys vary widely according to the scholar-exegete of the source and the details provided by the source itself,66 but they are almost invariably based on a simplistic equation and on the prejudicial idea that each stop mentioned corresponds to one night, i.e. one day of travel. Since Sigeric’s itinerary lists 79 stages between Rome and the Channel, mentioning only a two-night stay in Rome, the total length of the homeward journey is therefore calculated as a little over eleven weeks (Birch 1998: 58). However, a few analysts admit that some stopovers might have been longer than one night, allowing a total duration up to three months, around ninety days (Parks 1954: 54), compared to the seven weeks, or fifty days, which later became a normal figure (Poole 1924-1925: 31-32).

A more general review shows that most of these documents were intended to support pilgrims, even if they were probably perfected to improve commercial trade (Szabó 2000: 22). It might be interesting to note that most tools for land travel were elaborated by northern European scholars and writers, whilst maritime pilot books and rutters, or portolan charts, appear to be almost exclusively of Mediterranean authorship (Szabò 2000: 22). Scheduling, duration, distance, pauses, means of transport: The routine of travel The sources that we have briefly sifted through offer only a handful of details about the routine of travel. Information about scheduling, duration, means of transport, the composition of the party, overnight accommodation, costs, the practicalities of money transfer, and the dangers and challenges of travel are often missing or confused, not to say contradictory (Parks 1954: 55-56). However, the scattered references in contemporary sources make it clear that a sort of ‘chain of assistance’ was available for many travellers, mostly of ecclesiastical origin. For instance, in 849 Lupus of Ferrières did not hesitate in asking for money, assistance and accommodation along the way (Lupus Ferr. Epist. 75, translation in Regenos 1966: 85, where he explicitly asks for Italian currency).

Other calculations follow automatically: the total distance from Rome to Canterbury, accounted for a minimum of a rounded 1000 to a maximum of 1150 miles, equal to a range of approximately 1600 to c.1850km, divided by the number of days of travel, shows that Sigeric was travelling on average a minimum of 11 to a maximum of 29 miles a day (see Birch 1998: 58). This average pace would match that calculated for other travellers, for instance Odo of Rouen, travelling to Rome in 72 days (i.e. 72 recorded stops) leaving from Rouen, hence a shorter distance. Some more detailed calculations, although based on the same equivalence between descriptions of the place/stop and day of travel, show that the average distance covered daily by Sigeric in Italy (11 miles (= 17.7km), taking the average of a minimum 7.5 to a maximum 22.5 miles) is less than that walked from the Alps to the Channel (nearly 15 miles (more than 24km), the average of a minimum 7.5 to a maximum 29 miles: Parks 1954: 54). Much shorter distances were covered by other parties, for instance those engaged in the transfer of relics in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, documented in a series of recits de voyage (e.g. Hist. mirac. S. Amandi, pp. 895-898; see Sigal 1976). In 1060 some monks from the monastery of Lobbes transferred the relics of St Ursmar and St Ermin; in 1066 the relics of St Amandus are said

Almost nothing filters through the accounts about the ‘emotional aspects’ of a journey, since the characterisation of the landscape is very conventional, with impassable snow-covered mountains and the roughest seas and, as we have seen in chap. 1, pp. 7-10, 17-18, the description of dangers is predictably limited to illness, robbers and pirates. Here we could add comments about the strenuousness and discomfort of travel, drawing on the surprisingly ‘emotional’ and dramatic narrative of the accident met by Richer during his journey in 991. Richer very effectively drags the reader into the story-telling and openly shares his sentiments with ‘those who have experienced similar accidents and can make a comparison, understanding his feelings and worries’ (Richer Hist. Franc. 4.50) by

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A very useful scheme is provided by Matthews 2007, appendix 3, 72-74, where a starting period is proposed for each journey.

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The Route of the Franks to have been removed from the Viking menace.67 In 1102 monks from the Priory of Corbény (a dependency of the monastery of St Remigius of Reims) carried the relics of St Marculf (Miracula S. Marculfi, pp. 533-539); the monks of Laon made two tours (in 1112 and 1113) to transfer the relics of the cathedral (Herim. Torn. Mirac. S. Mariae cols 961-1018. See also Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, 12-13; Sigal 1976: 76-80).

that both ‘were walking, or, if on horseback, that they stopped off regularly along the way’ (Birch 1998: 58). The fact that Sigeric (and his company) went on foot, already argued by Konrad Miller (1895: III, 156-159), is accepted by Parks, who considered the longest stretch between two stops of 29 miles (= 46.7km) to still be a plausible distance on foot (Parks 1954: 54), although some travellers who were clearly riding do not seem to have covered much longer distances.

Thank to these récits, it has been calculated that the journey undertaken for the relics of St Ursmar (a total of 570km (= c. 374 miles) covered in 59 days) implied an average of 9-10km/day; the first journey with the relics of St Amandus (a total of 360km (= almost 224 miles) covered in 28 days), an average of 12-13km/ day, their second journey of 200km, completed in 15 days, an average of 13-14km/day; that for the relics of St Marculf, a total of 370km (= 230 miles) covered in 34 days, implied an average of 10-11km/day; the first journey of the monks of Laon reached 1000km (= c. 621 miles), walked in 110 days (corresponding to 9-10km/ day); and a slightly longer average distance (12-13km/ day) was travelled during the second shortest journey of 200km in 162 days (Sigal 1976: 81).

Comparison with Matthew Paris’s strip-maps is even less meaningful, given that in the maps themselves the locations that are considered worth mentioning (and therefore clearly ‘reference points’ or ‘landmarks’ for the traveller) can be separated by more (or less) than a day of travel (e.g. a jurnee et demie between Reims and Châlons vs a demie-jurnee between Canterbury and Dover). The suggestion that the diagram was somehow derived from a real itinerary, however, could be supported by the fact that in one of the four preserved versions, that attached to the Historia Anglorum, minuscule characters with numerals are displayed in the vertical sequences, counting left to right from I to XXXV, leaving room for the hypothesis that the figures indicated the number of days needed to journey to specific destinations (Lewis 1987: 332).

In the strip-map by Matthew Paris, the express indication of the time needed from one place to the next in days of travel, or their fractions, also results in uneven calculations. According to the chosen route, the total number of stops in France (from the shores of the Channel to the crossing of the Alps at the Mont Cenis Pass) ranges from 25 to 27, most a day’s journey apart, and on the other side of the Alps (Susa) to Rome we can count another 21 stops, totalling 46 stops and ideally 46 days, much less than the 79/80 stops recorded by Sigeric. The duration of the journée of travel converted into distance is anyway very uneven. The average calculated as 25 miles, corresponding to about 40km, is reasonable only if we imagine that the trip was done with a mount. It is simply an exercise, considering that the distances between adjacent places vary greatly, from long stretches like the 45 miles between Vercelli and Pavia up to the 65 miles (more than 104km) from Lyon to Valence, a distance that can barely be covered in one day (Lewis 1987: 342).

The fact that the equivalence between the mention of a stopover and one night has to be refuted is further demonstrated by the tour of the monks of Corbény (in 1102) that we mentioned earlier. After visiting the mother abbey of St Remigius, and having passed Châlons to head north-west, we are informed that the group stayed at Péronne for at least 5-6 days, and that only some days were devoted to travel, as an average of 30km/day was covered, frustrating the automatic calculations above (Sigal 1976: 80-83). Predictably, stays of more than a day had to be endured when waiting for the appropriate conditions to sail, on both sides of the Channel. The above-mentioned journeys of Odo of Rouen show that up to four overnight stays were spent in certain places, chiefly when rest was needed after demanding ascents or when the weather conditions were prohibitive. Interestingly, these travel accounts of the mid-thirteenth century show that the length of the stage was dictated by concern for reaching the location of overnight stays that had been planned in advance in a timely manner. This explains some of the discrepancies in the length of the stages of Odo's trip. For example, it is because he had already decided to stop in Courquetaine that, departing from Paris, he rode only 10km to Saint-Maur des Fossés, probably starting in the early afternoon. On the contrary, he covered 60km (more than 37 miles) in a single day to get to Montdidier starting from Poix, and to Mantova departing from Brescia (Renouard 1962: 419).

The simplistic nature of these estimations goes as far as suggesting that both Sigeric and Odo were much slower than the travellers that followed the strip-map of Matthew Paris (if we may say so, considering that there is no proof that this sort of document was ever used for a practical purpose), and even more simplistically 67  The version of the hagiographer Gislebert is heavily influenced by earlier narratives of the translation of relics. Effectively, no Viking threaten can have motivated such movement, but Gislebert is deeply inspired by the metaphor of the relics embodying the hero-saint who returns home after a perilous journey: Craig 2021.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration heartedness, is particularly bloody. In 959, during his journey to fetch the pallium, he was trapped in the Alps by ice and snow and tried to warm his feet, affected by frostbite, in the bowels of an agonisingly quartered horse (Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 17.5-18).

The pace of a journey was dictated by many factors, from personal (age, health, engagements, urgency of the trip, availability of means of transport, etc.) to external (climate, social and political situation, access to support, promptness of hearings at papal and other courts, etc.), and was naturally susceptible to incidents and impediments. It could vary significantly, and some travellers could voluntarily or otherwise take long pauses at monasteries, scholae or other hosting facilities.

The sources are often inconclusive, and sometimes even incoherent, as is the case in the last trip of Wilfrid, who is explicitly said to have left on foot (pedestri gressu), but became so ill at Meaux that ‘he could not ride’ (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 5.19). The same happened to Ceolfrid, of whom we are told that he rode from his monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow to Hull, where he embarked for France. Once in France, he got so sick that he had to be transported in a litter (Bed. Hist. Abb. 17; Matthews 2007: 18-19).

Of course, the speed of travel also depended on the composition of the party: large retinues of clerics, monks, guards and servants, some of them probably on foot, others on mules or on horseback, would have taken longer to move from one place to another, and to find a proper lodging in each place, eventually setting up camps for the staff and guards. The explicit mention of the delay experienced by Ceolfrid when he left the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, taking around nine weeks to reach the harbour where he boarded a ship to sail across the Channel, due to the many places and acquaintances that he visited along the way, is just an example of what was probably customary. All travellers, and especially ecclesiastical staff and Church leaders, surely took advantage of the opportunity to visit colleagues and confreres, stopping over at monasteries and episcopal palaces.

The option of a ‘combined’ trip, partly on a mount and partly on foot, as hypothesised for Sigeric, who would have walked to the Alps and ridden beyond them (Parks 1954: 54), appears problematic, considering that mounts would have needed to be acquired on the way, or implying that there was a system of stage-posts in place where animals could be rented and swapped at the following stations. Although particularly complicated for larger groups, this does not seem unlikely in general, at least along the most frequented routes, such as the Way of St James, and there is written evidence that in many places it was possible to rent mules (Labande 1963: 103).

It is evident from the many testimonies that, although penitent pilgrims were expected to walk, many other travellers and also pilgrims affected by age, illness or haste, rode animals: mainly horses, but also mules, asses and occasionally exotic animals like camels. Sources confirm that some of the Canterbury archbishops made use of mounts (e.g. Robert in 1052: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle text E, ad a. 1052), eventually completing the last stretch of the trip on foot, to preserve the humility of their condition (e.g. Wilfrid according to the Vita Wilfr. 50, 56).68 A few passages in the sources let us know that travellers were often equipped with mounts or pack animals69, since the beasts were stolen or even killed. Such was the case for Gerald of Aurillac, who managed to recover his two stolen pack horses (Odo Clun. Vita S. Geraldi 2.18, Sitwell 1958: 145), and for Odo of Cluny, who intervened in a case of theft (Johan. Clun. Vita Odon. 2.10; Sitwell 1958: 53), while the horse of a certain Mule (?), bought along the way from a cleric for the price of 30 solidi, was killed in the stable where his new owner had stopped to spend the night (Vita S. Dunst. 23; Stubbs 1965: 390). The episode involving as its protagonist Archbishop Ælfsige, a contested predecessor of Sigeric, accused of profanity and hard-

Nonetheless, the possibility that the traveller(s) changed their mind or were forced to resort to other means of transport is documented on several occasions. This is true in the above case of Richer (supra, p. 80), who narrated his misadventure in 991 during his journey to Chartres where he had been invited by the cleric Heribrand, who had sent a servant (later defined ‘the Chartrois’ or horseman) out to meet Richer. Richer, provided only with a beast of burden by his abbot, and accompanied by a boy, became lost after leaving the monastery of Orbais heading to Meaux; the long detour added to bad weather conditions led to the exhaustion of the animal (now defined as a muscular horse), and the party was thrown into panic. The ‘horseman’ from Chartres, who had clearly brought other horses with him, managed to let Richer get safely into the closest town, and went to recover the frightened boy who was left to guard the luggage. The journey was then continued the following day, thanks to ‘borrowed horses’ (Richer Hist. Franc. 4.50; see Glenn 2004: 252266). It seems to have been a common habit in the Middle Ages to ask acquaintances and ‘patrons’ for a mount, as demonstrated by Lupus’ greedy request to Abbot Mareward of Prum, who was solicited to donate ‘a horse, a trotter or some other sturdy steed’, in addition

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This habit of performing the first and the last part of the pilgrimage on foot, even when the rest of the journey was made with the support of a mount, is witnessed in many sources: Labande 1963: 104. 69  Barrow 2012: 554-555 argues that bishops and archbishops favoured ‘respectable’ palfreys over faster destriers.

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The Route of the Franks to lavish garments to bring as a gift for Pope Leo IV (Lupus Ferr. Epist. 77, a. 836).

contains a report of a further journey to the Holy Land, completed by the biography of his brother Winnebald: chapter 3 of Willibald’s biography is considered by Parks ‘the first vivid report of that country by a western pilgrim, and one of the outstanding work of AngloSaxon travel literature’ (Parks 1954: 46).

It is evident that different types of beasts of burden and riding animals were a necessary component of most convoys, especially those involving the acquisition, in Rome or along the way, of relics, books and works of art, or the transport of supplies that were not expected to be found at their destination, as in the case of the first group of missionaries led by Augustine arriving in Britain with a load of ‘materials for the furnishing of churches – vessels and vestments, relics and books (Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.18; see Robinson 1926: 231). An anecdote reported by William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pontif. Angl. 168) about the Alpine crossing of Aldhelm in 690, discloses that a camel was used to carry ‘a white marble altar’. When the beast was exhausted, this caused the piece to fall and break; only the prayers of the holy man could restore the camel to his feet and the altar to one piece (Parks 1954: 66).

Indeed, some interesting details about the modalities of travel filter through the narrative, however concise: the party gets ready at the beginning of summer in the year 721; it is composed of Willibald, his brother, his father and ‘a company of colleagues’. Preparations imply collecting money and supplies, before they reach the mouth of the river Hamble, in the large estuary of Southampton, where they seem to buy a passage on the fly, having waited only a short time for a suitable ship. After having disembarked, probably in a place not far from the mouth of the Seine, the group is said to have put up tents in the vicinity of Rouen and camped there for a few days. No further detail is provided about the itinerary but we are informed that Willibald and his party ‘stopped to pray at many shrines of the saints that were on their way’. They arrived in Gorthona [Tortona?] after crossing the Alps and Willibald’s father died in Lucca, before the party could reach Rome (Parks 1954: 46).71

Presumably, the use of some sort of vehicle, or at least cart or wheelbarrow, is hypothesised for travels that implied the transfer of precious goods, such as cists or caskets for relics (Héliot and Chastang 1964: 819), although there is no explicit mention of any of these in the sources, with the exception of the monks of Laon who travelled to England provided with two horses (supra; Sigal 1976: 83).

The detailed report of the journey of Lambert of Guînes, performed exactly one century after Sigeric’s trip (1091-1092), provides an in-depth view of several of the subjects we are touching upon: about timing, the distances covered daily and the duration of the stops. As previously mentioned (supra, note 5), the newly elected bishop of Arras was detained by the archbishop of Reims, not at all happy to have a new suffragan, and therefore his departure to Rome for consecration was delayed until the worst possible season: the end of December. The convoy, composed of at least ten people including the cantor Odo, the scholar Achard, Druon provost of Aubigny and their servants, got under way on December 24, but celebrated Christmas already in Châlons, at the monastery of Toussaints-en-l’Isle, where they were welcomed by Abbot Odo. On 26 December, Lambert and his companions were already on their way to Troyes, accompanied by a canon from the abbey, and covered 79km. Their stay at Troyes was, however, short, because the dispute between King Philip I of France and the count of Flanders made the area unsafe. Although the text does not report the details, we can trace the itinerary to the next stage through Bar-sur-Seine and Riceys to Molesmes, 69km apart. There, finally, they stopped for a few days, waiting for Gauthier, the aged lord of the manor of Douai, to join them. Back on the

Choosing the time of year for the journey was a particularly complex matter, since the coldest seasons had to be avoided, especially for the Alpine crossing, but at the same time spending time in Rome in the hottest summer months also had to be avoided, when unsafe sanitary conditions caused fevers and sickness and dissuaded travellers from staying, as happened to Willibald and his brother (infra), and to Archbishop Wighard and nearly all his retinue upon their arrival in Rome. An ideal solution would have been to leave from England in summer and return there after spending the whole winter in Rome, as did Willibald who left England in summer, arriving in Rome in November, and as Ceolfrid intended to do, leaving his monastery in Wearmouth in June, but he delayed his Channel crossing until mid-August, and in any case did not go further than Langres, where he died on September 25 AD 716 (Anonymous Historia Abbatum 31-32, pp. 388-404; supra, chap. 1, p. 14). Despite the fact that the exact date of Sigeric’s elevation to the archiepiscopal see is not known, it has been proposed that Sigeric left at the beginning of the year 990 (Ortenberg 1990). A few more insights into the practicalities of early medieval journeying from England to Rome can be found in the autobiography of Willibald,70 which also 70 

Huneberc of Heidenheim: Talbot 1954: 157. 71  McCormick 2001: 130-134 dwells on travellers as a medium to investigate diplomatic relationships and economic flows. There is a crux in the text, regarding the topographic positioning of Lucca north of the Alps/Apennines.

Vita Willibal. 1.80-106. The journey of Willibald is also recorded by

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration the foundation of such institutions (e.g. the activity of Hincmar at Reims: Saint-Denis 2001: 54).

road, they arrived in Dijon, where they indulged in a couple of days of rest, for themselves and the horses. The chronology of the following stages is unclear. At Dijon they were joined by Hugh of Die, papal legate and archbishop of Lyon, who led them to Cluny and then to Lyon. We are informed that in Lyon they stayed at least six days, for they intended to sail along the Rhone and had to wait for the right conditions. They arrived in Rome on Friday 19 February 1093. They left from Rome on the Friday after Easter, again sailing, at least until Genoa. We know that they were back in Arras in time to celebrate Pentecost, therefore totalling 37 days of travel for the homeward journey (Lestocquoy 1957: 182-184).

Kings bestowed donations to establish ‘houses for pilgrims’ (a definition that includes any sort of people in need of assistance) as is the case of the shelter of St Josse (or Judoc) at Saint-Josse-sur-Mer whose foundation was entrusted to Alcuin by Charlemagne (and where Alcuin arranged support for ‘recommended’ travellers like archbishop Æthelheard: Alc. Epist. 251, ad a. 801). The establishment of a hospital is such an important socio-political enterprise that the hospital network can be used as a proxy to analyse the centrality of places and to reconstruct their hierarchy in regional settlement patterns. These institutions for assistance are definitely generators of centrality, mainly thanks to their social and economic implications (Saunier 2004: 179-180). After the year 1000, hospitals were looked upon as certainties of medieval life and society, to the point that the pilgrim guide for the Way of St James boasted that ‘the Lord has placed three columns on the earth that are strongly needed to support the poor’ (Lib. S. Jac. 5.4.193v), namely the hospitales of Jerusalem, Roncesvalles and the Great St Bernard, steadily placed at the main passes to the three chief destinations of medieval pilgrimage: Rome, Santiago and Jerusalem (Caucci von Saucken 1995; Herbers and Santos Noia 1998; Berardi 2008). Just a few decades after the passage of Sigeric, the Icelandic Abbot Nikulas, travelling from his monastery at Thingor to Rome and the Holy Land (supra, pp. 79-80), notes the availability of infrastructure built thanks to King Eiríkr Sveinsson: a hospice eight miles south of Piacenza, at Borgo S. Donnino, where ‘they could refresh themselves’ (itiner. 55 ed. Werlauff 1821) and endowments so that ‘in Lucca, anyone speaking Nordic languages could drink fully and freely’ (Itiner. 150 ed. Werlauff 1821).75

Hospitality and accommodation The topic of monastic hospitality, accommodation en-route and lodging at the destination from Late Antiquity to the high Middle Ages, after the golden age of Roman infrastructure and before the time of institutionalised reception and assistance at the big late medieval hospitals, is receiving growing attention in international scholarship.72 Many new studies of the infrastructure for hospitality in Rome and Jerusalem have also significantly renewed the schematic knowledge that was available until the last decade of the twentieth century.73 A series of ancient sources demonstrates how deeply ecclesiastical and political leaders were involved in setting up hostels, ranging from the disposition of the Lombards (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 148-150) to the initiatives taken at the Councils of Meaux and Paris;74 earlier, at the Council of Aachen in 816-817 Charlemagne required communities of canons to build a receptaculum to host the needy, triggering a veritable explosion in

In any case, one of the most resourceful ways of obtaining assistance and hospitality in the course of a journey was to resort to acquaintances and peers, when not directly invited to court, as happened to Wilfrid and his travel companions when they reached Rome in 703 and were accommodated by Pope John in person (the Vita Wilfr. at section 50 specifies that the ‘dwelling’ was explicitly set up for them and was made available for free: ‘mansione voluntaria praeparata manserunt’). Presumably, the grounds for being hosted were prepared in advance, by sending letters with requests for support, or by relying on a well run network of institutions offering reception.76 Such is undoubtedly the case for

72  Montaubin 2004; Corsi 2005, 2016a and 2016b; Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 148. A great deal of work has been done in the framework of the international project HospitAm-HosperAnt, based at the ENS of Lyon: see HospitAm - Hospitalités dans l’Antiquité méditerranéenne: sources, enjeux, pratiques, discours, , viewed 24 January 2022, with a rich bibliographic review and many carnets de recherche, and within the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ of the University of Tubingen: , viewed 24 January 2022. A conceptualisation of ‘hospitality’ and of its evolution from Antiquity through the Middle Ages until modern times is attempted by Alain Montandon, who highlights how the idea of commercial hospitality progressively derived from what in French is labelled hospitalité oblative: Montandon 2001b: esp. 22-23. 73  See, e.g., Santangeli Valenzani 1995-96, 2014. The charitable institutions of the seventh-ninth centuries of Rome are also the topic of research by Hendrik Dey (Dey 2008), useful for English language readers. 74  The Council of Meaux and Paris (a. 845-846, canon 40) stressed the need to re-establish hospices that had fell into disrepair, at the same time prescribing to bishops’ residences a close proximity as ‘to be available for the reception of strangers and the poor’: Hefele 1861: 141-142.

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The Leiðarvísir also informs us that a hospice was built in Lucca on the initiative of the Countess Mathilde, fulfilling a vow taken at the Abbey of Montecassino: Itiner. 79 ed. Werlauff 1821. On the presence of English travellers at Montecassino see Pelteret 2011: 259-260, 272. 76  The entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in the Annals of St Bertin referring to West Saxon and Irish missions to Rome in AD 839, 848 and 853. suggest that, in the mid-ninth century, it was

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The Route of the Franks the Canterbury archbishops; a letter signed by Abbot Odbert from the monastery of St Bertin to Sigeric is preserved with a warm invitation to the new archbishop to stop over at the monastery in remembrance of the generosity of his predecessor Archbishop Æthelgar and in exchange for the hospitality that he enjoyed at the abbey (upon both trips to/from Rome), and which was still vividly motivating the local community (Stubbs 1874: no. xxii, p. 388). A few words demonstrate how pompous the welcome of the late archbishop was, just a couple of years before Sigeric’s passage.77 The letter goes into such detail that we are informed that the messenger who carried Odberťs letter was expected to arrange a possible date for his stay at the abbey with the archbishop. However, the Abbey at Saint-Omer does not feature among the stops listed for Sigeric’s homeward journey, although he may have stopped there during the outward leg to Rome (Vanderputten 2006: 232234). Moreover, even Æthelgar’s predecessor, Dunstan, is thought to have stopped at the Abbey of St Bertin in Saint-Omer upon his return journey from Rome (Grierson 1941: 91-92). At least during one of his stops, Dunstan experienced a shortage of supplies, blamed by his steward on the generosity of the holy man in giving away their provisions in alms. The prayers of the saint were answered when some messengers sent by a bishop to meet Dunstan provided the party with many supplies (Dales 2013: 51).78

money and gifts to offer popes and other authorities. Saddles, horses and other mounts or pack animals were blatantly begged for, and provisions for other people often demanded, sometimes emphasising that the present request was in return for hospitality previously offered to the addressee. Similarly, local authorities and administrators in the Roman Empire could be forced to offer accommodation to those who travelled on official business, as described by Charlemagne for his envoys,79 but also for humble pilgrims, who had to be provided with shelter and basic needs such as fire and water.80 When these dispositions did not oblige private citizens to host travellers, the warmth of the hospitality depended on the good will and generosity of those who lived in the neighbourhood, as Richer’s assistants found, when they were caught by darkness on the outskirts of Meaux and unable to join their master who was hosted by the local church community, and had to seek ‘shelter in a peasant’s hut. The peasant let them sleep there but gave them no food even though the lad had gone the whole day without eating’ (Richer Hist. Franc. 4.50, translation by M. Markowski. See, supra, pp. 80, 83-85). To avoid these uncertainties, many ecclesiastical and monastic institutions set up a network of dependencies strategically placed along the more frequented roads; their emissaries as well as their guests could therefore count on a system of relays that made travel safe and comfortable.81

Bishops played a special role. Their duties in welcoming guests (probably selected on the basis of their rank) are clear from the early times of Christianity (Corsi 2005), and in the letter from Pope Gregory to the missionaries sent to Canterbury, a certain amount of the revenues is even reserved for ‘the bishop and his familia for hospitality and entertaining’ (see Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.27; Robinson 1926: 228).

Voyagers might resort to the possibility of pitching camps along the road, with tents, basic equipment and household items loaded for the trip. The habit of putting up tents for the whole, or only part of the group of travellers had to be relatively common, as documented for the Roman period (Corsi 2019: 165167, 172). To the episode referred above,82 we can add the group of monks of Lobbe, who used to travel well

The review of medieval sources related to the travels of the English provided by Matthews (Matthews 2007: 81-126) is very informative about the intense epistolary exchange among clergymen and occasionally political leaders, who requested a diverse array of services and provisions in addition to hospitality: the basic needs of accommodation and board, changes of clothes, cash

79  In the Capitulary De Villis, of the end of the eight century, Charlemagne disposed that his missi and their retinues, when they were travelling for official business (literally, ‘are on their way to or from the palace’) had to be cared for by the count of the district or by those ‘men whose traditional custom it has been to look after’ them ‘as they have done in the past, providing them with pack-horses and other necessities’: Loyn and Percival 1975: 68, article 27. 80  General capitulary for the missi, a. 802, article 27, Loyn and Percival 1975: 76: ‘We ordain that no one in all our kingdom, whether rich or poor, should dare to deny hospitality to pilgrims: that is, no one should refuse a roof, a hearth and water to any pilgrims who are travelling the country in the service of God...’. 81  Barrow 2012 on the organisation and the acquisition of estates by the bishops and archbishops of England to facilitate journeys across the country. 82  Supra, pp. 63-65, 80: Boniface camped with his travel companions in Quentovic and Willibald and his retinue stayed in a tent outside Rouen in the first half of the eight century. Sigeric’s contemporary, Gerald of Aurillac, refers to having camped on several occasions; once, just outside Pavia, he was visited in his tent by Venetian traders trying to sell coals and spices: Matthews 2007: 25, with references to sources.

normal practice to send scouts to consult with the authorities in Francia in order to obtain the necessary permissions and to ensure an appropriate reception for a king who wished to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome: Story 2003: 231-235. 77  In Vanderputten’s translation ‘For when he travelled to Rome, he was received by us with honour, and returning from Rome, he was received very magnificently as befits such a great father, and he granted us the exceptional privilege of his fondness: at that point, he became our father as well as our brother, and we became his sons and his brothers in the one Lord. He lavished us with alms and many gifts, and also promised that he would bestow more so long as he lived’: Vanderputten 2006: 243. 78  This episode informs us not only about the predictable habit of carrying provisions, but also of the fact that the stopping points of St Dunstan along the route were known to his brethren.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration on Mount Amiata in southern Tuscany, is mentioned in the contemporary sources; soon this ‘place of the road’ would evolve into a small hamlet (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 55). Infrastructure not related to ecclesiastical assistance was probably managed by small entrepreneurs, albeit in this case the ownership of the tavern and the plot of land remained in the hands of the Abbey. The spread of secular facilities offering assistance to travellers definitely increased in the course of the tenth century, but their ownership probably remained with the ecclesiastical institutions.

equipped with two tents, although not disdaining more comfortable accommodations, in hostels and guesthouses (Sigal 1976: 87), and the brothers of SaintAmand-les-Eaux, who set up a tent in the main town square where they stayed overnight, after having safely deposited the relics in the cathedral. In a few passages, our sources reveal a sort of mixed solution: Lupus asks Bishop Odo to direct him to a location in the vicinity of his home to pitch camp and to let the horses graze once they have arrived, but at the same time his courier was hosted at the bishop’s monastery until their arrival (infra). Camping equipment was considered valuable to the point that it was given as a gift to royals and bequeathed by owners to confreres and monasteries. Ælfric Modercope’s words accompanying the donation of his tent and bed clothing to Bishop Ælftic are deeply moving for these belongings are defined as ‘the best that I had out on my journey with me’ (Anglo-Saxon Wills no. xxviii, a.1042/3).83

In any case, the possibilities of commercial exploitation and progressive emancipation from obligations towards lords and nobles led – around the year 1000 – to the birth of what in modern terms is labelled the ‘hospitality business’ (known in French as accueil mercantil), and in most cases is frequented by people who travel for trade or for political-diplomatic activity. Some municipalities managed to set up institutions for the reception of lay people (Peyer 1987: 205-208, 233-236).

An official testimony can be found in the Frankish Annals, ad a. 807, where envoys from the emperor deliver to the king of Persia ‘a tent and curtains for the canopy of different colours and of unbelievable size and beauty. They were all made of the best linen, the curtains as well as the strings, and dyed in different colours’ (Scholz and Rogers 1970: 87).

In chap. 1, p. 16, we have commented on the exceptional document that preserves the equivalent of the sections in contemporary travel guide for ‘useful words and expressions’, listing Latin words related to body parts and their translation into Old German. Does this mean that Latin speaking clergy were not (always) able to rely upon the hospitality of other churchmen? Was it considered a relatively common eventuality to have to resort to lay and/or commercial accommodation facilities where communication could not be based on the lingua franca? Or, instead, did the ecclesiastical staff equip themselves with instruments to communicate with guests who were not able to speak Latin?

As documented for Roman times and for some well-known medieval monasteries like St Gall, accommodation could be offered at different levels of comfort and cosiness (Pelteret 2011: 251-253; Corsi 2019), probably following the status of the guest and sometimes their financial means, as a generous cash or gift offering was more than welcomed, even at monastic institutions. One example can be found in the episode of Lupus, who asked for his courier, who arrived ahead of his master, to be hosted at the ‘poor man’s place’ at Bishop Odo’s monastery, where – if he will be given permission – ‘he will keep the scraps from being wasted, and will also dry the cups, so that they will not be tarnished by the moisture’ (Lupus Ferr. Epist. 121, translation in Regenos 1966: 138).

Undoubtedly, the ‘blended’ modality, i.e. making use of connections among ‘peers’ (especially for ecclesiastical travellers) and resorting to commercial accommodation only when the first option was not available, was very common, at least from the High Middle Ages. The more informative accounts such as those left by the entourage of Odo Rigaldus, bishop of Rouen, who made travel an instrument of his pastoral role as well as a lifestyle (supra, pp. 65-66), show that in the mid-thirteenth century, making use of his ‘double’ profile as archbishop and friar minor, Odo was warmly welcomed at bishops’ residences and at the urban Franciscan convents, and was sometimes hosted at Benedictine monasteries such as those of SaintMaur, Saint-Seine and St Ambrose in Torino or the commanderies of the Templars or the Antonines (for example, in Rampillon and Vienne). Of the 110 stops he made during his journey, 36 were in episcopal cities, ten in monasteries or priories, and seven in the manors of his archbishopric and cities of his archdiocese or castles of his family. He must therefore have resorted to

Commercial accommodation must have remained a possibility throughout the ‘Dark Ages’, at least in urban and large centres, but also in remote places, where peasants who lived along the route might have combined their traditional activities with the business of hospitality. By the mid-ninth century a taberna near Callemala, at the foot of the important Abbey of the Holy Saviour 83 

Different ‘models’ of tent are represented in illustrations of medieval manuscripts: Pelteret 2011: 250-251.

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The Route of the Franks commercial accommodations for wealthy travellers for the 57 other stop-overs (Renouard 1962: 419).

the jealousy of local clergy.85 On one of those occasions, chased out of Saint-Laurent-de-Cala, the monks were offered a very large tent by the provost of the castle, which was further equipped by local pious women (Sigal 1976: 86-87). At other times, the presence of large crowds attracted by events like fairs or interregional markets made accommodation unavailable, and it was therefore necessary to ask for hospitality at private houses.

Some fragmentary elements, therefore, allow us to glimpse a picture that by the mid-ninth century must already have been well structured. There are interesting data from other regions crossed by the ‘Route of the Franks’: for example, a xenodochium dedicated to St Lawrence, explicitly devoted to hosting pilgrims, is known from the bull of Pope Leo IV (852) at the curtis bearing the same name not far from Capranica (Corsi and De Minicis 2012: 149).84

Rome Although most of the sources we have been dealing with in these chapters implied that Rome was the final, or at least one of the main destinations of the journey,86 issues related to accommodation in the Urbs cannot be extensively discussed here. We may simply recall that among the taxes that English people were expected to pay to the Roman Church, that called ‘Peter’s Pence’ or ‘Romscot’, levied fairly regularly in England since the time of King Æthelwulf of Wessex (mid-ninth century),87 was probably the less obnoxious, since at least part of it was meant to support the maintenance of the institution that took care of assisting English visitors to Rome, the so-called Schola Saxonum, later Schola Anglorum (on which see: Ortenberg 2014: 204-205). It seems evident from the wording of the source that Sigeric must have lodged in the Schola upon his arrival at the Apostles’ See, and so probably did the other archbishops from Canterbury and York commanded to Rome to fetch the pallium, as well as most pilgrims and travellers coming from England (Tinti 2020).88 Beginning with Wilfrid Moore (Moore 1937: 90-125), many scholars have investigated how central this institution was in the deployment of diplomatic relationships between the two powers, for it is argued that the scholae (other

Although we have seen in a few travel accounts that some stays were planned in advance and that grounds were prepared by announcing an arrival at ecclesiastical institutions by means of letters, the planning of stopovers was probably only occasionally fully determined before the journey, and only the principal stops were based on the network of acquaintances, brotherhoods and connections. It was very common for ecclesiastical travellers to resort to former confreres who had been transferred to other monasteries or to sister houses of the abbey of origin, as did the monks from Laon when touring England, hosted by former students of the school of Laon (Sigal 1976: 85). A few more ‘technical’ pauses were unplanned, those due to the need to break stretches of road too long to be endured in one day into two, or following unpredictable events such as prohibitive weather conditions, sickness or exhaustion. This happened, for instance, to the brothers of Saint-Amande-les-Eaux who left from Laon in the morning heading to Noyon, but were caught by dusk on the way when they were passing by the fortified village (castellum) of Chauny, where they were obliged to ask for hospitality; and to the monks of Corbény, who did not make it to their priory before nightfall, and had to stay overnight at the village of Vans, 20km away from their home (Sigal 1976: 85).

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These tours also played an important political role, since the relics were displayed at official meetings, councils and celebrations as a sort of amulet to ensure peace and a direct link with the divine; they were also used as a mediating tool to broadcast the paramount importance of God’s sovereignty (Bozoky 1996: 268-269). This role of the relics as intermediaries between humankind and the Lord, and as a means to underline ecclesiastical power to the detriment of the temporal one, is amplified at the end of the tenth millennium in an eschatological reading: Bozoky 1996: 273-276. 86  An overview of the identity and traces of English travellers to Rome (and the sanctuary of Gargano) is in Pelteret 2011: 256-264. 87  Naismith and Tinti 2019 reassess the earliest forms of Peter’s Pence and describe how the mechanism for its levying became more sophisticated from the time of King Edgar (959–975) and his successors, especially Æthelred II (978–1016). They also highlight how the role of the archbishops of Canterbury grew in importance, since they received the collected tribute from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom as a whole. Naismith 2014 presents the coin hoards containing AngloSaxon currency found in Rome until the 970s. 88  Tinti 2020 discusses the characteristics of the English presence in Rome in the late Anglo-Saxon period, analysing the sources and assessing whether the evidence from this period differs from that of the Early Middle Ages. One of the most important differences, for instance, is the scarcity of consecrated women travelling to Rome, probably as a result of the increased emphasis laid on the concept of stabilitas and the restrictions imposed by the Benedictine reform: Tinti 2020: 347.

In short, ecclesiastical staff had four main possibilities for overnight accommodation: large towns, where ecclesiastical travellers could surely rely upon the hospitality of bishops and other high rank prelates; villages, where travellers may have been sheltered in the parishes; at dependencies or ‘sister abbeys’; or at any monastery that could provide a welcome. Predictably, things did not always go as planned, and even those carrying relics, like the monks from Laon, faced hostility due to the fact that the touring relics prompted very generous donations, thus unleashing 84  The bull is an erudite forgery to brag about the confirmation of the donation by King Pippin; nonetheless, given the interest of the counterfeiters in demonstrating its reliability, the mention of placenames is usually considered accurate: Raspi Serra 1972.

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Chapter 4. Travel in Early Medieval Europe: Modalities, Practice, Exploration by Ceolfrid’s generosity, since he commanded his attendants to provide everyone in need with food and money (Boutflower 1991: ch. 34).The presence of people armed for fighting was advised in many other contexts, however, considering the frequent turmoil disrupting medieval societies. Thus, Lupus suggested his friend who announced his visit get an escort ‘large and strong enough to keep off robber bands or, if it becomes necessary, to drive them out’, given the fact that ‘revolution has broken out in the country of our King Charles, plundering is rife, and nothing happens with greater certainty and frequency than wholesale pillaging’ (Lupus Ferr. Epist. 101, translation in Regenos 1966: 120).

‘ethnic groups’ had privileges to manage their own institutions) also acted as types of consulates, embassies and cultural centres, in addition to their charitable function for the assistance and hospitality of their ‘countrymen’. In fact, the definition of the functions and roles of these scholae peregrinorum has been the subject of ample discussion, since the use of the term schola in the medieval sources swings from material to immaterial meanings (Tinti 2014a: 8). Nonetheless, it is possible to draft an overview of the interaction between ‘external’ and papal resources in creating an efficient network of assistance for pilgrims and people in need as early as the sixth-seventh centuries (Thacker 2014). Indeed, the relationship between England and Rome had progressively tightened, starting at least from the end of the eighth century, to the point that Rome has provocatively been termed the ‘Capital of Anglo-Saxon England’ (Howe 2008). The importance of these institutions is manifest in entries in the AngloSaxon Chronicle such as that for year 816/817, where the death of Pope Stephen IV and the following election of Pope Paschal is paralleled in terms of relevance with the fire that ‘burned down the hostel of the English people’ (Howe 2008: 101).89

The internal organisation of the group, if not properly a hierarchy, also has to be envisaged, at least on the basis of the sources reporting ‘group leaders’ who also acted as spokespeople and negotiators, frequently supported by a second-in-command, and people in charge of the provisions and their division among the travellers (Matthews 2007: 26). When the name of the person in charge of leading the group is known, as in the case of Bishop Deodatus accompanying Wilfrid in 679 (supra), and of deacon Ealdwulf accompanying King Eardwulf back to England from Rome in AD 808 (source in Scholz and Rogers 1970, ad a. 808),90 it is possible that they also acted as ‘trouble-shooters’. Of course, where ‘learned’ travellers such as archbishops and monks were concerned, someone was probably in charge of recording any relevant events.

Internal structure and composition of the parties As explained above, even when a source accounts for the journey of an individual, many incidental notes let us know that most travellers chose to leave in a group. High ranking or reverend persons such as the archbishops and those in the odour of sanctity were usually accompanied by large retinues; armed escorts or at least the presence of men fit for the defence of their travelling companions and their belongings were frequently included in the party.

As briefly discussed above (chap. 1, p. 16; chap. 3, p. 41), a sort of ‘technical’ staff often accompanied the chief traveller, as witnessed by Gregory the Great for the group of monks sent to Britain, who recruited interpreters among Frankish presbyters (Greg. Epist. 6.58, literally ‘some priests from the neighbouring parts, with whom they may be able to ascertain the disposition of the Angli, and… to aid their wishes by their admonition’).

Bede unexpectedly dwells on details when narrating the departure of Ceolfrid in 716 from the English coast. He describes the ceremonious farewell bid to his brethren, who had accompanied him to the river shore, where he went onboard a vessel not only with the companions who were meant to escort him (later on in the story we learn that they numbered eighty), but also accompanied by the deacons of the church, carrying light tapers and a golden crucifix, endorsing a safe trip. Once the river was crossed, he kissed the cross, mounted his horse, and departed with his retinue (Parks 1954: 23-28). It is highly probable that the oversized nature of the entourage was justified by the value of the items that Ceolfrid was expected to collect in Rome, mainly precious manuscripts, relics and works of art (Matthews 2007: 47). On the other hand, the wording of the biographer seems to hint that some of his followers were attracted

The participation of women in travel and pilgrimage is the subject of specific gender studies. Here it will be sufficient to mention the outcry raised by Boniface, who in 747 complained to Cuthbert that too many Anglian women, once they left for a pilgrimage journey, had ended up as prostitutes in the cities of France and Italy (Bonif. Epist. ad Cuthiber. arch. Cant. 78.354-355).

90  The deacon Ealdwulf, ‘a Saxon from Britain’, acted as ‘professional guide’ since he was expected to return to Rome after accompanying King Eardwulf to Britain, a circumstance known to us because he was captured by pirates during his return journey (supra, p. 61). The king was offered also the same support by the emperor, who dispatched two abbots with him, Nanthar of Saint-Omer and Hruotfrid, who was probably abbot of the monastery of St Amandus: Story 2003: 146-147.

89 

Interestingly, the term used in the Anglo-Saxon text is ‘scolu’, that can be variously translated as ‘school’ or ‘quarter’ or ‘hostel’: Howe 2008: 102.

91

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric Abstract: The itinerary recounted by Sigeric is followed from the Swiss-French border, at the crossing of the Jura massif, to the shores of the Channel. A brief overview of the history of the main centres and a short description of their monumental early medieval heritage is provided, together with some details about the route that Sigeric might have followed from stage to stage. The hypotheses for the identification of a few stops on which uncertainties gravitate are reviewed.

Sombre, a village not far from Wissant (Lestocquoy 1947a: 40). The choice of the harbour where Sigeric and his comrades would have boarded to sail to Britain appears to be innovative since, as we saw in chapter 4, most British travellers preferred Quentovic. However, the mid-ninth-century attacks of the Vikings described above (Grierson 1940) easily motivated such a diversion to Wissant. Furthermore, the nearby Abbey of St Josse, endowed to Alcuin by Charlemagne, ensured assistance to pilgrims.2

On the (Roman) road. The itinerary across modern France The itinerary reported by Sigeric across modern France follows in broad outline the Roman road mentioned by Strabo (4.6.11) and described in the Itinerarium Antonini (346.10-349.2). It connected northern Italy to the shores of the Channel, and had as its main terminals Mediolanum (Milano) and Gesoriacum-Bononia (Boulognesur-Mer) (Figure 5.1). Along the segment from the Great St Bernard Pass to Besançon, the Itinerarium mentions only the stops of Equestris (Nyon), Lacum Losone (Lausanne), Urba (Orbe) and Ariorica (Pontarlier), for a total distance that does not correspond to the actual one. In the Tabula Peutingeriana (III, 1-4) the given distance between Besançon and Ariorica is much closer to reality, and an intermediate stop at Filomusiacum (identified with La Malepierre: Frézouls 1988: 116-117) is inserted. Heading north-west, the same passage of Strabo and the Roman itineraria delineate the road from Besançon to Andemantunnum (Langres), via Segobodium (Seveux) and Varcia (Aumoniéres: Frézouls 1988: 118-119). Archaeological traces of this road have been discerned thanks to trial excavations carried out in the twentieth century, documenting that the road, upon leaving Vesontio-Besançon, passed via Auxon, Cussey (with ruins of a bridge on the river Ognon), Oiselay and Seveux, and reached Varcia with a direct or indirect (via Volon) connection.1

In more detail, following the most authoritative historical-philological reconstructions (e.g. Ortenberg 1990; Miglio 1999) and respecting the administrative definition of contemporary regions for the sake of clarity, we can delineate the journey of Sigeric from the border between modern France and Switzerland as follows: - Franche-Comté, a region where the modern administrative boundaries roughly correspond to the ancient diocese of Besançon, in turn an approximation of the territory of the Roman civitas Vesontientium. Around the mid-fifth century, this territory was cut off from the southern regions of Saint-Claude and Revermont, included in the diocese of Lyon, and from the region of Louhans (Bresse), encompassed in the bishopric of Chalon-sur-Saône (Ajot et al. 1998: 113). The region entered the domain of the new dynasty of the Carolingian kings with Pippin the Short in 751, after a culturally formative period of Burgundian dominion (supra, chap. 2, pp. 19-21). Franche-Comté’s Christianisation was dominated by the importance of the metropolitan see of Besançon, where the first bishop is recorded in the last third of the third century, and by the monastic presence patronised by Columbanus (Ajot et al. 1998: 116-119). Following Sigeric’s text, starting from the stop listed with the number LVI called Antifern and corresponding to Jougne (probably, more specifically, to the chapel of St Maurice), we have:

Sigeric, instead, chose to skip Langres to head to Barsur-Aube, Châlons-sur-Marne and Reims, showing what seems to be an early interest in the champenoise fairs (Lestocquoy 1947a: 38-39). From Laon, the archbishop reached a place called Martinwaeth, then one spelt Duin (probably corresponding to Doingt), a suburb of Péronne, and went up to Arras. From Arras, he could have followed the so-called chaussée Brunehaut until Thérouanne (in the text spelt Teranburh), ending at

LVII Punterlin = Pontarlier,

1 

The literature about the Roman roads is predictably very extensive, but here it will be referred to only when necessary. Leaving aside the essays on the Roman road network, a general framework can be found in Leman 1988. Also, local research has been very active: e.g. Nouvel 2010 for Burgundy and specifically the area between the Saône Valley and the Parisian Basin.

2  ‘…ad elemosinam exhibendam peregrinis’: Lupus Ferr. Epist. 18 (a. 840). See Levillain 1927: 104.

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Figure 5.1: Schematic overview of Sigeric’s itinerary across France. Elaboration A. Panarello.

LVIII Nos = Nods,

LXIX Caꝺeluns/Catheluns = Châlons-en-Champagne (formerly known as Châlons-sur-Marne),

LIX Bysiceon = Besançon,

LXX Rems = Reims.

LX Cuscei = Cussey-sur-l’Ognon,

LXIV Blæcuile = Blessonville,

- Picardie: The Christianisation of the region was promoted by St Remigius, metropolitan bishop of Reims, between the second half of the fifth and the first half of the sixth century, since only the bishoprics of Reims and Amiens can be historically confirmed before his energetic proselytism. Monasticism met the same delay in taking root in the territory, with the urban monastery of Amiens being the only one known for the sixth century (Ajot et al. 1998: 336); we have to wait for the seventh century to witness thriving new foundations, among which we can list those of Corbie and Laon. The process of Christianisation, still in progress in the late Carolingian age, was also delayed by the role of the region as a place of passage, as shown by the fact that this is the region with the highest number of war cemeteries in France (Barral I Altet 1987a: 625626). Sigeric’s stops are:

LXV Bar = Bar-sur-Aube,

LXXI Corbunei = Corbény,

LXVI Breone = Brienne-la-Vieille,

LXXII Mundloꝺuin/Mundlothuin (in Monte Loduni) = Laon,

LXVII Domaniant = Donnement,

LXXIII Martinwæꝺ/Martinwaeth (Martini Vadum) = Seraucourt-le-Grand?

LXI Sefui = Seveux. - Champagne-Ardenne: Reims, district capital since the constitution of the Roman province of Gallia Belgica, enjoyed prosperity and cultural vitality in later times, profiting from its position at the crossroads of the routes connecting Lyon, Langres, Sens, Trèves, Bavay, and Boulogne (Ajot et al. 1998: 95). The stops of Sigeric’s itinerary are the following: LXII Grenant = Grenant, LXIII Oisma = Saint-Geosmes or Humes, in the municipality of Humes-Jorquenay,

LXVIII Funtaine = Fontaine-sur-Coole, in the municipality of Faux-Vésigneul,

LXXIV Duin = Doingt. 93

The Route of the Franks - Nord-Pas-de-Calais: Being a region whose modern borders have been imposed artificially, it is not easy to delineate its process of Christianisation, which was in any case slow and late, moreover characterised by the instability of its episcopal sees. Among the latter, in the tenth century, the most important was Cambrai, where it was transferred from Arras towards the end of the sixth century, since Arras’s cathedral is said to have been abandoned at the beginning of the same century (Ajot et al. 1998: 265). We have to wait to around 638 to find the first mention of a bishop at Thérouanne. Sigeric’s list is missing at least one or two stops here, since the stretch between Thérouanne and Guînes amounts to c. 45km.

the exception of the Chaux d’Arlier, a valley crossed by the river Drugeon, delimited by mountain ranges with a north-east/south-west orientation. On the northern edge, the region is dominated by the massif Crêt Monniot, separated from a valley by the other massif of Mont Séverin; a narrow passage to Switzerland remains southeast of Pontarlier between Mont Laveron and Mont Larmont (Malfroy, Olivier and Guiraud 1985: 1517). Having a Roman origin, the centre of Abiolica-Ariorica was part of the Provincia Maxima Sequanorum (Malfroy et al. 1979: 48-54). It was Christianised early, and was included in the large diocese of Besançon, already elevated to metropolitan status in the course of the fourth century (Poupardin 1907: 3). It was first separated from the rest of Burgundy in 839, but immediately re-joined the other counties under Lothar I (AD 843: Malfroy, Olivier and Guiraud 1985: 24). The medieval town had at least three churches: St Benignus, Notre-Dame and St Stephen. We know for sure that the first is the oldest, although we have no documentation proving their existence before the tenth century.

LXXV Aꝺerats/Atherats = Arras, LXXVI Bruwæi = Bruay-en-Artois (or Bruay-la-Buissière), LXXVII Teranburh = Thérouanne, LXXVIII Gisne = Guînes (Guisnes), LXXIX Sumeran = Sombre (in Dutch: Someren) near Wissant.

On the basis of the Chronique de Saint-Bénigne de Dijon, J. Mathez argued that in 590, after the unification by King Gontran of the abbeys of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, St Benignus of Dijon and St Marcel of Chalon, the route linking them was equipped with churches and hospitals to facilitate their connection. Thus, a church with a hospital was founded at Pontarlier. This parish church is initially listed as a dependency of St Benignus of Dijon, together with the hospital and the lands in its possession. Written sources confirm that at the latest from the seventh century, a few relays were established along the route connecting Valais and Bourgogne via Pontarlier and Salins (e.g. St Maurice at Jougne (supra), Boujailles and Villers-sous-Chalamont: Malfroy, Olivier and Guiraud 1985: 28-34).

LVI Antifern Several places have been suggested as possible candidates for the place mentioned by Sigeric at the border of the Jura massif, beginning with Yverdon, proposed by Stubbs; however, it seems too far from the direct route connecting Orbe to Pontarlier. The site proposed by Magoun, Tavel (ancient in Tabernis), has the disadvantage of being too close to Orbe, the earlier stop. On the basis of their place-names alone, two other possibilities are suggested by Ortenberg: Tavernier and Entre-les-Fourgs. The latter has the advantage of being near the Jougne Pass which was the usual crossing point for the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims in the region, although no traces of ancient and medieval occupation can be pointed out (see Ortenberg 1990: 240). A simpler alternative is the chapel of St Maurice at Jougne, but this proposal implies the existence of a structure for lodging and assisting travellers. The current chapel was built probably at the end of the eleventh or early twelfth century, but the crypt seems to be datable to the ninth century (Olivier, Malfroy and Guiraud 1988: 27).

In 941, the town passed under the authority of the Counts of Mâcon, shifting to the control of the lords of Joux towards the end of the tenth century (Malfroy et al. 1979: 60-71). After 950, a large part of the town (including the church and the hospital) and the suburb named in medieval sources Ad Stabulos (possibly corresponding to the modern faubourg Saint-Pierre) came into possession of lay people, although at least the church of St Benignus returned to the control of the Holy See in the twelfth century. The church of St Stephen, remarkably mentioned in a charter of 1083 as Sancti Stefano de Ponte, became a priory of the Abbey of Baume in the twelfth century (Malfroy, Olivier and Guiraud 1985: 26-44).

LVII Pontarlier (Punterlin) The arrondissement of Pontarlier, known in the Middle Ages as Pons Arecii, a name that underlines its prominent position in the road network, is delimited on the eastern side by the Swiss border but includes the entire landscape of mixed pasture and forest of Haut-Doubs. It is an area strongly characterised by mountains, with

The most important archaeological information comes from the very recent excavations in the area of Les Gravilliers, south-west of the town centre. Here, a large 94

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric programme of rescue excavations has brought to light many traces of an early medieval hamlet, preceded by Mesolithic occupation. Established in the course of the Merovingian phase (fifth-seventh centuries), the hamlet occupied a surface area of at least 8ha. The archaeological traces consist essentially of post-holes, ditches, pits and small sunken huts, probably used for storage. The wooden huts that were built making use of the post-holes were very large (on average 200 and up to 300m2), and were surrounded by burials, isolated or grouped in small numbers. The analysis of the findings indicates that the population carried out chiefly pastoral activities.3 Other sparse archaeological data, laboriously collected from the 1960s, confirm the extent of the Roman settlement, overlooking the river Doubs, on the right bank. The Roman road from Besançon skirted the town on the east side of the marshy area, until it reached the bridge south of the settlement (Mangin 1994: 95). Traces of the urban and periurban street network have been signalled on repeated occasions, for instance around the cour des Capucins, at the crossroads between rue de Salins and rue des Capucins, and at the faubourg Saint-Etienne (Marguet 1966, 17). A few elements connectable to the main Roman road (e.g. one milestone) have been collected in the last two centuries. Several stretches of the Roman structure have been documented in different excavations (Mangin, Jacquet and Courtadon 1986: 181-183), confirming the importance of the role of road stations along this international route. Specifically for the post-classical phase, segments of road with cart ruts dug into the bedrock, hypothetically considered medieval, have been signalled along the ridge that leads to Fourgs in the locality La Cluseet-Mijoux, south of Pontarlier (Marguet 1966), and a series of roads with cart ruts on the ridge of Vuiteboeuf, clearly used for the descent from the area of Sainte-Croix to the Swiss plateau, are archaeologically documented (Bichet et al. 2019: 11-12) (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2: The itinerary from A: Saint-Maurice d’Agaune to St Benignus of Dijon; B: from Pontarlier to Salins via the Chaux d’Arlier. After Malfroy, Olivier and Guiraud 1985: 25, fig. 4.

On the other hand, the fact that the main axis connecting Gaul and Italy still passed through the neighbourhood is witnessed by the fact that in 876 the army of Charles the Bald marched to Besançon via Pontarlier, and that a toll was collected at Jougne at least from the tenth century onwards. Furthermore, some documents of the early nineteenth century mention the so-called Grand Rue de l’ancien Vescontio (Malfroy et al. 1979: 49-53). New technologies, such as the use of LIDAR aerial detection, have been deployed to investigate the communication network and the settlement patterns of the area around Pontarlier (Bichet et al. 2019: 14-18) (Figure 5.3). Actually, these new data confirm for the most part what had already been discovered thanks to aerial survey, documenting the existence of a road built using Roman technique (i.e. a central lane bordered by a ditch on each side), heading straight north across the plateau de la Vrine, and less clearly along the descent to the plain, in the direction of the bridge on the river Drugeon, near the modern village of Vuillecin. Further south, another anomaly runs for c. 1.3km in a northwest/south-east direction, between the bridge of Vuillecin and the suburb of Pontarlier (Figure 5.4).

North of Pontarlier, nestled in a bent of the Doubs, a large early medieval cemetery has been partially investigated at the ‘Grande Oye’ (Manfredi, Passard and Urlacher 1990). More than 750 burials, dating from the sixth to the ninth century, have been detected, strictly organised in lines, east-west orientated. The grave goods indicate Frankish-Alemannic influences, although anthropological analyses show the presence of autochthonous groups (Urlacher, Passard and Manfredi-Gizard 1998).

3  Notice INRAP, , viewed 24 January 2022.

The road from Jougne to Nods via Pontarlier has been schematically drafted as reported in Figure 5.5. 95

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.3: The area around Pontarlier in LiDAR imagery, with small (A) and large (B) scale territorial frames. 1: Protohistoric necropolis of Arlier; 2: Merovingian necropolis of Grande Oye; 3: ancient settlement of Ariorica; 4: strongholds of Joux and Mahler (lock of Joux); 5: milestone of Fontaine-Ronde; 6: pass of Étroits; 7: ancient sanctuary of Chasseron; 8: ancient sanctuary of Covatannaz; 9: series of ancient roads at Vuiteboeuf. The three red rectangles indicate the areas where LiDAR survey has allowed the individuation of ancient roads. After Bichet et al. 2019: fig. 1.

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Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric

Figure 5.4: The area around Pontarlier in LiDAR imagery, with indication of traces of ancient roads in the plain. After Bichet et al. 2019: fig. 5.

approached Besançon from the plateau of Chapelle des Buis and originally entered the town from the Porte de Varesco, atop the Citadel. In a second phase, a passage was opened at the foot of the Citadel, although part of the traffic still ran through the Plateau des Buis, where traces of cart-ruts are signposted as ‘Roman road’5 and a segment of road metalling is still preserved in front of the Chapel (Jeannin 1972: 168-169). Another road paralleled this on the north-eastern side, along the so-called Morra, not far from the Fort de l’Est des Buis (today transformed into the monument de la Libération), where the trekking route is still indicated on touristic maps. This route might have approached the town from the Porte de Malpas, as documented in 1236, skirting the Plateau des Buis. In 1275, this road was termed grand chemin, and connected Pontarlier via Salins, Arguel and Beure (Jeannin 1972: 170 see Figure 5.4). In any case, even once the bypass of the Citadel was operative, the road entering the town from the Porte Taillée remained frequented. Although the connection with the village de Morre was engineered only in 1574‒1576, the road was already open in the Middle Ages and all traffic heading to the Plateau de Vercel and to Ornans continued to make use of the road crossing the Plateau des Buis and the Porte Taillée (Jeannin 1972: 170).

A segment of a road with cart ruts attributed to the late Carolingian-high medieval phase, detected in the area of the springs of the river Loue, has shown that infrastructure was also built in the medieval phases. Although this segment is not directly connected to the route d’Italie, it is clear proof of the resources that medieval societies and powers invested in the communication and transportation networks (Jeannin 1972: 136-139).4 LVIII Nods (Nos) The village of Nods, formerly a small municipality of the department of Doubs, is currently part of the commune of Les Premiers-Sapins. It is recorded in medieval documents with the name of (Centena) Neudensense in 934, Nos in 1110 and Nod in 1132 (Courtieu 1986: s.v.). LIX Besançon (Bysiceon) The road around Besançon-les Buis In the locality of Grand-Treuchot (Fiétier 1975: 5657), the road coming from Pontarlier via the plateau of Vereel joined the road leading to Ornans and the one heading to the plateau d’Amancey and Salins via Montrond (Jeannin 1972: 170). The main road 4 

On the other hand, a sort of rationalisation of the communication system was introduced in the thirteenth century, with the opening of an alternative route east of the Roman one, from Portarlier via Ornans to Besançon: Chomel and Ebersolt 1951: 12-13, see plate with map.

5  For instance, on the ‘pass’ where the road deviates towards the Mont des Buis. A chronological attribution to the medieval period has been convincingly argued by Jeannin 1972.

97

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.5: Schematic map of the road network between Jougne and Besançon. Elaboration Author after Jeannin 1972: 182, fig. 4.

The town

a secondary branch crossing the marshy quarter of Chamars was drained (Guilhot and Goy 1990: 29).

The site of Besançon6 is characterised by a twofold asset. On the one hand, it is a well-connected site, at the crossroads of the natural route along the valley of the Doubs and the artificial communication axis set up in Antiquity connecting central-eastern Gaul to Switzerland via the Jougne Pass (Figure 5.6); on the other hand, it took advantage of a well protected location. Indeed, the peculiar topographical setting of the town, ‘nestled’ in a teardrop-shaped bend of the river Doubs, made Roman Vesontio a virtually impregnable settlement, a characteristic that was still underlined in the High Middle Ages.7 Even the narrowest base of the peninsula is protected by an impervious mountain. The only viable accesses, in addition to the Roman bridge, are the man-made cuts into the rocky spur that was dominated by the Citadel. On the other hand, the river Doubs caused several floods and its bank suffered instability at least until the Middle Ages, when works were undertaken to stabilise the river’s course, and

The increased importance of the diocese8 during the Carolingian age promoted a repopulation of the socalled Boucle, the city area enclosed in the river bend, after the decrease in the population density of the sixth and seventh centuries. Local traditions attribute the ‘darkness’ of the following Carolingian age mainly to conditions of insecurity. However, it will be appropriate to downscale this idea of a town reduced to ashes by invaders – Saracens, Hungarians or Normans – since no contemporary document reports such events. Conversely, the Life of St Antide, written between the tenth and the eleventh century, prizes the prosperity of the town, so splendid as to earn the nickname Chrysopolis, the Golden City.9 The tenth century was characterised by political instability, since the creation in 888 of the Kingdom of Bourgogne on the initiative of Duke Rudolph I, with its capital in Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, had placed the city and its archbishops in a critical position. The control of the important town was, in fact, still disputed among

6  A complete review of the sources from Antiquity and the Middle Ages referring to Besançon is in Frézouls 1988: 9-70. 7  For instance, when the biography of St Antide, bishop of Besançon beheaded in the fifth century by the leader of the Vandals, was written (Chédeville 1980: 94-95). The Roman name of Vesontio appears corrupted to Besoncione on golden coins minted in a local workshop at the beginning of the seventh century.

8 

The list of bishops and archbishops of Besançon until the end of the tenth century is in Sainte-Marthe 1860, XV: cols 4-28. 9  Vita S. Antid., in manuscript I 248 from the Library of Troyes.

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Figure 5.6: The ancient road network around Besançon. Elaboration Author after Frézouls 1988: 118, fig. 4.

Like many other metropolitan sees, Besançon enjoyed great prosperity in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, mainly thanks to the role played by Bishop Hugh of Salins (1031-1066), who attracted the benevolence of the emperor and promoted a large programme of urban renovation, including the rebuilding of at least six churches and abbeys (Guilhot and Goy 1990: 33). This regeneration of the urban fabric started in the two poles of the Cité, at the foot of the Citadel, and in the quartiers on both sides of the bridge, on the northern edge of the Boucle.

the leaders of France, Lorraine, Provence and Germany (supra, chap. 2, pp. 25-30), and the election of the highest ecclesiastical personalities was often contested or manipulated. It is in this framework that the figure of the Count of Besançon gained a role as the main player, particularly with Hugh the Black, who arose to the title of Marquis de Bourgogne and aspired to follow his brother’s footsteps into the sovereignty of France (de Vregille 1964: 221-226). It is, however, during the long lordship of Count Otto-William that Sigeric arrived in Besançon. Having married the widow of the previous Count Aubry II, Otto-William ruled from 982 to 1026 over the counties of the region of Besançon and Mâcon. The authority of the count at the time was such that he probably installed one of his sons at the head of the archdiocese. The archiepiscopal see remained a political instrument in the decades to come, placing Besançon at the centre of the struggles for power, with their aftermath of revenge, changes of front, betrayals and violence (de Vregille 1964: 229-231).

The ancient route d’Italie functioned as the main urban axis (corresponding to the modern Grande Rue), with the Porte Taillé, at the base of the peninsula, at one end and the north-west crossing of the river, at the Pont de Battant, at the other (Figure 5.7). The north-western crossing of the river was already active in protohistoric times as a ford; the massive Roman bridge posing on five arches was only destroyed in 1953, and there is

In the tenth century, the links between Besançon and Cluny were close; the mention of SS Ferreolus and Ferrutius in English texts confirms that English clergy were also in frequent contact with the town.10 10 

1908: 48, 74-75) and in the Old English Martyrology, f. 108v-109r (see Kotzor 1981: II, 121-122), the two saints appear in a late-tenth century calendar from Wessex (see Wormald 1934: no. 2) and in the litany from the ‘Winchcombe Sacramentary’: Ortenberg 1990: 241. The passage of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims through this area is also attested indirectly, for example, through the presence of a late-tenth century English gospel book (Temple 1976: 93-94).

After being recorded in Bede’s Martyrology (16 June, see Quentin

99

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.7: Besançon. Schematic map of the town inside the ‘Boucle’, with indication of the most important monuments. Elaboration A. Panarello.

100

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric A few elements attributable to the Carolingian bishop’s residence can be pointed out west of the cathedral, with columns and part of an arch of a gallery linking this building to the church itself, bordering an atrium also known as ‘the episcopal cloister’ (de Vregille 1964: 207). This cloister is shown in a sketch from St Gall of 819, together with another cloister, captioned as the ‘cloister of the canons’,13 on the northern side of the nave (Tournier 1967: 14).

sufficient proof of its uninterrupted use (Frézouls 1988: 123). Other crossings, possibly by means of wooden bridges, might have existed but they are not archaeologically documented. Thanks to the above-mentioned biography of St Antide, written in the tenth to eleventh century, we are sure that at the time of Sigeric three gates were open in the narrow strip of land at the base of the peninsula embedded in the river bend (around 500m wide). From west to east, they are the Port de Malpas, the Porte SaintÉtienne or Porte de Varesco and the Porte Taillée. Connected to the central gate, there was a defensive wall, referred to as murus antiquus in the eleventh century (Guilhot and Goy 1990: 30).

In the eleventh century, this ensemble was characterised as the quartier capitulaire, surrounded by walls. In addition to the cathedral, it included a baptistery (hypothetically located north of the Porte Noir, a partially preserved Roman triumphal arch, which functioned as a gate)14 and an episcopal residence, to be situated at the side of the chapel of St Oyand, where the Carolingian palace was later built (Frézouls 1988: 140). It is likely that this episcopal district had existed since the Early Middle Ages (Guilhot and Goy 1990: 30).15

The first data about the foundation of Christian churches can be found in ecclesiastical sources, like the Ordo canonicorum, which attributes to the first Bishop Linus, who lived in the third century, the construction of the community church not far from the Pont Battant, where the church of St Madeleine now stands (Frézouls 1988: 140). The foundation of a second cathedral is attributed by other hagiographic sources to Hilarius, a bishop of the time of Constantine, who would have chosen a different location (Frézouls 1988: 140). In the fifth century, following the translation of an arm of the saint, this cathedral changed its dedication to St Stephen (Ortenberg 1990, 240);11 in the ninth century it was once more rededicated to St John the Evangelist. Thanks to documentary evidence, we know that the Carolingian cathedral was rebuilt as a basilica with three naves covered with a trussed ceiling (de Vregille 1964: 205). Although only a few pieces of archaeological data have been acquired, the presence of two different apses and the double dedication to St John and St Mary has led to hypothesise the existence of an original episcopal complex with two churches (Figure 5.8).12 The Carolingian cathedral, built on the initiative of Archbishop Bernoin (797-830), was almost as long as the modern church, with the peculiar specular apses at the eastern and western ends. The main block was divided into three naves by two rows of columns and was covered with wooden trusses (Tournier 1967: 11-14). Only very few traces of this building can be discerned at the side of the choir.

The suburbium A funerary extra-muros church of St Peter is recorded in the biography of St Nicetus, bishop of Besançon between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century (Figure 5.7). According to an eleventh century source (the Ordo canonicorum), it is possible to hypothesise that this basilica played the role of cathedral after the first (near St Madeleine) was abandoned and before the current cathedral of St John was completed. The cult of the patron saints of the town, SS Ferreolus and Ferrutius, developed from the fifth century onwards, as also witnessed by Gregory of Tours (Ortenberg 1992: 50), although a chapel had already been devoted to them in the fourth century on the initiative of Bishop Aignan, in a locality bearing the name of one of the saints (Ferjeux, west of the town: Ortenberg 1990: 240-241). Other churches and chapels were founded between Late Antiquity and the Carolingian age (e.g. St Maurice, end of the sixth century; St John the Baptist, probably during Merovingian phase; Saint-Étienne-du-Mont at the latest in Carolingian times) (Figure 5.7). One of Columbanus’s disciples, Donatus, founded the extra-urban abbey of St Paul (east of the so-called boucle, the peninsula in the bend of the river) and contributed to the foundation of the abbeys of Romainmôtier and

11 

Other versions report the donation of the relics of St Stephen by Helen, the mother of Constantine. The latter would have also donated the other relics owned by the cathedral. As anticipated, the possession of the relics of St Stephen was also claimed by the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont at the Citadel (see Figure 5.7): Guilhot and Goy 1990: 29. Other relics of SS Epiphanius, Isidorus and Agapitus were part of the treasure. 12  The church devoted to the Virgin would have been added in an undetermined epoch to the primitive cathedral dedicated to St Stephen: Tournier 1967: 10-11. Besançon will then enter the count of towns with a double cathedral: Chevalier 1997: figure 8.

13  The canons are priests associated with the service of the cathedral, who collaborated in the most important missions of the bishop. 14  The baptistery would be then outside the town, a case very rare but not completely unprecedented: de Vregille 1964: 158-159. 15  Part of a mansion built between the Carolingian phase and the eleventh century has been investigated by means of a programme of building architecture survey at 4 rue de la Convention (Bully 2012: 270).

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Figure 5.8: Besançon. Hypothetical reconstruction of the cathedral in the ninth century. Elaboration Author after Tournier 1967.

St Martin of Bregille (Ortenberg 1990: 240-241) (Figure 5.7).

Interestingly, a document from 1327 lists all the elements that are attractive for the foundation of a hospital: the presence of a river and a road as well as proximity to the town walls and gates (Brocard 2004: 271).

Outside the town there was also the abbey of JussaMoutier, not far from the south-western gate (Figure 5.7), established on the initiative of St Flavia, mother of St Donatus, in the first half of the seventh century (Guilhot and Goy 1990: 30).

The ‘grand route’ leaves the town through the Porte de Charmont, along the old route de Gray, an area later fortified by the ramparts of Vauban (Jeannin 1972: 170).

At the end of the Middle Ages, Besançon was equipped with several hospitals, some of them in the suburbium. 102

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric Having left Burgundy, pilgrims crossed the Langres plateau up to the Marne Valley, across Champagne.16

LX Cussey-sur-l’Ognon (Cuscei) The hamlet clustered at the site of a Roman bridge was mentioned in the Chronicle of St Benignus in about 943, then in a diploma issued by King Conrad in 967 with the name Cussiacus (de Vregille 1964: 223, 228). In a document of 1033 it has changed to Cusciacus (Ortenberg 1990: 241).

LXIII Oisma The identification of this stop has been the object of discussion: Stubbs suggested Humes-sur-Marne, part of the modern cluster of Humes-Jourquenay, north of Langres, but the village of Saint-Geosmes, at the southern edge of the territory of Langres,17 i.e. the place where Langres’ patron saints, Eleusippus, Speusippus and Meleusippus were martyred, might be preferable. At Saint-Geosmes a Roman sanctuary monumentalised the crossroads of the road connecting Andemantunnum/Andemantunum (Langres) to Lugdunum (Lyon)18 and the road to Vesontio (Besançon) via Grenant. The latter branches off the road to Lyon at La Belle Chapelle. Here, on the occasion of public works for the construction of a veterinary clinic, east of the R.N. 74, a segment of the road, elements from a Roman cemetery and one altar have been brought to light (Thévenard 1996: 301-302). As anticipated, the spoils of the three twin brothers Eleusippus, Speusippus and Meleusippus, martyred in the age of Aurelianus, were sheltered in a sanctuary mentioned in a source of the early seventh century, which explicitly indicates the crossroads and the distance of 2 miles from the main town. Indeed, in the area, some findings of funerary inscriptions and metal objects confirm funerary use at least until the sixth century (see Thévenard 1996: 302304).19 The sanctuary evolved rapidly into the Abbey of St Geosmes, a very prestigious and wealthy institution during the Carolingian period, and chosen in 854 as the location for a council presided over by Charles the Bald (Jolibois 1858: 263). Furthermore, since its foundation, the sanctuary attracted crowds of pilgrims demanding grace for their health, therefore it should have been equipped with infrastructure for lodging.

At the latest in the thirteenth century, there is confirmation of the existence of a hospital, a dependency of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit de Neufchâteau (Saunier 2004: 186). LXI Seveux-sur-Saône (Sefui) The ancient village was characterised as a ‘road settlement’, clustered on both sides of the Roman road, mapped by Matty de Latour in 1865, at the site of the crossing of the river Saône, where the existence of a Roman bridge is reported in local literature. The ancient settlement occupied a low terrace in a meander of the Saône (Mangin, Jacquet and Courtadon 1986: 8992). Recent archaeological survey has evidenced concentrations of protohistoric surface materials in rue des Roches (Bilan Scientific Franche-Comté 2014: 84), and traces of late republican and imperial structures and layout in the area of the Grand Rue. Trial excavations have brought to light some early medieval hut floors, partially destroyed by thirteenth century ditches, and a few funerary contexts of the same period (Passard, Gizard and Urlacher 2012: 217-218). In the locality known as ‘La Noue Dorée’, the building material from a Gallo-Roman structure was reused in a construction dating to the eleventh century (Mangin, Jacquet and Courtadon 1986: 91). Actually, traces of ancient occupation are spread across all three communes that make up the municipality of Seveux, including Savoyeux, on the opposite bank of the river Saône. The latter could as well be identified with the village encircling the church of Sivoio mentioned in a document of 1093 (Mangin, Jacquet and Courtadon 1986: 91).

An early medieval crypt is well preserved under the parish church; its earliest phase (sixth-eight centuries) 16  Between Langres and Berry-au-Bac, in Champagne, the ‘tourist’ trail of via Francigena is hypothetically reconstructed along the Grand Randonée 145, but it corresponds to the ancient road only in a few stretches. 17  Langres was a very popular stop along this route, as proven by the vicissitudes of Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow, who died there during his journey to Rome (supra, chap. 4, p. 61), and by fact that a hospice is mentioned in Langres as early as 800; another is mentioned in 831 ‘on the Septimer, farther (sic) east’: Platt 1929: 695. Moreover, in his martyrology Bede shows a good knowledge of the three martyrs, while a missal from Langres of c. 1060 contains some notes in Old English in the margins, implying cultural connections between the two monastic communities: Ortenberg 1992: 235-236. 18  Its track is followed by the R.N. 74 to Dijon. The road would have passed via Alesia and Augustodunum (Autun): Frézouls 1988: 377. 19  The martyrdom effectively took place in Cappadocia, but the relics were translated to France and possibly deposed in an existing sanctuary towards the end of the fifth century, in the framework of the dispute between Langres and Dijon for the episcopal see: Thévenard 1996: 302.

The communication axis linking Besançon to Langres, still overlaid by the route départementale 5, functioned as an attractor of settlements. Eventually, the Merovingian cemetery in the locality of Vaite and the church of St Denis would indicate the northern and southern edges of the agglomeration, although the inclusion of Savoyeux in the diocese of Langres and of the commune of Fresne Saint-Mamès in the diocese of Besançon makes the definition of the border unclear (Mangin, Jacquet and Courtadon 1986: 91). 103

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.9: Schematic map of the road network between Besançon and Châlons-en-Champagne. Elaboration Author after Nouvel 2010: 13, fig. 4.

is testified only by an apse and some materials, including fragments of sarcophagi found under the nave. They can be attributed to the seventh century, together with the first church (Poulain 1992: 265).20 A few other ninth-century spolia are used in the walls of the building (Collin et al. 1981: 363-364).

as the substructure of the presbyterium, and the reintroduction of funerary use. The third phase, in the eleventh century, resulted in an enlargement and implied the introduction of a series of pillars supporting arches (Figure 5.10). Continuing north, the R.N. 19 retraces the Roman road Andemantunnum (Langres) - Durocortorum (Reims). Also, the chemin rural des Bois d’Hûmes, crossing the D. 3 road where the map indicates ‘quote 367’, preserves traces of metalling, hypothetically interpreted as part of the Roman road connecting Langres to the Blaise Valley, representing a branch of the itinerary leading to Reims (Thévenard 1996: 234).

A second phase, predating the eleventh century (probably of the end of the ninth), implied the construction of two massive walls, functioning 20 

One of the sarcophagi finds comparison with those of the Merovingian cemetery excavated in the gallery of the cloister south of the cathedral of Laon: Thévenard 1990.

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Figure 5.10: St Geosmes. Plan of the church in phases I-III. Elaboration Author after Thévenard 1996.

The latter corresponds to the urban stretch of the ‘international’ route between Laon and Reims (Figure 5.11).

LXIV Blessonville (Blæcuile) Documentary material proves that at the latest in the thirteenth century people living in the area made donations to the church of St John the Evangelist at Châteauvillain. The documents mention a grange situated along the route to Blessonville (Gigot 1974: XCVIII-XCIX, and docs 84, 112, 123, 166, 238, 271).

Carcopino affirmed that the town was sacked by the Vandals in the fifth century (Carcopino 1964: 32). The possibility that a Merovingian stronghold was established atop the late Roman settlement is suggested by R. Rubaud (see Petit 1990: 9). It seems confirmed by the presence of a Merovingian cemetery on the hill of Saint-Germaine and of scattered finds dating to the Early Middle Ages (Tomasson 1994a: 206).

LXV Bar-sur-Aube (Bar) The medieval centre developed in the context of a Gallo-Roman settlement, a dependant of the civitas Lingonum, known as Segessera.21 It was probably already inhabited in the Early Iron Age, although the centre had progressively ‘slid down’ from the highest part of the hill (so-called oppidum) to occupy the banks of the river. This geographical position at the crossing of the river Aube favoured the role of stopping place along the route from Milano to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and indeed Segessera is recorded in the Tabula Peutingeriana (Denajar 2005: 260-262). Moreover, Bar played the role of crossroads from protohistoric to modern times, functioning as a node for communication to Troyes, the regions of Côte d’Or and Haute-Marne, the town of Barsur-Seine and to many other lesser centres (Denajar 2005: 262-263).

As anticipated, the route of Roman origin followed by Sigeric is well-documented in the area: it comes from Langres via the chemin de Courcelange, running along the Val de Thors to cross Bar by means of the rue Nationale. Archaeological excavations have brought to light part of a road with its axis parallel to avenue Général Leclerc, in the quartier of Les Varennes, northwest of the ancient centre. The width of the roadway ranges from 7 to 8m, and is bordered on both sides by ditches. The road descended towards the confluence of the rivers Aube and Bresse, where a complex system of drainage channels could indicate the arrangement of a ford. Archaeological evidence (e.g. cart-ruts and horseshoes) proves that the infrastructure was used uninterruptedly from Roman times to the modern age, at least until the eighteenth century, when the Route Nationale was opened (Deborde et al. 2015).

The intensive medieval occupation hinders the definition of the Roman habitat, but the main urban axes can be identified in the modern rue d’Aube (socalled cardo) and rue Nationale (so-called decumanus).

Coming from Bar, the road went via Trannes, Juvanzé, La Rothière, Dienville, traced by land-divisions partially still preserved in the rural landscape (Denajar 2005: 290, figure 153).

21 

The placename Barrum super Albam appears for the first time in a document of 1061: Tomasson 1994a: 204.

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Figure 5.11: Bar-sur-Aube. Schematic archaeological map of the town and its surrounding. 1: town, 2: western suburbium, 3: val de Thors, 4: oppidum of St Germain, 5: valleys of Queue de Renard and Provenchevaux, 6: Roman villa of Etifontaine. Elaboration Author after Tomasson 1994a: 205, fig. 2.

Roman biography of Lupus as Pagus Brionensis, later transformed to Villa Brionna in a document of 852 (Denajar 2005: 289). In the High Middle Ages, the village was replaced by a new settlement, named Nova Brena, corresponding to modern Brienne-leChâteau (Tomasson 1994b: 208).

LXVI Brienne-la-Vieille (Breone) Located east of the civitas Tricassium, the town of Brienne-la-Vieille developed in Roman times on the right bank of the river Aube as a roadside settlement on both sides of the Roman road connecting Langres to Reims, between Bar-sur-Aube (Segessera) and Corbeil (Corbilium) (Figure 5.12). The first mention of the place, however, appears in 451 in a late

The church of Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens might have been preceded by an early medieval building, as evidenced 106

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric The name Donnemans reported in a document of 11521180 could be traced back to the original form ‘Domnus Amandus’, connected probably to a church or a hospice devoted to St Amandus. Non-located occasional finds prove early medieval frequentation (Denajar 2005: 328329). From Corbeil, identified with the place captioned as Corobilium in the Tabula Peutingeriana, to Châlons, the road was still mapped at the time of Cassini with the caption ‘ancient chemin des Romains’ (Chossenot 2004: 123). The route is occasionally still visible in the fields and in aerial photographs: it crossed the valley of Vésigneulsur-Coole and can be picked up again as a service road marking the border between the municipalities of Cernon and Mairy-sur-Marne, Coupetz and Togny-auxBoefs, Fontaine-sur-Coole (identified with Sigeric’s stop no. LXVIII Funtaine), Vouciennes and Vitry-la-Ville, Vésigneul-sur-Coole and Chepper-la-Prairie. The river Coole was crossed at the mill of Saint-Laurent à Coolus (Chossenot 2004: 122) Between Coolus and Châlons several routes merged into one, leading to Châlons via the so-called Côte de Troyes (Chossenot 2004: 122) (Figure 5.13). At Châlons the road must have run somewhat south of the modern one until the bridge over the Marne. From there, it would have followed rue de la Marne and rue Léon Bourgeois, formerly known as rue Saint-Jaques or Rancienne, and avenue Général Sarrail. It would have exited the town via the modern R.N. 44 (Chossenot 2004: 122).

Figure 5.12: Brienne-la-Vieille. Extent of the Gallo-Roman settlement, crossed by the road linking Langres to Reims. After Tomasson 1994a: 205, fig. 5.

by a small cemetery found under the Romanesque nave (Tomasson 1994b: 209).22

LXIX Châlons-en-Champagne (Catheluns) Châlons-en-Champagne, until 1998 named Châlons-surMarne, was established in Roman times with the name of (Duro)Catalaunum or Catuvellaunum, at the passage of the main road connecting Milano to Boulogne on the river Marne (navigable from Saint-Dizier) and at the crossing of other important routes to Flanders and even Great Britain, routes that remained very busy with traffic even after the rise of Paris attracted the majority of trade towards the Île-de-France (Clause 1989: 10).

Heading north, the route crossed Le Gran Jaunis and continued to Brienne-le-Château, partially retracing the R.D. 443. It continued north-west heading to Reims, passing through the early medieval borough of Braux-Saint-Père, nowadays part of the administrative community of Braux, together with Braux-le-Grand, the place-name deriving from the small river anciently named Brau (modern Ravet). Braux-Saint-Père in mentioned in 845 as the property of the Abbey of Montier-en-Der (Denajar 2005: 288).

At the time, the Marne was divided into at least two branches: the main one to the west kept the name Marne, while the eastern one was called Nau from the Early Middle Ages. Further north, the two branches probably merged at a third riverbed (formerly corresponding to rue de Grève, currently rue SaintDominique). The area was partially marshy (Lenoble 1982). The settlement was placed at the centre of a chalky plain, bordered by the hills of Argonne and Brie (Figure 5.14). Like all other towns of Champagne (e.g. Troyes, Vitry, Epernay, Reims, Arcis-sur-Aube), Châlons is located in a river valley but is the only one that has

The road crossed the river near the farm of Dardicourt, where the ruins of bridge piers have been found. LXVII Donnement-sur-Meldançon (Domaniant) The ancient centre developed as a roadside settlement on both sides of the Roman road, on the right bank of the river Meldançon, tributary of the Aube. 22 

The Romanesque portal of the western gate, however, comes from the nearby abbey of Basse-Fontaine: Collin et al. 1981: 102.

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Figure 5.13: The communication network in the Marne region in Roman times. Elaboration A. Panarello after Chossenot 2004: 123, fig 34.

occupied both banks since its origins (like Paris). The presence of water is truly dominant: here the Marne receives two tributaries (Mau and Rognon) on the right bank and is divided into many branches creating islands. In the valley floor the Blaise also flows, which, like the Marne, forms many meanders less than 1km from the town. All these waterways have been adapted over time to the needs of the inhabitants, although it was only in the fourteenth century that they were regimented by dams and artificial banks.

built around 20 BC, when Agrippa was commissioned by Augustus to develop an extensive road network across the Gallic territories. The implementation of an infrastructure connecting Italy to the Channel implied the opening of a road passing via Châlons. It is not known how long the project took to be finalised, but archaeological data from the end of the first century BC-beginning of the first century AD confirm that the areas bordering the road were already actively frequented. A bridge, probably built at the time of the usurper Tetricus, was still partially visible in the first half of the eighteenth century (Alduc-Le Bagousse 1995). Furthermore, the town was well connected with many neighbouring centres (Troyes and from there to Auxerre and Autun, Bar via Langres, Reims, Verdun and probably Meaux) (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 16-17).

This position, merging the advantages of physical and human geography, partially compensated for the poverty of the natural resources and led to the town being awarded the role of regional capital. This allowed it to survive as an administrative centre and diocesan seat during the Merovingian period, and to flourish again in the Carolingian age.

The Roman settlement replaced a Gallic village located north of Châlons, in the municipality of Cheppe, loc. Le Vieux Châlons. The early Roman phases are not clearly documented but already from the second half of the first century BC (the period of the Caesarian conquest), the presence of a settlement on the banks of the river

This hydrological formation facilitated the defence of the inhabited area and favoured its development as a node between waterways and land routes. As anticipated, the most important of the latter was 108

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric is archaeologically attested.23 In the course of the fourth century, the town acquired a more pronounced independence; it was popular mostly as stopping place for the army battalions returning from military campaigns in Britannia, along the route connecting the Channel to Langres (Vercauteren 1934: 139).

office and administered the appurtenances of the diocese or other proprietary churches) and any other ecclesiastical matters was held by the king. In fact, a community of canons was probably already established in Châlons in the course of the ninth century, for a canonical manse25 separated from the episcopal one is attested in 850 (Vercauteren 1934: 145-146).

Conquered by the Franks in the last quarter of the fifth century, the town was included in the kingdom of Austrasia after the death of Clovis in 511, remaining part of it at least until the beginning of the seventh century (Vercauteren 1934: 140-141).

It was in the course of the tenth century that Châlons imposed itself as one of the main trade centres between the Loire and the Rhine. In 963, at the latest, a fair was established, traditionally held in August; two other markets took place annually. Italian merchants began to be seen; the trade volume was so high that it was necessary to move the market outside the walls.26 Châlons was on its way to becoming one of the four great fairs of Champagne during the next three centuries (Lestocquoy 1947b: 48). The liveliness of the trade is confirmed by the mention in the written sources of several taxes and levies. Curiously, the segment of the route followed by Sigeric that crossed the commercial borough is still called Grande Etape (Vercauteren 1934: 160-161).

With the Treaty of Verdun in 843, Châlons was assigned to the Kingdom of Francia Occidentalis. The frontier with Lorraine was established along the river Argonne and therefore the town found itself very close to the border with Germanic rulers for more than eight centuries, often being involved in the fights between the contenders, especially under the last Carolingians and the first Capetians, but also the dukes of Bourgogne and Vermandois and the local lords attempting to seize power and the episcopal or archiepiscopal sees of the towns and counties of the region (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 30-32). The late ninth century also saw the devastation perpetrated by the Vikings. In 888, a large part of the town and its cathedral were pillaged and burnt down. However, the expansion of the Carolingian kingdom during the ninth century reduced the pressure on the towns of the region and Châlons resumed its growth.24

At the beginning of the eleventh century there was an intense interaction between the bishop and Odo II (1021-1032), who acted as count of Champagne, and ensured that no fortified borough was built within a radius of 16km from Châlons. In general terms, it is evident that during the eleventh century the bishops of Châlons supported the kings, even if they tried to maintain good relationships with the counts of Champagne (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 42-47).

In the course of the tenth century, the town was again affected by the Norman invasions but most damage was due to involvement in the strife among the lords and the contenders for power, for instance with the devastating fire following the clash between the supporters of Bishop Beuves II and those of Boso I, brother of King Raoul in 931, or the fighting between the henchmen of Herbert and Robert of Troyes in 963 (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 31-32). On the other hand, it is likely that from the ninth and until the eleventh century it was the bishop that governed Châlons and its territory, being awarded the comital role (Vercauteren 1934: 152-153). Indeed, the County of Champagne would not include Châlons, and Troyes was to be chosen as its new capital (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 16). Episcopal authority was so strong that the power of a lay count, if one ever existed, was overruled and control of the Chapter (i.e. the assembly of canons who also provided the service of the divine

The core of the Roman town developed along the Agrippan Way, corresponding to the rue de la Marne, extending beyond the crossing of the river Marne until the river Mau, where an industrial sector was located. Archaeological traces found far from the town centre have been attributed to rural villas. The main cemeteries of the early imperial age were located west, on Mont Saint-Michel, and east of the town, next to the church of St Lupus (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 16). The town was probably encircled by walls at the end of the third or at the beginning of the fourth century. Allegedly, the town expanded up to the limit of the modern centre, only to shrink during the Early Middle Ages and to flourish again in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. (Vercauteren 1934: 136). Hypothetically, the circuit can be traced along boulevard Victor Hugo until rue du Vieil-Eveché, and then along rue Choiseul and

23  This new settlement was much smaller than its Gallic predecessor, its surface covering only 7ha compared to the Gallic village of 21ha (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 13-15). 24  The economic revival is proven, for instance, by the concession by Charles the Bald in 850 to Bishop Loup of charging tolls on the crossing of the Marne, and by the opening of a royal mint in 864, given the intense circulation of currency in the town (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 28-30).

25 

The word of Latin origin mense/manse, meaning table, intends the revenue necessary to feed the community and therefore, by extension, it indicates the income from taxes used for the maintenance of its holder. 26  Currently, the medieval Marché-au-Blé corresponds to place de la République.

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Figure 5.14: Châlons-en-Champagne. The so-called Plan Varin, an ancient map of the town by Nicolet Picard 1661. After Chossenot 2004: 285, fig. 173.

rue Cordeliers to the south; along part of rue Lochet and the current course of the Nau until rue du Gantelet to the east. From there, it followed rue Saint-Dominique to bend towards rue de la Marne along the Canal lateral. Rue de la Marne itself, with its perfect orientation east-west, would be a segment of a Roman road. This hypothetical circuit would have been c. 900m long and would have encircled an area of 5-6ha (Vercauteren 1934: 137-138). A regular layout of the Roman town is envisaged on the basis of the continuity of some streets with an orthogonal orientation. In addition to the area south of the town, known as the Jard, the commercial district of the eleventh-twelfth centuries developed outside of this hypothetical wall circuit, spreading eastwards.

The destruction from the clashes of 963 was repaired by Bishop Gébuin (947-998), who was the promoter of a full urban renewal (Vercauteren 1934: 151-152). Economic prosperity led to the construction of a new city wall, mentioned only in 1027 but probably older. A comparative study of the fortifications in the Loire and Rhine Valleys points to a date connected with the Norman invasions, in the ninth or around the midtenth century at the latest; the events of 931 and 963 might have effectively motivated such an enterprise (Ravaux 1980: 70; Clause and Ravaux 1983: 34). The new wall circuit was much longer than the late Roman one; it included the commercial district between the Mau and the Nau, enclosing an area almost three times larger (20ha instead of 7). The number of inhabitants equally increased, with the inclusion of the population living in the suburbs around the sanctuaries of St Sulpice, Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts and St Memmius, and along the road leading to Reims (today rue Léon-Bourgeois), amounting to around 3000 people. The topographical setting of this commercial district was not hindered

In 940 the above-mentioned Bishop Beuves undertook a renovation of the town wall, extending the circuit southward up to the bank of the river Mau, including the church of St Alpin (infra) and the lively borough developed around it, hitherto located outside the walls, and transforming one of the towers into a real donjon.27 27 

The medieval walls were completely dismantled between the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

110

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric In the course of the seventh century, the Christian topography was enriched with the foundation of other churches, especially in the suburbium, with a chapel devoted to Notre-Dame-en-Vaux (infra) built aside the basilicas of St Andrew (later, St Alpin) and St Memmius, although in the Early Middle Ages the most powerful institution of the district was the suburban Abbey of St Sulpice (Vercauteren 1934: 144). The latter, probably a small female monastery, already existed in the seventh century, when it was controlled by the bishop, and was located just at the crossing of the river Marne (today pont du canal). Before the eleventh century it was transformed into a parochial church and came under the control of the Chapter. It was destroyed during the Revolution and just a few ruins are visible between the école Duruy and rue Jean-Jaurès (Ravaux 1980: 62).

by hydrographic constraints like wetlands, and its precocious development is quite remarkable (Ravaux 1980: 71). The position of Châlons along an important route facilitated the Christianisation of the urban population. The first bishop might have been St Memmius (a.k.a. Menge), whose activity should be fixed at the end of the third or at the beginning of the fourth century. In any case, his elevation to the episcopal see should not predate 313.28 A second bishop, named Donatian, attended the council of Serdica in 346 (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 20). Having risen to the role of one of the most important cities of the Gallia Belgica, Châlons was the target of several raids, especially by the Vandals: once in 406407, when Bishop Nicasius was burned at the stake, and again in 451, when it is said that another bishop, St Alpin, was taken hostage (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 22).

Since the cathedral of St Stephen was small, a second cathedral, dedicated to St Peter, was built between the church of St Memmius and the city wall.

The limits of the diocese can be drawn midway between the modern departments of Marne and Haut-Marne, a few kilometres north of Châlons, whilst on the southern side the border would have come close to the town of Joinville. To the east it would have reached SainteMénehould, and to the west Mont-Mort, extending ca 6000km2 (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 18).

By the mid-ninth century, Bishop Erchenraus (858-868) had re-established the church of St Stephen in the role of sole cathedral, undertaking substantial works to enlarge it, to the detriment of the surrounding area, which was rapidly transformed into a large ecclesiastical domain, with the institution of the Chapter and its reform according to the Rule of St Chrodegang (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 30). Indeed, the ecclesiastical reform that generated the topographical link between the cathedral and its clergy (organised in the Chapter) promoted the construction of several complexes in the area of the ‘episcopal headquarters’, equal to a quarter of the Roman walled centre, which pushed the secular buildings outside the walls, thus stimulating the growth of the commercial and industrial districts of the suburbium (Ravaux 1980: 68). The episcopal palace was located between the western side of the cathedral and the walls, while the processional cloister was located north of it; other ecclesiastical buildings were scattered nearby, including the Hôtel-Dieu and other cloisters governed by the Chapter, forming a veritable quarter, surrounded in 1255 by a wall with gates (Ravaux 2001: 7). The episcopal palace, however, is not mentioned before the twelfth century (Yverneau-Glasser 1994a: 139-140).29

In the Merovingian phase most of the cultural poles were to be found in the suburbium, although a cathedral devoted to St Stephen already existed inside the walls. The cathedral was probably enlarged already in the sixth century, on the initiative of the bishops St Elaphius and St Lumier, but it was completed only in 625 by Bishop Felix I. This complex would have included catacombs to house the episcopal burials, and a chapel devoted to the Virgin just under the main altar (Maillet 1946: 7). The centre soon took on a ‘multipolar’ layout, with a church devoted to St Memmius outside the walls, probably monumentalising his burial († around 340), c. 1.5km east of the town, along the Roman road, existing at the time of Pope Gregory (Greg. De Glor. Confes. col. 876). Following the flow of pilgrims, a hamlet clustered around it (Chossenot et al. 1981: 95). A church devoted to St John already existed in the second half of the sixth century, since St Elaphius († 580) and Lumier († 614-627) were buried inside it (Ravaux 1980: 61). However, the well-preserved nave of the early Romanesque phase is not earlier than the half or even the end of the eleventh century (Collin et al. 1981: 187).

In the mid-ninth century the second cathedral was transformed into a Benedictine abbey with the title of Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts (Ravaux 1980: 62). Bishop Erchenraus sponsored the translation of the relics of St Alpin to the church of St Andrew in the commercial district; the church soon changed its dedication to St Alpin. This operation shows how influential the role

28 

The episcopal list of Châlons has been reported only by Mabillon and does not predate the eleventh century, with the figures of Lupus (attending the Council of Clermont in 535) and Felix (present at the Council of Clichy in 627) as the first historically documented (Ajot et al. 1998: 97).

29 

Also archaeological investigations were not able to gather evidence earlier than the thirteenth century: Yverneau-Glasser 1994a: 139-140.

111

The Route of the Franks of the bishop was not only in the reorganisation of the ‘episcopal city’ but also in the urban development of the areas outside the walls (Clause 1989: 15-16).

cartulary of Warin. Heavily damaged during the war between Raoul, king of France, and Herbert, count of Vermandois, it was repaired on the initiative of Bishop Gébuin (or Gibuinus or Jubin I, 947-999), relying upon the support of a monk named Hugh, who was in charge of the architectural and sculptural project. This construction had a sort of westwork, which included the so-called tower of St Laurent, destroyed only at the end of the twelfth century (Ravaux 2001: 7). Damaged again by lightning in 1138, it was rebuilt nine years later in a form still preserved in the modern construction (Maillet 1946: 8-9). However, a few traces of the abovementioned early Romanesque church can be found in the crypt, possibly identifiable with the early medieval chapel of St Mary, and in some segments of the aisles used for burials, whilst the peculiar baptismal font located on the first floor of the tower can be dated to the eleventh or twelfth century (Maillet 1946: 42-58). The crypt was originally composed of a nave divided by two rows of columns (Ravaux 1980: 53).

At the beginning of the eleventh century, on the initiative of Bishop Roger I (1011-1042), the abbey was remodelled and reformed under the guidance of the abbot of Saint-Vanne de Verdun. Hence, it recuperated its possessions and further expanded, acquiring parochial rights in the suburbs and the commercial sector which included the churches of St John and St Alpin, at the same time restraining the powers of the counts of Champagne (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 3538). In the same period, Bishop Roger I founded the ‘collegiate’ church of the Trinity (i.e. a church including a community of canons although not classified as cathedral) attached to the cathedral, which at the end of the eleventh century acquired the parochial role for the whole surrounding district. Another collegiate church devoted to St Nicolas was founded by Bishop Roger III at the end of the eleventh century south of the cathedral (Clause 1989: 18-20). It is likely that between 1075 and 1090 the first cathedral School was founded by Canon Guérin (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 39-55).

A few details about its appearance in the tenth century can be gathered about the above-mentioned church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux. By then, it was already playing the role of collegiate church and parish, and a few canons lived in the cloister on the northern side of the church (Prache 1966: 2-8). Excavations have been carried out in the cloister (Chossenot 2004: 286) and in the area of the modern College Saint-Etienne, corresponding to a sector of the medieval episcopal palace (Chossenot and Lenoble 1992: 278).

The Abbey of Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts was among the most powerful ecclesiastical institutions of the district. Although considered to be of ancient foundation, it is never mentioned in written sources before the eleventh century, when it started to acquire rights over the burgus clustered around it, the urban churches of St Alpin and St Germain, together with three mills, covering a large part of the suburbium including NotreDame-en-Vaux and the urban quarter delimited by the Nau and the Mau, enclosed by segments of the Roman and medieval walls.

After the turbulent events of the ninth and tenth century there was surely a need to rebuild the complex, although there is no mention of the church before the beginning of the twelfth century, when the building, equipped with several altars, was visited by Pope Paschal II. The church was again remodelled in 1157 (Sauerländer 1963; Prache 1966: 6-9, 44-48). However, since the early medieval building was located slightly north of the Romanesque complex, it is not possible to isolate structural elements of the earlier phases. Just a few capitals still used in the ground level of the towers of the facade can be considered older than the others (Sauerländer 1962: 98, pl. I; 1963: 119, pl. XXXVII, 1), casting doubt over whether these churches characterised by square towers flanking the apse (the so-called style of the Rhine) could date back to the tenth century, as is the case with the cathedral of Reims, or even the second half of the ninth century with the examples from Lorraine (e.g. Metz, Toul and Saint-Vincent: Prache 1966: 48-49).

Of the 24 religious foundations that are attested in the twelfth century (almost half of which were built in the course of the same century), only four are partially preserved: the cathedral of St Stephen, the collegiate church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux and the two parish churches of St Alpin and St John, but no elements preceding the twelfth century survive today (Clause and Ravaux 1983: 56-58), although sectors of a medieval cemetery have been investigated beside the church of St Alpin, at the corner between rue Lochet and rue de la Marne (Chossenot and Lenoble 1992: 279). For Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, although the tradition ascribes the foundation of the church to Bishop Arnold († 635), no documentary evidence is available before the ninth century, and no architectural remains are earlier than the late eleventh century (Collin et al. 1981: 189-197) (Figure 5.15).

It is almost impossible to draft the hypothetical appearance of the town at the time of Sigeric, although some elements attested in the Late Middle Ages can be traced back to earlier centuries. Archaeological

The best-known monument remains, however, the cathedral, with its possessions documented in the 112

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric

Figure 5.15: Châlons-en-Champagne. The church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux in the eleventh century. Elaboration Author after Collin et al. 1981: 192.

area in post-classical times (Lenoble 1983, 1984, 1985). Other excavations in the place de la République seem to prove that the late medieval complex of the Marchéau-blé was preceded by an eleventh-century building, attributable to the initiative of the bishop, who profited from the renunciation by the count of Champagne of his rights in Châlons to establish the first important market (supra).

excavations around the Hôtel-Dieu brought to light fragmentary evidence of hut floors and wells assigned to the Carolingian or medieval age, with stratigraphies attributable to an early medieval occupation of the area. In the High Middle Ages the evidence is surely interpretable as a living quarter (with houses, wells, pits and ditches), with traces of occupation until the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries (Figure 5.16). Unsurprisingly, in the early modern age the district of the Hôtel-Dieu thrived with hostels and lodgings for travellers and merchants (Chossenot et al. 1981; Chevallier 1992: 96). Many finds spread from the ninth or tenth to eighteenth centuries show the vitality of the

The suburban area was characterised by the presence of the borough clustered around the church of NotreDame-en-Vaux and the Agrippan Way. Although already in the tenth-twelfth centuries many houses and 113

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.16: Châlons-en-Champagne. Plan of the excavations in the area of the Hôtel-Dieu. Elaboration Author after Chossenot and Lenoble 1992: 274, fig. 2.

buildings lined along the road, large areas remained unoccupied until recent times. In the thirteenth century, the district east of the river Mau maintained a layout determined by the main axis connecting Châlons to the closest centres. The bridge of Putte-Savatte surely functioned in relation to the medieval city wall (Ravaux 1980: 64-66).

Gallo-Roman period, made Reims a major stop on the Roman pilgrimage route30 (Figure 5.17). The route of Roman origin connecting the shores of the Channel to the Mediterranean can be followed from Beaumontsur-Vesle until the crossroads north of Sillery, to SaintLéonard. Finally, via what is nowadays the rue Barbâtre, it entered the southern Porte Bazée (Legros 1983: 273-4).

Until modern times, there were few bridges on the Marne, but the fact that the river at Chȃlons divided into four branches made it easier to arrange fords.

The road crossed the town from south-east to northwest; it functioned as one of the two main orthogonal axes of the urban grid, and is still traceable from Porte Bazée, the ancient Porta Basilica, to the south, along rue de l’Université, across Place Royale, not far from the Roman forum, to the Hôtel de Ville, from where it continues in a straight line until the Porte de Mars, a Roman triumphal arch located at the northern edge of the town (Figure 5.18, D).

Approaching the Montagne de Reims and the valley of the Vesle, the road most probably crossed the industrial district in the suburb (Petit and Mangin 1994: 216). At least from the mid-ninth century and until the seventeenth, the crossing of the river Vesle and of the marshy area was undertaken at a place called Pontvray. On the southern edge of Reims, the road can be traced in correspondence with the R.N. 44, at least in the localities of Gran-des-Loges, Petites-Loges, Beaumont and La Pompelle, as documented by Cassini’s map. It entered the town becoming its cardo, known in the Middle Ages as voie Césarée.

30  Reims was a formidable junction in Gallo-Roman times; its role as a node between land-routes and waterways, linking the valleys of the rivers Marne and Aisne, has been always highlighted in the literature: see Chossenot 2004: 115-120. Other routes arrived from the west, from the Parisian district, from the regions of Brie and Soissons. From Reims they continued in any direction, to Flanders, Picardie, Lorraine, the Rhine Valley and Bourgogne (Reinhardt 1963: 5). In addition to Sigeric, other travellers and pilgrims are recorded as stopping in Reims. Among them, the sources mention Burgheard, son of Earl Ælfgar, who died there in 1061-1062 on his return from Rome (Ortenberg 1992: 236). His father, then, donated a plot of land to the Abbey of St Remigius, where Burgheard was buried: Darlington 1959: 19. St Remigius was widely venerated in England.

LXX Reims (Rems) Its geographical position, and the fact that it was crossed by important communication axes back in the 114

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric

Figure 5.17: Reims. Schematic plan of the Roman road network. Elaboration A. Panarello after Chossenot 2004: 139, fig. 46.

Remi in French), who in 496 convinced the Merovingian King Clovis to be baptised in the cathedral of Reims. This marked the start of a close connection with the crown of France, only partially shadowed by the ascent of Sens. For example, in 751, Pippin the Short sought recognition of his enthronement by being consecrated by the bishop of Reims; Louis the Pious did the same in 816, also supported by Pope Stephen IV (Desportes 1983: 63-135). Although in 848 Charles the Bald stepped back from this tradition, choosing to be consecrated in Orléans, the Church of Reims, starting with the Treaty of Verdun in 843, by promoting the invented miracle of the ampulla containing the oil for holy anointing found in the grave of St Remigius, claimed the right to be the only institution entitled to consecrate the new king (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 8).32

At the time of the Roman conquest, the oppidum of Durocortorum, strategically located at the watershed between the basins of the rivers Meuse and Seine, was homeland to the Gallic tribe of Rèmes. In the early imperial times, Reims was chosen as capital of Gallia Belgica, which extended into the Rhine Valley. With the third century AD, Reims became the capital of the province called Belgica Secunda, and at least 60ha of its surface area was incorporated into a new fortified wall, built with reused material (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 7). By that time, the town was Christianised; a few bishops are mentioned starting from AD 260: Sixtus, Sinicius and Amausius. However, the first bishop officially recorded is Imbetausius, who attended the Council of Arles in 314 (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 7). The importance of the city in Antiquity explains its religious and cultural domination in Late Antiquity and in the early and high medieval period.31 Central to these developments is the action of St Remigius (St

It was with the archiepiscopate of Ebbo (817-840) that the Church of Reims gained a position of strength and 32 

Moreover, in 999, Pope Sylvester II confirmed this privilege, and so did Pope Urban II in 1089. From the coronation of Henry I, hence, consecrations were carried out exclusively in Reims, with the exception of Louis VI the Fat and Henry IV.

31 

The list of bishops and archbishops until the end of the tenth century, with the years 990-991 particularly crammed with events, is in Sainte-Marthe 1751: IX, cols 2-62.

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The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.18: Reims. Schematic plan of Reims and its suburbium during Late Antiquity. A: first cathedral of the Apostles; B: second cathedral; C: bishop’s residence; D: Porte de Mars; E: Porte Bazée. Possible location of the funerary churches of 1: St Christopher; 2: St Julian; 3: St Timothy; 4: St Martin; 5: St Sixtus; 6: SS Agricola and Vitalis; 7: St John. In grey, the area of the Roman forum. After Ajot et al. 1998: 105.

managed to regain its possessions.33 Thus, it was capable of starting a programme of renovation and restoration of ecclesiastical complexes, paralleled by a process of cultural renovation, which led to the intellectual growth of the town (Reinhard 1963: 23).

Indeed, Reims is an ideal case study for the analysis of the evolution of the progressive overlap of temporal and ecclesiastical powers in the hands of the (arch) bishop. Having started in the course of the tenth century, the process consolidated during the eleventh, but can be traced further back in time, even to the figures of bishops that, being members of wealthy and ‘aristocratic’ families, made use of their patrimonies in the same way in which the Roman nobilitas performed euergetism in Antiquity.34

Moreover, Charlemagne decreed Reims to be the seat of an archbishopric often held by members of the imperial family. The see of the archbishop was particularly desirable, since in 940, King Louis IV d’Outremer awarded to the archbishops of Reims the title of comes, elevating them to the role of governors of the town and its territory (Vercauteren 1934: 85).

The Church of Reims was particularly wealthy during the Early Middle Ages. Its possessions spread to the

33  Ebbo, at the time librarian at the palace of Aachen, was elected on the initiative of Louis the Pious, his foster brother.

34  For a review of the ‘political’, social and urbanistic acts of Reims’ archbishops see Demouy 2005: 485-495.

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Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric

Figure 5.19: Reims. Schematic plan of the old town and the new borough in the Middle Ages. After Heers 1990: 196, fig. 60.

After the Edict of Constantine, the early phase of Christianisation resulted in Reims in a series of monumental buildings clustered around the two main Christian poles: the cathedral, dedicated to the Apostles, traditionally located south of the forum (infra), and the suburban complex (later dominated by the Abbey of St Remigius) along the road leading to Lyon, approximately 1km south of the walls, with a monumental cemetery and several small churches. Among the latter, we can list the churches of SS Timothy and Apollinarius, of the sixth century, and St Thierry (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 7) (Figure 5.18). Slightly to the east of this cluster, another church dedicated to SS Agricola and Vitalis was built by Jovin, head of the militia, in the fourth century; in the course of the fifth century, it came to include the episcopal necropolis and changed its dedication to St Nicasius. In 1057, it was transformed by Archbishop Gervais into a large Benedictine abbey.

dioceses of Metz, Mainz and Worms, and counted properties as far as Poitiers, Limoges and Provence (Ortenberg 2012: 222-223). However, the visit of Sigeric happened just before the outbreak of the crisis of the years 991‒999. Upon the death of Archbishop Adalbero, in 989, following one of the frequent struggles for power between Hugh Capet and the brother of Lothar I, Charles of Lorraine, trying to ascend to the throne of his brother who died in 986, the cleric Arnoul, bastard of Lothar himself, was installed by Hugh as archbishop of Reims, with the aim of attracting to his side some of the supporters of Charles. Arnoul, in return, let the latter take the city in 990 without offering any resistance. With the defeat of Charles and the ascendence of Hugh Capet, however, Arnoul was treacherously imprisoned, and Hugh solicited his condemnation by Pope John XV. In 991, during a council held at St Basle (Basolus) Abbey at Verzy, strong accusations and disturbing allegations were made about Arnoul; the deposition of the archbishop was decreed and Gerbert of Aurillac was elected in his place. When the latter left for Rome to defend his nomination in front of the pope, the new King Robert the Pious decided to reinstate Arnoul as archbishop of Reims (Reinhard 1963: 47).35

Together with the sector where the Abbey of St Remigius would have been built (infra), the area of St Nicaise, south of the town centre, and the clusters of the new parishes of La Madeleine to the north and St James to the west, became the nuclei of medieval extraurban expansion (Figure 5.19).

35  The intervention of Emperor Otto III led to a diplomatic solution; after a period as patriarch of Ravenna, Gerbert was elected pope. The contest, in which dynastic fights mingled with ‘parochial’ disputes,

family quarrels and local or personal clashes met its end only with the death of Pope John and the election of Sylvester II in April 999 (Demouy 2005: 369-374).

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The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.20: Reims. Schematic map of the old town with indication of the location of the main monuments and of the different wall circuits. 1: cathedral; 2: St Remigius; 3: St Nicaise. The dotted line indicates the limits of the castellum, the dashed line the limits of the Urbs, the solid line the limits of the medieval wall circuit. Elaboration Author after Chédeville 1980: 96.

beginning of the ninth century to collect building material for the cathedral, were rebuilt in the last twenty years of the same century on the initiative of Archbishop Fulk.37 Other fortifications were undertaken on the occasion of the attacks of Odo (in 894 and 896) and of the Magyars (in 926) (Vercauteren 1934: 82-85). In the tenth century, the walls were pierced by four gates: Porte de Mars, Porte Cérès (from the eleventh century known as Porte Carceris), Porte de Soissons or Porte Vidula and the already mentioned Porte Bazée or Porte Basilica, from which exited the road leading to the borough of St Remigius (Figure 5.20).

Many other churches and monastic complexes were built during the Early Middle Ages within the walls, among them the two nunneries dedicated to St Peter (Saint-Pierre-les-Dames), the chapels of St Hilary, St Martin, St Victor and SS Crispin and Crispinian, and the ninth-century church of St Timothy. These ecclesiastical institutions were often accompanied by charitable institutions, like the two hospices of St Julian and SS Cosmas and Damian.36 The city centre The insecurity of Late Antiquity pushed the ecclesiastical communities to seek shelter inside the urban defences built in Augustan times. Such is the case for the abbeys of St Thierry, St Remigius, Saint-Pierreles-Dames and Saint-Pierre-en-la-cité, built between the sixth and the seventh centuries (Figure 5.19), the hospital and the Domus Ecclesiae, i.e. the residence of the bishop next to the cathedral mentioned in textual sources (Vercauteren 1934: 51).

The account of the translation of the relics of St Remigius back into the cathedral in 1049 allows three separate compounds to be distinguished: the urbs (i.e. the Gallo-Roman civitas), the castellum (i.e. the walled borough of St Remigius) and the municipium (i.e. the new agglomeration that developed around the borough) (see Figure 5.20). Until the Romanesque floruit, the BourgSaint-Rémi was characterised as a village of winegrowers (Chédeville 1980: 97). Inside the town there were two distinct ‘poles’: one north-west of Place Royale and of

Later, under the menace of the Norman invasions, the walls, which were substantially dismantled at the

37 

A segment of these walls built between 883 and 887 was excavated in 2000, as part of a project of archaeological survey in the area of the Mediatheque, in front of the cathedral (excavation INRAP).

36 

The church was probably built only in the twelfth century, and not earlier: Demouy 2005: 283.

118

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric has been fixed in a different location to that proposed by Henri Deneux on the basis of the excavation he promoted between 1919 and 1930 (Deneux 1944).42 The baptistery is located on the western side of the primitive church and is therefore covered by the Carolingian extension. To the south was the residence of the bishop, attested in the sixth century, built making use of many recycled materials.

rue Carnot and rue Cérès that was less imprinted by the ecclesiastical presence (with only the two parish churches of St Peter and Saint-Hilaire-en-cité);38 conversely, the other south-eastern town-district was characterised by a clear Christian topography, with the cathedral, the Hôtel-Dieu, the canons’ cloister, the churches of St Michael, St Symphorian (the new name of the earliest cathedral, originally dedicated to the Apostles: Demouy 2005: 276), St Stephen, St Martha and the Abbey of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames (Chédeville 1980: 87) (see Figure 5.19).

Documentary evidence shows that a charitable institution called matricula existed in connection with the bishopric in the fifth century, but it was thanks to Hincmar that a hospice for the poor was established and granted an allowance under the responsibility of the canons (Demouy 2005: 97-109). The so-called HôtelDieu, built on the edge of the esplanade in front of the cathedral, was transferred only in the nineteenth century to another location. Part of its vaulted halls of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries remain under the modern Palais de Justice (Demouy 1995: 46).

The cathedral Although some dubious sources report on the construction of an earlier cathedral in the southern suburbium in the third century (Berthelot and Neiss 1994), the sources of the ninth and tenth centuries locate the primitive episcopal see in the south-eastern part of the town. Built upon the initiative of Bishop Bétause, subscriber at the Council of Arles in 314, the cathedral was dedicated to the Apostles (Demouy 1995: 10).

Several construction yards were opened in the Carolingian phase: in the cathedral (with the doubling of the lower collateral naves and the creation of a crypt under the apse), for the remodelling of the baptistery and the replacement of the building to the north with complexes for the use of the cathedral Chapter.

A second cathedral was built by Bishop Nicasius approximately 100m to the west and was dedicated to the Virgin39. It was completed by a separate baptistery and the episcopal palace, its location still respected by the cathedral and the archiepiscopal residence.40 Both these complexes were inserted into the regular grid of the Roman town layout, occupying part of the blocks situated just south-east of the forum.41 The area was occupied by public monuments that were already almost abandoned, among them the governor’s palace and the baths built by Constantine. The latter covered a large surface, since they occupied the whole area below and around the cathedral (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 10). The Early Christian church was probably a single nave without transept, approximately 40m long and 20m wide. Thanks to the excavations carried out in the 1990s by Walter Berry and Robert Neiss, the baptistery

Most of the works was undertaken when Archbishop Ebbo was authorised in 818 to reuse the walls as building material. He also proceeded to raise the galleries of the processional cloister and to enlarge the canonical ‘quarters’, where the church was completely rebuilt and enlarged. The works started in 817 but stopped in 835 when Ebbo was obliged to leave his office. The completion of Ebbo’s intervention consisted mainly in the roofing and in the decorative programme (wall-paintings, stained glasses, floors and fences). The western entrance was probably completed with an atrium. The baptistery was remodelled with the installation of a new baptismal font at the level of the Westbau (i.e. westwork). The Carolingian church, one of the largest of its time (length 86m in total), had two liturgical poles: one dedicated to the Holy Saviour on the western side and the other to the Virgin on the eastern side (Demouy 1995: 12-13) (see Figure 5.21).

38 

At least in the seventeenth century, this area hosted the markets of clothes, meat and grains, the Hôtel de Ville and artisanal and manufacturing activities. 39  Its traditional chronology linked by Flodoard to the sacking by the Vandals in 407 poses some questions, since this initiative of Bishop Nicasius would anticipate the dogma of Mary mother of God enshrined at the Council of Ephesus of 431 and would establish a precursor to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, built between 432 and 440 (Demouy 1995: 10-11). 40  The latter was replaced by the so-called Palais Tau (infra). For a detailed description of the cathedral and for several entries recording the passage of English pilgrims through Reims until the first half of the tenth century, see the Historia Remensis Ecclesiae written by Flodoard, who made use of the Annales by Archbishop Hincmar (845882), especially Flod. Hist. Rem. Eccl. 19, 21, 26, and Flod. Ann. ad a. 921 (KH), 923 (Λ), 940 (MZ), see Lauer 1905: 5, 19, 79. The work of Michel Sot discusses thoroughly the personality of Flodoard, his writing, his times and his reception (Sot 1993), whilst a lucid analysis of his political involvement is in Glenn 2004: 171-175. 41  Tradition has it that Nicasius was beheaded here by the Vandals in 406.

The deposition of Ebbo imposed by the emperor did not lead to the abandonment of the plan, since his successor Hincmar finalised the works and sumptuously inaugurated the new cathedral in 862 in the presence of Charles the Bald. With his support, Hincmar achieved 42  The square hall (9 by 9m) with a large cross-shaped bath decorated with mosaics is now identified with one of the rooms of the baths complex: Balcon, Berry and Neiss 1996: 26-27.

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Figure 5.21: Reims. Hypothetical reconstruction of the cathedral. A: Schematic reconstruction of the succession of the three late antique (grey rectangle in the middle), Carolingian (smaller church with dashed apse) and high medieval churches (outer church with large apse) on the basis of the Gothic building (in pale grey). B: Hypothetical reconstruction of the church of ninth-tenth century, with indication of the segments of preserved walls (in black). After Balcon, Berry and Neiss 1996: 26, 30.

the elevation of the cathedral to the role of royal church, rival of the Abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 12).

transept (see Figure 5.21). The church included a crypt, restored and devoted to St Remigius by Archbishop Heriveus at the beginning of the tenth century (Ajot et al. 1998: 105-106). The complex was completed by a westwork, and its façade was decorated with a mosaic depicting Louis the Pious and Pope Stephen IV at the

The works of the second half of the ninth century implied an enlargement and the construction of the 120

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric

Figure 5.22: Reims. The episcopal palace ‘Tau’. 9 indicates the Great Hall, 11 the chapel. After Crepin-Leblond 1994: 168, fig. 1.

of a comment by Richer, it may be that a programme of renovation also involved enlargement and the installation of new stained glass. For certain, a bespoke tradition in this art was flourishing at Reims in the second half of the eleventh century, when a master glassmaker was called from Reims to decorate the church of Saint-Hubert-d’Ardenne (Reinhard 1963: 4449).

feet of Christ. It was also equipped with a roof covered in tin slabs, probably imported from England (Demouy 1995: 14). In the tenth century, a redesign of the western sector of the nave might have caused the destruction of the Carolingian baptistery. The Norman invasions forced modifications to this project: the cathedral choir was reworked at the beginning of the tenth century; the crypt, then consecrated to St Remigius, was covered with mosaics. From the episcopate of Odalric (961-969) the choir also started to host the burials of bishops (Ajot et al. 1998: 110).

The construction of an altar devoted to the Holy Saviour followed the addition of that dedicated to Notre Dame suggested by Louis the Pious. Many pieces of art were installed on the high altar (Demouy 2005: 107-108). As anticipated, a hospice was attached to the cathedral in early times, but no architectural remains can be pointed out before the end of the Gothic period (supra).

At the end of the tenth century there were also important translations of relics, some paralleled by other architectural interventions, the most important carried out on the initiative of Archbishop Adalbero. They involved the removal of the vault and of the tribune that bordered a large part of the nave, probably the elimination of the westwork and the construction of a chapel hosting the relics of St Calixtus above the entrance (Balcon, Berry and Neiss 1996: 28-30). This oratory was nested inside a tower built on top of the gate, later known as the Vieille tour, removed during the remodelling of the twelfth century. Also, the large bells committed by Adalbero were lodged inside this structure, known in French as clocher-poche (Reinhard 1963: 26-43).43 Following the possible interpretation

The episcopal palace also underwent renovation under the guidance of Archbishop Ebbo: a few elements of the building dating to the ninth century, which replaced the early Christian residence of the bishop decorated with late Roman mosaics, can be found in the Great Hall on the eastern side of the later version of the episcopal residence, known as Palais Tau (Figure 5.22, no. 9). Thanks to Flodoard, we are informed that Ebbo installed archives and probably the first palace chapel, dedicated to St Peter. Almost a century later, between 922 and 925, Archbishop Seulf set about renovating the decorative programme with new paintings (Demouy 2005: 117). It is first mentioned with the name of Palais Tau in a document issued by Louis VII in 1138 and in 1148 as the location of a council called by St Bernard. The denomination is probably due to the design of its

43  However, since no trace of this structure has been found, M.M. Bur suspected that it never existed: see references in Barral I Altet 1987a: 306-307.

121

The Route of the Franks plan, also adopted in the episcopal palace of Angers (Crepin-Leblond 1994b).44

church had already been transformed by Archbishop Tilpin (a.k.a. Talpin or Tulpin) into a Benedictine abbey where monks were established between 780 and 790. In the mid-ninth century, Archbishop Hincmar, fearing the devastation of the Viking invasions, arranged the translation of the relics of St Remigius to Épernay. They were solemnly returned to the Abbey of St Remigius only in 1049, on the initiative of Pope Leo IX during the council held in Reims.46

The canons’ cloister The Chapter from which most of the archbishops were recruited was composed mainly of the local nobility. It amounted to 72 members and was established shortly after 816 by Archbishop Ebbo, although tradition assigns it to Bishop Rigobert (d. 753) (Demouy 1995: 33). It had important revenues, classified as the canons’ manse, which were separated from those of the archbishop (Kurmann and Villes 2001: 9).

The abbatial church underwent important remodelling works in the course of the eleventh century, when Abbot Airard undertook the construction of a Romanesque basilica. The works started in 1007 but were interrupted in 1035 upon the abbot’s death. His successor Thierry scaled down the ambitious project and completed only the choir above the holy burial of St Remigius. The construction was finalised in the mid-eleventh century (Collin et al. 1981: 117-118) but only the nave of the modern church can be traced back to that project, while the apse is not earlier than the end of the twelfth century (Demouy 2005: 20-24).

The Chapter was based in the great cloister, an enclosed space inside the ‘holy city’. The latter encompassed the cathedral, the archbishopric, the Hôtel-Dieu, the processional cloister (a covered gallery that surrounds a courtyard or garden, reserved for canons or monks, in which silence is enjoined), the canons’ halls and the private residences of the canons. The cloister was mentioned in a diploma of Louis the Pious of 817‒825, in which some baths, whose construction was probably still ongoing, were also mentioned. The cloister was enlarged in the mid-ninth century by Hincmar, who obtained from Charles the Bald the authorisation to divert some viae publicae. The latter have to be interpreted as the remains of the Roman town layout, in a few cases directly connected to the extra-urban communication network and occasionally still preserving traces of Roman metalling, as witnessed by sources like the Vita S. Rigoberti (Vercauteren 1934: 66-67).

In the course of the tenth century, the Abbey of St Remigius, already surrounded by smaller churches and houses clustered in a sort of domanial hamlet, had been encircled by walls erected on the initiative of Archbishop Seulf (924-925) (Yverneau-Glasser 1994b). This hamlet evolved into an independent castellum or castrum, and included a market (Vercauteren 1934: 6870). This fortified borough was the only area to survive the raids of the tenth-eleventh centuries, although it was in this period that the suburbium started to be more intensively populated, with domestic housing and workshops clustered around the churches (Vercauteren 1934: 91-95). The excavations in the surviving apse of the church of St Julian, in the proximity of the basilica of St Remigius, document the existence of a cemetery that was in use until the eleventh century.

The school The cathedral school, run by the canons, in the course of the tenth century under the guidance of Gerbert of Aurillac established itself as one of the most influential intellectual centres of Europe. It was particularly renowned between the years 972 and 991, when Sigeric visited Reims.

Just outside the northern edge of the town, not far from the Porte de Mars, the discovery of early medieval sarcophagi in the central flowerbed of place de la République confirms the foundation by Bishop Rigobert of a cemetery in connection with the church of St Hilary, which was used mainly to bury the canons of the cathedral (Poulain 1992: 238, 253).

The suburbium The burial of St Remigius, which took place in 533 inside a small suburban church dedicated to St Christopher, linked to a church dedicated to St Martin probably dating to the fourth century, 700m south-east of the town, soon attracted many devotees. After the proclamation of his sanctity as the Apostle of the Franks on the initiative of Archbishop Hincmar in 852, the church changed its dedication to St Remigius.45 By then, however, the

Traces of the ancient road heading to the shores of the Channel have been found 2.5km north of Porte de Mars, corresponding with the newly built crossroads of R.N. 44, in front of the area of La Neuvillette, showing that the central axis of the Roman layout (the so-called cardo, supra) continued in the direction of Berry-au-Bac (Rolin and Jolly 1998-1999).

44 

The palace burned down together with the cathedral in 1210: Crepin-Leblond 1994b. 45  The dedication to St Remigius was already established at the end of the sixth century according to Demouy 2005: 19.

46 

Three English clergy members attended the council and the translation of the relics in 1049: see Southern 1953: 125-127.

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Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric According to Nicolas Bergier, a scholar of the sixteenth century, the route leading to Saint-Quentin ran through Bac, Corbény and Festieu, although traces of the road were still visible only between Corbény and SaintQuentin (Bergier 1622: 492).

(Vercauteren 1934: 325). It is possible that it was already fortified by walls in the third century: a segment might be the Roman wall found during nineteenth century excavations under the former episcopal palace (modern Palais de Justice). The Roman city wall is hypothetically reconstructed from place Hôtel de Ville (on the eastern side) to rue Rempart du Nord and rue de la Plaine, following or the alignment rue Rempart du Midi-rue de l’Arquebuse-rue de la Préfecture, or – more probably – rue Sainte-Geneviève-rue des Cordeliers, ranging from a length of ca 1500m in the first case to 1300m in the second (Vercauteren 1934: 326-7) (Figure 5.23). The ancient layout of the settlement can be hypothetically reconstructed on the basis of the modern street network, underlying the presence of the cathedral only 70m north-east of the two squares of Marché aux Herbes and Parvis (Ben Redjeb 1994: 227).

According to the study of R. Legros, based on historical cartography and aerial survey, we can trace the path following what is probably a protohistoric trail from the Porte de Mars to the Aisne region via Courcy, Berméricourt, the crossing of the river at Mauchamps where it is probably possible to locate the bridge mentioned by Caesar, continuing to Juvincourt and Aizelles, before reaching Velud and the plain of Laon (Legros 1983: 270-271). It is not by accident that near Juvincourt, in the place known as Gué (i.e. ford) de Mauchamps, on the right bank of the river Aisne, remains of a protohistoric settlement, occupied continuously from protohistory to Merovingian times (sixth to eight century), have been located (Pichon 2002: 266-267, Figure 319). The site of Berry-au-Bac also shows traces of occupation from Iron Age to Carolingian times (loc. La Croix Maigret: Pichon 2002: 124-125, Figure 80). It is also possible that this route of Gallic origin was doubled in Roman times by a more direct road, hypothetically running between the valley of the Loire and the Massif de Saint-Thierry, joining the older route north of Corbény (Chossenot 2004: 131-132).

The episcopal see was very probably established by St Remigius in the second half of the fifth century. Given the vastness of the territory of Reims, increased thanks to the generous donations of Clovis, St Remigius was unable to fulfil his duties and therefore created new bishoprics, one of which was predictably established in his birthplace (Contreni 1978: 8-9). Furthermore, soon after the death of Clovis in 511 and the consequent partition of his kingdom, the portion of the territory of Reims, which was first included in the Kingdom of Soissons and in 561 was handed down to Austrasia, needed a leading centre (Vercauteren 1934: 327-328). It is only thanks to an incidental mention (the marriage between Pippin the Short and the daughter of the Count of Laon in 749) that the existence of the County of Laon is documented.

LXXI Corbény (Corbunei) The settlement, to be found along the Roman road between Laon and Reims, is first mentioned in ancient sources as a Merovingian domain, and in 938 the foundation of a castrum is recorded (Flucher 2007). At the end of the ninth or in the early tenth century a priory dedicated to St Marculf, whose relics were conserved there, was founded as a dependency of St Remigius of Reims. At the end of the ninth century, a royal palace was also built there (Ortenberg 1990: 242).

In Carolingian times, Laon boasted an ‘English connection’ since Eadgifu, wife of Charles the Simple and mother of Louis d’Outremer, married her second husband, Herbert of Vermandois, later Count of Troyes, in one of the town’s churches. It was in the course of the tenth century that Laon was affirmed as a political centre, considered a sort of capital of the Kingdom of France, where the Carolingian kings often resided (Vercauteren 1934: 335-336). Predictably, the role of ‘royal town’ exposed Laon to being at the centre of the struggles for power that tormented the tenth century and that brought about the construction in 928 of a fortified castrum at the western edge of the hill. Only in 950, after the fluctuating fortunes of the contenders, was Laon returned to the hands of the royal dynasty. King Louis IV and King Lothar established their residence at the side of the Abbey of St John, possibly encompassed by the fortified walls of the palace. The tower built by Louis d’Outremer before 946 was still called Porte Royale in the seventeenth century (Vercauteren 1934: 336-338).

Although several campaigns of trial excavations have been carried out in the area, only a handful of traces of ancient occupation have been found. Among them, are some medieval ditches (Flucher 2007). LXXII Laon (Mundlothuin) Although Laon did not figure among the Roman civitates of Gallia Belgica, in Gallo-Roman times a settlement occupied an isolated hilltop dominating the plain. It was named Lugdunum or Laudunum, after the Celtic term translated into French as clair-mont. At least from the sixth century onwards, the name of Clavatum, of uncertain origin, was preferably used for the settlement 123

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.23: Laon. Schematic map of the town at the beginning of the thirteenth century. After Saint-Denis 1983: plate 1.

Two years before Sigeric’s visit, in 988, Laon was involved in the struggle between Charles of Lorraine and Hugh the Great. The latter besieged the town, where Charles had started to work on new defensive structures at the palace and tower (Ortenberg 1990: 242), and in 991 reconquered the town. Although it has been argued that Charles had fought against Adalbero in his capacity as bishop-count, the historical evidence does not allow such inference, as it is possible that Adalbero was simply exerting his authority as owner of the domains, although it is evident that in the course of the eleventh century the bishops of Laon acted independently from royal authority (Sassier 1987: 231236).

the Carolingian age that Laon flourished as one of the most influential cultural centres of the time, with the cathedral school excelling during the Carolingian Renaissance, thanks also to the contribution of Irish scholars gathered there under the guidance of John Scotus Eriugena (Ortenberg 1992: 223). Other foundations are recorded for the period, for instance the monastery of St Hilary. A few pieces of information can be collected for the monastery of St Vincent, according to tradition founded by the Merovingian queen Brunhilda (Contreni 1978: 13). Given its impressive position, perched atop a hill raised on the surrounding plain, its impregnability enhanced by its ramparts, during the ninth century Laon was considered a very safe place, where monks from centres attacked by the Normans could shelter, like those from Gent, and relics could be safely housed (e.g. those of St Quentin). In 886, Bishop Dido accorded admittance to a group of canons from Pierrepont, fleeing before the Northmen, to the monastery of St Vincent, where they sheltered the precious relics of their patron St Boetian (Contreni 1978: 14). Nonetheless, the suburbium of the town was raided in 882 and the abbeys of St Vincent and St Hilary were set on fire (Vercauteren 1934: 331332). Several attempts to restore St Vincent carried out in the first half of the tenth century failed because of the relentless attacks; the monastery, chosen as burial place of Laon’s bishops, found stability only under the oversight of Bishop Roric.

This close link with the last Carolingian dynasty involved Laon in their decline. Probably it is not by chance that no source survives about the school and scholarly production at Laon. Bishop Adalbero (who succeeded Roric in 977 and lived until 1030) might have been still one of the most influential ecclesiastics of his time but ‘his intellectual activity was limited to polemic’ (Contreni 1978: 25-26). Some of the oldest churches were founded in the Merovingian phase: St Christopher (later the Abbey of St Vincent), St Peter and the Abbey of the Virgin and St John, all just outside the walls (Ortenberg 1992: 223). A female monastery was founded in 640 by a group of noblewomen who originally settled in Laon; it was dedicated to Notre-Dame-la-Profonde. The community was headed by Salaberga, who built six more churches in Laon to host the growing number of nuns (Contreni 1978: 15). However, it was during

In the last decades of the ninth century, the separation between the canonical and episcopal manse was completed. 124

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric The ancient episcopal palace, located north-east of the cathedral, is partially preserved in the modern Palais de Justice. Excavations in the early 1980s brought to light parts of the building of the Carolingian phase, superimposed on structures dated to the fifth century. The building was destroyed by fire in the second half of the eleventh century and had been rebuilt by the beginning of the twelfth century (Crepin-Leblond 1994a).

or Nemetacum, after a sacred wood in the area (nemeton), but was renamed Atrebatum after the Roman conquest. Atrébatie was thus extended to name the surrounding region. The town was fortified in the course of the third century AD; its walls were around 1200m long, enclosing a surface area of 8.64ha. According to unreliable sources, the town wall was extended in 367‒370 to also include a part of the citadel and the area where the Abbey of St Vaast would have been built (Varcauteren 1934: 185) (Figure 5.24). In the course of the fifth century, a few tribes of Salian Franks settled in the area (Varcauteren 1934: 186).

It is possible that at the same time the Hôtel-Dieu of the town was established (Saint-Denis 1983). LXXIII Martinwæꝺ/Martinwaeth (Martini Vadum) = Seraucourt-le-Grand?

It has been argued that the process of Christianisation was precocious but there are no sources to confirm this information (Leduque 1966: 19). The information about the proselytism of a priest named Diogenes at the beginning of the fifth century remains legendary, like the idea that the bishop of Reims elevated him to the episcopate (Varcauteren 1934: 186). With more certainty, we can affirm that the Church of Arras was soon in competition with that of Cambrai, the former being disadvantaged by the fact that it lost its episcopal rank probably soon after its establishment by Bishop Vaast (or Vedast, later known as St Vaast), around 540, who enjoyed the support of King Clovis but was opposed by St Remigius and was soon deposed (Leduque 1966: 19). Later on, despite the re-establishment of a bishopric,47 the role of Arras was overshadowed by the imposing Abbey of St Vaast.

Although the place name can be translated as ‘St Martin’s ford’, it is not easy to identify its location (Ortenberg 1990: 242). In the edition of the Memorials, of St Dunstan, Stubbs (1874: 395, no. 73) provides three alternative possibilities, but only Saint-Martin-surAmignon is placed along the route to Doingt. However, no elements of medieval occupation have been found in the area. LXXIV Doingt-sur-la-Cologne (Duin) The old centre, now joint in an administrative cluster with Flamicourt, is a sort of suburb at the eastern edge of the town of Péronne, outside Porte Bretagne. The suburb developed on the right bank of the river Cologne (a.k.a. Coulogne or Coulette de Doingt), at the foot of the hill dominating on the north-eastern side. It is mentioned in the Chronicle of Flodoard as Donincum castellum in 931; in a document of the Archives Départementales de la Somme of 1046, it is recorded as Dodonicus (Lejeune 1899).

The geographical position and strong connectivity of Arras exposed it to the Norman invasions, already in 851, and especially in 880 (when the relics of St Vaast were translated to a more secure place, probably in Beauvais), 881 and 883, when finally a fortified perimeter around the abbey started to be built upon the authorisation of King Charles the Fat. Henceforward, the newly termed castrum was able to resist the further menaces prompted against the agglomeration; in 893 the monastery was considered so safe that the relics of St Vaast were returned (Varcauteren 1934: 190-191). The fact that the town was possibly not equipped with new fortifications led to its progressive abandonment and loss of importance to the advantage of the new fortified village.

Interestingly, a link can be established between the Abbey of Péronne, founded by the Irish missionary Fursa, who had worked in East Anglia before going to Gaul, and Christ Church, Canterbury, where the head of Fursa was treasured as a relevant relic (Ortenberg 1990: 242). LXXV Arras (Aꝺerats/Atherats) The town of Arras was located at the junction of several important roads, leading, for instance, to Amiens, Thérouanne, Cassel, Tournai and Cambrai. Since Roman times and until Late Antiquity, it had been renowned for its textile production, which evolved into the famous production of tapestry ‒ called arazzi in Italian after the town itself.

In the first half of the tenth century, the town (and probably the castrum of St Vaast) fell into the hands of the counts of Flanders. In the ninth century, a cloister of canons was founded in the town, but the absence of a bishop prevented the canons from extending their secular authority outside the limits of the institution

The first settlement recorded in the area is a Gallic oppidum, settled by the tribe of Atrebati, in Gallia Belgica. The village/oppidum was originally named Nemetocenna

47  The first reliable mention of a bishop at Arras dates, in fact, to 1093: Varcauteren 1934: 187.

125

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.24: Arras. Schematic map of the Gallo-Roman oppidum with 1: the cathedral; 2: the borough with the Abbey of St Vaast; 3: petit place; 4: grand place. After Chédeville 1980: 110.

itself (Varcauteren 1934: 192-193). The years between 966 and 988 were troubled for Arras, for which the counts of Flanders and the kings contended, but at the latest in 988 the town returned to the control of the counts by concession of Hugh Capet (Varcauteren 1934: 194-196).

church, partially built reusing structures of a baths complex of the fourth century. The church would have been destroyed in the eighth century to be replaced by a new complex. The area of the early cathedral would then have been transformed into a courtyard, where wooden structures would have been built. The latter would have been replaced in the course of the eleventh century by burials. Only in the thirteenth century would the sturdy foundations of the Westbau have been placed at the entrance of the new cathedral (Jaques 1994: 128-129)

In the eleventh century the counts of Flanders often resided in Arras, since they probably enjoyed the lack of episcopal competition. However, the abbey kept its control over a large part of the territory, while also raking in a percentage of the tolls. It expanded further and at the end of the twelfth century the cluster of constructions around the abbey appeared as a real urban centre (Varcauteren 1934: 196-197).

The abbey was probably founded by St Aubert between 650 and 670, but the authenticity of many of the documents related to that period is contested. The abbey encompassed three churches, dedicated to St Vaast (or the Holy Cross), St Peter and the Virgin. A church dedicated to St Maurice, probably dating to the eighth century, was located north-west of the Abbey (Vercauteren 1934: 198-199). A hamlet developed around it; later it was called Vieux Bourg and paralleled the castrum of the abbey itself. South of the Vieux Bourg, the Novus Burgus developed from the eleventh century.

As anticipated, the existence of Christian institutions cannot be ascertained before the seventh century, when the presence of an urban church dedicated to the Virgin and of the abbey in the suburbium, on the right bank of the river Crinchon, is attested to by documents (Varcauteren 1934: 188). Some amateur excavations interpreted the archaeological evidence under the modern cathedral as remains of an early Christian 126

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric The Abbey of St Vaast rapidly grew and established itself as a place where even the Carolingian kings used to stay, enlarging its possessions and overshadowing the town. The abbey even had its own market, which was provisioned with fresh fish coming directly from its fisheries on the shores of the Channel. Frequented at the latest from the end of the tenth century, the market of the borough fostered trade in a wide range of merchandise and originated a flow of tax revenues. It attracted pilgrims, merchants and scholars ‒ a German or Flemish and an Irishman among the first in the tenth century (Miracula S. Vedasti, in AA.SS. Jan. I, p. 124 (ad a. 1014); Feb. I, p. 821) and many others among the latter (e.g. Ges. Pont. Cam. 1.29, p. 413; Cart. abb. S. Vaast pp. 144145). The abbey also owned infrastructures for lodging travellers whose management was probably outsourced (Diploma of Charles the Bald, 3 oct. 868: tabernam unam in vico monasterii: Cart. abb. S. Vaast p. 42).

of the monks of the Abbey of Fontenelle. In the Vita Lantberti (companion and successor of St Wandrille, native of the surroundings of Thérouanne), it is said that most monasteries in the region of Boulogne and Thérouanne followed the rule of St Wandrille, in English better known as Wandregisel. The relics of the saint, transferred in the mid-ninth century from the Abbey of St Wandrille to Fontenelle because of the Norman invasion, travelled to several locations in the Pas-de-Calais until the mid-tenth century, before being returned to Fontanelle. This long stay in the Boulonnais promoted the devotion to the saint; several abbeys and monasteries were thus affiliated to the vandregisiliens rule (soon to be replaced by the Benedectine: Leduque 1957: 24-25). The establishment of an episcopal see was promoted in the seventh century by Audemarus,48 better known as Omer, who settled at the episcopal church of Boulogne, from where he proceeded to acquire the church of Thérouanne, which in a short time became the main seat. Hence in the sources Audemarus is said episcopus Bononiae et Taruanensis oppida (AA.SS., Aug. VI, Vita S. Agile 2, p. 577). During the ninth century, however, Thérouanne was so exposed to Viking attacks (infra), that the episcopal see was transferred to Boulogne. Soon returning to Thérouanne, the bishop undertook the construction of a new cathedral that was progressively enlarged until it became one of the most imposing Gothic monuments of the region (Mélard 2012: 4).

St Vaast was one of the most popular continental saints in England even before the arrival of the manuscript known as ‘Leofric Missal’, written at St Vaast in the ninth century and used at Glastonbury in the tenth, then at Exeter in the eleventh century. Moreover, the close relationship between the abbey and Canterbury are witnessed by the already mentioned epistolary exchange between archbishops Æthelgar and Sigeric and Fulrad, abbot of St Vaast (Vanderputten 2006; see supra chap. 4, pp. 65, 88). The long stretch of road connecting Arras with Thérouanne, approximately 55km apart, is followed by an amazingly rectilinear modern road (D. 341) that closely follows the medieval chaussée Brunehaut (supra, chap. 4, p. 56; chap. 5, p. 92), in turn the direct heir of the Roman road. The ancient straight route is interrupted only between Camblain-l’Abbé and Gauchin-Légal, and between Rebreuve-Rauchicourt and CamblainChâtelain (Laborde 1983: 444). It is also visible south of Arras, where however it does not retain the name of chaussée Brunehaut.

The friction between the two centres remained for the following centuries, requiring intervention on the part of the pope in the twelfth century (Leduque 1957: 25). Most probably, the cathedral was originally dedicated to St Martin and St Peter, the first particularly connected to the presence of major roads (Leduque 1957: 26).

The Roman town of Taruenna is located along the route from Boulogne to Arras, described in the Roman itineraries, along the river Lys. The town was probably encircled by walls in the Late Imperial period, but they are not known archaeologically, while archaeological evidence shows that the area occupied by the settlement at the end of the third century covered approximately 140ha (Mélard 2012: 3).

The centre features in the medieval chronicles a few times during the ninth century, on the occasion of the Norman invasions. A first attack was carried out in 850, a second in 861 and again in 879, while the raids of the years 887 and 889 seem not to have involved Thérouanne, by then probably reduced to rubble (Varcauteren 1934: 320-321). Progressively rebuilt in the course of the tenth century, the town recuperated part of its monumentality, with the construction of the canons’ cloister (in 1069, involving a separation between the episcopal and the canonical manse) and of a new cathedral (Varcauteren 1934: 321) (Figure 5.25). From a political point of view, Thérouanne was firmly controlled by the counts of Flanders who, during the

The presence of the road heavily influenced the process of Christianisation. If a few sources suggest that the citizens of Taruenna were Christianised by St Victricius, bishop of Rouen, in the Boulonnais region Christian expansion was fostered by the presence

48  The episcopal lists of Thérouanne mention two bishops for the sixth century but their existence is not documented by early sources: Bled 1904: 35-38. Furthermore, given the gap in the list from Athalbert († 552) to Omer, who ascended to the episcopal throne before 638, the see is claimed to have been vacant for more than eighty years.

LXXVII Thérouanne

127

The Route of the Franks

Figure 5.25: Thérouanne. Sketch of the town in the seventeenth century by Malbrancq J. De Morinis et Morinorum rebus, Tornaci Nerviorum, 1647, reporting on some ‘excavations’ carried out in the sixteenth century. After Bernard 1985: fig. 1A.

tenth and eleventh centuries, frequently had their say on episcopal matters (Varcauteren 1934: 322).

Consequently, archaeological research at Thérouanne is facilitated by the limited modern expansion, although the site of the Vieille Ville has been heavily depleted by being pillaged to reuse the building material (Mélard 2012: 4-5).

Although part of the traffic between Great Britain and central Europe crossed the town, its appeal during the High Middle Ages seems limited.49 Moreover, in the eleventh century the town was very modest, with a small urban population, a few churches, the episcopal palace and the houses of the canons (Varcauteren 1934: 322-23).

The location of the cathedral has long been ascertained at the core of the northern part of the medieval town, beside the medieval pathway called ‘chemin de Saint-Jean’ (Ajot et al. 1998: 274-277). On the basis of some amateur archaeological excavations carried out from the 1970s, and of random findings of early medieval sculptures, it has been maintained that the Gothic church was preceded by an early Christian or Merovingian edifice, or even by an episcopal complex comprising two churches (the largest on the northern side) and a baptistery (at the southern edge) (Figure 5.26). However, this reconstruction leaves room for doubt, and recent research has not been

Thérouanne’s strategic position led to the decision of Emperor Charles V to raze the centre to the ground and to forbid its reoccupation (mid-sixteenth century). 49 

At the end of the tenth century, the Vita S. Abbonis laconically remarks that travellers chose to stay as shortly as possible: ‘Cumque ad Morinos ventum esset, a quibus brevissimus ad Anglos transitus est’ (Aimoin. Vita S. Abb. c. 391).

128

Chapter 5. In the Footsteps of Sigeric

Figure 5.26: Thérouanne. Schematic plan of the episcopal complex, with hypothetical indication of the ramparts according to Bernard. After Ajot et al. 1998: 276.

able to confirm any of the above nor to substantiate the interpretation with datable stratigraphies and findings (Ajot et al. 1998: 274-277; see Bernard 1985 and Figure 5.25).

LXXVIII Guînes (Guisnes, Gisne) The municipal territory of Guînes spreads south of Calais, at the edge of the coastal plain, on the ridge separating the regions of Calais and Boulogne. Since the altitude of this coastal strip is almost equal to the average sea level, part of this territory was marshy and interwoven by many lagoons and ponds, nowadays largely drained. The town rises on a chalky plateau elevated up to almost 150m a.a.s.l. The centre is considered to be of Roman origin, but information is scarce for the Middle Ages, although Guînes was capital of a small county. Popular literature reports an attack by the Danes in 928, that would have led to the construction of the fenced mound with double ditch considered to be of Scandinavian tradition, and that would have given rise to the castle. Thus in the midtenth century, the stronghold of Guînes seemed so impregnable that Arnulf I, count of Flanders, decided to

On the other hand, a campaign of archaeological investigation carried out in 2010 has given confirmation of the exceptional level of conservation of the still buried structures of the cathedral and has brought to light part of the decorative sculpture of the facade (Mélard 2012: 10). One of the saints venerated in Thérouanne, Amandus, was also immensely popular in England, chiefly because of the links of various monasteries with his two foundations at Gent. Another local saint, Silvinus, also appears in two calendars of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries in Wessex and at Christ Church, Canterbury.

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The Route of the Franks include it in his domain by means of ‘diplomatic’ action, marrying his daughter Elstrude to the Danish leader Sigfrid (956), who thus acquired the title of count of Guînes (Schwennicke 1984: pl. 5). Over time, however, vassalage to the count of Flanders weakened and the County of Guînes gained in independence and strength.

Jardin du Couvent has brought to light a large enclosure, probably with a funerary function, attributable to the ‘disc barrow’ or ‘bell barrow’ type, datable to the Early or Middle Bronze Age. This barrow was partially reoccupied with a few dozen medieval and post-medieval structures (Henton, Auxiette and Defgnee 2006).

Trial excavation carried out at the motte de la Cuve (a.k.a. motte du Château), a huge earthwork of around 60m diameter, almost 10m high, has evidenced structures of the English period (1347-1558). No archaeological remains of the tenth century phase, attributed by written documents to the first count of Guînes, Sigfrid the Danish, nor of the circular donjon erected after 1181 by Baldwin II, have been detected (Routier 1994a).

Other traces of post-classical occupation come from the historical trail called la Leulène, that crossed Guînes connecting Thérouanne to Sangatte, considered to be of Gallo-Roman origin. During works along the route départementale 244, a cemetery dating back to the fourth century was partially brought to light. A series of houses clustered along the road in the fourteenth century, showing that the route was still frequented (Maniez 2008).

Similarly, the excavations carried out at the ramparts and at the motte de la Walle have delivered information only about the later phases. Therefore, the ramparts and the additions to the mound can be now dated to the so-called ‘English period’ of Guînes, corresponding to the seventeenth century (Henton 2006), while the materials from the motte date to the fourteenth century (Routier 1994b).

LXXIX Sombre (Sumeran) From Guînes to the Channel, Sigeric’s party probably followed the route leading to the now silted up port of Wissant, via Sombre. The coastal region, although marshy, was densely populated, as documented by a few rescue excavations carried out by INRAP: for instance, at Saint-Tricat, north-west of Guînes, in rue du Marais, where traces of a rural settlement datable to the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries have been uncovered (Neaud, Creteur and Routier 2011).

Archaeological excavation carried out at the beginning of the third millennium in the area of the Résidence

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Chapter 6. A Cross-section of Continental Europe at the End of the First Millennium AD Abstract: Building upon the topographical elements attested at the end of the tenth century, we attempted to depict the landscape crossed by Sigeric. The description of the archaeological evidence of that phase for the urban centres and for their main monuments serves as a basis for delving into the cultural environment of the period and is used to frame and understand the reasons behind Sigeric’s choices. Conclusions are drawn on the hypothetical landscape and cultural backdrop experienced by Sigeric and other travellers of his time during their journey.

97). The religious function of towns was intensified by the insecurity and regular devastation of their suburbs, since most important relics and treasures were transferred into urban churches, monasteries and sanctuaries (Chédeville 1980: 50).

Towns and centres Since Sigeric reports having stopped in most cases in important towns or relevant ecclesiastical locations, our review will start from the large centres, anticipating that we can extend the considerations for Reims to almost all the urban settlements listed in Sigeric’s journey: his passage ‘occurred at a time when the town was, both intellectually and economically, exceptionally prosperous’ (see Ortenberg 1990: 243).

Episcopal complexes A prominent phenomenon of the late Merovingian and Frankish period is the insertion in the urban tissue of a real episcopal presence, often implying continuity with the early Christian phase, as in Thérouanne, where the largest of the three buildings excavated under the Carolingian crypt seems to be attributable to the earliest community church. The quartier canonial, therefore, developed naturally as a follow-up to the domus ecclesiae (Chevalier 1997: 400-401). However, generally speaking, the spatial organisation of this episcopal ‘town’ can be mapped only for the later phases, as we have seen in Laon.

The only exception is Besançon. Although historiography has shown that in the Carolingian era Besançon was an important city and that in the tenth century it was dominated by great secular principalities, in particular that of Mâcon, which came to control even territories to the east of the Saône, previously controlled by the marquis-duke of Burgundy (952), and where many restorations were undertaken in the ninth century, the tenth century was stagnant, to the point that many interventions were necessary in the eleventh century to reinstate the decor of monuments and centres (Barral I Altet 1987a: 327-328).

What is called ‘the episcopal group’, the ensemble of the cathedral, the bishop’s residence, the houses of the clergy and eventually other infrastructure linked to the bishop’s role (e.g. hospitals and/or hostels for pilgrims and the poor), often occupies an imposing part of the walled area. Frequently it is in an elevated but eccentric position, leaning against the walls, therefore standing as a sort of fortress inside the town. At Langres, for example, the episcopal group occupies almost half of the intramural surface, although here the episcopal palace did not directly lean against the walls but largely ran parallel to it. The defensive appearance was enhanced by a massive guard tower. The hospital and the small churches of St Peter and St Denis overlooked the forecourt of the cathedral. There was an oven and north of the palace a large barn faced the cellars. The cemetery spread along the walls with its funerary chapel (Heers 1990: 149-151). One of the newest components of the episcopal group was the chapter, the residence of the canons appointed to the service of the cathedral. The chapters were a very prominent urban element, mainly in northern France, since their establishment implied the construction of several imposing and

Going back in time, we could summarise the history of those Gallic towns that evolved into episcopal centres as follows: after the crisis that brought about a shrinking of their surface area and their relevance in late imperial times, the towns benefitted from the ‘aura’ of holiness imprinted on them by the Merovingian kings, until they resumed their process of urbanisation in the ancient tradition thanks to the stability ensured by the first Carolingian dynasties, starting from the beginning of the ninth century (Hubert 1959a: 529). In this phase, the towns of northern France were more active in the restoration of the canons of traditional urbanism (Hubert 1954). From the tenth century, in towns such as Metz, Lyon and Vienne, the most farreaching reorganisations of the urban layout were due to the construction of cathedral chapter complexes or hospitals. If the intramural area was sufficiently large and underdeveloped during the Early Middle Ages, as in Reims, the ecclesiastical buildings expanded inside the circuits of the old walls (Chédeville 1980: 131

The Route of the Franks characteristic buildings, including the maisons canoniales. Although the main cloister was inevitably their core, this large ensemble of buildings generally expanded around it (Heers 1990: 152). In England, where the cathedral chapter did not usually include canons, and monastic communities were directly linked to the episcopal group, the topography of the episcopal complexes was significantly affected by these monastic buildings (Heers 1990: 158). The best-known example is Canterbury, thanks to a map of the twelfth century for locating the infrastructure for water provisioning (Urry 1967; supra, Figure 4.3). This asset, however, dates to the twelfth century; it highlights the importance of pilgrimage to the relics of Thomas Becket, and the domus hospiciorum that sustained it.

In 911, the leader of the Vikings, Rollo, agreed to be baptised and swore loyalty to King Charles the Simple, and was therefore given lands in the area of Rouen. This led to an end to the relentless deadly attacks on coastal regions and the condition of insecurity affecting urban development. However, the devastations of the Danes were not fully over, and other invasions followed in a short period of time: Hungarians and Saracens, starting in the same year of 911, caused less destruction but at the same time hindered the development of coastal towns, to the point that the episcopal lists of places like Nice, Toulon and Antibes are interrupted until the end of the tenth century (Chédeville 1980: 34-35). In brief, the conditions of instability that characterised the Western Kingdom triggered some developments in settlement patterns, among which the most relevant are the diffusion of castella (i.e. fortified villages) in the countryside and the erection of urban strongholds in towns such as Laon, Châlons-en-Champagne and Reims (Fernie 2014: 47). Most of these fortification systems proved sufficiently effective, but in the long run they constrained the expansion of the urban centres.

Fortifications Several early medieval towns in France were encircled by late antique walls in petit appareil, though most were shorter and the fortified areas smaller than their Roman predecessors. At Reims, for example, the citywall length reached 2200m, enclosing a surface area of 20 to 30ha,1 while it was 1200m at Arras, and the wall encircled an area of no more than 6‒7ha at Châlons (Vercauteren 1959: 456-457). At Châlons, the circuit was extended around 950 to include the suburban sanctuary of St Alpin between the rivers Mau and Nau, and in 963 a tower was added. Before 1028, the walls had already encompassed the ancient castrum surrounding the cathedral (Barral I Altet 1987a: 317).

Palaces Although profoundly inspired by the Carolingian vision of the palace, and imbued with the ancient tradition that this was the place where enlightened governors dispensed justice, in contrast to those despots entrenched in castra and fortresses, the appearance of the seigneurial residences of the late tenth and eleventh centuries changed significantly, mostly following the establishment of the territorial principalities. The latter phenomenon triggered the erection of many buildings, sharing the characteristics of palatial and fortified residences, in particular in Normandy, where the need for a sort of consecration was more keenly felt (Renoux 2002: 15-16).

As we saw in the previous chapter, the relative stability of the early Carolingian period had allowed a few centres (e.g. Langres and Reims) to dismantle their walls to reuse the building material. The presence of sanctuaries inside the walled area was thought to function as protection against misfortunes, epidemics and other disasters. Not for nothing were Lyon and Reims considered better protected by their churches than their walls (Hubert 1959a: 537-544). The Norman invasions, however, had the effect of pushing towns once again to fortify their urban settlements and religious centres, turning them into a fenced borough2 (Hubert 1959a: 530). The ninth and tenth centuries were then characterised by the erection of smaller fortified circuits inside the town, sorts of citadels, as in Arras in 883-887 around the Abbey of St Vaast, referred to as a castrum in a document from 890. The castra of St Remigius (built in 923-925 by Archbishop Seulfus) and St Arnoul at Reims (probably erected in the same period) are other examples (Chédeville 1980: 44).

The conditions of political instability and of military unrest, with the frequent attacks of the Northmen and other invaders, which rapidly led to the installation of urban defences (supra), concurrently caused the fortification of the centres of power, generating the symbiosis of palace and castrum, in a process defined as castralisation du palais (Renoux 2002: 16-21). However, among the Carolingian (fortified) palaces that were set up in several towns in France, the only one along the itinerary of Sigeric, Laon, was neglected by the Capetians (Chédeville 1987: 64), and probably represented a negligible part of the townscape admired by Sigeric.

1  In Reims the medieval circuit is identical to the Roman one, elliptical with four gates (Chédeville 1980: 36-37). 2  Since the Carolingian period, the term borough seems to address a hamlet, located in the suburbium or in the countryside, and in most cases its role as marketplace seems to be ascertained: Chédeville 1980: 61.

Suburbia Although the birth of new boroughs in the suburbia of important centres is directly linked to demographic 132

Chapter 6. A Cross-section of Continental Europe at the End of the First Millennium AD but also political pressures, the presence of later suburban churches, which did not arise in connection with venerated burials, seems above all to be related to the increasing influx of pilgrims for the great religious festivals who could not be accommodated in the cramped cities and in their small cathedrals. Cathedrals themselves suffered from the antagonism of churches dedicated to, or containing relics of, local saints and bishops, which often fulfilled the same function as the community’s mother church (e.g. St Martin of Tours: Hubert 1959a: 546-547). On the other hand, the need to provide important religious sites outside the urban walls was soon felt, and fortification works were undertaken in many suburban monasteries and sanctuaries from the mid-ninth to the end of the tenth century, although the defensive structures were mainly earthworks rather than the stone walls inside the urban belts. The rise of ‘strongholds’ outside the main centre led in a few cases to friction and even conflict. Such was the case for Arras, where the fortified faubourg reached an extent almost equal to that of the episcopal town (Hubert 1959a: 552-553).

regions controlled by the German emperors and the first successors of the Salian dynasty (until 1040), and the regions of northern Italy, Catalonia and Burgundy where this so-called First Southern Romanesque Art was seen to have been dominant (see Vergnolle 2012: 18-20). This schematic vision has been progressively replaced by a more nuanced theory. It is clear that the geographical definition is not as neat as claimed and that even the characteristics that were considered peculiarities of each of these styles are effectively also present elsewhere. Most monuments of western Europe were indeed characterised by the sturdiness of the forms and the severity of the decoration; the most important innovations of the period were a new orientation to the west and the introduction of a sort of ‘ante-church’, the westwork or Westbau, often superimposed on a crypt (Chevalier 1997: 113-119). The popularity of the westwork is a common element of many churches of the late Carolingian period (Caillet 2001: 149-153). Other innovations were introduced in Champagne and in the rest of France only from the eleventh century, for instance with the twin towers at the sides of the apsis adopted from Lotharingia-Lorraine, as at NotreDame-en-Vaux and the cathedral of Châlons, attesting to Ottonian influence (Héliot 1972: 114).

In other cases like Reims, these ‘foundation burgs’ were developed both outside and within the city wall and were promoted by the Chapter and the archbishops. These new settlements occupied areas that had remained undeveloped (e.g. between the Cité and St Denis to the west, St Remigius to the southwest). However, along the via Caesarea heading to the borough of St Remigius, the settlement developed only between 1070 and 1100 (Heers 1990: 194; see Figure 5.19).

The contrast between the magnificence of the Carolingian Renaissance and the sobriety of early Romanesque art in France remained, however, stark. In certain regions like Champagne, the architectural expressions of late Carolingian art are considered monolithic and simple like those that came later, characterised as they were by unarticulated walls, straight naves and trussed roofs (Héliot 1972: 105). We can say that the tenth century marks a complete break with the past, and part of this apparent simplicity has been blamed on the lack of resources due to political and social insecurity. However, we have to consider that the disruption attributable to invasions (Vikings, Moors, Hungarians etc.) was localised and that most of the achievements of the last Carolingian art were still standing and were beacons of illuminating examples. Nonetheless, especially in the eleventh century, the urge to replace the antiquated constructions was strongly felt. The same applied to other forms of artistic expression, although in those fields continuity was sought at the same time as renovation and substitution of styles and techniques (Gaborit 2005: 50). Hence, to catch the innovativeness of the arts of this transitional period, we have to look at decorative art and at the productions of the scriptoria.3

Trade and exchange The end of the Norman invasions is unanimously considered to have favoured an economic renaissance, revitalising the old trade centres and boosting the establishment of new marketplaces, especially in the vicinity of ancient civitates and castra. By the tenth century, Reims and Châlons-en-Champagne could be counted in the first group of towns that saw a trade centre developing within the ancient walls; at Reims, the medieval market eventually occupied the Roman forum (Ganshof 1943: 26). The process, however, was not uniform. Some ancient civitates like Thérouanne did not flourish as happened elsewhere in the region between the rivers Rhine and Seine (Ganshof 1943: 24). Churches, abbeys, sanctuaries and artistic trends France

To review just a handful of examples from the places where Sigeric might have passed, we can list a lectionary from the cathedral of Reims (Gaborit-Chopin 2005: 222, no. 165, dated before 1096), the figurative appliques in ivory from Saint-Omer (probably from the Abbey of St Bertin: Gaborit-Chopin 2005: 302, no. 229, dated around 1000), the manuscript of the Vie de Saint Bertin from Boulogne-surMer (Gaborit-Chopin 2005: 315, no. 238, dated between 990 and 1007),

3 

Sigeric’s journey took place in the gestation period of what was defined as the ‘First Romanesque Art’ by Puig I Cadafalch at the beginning of the twentieth century. The theory established a dichotomy between the domain of Ottonian architecture, spread in the 133

The Route of the Franks In any case, the aspiration towards ‘continuity’ was less pressing in Francia Occidentalis, where royal and imperial authority was less keenly felt and there was no ambition to revitalise the glorious splendour of the Carolingian age.

across Burgundy, since he did not cross the centres of the Duchy where the newest monuments were already embellishing the townscape (Sapin 2012). Having crossed Lombardy and Burgundy in a period when, notwithstanding the embryonic stage of the style (the starting date of which is much disputed: Fernie 2014: 4-7), the ferments of the new approach were already perceivable, did Sigeric feel the wind of change?

In other words, the tenth-century Christian topography is heavily patterned by Carolingian developments. Especially in the rural context, most buildings and even churches were still built in wood, while in towns there were already a number of stone churches, many of them heirs to early Christian basilicas, as in Reims, where the basilica built by Jovin in the fourth century (supra, chap. 5, p. 117) became St Nicaise, and the old cathedral of SS Apostles became St Symphorian. The persistence of wooden constructions in the later Carolingian age, put forward on the basis of Glaber’s comment on the reconstruction of the church of Reims, seems to be confirmed by surveys carried out in the 1980s, showing that the diffusion of churches built in stone generally does not pre-date the year 1000 (Pesez 1985: 197-201). However, a more thorough analysis of the cultural ferment and artistic production of the tenth century, especially in its second half, proves that a process of monumentalisation promoted by the monastic reform movement affected not only the main centres and their suburbia, but also more remote monasteries and churches (Heitz 1987). Although the diffusion of the canons of Romanesque art was precocious in northern France, parts of Belgium and the Rhineland, given the strong imprint of Carolingian artistic trends, these areas were not characterised by originality and notable architectural achievements (Vergnolle 2005). Among other things, most churches were not vaulted, remaining attached to the Early Christian and Carolingian tradition of the couverture en charpente (i.e. roofing with wooden trusses), but of course no original structure is preserved, and it is therefore difficult to assess the appearance of these buildings at the time of Sigeric (Gaillard 2005: 5-10).

The peak of the phenomenon of pilgrimage triggered substantial changes in those churches sheltering important relics. In most cases, the enlargements led to the construction of vaulted roofs, implying the dominance of masonry work over decorative elements (Destemberg 2017: 37). From the council of Aachen of 817, and especially after the reigns of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, many urban fiscal domains were used to build cloisters for the canons, beginning the establishment of ecclesiastical estates inside towns (Vercauteren 1959: 477-478). Following the reform of the eighth century, which required the cathedral clergy of Gaul to lead a common life as monks (the reform of Chrodegang was put in place between 756 and 816), the canons were obliged to reside in a structure specially built at the side of the cathedral. It had to include an oratory, chapter house, refectory, cloister, cells and other typical ‘monastic’ spaces, and to be enclosed by a wall with a single access. These complexes were so vast that their insertion in the urban tissue often necessitated expropriation of residents and demolition of other buildings or segments of the walls (Hubert 1962: 9193). Although almost nothing survives of its tenth- to twelfth-century structures, the complex of Besançon shows that the conventional organisation consisted of a cloister surrounded by buildings regularly arranged around a courtyard (Hubert 1962: 101-103). England Most of the historical contextualisation of the artistic expressions and architectural manifestations of the tenth century in England is framed in a ‘mythic’ version of a native culture threatened by the Viking invasions, which survived thanks to the victorious activity of King Alfred the Great and flourished thanks to the vital impetus of the spirit of monastic reform. Obviously, this interpretation is a simplification directly inherited from contemporaries and does not consider that by the end of the tenth century the light of the reform movement was already dimming (Gem 1991: 803-804).

Alas, only a few architectural monuments of the period are preserved for us to study; those that survive or are known through excavation or sources are almost without exception dated to the early or second quarter of the eleventh century. Of the thirty or so religious buildings existing in France from the Carolingian era, more than half originate from the sixth century at the latest, but often there is no information about rebuilding until the eleventh century (Barral I Altet 1987a: 300). Besançon, Reims and Thérouanne are the only sites preserving parts of the Carolingian and ‘post-Carolingian’ churches. Not many examples of this embryonic floruit were seen by Sigeric during his trip

Furthermore, only the works carried out at Christ Church, Canterbury, under the direction of Archbishop Oda, elected in 941, can be considered as part of this artistic ferment. Contrary to what is known about

and the manuscript of St Augustin’s Confessions from the Abbey of St Vaast in Arras (Gaborit-Chopin 2005: 316, no. 239, dated at the beginning of the eleventh century).

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Chapter 6. A Cross-section of Continental Europe at the End of the First Millennium AD other projects of the period, such as the Abbey of Glastonbury, little information can be gathered about Oda’s remodelling: it involved a re-roofing of the nave and the heightening of the walls by about 20 feet, and thus does not represent an exemplary achievement of the times (Gem 1991: 814-815). Conversely, it has been argued that the ecclesiastical architecture of the period, although steeped in the canons of late Carolingian and Ottonian architecture, was ‘refreshed’ by the cultural contacts that followed the Viking period. Elements like the western towers, the crossing-like bays, the presence of crypts in the hall and even outside the main building, in addition to innovation in the decorative programmes, can be pointed out as novelties in the panorama (Fernie 2014: 61).

movement originating in Cluny at the beginning of the tenth century substantially renovated the monastic life and restored the ascetic spirit, generating many new foundations as well as absorbing existing ones (Destemberg 2017: 36). Sigeric, however, did not seem to be drawn by the fame of the Burgundian abbey, nor of any of its daughter houses. Topographical convenience seems to have prevailed over ‘political’ interest in the planning of his itinerary. Many of the stops on Sigeric’s route show that the passage of the archbishop of Canterbury and of many other leading figures of the English clergy as well as simple pilgrims played a role in the diffusion of certain saints in the Anglo-Saxon world, as happened with the cults of St Christine of Bolsena, St Maurice of Agaune and, above all, St Remigius of Reims and St Vaast of Arras, who can be listed among the most popular continental saints in England. To these less popular saints such as Caprasius of Aulla, Amandus, Nicasius and Silvinus may be added, albeit mentioned only in written sources (Ortenberg 1990: 244-245).

In general, however, the architecture of the tenth century in England can be said to have been inspired by a certain conservatism, manifested by the care devoted to preserving ancient structures and to building new ones according to traditional models. Contrasting with the tenth century situation, the Early Middle Ages saw strong links with continental France: we have documents showing Benedict Biscop inviting Gallic craftsmen to aid in the construction of the complex of Monkwearmouth in the seventh century, and Carolingian ‘solutions’ are attested early in England, with the ‘bipolar’ asset of the nave with a chapel at the first level of the Westbau and a crypt under the apsis (Caillet 2001: 198-201). Conversely, stimuli and influences from abroad, and especially from Carolingian France, were received randomly and eclectically in the tenth century. This superficial interaction delayed, if it did not frustrate, the development of Romanesque art (Gem 1991: 832-835).

We can highlight other ‘side effects’ of mobility between the Continent and the British Isles, for instance the fame of the Abbey of St Bertin, in northern France, flourishing thanks to the personality of its Abbot Otbert (986-1007), which spread to the other side of the Channel and promoted the lively exchange that Otbert had with Sigeric and his predecessor Æthelgar. These good cross-Channel relations led to the engagement of an ‘English’ illuminator for the completion of the Boulogne Gospels (Riché 1999: 133). Around the year 1000. At the dawn of a new era? The myth of the year 1000, created at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Caesar Baronius’s definition of the tenth century as the ‘century of iron and lead’, fed by the feeling of anguish widespread in the works of Rodulfus Glaber and implemented through the historiography of Romanticism, has long been dismantled4 and replaced by a new understanding of a phenomenon that, however it was felt by some of the men and women of the time, was never grounded in reality (e.g. Barral I Altet 1987b: 12-14; Riché 2001b: 7-9). Furthermore, the perception of time was only superficially felt, almost exclusively linked to the religious calendar and to seasonal activity. It was therefore only in the ecclesiastical schools that an astronomical concept of time was elaborated and attempts to fix Christ’s incarnation were made. Given the large variety of systems to establish the starting point for counting years, however, it is evident that

The cultural scenario The political and ecclesiastical organisation of the eastcentral regions of modern France – the ecclesiastical province of Besançon including the northern portion of Switzerland, the province of Vienne encompassing the diocese of Genève, and that of Tarentaise spreading on both sides of the Alps – promoted cultural exchange and favoured the diffusion of artistic trends (ValleryRadot 2005: 325). One of the most formative events in this period was the foundation of the abbeys of Cluny, at the beginning of the tenth century, and of Citeaux in 1098, two spiritual centres that were destined to give rise to popes and many other very influential figures of the tenth to thirteenth centuries (Vallery-Radot 2005: 326). The wind of reformism came to the monastic communities of France later than in the Anglo-Saxon world. Moreover, in France most efforts seemed to be channelled into detaching the institutions from the ‘political’ control of lay powers. Only the powerful

4  However, the Silvester night between the 31 December 999 and the 1 January 1000 is still described in traditional terms, with a gloomy but thrilling atmosphere: Pellus 2007: 11. See also Gougenheim 1999.

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The Route of the Franks not many people were aware of the incoming turn of the first millennium. Therefore, the concept of an imminent Apocalypse was limited to a few circles of scholars rather than dispersed among large crowds of simple people (Riché 2001b: 7-9).

century. Especially in the north-eastern part of France, the Roman road network remained substantially intact until the Norman invasions, as proven by the fact that the anti-Norman fortifications arose at the nodes of that network (Hubert 1959b: 25-30). However, although a few centres confirmed their role as road junctions, such as Pontarlier, a strategic centre at the crossing of the Jura (Barral I Altet 1987a: 329), new monastic foundations such as Saint-Oyan/Saint-Claude and Baume-les-Dames, or centres as Salins (at the passage of the Jura and at the crossing of the Saône) and fortresses such as Miroual (Joux) and Usier (controlling the route from Besançon to Lausanne and Italy: Vergnolle 2018) arose as important road stations.

We have already discussed the extent to which Rodulfus Glaber’s depiction of decaying monuments, suddenly involved in a sort of general master plan for their reconstruction starting soon after the year 1000, is simplified and misleading. It is enough to mention the ambitious programme of renovation of Reims cathedral by Archbishop Adalbero in the last quarter of the tenth century, paralleled by similar enterprises at Orléans, Paris, in central France (for instance with the spread of the Cluniac movement, leading to new foundations and the renovation of existing monasteries) and further south at Saint-Michel-en-Cuxa (Barral I Altet 1987b: 17-18). The tenth century is also considered ‘a great century for Britain’ (Riché 2001b: 17). Until the last decade of the century, indeed, pressure from the Danes seemed under control, and a few intellectuals of Danish origin contributed to the political and cultural development of the country, as did Oda of Canterbury and Oscytel of York. The seizing of power by Æthelred changed everything, rather dampening spirits, and paradoxically the ascent of the Dane Cnut restored confidence in Britain. Sigeric, then, left England in one of its darkest hours, to be absorbed into a world that was, conversely, characterised by experimental projects and driven by the cultural floruit and the political consolidation of High Medieval society.

Other changes were brought about by the creation of tight monastic networks and the increasing need to connect the ‘mother abbeys’ with their daughter houses, as in the case of Cluny in the tenth century and of the priories of the eleventh century, veritable outposts of the abbeys (Hubert 1959b: 42). The monastic hostelries worked as gîtes d’étape, as shown by the eleventh-century Chronicle of St Benignus of Dijon, where the estates located along the road to Italy owned by the monastery are listed as places where abbots and monks would be offered hospitality (Bougaud and Grenier 1875: 32). The study of settlement dynamics in Burgundy and Franche-Compté shows that the so-called habitats de bord de voie displayed along the voie d’Italie between Pontarlier, Besançon, Pontailler-sur-Saône and Langres were less active than other settlements bordering the other main communication axes of the Agrippan network in Gaul from Late Antiquity (Nouvel and Venault 2017: 40). Indeed, the segment of the road between Besançon and Langres seems to be the less vital in the period following the fourth century. This lack of vitality could be due to the decline of the popularity of this itinerary to the advantage of the more northern route, via Seveux/Segobodium and Larret/Varcia, a decrease in traffic that in the course of the Early Middle Ages would have led to the abandonment of most sites in the valleys of Ognon and Doubs, with the exception of the most prominent ones (e.g. Mirebeau-sur-Bèze and Pontailler-sur-Saône: Nouvel and Venault 2017: 41).

Conclusion. Landscapes of movement at the twilight of the first millennium The road network An efficient communication system was one of the most prominent legacies of the Carolingian empire, even after its fragmentation into several realms and kingdoms. In turn inherited from the Roman Empire, the communication network was an essential instrument of governance, given the heterogeneity of the lands, the perpetual state of warfare after the death of Charlemagne and the ‘itinerancy’ not only of the royal and imperial courts, but also of many representatives of lay and ecclesiastical powers. Mobility of people and exchange of information definitely characterised a large part of ninth- to tenth-century society (McKitterick 2015: 28-29).

River crossing is one of the most interesting technical aspects of mobility. As documentation about bridges in this phase is not abundant nor solid and the existence of bridges is generally argued on the basis of continuity with the Roman or the later medieval periods, not many archaeological data can be provided.

The road network of France at the end of the first millennium was much more similar to the Roman one, pivoting on Lyon, than to the modern one, centred on Paris, a change that followed the institution of the royal postal service enforced by Louis XI in the fifteenth

Moreover, we have to take into account the possibility that some rivers were crossed by means of fords, structurally arranged, or were simply crossed taking 136

Chapter 6. A Cross-section of Continental Europe at the End of the First Millennium AD advantage of shoals. The case of the river Saône, systematically investigated, serves as an excellent example. Although archaeological finds point to intensive activity in pre-Roman times, the high density (more than 66) of regularised shoals that have been detected in the 167km-long river stretch between Verdun-sur-le-Doubts and Lyon, and the chronology of their use, established for that at Port Guillot, south of Chalon-sur-Saône in the third century AD, and for Port de Varennes, 10km further south, in the first century AD, show that this solution was also systematically adopted during the Roman imperial period. Therefore, it would not be surprising to find it exploited during the Early and High Middle Ages (Bonnamour 2000: 46-47).

subscriptions dispensed during the early Capetian rule, with clusters predictably found at Reims and Châlons but less obviously getting very dense at Thérouanne and Laon (Lemarignier 1965: carte 6). It is thus evident that, besides a general topographic convenience, Sigeric favoured ecclesiastical towns over monastic centres, lively towns over popular sanctuaries, cultural centres over pilgrimage destinations. The suggestive idea of a meeting between Sigeric and Gerbert of Aurillac at the cathedral school of Reims is manifestly just speculative. Although highly probable, given Sigeric’s inclination and keen interest for cultural and for episcopal centres, no material evidence survives of such an encounter.

Sigeric’s choices

It is this culturally oriented interest that seems to characterise Sigeric’s profile. If we are to believe that his Roman stay lasted only 3-4 days, and that the greater part of the day was spent in touring churches, it is probable that there was not sufficient time left to acquire and collect antiquities, relics and books to bring back to Canterbury, as most ecclesiastical travellers did. However, if it is correct that the list of popes attached in the manuscript of the itinerary has to be considered a document reported by Sigeric or his assistant, it is evident that the group used the occasion to collect at least some manuscripts, confirming what we know of Sigeric’s interests.

To determine whether Sigeric’s itinerary was planned according to the existence of special links with the ecclesiastical communities of the regions that he intended to cross, it would be essential to understand the nature of these connections. As well as its closeness to the papal court, discussed in chapter 3, the Church of England had documented exchanges with many episcopal sees and religious centres (e.g. Liège, Köln, Bremen, Verdun, Metz, Trier and Mainz). Alas, among them only Besançon is located along what is called the ‘direct route’ from southern England to Rome and therefore featured among Sigeric’s stopping points. A comparison between the schematic reconstruction of the road network in the late Carolingian age (Figures 4.1-4.3) and Sigeric’s itinerary (described in chapter 5) shows that only a few main towns feature in both, suggesting that, although the general routes remained unvaried, either the previous century had produced a substantial change in the topography of the roads and their infrastructure, or Sigeric’s personal choices had played a dominant role in the definition of his itinerary and stopping points. Moreover, the ‘eastern variant’ of the Roman route passing via Besançon, Langres, Reims, Saint-Quentin, Arras, Cassel or Thérouanne and Sangatte seems to be older. Indeed, it is equipped mainly with fords rather than bridges and therefore was easier to maintain. Is this one of the reasons why this route was favoured by the archbishop at the end of the tenth century?

Journey as exploration It is through movement along pathways that people navigate and experience the landscape, since roads make it accessible, and they define our viewpoint. Relationships between routes, landscape and movement are reciprocal and influence each other: on the one hand, tracks allow movement across the landscape; on the other hand, movement affects and conditions the understanding of the landscape. As wonderfully expressed by J. Andrew Darling, inspired by the work of Rebecca Solnit (Solnit 2000), when people take a path to cross a landscape, they perform an interpretation, assessing which is the best way to traverse it, in a process of pathfinding. When other people follow that path, they accept someone else’s interpretation, and therefore, in a certain sense, they replicate their predecessors’ experience, reviving at least part of their feelings and perceptions (Darling 2009: 61). But then, if the action of following a route traced by someone else is an impersonation of that predecessor, transforming the route itself into a sort of theatre where physically and mentally we play a part, can we maintain that Sigeric was aware of being part of a ritual representation implying exploration of unknown surroundings? I would not hesitate in affirming that somehow he must have been conscious

Comparing the schematic maps with the locations of the places where diplomas were issued by Hugh Capet and Robert the Pious between 987 and 1031 (Lemarignier 1965: carte 3), it is evident that Sigeric’s choices of stopovers (and of the route) were not influenced by the political centrality of towns and villages, as only Châlons and Reims benefitted from diplomas and in a very limited number (one in Reims and two in Châlons). The situation is reversed with the map of the episcopal 137

The Route of the Franks that he was playing a certain role, probably feeling more like a pathfinder than an follower. The recording of his stays, although not sufficiently detailed to allow travellers to come and share the same experiences by overnighting in the same monasteries, hostels or episcopal residences, reasonably not expecting his followers to meet the same people, was surely intended to delimit the ‘spatial theatre’, the landscape context where this impersonation was going to be staged. Obviously, it is very difficult to assess the strength of the bond established between the traveller’s personal and cultural identity and the places he journeyed to, as it is almost impossible to understand how deep the sharing of common experiences, symbols and meanings attached to places was. Beyond the austere testimony of Sigeric, other travellers, however, let us know how deeply they were impressed by the people they met and the experiences they shared with them, establishing a link between place and identity. In this framework, dealing with once-in-a-lifetime longdistance journeys and not with regular commuting, we are not referring to internalisation of the landscape experienced daily, rather we are focusing on a process of dynamic and progressive identity building. In this sense, the sketch of Sigeric’s itinerary can be enlisted in the larger group of mental maps, extending the use of wayfinders, particularly in unfamiliar environments, to the generation of shared ‘cognitive mappings or of a sense of spatial geography among’ the users (Darling 2009: 83).

cross (supra, chap. 1, pp. 9-10). Is this ‘understanding’ of the landscape, this ‘metabolisation’ of unknown surroundings that are probably implied yet seem to imbue and inspire those who attempt the accounting of journeys for travellers to follow. The medieval intuito corporeo is a deepening of the concept of consilio mentis of Late Antiquity, although Vegetius’ reference seems to refer to a sort of mental modelling of the physical landscape while John of Würzburg’s and Wilbrand van Oldenburg’s comments show a more emotional appropriation of the special atmosphere of a place, a clear attempt to communicate a phenomenological approach. It is not the ambition of this book to enter into the debate on the existence of maps before the Middle Ages, but we can easily agree upon the fact that orientation tools for travellers were built as sequential lists of destinations, whether textual, like Sigeric’s, or pictorial, like Matthew Paris’s. Whether Emily Albu’s assumption that ‘whatever world maps the Roman Empire produced, like “Agrippa’s map” these existed for display, not as an aid for travelers’ (Albu 2008: 112) is correct or not, we can accept that ‘navigation devices’ for medieval wayfarers relied mainly upon textual tools. Last but not least, we can comment on the advance of the state of the art measured with respect to the book edited by Richard Talbert and Richard Unger in 2008 (Talbert and Unger 2008a). Although not intending to deal with technical aspects like mastery in cartographic production, the present volume seeks to understand the means of spatial representations from the insider’s viewpoint, and tries to ‘personalise’ the aspects of landscape exploration, as well as to analyse the tools for transferring the acquired knowledge. The breaking of phenomenological approaches, of cognitive sciences and more generally of trans- and interdisciplinary methodologies into the humanities could not be more glaring.

Educated travellers like Sigeric were surely aware of the fact that the efficiency and safety of the connection between places was the basic requirement to foster ‘international’ relationships. Sigeric and his peers were probably conscious that their social network also relied upon personal and not only epistolary exchange, as well as cultural and artistic transmissions. As the cohesiveness of the Roman Empire was enforced by the efficiency of the road system (Laurence 1999: 199), the intellectual elites of the Middle Ages were aware that the binding force of the Church also resided in the mobility and connectivity of people. The ceremony of the delivery of the pallium from hand to hand and all the physical engagement behind it were the tip of the iceberg of this mindfulness of the role of the journey as adhesive tape between two worlds.

A great deal of enhancement is highlighted by the confrontation between the use of the concept of ‘exploration’ in this book and Patrick Gautier Dalché’s analysis of the anachronism of the term ‘exploration’ in the study of medieval travel. While it might be true that ‘it is a mistake to use the term “exploration” for the periods preceding the great Hispanic discoveries’ (Gautier Dalché 2015: 144), it is also true that the concept of ‘exploration’ has been deployed here as the proxy of cognitive sciences to describe the process of acquiring knowledge and awareness of one’s surroundings, not in the sense of the human quest to discover new lands. Gautier Dalché assumes that the ‘explorers’ of the Middle Ages were convinced that the reading that had preceded their journeys had provided them with the necessary geographical

The comparison with contemporary map production shows that the ‘personal’ report of Sigeric’s journey embodies a practical view of the surrounding space, where the concept of unidimensional landscape appears to prevail, rekindling the extension to the medieval world of the idea of itinerary lists as a determinant of the (late) Roman conception of space. But then, it is predictable that a ‘functional’ tool has this focus, although Vegetius’s prescriptions advise getting a broader vision of the landscape that we are about to 138

Chapter 6. A Cross-section of Continental Europe at the End of the First Millennium AD and ethnographical (another anachronistic term) ‘knowledge’ of the lands that they were about to visit. This statement, if proven, would also charge the travel accounts and not only the geographical works with scopes beyond the practical purpose of guiding the travellers to come. On the other hand, we cannot but agree with the assertion that even products such as mappae mundi had a practical use, and that a few of them are built upon ‘the points of departure and arrival for a journey and [proceed] to think out its stages’ (Gautier Dalché 2015: 148). One example is offered by the mappa mundi designed by Gerald of Wales (O’Loughlin 1999), aimed at visualising the route from the British Isles to Rome, manifestly built upon the shared, collective knowledge accumulated over the previous centuries (Gautier Dalché 2015: 148-149). In other words, these ‘cartographic products’ and itineraries were tools for acquiring confidence with the landscapes that wayfarers were about to explore, perfectly embodying the description of the ‘itineraria non tantum adnotata sed etiam picta’ provided by Vegetius (chap. 1, pp. 9-10), where practical information on the route and condition of the roads was paralleled by an indication of the geographical features that were expected to influence movement through those landscapes, at the same time empowering an internalisation of the landscape, absorbed by the mind and not only imagined visually. This idea of core knowledge that is augmented, enhanced, reprocessed and transferred by means of progressive stratification is at the base of the definition of a ‘mental map’, a match of personal experience and external inputs, a veritable product of individual and collective identity.

explicit. Evidently, the sequence of place-names sets out a clear route from Rome to the Channel, and the account of the tour of Roman churches can be plotted on a map and turned into a clockwise itinerary of the Urbs and its immediate suburbium. Towns and places of worship can easily be understood as volumetric constituents of space but, at the same time, can be perceived as destination points. More than ever, we can address Sigeric’s itinerary as a system to ‘order places and the ways in which they are encountered’ (Witcher 1998: 4). It would be too hasty to assert that by means of such a listing the pathways turned into a mental scheme linking places and identity but, as obvious as it may seem in the 21st century to make such a list, for a medieval scholar this is a clear acknowledgement of the spatial dimension of the experience just completed. Recording it for posterity confirms that that experience was considered positive and deemed worthy of being reproduced. Whether the ‘editor’ of the itinerary was aware of the fact that each journey would have resulted in a different experience or not, the landscapes that were internalised and mentally structured were to be handed down to followers. Although only a few segments of the road effectively walked by Sigeric and his entourage can be identified in the contemporary landscape, it is the continuity of the greater part of those roads and paths into post medieval towns and countryside that confirms how their ‘logic’ and design embodied a durable sociopolitical organisation, the economic forces and the cultural factors that shaped them. The memories and landmarks clustered along them are witness to the everlasting imprint on local identity and world views. The new medieval routes, composed from a patchwork of older roads adapted to serve novel needs, although generated more spontaneously, still deeply patterned the perception of urban and rural landscapes, influencing the construction of social structures.

Sigeric’s text fits into this tradition, annulling the difference between personal experience and travellers’ guide. Landscape perception and medieval journey The parallelism with Matthew’s strip-maps shows that Lynch’s theory can be applied as an interpretative tool to explore late medieval perception of space. The constituents of the strip-maps can easily be classified in linear (the lines connecting the stages representing roads) and volumetric (the settlements with their three-dimensional simulation obtained thanks to the clusters of buildings surrounded by walls) elements and points (crossroads, junctions and intersections). Notwithstanding the conventional nature of the icons depicting the settlements, a sort of appreciation of the material and immaterial characteristics of the places crossed by the route is given in the form of dimensional (smaller vs larger settlements) and urban (simpler vs more complex settlements) ranking.

The traveller’s choices, as evidenced above, shaped the configuration of space: the selection of more impervious mountain passes, the choice of thriving urban centres over isolated monasteries, the predilection for powerful episcopal sees over political capitals patterned Sigeric’s experience and perception. Notwithstanding his silence on the matter, he shows through the watermark of the manuscript his own attitudes and personality. Clearly still physically fit to endure a tour-de-force of sightseeing in Rome soon after his arrival in the capital, Sigeric shows strong determination in selecting his way, demonstrating the ‘pathfinder’s’ attitude that we have noted above. His resolution and authoritative trait emerge in the promptness with which he gains an audience with the pope. Although it may be merely a

Sigeric’s text provides less straightforward identifications. First of all, the linear elements are not 139

The Route of the Franks coincidence, it is quite rare in our sources to witness such a short wait at the papal court.

at the immense divine almightiness. The expression we used of a ‘journey of a lifetime’ to describe most of these travels (although some untiring travellers had this unique experience several times!) can certainly be adapted to ‘life-changing experience’.

In other words, combining different elements which complement and enrich each other, even Sigeric’s concise text comes to embody ideology, power and identity.

This last consideration raises the question of travel and identity. Provided that a journey challenges habits and personal convictions, that it gives way to the confrontation of individuals and groups and that, therefore, it stimulates further transformations in individual and group identity, the change also implied an enhanced connectivity and an ample dissemination of cultural traits ‘exported’ by means of wayfarers’ experiences and contacts. Whether hospitality was offered by peers or lodging was found in makeshift shelters or at commercial operations, exchange must have been intense, regardless of linguistic or cultural barriers, especially among the intellectuals of the time. Limiting our final comment on Sigeric’s case-study, a period of at least six months spent ‘on the road’ cannot but have left a deep impression on the archbishop and on the members of his entourage. Incidents and accidents, health issues, extreme weather conditions, dangers, physical exhaustion and the psychological stress of completing the undertaking were surely counterbalanced by the pleasure of meeting scholars and wise men, the pope and the uppermost hierarchies of the Church of Rome, and eventually political leaders, of visiting impressive sanctuaries and of being in direct contact with holy places and relics. Thus, in spite of the succinctness and essentiality of Sigeric’s account of the journey, the rich documentation on other journeys in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, historical contextualisation and the application of inter-disciplinary analysis shed light and enormously enrich our understanding of Sigeric’s personality, of his times and more broadly of medieval spirituality.

Since it is grounded in an argumentum ex silentio, it might be a slippery approach, but it could be interesting to comment on Sigeric’s disregard for the itinerary to follow in England. Obviously, such disinterest can be explained by the short distance from his landing place to Canterbury, allowing him to reach the final destination without an intermediate stop but, at the same time, it can be framed within the cultural manifestation discussed by John Blair in his study of ‘landscapes of the mind’ in the Anglo-Saxon world (Blair 2018: 73-100, supra chap. 1, pp. 7-8). Blair’s study seems to demonstrate that after the beginning of the tenth century ‘relics’ of the past (the monumental and landscape heritage) were discarded to the margins of cultural perception of the habitat. Is Sigeric’s silence a proof that the English countryside was perceived as uncivilised and loaded with despised meanings? It is evident, however, that we have to resort to other medieval sources to grasp the ‘emotional’ facets of such journeys. The ample review offered here provides countless points of reflection but it will suffice to mention just one. The almost entire century separating the journey of Sigeric from that of John de Bremble, monk of Christ Church, Canterbury (chap. 1, pp. 8-9), cannot deter us from using that document to analyse aspects related to emotional involvement. John’s comment on his experience says a lot about the mixture of extreme feelings, from the impression of being annihilated by the forces of nature to rapture

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157

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names

Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury Abbey 86 Alemanni 20, 21 Alesia 103 Alfred the Great, king of Wessex 33, 34, 35, 41, 134 Alphege, see Ælfheah   Alpin, St 111 Alps 8, 17, 21, 29, 30, 34, 56, 59, 60-66, 83-86, 135 Amadeus V, count of Savoy 83 Amancey 97 Amandus, St 59, 84, 129, 135 Amausius, bishop of Reims 115 Ambleteuse 64-65 Amesbury  35 Amfleat, see Ambleteuse   Amiens 56, 64, 65, 66, 93, 125 Andemantunnum, see Langres  Angers 59, 122 Anglo-Saxons 43 Anjou, county of 28 Anscar I, margrave of Ivrea 21 Anse (Asa Paulini) 66 Anselm, St archbishop of Canterbury 17 Antibes 132 Antide, St 98, 101 Antifern, see Jougne  Aosta 21, 62, 64 Apennines 66, 86 Apertus, bishop 60 Apostolic See, see Holy see  Apulia 12, 57, 72, 73, 78 Aquitania, see Aquitaine  Aquitaine 21, 24, 28, 60 Aquitaine, duchy of  28 Arabs 27, 31 Arculf, Frankish bishop 10 Argonne, river 107, 109 Arguel  97 Ariorica, see Portarlier  Arles 8, 9, 65, 82, 115, 119 Arnold, bishop of Châlons 112 Arnoul, archbishop of Reims 117 Arnulf of Carinthia, see Arnulf, king of Germany   Arnulf I, king of Germany (formerly known as Arnulf of Carinthia) 21, 24, 31 Arnulf I, count of Flanders 129 Arnulf II, count of Flanders 34 Arras (Atrebatum) 24, 56, 57, 77, 87, 92, 94, 125-127, 132, 133, 137 - cathedral 101, 126-127 - St Maurice, church 126

A  Aachen 87, 116, 134 Abbeville 65, 77 Achard, scholar 86 Adalbero, archbishop of Reims 117, 121, 136 Adalbero, bishop of Laon 124 Adalbert, marquis of Tuscany 31 Adda, river 66 Adelaide of Burgundy, queen of West Francia 26 Adomnan, abbot of Iona 10 Ad Stabulos, see Saint-Pierre  Ælfheah (a.k.a Alphege), archbishop of Canterbury (and bishop of Winchester) 17, 34, 35, 39 Ælfmaer, abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 49 Ælfric, ealdorman of Hampshire 34 Ælfric Modercope, thegn from East Anglia 89 Ælfric of Abingdon, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 43 Ælfric of Eynsham, scholar (and abbot of Cerne) 36, 37 Ælfsige, archbishop of Canterbury (and bishop of Winchester) 39, 85 Ælfstan, abbot of St Augustine, Canterbury 40 Ælfthryth, mother of Æthelred II 35 Ælftic, bishop 89 Æthelberht, king of Kent 41 , 42, 43 Æthelgar, archbishop of Canterbury 36, 39, 65, 88, 127, 135 Æthelheard, archbishop of Canterbury 80, 87 Æthelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Æthelred, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Æthelred I, king of Wessex 51 Æthelred II the Unready 34, 35, 90, 136 Æthelric of Bocking, Anglo-Saxon nobleman 35 Æthelstan, Anglo-Saxon king 33 Æthelweard, Anglo-Saxon ealdorman 34, 36 Æthelwulf, king of Wessex 41, 90 Agapitus, St 101 Agapitus II, pope 32 Agendicum, see Sens  Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxon Kingdom 16 Aignan, bishop of Besançon 101 Aiguebelle  77 Aimery Picaud, cleric 81 Airard, abbot of St Remigius Abbey 122 Aisne, river 114, 123 Aizelles 123 Alans 19 Alberic, noble of Rome 32 Albert de Stade 82 Alcuin, scholar 16, 41, 57, 65, 80, 87, 92 158

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names - St Peter, church 124 - St Vaast, abbey and castrum  24, 57, 125, 126-127, 132, 134, - Virgin, church 126 Asa Paulini, see Anse   Assisi 66 Athalbert, bishop of Thérouanne 127 Athelm, archbishop of Canterbury 33 Atherats, see Arras  Atlantic Ocean 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 30, 56, 65, 80 Atlas mountains 60 Aubert, St 126 Aubry II, count of Besançon 99 Auchy  57 Audemarus, St, see Omer, St  Augustine, St 40, 41, 42, 48, 51, 59, 64, 86 Augustudunum, see Autun  Aurasium, see Orange  Austrasia 21, 63, 109, 123 Austrulph, abbot of St Wandrille 61 Autessiodurum, see Auxerre  Autun (Augustudunum) 66, 103, 108 Auxerre (Autessiodurum) IV Auxon 92 Avignon 65, 81

Bern 63 Bernard, St 61, 122 Bernoin, archbishop of Besançon 101 Berry-au-Bac 103, 122, 123 Bertha, wife of Æthelberht of Kent 41, 42, 43 Besançon (Vesontio) 2, 40, 64, 65, 66, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97102, 103, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137 - Boucle 98, 99, 101 - Cathedral (St Stephen, later St John the Evangelist) 101, 102 - Chamars 98 - Citadel 97, 99, 101 - Fort de l'Est 97 - Jussa-Moutier, abbey 102 - Pont de Battant 99, 101 - Porte de Charmont 102 - Porte de Malpas, 97, 101 - Porte de Varesco (Porte Saint-Étienne) 97, 101 - Porte Noir 101 - Porte Taillée 97, 101 - quartier capitulaire  101 - Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, church 101 - St Madeleine, church 101 - St Martin of Bregille, abbey 102 - St Maurice, church 101 - St Paul, abbey 101 - St Peter, church 101 Besançon-les Buis 97 Bétause, bishop of Reims 119 Beure 97 Beuves II, bishop of Châlons 109, 110 Blæcuile, see Blessonville  Blaise, river and valley 104, 108 Blaise, St 39 Blessonville (Blæcuile) 93, 105 Blois, county of 28 Boetian, St 124 Bologna 66 Boniface (Consiliarius), archdeacon, advisor to the papacy 62 Boniface, St 63, 64, 65, 88, 91 Bononia, see Boulogne-sur-Mer  Bordeaux (Burdigala) 9, 59, 62 Borgo S. Donnino 87 Boso, king of Provence 29 Boso I of Burgundy (brother of King Raoul) 109 Bouche-du-Rhone 24, 66 Boujailles  94 Boulogne-sur-Mer (Bononia, Gesoriacum) 30, 56, 64, 65, 66, 73, 92, 93, 105, 107, 127, 129, 133 Bourg-Saint-Pierre 61, 65 Bourgogne, see Burgundy  Bracco Pass 66 Braux-Saint-Père 107 Breedon, monastery 16 Bremen 137 Brenner Pass 31

B  Bagno di Romagna 73 Baldwin II, count of Guînes 130 Balkans 30 Bar-sur-Aube (Segessera) 77, 92, 93, 105, 106, 108, Bar-sur-Seine 64, 86, 105 Baralle 57 Bard 31 Barthélemy Bonis 81 Basques 21 Battle, abbey 37, 38 Baume-les-Dames 136 Baume(-les-Messieurs), abbey 94 Bavaria 25 Bavarians 21 Bavarii, see Bavarians  Bavay 56, 57, 93 Beaumont-sur-Vesle 77, 114 Beaune 64, 77 Beauvais (Caesaromagus) 24, 66, 77, 125 Bede the Venerable, scholar 8, 14, 41, 42, 43, 48, 57, 62, 64, 68, 70, 79, 91, 99, 103 Belgium 9, 19, 134 Benedict, St 31 Benedict Biscop 16, 59, 61, 62, 64, 66, 135 Benedict X, anti-pope 39 Benignus, St 94, 103, 136 Berbers 60 Berhtwald, archbishop of Canterbury  39, 63 Berméricourt 123 159

The Route of the Franks Breone, see Brienne  Brescia 84 Bresle, river 57 Bretagne, see Brittany  Brèves 55 Briançon (Brigantia)  8 Brimeux 64 Brienne-la-Vieille (Breone) 55, 93, 106-107 - Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens, church 106-107 Brienne-le-Château 106 Briennon 55 Brigantia, see Briançon  Britain 16, 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 42, 48, 52, 59, 64, 65, 66, 71, 77, 78, 86, 91, 92, 107, 109, 128, 136 Britannia, see Britain  Brithelm, archbishop of Canterbury 34 Brittany 21, 23, 64 Brittany, duchy of 28 Brive 55 Bruay-en-Artois 94 Bructeri  19 Brunehaut, queen of the Fraks 56, 124 Brunhilda of Austrasia, see Brunehaut  Bruno (the Great), archbishop of Köln and duke of Lotharingia 25 Burgheard, son of Earl Ælfgar 114 Burdigala, see Bordeaux  Burgundia, see Burgundy  Burgundians 19, 21, 23, 29, 65 Burgundy 19, 25, 31, 40, 57, 60, 66, 77, 92, 94, 103, 114, 133, 134, 136 Burgundy, duchy of  26, 28, 30, Burgundy, kingdom of 21, 23, 28, 29, 30, 98 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, scholar 44 Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Wessex 35 Bysiceon, see Besançon 

- St Augustine, abbey 34, 46, 48, 49, 51, 73, 78 - St Martin, church 42, 43, 48, 51 - St Mary, church 46, 48, 50, 51 - St Pancras, church 51, 52 - SS Peter and Paul, abbey  42, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 - St John, church 45, 46 - Westgate 52 - Wincheap 52 - Worthgate 52 Cappadocia 103 Caprasius, St 43, 135 Carloman, Frankish ruler 21, 24 Cassel 125, 137 Catalonia 30, 133 Catheluns, see Châlons-en-Champagne  Catti 19 Cendred, king of Mercia 41 Centumcellae, see Civitavecchia  Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow 8, 14, 41, 61, 62, 64, 85, 86, 91, 103 Cerdric, king of Wessex 34 Cernon 107 Chambéry 66, 77 Chalon-sur-Saône (Cabillodunum) 55-56, 64, 66, 77, 92, 94, 137 - St Marcel, abbey 94 Châlons-sur-Marne, see Châlons-en-Champagne  Châlons-en-Champagne 31, 66, 77, 84, 86, 92, 93, 107114, 132, 133, 137 - St Andrew (later St Alpin), church, see St Alpin church  - cathedral (St Stephen) 109, 111, 112, 132, 133 - cathedral (St Peter) 111, 112, 132, 133 - cathedral School 112 - Hôtel-Dieu 111, 113 - Notre-Dame-en-Vaux  111, 112, 113, 133 - Putte-Savatte, bridge 114 - Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts, abbey 110, 111, 112 - St Alpin, church 110, 111, 112, 132 - St Germain, church 112 - St John, church 111, 112 - St Lupus, church 109 - St Memmius, church 110, 111 - St Nicolas, collegiate church 112 - St Sulpice, abbey 110, 111 - SS Trinity, collegiate church 112 - Toussaints-en-l'Isle, monastery 86 Champagne 30, 31, 40, 61, 64, 66, 103, 107, 109, 133 Champagne, county of 25, 28, 31, 109 Champagne-Ardenne 93 Chanceaux 77 Channel, the 11, 14, 16, 17, 33, 38, 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 73, 78, 83, 84, 85, 86, 92, 108, 109, 114, 122, 127, 130, 135, 139 Charlemagne 16, 21, 22, 24, 65, 80, 87, 88, 92, 116, 136 Charles II the Bald, king of West Francia 22, 23, 29, 30, 31, 95, 103, 109, 115, 119, 122, 127, 134 Charles V, emperor 128 Charles III the Fat, Carolingian emperor 24, 66, 125

C  Cabillodunum, see Chalon-sur-Saône  Cædwalla, king of Wessex  41 Caesaromagus, see Beauvais  Calixtus, St 121 Callemala 89 Camblain-Châtelain 127 Camblain-l'Abbé  127 Cambrai 19, 56, 57, 94, 125 Canche, river 30, 57, 65 Canterbury 1, 6, 8, 14, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43-53, 62, 64, 65, 68, 73, 77, 80, 83, 84, 88, 125, 127, 132, 137, 140 - Cathedral - Christ Church 8, 34, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44-48, 51, 52, 68, 73, 78, 125, 129, 134, 140 - Longmarket 52 - Longport 51, 52 - Marlowe area 52 - Newingate (St George gate) 52 - Queningate 52 160

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names Charles III the Simple, king of West Francia  24, 25, 132, Charles Martel, ruler of the Merovingian kingdom 21, 63 Charles of Lorraine, duke of Lower Lorraine 27, 117, 124, Chartres 8, 24, 80, 85 Châteauvillain 105 Châtillon-sur-Seine 77 Chauny 90 Chaux d'Arlier 94 Chepper-la-Prairie 107 Childeric I, king of the Franks 19 Childeric III, king of the Franks 21 Chlothar I, king of the Franks 21 Cholsey Abbey  35 Christine, St 43, 135 Chrodegang, St 111, 134 Chuchy-à-la-Tour  57 Citeaux 135 Civitavecchia (Centumcellae) 59 Clovis, Merovingian king 19, 20, 21, 109, 115, 123, 125 Cluny 28, 30, 31, 60, 87, 99, 135, 136 Cnut, king of England, Denmark and Norway 35, 39, 40, 41, 46, 59, 67, 136 Coenwulf, king of Mercia 46 Coire 60 Cologne, river 125 Colonia, see Köln  Columbanus, St 92, 101 Conrad, king of Burgundy 29, 30, 103 Conrad II, German king and emperor 67 Constance, lake 71 Constantinople 30, 72 Coole, river 107 Coolus 107 Corbeil (Corbilium) 106, 107 Corbény 84, 90, 93, 123 - St Marculf, priory 123 Corbie 24, 93 Cornwall 35 Corsairs 60 Côte d'Azur 60 Côte d’Or  105 Coupetz 107 Courcy  123 Courquetaine 66, 84 Crescentius the Younger, Roman noble 32 Crinchon, river 126 Cunigunde, see Gunnhild  Cuscei, see Cussey-sur-l'Ognon  Cussey-sur-l’Ognon (Cussiacus, Cuscei) 92, 93, 103 Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 42, 46, 52, 91 Cyriacus, St 34

Danes 24, 34, 35, 129, 132, 136 Dardicourt 107 Dauphiné 8 Denewulf, bishop of Winchester 81 Denmark 80 Deodatus, bishop of Toul 63, 80, 91 Desvres 56 Devon 34, 35 Dido, bishop of Laon 124 Dijon 65, 87, 103 - St Benignus, abbey 94 Diogenes, bishop (?) of Arras 125 Doingt-sur-la-Cologne (Duin?) 92, 93, 125 Domaniant, see Donnement  Donatian, bishop of Châlons 111 Donnement-sur-Meldancon (Domaniant) 93, 107 Dorestad 65 Doubs, river 95, 97, 98, 136 Dover 17, 64, 65, 73, 77, 78, 84 Dover, Strait of 64 Drugeon, river 94, 95 Druon, provost of Aubigny 86 Duin, see Doingt  Dunstan, St 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 88 Durouernum Cantiacorum, see Canterbury  E  Eadbald, king of Kent 50 Eadgifu, wife of Charles the Simple 123 Eadmer, scholar 36, 44, 45, 46 Eadred, king of Wessex 33 Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Ealdwulf, deacon 91 Eardwulf, king 61, 91 East Kingdom, see Francia Orientalis  Ebbo, archbishop of Reims 115, 116, 119, 121, 122 Ebroin, mayor of the palace of Neustria 15, 21, 63, 65 Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria 62 Eddius of Ripon 62, 63, 65 Edgar, king of Wessex 31, 34, 90 Edmund, king of Wessex  33 Edward (the Martyr), king of Wessex 34, 35, 81 Edward (the Confessor), Anglo-Saxon king 39 Einsiedeln 39, 79 Eiríkr Sveinsson, king of Denmark 87 Elaphius, St, bishop of Châlons 111 Eleusippus, St 103 Elstrude, daughter of Count Arnulf I 129 Emma, wife of Æthelred II 35 England 1, 7, 9, 25, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 50, 51, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 72, 73, 78, 86, 90, 91, 121, 127, 129; 132, 134-135, 137, 140 English, Englishmen 14, 35, 39, 41, 57, 80, 88, 90, 91 Ennodius, Magnus Felix, bishop of Pavia 8 Entre-les-Fourgs 94 Épernay  107, 122 Epiphanius, St 101

D  Dagobert, king of Frisia 63, 80 Dagobert III, Merovingian king 21 Danelaw 33 161

The Route of the Franks Erchenraus, bishop of Châlons 111 Ermin, St  83 Estrée-Cauchy 57 Étaples  65 Etroubles (Restopolis) 8 Exeter 127

G  Galen 81 Galli 19 Gallia, see Gaul  Gallia Belgica 56, 93, 111, 115, 123, 125 Gallia Narbonensis 8 Gargano, see Monte Gargano  Garonne, river 59 Gascony 23 Gauchin-Légal 127 Gaul 8, 19, 21, 24, 42, 55, 66, 67, 95, 98, 125, 134, 136 Gauthier IV Gébuin (or Gibuinus or Jubin I), bishop of Châlons 110, 112 Gembloux  56 Geneva, lake (Lac Léman) 66, 80 Genoa 59, 83, 87 Gent 124, 129 - St Peter’s Abbey 34 Gerald of Aurillac, St  8, 85, 88 Gerald of Wales, scholar 139 Gerard of Brogne, St 31 Gerberga of Saxony, queen of the Franks 25 Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) 18, 28, 31, 61, 115, 117, 122, 137 Germania, see Germany  Germany 19, 21, 22, 23, 28, 30, 31, 68, 80, 81, 99 Gervais, archbishop of Reims 117 Gervase of Canterbury, scholar 36 Gesoriacum, see Boulogne-sur-Mer  Gibraltar, Strait of 80 Gironde, river 59 Gislebert, scholar 84 Giso of Wells, scholar 36 Gizur, bishop of Iceland 80 Glastonbury 33, 34, 36, 127, 135 Gondebaud, king of Burgundy  8 Gondoval, see Gondebaud  Gontran, king of Burgundy 94 Gran-des-Loges  114 Grand-Treuchot 97 Great St Bernard Pass 8, 30, 31, 40, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 80, 81, 87, 92 Greeks 31 Gregory I the Great, pope 40, 41, 42, 43, 48, 52, 88, 91, 111 Gregory II, pope 64 Gregory III, pope 64 Gregory of Tours, scholar 79, 101 Grenant 93, 103 Guérin, canon of Châlons 112 Guido of Pisa, geographer 12 Guisnes, see Guînes  Guînes 94, 129-130 - motte de la Cuve (a.k.a. motte du Château) 130 - motte de la Walle 130 Gunnhild 67 Guthmund, Viking leader 35

F  Faenza 73 Felix I, bishop of Châlons 111 Ferfay 57 Ferreolus, St  99, 101 Ferrières 24 Ferrutius, St 99, 101 Festieu 123 Filomusiacum, see La Malepierre  Flanders 30, 31, 33, 56, 107, 114 Flanders, Marquisate of, see Flanders, county of 25 Flanders, county of 28 Flavia, St 102 Flavius Aetius, Roman general 19 Flemish 80 Fleury 77 Flodoard of Reims, scholar 36, 60, 119, 121, 125 Florence 2, 73 Fontaine-sur-Coole (Funtaine) 93, 107 Fontainebleau 77 Fontenelle 127 Fontenoy 22 Forlì 73 France 5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 41, 42, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 77, 82, 84, 85, 88, 91, 92, 93, 99, 103, 109, 123, 131, 132, 133134, 135, 136 Franche-Comté 92, 136 Franci Ripuari, see Ripuarian Franks  Franci Salii, see Salian Franks  Francis, St 66 Franks 3, 15, 19-21, 30, 31, 55, 63, 66, 80, 90, 109 Fraxinetum 60, 61 Francia, see France  Francia Media 22, 25 Francia Occidentalis 22, 24, 109, 134 Francia Orientalis 22, 24 Franconia 25 Freiburg 63 Fresne Saint-Mamès 103 Frisia 63, 64, 65 Fulda 64 Fulk the Venerable, archbishop of Reims 118 Fulrad, abbot of St Vaast 65, 127 Funtaine, see Fontaine-sur-Coole 

162

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names H 

J 

Hadrian of Africa, missionary to Canterbury 39, 59, 62, 65, 66 Hamble, river 65, 86 Hampshire 34 Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine 101 Helgaud of Fleury, scholar 28 Henry, duke of Burgundy 26-27 Henry I, king of the Franks 27, 115 Henry I, count of Champagne 61 Henry II, German emperor 28 Henry III, German emperor  67 Henry IV, king of France 115 Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony and king of East Francia 25 Herbert, count of Vermandois 109, 112, 123 Heriveus, archbishop of Reims 120 Hexagone, see France  Hexham, monastery 62 Hilarius, bishop of Besançon 101 Hincmar, archbishop of Reims 87, 119, 122 Horace, Roman poet 9 Holy Land 10, 11, 12, 31, 40, 43, 73, 78, 80, 81, 82, 86, 87 Holy Saviour, abbey on Monte Amiata 89 Holy See 15, 36, 39, 40, 62, 63, 80, 84 Honorius I, pope 51 Hospicius, St 79 Hruotfrid, abbot of the monastery of St Amandus 91 Hugh, monk 112 Hugh Capet, king of the Franks 25, 27, 28, 31, 117, 126, 137 Hugh of Arles or Hugh of Provence, king of Italy and Provence 29, 60 Hugh of Die, archbishop of Lyon 87, Hugh of Salins, archbishop of Besançon 99 Hugh the Black, marquis of Burgundy 99 Hugh the Great, count of Paris, duke of France, Burgundy and Aquitaine 25, 26, 124 Humber, river 16 Humes-Jourquenay 93, 103 Humes-sur-Marne  103 Huneberc of Heidenheim, scholar 86 Hungarians, see Magyars 

Jarrow 41, 42, 62, 64, 85 Jerusalem 9, 10, 87 John, abbot of St Martin 62 John II, pope 32 John X 38 John XV, pope 36, 38, 40, 117 John de Bremble, monk at Christ Church, Canterbury 8, 9, 82, 140 John of Worcester, scholar 36 John of Würzburg, scholar 10, 81, 138 John Scotus Eriugena, philosopher 124 John the Patrician, Roman nobleman 32 Joinville 111 Jostein, Viking leader 35 Jougne 92, 94, 95 - St Maurice, church 92, 94, Jougne Pass 61, 65, 66, 94, 98 Jovin, head of the militia of Reims 117, 134 Julian the Apostate, Roman emperor 19 Jura Massive 29, 61, 65, 66, 94, 136 Juvenal, Roman poet 11 Juvincourt 123 K  Kent 33, 35, 42, 52, 64, 73 Köln 19, 25, 137 L  Lacum Losone 92 La Garde-Freinet  60 La Malepierre (Filomusiacum?) 92 Lambert of Guînes, bishop of Arras 59, 86 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Langres (Andemantunnum) 14, 31, 55, 56, 61, 64, 66, 86, 92, 93, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 131, 132, 136, 137 - St Denis, church 131 - St Peter, church 131 Languedoc 81 Languedoil 66 Laon (Lugdunum or Laudunum) 31, 66, 84, 86, 90, 92, 93, 104, 105, 123, 124, 131, 132, 137 - Cathedral (Notre-Dame) 104, 123, 124, 125 - Cathedral School 90, 124 - Hôtel-Dieu 124 - Notre-Dame-la-Profonde, monastery 124 - Porte Royale 123 - St Hilary, monastery 122, 124, - St John and the Virgin, abbey 123, 124 - St Christopher (later St Vincent), abbey 124 - St Peter, church 124 - St Vincent, abbey see St Christopher  Larret (Varcia) 136 La Tour de Pin 77 Laurence, see Lawrence 

I  Iberian Peninsula 24, 28, 59, 71, Iceland 11, 80 Île-de-France 26, 28, 107 Imbetausius, bishop of Reims 115 Ine, king of Wessex 41 Innocent IV, pope 66 Isidorus, St 101 Isleifr, bishop of Iceland 80 Italian Peninsula, see Italy  Italy 3, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 54, 56, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 80, 82, 83, 91, 92, 95, 108, 133, 136 Ivrea 31, 64 163

The Route of the Franks Laurentius, see Lawrence  Lausanne 64, 65, 66, 92, 136, Lawrence, bishop of Milano 8 Lawrence, archbishop of Canterbury 48 Léman, lake, see Geneva, lake  Leo III, pope 16, 21 Leo IV, pope 66, 86, 90 Leo IX, pope 39, 122 Lérins Islands 62 Les Gravilliers 94-95 Les Premiers-Sapins  97 Liège 56, 137 Liguria 65 Limoges 117 Limousin 28 Linus, bishop of Besançon 101 Little St Bernard Pass 61, 65, 66 Liudhard, bishop of Canterbury 41, 43 Liutprand, bishop of Cremona 60 Liutprand, king of Lombardy 63 Lobbes  83 Loire, river and valley 25, 26, 62, 109, 110, 123 Lombards 21, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 87 Lombardy 65, 134 London 12, 34, 41, 63, 64, 65, 72, 73, 77 Lorraine 22, 23, 25, 28, 31, 99, 109, 112, 114, 133 Lothair, see Lothar  Lothar I, Frankish king and emperor 22, 23, 94, 117 Lothar II, king of Lorraine 24, 26 Lothar (IV) of France, king of West Francia  25, 27, 123 Lotharingia see Lorraine  Loue, river 97 Louhans 92 Louis II the German, king of East Francia 22, 23 Louis III, king of West Francia 24 Louis IV d’Outremer, king of France 25, 26, 27, 29, 116, 122, 123, 124 Louis VI the Fat, king of France 115 Louis VII, king of France 122 Louis IX, king of France 65 Louis XI, king of France 136 Louis the Pious, king of the Franks 21-22, 65, 115, 116, 121, 122, 134 Louis the Blind, king of Provence 60 Louis the Stammerer, king of West Francia 24 Loup, bishop 109 Low Countries 19, 20 Lucca 86, 87 Ludna, see Saint-Georges de Reneins   Lumier, St, bishop of Châlons 111 Lupus, bishop of Châlons 111 Lupus of Ferrières, abbot of Ferrières Abbey, scholar 83, 85, 89; 91, Luzarches 77 Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Lyon 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 77, 78, 84, 92, 93, 103, 117, 131, 132, 136, 137

M  Mâcon 64, 77, 94, 99, 131, Magyars  27, 60, 98, 118, 132, 133 Maine, county of  28 Mainz 117, 137 Maiolus, abbot of Cluny 30, 31, 60, 61 Mairy-sur-Marne 107 Maldon 34, 35 Mantova 84 Marcellinus, St 59 Marculf, St 84, 123 Mareward, abbot of Prum 85 Marne, river and valley 61, 66, 103, 107, 108, 109, 111, 114 Marones 8, 9, 81 Marseille 59, 62, 65, 66 Martigny 65 Martin of Tours, St  17 Martinwaeth (Martini Vadum), see Seraucourt-le-Grand  Mathilde, countess of Canossa 87 Matthew Paris 12, 64, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 82, 84, 138 Mau, river 108, 109, 110, 112, 114, 132 Mauchamps 123 Maurice, St 43 Meaux 25, 63, 64, 80, 85, 88, 108 Mediolanum, see Milano  Mediterranean Sea 7, 19, 20, 24, 26, 28, 30, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 80, 83, 114 Meersen 23 Meldançon, river 107 Meleusippus, St 103 Mellitus, archbishop of Canterbury 42, 50 Mellitus, bishop of London 40 Memmius, St 111 Mercia, kingdom of 33 Merovingians 56 Metz 112, 117, 131, 137 Meuse, river 19, 23, 115 Michael, St 63 Milano (Mediolanum) 65, 66, 92, 105, 107 Mirebeau-sur-Bèze 136 Miroual (Joux)  136 Molesmes 86 Moncenisio, see Mont Cenis  Monkwearmouth-Jarrow, abbey, see Wearmouth  Montauban 81 Mont Cenis Pass 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 75, 77, 84 Montgenèvre Pass  8, 62, 65 Mont Larmont 94 Mont Laveron 94 Mont-Saint-Éloi 57 Mont-Mort 111 Mont Séverin  94 Monte Gargano  57, 90 Montdidier 84 Montecassino 80, 87 164

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names Montier-en-Der, abbey  107 Montreil 77 Montrond 97 Mont Saint-Michel 109 Moors 60, 61, 133 Moret 77 Moselle, river 19 Moutiers-en-Puisai 66, 67 Mundlothuin (in Monte Loduni), see Laon 

Orbais 85 Orbe (Urba) 66, 92, 94 Orléans 20, 30, 115, 136 Ostia 59, 66, 72 Ornans 97 Oscytel, archbishop of York 136 Oswald of York, archbishop of Canterbury 36, 44 Otbert, abbot of St Bertin Abbey at Saint-Omer 135 Otto I, duke of Saxony 25 Otto (I) the Great, king and German emperor (named Otto II as duke of Saxony) 25, 26, 28, 29, 32 Otto II, king and German emperor 25, 26, 27 Otto III, king and German emperor 26, 27, 32, 117 Otto-William, count of Besançon 99

N  Nantes 24 Nanthar, abbot of St Omer  91 Narbonne 59 Nau, river 107, 110, 112, 132 Navarre 23 Netherlands, the 5, 19 Neustria 21, 25, 63 Nevern 68 Newcastle 77 Nice 59, 132 Nicasius, St, bishop of Reims 111, 117, 119, 135 Nicetus, St, bishop of Besançon 101 Nikulas Bergsson (of Munkathvera), abbot Thingor 11, 79, 80, 87 Nithard, scholar 22, 23 Nods (Nos, (Centena) Neudensense) 93, 95, 97 Nogent-sur-Seine 64 Nord-Pas-de-Calais 56, 94, 127 Normandy 24, 28, 30, 35, 60, 61, 80, 132 Normandy, duchy of  25 Normans 34, 55, 98, 124 Northmen, see Vikings  Northumbria 33, 41 Norwegians 34 Nos, see Nods  Nothelm, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Noyon (Equestris) 90

P  Palestine 73, 80 Paraclete, abbey of 66 Paris 20, 24, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 77, 84, 87, 107, 108, 120, 136 - St Genevieve, abbey 21 Paschal I, pope 91 Paschal II, pope 112 Paul, St 57, 81 Paul the Deacon, scholar 57 Pavia 8, 40, 59, 61, 63, 64, 80, 84, 88 Perctarit, king of Lombardy 63, 80 Péronne 84, 92, 125 Peter, abbot of Canterbury 64 Peter, St 40 Petites-Loges 114 Piedmont 65 Philip I, king of France 27, 86 Philip II Augustus, king of France 83 Picardie 93, 114 Pippin I, king of Aquitaine 22, 24 Pippin II, king of Aquitaine 22 Pippin II of Herstal, ruler of Austrasia 21 Pippin III the Short, king of the Franks 21, 30, 66, 92, 115, 123 Pisa 59 Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Poitiers 21, 117 Poitou 28 Poix 77, 84 Ponthieu  66, 67 Ponthion 66 Pontremoli 78 Pontvray 114 Pontailler-sur-Saône 136 Pontarlier (Pons Arecii) 65, 92, 93, 94-96, 97, 136 - Grande Oye 95 - Notre-Dame, church 94 - Saint-Etienne, borough 94 - St Benignus, church 94 - St Stephen (Sancti Stefano de Ponte), church 94 Port de Varennes 137

of

O  Oda, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 44, 45, 134, 135, 136 Odalric, bishop of Reims 121 Odbert, abbot of St Bertin  65, 88 Odo, count of Paris, king of West Francia 24, 25 , 118 Odo II, count of Champagne  109 Odo, abbot of Cluny 31, 84, 85 Odo, abbot of the monastery of Toussaints-en-l’Isle 86 Odo of Rouen, see Odo Rigaldus  Odo Rigaldus 65, 66, 83, 84, 89 Offa, king of Mercia 16, 41 Oise, river 77 Oiselay 92 Oisma, see Saint-Geosmes   Olaf, Viking leader 34, 35 Omer, St 127 Orange (Aurasium) 65 165

The Route of the Franks Port Guillot 137 Portsmouth 65 Postumus, Roman emperor 19 Provence 29, 25, 77, 99, 117, Provence, duchy of 21, 23, 29, 29 Provence, ‘kingdom’ of 23, 29 Provins 77 Punterlin, see Pontarlier  Pyrennes  19, 20

- St Remigius, abbey and castrum 84, 114, 117, 118, 122, 123, 132, 133 - St Stephen, church 119 - SS Timothy and Apollinarius, church  118 - St Thierry, church 117, 118 - St Timothy, church 118 - St Victor, church 118, Remigius, St 43, 93, 114, 115, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 135 Rems, see Reims  Restopolis see Etroubles   Revermont  92 Rhine 19, 56, 62, 63, 65, 66, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 133, Rhineland 23, 25, 40, 134 Rhone, river and valley  8, 23, 30, 59, 62, 65, 66, 67, 77, 87 Riceys IV Richard, duke of Burgundy 30 Richard, duke of Normandy 35 Richard of Verdun, abbot of St Vanne monastery 31 Richborough (Rutupiae) 51, 64, 65 Richer of Senones, scholar 8, 28, 36, 80, 83, 85, 88, 121 Rieti 73 Rigobert, bishop of Reims 122 Ripon, monastery 62 Ripuarian Franks 19 Robert I, king of the Franks 25 Robert II the Pious, king of the Franks 26, 27, 28, 30, 117, 137 Robert II, duke of Burgundy 30 Robert of Jumièges, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 85 Robert, count of Troyes 109 Robert the Strong, count of Anjou and Blois 26 Rochester 64, 73, 77 Rodanus, see Rhone  Rodulfus Glaber 27, 28, 134, 135, 136 Roger I, bishop of Châlons 112 Roger III, bishop of Châlons 112 Roland, Frankish military leader 21 Rollo, Viking leader 24, 132 Romainmôtier 66, 101 Rome 1, 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90-91, 103, 114, 117, 137, 139 - Caelian Hill 41, 62 - Lateran basilica (Holy Saviour, later St John the Baptist) 42 - Porticus Vipsania 10 - Schola Anglorum, see Schola Saxonum  - Schola Saxonum (later Schola Anglorum) 38, 90 - St Mary Major, church 119 - St Mary church 38 - St Peter church 21, 38, 46, 50, 81 Romanus, bishop of Rochester 59 Roncesvalles (Pass) 21, 87 Roric, bishop of Laon 124 Rouen 30, 57, 65, 83, 86, 88, 132

Q  Quentin, St 124 Quentovic  16, 30, 56, 59, 62, 63, 65, 88, 92 R  Rachtis, king of Lombardy 61 Raetia 21 Rampillon 89 Ramsbury 34, 38 Raoul, duke of Burgundy 30 Raoul, king of France 109, 112 Ravenna 12, 60, 117 Rebreuve-Rauchicourt 127 Reichenau, abbey  68, 71 Reims (Durocortorum) 8, 18, 20, 24, 25, 28, 36, 43, 56, 57, 64, 66, 77, 80, 84, 87, 92, 93, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114-123, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137 - cathedral SS Apostles (later St Symphorian) 112, 115, 117-121, 122, 133, 134, 136 - cathedral School 31, 122, 137 - Hôtel-Dieu 119, 122 - La Madeleine, church 117 - Palais Tau 119, 121 - Porte Bazée (Porta Basilica)  114, 118 - Porte Cérès (Porte Carceris) 118 - Porte de Mars 114, 118, 122, 123 - Porte de Soissons 118 - Porte Vidula 118 - Saint-Hilaire-en-cité 119 - Saint-Pierre-en-la-cité, abbey 118 - Saint-Pierre-les-Dames, abbey 118, 119 - St Arnoul, abbey and castrum 132 - SS Agricola and Vitalis (later St Nicasius), church, see St Nicasius  - St Christopher, church 122, 124 - SS Cosmas and Damian, hospice 118 - SS Crispin and Crispinian, church 118 - St Denis, church 133 - St Hilary, church 118, 122, 124 - St James, church  117 - St Julian, church and hospice 118, 122 - St Martha, church 119 - St Martin, church 118, 122 - St Nicasius, abbey 117 - St Peter, church  119, 121 166

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names Rudolph of Burgundy, king of France 25 Rudolph I, duke and king of Burgundy 21, 29, 98, Rudolph II, king of Burgundy 29 Rudolph III, king of Burgundy 30, 67, Rutilius Namatianus, Claudius 8 Rutupiae, see Richborough 

Savoyeux 103 Saxons 21, 41, 43, 63 Saxony 25, 32 Scandinavian Peninsula 80 Scandinavians 60, 80 Scheldt 23, 25 Seasalter 52 Sefui, see Seveux  Segessera, see Bar-sur-Aube  Segobodium, see Seveux  Seine, river 24, 25, 26, 59, 61, 65, 66, 77, 86, 115, 133, Senlis 27 Sens (Agendicum) 25, 64, 66, 77, 93, 115, Septimer Pass 103 Seraucourt-le-Grand 93, 125 Seulf, archbishop of Reims 121, 122, 132 Seveux-sur-Saône (Segobodium) 92, 93, 103, 136 - St Denis, church 103 Shaftesbury Abbey 35 Sicily 78 Siena 73 Sigeric (the Serious), archbishop of Canterbury 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 30, 31, 33- 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 68, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 99, 101, 105, 107, 109, 112, 114, 117, 122, 124, 127, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 Sigeric, king of East Saxons 41 Sigered 41 Sigfrid the Danish, count of Guînes 130 Silvinus, St 129, 135 Simplon Pass 66 Sinicius, bishop of Reims 115 Siric, see Sigeric  Sixtus, bishop of Reims 115 Soissons 20, 64, 114, 123 Sombre  92, 94, 130 Somme 56, 125 Sonning 34 Southampton 86 Spain 21 Speusippus, St 103 Stephanus of Ripon, see Eddius  Stephen, St 101 Stephen II, pope 66 Stephen IV, pope 91, 115, 121 Stour, river and valley 51, 52, 53, St Albans, cathedral, abbey 12, 72 St Amandus, hospice 107 St Amandus, monastery 57, 91 St David, shrine 68 St Gall, abbey monastery 10, 16, 68, 89, 101 St Geosmes, abbey, see Saint-Geosmes  St Gotthard Pass 66 St Honoratus, monastery 62 St Judoc, monastery, see Saint-Josse  St Lawrence, xenodochium 90 St Maurice, church, see Jougne 

S  Saint-Amand-les-Eaux 89, 90 Saint-Claude  92, 136 Saint-Denis 24, 77, - St Bartholomew, church 42 - St Denis, abbey 24, 120 Saint-Esprit de Neufchâteau 103 Saint-Georges de Reneins (Ludna) 66 Saint-Geosmes (Oisma?) 93, 103 Saint-Gilles 77, 82 Saint-Hubert-d’Ardenne 121 Saint-Josse, see Saint-Josse-sur-Mer  Saint-Josse-sur-Mer 16, 66, - St Josse (or St Judoc), monastery and hospital 67, 80, 87, 92 Saint-Laurent-de-Cala 90, 107 Saint-Léonard 114 Saint-Martin-sur-Amignon 125 Saint-Maur des Fossés 84, 89 Saint-Maurice, see Saint-Maurice d’Agaune  Saint-Maurice d’Agaune 31, 40, 59, 60, 61, 65, 94, 98, Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne 77 Saint-Michel-en-Cuxa 13 Saint-Omer 65, 88, 133 - St Bertin, abbey and castrum 24, 77, 88, 133, 135 Saint-Ouen 56 Saint-Oyan/Saint-Claude  136 Saint-Pierre (Ad Stabulos?) 94 Saint-Remi, village  8 Saint-rhemy-en-bosses 65 Saint-Quentin 77, 123, 137 Saint-Riquier 77 Saint-Seine 89 Saint-Thierry, Massif de 123 Saint-Tricat 130 Saint-Tropez Peninsula 60 Saint-Vincent 112 Sainte-Ménehould 111 Salaberga, abbess of Notre-Dame-la-Profonde 124 Salian Franks 19, 125 Salins 66, 94, 95, 97, 136 Samarobriua, see Amiens  Sandwich 63, 65 Sangatte 130, 137 Santiago de Compostela 81, 82, 87 Saône 23, 30, 66, 77, 92, 103, 131, 136, 137 Sassenay 55 Sapaudia, see Savoy  Saracens 60, 61, 66, 67, 81, 98, 132 Savoy 19, 83 167

The Route of the Franks St Maurice, abbey, see Saint-Maurice d’Agaune  St Peter (Northumbria), monastery, see Wearmouth  St Vanne, monastery 31 St Vaast, abbey, see Arras  St Wandrille, monastery 16, 61, 127 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Suevi 19 Sulpicius Severus 17 Sumeran, see Sombre  Susa 84 Swabia 25 Sweyn, Viking leader 35 Swithun, bishop of Winchester 38 Switzerland 68, 79, 80, 92, 94, 98, 135 Syagrius, Roman general 20 Sylvester II, pope, see Gerbert of Aurillac  Symeon of Durham, scholar 36 Syria 73 Syrus, scholar 60

Trophimus, St 82 Troyes 25, 41, 64, 77, 86, 98, 105, 107, 108, 109 Turks 31 Tyrrhenian Sea 59, 62, 65 U  Unknown Ravennese, geographer 12 Urba, see Orbe  Urban II, pope 115 Urbs, see Rome  Ursmar, St  83, 84 Usier 136 V  Vaast, St 43, 57, 125, 127, 135 Val d’Aosta 65 Valais 65, 94 Valence 77, 84 Vandals 19, 98, 105, 111, 119 Vans 90 Varcia, see Larret  Vegetius, Roman writer 9, 10, 68, 70, 138, 139 Velud 123 Vercelli 64, 66, 84 Verdun 108, 137 Verdun-sur-le-Doubts  137, Vereel 97 Vermandois, county of  25, 109 Verona 31, 68 Verzy  - St Basle, abbey 117 Vésigneul-sur-Coole 107 Vesle, river 114 Vesontio, see Besançon  Vevey 65 Vézelay 64, 77 - St Mary Magdalene church 77 Victricius, St, bishop of Rouen 127 Vitry-la-Ville 107 Vienne 8, 62, 65, 66, 77, 89, 131, 135 Vikings 24, 27, 34, 35, 60, 61, 92, 109, 124, 132, 133 Villers-sous-Chalamont 94 Vis-en-Artois 57 Visigoths 23 Vitalian, pope 62 Vouciennes  107 Vrine, la  95 Vuiteboeuf 95 Vuillecin 95

T  Tarentaise 135 Tatwin, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Tavel (Tabernis) 94 Tavernier 94 Tencteri 19 Teranburh, see Thérouanne   Termigno 77 Thanet, isle of 64 Theodore of Tarsus, first archbishop of Canterbury 39, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66 Theodoric, king of the Franks 15 Theoderic IV, king of the Franks 21 Theodoric of Würzburg, scholar 81 Theodred, bishop of London 40 Theophanu, queen, wife of Otto II 26 Thérouanne (Taruenna, Teranburh) 56, 57, 92, 94, 125, 127-129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 137 - cathedral (SS Martin and Peter) 127-129 Thingor, monastery of 87 Togny-aux-Boefs 107 Tongeren 9, 56 Thierry, abbot of St Remigius abbey 122 Tilpin (a.k.a. Talpin or Tulpin), archbishop of Reims 122 Torino 8, 62, 66, 89 - St Ambrose, monastery 89 Tortona 86 Toul  112 Toulon 132 Toulouse 59 Tournai 19, 20, 56, 125 Tours 24, 41, 62, 66 - St Martin, church  133 Trent, river 16 Trèves 93 Trezzo d’Adda 66 Trier 137

W  Wales 35 Wancourt 57 Wandrille (Wandregisel), St 127 Wearmouth, abbey 41, 42, 62, 85, 86 168

Index of Geographical, Ethnic and Personal Names Welsh 80 Wessex 33, 99, 129 West Kingdom, see Francia Occidentalis  Wherwell 35 Whitstable 52 Whitby 64 Wido, abbot of St Peter Abbey, Gent 34, 48 Wighard, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 86 Wilbrand van Oldenburg, scholar 10, 138 Wilfrid of York, bishop of Northumbria and Ripon 15, 21, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 80, 85, 87, 91 William I, count of Provence 60, 61, William I the Pious, duke of Aquitaine 31 William of Malmesbury, scholar 34, 36, 86 Willibald of Mainz, scholar 63, 64, 65, 86, 88 Willibrord, St 63 Winchester 38 Winfrid, bishop of Lichfield 15, 21, 65

Winnebald, brother of Willibald  86 Wissant 17, 65, 73, 92, 94, 130 Worms 19, 117 Wulfhelm, archbishop of Canterbury 39 Wulfric, abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 48, 51 Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury 39, 43, 44, 52 Wulfstan the Homilist, archbishop of York 40 Wye 52 Wynfrith, see Boniface  Y  Yverdon 94 York 40, 41, 62, 63, 90 Z  Zacharias, pope 21

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Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources Aimoin. Vita S. Abb. c. 391 128 Alcuin Epist. 200, ad a. 801 80 Alcuin Epist. 201 80 Ambr. in Psalm. 118, 5.2.2-3 9 Ambr. Sermo 5.2 9 Amm. Hist. 15.10.3-5 17 Anglia Sacra I.54 34 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 816/817 91 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 839, 848, 853 87 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 989 (= 990) 33 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 991 34 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ad a. 1052 85 Anglo-Saxon Wills no. xxviii, a.1042/3 89 Anglo-Saxon Wills p. 5 40 Anonymous Historia Abbatum XXXI-XXXII, pp. 388404 86 ‘Author B’ Vita S. Dunstani pp. 38-40 39 Bed. De Temp. Ratio. col. 571 41 Bed. Hist. Abb. 2-4, 6, 9 62 Bed. Hist. Abb. 17 85 Bed. Hist. Abb. 21 14 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.1 64 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.18 86 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.23-33 41 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.25 64 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.27 88 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.29.104-107 40 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1.33 43, 48 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.3 48 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.20 50, 59 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.33 65 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 2.6 50 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 3.7 16 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.1 59, 62, 65 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.16, 18 62 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 4.18 62 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 5.7 41 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 5.19 41, 62, 85 Bed. Hist. Eccl. 5.21, 24 62 Bonif. Epist. ad Cuthiber. arch. Cant. 78.354-355 91 Byrhtferth of Ramsey Life of St Oswald 44 Cart. abb. S. Vaast p. 42 127 Cart. abb. S. Vaast pp. 144-145 127 Codex S. Galli 913 16 Ed. Lang. Rat. c. 13 61 Einhar. Transl. SS Marc. et Pet. 239 17 De locis sanctis 39, 79 Flod. Ann. 369 (a. 321), 373 (a. 323), 386 (a. 939) 60 Flod. Ann. ad a. 921 (KH), 923 (Λ), 940 (MZ) 119 Flod. Hist. Rem. Eccl. 19, 21, 36 119 Flor. Wig. 991 34 Galen, De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis 9 81

Gerv. Cant. Act. Pont. Cant. 2.350-1 39 Gerv. Cant. Act. Pont. Cant. s.v de Sirico 36 Ges. Pont. Cam. 1.29, p. 413 127 Gos. Hist. Transl. S. Aug. 13-46 40 Greg. De Glor. Confes. col. 876 111 Greg. Epist. 6.51-55, 57, 59-60 41 Greg. Epist. 6.58 91 Greg. Epist. 8.29 41 Greg. Epist. 11.34-42, 44-45, 47-48, 50-51 41 Greg. Tur. Hist. Franc. 6.6 59, 79 Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua 12-13 84 Herim. Torn. Mirac. S. Mariae cols 961-1018 84 Hist. Aug., Alex. Sev. 45 9 Hist. mirac. S. Amandi pp. 895-898 83 It.Ant. 346.10-349.2 92 Johan. Clun. Vita Odon. 2.10 85 Leo III Epist. 3, 3.91-92 16 Lib. S. Jac. 5.4.193v 87 Lib. S. Jac. 5.8 82 Lupus Ferr. Epist. 18 92 Lupus Ferr. Epist. 75 83 Lupus Ferr. Epist. 77 86 Lupus Ferr. Epist. 101 91 Lupus Ferr. Epist. 121 89 Miracula S. Marculfi pp. 533-539 84 Miracula S. Vedasti 127 Nik. Berg. itiner. 53 80 Nik. Berg. itiner. 55 87 Nik. Berg. itiner. 79 87 Nik. Berg. itiner. 150 87 Odo Clun. Vita S. Geraldi 2.18 85 Richer Hist. Franc. 4.50; 110; 115; 119; 124 80, 83, 85, 88 Rodulfus Glaber Hist. 3.4 28 Strabo 4.6.11 92 Veg. epit. r. mil. 3.6 9, 70 Vita Amandi episc. 5, p. 435 5 Vita Ansberti 5, p. 639 55 Vita Lantberti 653-654 127 Vita Maioli 60 Vita Maioli 654.7 61 Vita S. Antid. 98 Vita S. Dunst. 23 39, 85 Vita S. Rigoberti 122 Vita Wilfr. 1 63 Vita Wilfr. 3 62, 65 Vita Wilfr. 5 62 Vita Wilfr. 7 63 Vita Wilfr. 13 63, 65 Vita Wilfr. 25 65 Vita Wilfr. 28 15, 80 Vita Wilfr. 33 63 Vita Wilfr. 34 63 170

Index of Manuscripts Vita Wilfr. 50 85, 87 Vita Wilfr. 56 85 Vita Willibal. 1.80-106 86 Vita Willibal. 3 65 Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 1.20 34

Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 17.5-18 85 Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 76 17 Wil. Malm. Gest. Pontif. Angl. 168 86 Wil. Malm. Gest. Regum 2.10 34 Willibald, Vita Bonif. 5, col. 613 63, 65

Index of Manuscripts CC 16 72, 73 CC 16 fol. 2 73 CC 26 72, 73, 77, 78 CC 26 fol. 1r 73 CC 26 fol. 5 78 CC 183 38 Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 132v 33 Cotton Domitian A. VIII, fol. 58v 33 Cotton Nero D I 73 Cotton Nero D I, fols 183v-184 73 Cotton Tiberius B. V, fol. 21 38

Cotton Tiberius B. V, fol. 23v 38 Cotton Tiberius B. V, fols 23v–24r 36 Cotton Vespasian B. VI 38 Harley 2321, fols 118v-121v  64 Royal 14 C VII 72, 73, 77 Royal 14 C VII fol. 2r 64, 73 Royal 14 C VII fol. 4  78 Royal 14 C VII fol. 4r 73 Royal 14 C VII fols 2-4 73 Vatican 566 (= leaf of Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Lat. 7641) 16

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