Writing Normandy: Stories of Saints and Rulers 9780367139537, 9780429029349

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Writing Normandy

Writing Normandy brings together eighteen articles by historian Felice Lifshitz, some of which are published here for the first time. The articles examine the various ways in which local and regional narratives about the past were created and revised in Normandy during the central Middle Ages. These narratives are analyzed through a combination of both cultural studies and manuscript studies in order to assess how they functioned, who they benefitted, and the various contexts in which they were transmitted. The essays pay particular attention to the narratives built around venerated saints and secular rulers, and in doing so bring together narratives that have traditionally been discussed separately by scholars. The book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural history and medieval history, as well as those interested in manuscript studies. Felice Lifshitz is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, and of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her publications include Gender in Historical Film and Television (2018), co-edited with Carol Donelon and Siobhan Craig, and Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture (2014).

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES

Writing Normandy

Felice Lifshitz

Writing Normandy

Stories of Saints and Rulers

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2021 Felice Lifshitz The right of Felice Lifshitz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-13953-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02934-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1095

This book is dedicated to the memory of Caroline Allen Pripps Marin. May she rest in power and in peace.

CONTENTS

List of abbreviations Preface

xiii xvi

Part I: “Hagiography” and historical representation 1 Beyond positivism and genre: “hagiographical” texts as historical narrative Viator 25 (1994): 95–113, republished here with permission of the University of California Press. 2 Still useless after all these years: the concept of “hagiography” in the twenty-first century Part II: Historiographic discourse and saintly relics: the archbishops and Rouen 3 The “Privilege of St. Romanus”: provincial independence and hagiographical legends at Rouen Analecta Bollandiana 107 (1989):161–170, republished here with permission of the Société des Bollandistes. 4 The Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium: a monastery or cathedral product? Analecta Bollandiana 108 (1990): 337–347, republished here with permission of the Société des Bollandistes. 5 Eight men in: Rouennais traditions of archiepiscopal sanctity The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, vol. 2, ed. Robert B. Patterson (London: Hambledon Continuum, 1990), pp. 63–74, used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ix

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47 49

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6 St. Romanus of Rouen: Frankish missionary in Viking Normandy “S. Romain: Missionnaire franc dans la Normandie des Vikings,” in Voix d’ouest en Europe, souffles d’Europe en ouest: actes du Colloque international d’Angers, 21–24 mai 1992, ed. Georges Cesbron (Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 1993), pp. 23–30, republished here (in an English translation by the author) with permission of the University of Angers. 7 The politics of historiography: the memory of bishops in eleventh-century Rouen History and Memory 10 (1998): 118–137, republished here with permission of Indiana University Press. 8 The cults of the holy bishops of Rouen from 396 to 996: the role of oral traditions and popular actions “Les cultes des saints évêques de Rouen de 396 à 996: Le rôle des traditions orales et des actions populaires,” in 396–1996: XVIe centenaire de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen: Colloque international, 5–7 décembre 1996, ed. Yves Lescroart (Rouen: Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Haute-Normandie, 2005), pp. 49–56, republished here (in an English translation by the author) with permission of Yves Lescroart and the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Haute-Normandie. Part III: Historiographic discourse and saintly relics: beyond Rouen 9 The “exodus of holy bodies” reconsidered: the translation of the relics of St. Gildardus of Rouen to Soissons Analecta Bollandiana 110 (1992): 329–340, republished here with permission of the Société des Bollandistes. 10 The migration of Neustrian relics in the Viking Age: the myth of voluntary exodus, the reality of coercion, and theft Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995): 175–192, republished here with permission of John Wiley and Sons. 11 Apostolicity theses in Gaul: the Histories of Gregory and the “hagiography” of Bayeux

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The World of Gregory of Tours, eds. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 211–228, republished here with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV. Part IV: Dudo of St. Quentin and the Gesta Normannorum

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12 Dudo’s historical narrative and the Norman succession of 996 Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 101–120, republished here with permission of Taylor and Francis.

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13 Viking Normandy: Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum ORB Online Library, http://163.238.55.65/orb_done/ dudo/dudintro.html, 1996, © Felice Lifshitz.

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14 Dudo of St. Quentin (fl. late tenth century) A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing, ed. Daniel R. Woolf, 2 vols., (New York: Garland, 1998), vol. 1, p. 248, © Daniel R. Woolf. Republished with permission.

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15 Carolingian Normandy: an essay on continuity, using neglected sources “La Normandie carolingienne. Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources negligés,” Annales de Normandie 48 (1998): 505–524, republished here (in an English translation by the author) with permission of Annales de Normandie.

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16 Translating “feudal” vocabulary: Dudo of St. Quentin The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, vol. 9, ed. Christopher P. Lewis (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), pp. 39–56, reprinted by permission of Boydell and Brewer Ltd.

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Part V: Women and gender

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17 The Encomium Emmae Reginae: a “political pamphlet” of the eleventh century? The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, vol. 1, ed. Robert B. Patterson (London: Hambledon Continuum, 1989), pp. 39–50, used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. xi

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18 Sifting for fictions: women in Dudo of St. Quentin’s androcentric Gesta Normannorum Manuscripts cited Index

239 260 262

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ABBREVIATIONS

AASS AB AHR BC BHL BM BN BSS c. CCHP

CCHR coll. d. Dudo, De moribus

Dudo, HN eds.

Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, eds. Société des Bollandistes, 68 vols. (Antwerp: Meursius, 1643–1940). Analecta Bollandiana American Historical Review Bibliothèque du chapitre Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, eds. Société des Bollandistes, 2 vols. and supplements (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1898–1911 and 1987). Bibliothèque municipale Bibliothèque nationale de France Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 13 vols. (Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII nella Pontificia Università lateranense, 1960–1970). circa Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum antiquiorum saeculo XVI qui asservantur in Bibiotheca Nationali Parisiensi, eds. Hagiographi Bollandiani, 3 vols. (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1889–1893). Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum bibliothecae publicae Rotomagensis, ed. Albert Poncelet, AB 23 (1904): 129–275. columns died Dudo of St. Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. Jules Lair (Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 23; Caen: F. Le BlancHardel, 1865). Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998). editors

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esp. et al. Fauroux, Recueil fl. fol. GC HLF lat. Lifshitz, Lifshitz, “Dossier” Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative” Lifshitz, Norman Conquest MGH MGH SRG MGH SRM MGH SS MM nal no. nos. OV PL s.v. SB-PK Settimane St.

especially and others Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. Marie Fauroux (Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 36; Caen: Caron, 1961). floruit folio Gallia Christiania in provincias distributa, 16 vols. (Paris: Coignard, 1715–1785 and Didot, 1856–1865). Bénédictins de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur, et. al., Histoire littéraire de la France, 46 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1733–2018). latin “Beyond Positivism and Genre” Felice Lifshitz, “The Dossier of Romanus of Rouen: The Political Uses of Hagiographical Texts” (Ph.D. Dissertation; Columbia University, 1988). Felice Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative and the Norman Succession of 996,” Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 101–120. Felice Lifshitz, The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics, 684–1090 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1995). Monumenta Germaniae Historica MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum Scriptores rerum merovingicarum Scriptores Médiathèque municipale nouvelle acquisition latine number numbers Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968–1980) Patrologiae cursus completes, series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris: Petit-Montrouge, 1844–1864). sub verbo Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo saint

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trans. translator “Vita Sancti Gildardi,” “Vita Sancti Gildardi, episcopi Rothomagensis et ed. Poncelet eiusdem translatio Suessiones, anno 838–840 facta,” ed. Albert Poncelet, AB 8 (1889): 389–405. vol. volume vols. volumes

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PREFACE

This collection brings together sixteen essays published between 1989 and 2005, three of which are here translated into English from their original French, alongside two new contributions (Chapters 2 and 18) written specifically for this volume. The majority of the essays explore medieval, Latin-language narratives about saints (primarily bishops) and/or rulers (primarily dukes) of Normandy. The main theme running through the entire book is the different ways in which narratives about the local and regional past (historiography) were created, revised, and instrumentalized in what is now Normandy (and very closely related areas, such as England) primarily during the central Middle Ages. I analyze a number of different Latin narratives (above all Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum and the lives, miracles, and relic translation accounts of various Norman saints, but also the Encomium Emmae Reginae) utilizing a combination of cultural studies (how does it function, what does it conceal, and who benefits?) and manuscript studies (in what context do we find the narratives? precisely when and where were the copies made?) approaches. In these essays, I treat both narratives built around figures venerated as saints and narratives built around secular rulers as generically identical, that is, as historiographical constructions and representations of the (always unstable) past. One goal of this collection is to collect and publish together articles that might have found two separate sets of audiences in the past: “political” historians may have been focusing only on the narratives about secular rulers, while “religious” historians may have been focusing only on the narratives about saints. In fact, the “religious” and the “political” aspects of the narratives are inextricable from each other, across all the narratives discussed. In order to more persuasively justify my grouping together of narratives that are conventionally handled separately, as if they belonged to two separate genres of “historiography” and “hagiography,” I include in the collection my 1994 Viator article in which I set forth the rationale for dissolving the artificial and misleading generic wall between these (purportedly) divergent types of historical narratives. One of the newly composed essays (Chapter 2) expands on the themes of that 1994 article in light of subsequent developments in the field. The idea to publish a collection of my articles first came from Beverly Kienzle, and I am tremendously grateful to her for having suggested it to me; without her xvi

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encouragement, I would not have had the chutzpah to approach Routledge. I am grateful to Routledge’s Michael Greenwood for the excellent suggestion that I make English translations of the three articles I originally published in French and that I include two new essays. I am extremely grateful to the two anonymous readers for Routledge who supported the publication of this collection. I also owe a real debt of gratitude to Kamal Ranaweera and Thomas Welz of the University of Alberta, who gave me access to the equipment, and showed me (repeatedly, until I finally got it!) how to use the relevant software necessary to process the various articles from a range of starting points (sometimes as unpromising as a poor photocopy of an old article) to where I could create new, usable Word files. I have heard it said that these collected essay publications are vanity projects, but my experience of working through my older articles was rarely flattering to my vanity. To the contrary, it was often mortifying to discover typographical errors and faulty citations in my previously published work, but I am glad to have had the opportunity to correct those errors in the process of uniformizing and regularizing the texts and the citations styles of all the articles for (re)publication in a single consistently formatted volume. I have also moved innumerable footnotes from the middle to the end of sentences (which has sometimes meant combining multiple footnotes into a single end-of-sentence note), and smoothed out or clarified some of my more awkward (or incorrect) linguistic formulations, and introduced some abbreviations that recur throughout this collection but that did not require abbreviation in the individual previously published articles. I have not, however, updated or corrected any errors of substance. As before, all errors are my own. This book is dedicated to the memory of Caroline Allen Pripps Marin, my birth mother, to whose company during the very beginnings of my life, I believe, I owe some of my knowledge of the French language; without that, I would have been a much inferior Normanist. Edmonton, Alberta June 10, 2020, in the midst of the Pandemic.

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Part I

“Hagiography” and historical representation

1 BEYOND POSITIVISM AND GENRE “Hagiographical” texts as historical narrative

Historia est quae praeterita narrat, Prophetia quae futura narrat, Hagiographa quae aeternae vitae gaudia jubilat.1

Over the past century, “hagiographical” materials have been approached from every conceivable perspective.2 A critical trend has been to move away from bobbing for data to reconstructing mentalities and, consequently, to move from searching for the original version of each particular saint’s biography to studying all extant versions, each in its particular compositional context. Instead of seeing “legendary accretions” as dross to be sifted and cleared away, scholars have seen transformations in a saint’s character as crucial indicators of many different sorts of changes over time.3 Although an archetype-fetish no longer prevails, and professional historians have ceased dismissing re-workings out of hand, the fact that “hagiographical” narratives (both original and revised versions) have frequently been stigmatized as “untrue” can still blind us to their function as historical writing, despite their 1 Honorius of Autun (fl. ca. 1100), In Psalmos, PL 172.273B. The main outlines of this essay were first presented as a paper before the Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium on “Saints and Their Cults in the Middle Ages” in April 1993. I thank the audience, the other panelists, and particularly Thomas Heffernan, for the useful discussion which followed the paper, and Magdalena Carrasco, Patrick J. Geary, Cynthia Hahn, Thomas Head, and Thomas F.X. Noble for helpful informal discussions outside the framework of the panels. Funding for the research and preparation of the colloquium paper and for the expanded article was provided by a Faculty Development Mini-Grant from Florida International University. Earlier drafts of the typescript were read and improved by the comments of Dan Cohen, Walter Goffart, and Alan Kahan; my failure at times to follow their excellent advice leaves the fault for more than simple errors of fact squarely at my doorstep. An especially large debt is owed to Benjamin Arnold, whose efforts went well beyond the call of duty. 2 For a bibliographically rich survey of the field see Friedrich Lotter, “Methodisches zur Gewinnung historischer Erkenntnisse aus hagiographischen Quellen,” Historische Zeitschrift 229 (1979): 298–356. 3 The seminal works here are Joseph-Claude Poulin, L’idéal de sainteté dans l’Aquitaine carolingienne d’après les sources hagiographiques (750–950) (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1975), and Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

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increasingly enthusiastic rehabilitation as historical sources. In fact, there has even been something of an industry involved specifically in discovering the characteristics which distinguish historical writing, or historiography, from “hagiography,” a scholarly effort which, despite a century of labor, had yet, in 1979, to solve the “problem.”4 A similar conundrum concerning definitions has plagued historians of visual, rather than verbal, representation, some of whom have begun to assert the complete impossibility of distinguishing generically among modes of visual representation, for instance between an icon and a pictorial narrative.5 This essay, however, will be confined to the problems raised by literary genres. 4 Lotter, “Methodisches,” p. 306. There is also a brief review of the literature on the issue of genre up to approximately the same year in Pierre-André Sigal, “Histoire et hagiographie: les Miracula aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” Annales de Bretagne 87 (1980): 237–257, at 238–240. Whoever examines the century’s worth of literature devoted to generic definition will witness the spectacle of authors painstakingly erecting criteria for the “hagiographical” genre, as distinct from the historiographical genre, only to admit that many “hagiographical” texts do not fit into the category of “hagiography,” which indeed happens with Lotter himself (“Methodisches,” p. 306; also see pp. 312–313 where he admits that translationes are not “hagiographical” but historical). Voss, too, eventually declares that, “in practice,” his two branches of historiography are frequently mixed up (Bernd Reiner Voss, “Berührungen von Hagiographie und Historiographie in der Spätantike,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 4 [1970]: 53–69, at 61). Sigal, after arguing throughout for two distinct genres, ends up admitting that there is a large “hagiographical” component in “historical” works and ultimately concludes that “hagiography” is part of “history” (“Histoire et hagiographie,” pp. 246–248 and 257). Ludwif Zoepf (Das Heiligen-Leben im 10. Jahrhundert [Leipzig: Tuebner, 1908], pp. 34–35) distinguishes within his ideal genre of “hagiography” (from which he has already excluded most texts as perversions of the pure genre) among “biography,” “vita” (biography plus miraculous occurrences), and “legend” (biography with a very large or even dominant supernatural element), then immediately declares that many texts cannot be fitted into the categories and that in any case the modus operandi of the “hagiographer” is identical for all three subgenres. Only a few examples of the points on which the generic projects capsize will be noted here as illustration; the interested reader should consult directly the literature concerning generic definition. The prologues of works that nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians have considered to be historiography follow exactly the same tripartite schema that Zoepf constructed as characteristic of “hagiography:” a description of how the work was commissioned by a superior, though the author at first balked due to consciousness of his limited erudition; a plea to the patron to protect, correct or destroy the work; an assertion that the tale about to be told is true (Zoepf, Das Heiligen-Leben, p. 40; Antonia Gransden, Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England [London: Hambledon Press, 1992], pp. 125–126; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 115–120). “Both” historiographers and “hagiographers” favored the form of the “virtue catalog” to describe a hero’s main attributes, and ascribed to their heroes identical virtues; Fredegar describes Claudius as “genere Romanus, homo prudens, iocundus in fabolis, strenuus in cunctis, pacienciae deditus, plenitudinem consiliae habundans, litterarum eruditus, fide plenus amiciciam cum omnibus sectans” (Fredegar, Chronicon 4.28, ed. Bruno Krusch [MGH SRM 2; Hanover: Hahn, 1888], p. 132). It has even been conclusively demonstrated (bizarrely enough in the context of arguing that “historiography” and “hagiography” are two separate genres) that the entire thematic complex of a hero’s fama and his virtues as exemplars for imitatio, which is often seen as the hallmark of a “hagiographical” text, was central to the narratives of Xenophon, Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, and Livy, “historiographers” to a man (Voss, “Berührungen,” pp. 56–63). 5 This was the conclusion of the editors of the proceedings of the 1985 National Gallery of Art conference on Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds. Herbert Kessler and Marianna Shreve Simpson (Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, 1985), p. 8.

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I will address directly only one of the many definitions of “hagiography” that have been proposed, because this particular definition has been very frequently cited: the oracular definition of Hippolyte Delehaye. Delehaye contends that “hagiography” intends primarily to engender, propagate, strengthen, etc. the cult of a saint.6 Yet there are many writings about saints which seem never to have served for any functioning cult, and many in which the dominant motives for composition are unrelated to any kind of liturgical veneration.7 Even the many narratives preserved and transmitted in legendaries are frequently bereft of festival dates, indicating the absence of ties to a cult.8 Nor can we simply take “cult” in its very broadest, rather than in its specifically liturgical, sense as a general fame or revered reputation; for that would lead us down precisely the same road we are already on, heading toward a broad “genre” of biographies of famous people, people among whom a “saint” cannot be distinguished without a liturgical, rather than a merely fanatical, cult. Furthermore, when tenth-century authors did wish to refer to the liturgy of anthems, responses, readings, and prayers that had developed in connection with the celebrations of saints’ cults, they did not use “hagiographical” words; rather, they called such compositions “historiae.”9 If an actual cult is not always a significant part of “hagiographical” writing, then the fact that a narrative hinges upon a saintly hero or heroine becomes a tangential concern, and the glue of the generic label qua “hagiography,” rather than biography/historiography, dissolves. Biography, of saints or of other figures, seems to have been the most popular form of historical narrative in the Middle Ages, just as it is today. The libraries of medieval monasteries were stuffed with biographies, as are the libraries of today’s bibliophiles and history buffs. But these modern collections are not divided into separate genres on the basis of the

6 Hippolyte Delehaye, Les légendes hagiographiques (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1906), pp. xiii and 2. Among the authors discussed in this paper alone, the definition is cited by Zoepf, Das Heiligen-Leben, p. 5; Lotter, “Methodisches,” p. 307; and Baudouin De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie: Quelques aspects du problème,” Settimane 17 (1970): 139–166, at 140. 7 Biographies of saints provided communities and institutions with written traditions; they defended the independence of communities and institutions against those who wished to subject them; they defended property rights and territorial endowments; they fueled episcopal rivalries; they conveyed political and theological stances; they propagated an individual author’s or group’s notion of “the holy;” they served, in short, for manifold purposes. See the catalog of functions in Zoepf, Das Heiligen-Leben, pp. 6 and 12–30, and in Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); the latter is essentially an encyclopedic compendium of the uses of “hagiographical” materials, most of which turn out to have very little to do with cults. Episcopal lists likewise had long been assumed to possess primarily cultic or liturgical functions, simply because their historiographic functions were unappreciated; for a corrective, see Jean-Charles Picard, Le souvenir des évêques: sépultures, listes épiscopales et culte des évêques en Italie du Nord des origines au Xe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), pp. 520–538. 8 Guy Philippart, Les légendiers latins et autres manuscrits hagiographiques (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), pp. 24–25. 9 Jones, Saint Nicholas, pp. 112–113; Ritva Jonsson, Historia: Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm: Almqvist et Wiskell, 1968).

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profession or status of the subject. The hero or heroine may be a politician, a sports figure, or a movie star, and within each realm there will be a number of similarities in their life stories, crucial turning points such as first campaign, dramatic injury, bout with substance abuse, trauma at loss of privacy. Does the presence of such topoi impose a generic differentiation within “biography?”10 Such arguments aside, the main problem with Delehaye’s definition of “hagiography” lies elsewhere, a problem which has marred all the definitions of “hagiography” that have been erected, and especially those which seek to distinguish “hagiography” from historiography: the very attempt to discover a single definition that can be universally valid. There can be no simple definition of “hagiography” or of historiography that does not conscientiously take into account changing political contexts. The points I wish to make in this essay are more suggestive than exhaustive. It is not possible to cover the history of European historiography in a single article; instead, I wish only to emphasize certain twelfth- and nineteenth-century developments. Even then, the discussion must be sketchy. It will not be possible, for instance, to distinguish among the different courses of national development followed by England, France, and Germany, or among the different rhythms of academic professionalization in those countries, or even to differentiate among the concerns of the various individuals who contributed to the relevant changes. Nevertheless, it is possible to suggest how some already well-known twelfth- and nineteenth-century political developments affected European conceptions of the proper subject of history. My intention is to connect changing conceptions of historiography and major political developments, both of which are already recognized, with the problem of the “genre of hagiography.” The point is to warn against applying definitions of historiography, and by extension of “hagiography,” that make sense for a twelfth- or a nineteenthcentury context, anachronistically to ninth-, tenth-, or eleventh-century Francia.11 We cannot ignore political contexts,12 or fail to look historically at all the terms of the debate, including “historiography.” The historiography against which 10 To the argument that “hagiographical” materials also include relics, reliquaries, iconographic representations, breviaries, etc., I would respond that, logically, we are therefore also required to erect a genre “politicalia” comprised of biographies of politicians, reports of office-holders to constituents, campaign posters, bumper-stickers, and souvenir sponges. 11 Two recent works on European historiography have argued for the centrality of the socio-political context in determining the style and content of historical narrative. Morrison’s 1990 discussion of high medieval scholastic historiography analyzed the analogous programs of visual and literary representers of the past to show that both functioned so as to exclude “pagans,” Jews, women, peasants, and a variety of “Others” from the stuff of “history;” see Karl Morrison, History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Christina Crosby analyzed how nineteenth-century authors produced “history” as “man’s truth” by using “women” as their intrinsically unhistorical Other, a development which formed the background for the establishment of “history” as a university discipline; see Christina Crosby, The Ends of History: Victorians and “The Woman Question” (New York: Routledge, 1991). 12 Mark Van Uytfanghe’s attempt to replace “genre” with a different literary conception, namely “discourse,” only came to my attention after this article had been accepted for publication, and I

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“hagiography” has been defined is scientistic in its methodology, as we shall briefly see, but it has also been secular and nationalistic in its content. It is a historiography whose emergence coincided with that of the administrative monarchies of Western Europe in the twelfth century and after, and whose development culminated with the entrenchment of the nation-states of the nineteenth century. It is a historiography inseparable from that political connection. Yet the Frankish kingdoms in the late Carolingian and early Capetian periods, whether vilified as anarchic and chaotic or hailed for their creative methods of preserving peace and order without cultural, political, ethnic, and linguistic barriers, are famous for the “weakness” of the “state.” The late Carolingian and early Capetian realms had no universities and no law schools, no interest in Aristotelian categories or Roman law, practically no bureaucracies or methods of recordkeeping. I would suggest that, as a result, the west Frankish lands between the ninth and the eleventh centuries also necessarily lacked any conception of “historiography” that even could be distinguished from “hagiography.” In 1988, Tilliette drew attention to the enormous output of metrical verse biographies of saints that marked the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, but that had prior to his article been completely ignored by historians. He counted over seventy extant verse biographies of saints composed in Northern Francia between 800 and 1100, with a marked concentration of production from the late ninth century through the early eleventh.13 Tilliette’s explanation of why these verse biographies had been so ignored is extremely instructive: because, as Tilliette rather dramatically put it, they are almost all marked by the fundamental flaw, the original sin, of being re-workings of earlier prose texts.14 Until 1988, this revisionist literature had been studied exclusively by literary scholars who were concerned with the stylistic and linguistic differences between the original and the reworking. The assumption governing discussion of the verse biographies had long been that their authors simply wished to clean up grammatical errors and ameliorate the degraded and garbled syntax of predecessors. But Tilliette argued that authors who possessed the learning and skills necessary to compose an epic poem in hexameters or elegiac distiches were scarcely likely to have spent their effort in the puerile paraphrasing of narratives considered insufficiently elegant.15 When one considers that the ubiquitous and omni-influential Alcuin of York himself began the Continental vogue for verse (and prose) rewritings with his twin biographies of St. Willibrord, one can hardly cling to the notion cannot do his arguments justice here (“L’hagiographie: un ‘genre’ chrétien ou antique tardif?” AB 111 [1993]: 135–188). I would consider his approach incomplete, due to the continued isolation of “hagiography,” both from historiography and from the political context, in a world of literary theory; narrative discourse rarely exists in isolation. 13 Jean-Yves Tilliette, “Les modèles de sainteté du IXe au XIe siècle, d’après le témoignage des récits hagiographiques en vers metriques,” Settimane 36 (1988): 381–409, at 387–388. 14 They “porte[nt] la tare originelle d’être, dans une large mesure, une littérature de réécriture” (Tilliette, “Les modèles de sainteté,” pp. 381–382; emphasis mine). 15 Tilliette, “Les modèles de sainteté,” pp. 383–384.

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that such a politically active man was interested in mere grammar, or disinterested in what vision of the past would be dominant. It appears that the leading intellectuals of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries felt compelled to rewrite early medieval texts specifically because the latter clashed with their own historical perspectives, not because the grammar was poor. The verse biographies cited by Tilliette will be a good place to start if we wish to understand what historiography meant in the late Carolingian and early Capetian periods. First, we have to recognize re-visions and re-writings as historiographical.16 The metrical re-workings in question concern almost exclusively missionaries and monastic founders of the late Roman and Merovingian eras (the fourth through the seventh centuries). Furthermore, the metrical biographies depart from their models in order to enmesh the saint’s activities explicitly within a larger historical context: the most cherished aim of the “hagiographers” was to relate their own past to the history of salvation.17 Such narratives, whether verse or prose, were among the main vessels into which the curious and the creative poured their images of the past, particularly concerning issues of burning concern such as when and how an area was first converted to Christianity. Frequently, and this is the case with Tilliette’s corpus of verse biographies, medieval historians revised the pictures of the past which had been transmitted to them by their predecessors, much as we do today, to bring those images more in line with contemporary needs. In order to recognize these narratives for what they are, and to understand the historical consciousness of the period, we must go beyond the anachronistic application both of positivist theory and of the concept of a “hagiographic” genre. Nothing authorizes us to excise from the history of historiography everything which is now perceived as “false,” or to excise from the rollcall of historians everyone whose methods and conclusions we do not accept.

Positivism The lines along which the generic debate has been drawn over the past one hundred years have taken as the ideal standard of historiography, against which “hagiography” is measured, a particular form of historical writing which may be called

16 Heinz Lowe addressed the issue of central medieval “historiography” and included certain “hagiographical” works in his discussion; however, he only considered narratives describing contemporary events worthy of mention (Lowe, “Geschichtsschreibung des ausgehenden Karolingerzeit,” Deutsches Archiv 23 [1967]: 1–30, at 18–23). Such a limited perspective still misses the vast majority of the historiographical output of the period and presents a false vision of the period as lacking interest in the historical past. Hofmann has begun the interrogation of this artificial boundary between historiography focused on the past and historiography focused on the present; see Heinz Hofmann, “Profil der lateinischen Historiographie im zehnten Jahrhundert,” Settimane 38 (1991): 837–905, at 839. 17 “Les hagiographes ont à coeur de rapporter leur propre passé à l’histoire du salut” (Tilliette, “Les modèles de sainteté,” pp. 389–397).

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“empirical.”18 In effect, the emphasis in all fully fledged discussions of the issue by historians has been whether “hagiography” can be as “factual” and “scientific” as historiography, evidently perceived by the participants in the debate to be an objective science, while historians have ignored the fact that historiography, at least in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, was as “literary,” as “moralizing,” and as much a rhetorical art form, as was what they have labeled “hagiography.”19 Consider two contributions to the 1970 Spoleto conference on historiography, namely, the communications of Edmond-René Labande and Baudouin de Gaiffier, along with Pierre-André Sigal’s review of the generic debate ten years later.20 Labande employs a more or less tacit notion of the proper definition of historiography in order to exclude most output from consideration, such that only at the very end of the eleventh century does Normandy, for example, “[entre] dans l’ère de l’Histoire au sens le plus noble du terme” (“enter the age of History in the most noble sense of the term”) with the work of William of Poitiers, who made of history “une science, une discipline exigeante.”21 De Gaiffier’s view likewise is positivistic, standing firm on his conception of historical inquiry as a scientific and objective search for Truth. He argues that “hagiography” is not historiography because “hagiographical” materials have a number of traits which are, in his opinion, not characteristic of historiographical narrative: they are intended to glorify their subject;22 they are intended to inspire emulation;23 they express ideals which

18 Thomas Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 15–18 and chapter two, “Sacred Biography as Historical Narrative,” pp. 38–71. Even more recently, two authors have mounted full-scale attacks on anachronistic conceptions of historiography being applied to the works of pre-modern writers and artists; see Morrison, History as a Visual Art, and Jack Greenstein, Mantegna and Painting as Historical Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 27–28. 19 The whole problematic as formulated by Voss is askew: he begins by asking “ob und in welchem Ausmaß hagiographische Schriften als Werke der Geschichtsschreibung im heutigen Sinn angesehen werden können” (“Berührungen,” p. 53). For historiography as a branch of rhetoric, see Roger Ray, “The Triumph of Greco-Roman Rhetorical Assumptions in Pre-Carolingian Historiography,” in The Inheritance of Historiography 350–900, eds. Christopher Holdsworth and T.P. Wiseman (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986), pp. 67–84. 20 De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” pp. 140–166; Edmond-René Labande, “L’historiographie de la France de l’ouest aux Xe et XIe siècles,” Settimane 17 (1970): 751–791; Sigal, “Histoire et hagiographie.” 21 Labande, “L’historiographie de la France,” pp. 762–763, in reference to William’s Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum. Labande seems to consider only writings about relatively contemporary events as qualifying as “récits historiques.” He uses his scalpel even to excise self-conscious historians such as Dudo of St. Quentin, whose De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum he dismisses, following Lucien Musset, for “nullité intellectuelle” (“L’historiographie de la France,” p. 760). For Musset’s vicious attack on Dudo, see his “Le satiriste Garnier de Rouen et son milieu (début du XIe siècle),” Revue du Moyen-Age latin 10 (1954): 237–266, at 240–241. 22 De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” p. 141. 23 De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” p. 140.

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change over time as a result of larger societal transformations;24 their authors are inspired by earlier models within the genre and by texts such as the Bible;25 their authors are sometimes more concerned with the tastes of the public or with some didactic aims than with “the painstaking search for truth;”26 and the visions they present of the subject or hero are unstable and constantly changing so that they do not provide scientifically certain knowledge.27 Sigal, by way of explicitly endorsing the views of De Gaiffier, established boundaries between the genres of historiography and “hagiography” on the dual grounds that “moralizing” is a distinguishing trait only of the latter,28 and that the true Historian is little more than a conduit for the Spirit of Historical Truth: alors que l’historien a pour mission de faire le récit le plus complet possible, de raconter tous les événements qu’il connaît dans le cadre qu’il s’est fixé, meme si ces faits sont douloureux et tragiques et déchirent l’ecrivain chargé de les transmettre à la posterité, l’auteur de miracula peut se permettre de choisir.29 The anachronistic nature of this sort of empiricism or positivism has been laid bare by Thomas Heffernan, a literary historian who has taken the care to remind “historians” of their rhetorician roots.30 As soon as one dispenses with the anach24 25 26 27

De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” pp. 142–143 and 148. De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” pp. 143, 153, and 162. De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” p. 148. De Gaiffier, “Hagiographie et historiographie,” pp. 148–151. Neither De Gaiffier nor Delehaye, both positivist-leaning Bollandists (Jesuits), ever reached the intensity of the most extreme defender of “hagiography” as a separate genre, the Benedictine monk, Jean Leclercq; for instance, see Jean Leclercq, “L’écriture sainte dans l’hagiographie monastique du Haut Moyen Age,” Settimane 10 (1963): 103–128. Leclercq (on pp. 116–122) argues (with almost no evidence) that every action in a saint’s biography must be based on a biblical model or precedent, and since every action is actually biblical, therefore “hagiographical” writings, like the Bible, are only to be submitted to exegesis because their authors are interested only in what the events meant sub specie aeternitatis. 28 Sigal, “Histoire et hagiographie,” pp. 255–257. 29 “Whereas the mission of the historian is to create the most complete account possible, to narrate all the events of which he is aware which fall within the framework which he has set for himself, even if those facts be painful and tragic and wrench the heart of the historian who is burdened with the duty of transmitting them to posterity, the author of miracula can permit himself to choose” (Sigal, “Histoire et hagiographie,” p. 249). 30 Heffernan’s thesis is “that much of our current understanding of medieval hagiography has been unwittingly shaped by the Enlightenment response to sacred biography, the parent of the dominant positivist tradition to which much biographical scholarship is still heir” (Heffernan, Sacred Biography, p. 54). Heffernan rejects the term “hagiography” in favor of “sacred biography.” However, were we simply to replace “hagiography” with “sacred biography,” as he proposes, we would still be faced with the herculean task of deciding which biographies are “sacred” and which are not. Witness the debate over the proper classification of Helgaud of Fleury’s Epitoma vitae regis Rotberti pii (Vie de Robert le Pieux: Epitoma vitae regis Rotberti pii, ed. and trans. Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Labory [Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1965]; the extensive literature on the subject is listed by Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints: The

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ronistic positivist yardstick applied by De Gaiffier, Labande, and Sigal and measures late Carolingian and early Capetian “hagiography” against late Carolingian and early Capetian historiography, rather than against nineteenth- and twentiethcentury historiography, it becomes impossible to distinguish two separate types of literary narratives, just as it is impossible to distinguish two categories of authors, for again and again the very same people wrote works that are now considered to pertain to the genre of “historiography” as well as those considered to be “hagiography.”31 Before its professionalization in the late nineteenth century, “historiography” was a dramatist’s art, a branch of poesy and rhetoric. We must, first of all, in approaching the narrative output of the ninth through the eleventh centuries, dispense with any neo-positivist prejudices, and renounce any project to distinguish genres along scientistic lines. Scientistic understandings do not work even for the early part of the nineteenth century, when Henry Adams (soon to become the first professional American medievalist) took second place in the 1858 competition for the Bowdoin prize for Harvard undergraduates in historical writing for an essay, on St. Paul and Seneca, written “in the vein of Plutarch,” that is, as a guide to morals.32 Still less do scientistic understandings work for the twelfth century, when Robert of Torigny began his Chronicle by explaining that he, as a historian, has the following moralistic aims: to praise virtue, censure vice, and thus admonish

Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], p. 270 n. 155), or the discussions that have swirled around Ruotger’s Vita Brunonis (see Ruotgers Lebensbeschreibung des Erzbischofs Bruno von Köln: Ruotgeri Vita Brunonis Archiepiscopi Coloniensis, ed. Irene Ott [MGH SRG n.s. 10; Weimar: Böhlau, 1951], p. x, where it is argued that the biography of this particular saint “ist kein Werk der Hagiographie im üblichen Sinn”). 31 Zoepf’s list of the major central medieval “German” “hagiographers” could simply be relabeled a list of the major central medieval “German” authors: Alcuin, Einhard, Walafrid Strabo, Ermanrich of Ellwangen, Rudolf of Fulda, Hucbald of St. Amand, Adso of Lobbes, Rather of Verona, Walter of Speyer, Heriger of Lobbes, Notker the Stammerer, Notker of Liège, John of Gorze, the Cluniac abbots, Widukind of Corvey, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Bruno of Querfurt (Zoepf, Das HeiligenLeben, p. 32). Meanwhile, the historiographical projects of all those authors, plus those of Eusebius of Caesarea, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, John of Biclaro, Bede, and Dudo of St. Quentin (to name just a few) were fundamentally shaped within a biblical or sacred historical crucible, combining the “classical” tradition of exempla with the hand of God, although every author used the Bible in his or her own manner. See Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Rev. ed. 3; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), and Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London: Scribner, 1975); Erich Auerbach, Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spätantike und im Mittelalter (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1958); Ward, Miracles, pp. 201–205, esp. 202–203; Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative”; Paul Lehmann, “Der Einfluss der Bibel auf frühmittelalterliche Geschichtsschreiber,” Settimane 10 (1963): 129–140. Not only the Bible but also the liturgy played a role, particularly in the works of historians who did not receive a scholastic education; see Leonid Arbusow, Liturgie und Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter in ihren Beziehungen erläutert an den Schriften Ottos von Freising (+1158), Heinrichs Livlandchronik (1227), und den anderen Missionsgeschichten des Bremischen Erzsprengels: Rimberts, Adams von Bremen, Helmolds (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1951), pp. 41–42 and 86–87. 32 Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 21.

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his readers to love and fear God.33 And scientistic understandings certainly do not work for the period before 1100.

Genre: a ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-century anachronism Simply to reject the scientistic, empiricist yardstick as anachronistic, which we must do for twelfth- and nineteenth-century narratives alike, does not go far enough when it comes to the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. In this case, we must move beyond positivism and genre. Nor is it enough to say that, for centuries on end, there was much “cross-over” or “bleeding” or “blurring” among genres; at a certain point, constant “cross-over” must be taken as an indication that the categories themselves are hopelessly inadequate. To retain the generic categories of “hagiography” and “historiography” for the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries would do more harm than good. How does it help us even to pose the question of which generic label ought to be affixed to the monastic and episcopal gesta composed by some of the most active scriptoria in Francia in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, such as the Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium,34 the Gesta episcoporum Autissiodorensium,35 the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium,36 and the Gesta abbatum Fontenellensium?37 These narratives are at once serial biographies and chronological histories of local institutions; they contain a heavy supernatural content while being loaded with citations to and verbatim recapitulations of documentary sources, and have sometimes been broken down and assigned individual numbers in the Bibliotheca hagiographica latina (BHL).38 Indeed, the insoluble complexities involved in the enterprise of applying generic categories to the late Carolingian and early Capetian periods help us to understand the variable treatment accorded to the various gesta by the compilers of the BHL. The gesta of the bishops of Le Mans have all been given BHL numbers. On the other hand, the BHL lists the sections of the gesta of the bishops of Auxerre that were published 33 PL 160.421; see also Robert of Torigny, Chronique, ed. Léopold Delisle, 2 vols. (Rouen: A. Le Brument, 1872–1873). 34 Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, eds. Georges Busson and Ambroise Ledru (Le Mans: Société des Archives Historiques du Maine, 1901). 35 Gesta episcoporum Autissiodorensium, ed. L.M. Duru (Auxerre: Bibliothèque historique de l’Yonne, 1850), pp. 309–509. 36 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann (MGH SS 7; Hanover: Hahn, 1846), pp. 402–489. 37 Gesta abbatum Fontenellensium, eds. Fernand Lohier and Jean Laporte (Rouen and Paris: Société de l’histoire de Normandie, 1936). For other examples of such gesta see Robert-Henri Bautier, “L’historiographie en France de l’ouest aux Xe et XIe siècles,” Settimane 17 (1970): 793–850; for similar narratives composed on the northern Italian peninsula during the same period, see Picard, Le souvenir des évêques, pp. 442–459 and 480–498. 38 Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, eds. Société des Bollandistes, 2 vols. and supplements (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1898–1911 and 1987).

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in the Acta Sanctorum but does not assign them numbers. Finally, the gesta of the bishops of Arras-Cambrai are completely ignored by the BHL. Meanwhile, there have been extended expert discussions aiming to disentangle the properly “historiographical” and the properly “hagiographical” strands in the narratives, since they had somehow been mixed together by the authors of the texts.39 And what can the modern notion of genres make of what Bautier has called “historical cartularies” or “chronicle-cartularies:” collections of charters attesting to the property rights of a monastery, embedded within a chronological narrative of local history and accompanied by collections of miracles?40 In the course of the 1980s, medievalists increasingly learned from cultural anthropologists to treat their texts in a culturally specific manner.41 White’s 1988 study of the laudatio parentum is an example of how long-vexed questions can find plausible solutions only if we stop asking them in anachronistic forms.42 White argues that the major downfall of earlier studies lays precisely in a projection backward of the very concept of clear-cut bodies of laws and rules, and in treating the laudatio as part of a standardized system of land conveyance procedures. By the thirteenth century, it seems there was a system in place that was more analogous to our modern assumptions about real property law, but that does not help us understand the eleventh century, and, in fact, for a long time prevented us from understanding the eleventh century.

The twelfth century Static definitions of and decontextualized criteria for “hagiography” and historiography cannot function adequately both for the late Carolingian and early Capetian periods and for more recent times. Some attempts to define the boundaries between historiography and “hagiography” have focused on the relative balance between natural and supernatural phenomena in the narratives, such that the “historical” quality of the text was thought to have decreased in proportion to any increase in its miraculous content.43 Once we recognize how very anachronistic are such 39 Michel Sot, “Arguments hagiographiques et historiographiques dans les ‘Gesta episcoporum’,” in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés, IVe-XIIe siècles, eds. Pierre Riché and Évelyne Patlagean (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981), pp. 95–104; Michel Sot, Gesta episcoporum, gesta abbatum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981). 40 Bauthier, “L’historiographie en France,” pp. 816–821. 41 Vansina has argued against the possibility of any “universal cross-cultural classification” of narrative genres, noting how the categories never work even when “convoluted to excess” (Jan Vansina, History as Oral Tradition [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985], p. 82). 42 Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), esp. pp. 9–15, his discussion of issues concerning accidents of source survival and the fragmentary nature of the sources. 43 Stancliffe relies heavily on this criterion to argue that Sulpicius Severus wrote “hagiography” in his vita Martini and “history” in his Chronicle (Clare Stancliffe, Saint Martin and His Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus [New York: Oxford University Press, 1983], pp. 88–102

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secularizing arguments for the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, we will begin to see how the effects of a whole series of twelfth-century transformations render the generic category “hagiography” useless for the earlier period. Before the twelfth-century schoolmen began to examine “the miraculous,” the genuineness of the possibility of such occurrences was very much taken for granted by all levels of society.44 From the patristic to the scholastic period, the conviction reigned among Christian authors that the doings of earth and heaven formed a single seamless garment; certainly it was useless to consider events in the former outside the context of the latter. The ecclesiastical elites of the twelfth century and after turned ever more hostile eyes upon mystical, miraculous occurrences, a reversal of the policies of ninth-, tenth- and eleventh-century clerics who had actively promoted many forms of “magic.”45 Certainly, many in the late Roman world had rejected “magic,” but it had then been rescued and preserved by many prominent leaders of the Merovingian- and Carolingian-era churches, and it flourished outright by the tenth century.46 However, the twelfth-century scholastic philosophers increasingly carved out a sphere of inquiry in which proto-scientistic modes of analysis were used to narrow the concept of the “miraculous,” until it became quite a rare and unnatural thing indeed, enlarging instead an ever-growing category called the “superstitious.”47 By the sixteenth century “witches” were burned for engaging in the very same practices which had been prescribed by tenth-century clerics.48 Twelfth-century scholastic philosophers also elaborated a new theory of memory, one which applied contemporary rationalizing epistemology to the remembrance of things

44 45 46 47 48

and 182), although for a contemporary such as Paulinus of Nola, Sulpicius’ vita Martini was simply “historia” (Letters of Saint Paulinus of Nola 11.11, ed. Patrick B. Walsh [Westminster, MD: Newmann Press, 1966]). For Voss, despite the formal continuity in themes, literary devices, etc., between ancient “historical biography” and medieval “hagiography,” the latter is a genre unto itself, unconnected with historiography, because to his mind the miraculous is, in and of itself, incompatible with historiographical description (“Berührungen,” p. 65). Lotter also wished to make an author’s attitude toward “the miraculous” the main criterion for formal distinction between genres, since only those biographies without a significant miraculous content depict “real” (namely, true, historically accurate) lives; the rest are, at best, encomia (Friedrich Lotter, Severinus von Noricum: Legende und historische Wirklichkeit [Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1976], pp. 17 and 50–58). Such criteria would not work even if they were not anachronistic; such a scheme cannot accommodate biographies of saints that do not include any significant miraculous or supernatural content, for instance because the holy individual in question did not perform many miracles (one example is Norbert of Iburg, Vita Bennonis II, episcopi Osnabrugensis, ed. Harry Bresslau [MGH SRG 56; Hanover: Hahn, 1902], p. 1, which the author declares to be practically devoid of miracles). Ward, Miracles, p. 3. Valerie I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Flint, Rise of Magic, pp. 128–145 and esp. 142–143. Ward, Miracles, pp. 19–24. Flint, Rise of Magic, p. 83.

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past.49 How can a single definition of “hagiography” (or historiography) serve for two eras with such clearly divergent visions of the world? The epistemological reorientation of scholasticism formed an integral part of the political and social transformation in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin Europe, as evidenced by a new emphasis on the separation of the secular and the ecclesiastical.50 At the same time, the new administrative monarchs put forward a laicized conception of the foundation and nature of royal power, couched in secular rhetoric. The strength of the new secularizing tendency is nowhere more evident than in the rationalistic basis of even papal authority, which appealed to canon law. The concomitant mental transformation of the administrative monarchies of Latin Europe in the twelfth century and after, so much connected with the provision and manipulation of documentary evidence, signed, sealed, delivered, and dated, in and of itself accelerated the making of a new series of distinctions between public and private, royal and ecclesiastical, legal and customary, historical and literary.51 Without abrogating all their sacral character, the new-style princes based their claims to authority more on profane considerations than on the grace of God, whose role in the description of high-level political doings was, accordingly, increasingly irrelevant. The “miraculous” (or “superstitious”) content was accordingly and progressively drained from most forms of narrative, whether about a saint, a warrior, or some other hero, and the self-conscious genre of androcentric and “realistic” historiography was born.52 49 Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 229–324, esp. 274–324. 50 It is no accident that Bautier located the source of “proto-modern” historiography in western Francia at Fleury, one of the most important centers of reform ideals (“L’historiographie en France,” pp. 826–827 and 833–837). He went so far as to call Aimoin of Fleury’s early twelfth-century Gesta Francorum “the first modern history” (p. 850). 51 Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 1–56, esp. 22–26; M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 16 and chapter 2, “Legal Change, 1140–1300,” pp. 39–66. Such a development would slowly but surely also serve to make the lack of temporal precision in earlier “hagiographical” narratives look like generalized ahistoricity. Thus, the typical absence of precise temporal coordinates in saints’ biographies is hardly a solid criterion by which to distinguish them from “historical” narratives, as Lotter (“Methodisches,” p. 335) would like to claim; we will look in vain for precise temporal coordinates in the narrative texts of a society that barely “dated” its documents concerning real property transfers and juridical pronouncements, when indeed it felt the need to produce documentary records at all! For the general lack of what to us is crucial chronological precision in the period, see Donald J. Wilcox, The Measure of Time Past: Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric of Relative Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), esp. p. 137, and Donald J. Wilcox, “The Sense of Time in Western Historical Narratives from Eusebius to Machiavelli,” in Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. Ernst Breisach (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 167–237. 52 “N’imprégnant plus comme dans le passé l’ensemble de la vie sociale, le surnaturel devient une catégorie à part, l’objet de la réflexion critique des théologiens et des canonistes. . . . Enfin, la

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The above-mentioned trends were connected with and reinforced by a concurrent series of changes in the conception of sanctity and in the modes of saintly veneration in the Latin world. Vauchez has shown how, in stark contrast with Carolingian and early Capetian cultic promoters, who had looked to the long dead as intercessors, the saint-makers after 1150 increasingly favored the recently deceased.53 This shift in patterns of veneration caused biographers of saints to focus their narratives increasingly on the present or immediate past. We must also consider the impact of the advent and elaboration of canonization procedures emanating from the papal curia.54 Juridical canonization procedures also profoundly altered the nature of writings about saints, past or present. For one thing, the type of written instrument into which an interested promoter would have to pour his energies became increasingly “documentary,” the type of archival evidence that would pass muster with the lawyers of the Roman curia. Sanctification in the twelfth century ceases to be a matter of narrative and becomes a matter of law and science; narrative texts such as biographies form but a fraction of the assembled legal dossier. Put another way, writing about saints becomes less “historiographical” and more “journalistic.”55 In the course of the twelfth century, there was developed not only a new way of writing about saints, but also a new way of speaking about saints. In the new discursive strategy of exempla, used by sermonizers, the hero or heroine ceases to be the center of interest, to be replaced by a more abstract, objectified, depersonalized center: the moral.56 Just as the saint was displaced by the moral as the true subject of “hagiography,” the saint was also displaced by another abstraction, the state, as the true subject of historiography. For it is more than the intellectual context, and more than the nature of saints’ cults, that changes in the twelfth century. It is true that scholastic rationalism began a process which culminated in postEnlightenment positivism. But the point is to place the intellectual and religious

53

54 55

56

relation traditionelle des miracula est peu à peu éliminée des ouvrages d’histoire (historiae) pour se réfugier dans le genre specifique de l’hagiographie” (Jean-Claude Schmitt, “La fabrique des saints,” Annales: E.S.C. 39 [1984]: 286–300, at 296). André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1981). The rise in “recent” saints holds true across the board, both in the category of officially canonized saints and in the category of popular/local saints that do not attain universal status. Also see the chart in Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations (Liège: Faculté de droit, 1969), p. 230: the vast majority of successful canonization processes under the new papal order involved recent saints. For a detailed description of the canonization process, see Delooz, Sociologie, pp. 44–97. From the late ninth century to the mid-eleventh century, miracle collections composed at Fleury were sophisticated narratives, synthesizing the history of the community with the marvelous stories of its patron saints, yet from the middle of the eleventh century miracle collections become less and less shaped narrative tales and more and more simply loose collections of anecdotes, lists of miracles (Head, Hagiography, pp. 137–138). Jacques Le Goff, “‘Vita’ et ‘pre-exemplum’ dans le deuxième livre des ‘Dialogues’ de Grégoire le Grand,” in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés, eds. Riché and Patlagean, pp. 105–120.

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developments in the context of the political and thus the ideological changes, first of the twelfth century, then of the nineteenth, all of which determined the nature of historiography in those periods. History cannot be written or even conceived of outside the political and social context in which the historian lives. It may not even have been possible in any serious way to conceive, in the post- Roman West (unlike in the post-Roman East, or Byzantium), of a subject for “secular” historiography that would be distinct from the individual activities of holy men and women. In the post-Roman Latin West, by way of contrast with the Byzantine East, there was no evident earthly political embodiment of the Divine Plan to be found; thus, in the words of Claudio Leonardi, “i santi, monaci o vescovi – a differenza di quelli orientali – entrano nella storia e vogliono regolarla, se ne sentono responsabili” (“saints, both monks and bishops – unlike those of the East – enter into history and wish to control it, they feel themselves responsible for it’’).57 Although Leonardi developed his ideas in reference to the fifth century, they are easily applicable to the Frankish territories in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, for there are few places that were more lacking in an obvious earthly embodiment of Providence. Leonardi argues that, because of the political situation, Western ideals of sanctity included an active dimension, keyed around conversio and prophetia, in a way that Eastern ideals did not.58 But we cannot forget the connection between writing about the active saints in question and the political situation, for it is precisely those narratives that stand between us and the activities and comprise our source of information about them. The description of the saints’ activities was primarily the task of those whom we now call “hagiographers.” Over seventy examples of such narratives were brought to light by Tilliette, though they have not yet been read for their historiographic content, not even by Tilliette himself. The late Carolingian and early Capetian saints’ biographers of Francia set their narratives within a metahistorical and sacral framework because they were, in effect, describing the earthly realization of the Divine Plan, a realization which was unconnected with any contemporary political units. These narratives have tended to be unrecognizable to modern eyes as historiography because, from the twelfth century onward, the definition of historiography has been, in contrast, increasingly connected with secular powers and political units. Very specific political changes in the twelfth century transformed the metahistorical framework within which historians wrote, shifting it away from the one described by Leonardi toward the teleological secular-national historiography that would eventually dominate the historical profession. The twelfth century marked the beginnings of a historiographical revolution concerning the proper subject of historical narrative, a revolution which began in the abbey of St. Denis during the abbacy of Suger (1122–1151), when the first example of what could legitimately 57 Claudio Leonardi, “Modelli di santità tra secolo V e VII,” Settimane 36 (1988): 261–283, at 265. 58 Leonardi, “Modelli,” p. 266.

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be called a history of “France” was initiated with the Gesta gentis Francorum.59 History-writing inhabitants of the abbey began to set a new style, creating the first examples of the type of royally centered “national” historiography that would become, by definition, the prototype of “grosse Geschichtsschreibung,” of Hegelian “world-historical” history. The key revolution in Dionysian historiographic production was the identification of “France” and its history with the Capetian kings. As Spiegel writes: By inserting the history of the troisième race within the history of France as a whole, the chroniclers could describe French history as a coherent evolution and use the past to legitimize contemporary political life. In this sense, royal history as written at St.-Denis functioned as a legitimizing myth. . . . [Suger’s] Life of Louis VI presents the Capetian monarch as the . . . focal point of French history. . . . it provided a new model for historical writing. . . . Suger initiates the intensive study of the history of France, reign by reign, with a clear focus on the person of the king.60 In order to pinpoint the way in which the twelfth-century historiographic production of St. Denis is “modern,” Spiegel contrasts it with that pre-modern form of historiographical production which we now call “hagiography:” The focus on the king is no longer restricted to a biographical study, as in Helgaud’s quasi-hagiographical study of Robert the Pious, but takes a more official perspective, in which the king figures as the representative of the realm.61 With the twelfth-century productions of St. Denis, part and parcel of the creation of the administrative monarchy of the Capetians, we begin to see the creation of a “historiography” measured against which pre-twelfth-century narratives will seem to pertain to a distinct genre, one which, in the nineteenth century, would be labeled “hagiography.” Helgaud’s biography of Robert was “quasi-hagiographical” compared with Suger’s biography of Louis precisely because the true subject of Helgaud’s narrative was not the realm, the kingdom, the “state.” The exemplary, moralizing, providential aspects of Helgaud’s narrative did not render it “hagiography” in Spiegel’s eyes, but the absence of a focus on the kingdom of France did, for that has been a sine qua non for the definition of historiography.62 59 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey (Brookline, MA: Classical Folia Editions, 1987), p. 11. 60 Spiegel, Chronicle Tradition, pp. 45–46. 61 Spiegel, Chronicle Tradition, p. 47. 62 The works of Helgaud and Suger did not differ at all when it came to the types of criteria that are most frequently invoked to distinguish “hagiography” from historiography, for Suger’s biography too remains “a panegyric written to reflect the virtue and piety of the king as an exemplar to later generations” (Spiegel, Chronicle Tradition, p. 48). So too for the contribution of Odo of Deuil,

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Because ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-century Francia had no modern-style secular kingdoms or states, it was not possible to write history in the modern style. It was, however, possible to write history, as Tilliette’s seventy-plus narratives, numerous extant monastic and episcopal gesta, “chronicle-cartularies,” and a host of other texts amply demonstrate.

The nineteenth century All the factors mentioned above, intellectual-epistemological, religious, and political, worked together from the twelfth century to create a new paradigm within whose framework “historiography” became a type of narrative ostensibly concerned exclusively with the realm of sensible reality divorced from the realm of the sacred, the realm of the “saints.” However, it was not until the nineteenth century that the category, the genre, of “hagiography” was invented. For then, historiography stood ready to be purged of those who dared write of saints or miracles in history at all, rather than within the confines of “hagiography,” “superstition,” “folklore,” or “popular devotion.” The definition of “hagiography” that was current in approximately 1100 has already been cited in the opening lines of this essay; it bears repeating here. In the words of Honorius of Autun: Historia est quae praeterita narrat, Prophetia quae futura narrat, Hagiographa quae aeternae vitae gaudia jubilat. History is that which describes the past, Prophecy is that which describes the future, Hagiography is that which celebrates the joys of eternal life. The “hagiographa” (literally, the holy writings) continued to be defined as the final portion of the Hebrew scriptures (writings such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Lamentations) throughout the following 700 years.63 The Oxford English Dictionary gives fourteen citations for the continued use of “hagiographa” (as well as its derivatives “hagiographal,” “hagiographer,” “hagiographie,” and “hagiographical”) in that sense ranging from 1583 through 1888.64 However, during the middle years of the nineteenth century, a new conception of “hagiography” was superadded, a conception which singled out saints’ biographies as the paradigmatic type of “hagiographical” narrative. Similarly, the Dictionnaire de l’Academie française Suger’s successor as abbot and historian at St. Denis. Odo’s narrative, De profectione Ludovici Vll in orientem (ca. 1148), is filled with “unwavering praise of Louis’ actions, ideas and virtues, in which he sees the disguised hand of God at work” (Spiegel, Chronicle Tradition, p. 54). 63 Leclercq, “L’écriture sainte,” p. 105. 64 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), eds. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner (Ed. 2; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 6.1014ff.

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lists “hagiographie” solely in its scriptural sense for the first six editions of 1696, 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798 and 1835; the meaning changes to its “saintly” connotation with the 1878 edition. For the original brainstorm, in England at least, it seems we must look to Robert Southey, a prolific author who peppered his writings with numerous variations on the term “hagiographa” as specifically connected with saints; his usage was, from the beginning, hardly complimentary, as he derided the sorts of tales which were common in “Romish hagiography” or the ridiculous propensity of “Romish hagiographists” to bestow every miracle short of a miraculous conception upon their saints.65 The first stage of hammering out the new term is marked by the context of sectarian polemic. Even more significant is how the new-fangled terms spread beyond the writings of Robert Southey and took on their presently reigning forms and definitions. “Hagiography” and “hagiographer” as we use them today came into being specifically in opposition to the words “history” and “historian.” The first attestation of “hagiographer” as “an author of saints’ lives” appears in Sir James Stephen’s Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (1850), where he dismisses the types of chronicles which had theretofore been held in esteem by “hagiographers;”66 Freeman twice warned the readers of his widely read History of the Norman Conquest (1867–1879) of the danger of mistaking “hagiology” for “history;”67 meanwhile, another eminent Victorian, no less a man than Cardinal Newman himself, let it be known that one ought not assume one is a “historian” simply because one is a “hagiographer;”68 finally, by 1893 a contributor to The Athenaeum: A Journal of Literature, Science and the Arts could clearly distinguish two strains in a work dubbed “a curious compound of genuine historical research and hagiographic adulation.”69 The only attestation of the use of “hagiography” that does not explicitly contrast the “genre” against “history” still plants the production of such narratives squarely in the camp of an “alien” group: for R. A. Vaughn, “hagiography” is what “Mohammedans” write.70 65 The cited remarks were made by Robert Southey in the Quarterly Review 24 (1821): 476, and in his preface to his 1817 translation of Malory’s Le morte Darthur (p. xi), respectively; the OED also attributes to Southey the first use of “hagiologist” (1805), “hagiology” (1807), “hagiographie” (1819), and “hagiologic” (1826), the final instance in his far from neutral work, the Vindiciae ecclesiae Anglicanae (Letter to Charles Butler). 66 James Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850) 1.91 (cited from OED). 67 Edward A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, Its Causes and Its Results, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1867–1879), 1.5.390 and 2.7.20. 68 John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (1846) app. 36 (cited from OED). Newman was not only active in the conceptual segregation of “hagiography” and “history;” he was also a part of the elaboration of definitions of “popular religion” (qua vulgar superstition) as distinct from religion; see his Difficulties of Anglicans (Dublin, 1857), pp. 80–81. 69 Athenaeum 24 (1893): 791–792. 70 Robert A. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics: A Contribution to the History of Religious Opinion (London, 1860) 2.4.

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It appears that the modern historical profession owes a certain amount of its core notions of self and other to a newly imaged “untrue” narrative genre, that is, “hagiography,” which could not lay claim to the kind of accuracy historians wished to reserve for their narratives. There is more here than the outgrowth of eighteenth-century values, such as empiricism and verifiability. It is evident from the works of a number of nineteenth-century historians, less illustrious, less famous men than Leopold von Ranke and the other academic scholars who have been included in the genealogy of the modern historical profession, that another way of looking at historiography, and therefore also at “hagiography,” was still possible in the nineteenth century. Those nineteenth-century historians who do not fit the now-triumphant academic model, because of a religious profession, because of an aristocratic heritage, or because of their temerity in treating saints as “historical,” have found their works retrospectively removed from the genre historiography and placed in the ghetto of “hagiography,” while they themselves have been saddled with the derogatory label “hagiographer.” Academic and scientific historians have not hesitated to sift through centuries of production of historical narrative and to excise what does not conform to present-day ideologies and tastes, whether written in the nineteenth century or the ninth. An object lesson is provided by studies of two nineteenth-century “hagiographers,” Hunkler and the baron d’Agos.71 The only thing that distinguishes the writings of Hunkler and d’Agos from those of other historians of the day and age is that the subjects of their narratives are saints, yet these narratives are subjected to the type of structuralist literary analysis normally associated with “folklore” and “myth.” Hunkler deliberately and self-consciously considered himself to be a historian who happened to be writing the history of a saint, Henry II; there is nothing in his narrative that would strain a “modernist’s” credulity, no miracles, nothing “ahistorical,” everything is precisely and “realistically” described and dated. The baron d’Agos, as well, clearly considered his monograph to be not only “historiographical” but “scientific,” to judge from the vast size and complexity of his documentation. The works of Hunkler and d’Agos were themselves empiricist, and “scientific.” If the main issue blinding us from fully comprehending pre-nineteenth-century “hagiographic” narratives were positivism, the works of these two men would pass muster without a murmur from any corner, and no one would think to label them “hagiography” and analyze them as “myth.” The generic label “hagiography” does more than implicate a positivist critique of pre-modern methodologies.

71 Marie-Claire Groshens, “Le Roi du chœur,” in Les saints et les stars: le texte hagiographique dans la culture populaire, ed. Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), pp. 77–100, discussing the abbé Hunckler’s biography of the emperor Henry II in Théodore-François-Xavier Hunkler, Histoire des saints d’Alsace (Strasbourg: Levrault, 1837), pp. 251–262; Raymond Fourasté, “Saint Exupère d’Arreau,” in Les saints et les stars, ed. Schmitt, pp. 101–132, a study of the scholarly monograph by Louis de Fiançette, baron d’Agos, Saint Exupère d’Arreau, évêque de Toulouse, et ses monuments (Saint-Gaudens: Abadie, 1870).

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It is the very subject of the narrative that is at issue, not the methodology of the author. The subject of history for the academic historical profession was, at its foundation, the secular state, in whose service the profession labored, as researchers and writers of legitimating narrative. The humanity qua middle-class European males, which nineteenth-century academic historians placed at the center of their histories, had as an essential characteristic secularity. Both the subjects of “history” and the professional authors of it were absolutely not “superstitious:” they believed neither in miracles nor in “saints,” and their religion was not a point of “world-historical significance.” This secular-national conception of history permitted, for instance, bourgeois Jews to write academic history, but it tended to exclude at the same time from serious consideration both aristocrats and abbés, remnants of a “feudal” past.72 The nineteenth-century transformation in historiographic conceptions, and its connection with nationalistic politics, is nowhere clearer than in Germany. The changes made in the arrangement of texts within the Monumenta Germaniae Historica series Scriptores over the course of the century are extremely telling. Compare for instance the contents of volume two, edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz in 1829, before the invention of the category “hagiography,” with Georg Waitz’s arrangement of volume 13, which appeared in 1881: in the former volume we find under “historiae” biographies of Boniface, Lebuin, Willehad, Liudger, and many other saints, cheek by jowl with biographies of Charlemagne by Einhard and Notker of St. Gall, Nithard’s histories, Abbo’s account of the siege of Paris, and other narrative texts, whereas in the latter volume there are no biographies of saints whatsoever, and the “historiae” include only narratives of royal and imperial doings, the “gesta” of bishops and abbots having been carefully placed in a distinct ghetto. The changed organizational principles reflected changes in the function of the Gesellschaft (Society) that published the volumes, as the Gesellschaft became increasingly tied, in the course of the century, to the enterprise of creating a German state. The idea for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica was originally put forward by Baron von Stein, just after the Congress of Vienna. The project found its first active scholarly supporter in Pertz, who had begun his career as a Protestant

72 The moment of the revolution within the university professoriate, and of the discipline of academic history, has been situated in the 1870s and 1880s, in a collection of essays by a number of professors who deplore the state of affairs in which Christianity has been transformed from “a leading force” in scholarship to one which is “at most tolerated as a peripheral enterprise and often . . . simply excluded” (George M. Marsden, “Introduction,” in The Secularization of the Academy, eds. George Marsden and Bradley J. Longfield [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992] pp. v and 4–7). Of particular relevance for the issues raised in this essay and for the events of the 1870s and 1880s are the articles therein by James Turner, “Secularization and Sacralization: Speculations on Some Religious Origins of the Secular Humanities Curriculum, 1850–1900” (pp. 74–106), and by David Bebbington, “The Secularization of British Universities since the Mid-Nineteenth Century” (pp. 259–277).

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theologian. Though Pertz renounced theology in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and, inspired by the atmosphere of German nationalism which then pervaded the German-speaking lands, devoted himself to Stein’s project, Pertz’s romantic nationalism was tempered by his own earlier training and interest in the history of religion. The appearance of the first volume of the series in 1825 was greeted by Stein with thanks from the entire Vaterland; nevertheless, Pertz included in his vision of the crucial sources for German history narratives, which were not purely secular-national, an orientation for which he was to be severely criticized by the in-house historian of the Gesellschaft in 1921.73 By the 1860s, Pertz’s perception of the historical past was becoming outmoded, and Bismarck worked with the rest of the Prussian government to dethrone him from his august position at the head of the Gesellschaft. Pertz fought to maintain the Gesellschaft as a private corporation, but he was unable to prevent the enterprise from becoming part of Bismarck’s program of state-formation. After a great power struggle, Waitz, a student of Leopold von Ranke, and trained in “Geschichtswissenschaft,” was placed at the head of a reformed Gesellschaft that was established in Berlin, connected with the Königlich preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and financed by the Prussian government.74 Thenceforth, every publication of the Gesellschaft would bear the legend “Sanctus amor patriae dat animum” (“Holy love for the Fatherland gives spirit”).75 The secularizing vision of “what matters” and of what is central in history, as embodied in the contents of volume 13 of the Scriptores, served to reinforce the power of the new state. In such a context, the definitions of historiography and of “hagiography” could not be ideologically neutral. The interests of both historians and “states” were served simultaneously. As the historians reinforced the authoritative claims of the state, the secularized vision of history reinforced the academic historians’ claims to be authoritative guides to the past. Too much fraternization with narratives now asserted to be “fictional” or “legendary” would obviously have contaminated the new academic discipline of “historiography” in ways it could not at the time abide. The same period which witnessed the creation of the generic category “hagiography” by historians also witnessed the creation of another genre relegated to false ahistoricity, the “historical novel.”76 Furthermore, in an age of rising skepticism, the tactic worked for religious scholars as well, so that “hagiography” as a generic concept has been an all-around success. When “hagiography” took on its nineteenth-century 73 Harry Bresslau, Geschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica im Auftrage ihrer Zentraldirektion (Hanover: Hahn, 1921), pp. 93, 226, 454–455 and 462–466. For von Stein and Pertz see pp. 1–98, esp. 92–98, and 151. 74 Bresslau, Geschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, pp. 396–481 and 517–524. 75 Bresslau, Geschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, p. 532. 76 See the discussion of that “fiction which always returns to haunt history” as Crosby, Ends of History, pp. 48–68 extensively parallels Macaulay’s History of England with Thackeray’s History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

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connotations of “writings about saints,” it ceased to carry its millennia-old connotation of referring to portions of the Hebrew Bible. “Hagiography” in the twentieth century is not only “not-History,” it is also “not the Bible.” At the height of the Modernist crisis within the Catholic Church, the new category served yet another useful function.77 Consider the Jesuit Lanzoni’s monumental study of “historical legends,” which took as its documentary base ancient Indian, Buddhist, Iranian, and Egyptian “legends,” Greek “myths,” “tales” of Alexander the Great, of Plato, and of Aristotle, the entire “matter of Troy,” the “plays” of Shakespeare, the “poetry” of Virgil, the Sybilline prophecies, the “apocryphal” Acts of the Apostles, the Acta Sanctorum, the Qu’ran, the “songs” of the Cid, Roland, Arthur, Charlemagne, and much, much more. On one level, the work describes how all of those “historical legends” develop and function, organized around a single underlying theme: a “legend” is that which changes, alters, deforms, amplifies, embroiders, and so on “reality” and “historical truth.”78 But the entire project depends first upon the establishment of a truth, whether historical or biblical, which can be perceived as having been altered by the legendary process;79 in this regard, Lanzoni’s work is as much about what is omitted as it is about what is so minutely dissected and described.

Conclusion The entire historiographical transformation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century involved the redefinition of the category of that which is true, against which falsity could be measured. Professional academic historians, ambitious state-builders in Germany and elsewhere, the erudite religious, and the embattled papacy were all equally concerned to present certain narratives as both true and significant; doing so involved excluding others as false and legendary. The concept of a genre of “hagiography” is a historiographical construction and, ipso facto, an ideological tool. It is a tool that had no function in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, and thus as a conceptual category did not exist. It should not be anachronistically applied in our analyses of late Carolingian and early Capetian Francia, because it can only obscure the realities of those centuries, not illuminate them. At the end of the twentieth century, it is no longer the case that there is an automatic preference for secular political units as the subject of historical narrative. It

77 So, 1881 saw not only the appearance of volume 13 of the MGH Scriptores series, but also the foundation of the Analecta Bollandiana as a specialized “review of hagiography” by the Jesuit Bollandists of Brussels. 78 Francesco Lanzoni, Genesi, svolgimento e tramonto delle leggende storiche (Rome: Tipografia poliglotta Vaticana, 1925), pp. 2 and 116. 79 For instance: “Scritti evangelici apocrifi ed opere de agnostici o di maomettani mettono sul labbro di Gesù molti detti o sentenze che Egli no ha mai pronunciato; sentenze però architettate secondo il prototipo notissimo dei discorsi evangelici” (Lanzoni, Genesi, p. 47).

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is no accident that the late twentieth century, with its expanded definition of “what matters” historiographically, has witnessed a degree of interest in the tenth century such as has not been seen since the twelfth century. It is time to recognize explicitly that the historiographical production of late Carolingian and early Capetian Francia, like much of ours, did not center on the “res publica” in any of its guises; neither body of writings is any less historiographical for all that.

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2 STILL USELESS AFTER ALL THESE YEARS The concept of “hagiography” in the twenty-first century

Remembering the twentieth century1 When I was in graduate school in Medieval History at Columbia University during the early 1980s, my major professors (J.M.W. Bean and John Hine Mundy) utilized household account books, wills, charters, town chronicles, and laws (among other documents) in their own research and writing. When I brought biographies of saints, accounts of miracles, descriptions of relic discoveries and transfers, and the like into our seminars, I had to argue explicitly in favor of their potential relevance as sources for medieval European history. I did not at the time question the normative placement of such narratives in a category of text known as “hagiography,” as is evident from the subtitle of my 1988 dissertation: “The Dossier of Romanus of Rouen: The Political Uses of Hagiographical Texts.” At the time, I was primarily concerned with vindicating the value of (what I understood to be) “hagiographical texts” as sources for historians. That materials then conventionally labeled as “hagiography” should be taken seriously by professional, academic historians – in Anglophone North America at least – was not at all obvious at the time. Consider three monumental (and germinal) works from my graduate school years: Brown’s Cult of the Saints (1981), Orsi’s Madonna of 115th Street (1985), and Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987).2 Brown never called his source materials “hagiography,” and only used 1 The initial draft of this essay was presented as a keynote lecture at the “Comparative Hagiology” pre-conference workshop at the AAR/SBL annual meeting in November of 2019. I thank Massimo Rondolino for the invitation to participate, Martha Newman for putting the two of us in contact, and all the participants in the workshop for a full day of lively and fruitful discussion. A subsequent draft was presented to the Religious Studies Colloquium at the University of Alberta in February of 2020. I am grateful to Josie Hendrickson both for organizing the presentation and for providing an immensely helpful critique of it. I dedicate the essay to the memory of Thomas Head, whom I both respected as a scholar and valued as a friend, despite our diametrically opposed approaches to the topic of “hagiography.” 2 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Caroline Walker Bynum,

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the adjective “hagiographical” (twice) derisively.3 Orsi never used any form of the term. Finally, while Bynum referred to some medieval authors as “hagiographers” and to some medieval texts as “hagiographical” without any taint of ridicule, she was careful to insist that her own work constituted “an interpretive essay in social and religious history . . . not a technical contribution to the long-established field of hagiography.”4 It is little wonder that Bynum resisted that association, given that (as Thomas Heffernan wrote in 1988) the term “hagiography” was “virtually impossible to read except as an epithet signifying a pious fiction or an exercise in panegyric.”5 Heffernan argued that scholars could avoid the routinely patronizing mischaracterizations to which medieval Christian saints’ lives were subject by replacing the term “hagiography” with “sacred biography.” I thus understood my task in my immediate post-doctoral years to be to vindicate the significance of materials conventionally labelled as “hagiographical” as historical sources and indeed as historical narratives. Happily, it soon became evident that I was hardly alone in recognizing materials associated with the veneration of medieval Christian saints as important evidence for historians; witness, for instance, Sharon Farmer’s insightful 1991 study of the political dynamics around the commemoration of St. Martin in the medieval Touraine.6 More importantly, by 1991 I came to this fundamental realization: the most effective way to argue that materials labelled and therefore dismissed as “hagiography” were in fact invaluable historical sources was to stop labelling them as “hagiography.”7 But simply dropping the term from my vocabulary, including in the revised version of my dissertation that I hoped to publish as a book, was not as simple as it seemed. Readers for the press demanded a full-fledged “hagiographical” study of the medieval manuscripts at the heart of my work along the lines of Head’s Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, which not only used the entire “hagiograph*” complex extremely frequently (“hagiography,” “hagiographic(al),” and

3

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7

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). All three books have been continuously in print since their original publication. Furthermore, Brown’s Cult of the Saints came out in an enlarged second edition in 2014, and Orsi’s Madonna of 115th Street received both second (2002) and third (2010) editions. Brown describes Gregory of Tours’ “hagiographical work” as “full of subdued music and of mysterious perfumes,” and notes that the study of phenomena such as pilgrimage had recently passed from “the sober domain of hagiographical antiquarianism into a series of excellent studies of patronage and politics” (Brown, Cult of the Saints, pp. 76 and 90). Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. xv. Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 16. Farmer barely utilized “hagiograph*” words (a total of five times) and never relied on them to do any analytical work; see Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 21, 22, 26, 163, and 172. Events have proven this line of thought to have been mistaken, as I discuss below. “Hagiograph*” terms appear without interrogation or critique in the publications collected in this volume through 1993 (given the time needed to move through the pipeline from submission to appearance in print), but I ceased using them during 1992.

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“hagiographer”), but also featured the specific term “hagiography” in the title.8 As far as I was concerned, Head had missed the chance to underline explicitly how the historical narratives he analyzed (featuring important figures from the history of the Orléanais) were historiographic productions; instead, he took a major step towards reifying “hagiography” as a separate genre of text. Nevertheless, I did not reject the readers’ demand outright; in fact, I decided to comply with it. In order to produce a “hagiographical” study, I needed to research and ponder the question of what rendered a given artifact (textual or material) “hagiography.” Yet, the more I read, the more confused and frustrated I became; it seemed to me that no one had actually come up with a satisfactory definition of “hagiography” that was not open to multiple serious critiques. I genuinely wanted to reach a functional understanding of “hagiography;” if I could not publish a monograph, I would be denied promotion and tenure at Florida International University. One day, my friend and colleague at the University of Miami, Hugh Thomas, urged me to confront the situation head-on by presenting a paper at the 1993 Sewanee Medieval Colloquium on “Saints and their Cults in the Middle Ages.” With some trepidation, I attended that meeting, and articulated in public for the first time my growing suspicions that the generic label “hagiography” obscures more than it reveals. Although Thomas Heffernan, who commented on my presentation, charged me (in the nicest possible terms) with going too far, Benjamin Arnold enthusiastically encouraged me to publish a written version of my conference paper; the resulting 1994 Viator article is republished as Chapter 1 in this collection. Emboldened by the status of the article as “forthcoming,” I charged into the belly of the beast, joined the recently founded (1990) “Hagiography Society,” and got myself selected as a speaker for the group’s first ever sponsored conference panels (both in 1994), at which I argued for the treatment of materials connected with a number of medieval bishops as narrative descriptions of regional history, rather than within the framework of the nineteenth-century scholarly construct “hagiography.”9 One fellow panelist, Richard Landes, did me the great honor of – on the fly – substituting “historiographic” for “hagiographic” in every instance of the term in his own paper, thereby fostering in me an extremely misleading sense of the imminent victory of my position. Meanwhile, the publication of the peer-

8 Thomas F. Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 9 In 1994, I presented “A Clear and Present Danger: Demonic Infestation in the Tenth Century” on the Hagiography Society’s sponsored panel at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, and “The ‘Transition from Paganism to Christianity’ in Gaul: The Clementine Thesis from the History of Gregory of Tours to the Ghetto of ‘Hagiography’” at the Hagiography Society’s sponsored panel at the International Medieval Congress. The ICMS paper appeared as Felice Lifshitz, “La Normandie carolingienne. Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources negligés,” Annales de Normandie 48 (1998): 505–524 and the IMS paper appeared as Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, eds. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 211–228; they are now Chapters 15 and 11 in this collection.

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reviewed article was enough to justify the acceptance of my monograph The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics, 684–1090 by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto (1995) without a “hagiographic” study, or the use of any “hagiograph*” terms. Enough people were sufficiently intrigued by the idea of dispensing entirely with the “hagiograph*” construct that Alison Frazier was able to organize a roundtable (entitled “No More Hagiography?”) devoted to my Viator article at the 2000 International Medieval Congress in Leeds.10 At the turn of the millennium, it was still the case that only a handful of professional academics worked with source materials conventionally labelled (and previously dismissed) as “hagiography,” and it might have been possible for the widening of the scholarly lens to include theretofore dismissed materials to continue without the ghettoization of newly interesting textual and material artifacts into a misleading “hagiography” bundle.11 In my Viator article, I sought above all to vindicate the status of narratives about the past as historiographical (rather than as a separate type of “hagiographical” writing) even when they revolved around or otherwise attended to people, places, and things venerated as holy. The specific emphasis of that article had been necessitated by my main goal of justifying the approach of my forthcoming monograph on the shifting ways in 10 Of course, my Viator article (even after it had been honored with its own round table) didn’t miraculously make the “hagiograph*” construct vanish any more than Peggy Brown’s widely hailed and ubiquitously cited 1974 challenge to “feudalism” (as a modern and misleading construct) banished that term from scholars’ vocabularies, including after it inspired Susan Reynold’s magisterial booklength take-down of the F-word in 1994. See Elizabeth A.R. Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” AHR 79 (1974): 1063–1088; Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Paul Hyams, “The End of Feudalism? A Review of Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted by Susan Reynolds,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27 (1997): 655. Reynolds reiterated her argument that “feudalism” is an anachronistic concept that leads to a misunderstanding of medieval sources in Susan Reynolds, “Still Fussing About Feudalism,” in Italy and Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham, eds. Ross Balzaretti, Julia Barrow, and Patricia Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 87–94. Nevertheless, “her insistence that feudalism tout court was an Early Modern invention has not been widely accepted” (Levi Roach, “Feudalism,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences [Rev. ed. 2; Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015], vol. 8 pp. 111–116, at 114). I was evidently as off-base about “feudalism” as I was about “hagiography,” having confidently recommended publication of and blurbed the dustjacket for a 2008 book with the pronouncement that it had “the potential to eliminate the problematic term ‘feudalism’ from historical discussions of the ‘Middle Ages’” (Kathleen Davis, Periodization & Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008]). 11 In the acknowledgments to a source collection that marked a major milestone in the establishment of “hagiography” as a putatively specific (and recognizable) type or genre of text, the editor noted that he “would not have been able to compile this volume without the very existence of the Hagiography Society and the active participation of much of its membership;” he went on (regrettably) to offer a simplistic definition of “hagiography” as “quite simply, ‘writings about the saints’” (Thomas F. Head, Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology [New York: Routledge, 1999], pp. xi and xiv). This approach obscured the truly immense complexity of the matter.

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which the regional history of Normandy had been constructed and reconstructed around different saintly heroes and heroines. The status of the article as a sort of prolegomenon to my monograph also necessitated its chronological focus on the period before the twelfth century. I sometimes regret not having followed up soon thereafter with a second and broader article, addressing the entire universe of phenomena that scholars of Medieval Europe were increasingly (and in my view erroneously) treating under the rubric of “hagiography.” For instance, one scholar attempted to sort vernacular literary depictions of passionate suffering into separate genres of “hagiographic romance” (centered around saintly protagonists) and “courtly romance” (centered around other types of protagonists), although both “hagiography and courtly romance had, above all, a didactic function;” I, however, concluded from her discussion of the “hybrid character” of the (so-called) “hagiographic romances” that they were actually better understood within – rather than in opposition to – their literary context, and I wish I had taken the time in the late 1990s to address such new developments head on.12 Spectacular, dramatic literary productions that happen to have saintly protagonists are best understood as popular literature, completely within the context of contemporaneous literary productions built around other types of protagonists . . . with the proviso that many texts – whether concerned with saints or not – are both literary and theological (like the Bible itself, “the yardstick text for every Christian”).13 I would make similar arguments concerning non-textual materials that have also (despite the literal association of “graphy” with writing, a point I discuss later in this chapter) been increasingly treated within the interpretive framework of “hagiography.” Consider the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park in Hodgenville, Kentucky (where Lincoln’s birth cabin is enshrined within a Neo-Classical Memorial Building on the traditional site of the 16th United States President’s birthplace), and the Basilica della Santa Casa 12 Brigitte Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp. 16 and 33. Every application of the “hagiograph*” construct as an analytical tool (such as: “the hagiographic discourse implicitly defiles the very virtue it attempts to praise”) rendered Cazelles’ discussion increasingly opaque for me (Cazelles, The Lady as Saint, p. 49). Her study stood in stark contrast to another (and to my mind, far more sensible) work published the same year that made no attempt at generic sub-divisions in its treatment of the “essentially necrophilic” “courtly eroticism” of popular vernacular literature (R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991], p. 176. Bloch never relied upon the “hagiograph*” construct to perform any analytical work or create any generic distinctions, though he did use the word “hagiography” (quite off-handedly) twice (pp. 108 and 170). 13 Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich, “Hagiographic Fiction as Entertainment,” in Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, ed. Heinz Hofmann (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 187–212, at 173. For instance, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity can be productively understood against the background of Greco-Roman novels; see Jan N. Bremmer, “Felicitas: The Martyrdom of a Young African Woman,” in Perpetua’s Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, eds. Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 35–53, at 49.

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in Loreto, Italy (a late Gothic basilica that enshrines the house in which, tradition teaches, the Virgin Mary was born, raised, and received the Annunciation, and in which the Holy Family lived during Jesus’ youth); these strike me as being more similar than they are different, but the conventional application of the label “hagiography” to the latter but not the former would encourage us to treat them in isolation from each other.14 The ability to draw a distinction between Loreto (Italy) and Hodgenville (Kentucky, USA) depends upon a concomitant acceptance of “religion” as a separate and distinct sphere of human activity, yet the R-word itself was hotly contested by 2000, as more and more scholars came to treat “religion” as a social construct, and to treat “nationalism,” “politics,” and “economics” as “religion.”15 In the decades since I first discovered the contested and anachronistic nature of the very category of “religion” (upon which the distinction between “hagiographical” and “non-hagiographical” biographies, histories, romances, shrines, and the like would seem to depend), the relevance of “religion” for pre-modernists has been even more forcefully repudiated.16 This sorting device is itself in need of interrogation, and not only for pre-modernists.17 “Given that religion, religious, and religions are Western folk concepts, that their meaning is unstable and contested, and that they cannot be defined so as to specify anything uniquely,” I am extremely

14 The Lincoln Birthplace website at www.nps.gov/abli/index.htm (accessed May 11, 2020) offers limited information. It does not mention the adjacent museum, which includes a number of traditional contact relics associated with Lincoln, such as his family Bible, nor does it convey much of the background information that was, at least throughout the 1990s, displayed on signage inside the shrine. The language on the website now does seem to acknowledge the “symbolic” nature of the log cabin, but the impression given at the site during the 1990s was that the cabin on display constituted the actual cabin of Lincoln’s childhood, not the twentieth-century “recreation” that it in fact is. Only a visitor like myself, who carefully read all the placards, could understand the invented nature of the site. The placards also explained how the memorial was funded through traditional means familiar to any scholar of medieval European Christian relic cults, namely by processing the item in question (in the case of Lincoln’s log cabin, by train) through the countryside and collecting donations from those who came out to view it. For the Basilica of the Holy House, see Floriano Grimaldi, La historia della Chiesa di Santa Maria de Loreto (Loreto: Carilo, 1993). 15 Carlton J.H. Hayes, Nationalism: A Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1960); Emilio Gentile, Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 1993); Robert H. Nelson, Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); Emilio Gentile, Le religioni della politica: fra democrazie e totalitarismi (Rome: Laterza, 2001). 16 Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016); Nathan J. Ristuccia, Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 17 As William T. Cavanaugh wrote: “how the religious/secular distinction is used and what types of power it authorizes should be carefully scrutinized” (“The Myth of Religious Violence,” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, ed. Andrew R. Murphy [Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011], pp. 23–33, at 29.

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hard-pressed to see how “hagiography” – its pendant – can be any more stable, uncontested, definable, or even useful.18 Had I made such points in a more generalized statement concerning “hagiography” around the turn of the millennium, it would likely still not have stemmed the advance of the “hagiograph*” tide. In retrospect, I was categorically wrong about at least one thing: the fact of having been labeled as “hagiography” did not prevent textual or material artifacts from being taken seriously as objects of scholarly analysis; to the contrary, an ever-growing number of scholars have embraced materials they consciously consider to be “hagiographical” as especially worthy topics for study. Although the very idea that some materials (some histories, some romances, some shrines, etc.) can be separated out from their contexts and understood within a special “hagiograph*” grouping still seems to me to be as useless and misleading as it did decades ago, it has become very firmly entrenched in the contemporary academic landscape.

Neither proper nor essential: “hagiography” is useless and misleading Already in 2013, a state of the field review concluded that it would be impossible to get rid of “hagiography,” even for the precise time and place (early Medieval Christian-dominated Europe) that I targeted in my Viator article.19 In 2020, that is even more the case. Every year, multiple full conferences take “hagiography” as their focal point.20 Both Brepols (in 1999) and Amsterdam University Press (in 2018) have launched book series devoted to “hagiography,” further embedding the concept into the landscape of scholarship.21 “Hagiograph*” terminology is also now built into university course catalogues and into library catalogues, which are now electronically searchable. Furthermore, publishers insist on, and seek to maximize, the discoverability of their products through the utilization of broad and conventional search terms; I suspect that the explosion in usage of the “hagiograph*” complex has been stoked at least in part by this desideratum. But clearly it is more than just that; for many scholars, “hagiograph*” terminology and “hagiograph*” thinking appear to be outright useful. Samantha Kahn Herrick very recently wrote: 18 Ann Taves, “Special Things as Building Blocks of Religions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, ed. Robert Orsi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 58–83, at 58. 19 Anna Taylor, “Hagiography and Early Medieval History,” Religion Compass 7 (2013): 1–14. 20 One example from 2018 is “Understanding Hagiography and its Textual Tradition” at the University of Lisbon (http://uhttlisbon2018.letras.ulisboa.pt/; accessed May 10, 2020). 21 For the Brepols series, entitled “Hagiologia: Études sur la sainteté et l’hagiographie – Studies on Sanctity and Hagiography,” see www.brepols.net/Pages/BrowseBySeries.aspx?TreeSeries=HAG (accessed May 3, 2020); for the Amsterdam University Press series, entitled “Hagiography Beyond Tradition,” see www.aup.nl/en/series/hagiography-beyond-tradition (accessed May 3, 2020).

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Felice Lifshitz questioned the very notion of hagiography as a genre. . . . She argued that the distinction between historiography and hagiography – on which Delehaye insisted – was a modern construct imposed on medieval texts at the cost of seeing them as did those who produced and used them – the very people, that is, whom medievalists seek to understand. . . . Lifshitz’s article in particular sparked a great deal of thought about what differentiates writings about saints from other sorts of narratives. Most scholars now agree that it is unwise to impose modern categories on medieval subjects . . . the boundaries between hagiography and other sorts of historical writing now appear much less clear-cut than they did to Delehaye. Nevertheless . . . most scholars working on hagiography agree that medieval authors and audiences did perceive these narratives as belonging to a particular category. . . . Most scholars thus agree that hagiographical texts were, in the eyes of the medieval people who produced and used them, recognizably different from other sorts of narratives.22 Whether or not Herrick is exaggerating about “most scholars,” the moment seems propitious for me to publish a more general, and updated, statement about “hagiography.”23 My goal is not to argue with those scholars (“most scholars?”) who feel confident (1) that they know what hagiography is; (2) that other people (past and present) know what hagiography is; and (3) that hagiography provides a useful framework within which to analyze and understand the phenomena that interest them. My goal, rather, is to speak to those scholars (even if their number is quite small) who do not have that kind of confidence, and who perhaps have struggled with their own doubts and confusions about (1) what “hagiography” is and (2) whether “hagiographical” analysis is a profitable pursuit. Perhaps reading this essay will help them liberate themselves from a perceived need to continue struggling with an unsatisfying and frustrating approach to their field of interest, just as (I have been told) reading my 1994 article has helped others in the past.24 22 Samantha Kahn Herrick, “Introduction,” in Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500–1500, ed. Samantha Kahn Herrick (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 1–9, at 3–4. 23 As Carol Christ once did with Goddess thealogy, I here expand the relatively narrow claims of my earlier article (Carol P. Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess,” Heresies 5 [1978]: 8–13; Carol P. Christ, “Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess,” Feminist Theology 20 [2012]: 242–255). 24 Publications by medievalists who have told me, in personal conversations, that my Viator article helped them dispense with the perceived need to work within the framework of “hagiography” include Anna Taylor, Epic Lives and Monasticism in the Middle Ages, 800–1050 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Steffen Hope, “Constructing Institutional Identity through the Cult of Royal Saints, c. 1050–c. 1200” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern Denmark, 2017). A number of scholars avoid the entire “hagiograph*” complex in their own publications, but I have no knowledge of the thought processes behind their (apparent) rejection of the construct; one example of a “hagiograph*”-free publication is the graphic novel Jennifer A. Rea and Liz Clarke,

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I myself am grateful to have achieved that liberation decades ago, and I have never for a moment regretted not having “hagiograph*” arrows in my scholarly quiver. The thoughts I offer here result from my participation as a keynote speaker for the “Comparative Hagiology” Pre-Conference Workshop held at the November 2019 American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego, where I was asked to comment on a (then forthcoming) special issue of the journal Religions, edited by the workshop’s organizer, to which many of the workshop’s participants (specialists on a variety of traditions and periods) contributed.25 All of the articles in question are excellent; they represent the best that could possibly be done by anyone in an effort to define what ought to be considered as “hagiography.” The fact that, collectively, they failed to do so (as I argue here) is entirely due to a simple fact: it cannot be done. As George Box noted many decades ago, “all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.”26 With the “hagiograph*” complex, the limits of utility are very quickly reached. As one contributor to the special issue admits: “many hagiographic texts will be found to not fit neatly into these categorizations, or to fall into different opposing categorizations simultaneously. Such is the nature of hagiography . . . upon close examination texts will often be found not to conform to these categories. . . . Hagiographic texts tend strongly toward being complicated, difficult to describe. This is because of the elasticity of the genre.”27 Frankly, for me, it’s a real dealbreaker if the “nature of hagiography” involves such infinite elasticity that the category doesn’t work. One recurrent problem with contributors’ attempts to define “hagiography” is that their chosen characteristics were neither proper nor essential to the texts or phenomena under discussion; those characteristics are also present in various texts and phenomena that are not normatively considered to be “hagiographical,” and/ or are absent from various texts and phenomena that are normatively considered to be “hagiographical,” all of which effectively renders useless the categorical grouping of some materials into a box labeled “hagiography.” Siebeking focused on how a twelfth-century biography of Muhammad and a “quasi-autobiographical experiment” by a twentieth-century Korean-American artist sought to cultivate in their readers personal, affective, and participatory relationships with the holy.28 He explored this avenue because his working definition of “hagiography” (“writings about exemplars of perfection”) turned out to have

25 26 27 28

Perpetua’s Journey: Faith, Gender, & Power in the Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Comparative Hagiology: Issues in Theory and Method, ed. Massimo Rondolino (Religions 10 [2019]: 538–2020, 11, 163, at www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/comparativehagiology). George E.P. Box, Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (New York: Wiley, 1987), p. 74. David M. DiValerio, “A Preliminary Controlled Vocabulary for the Description of Hagiographic Texts,” Religions 10 (2019): 585, pp. 1 and 5. R. Brian Siebeking, “Dare to Compare: Reflections on Experimenting with Comparative Hagiology,” Religions 10 (2019): 663.

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no currency in relation to those particular texts (Muhammad is not meant to be a model for imitation, and the avant-garde artist is not presented as perfect). Siebeking’s discussion of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s al-Shifāʾ and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee is valuable in terms of what it reveals about the two texts themselves, and about the possibilities of the comparative project, but it ultimately tells us nothing about a putative category of writing called “hagiography.” The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qu’ran (to name but three examples) also seek to cultivate in their readers a particular relationality to the holy; therefore this characteristic is not proper to materials that have been labeled as “hagiography.” It becomes even less proper to materials that have been labeled as “hagiography” when we consider other materials that seek to construct a “dynamic of active relationality” between extraordinary persons and their fans, such as the Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook feeds of social media influencers, a dynamic recently explored in relation to the quest for popular fame by the English mystic Margery Kempe and by the reality TV star Kim Kardashian West.29 Yet, texts concerned with the trickster St. Faith (always explicitly treated as “hagiography” by scholars) sought to inculcate in their audiences a sense of abject terror before their holy protagonist in order to deter “transgressions” against the owners of her relics.30 Indeed, those who have studied St. Faith in greatest detail argue that “medieval hagiography . . . tends to articulate themes of power and authority.”31 Therefore, the cultivation of an affective personal relation is not essential to “hagiography.” Another characteristic that is neither proper nor essential to texts labelled as “hagiography” is “collaborative and communal” authorship.32 Zimbalist’s study of the manuscripts of the Vita of Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246), written by the Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (1200–1270), attends closely to the material specificity of those manuscripts to demonstrate that the very creation (and recreation) of the text was a result of collaborative efforts, rather than of the type of sole authorship modern readers tend to associate with literary production. Zimbalist’s discussion is brilliant and important, and reveals much about the texts and manuscripts in question, but it ultimately tells us nothing about a putative category of writing called “hagiography.” None of the dynamics that Zimbalist discerned are in any way proper to “hagiography,” although – misled by having taken for granted the existence of “hagiography” as a distinct genre – she mistakenly 29 Alicia Spencer-Hall, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 167–187. 30 The Book of Sainte Foy (Liber Miraculorum Sancte Fidis), ed. and trans. Pamela Sheingorn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 1, 3, 25 (for the texts as “hagiography”), and 204 (for an example of how Faith “often restrains her hand from taking vengeance on those who repent. But after the time for being indulgent has passed, she looses her hand once and for all to smite those who have abused her patience”). 31 Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, Writing Faith: Text, Sign, and History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. ix. 32 Barbara Zimbalist, “Comparative Hagiology And/As Manuscript Studies: Method and Materiality,” Religions 10 (2019): 604, p. 4.

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attributes them to that category of text. What Zimbalist discerned in connection with the manuscripts of the Vita of Lutgard of Aywières is typical of the medieval European literary landscape, as Bernadette Masters showed nearly thirty years ago through her study of the manuscript witnesses to the Lais of Marie de France.33 Medieval Europeanists should always be aware of the vastly different mentalities and technologies that governed textual production in scribal culture, when most if not all texts were the living products of communal action. Another characteristic that is neither proper nor essential to texts that have been labelled as “hagiography” is the inclusion of supernatural, miraculous, or astonishing content. That miraculous, supernatural, and astonishing content features in innumerable cultural products that have never been labeled as “hagiography” is so uncontroversial that it would be superfluous for me to provide specific examples; therefore, such content is not proper to “hagiography.” Meanwhile, Zoepf’s taxonomy of “hagiographical” texts already included an a-miraculous subtype over a century ago; therefore, such content is not essential to “hagiography.”34 Two contributors to the special issue recommended measurement of the miraculous as part and parcel of a “hagiographic” analysis;35 yet, in so far as a question concerning the relative prominence of such motifs can profitably be posed to any text or social process, and in so far as the answer to the question in relation to materials that have been labelled as “hagiographic” can range from “completely absent” to “utterly pervasive,” I do not see the utility of posing that question within the specific framework of “hagiography,” or how answering the question reveals anything useful about some putative “hagiograph*” grouping of materials. Yet another area in which the dynamics that are often described in connection with “hagiography” are neither proper nor essential to it concerns the entire complex of phenomena associated with the commemoration of extraordinary individuals. The existence of massive enumerative martyrologies (sheer lists of calendrically organized personal- and place-names disconnected from any active cult) demonstrates that full-fledged memorialization is not essential to sainthood.36 At the same time, the dynamics of cultic memorialization are not proper to figures venerated as saints; witness the parallels between the shrine of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace cabin in Kentucky and the shrine of the Virgin Mary’s house in Italy

33 Bernadette A. Masters, Esthétique et manuscripture. Le “moulin à paroles” au moyen âge (Heidelberg: Winter, 1992). 34 Ludwig Zoepf, Das Heiligen-Leben im 10. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Tuebner, 1908), pp. 34–35. 35 DiValerio lists among the questions that can be posed to a text as part of a “hagiographic” analysis: “To what extent does the text rely on accounts of the miraculous?” (“A Preliminary Controlled Vocabulary,” p. 5); Sarah Ritchey suggests asking a series of questions along the lines of “To what degree is the extra-ordinary involved in the hagiographic process of the exemplary figure?” (“Dialogue and Destabilization: An Index for Comparative Global Exemplarity,” Religions 10 [2019]: 569, p. 4). 36 Felice Lifshitz, “Bede, Martyrology,” Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Head, pp. 169– 197, esp. 169–171; Felice Lifshitz, The Name of the Saint: The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia (627–827) (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

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noted earlier. Hollander raised this point, in relation to his own original work on the anticolonial heroes of Cyprus as well as in relation to the spectacular case of the cult of Elvis Presley.37 Hollander reports how the majority of the Comparative Hagiology collective members, in the course of previous meetings, had rejected such comparisons on the grounds of “the reasonable but . . . ultimately untenable worry that once everything is hagiography, nothing will be.”38 Hollander dismisses this collective worry as “untenable,” and continues unapologetically to use the “hagiograph*” complex of terms to describe such phenomena, whereas I draw the (I would argue) tenable conclusion from the phenomena in question (a US national park, an Italian church, a private tourist venue in Memphis, Tennessee [Graceland], and a Greek museum) that, indeed, nothing is “hagiography.” The features on display at these sites are neither proper nor essential to locales that have been considered as “hagiographical;” rather, just as biographies of saints can profitably be treated as biographies, and romances featuring saints can profitably be treated as romances, the four locations in question can more profitably be treated together as lieux de mémoire (collective memory spaces), than separately as “hagiograph*” and “non-hagiograph*” sites.39 As far as I could see, no contributor to the special issue succeeded in elaborating a set of proper and essential characteristics that could be used to constitute or reify a particular group of materials as “hagiographical,” nor in discerning a methodological approach that could be considered proper and essential to the study of “hagiographical” materials. For instance, I would insist that scholars interested in any and all aspects of cultural studies should attend to consumption and reception as well as to production (as Hollander rightly argues concerning what he calls “hagiography”).40 I would also insist that scholars interested in any and all aspects of societal analysis “need to grapple with who we are as scholars . . . and encourage self-reflection on how our experiences shape and inform our work as researchers and educators” (as Harrower rightly underlines concerning what he calls “hagiography”).41 37 Lawrence Jasud, “St. Elvis,” in Saints: Faith Without Borders, eds. Françoise Meltzer and Jaś Elsner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 35–44; Aaron T. Hollander, “The Heromartyrs of Cyprus: National Museums as Greek Orthodox Hagiographical Media,” Material Religion 16 (2020): 131–161. 38 Hollander, “Comparison as Collaboration: Notes on the Contemporary Craft of Hagiology,” Religions 11 (2020): 31, p. 6. 39 Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1992). 40 Hollander, “Comparison as Collaboration,” pp. 6–7. For anyone who is unaware of how transformative and necessary it has proven to be for the rigorous scholarly analysis of human societies to attend to consumption/reception, I suggest examining the discussion of what happened when film specialists began taking audiences as active thinking participants in the production of meaning into account in their studies of cinema in Janet McCabe, Feminist Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), esp. chapter 2 “Textual Negotiations: Female Spectatorship and Cultural Studies” (pp. 37–64). 41 Scott Harrower, “The Ethics of Doing Comparative Hagiology,” Religions 10 (2019): 660 p. 8. Virtually all feminist methodology of the past half century has called for this sort of ethical

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This lack of success on both definitional and methodological grounds is scarcely confined to the Religions special issue around which I have built this general statement. A marvelous example of how the very act of accepting the existence of “hagiography” as a res caused problems for a young scholar is provided by the recent dissertation of Tamar Rotman. Rotman ultimately argued that Gregory of Tours’ trilogy of anecdotes about saints and their miracles (Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, Life of the Fathers) should be understood as a single narrative whole, effectively as an Ecclesiastical History of the GalloRoman (Merovingian) people, intended as a complement and supplement to his (simultaneously written) Ten Books of Histories. However, it took Rotman many years to arrive at this understanding, because she was for so long misled by trying to work within the confines of “hagiography.” As she explained in her conclusion: Breaking free of the scholarly convention that would have me examine these hagiographical collections in the context of the Merovingian cults of saints and the perception of the holy and sacred in Merovingian Gaul, I decided to focus on how Gregory of Tours molded his narrative and what literary strategies did he use. In doing so, Gregory’s authorial sophistication soon became apparent, leading me to the conclusion that Gregory’s hagiography, which was written for historiographical reasons, may, indeed, be classified as ecclesiastical history.42 In other words, all the significant features that Rotman discerned in Gregory’s Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers were decidedly neither proper nor essential to those texts, but were shared completely in common with other historical writings by the same author. It seems fair to say that Rotman is one scholar who (pace Herrick) would not “agree that hagiographical texts were, in the eyes of the medieval people who produced and used them, recognizably different from other sorts of narratives.”43 Discussion of Gregory of Tours brings me back to where I began decades ago, when I first attempted to understand what characteristics might be taken to distinguish “hagiographical” from “historiographical” narratives, and concluded that no such distinction was possible. Historical narrative is the field in which the “hagiograph*” complex is, to me, most thoroughly useless and misleading, as acknowledgement of and grappling with our identities as scholars, for instance through the exploration of “standpoint epistemology;” see, for instance, Feminist Epistemologies, eds. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993). 42 Tamar Rotman, “Miraculous History Between East and West: Hagiography, Historiography and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2018), pp. 195–196. I am grateful to Yitzhak Hen for the opportunity to read this work as an external examiner. As the quotation makes clear, this experience has not persuaded Rotman to abandon the “hagiograph*” complex of terms, only to recognize the way in which reliance on it can be detrimental to scholarly understanding. 43 Herrick, “Introduction,” p. 4.

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Rotman recently discovered. Again and again, attempts to distinguish between “hagiography” and “historiography” dissolve under closer scrutiny, sometimes within moments of being asserted in the first place. For instance, in a 2016 essay, Rico Monge momentarily groped his way towards a distinction between “historiography” and “hagiography” qua “sacred historiography” then, turning on a dime, conceded that all historiography was sacred anyway: [D]eeper reflection on the fundamentally fictive character of historiography illuminates how hagiographies might themselves be better understood as sacred historiography – a historiography that manifests truths sacred to a particular tradition of thought. Indeed . . . [Hayden] White’s observations help reveal how any historiography (whether bearing an explicitly religious character or not) manifests truths sacred to particular traditions of thought.44 What Monge ultimately recognizes here is the fragility of utilizing the presence or absence of the sacred, of “religion,” as a sorting tool; it may be that the nature of “religion” as unstable, contested, and undefinable (as noted by Ann Taves) provides the most compelling reason to abandon the search for a “hagiographical” category of materials with proper and essential characteristics.45

Stumbling blocks in the riverbed of “hagiography” Revisiting a question after several decades cannot be straightforward. As Heraclitus famously said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”46 While both I and the river have definitely changed over the past few decades, the riverbed of “hagiography” still contains many of the same rocks, tree roots, and other stumbling blocks that tripped me up in the early 1990s, leading me to abandon any attempt to define what sorts of materials should properly be considered “hagiographical” and which should not. In this section, I lay out more of the rationale that led me to that point decades ago. Although the concerns noted here have determined my stance on the matter for over twenty-five years, I chose not to include them in the (highly targeted) argument of the Viator article, and only articulate them now in light of my engagement with the Religions special issue. The English morpheme “graphy” derives from the Ancient Greek terms γράφω (grapho, to write), γράφειν (graphein, to write), γρᾰφή (graphe, writing), etc.

44 Rico G. Monge, “Saints, Truth, and the ‘Use and Abuse’ of Hagiography,” in Hagiography and Religious Truth: Case Studies in the Abrahamic and Dharmic Traditions, ed. Rico G. Monge (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 7–22, at 15. 45 Taves, “Special Things.” 46 The saying is famous, but I owe the fact that I am thinking about it in the context of this essay to Nikolas O. Hoel, “Comparison as a Provisional Activity,” Religions 11 (2020): 36, p. 1.

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Therefore, using words from the “hagiograph*” complex as generic descriptors inevitably points towards the written, and “cannot but prioritize textuality,” when in fact the range of items that scholars analyze under the rubric of “hagiography” far exceeds the bounds of what is meant by “writing.”47 Thus, contributors to the special issue explicitly disavowed the clear implications of their own language to indicate that their understanding of “hagiography” included visual, acoustic, material, performative, and archeological items such as artistic productions, songs, practices, actions, relics, behaviours, prayers, commemorations, apparitions, and buildings.48 In my view, it’s nonsensical to preferentially utilize a term that is so clearly misleading. Furthermore, if buildings, behaviours, and books (to take but three items) really are all “hagiography,” then everything is “hagiography.” I would argue that the term is empty and useless, that it does no real analytical or descriptive work in relation to the buildings, the behaviours, and the books; all the work of actually saying something meaningful about the “hagiographical” buildings, the “hagiographical” behaviours, and the “hagiographical” books still remains to be done.49 My own modus operandi, for many decades now, has been to focus on carrying out whatever type of analysis seems most appropriate for the given building, behaviour, book, or (in the case of my most recent work) film that has attracted my interest, with no regard to whether any part of it can be considered 47 Jon Keune, “Comparative vs. Hagiology: Two Variant Approaches to the Field,” Religions 10 (2019): 575, p. 2. 48 For instance, Massimo Rondolino, “Some Foundational Considerations on Taxonomy: A Case for Hagiography,” Religions 10 (2019): 538, p. 5; Siebeking, “Dare to Compare,” p. 2; DiValerio, “A Preliminary Controlled Vocabulary,” p. 1; Ritchey, “Dialogue and Destabilization,” pp. 2–3; Hollander, “Comparison as Collaboration,” pp. 4–5. This preferential utilization of a term that literally means “writings” to refer to many things that are not writings is currently standard practice; for instance, “. . . hagiography is not limited to the written lives of saintly figures. Rather, liturgy, text, hymnography, pilgrimage, and sacred space all can operate on the level of hagiographical discourse. We thus define hagiography not only as the lives of saints as depicted textually in narrative, but also as represented iconographically, hymnically, liturgically, and enacted and imitated ritually” (Rico G. Monge, Kerry P.C. San Chirico, and Rachel J. Smith, “Introduction,” in Hagiography and Religious Truth, ed. Monge, pp. 1–4, at 1). 49 I was just beginning to think about writing this updated statement when I came across a call for papers for the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies (for a session on “Hagiography and Historiography”) that posed the specific question: “What is it about hagiography that makes it a mirror for contemporary concerns, both for medieval authors and artists and for modern scholars?” I considered proposing a paper with the following answer: “the fact that ‘hagiography’ doesn’t exist, such that whenever anyone looks at anything that they want to label ‘hagiography’ they will discover something else going on there; ‘hagiography’ (in books, behaviours, or buildings) always turns out to be about something else, and scholars would be best off focusing on that something else from the get-go.” For the CFP, see http://jennycbledsoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ Hagiography-and-Historiography-CFP.pdf (accessed May 10, 2020). In the end, I knew I would be unable to write both this new statement and my new essay on Dudo of St. Quentin (now Chapter 18 in this collection) for Spring/Summer 2019 conferences, so I decided to work on Dudo first. I am happy that I did, because the AAR/SBL invitation provided a much better framework for writing the current essay than the ICMS panel would have.

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“hagiographical.”50 The notion that some “things” (understood as people, places, objects, behaviours, emotions, events, and experiences) are considered “special” in a “religion-like way” should be more than enough for anyone who desires generic categories and labels; as Ann Taves writes: “Although neither the specific Western terms nor the web of relationships that they constitute correspond precisely to distinctions made in other cultural contexts, the concept of specialness, insofar as we can operationalize it in terms of behaviors, provides a . . . promising starting point for cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and perhaps even cross-species research.”51 There is a second problem with the “graphy” portion of “hagiography.” While the (misleading) “hagiograph*” complex is widely used to designate things that are not “writings about the saints” (to use Tom Head’s definition) because they are not writings at all, it is simultaneously assiduously eschewed in relation to many things that absolutely are “writings about the saints,” when those writings are produced by academics.52 Eminent scholars who write appreciative books about Christian historical figures who are venerated as saints are never said to have written “hagiography,” and they certainly never describe their own work as “hagiography” or themselves as “hagiographers.”53 If biographies of saints are “hagiography,” then Jacques Le Goff and Johannes Fried (both leading historians of medieval Europe) are “hagiographers.”54 To judge from a publicity video shot inside the Sainte Chapelle, built by the crusader King St. Louis IX of France (1214–1270) to house his relic collection, Le Goff’s biography of Louis surely aroused admiration for a “fascinating” figure in his readers.55 Meanwhile, Fried’s adulatory visualization of Charles the Great, Emperor of the year 800 and saint of

50 For instance, Felice Lifshitz, “The Politics of Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality in Mid-Century Medievalist Films: The Example of Becket (1964),” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae (QMAN) 19 (2014): 211–240; Felice Lifshitz, “Between Adaptation and Oblivion: Cinematic Sanctification and the World of Late Antiquity” (paper presented at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2018). 51 Taves, “Special Things,” p. 60. Also see p. 59 for her expansive definition of “things.” 52 For Head’s definition, see above note 11. 53 Examples of such works that I read during my initial unsuccessful attempt to understand what counted as “hagiography” include Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), James J. O’Donnell, Augustine (Boston: Twayne, 1985), Henry Chadwick, Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: Saint Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), and Carole Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). In fact, with the exception of some members of the Société des Bollandistes, I am not aware of anyone who has ever self-identified as a “hagiographer.” For the Bollandists, see Guy Philippart, “Hagiographes et Hagiographie, Hagiologes et Hagiologie: Des Mots et des Concepts,” Hagiographica 1 (1994): 1–16, at 10–11. 54 Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996); Johannes Fried, Charlemagne (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 55 Olivier Barrot, “Jacques Le Goff: Saint Louis” (1996) at www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9& v=wjjH_H-bkqw (accessed April 30, 2020).

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the Catholic Church, absolutely pulled out all the stops in praise of its subject.56 I suspect that the reason such work is never (to my knowledge) said to belong in the category of “hagiography” is this: to do so would be to smear the authors with a derogatory term of abuse. Not, however, that the reason matters; the important point here is that the term “hagiography” does not have a stable and consistent meaning, and is therefore not particularly useful or illuminating. Nevertheless, it is worth pausing over the distinctly negative valence that “hagiograph*” terminology has for many people, according to a 2016 assessment: [H]istory is construed as representing objective truth. Hagiography, on the other hand, is that which dissembles, whitewashes, and idealizes, and thus carries with it the connotation of falsehood. This suggestion of falsehood naturally leads to disparaging attitudes toward hagiography. At best it is trivial fantasy that serves only to reveal what unenlightened people have believed (and still believe). At its worst it is nothing less than a dangerous erasure of the truth itself . . . hagiography is routinely construed as the enemy of history, and thus of truth.57 As I showed in my 1994 article, this is not just the way “hagiography” is construed in the twenty-first century; it’s the way it was constructed in the nineteenth century. The word was repurposed from its centuries-old usage as a term for the poetical and lyrical books of the Hebrew Bible into a derogatory label designating something mendacious and worthless.58 Clearly, scholars who have both embraced the idea that certain materials (beyond those scriptural texts) should be categorized as “hagiographical,” and have written about those materials utilizing “hagiograph*” terminology, do not themselves hold completely dismissive and derogatory views of “hagiography” (although they do sometimes throw shade at the material).59 But 56 “A great hunter,” “the master of them all at swimming,” whose “whole being was shot through with a refreshing sensuality,” Charlemagne was a man marked by “love of the sciences, astronomy, calendrical calculation and mathematics, and dialectics and rhetoric” and a “widely renowned thirst for knowledge;” he was a man of “unswerving religious observance” and “a tireless warrior in his defense of the faith,” whose every action was guided by the watchwords “[f]aith, justice, peace, compassion, strength of mind, moderation, benevolence, equity, and piety” (Fried, Charlemagne, pp. 22, 318, 35, 224, 238, 24, 213, and 508). 57 Monge, “Saints, Truth, and the ‘Use and Abuse’ of Hagiography,” p. 9. 58 Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre,” pp. 108–111. The fact that the entire “hagiograph*” complex referred exclusively to the Bible (with extremely rare exceptions) from 400 to 1700 was also noted by Philippart, “Hagiographes et Hagiographie,” p. 16. 59 Consider these minimizing assertions about the “derivative genre” of “hagiography:” “most saints’ Lives drew their authority from the repetition of themes and conventions borrowed from late antique traditions of sacred Christian biography” and “repetition of age-old literary models exerted a dominant influence in this conservative genre” (Scott G. Bruce, “Sources for the History of Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages [c. 800–1100],” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, eds. Alison I. Beach and Isabelle Cochelin [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], vol. 1, pp. 63 and 67). Such statements hardly prepare a reader for the immense variety of themes and issues that show up across thousands of biographies of people

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the inability of the term to shed its fundamentally derogatory resonance – notice how little has changed between Heffernan’s 1988 quotation and Monge’s 2016 one – has condemned some scholars to treading the frivolous waters of redundant controversy, arguing in favor of “the rich potential of hagiography to enhance our knowledge,” despite the fact that the value of saints’ biographies (for instance) is now widely recognized.60 Just as I do not think it makes sense to use a “hagiograph*” word that literally points to “writing,” thereby putting myself in the position of needing to assert explicitly that I actually also mean every possible sort of “not-writing” when I use that word, I have also preferred simply to treat all the materials about which I write as valuable, and to proceed directly to my analysis, rather than to risk smearing them through the inevitably derogatory connotations of a “hagiograph*” label, and thereby put myself in the position of needing to explicitly argue that they are valuable despite their “hagiograph*” nature. Beyond the “graphy,” there are also problems related to the “hagio” morpheme in “hagiography,” built on the Greek term “ἅγιος” (hágios) meaning “holy.” Like all Euro- and Christo-centric terminology, “hagio” and “holy” carry with them a significant amount of imperialist, colonialist, and racist baggage.61 Contributors to the Religions special issue demonstrated concern about the problematic strength of what Jon Keune called the “Euro-Christian gravity well;” Keune in fact devoted much of his contribution to demonstrating how any retention of the “hagio” might inescapably “end up reinforcing and favoring, even if unintentionally, the default Euro-Christian paradigm,” while Rondolino extensively explored the sinister potential of the “hagio” to “reproduce hegemonic Europe-centric biases.”62 My feeling is that, if this can be avoided, it should be avoided, rather than reluctantly embraced or excused.

venerated as Christian saints, and in fact insult both medieval readers and medieval authors by depicting them as having spent centuries on end consuming and producing derivative, repetitive, conventional texts. 60 “Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500–1500 shows the historical value of texts celebrating saints – both the most abundant medieval source material and among the most difficult to use. . . . The volume’s twenty-one contributions . . . show the rich potential of hagiography to enhance our knowledge of [the medieval] world, and some of the ways to unlock it” (https://brill. com/view/title/36198?language=en, publisher’s website blurb for Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, ed. Herrick; accessed April 30, 2020). For Heffernan, see above note 5. 61 “‘The holy’ has the musty smell of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century bourgeois European piety about it, of the canon’s study and the don’s lecture hall. It appears to be hopelessly entwined with highly technical Western philosophical debates and categories that mean little to anyone anymore. As it was developed at the turn of the twentieth century, moreover, the concept of ‘the holy’ was implicated in the European ideology of Western superiority that underwrote the colonial project, because invariably the most perfect experience of the holy was judged to be the modern European Protestant Christian. In the contemporary academic context, the very aim of the holy as a concept – to name the really realness of religious phenomena independent of cultural and social coordinates – seems jejune” (Robert Orsi, “The Problem of the Holy,” in Cambridge Companion, ed. Orsi, pp. 84–105, at 85). 62 Keune, “Comparative vs. Hagiology,” p. 4; Rondolino, “Some Foundational Considerations,” p. 5.

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One definitional conundrum that frustrated me in the 1990s, contributing to my eventual abandonment of the “hagiograph*” description project, concerned the character of the person or people spotlighted in the (so-called) “hagiograph*” materials (as opposed to the character of the “hagiograph*” materials themselves). This (to me insoluble) question emerged as a key point of contention among the contributors to the special issue. Rondolino’s proposed definition of “hagiography” restricted it to materials concerning perfect individuals.63 Such a rosily romantic orientation fails to register the ways in which control of the memory (and sometimes the physical remains) of sainted persons provides a self-aggrandizing power base (and frequently also an income) for the impresarios of their cults.64 In contrast to Rondolino, Guilfoy suggested (based on the inconvenient truth that many individuals studied as part of self-identified “hagiographic” scholarship are manifestly not perfect) that “extraordinary” might be a more accurate way to conceptualize the proper subjects of “hagiography;” however, he immediately retreated even from that position on the utterly sensible grounds that “extraordinary” people are “extraordinary” in so many different ways that nothing is actually gained by inventing a single term to describe the extraordinariness of both Christina the Astonishing and Francis of Assisi.65 I would add, moreover, that “extraordinary” does not begin to expand beyond “perfect” sufficiently to include venerated figures constructed and venerated by their orchestrators as terrifying tools for social control.66 Scholars should not shy away from acknowledging social dynamics such as “the capacity of religion to be used by the state as a tool to oppress the rights and interest of the people . . . to support or justify its authority [and] . . . as a weapon against political dissent or a tool in the arsenal of weaponry in wars with other states and rulers.”67 The tendency towards erasure and denial of the violence 63 “I offer a revised definition of hagiography that reflects the nexus of behaviors, practice, beliefs, and productions through which a community constructs the memory of a human being it considers to have embodied religious perfection. . . . I argue that we should adopt the concept of hagiography as an analytical category for the taxonomy of sources that contribute to construct and promote the recognition of a given individual as a perfected being in the context of a particular religious theory of truth. . . . [hagiography is t]he complex web of behaviors, practices, beliefs and productions (literary, visual, acoustic, etc.) in and by which a given community constructs the memory of individuals who are recognized as the embodied perfection of the ‘religious’ ideal promoted by the community’s tradition and socio-cultural context” (Rondolino, “Some Foundational Considerations,” pp. 1, 2, and 5). 64 For one discussion of this dynamic, see Felice Lifshitz, “The Martyr, the Tomb and the Matron: Constructing the (Masculine) Past as a Female Power Base,” in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, eds. Patrick Geary, Gerd Althoff, and Johannes Fried (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 311–341. The seminal apprehension of this dynamic is of course Brown, Cult of the Saints. 65 Kevin Guilfoy, “Is Comparison Based on Translatable Formal Concepts?” Religions 11 (2020): 163, pp. 3–5. Closer to Rondolino than to Guilfoy was the approach of designating the subjects of “hagiography” as “exemplars” or “exemplary figures” (Ritchey, “Dialogue and Destabilization,” p. 2). 66 For the example of St. Faith, see above notes 30 and 31. 67 David E. Guinn, “Religion, Law, and Violence,” in Blackwell Companion, ed. Murphy, pp. 99–111, at 100–101.

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that is often thoroughly imbricated in “religious” phenomena, accompanied by a preference for an emphasis on “religion(s) as something good, as something that provides ethical ideals, cultural and personal identity, and a way to relate to all ‘big questions in life,’” has recently been critiqued in a collection of essays from the University of Tromsø in Sápmi; one contributor to the collection goes so far as to call the currently hegemonic romantic-rosy approach “disciplinary lying.”68 But the important point is this: even with a very circumscribed definition of the subject of “hagiograph*” materials (human persons, to the exclusion of non-human animals, natural objects such as trees or rocks, places, human-made objects, etc.) the contributors to the Religions special issue could not agree on parameters for describing those persons.69 The fault lies not in them, but in the futility of the enterprise. There is one point I did already make in the 1994 article that I wish to reiterate here. In a footnote, I ridiculed the notion that “hagiography” is a genre defined by its content (a definition favored by one contributor to the special issue) through a ludic analogy to “politicalia.”70 In 2020, and still in jest, I propose two additional possible genres that might also be defined by their content, analogous to the way “hagiography” is currently defined in practice by its self-identified practitioners as anything having to do with saints, relics, shrines, or miracles. Would it truly be helpful to treat as manifestations of a single genre everything we can imagine that is connected with food, such as restaurant menus, cookbooks, Yelp reviews, cooking competition shows, still life oil paintings featuring food, photographic advertisements of Wendy’s burgers, cereal boxes, Gourmet magazine, cargo manifests documenting tea imports by the East India Company, and infinitely more items besides? Similarly, do texts describing battles, biographies of military figures, actual tanks, actual submarines, statues of military heroes, medals, uniforms, war memorials, anti-war novels, military recruitment posters, the ruins of the fortress at Masada, the Gilbert and Sullivan patter song “I am the very model of a modern major general,” and infinitely more items besides constitute a genre defined by having something to do with war? In both cases, all the things I name might attract the interest of scholars in the fields of Food Studies and War Studies, respectively; however, no one working in either of those fields argues that the items themselves form a coherent and definable genre that is independent of the scholarly gaze

68 Bengt-Ove Andreasson, “Significant or Insignificant Absence? Religion and Violence in RE Textbooks for Norwegian Teacher Education,” and Aaron Hughes, “Toward an Appreciation of Non-Normativity: A Quasi-Autobiography,” in Textbook Violence, eds. James R. Lewis, BengtOve Andreassen, and Suzanne Anett Thobro (Sheffield: Equinox, 2017), pp. 176–195, at 186 and pp. 196–209, at 206. 69 All contributors to the special issue either explicitly or implicitly limited their discussion of the proper subjects for “hagiography” to human beings, with the exception of Hollander (“Comparison as Collaboration,” p. 5), who highlighted stones bearing the hoof prints of St. George’s horse. 70 As suggested by DiValerio, “A Preliminary Controlled Vocabulary,” p. 1; see Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre,” p. 97.

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bringing them together, or attempts to reify them into a really existing category of things that can be labeled as “comestibilia” or “militaria.”71 According to the Wikipedia entry for “War Studies,” the multi-disciplinary study of war is sometimes called “polemology,” from the Greek πόλεμος (pólemos), meaning “war” or “battle.”72 Continuing the analogy, I cannot reasonably object if some scholars, such as the members of the Comparative Hagiology Collective, wish to self-identify as practitioners of “hagiology,” understood as a field of study that, along the same lines as Food Studies or War Studies, brings together disparate materials for multi-disciplinary study.73 The word “hagiology” boldly signals something that the word “hagiography” obscures: that it (like religion, as we know from Smith) is created at the scholar’s desk.74 My only hesitation would be that the term for the field would still be built on a Euro-centric root (the “hagio” already discussed above), but this is par for the course when it comes to the terms for a multitude of academic disciplines (e.g. anthropology, psychology, theology, sociology, musicology, toxicology, pharmacology, anesthesiology, and so on); it is certainly not my intention to call for a repudiation of all such terms. Indeed, it is not even my intention here to call for a repudiation of “hagiograph*” terminology and “hagiograph*” thinking. Now, as decades ago, I find the entire construct to be useless and misleading and therefore I personally avoid it. I imagine that there may be other scholars out there who also are disturbed, confused, and/or frustrated by trying to understand what constitutes “hagiography,” or who are fed up with seemingly endless generic debates over “hagiography” that never lead to consensus. This essay is for them. I hope it can provide the slight nudge they need to liberate themselves from the discussion, and to get on with their work unimpeded by the “hagiograph*” construct. 71 For Food Studies, see the Wikipedia article on the topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_ studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_studies; accessed May 3, 2020) and, as one concrete example, the website of the Food Studies Research Network at https://food-studies.com/ (accessed May 3, 2020); for War Studies, see the Wikipedia article on the topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/War_studies; accessed May 3, 2020) and, as one concrete example, see the programme at the Royal Military College of Canada (www.rmc-cmr.ca/en/registrars-office/war-studies-programmes; accessed May 3, 2020). 72 See above note 70. 73 Members of the Collective (Todd French, Jon Keune, and Massimo Rondolino) have recently established a listserv that can be reached by emailing [email protected]. Furthermore, the AAR Program Committee has recently approved a five-year “Hagiology Seminar,” for which Brian Siebeking and Todd French serve as co-chairs. 74 Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. xi. “Hagiolog* terminology has been utilized in European scholarship since the fifteenth century, but only relatively rarely, and normally as interchangeably synonymous with “hagiograph*” terminology (despite a handful of scattered exceptions of the use of “hagiologus” in the sense of “a specialist on hagiography”). There was a concerted, but failed, attempt during the 1970s and 1980s to establish “hagiolog*” terminology to designate a field of study, most notably in Réginald Grégoire, Manuale di agiologia: Introduzione alla letteratura agiografica (Fabriano: Monastero San Silvestro Abate, 1987). For all this, see Philippart, “Hagiographes et Hagiographie,” pp. 12–16.

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Part II

Historiographic discourse and saintly relics The archbishops and Rouen

3 ТHE “PRIVILEGE OF S T. R O M A N U S ” Provincial independence and hagiographical legends at Rouen

One of the more interesting mysteries of Norman legal history is the origin of the so-called “Privilege of St. Romanus.” The story goes that, when Romanus became archbishop of Rouen early in the seventh century, he sought to rid the town of а monstrous creature who was ravaging the countryside, but was unable to find а single citizen, “suburbanite,” or cleric to assist him in his quest. The only volunteer was а prisoner, waiting on death row in the prisons of Rouen. With the help of the prisoner, the saint tamed the wild beast and brought it back to his see, where it died in the sight of all the populace. In token of their gratitude, the citizens released the prisoner from their keeping and from any punishment. The privilege originated, however, not with Romanus himself but with his successor, Аudoenus, who demanded and received from King Dagobert а privilege designed to preserve the memory of Romanus’ holy deed. Supposedly, King Dagobert conceded in perpetuity to the cathedral chapter (the archbishop, archdeacons, and canons of the church of Rouen) the right to free one prisoner every year on Ascension Day, no matter what crime they had been accused of committing. No sources of the seventh through the twelfth centuries make any reference to this event in Romanus’ life, or to the privilege. What, then, is at the root of the privilege? Aside from those who have accepted the story at face value as entirely authentic, most critics have explained its genesis by interpreting the tale symbolically, as а metaphor for Romanus’ stamping out of “paganism” in his archdiocese. Floquet, the author of а monumental and still definitive work on the privilege, assimilates the rouennais story to those of the many other cathedral churches which boasted dragon-slaying bishops. He traced the origin of that common phenomenon to the institution of liturgical Rogations at the end of the fifth century, with the three days of Rogations representing the three great epochs of religion: the pre-Mosaic, the Mosaic, and the Evangelical. Because the “demon” had reigned during the first two eras, on Monday and Tuesday of Rogations а dragon with а raised tail was carried in procession before the cross. Then, on Rogation Wednesday, the dragon was placed behind the cross, humbled, with its tail between its

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legs. As the Rogation Days complemented the festival of Ascension, when the privilege was exercised, Floquet felt he could trace the origin of the legend to liturgical symbolism.1 The only modern author to have studied the cult of Romanus, the Bollandist Van Hecke, likewise lists the various dragon-slaying bishops, adding Martha, hospita Christi, and agrees to Floquet’s metaphorical explanation.2 Tougard, on the other hand, has suggested that the tale was merely а mistaken borrowing from the vita Nicasii. It may have seemed wrong to the inhabitants of Rouen that in their case the dragon-slayer (Nicasius) was not the patron of the diocese (Romanus), as he more usually was (for instance Sts. Pol of Leon, Samson of Dol, Clement of Metz, Julian of Le Mans, Amand of Utrecht, Vigor of Bayeux, etc.) and thus а transposition would have been only logical.3 А slightly different approach was taken by Louis de Sacy, for whom the privilege symbolized а deformation of one of the saint’s more popular miracles, the turning back of the Seine. He argued that an eruption of water threatening to inundate the town would have been called а “gargouille” in the vernacular. This word, when translated, as he supposed it would be, by the Latin “hydra,” was mistaken for а type of monster.4 But de Sacy did not realize that, like dragons elsewhere, flooding waters were themselves symbolic of paganism in the rouennais mental universe. He knew the vita Romani only in the abbreviated form (BHL 7313а-7313b) published by Nicolas Rigault in 1609. That abridgement relates only briefly the substance of the following miracle, and completely omits Romanus’ own commentary on the event. The town was one day unexpectedly flooded by the waters of the Seine, and the archbishop: crucem dominicam quam pre oculis semper gestari faciebat arripiens, seuientes undas perrumpit intrepidus, que mox precipiti refugio uelut metu perterrite, а facie ipsius nоn sine impetu relicta urbe et relictis agris quos male occupauerant effugere ceperunt. Instabat fugientibus aquis uir sanctus, et calcatius morantes urgebat, donec per patentes portas erumpentes preterfluentis sequane alueo sese infuderunt. Quibus uir apostolicus in ipso portarum introitu ne ultra in euum procederent, terminum constituit, quod et has usque in hodiernum seruare manifestis uidemus indiciis . . . 1 Amable Floquet, Нistoire du privilège de Saint-Romain (Rouen: A. Le Grand, 1833), vol. 1, pp. xiii– xv and 44–45. As for the name “gargouille” by which the creature was known at Rouen, Floquet believed it was some sort of affectionate nickname due to the creature’s resemblance to the waterspouting “gargoyles” then beginning to adorn the edifices of Rouen. Besides Floquet’s massive study, а large portion of Arthur Du Monstier’s Neustria Miscellanea (unpublished, 1647) in Paris BN lat. 10052 is devoted to the issue of the privilege. 2 Joseph Van Hecke, De Sancto Romano, Episcopo et Confessori, Rotomagi. Commentarius Praevius, AASS October 10:74–91, at 88. 3 Albert Tougard, La Vie de S. Romain (Rouen: Société des Bibliophiles Normands, 1899), р. viii. Also see the Passio Nicasii, Quirini, et Scuviculi, AB 1 (1882): 628–632, at 629–630. 4 Louis de Sacy, Recueil de mémoires, factums et harangues (Paris: Pierre-Jacques Bienvenu, 1724).

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[Populis] respondit, “Nolite filii karissimi nolite turbari, nес uobis ultra timeatis huiusmodi aquas superuenturas esse. Aque iste prelocuntur uobis aduersarum gentium quandoque piraticum superuenturum exercitum, qui uestre huius regionis fines occupatos, inaudita feritate perdomabit, et posteros uestros per tempus et per spatium temporis, suo subiugabit dominio. Uerumptamen apud misericordem dominum hoc uobis optinui, ut uestris istud non fiat temporibus. Illud autem scitote, quoniam gens illa de qua loquimur gentilitatis errore adhuc detenta, mox ut christi nomen audierit, catholice fidei cultum arripiet, et populum sibi subiectum multa in расе confouere persistet. Nunc ergo agite, et sedium uestrarum atria confidenter repetite, certi quia еа nequaquam ultra marina uexabit inundatio.5 This image of Romanus as “chaser of waters” apparently remained vivid at Rouen; both François Pommeraye and François Farin knew а story of the saint’s relics turning back а flooding of the Seine in 1296, which they found in а manuscript in the library of Jean Bigot, dean of the Cour des Aides of Normandy and а well-known seventeenth-century bibliophile.6 However, all of these explanations of Romanus’ miracle fail to account for the privilege itself. The actual, real-life right to free а prisoner is not the necessary outcome of а dragon slaying, or of а triumph over flooding waters. Tougard is probably right that the story was borrowed from the vita Nicasii. But Nicasius’ deed did not result in any such privilege, and it is the privilege, not the dragon slaying, that needs explaining. Certainly we must look for the origin of а politicallycharged judicial privilege not in the worlds of literary criticism and hagiographical tradition, but in particular political events, preferably ones with strong judicial components. The very first time the “ancient privilege” is known to have been executed was in 1210. We know of the event because the lucky prisoner made, in gratitude, certain donations to the church of Rouen, and а copy of the charter still exists in the cartulary of the cathedral. Here is the story, in his own words: Notum sit omnibus presentibus et futuris quod, anno аb incarnatione Domini 1210, ego Ricardus miles, dictus abbas de sancto Medardo, cum 5 These passages are taken from the original, complete version of Romanus’ vita (unknown to the BHL), which I recently discovered in two manuscripts, Paris ВN lat. 13090 and Evreux BM 101. The readings of BN lat. 13090 are superior, and the citations can be found on folios 121v and 122r of that manuscript. The text, by Fulbert of St. Ouen, seems to have been composed in approximately 943 at Rouen. [At the time of writing this article, I here referred readers to my dissertation (Lifshitz, “Dossier”), and announced the intention to publish critical editions of the texts related to Romanus; as it turned out, I instead published transcriptions of the texts in Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 227–281. The passage quoted here can be found on pp. 251–253.] 6 François Pommeraye, La Vie et miracles de S. Romain archevesque de Rouen, patron de ladite ville (Rouen: Jean de Boullanger, 1652); François Farin, La Normandie Chrestienne, ou l’Histoire des archevesques de Rouen (Rouen: Louis du Mesnil, 1659).

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essem in periculo corporis mei, in regio carcere, apud Rothomagum detentus, hanc mecum multiplicavit Deus misericordiam suam, quod, de jure libertatis ecclesie Rothomagensis, intuitu gloriose virginis Marie et beati Romani, а regibus et principibus antiquitus approbate, labore ас diligentia capituli Rothomagensis, а vinculo carceris, in die Ascensionis Domini, cartam mee liberationis accepi.7 We do not know with what Richard was charged; we do know that he was charged by the king or by а royal official, for he was held in the royal prison. Furthermore, the crime must have been fairly grievous, for the punishment was death. Not surprisingly, King Philip Augustus immediately challenged the liberation and had the privilege investigated by the governor of his fortress at Rouen, the castellan of Arques. So the archbishop of Rouen, Robert Poulain, convened several citizens of the town and had them swear on the Bible that the privilege indeed existed and had been exercised in the times of Kings Henry II and Richard I of England.8 It almost goes without saying that there is, in fact, not the slightest shred of evidence of such а privilege before this date. It seems highly likely that the privilege was fabricated at precisely this moment to serve а new and unexpected need. It is even possible that it was created specifically to benefit Richard of St. Medard. The situation of Rouen at the time was one which would have encouraged potential forgers and perjurers. Philip Augustus had conquered Normandy from John of England in 1204, and he immediately began to institute at Rouen his ambitious program of royal centralization. The commune of Rouen fought energetically to preserve its independence and its constitution. “De là,” as Chéruel put it, “une suite de combats, non sans gloire pour la commune, mais où la disproportion des forces devait enfin la faire succomber.”9 The commune may have lost, but the cathedral chapter did not. Not coincidentally, it is at this point that the enforcement of their metropolitan rights over suffragan bishops and abbots began to preoccupy the archbishops. From Philip Augustus, they immediately won the right to free election of the bishop by the cathedral chapter. Pommeraye affirms that this right had long existed, but he can martial no evidence for independent elections before the end of the AngloNorman era, while everything we know about the archbishops of the Norman and 7 Rouen BM 1193 (Y.44), ed. Floquet, Нistoire du privilège, vol. 2 p. 602; also see р. 347, where Richard is first on the list of the hundreds of prisoners liberated under the privilege in the nearly 600 years of its operation. 8 See Floquet, Нistoire du privilège, vol. 2, рp. 601–602 and Van Нecke, De sancto Romano, р. 89 for the account of the investigation which Floquet had found in а manuscript of the Bibliothèque Royale under the title: Anno 1210 controversiaт de Sancti Roтani privilegio inter capituluт et regis castellanuт exortaт . . . Exstant еа de re sequentes ad principeт litterae in chartulario capituli. Reverendo Philippo, Dei gratia illustri Francoruт regi, Robertus, perтissione divina Rotoтagensis archiepiscopus (and the letter follows). 9 Аdolphe Chéruel, Histoire de Rouen pendant l’époque communale, 1150–1382 (Rouen: N. Périaux, 1843–1844), vol. 1, pp. 96–97.

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Anglo-Norman periods points to а decided involvement on the part of the ruling families.10 Even more than the Conquest of 1066, the events of 1204 held the promise of freeing the church of Normandy from centuries of entanglement with, nearly dependence upon, the secular rulers. Among Philip’s first actions was to strip the Norman clergy of its numerous privileges.11 He was no tyrant, though, and both clergy and burgers of Rouen found themselves, as the result of an inquiry, confirmed in their various legitimate and useful privileges and liberties. No privilege of St. Romanus, nor anything resembling it, was recorded at the time.12 Nor did it exist in 1207, at the time of the dramatic internal conflict between the chapter and the commune. The canons of the cathedral claimed exclusive jurisdiction over their servants; the mayor claimed authority over all non-clerical inhabitants of the town. When servant of the canon William de Marloy was arrested and imprisoned for rioting, the chapter did not appeal to any right of liberating prisoners, but instead used their traditional weapon of ecclesiastical interdict. Only as а result of repeated and well-documented interventions by Philip was the interdict lifted and the divine office performed again at Rouen, and only at the price of recognizing the chapter’s jurisdictional claims. At no point is there any reference to the privilege.13 If the idea of the privilege was not born in connection with the case of Richard of St. Medard in 1210, then it may well have been born in connection with the case of William’s servant in 1207. In neither of the documents relating the events of 1210 is the privilege explicitly connected with St. Romanus. His name is mentioned in Richard’s donation charter, but the name of the patron of the town is inevitably found in charters commemorating donations to that town’s cathedral. The eventual attribution of the privilege to St. Romanus and the creation of а story to explain its genesis must have been the result of а long process of association of the saint with the initially independent privilege. The privilege was exercised on Ascension Day, and since the late eleventh century there had been а procession of Romanus’ relics on Ascension Day as well.14 Fusion was inevitable. 10 François Pommeraye, Histoire de la cathédrale de Rouen, metropolitaine et primatiale de Normandie (Rouen: l’Archevesché, 1686), р. 488. 11 Chéruel, Histoire de Rouen, vol. 1, р. 99. 12 Chéruel, Histoire de Rouen, vol. 1, р. 99. 13 Chéruel, Histoire de Rouen, vol. 1, pр. 107–109. 14 Three dates in the calendar of the Church of Rouen are of significance for Romanus’ cult. The festival of his deposition (October 23) was celebrated by the 1060’s at the very latest, when it is mentioned by John, bishop of Avranches (Le “De Officiis Ecclesiasticis” de Jean d’Avranches, archevêque de Rouen (1067–1079), ed. Rеné Delamare [Evreux: Picard, 1923]). The celebration of Romanus’ October deposition was made mandatory throughout the diocese by Archbishop William, former abbot of Саеn, between his accession in 1079 and 1090, when а translation performed by William at the time of his imposition of the mandatory cult is cited in the account of the translation of а relic of Romanus from Soissons to the abbey of St. Оuеn (BHL 7319а). The translation from Soissons took place and was commemorated at the abbey on June 17, also the date of Romanus’ translation festival on the calendar of the secular church. The June 17 festival seems to have been instituted by Archbishop Robert in 1036, at the time of his inventio corporis, when

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Floquet details the entire course of the controversy over the privilege, which was hardly settled by the investigation of 1210.15 By 1346 the privilege was explicitly connected with Romanus; for instance, it is referred to several times as the “pardon saint Roumaing” in the statutes of the brotherhood of Romanus for that year.16 At the time of the royal investigation of 1394, Charles VI learned that: le dit Prévilége fu ainsi ordoné en l’onneur et remembrance des notables et beaux miracles que fist le dit glorieux saint Monseigneur Saint Romain à la cité de Rouen et à tout le païs de environ. Entre les quieulx, par la grâce de Dieu, il prinst et mist en subjection un grant serpent ou draglon qui estoit environ Rouen, et devouroit et destruisoit les gens et bestes du païs, telment que nulz n’osoit converser ne habiter en icelui païs. Et ensement, icelui glorieux saint chassa et mist hors d’icelui païs anemis et malvèz espéris qui conversoient et habitoient en icelui païs, telment que aucun n’y osoit demourer; avecques plusieurs grans et notables miracles que Dieu fist pour luy en sa vie, et depuis son trespassement, comme il peut estre sceu notoirement.17 We are clearly now very close to the origin of the legend. Romanus has been given а dragon-slaying miracle to supplement his other deeds, but it is not yet in exclusive commemoration of that slaying that the privilege is exercised. Furthermore, the privilege still hasn’t been explained and fully justified through the addition of the aid of the prisoner, the reason Romanus’ miracle is commemorated for the benefit of one condemned. The earliest text in Romanus’ dossier recording the legend and the privilege is the vie inserted into the Légende Dorée, а vernacular translation of Jacques he apparently moved the saint’s body from its original place of burial in the church of St. Mary (afterwards St. Gildard) in the Beauvoisine suburb to а small chapel of St. Romanus just north of the cathedral, on the street that presently bears the saint’s name. The source for the year 1036 for the inventio is the now-lost Tabularii of the church of Rouen, seen by both Farin (La Normandie chrestienne, р. 456) and François Pommeraye (Histoire des archevesques de Rouen [Rouen: Laurens Maurry, 1667], р. 246; also see р. 131 for the evidence of the existence of such а chapel). The third date, the Ascension Day procession with the “fierté S.-Romain,” can only commemorate the translation of Romanus’ body from the chapel of St. Romanus (“his very own temple”) into the metropolitan basilica; the procession is mentioned (though no date is given) by Orderic Vitalis in his account of Archbishop William’s institution of the public cult: “Corpus sancti Romani presulis de propria aede in metropolitanam basilicam gloriose transtulit et in scrinio auro argentoque cum preciosis lapidibus operose cooperto reverenter locavit. Solennitatem quoque eius х kal’ Novembris per totam diocesim suam festive celebrari constituit, et generali edicto festivam stationem ad sancti pontificis corpus extra urbem singulis anпis fieri decrevit, ad quam parrochianos реnе omnes monitis et absolutionibus atque benedictionibus invitavit” (OV 3.22–25). 15 I do not repeat all of the many phases of the combat and the dates of the numerous royal investigations, all of which can be found in Floquet, Нistoire du privilège. 16 Floquet, Нistoire du privilège, 2.607–614. 17 Floquet, Нistoire du privilège, 2.617.

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de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea printed in Rouen in 1511 by Richard Goupil for booksellers of Rouen (Richard Масе), Caen (Michel Angier), and Rennes (Jean Масе).18 The contents of this vernacular collection follow those of the 1507 rouennais Latin Golden Legend to St. Вarlaam, who is replaced by Romanus; the collection then returns to the 1507 model, although а few saints are omitted. Romanus is the only saint from the so-called “Norman Appendix” to the 1507 collection who is retained in the 1511 vernacular translation.19 There is every reason to believe, however, that the vie of Romanus pre-dates the 1511 collection, and was originally independent of it, and that the insertion into the 1511 collection was more or less fortuitous. In every other case, the 1511 collection contains а vernacular translation of the Latin epitomes in the 1507 collection (in Romanus’ case this would have been BHL 7317). But the vie of Romanus in the 1511 collection is based on the full vita by Fulbert.20 Confirmation that the vie had an independent existence prior to 1511 is provided by Tougard, who in 1899 published а mysterious livret entitled La Vie de Saint Romain.21 The text is nearly identical to that of the Légende Dorée, but the readings in Tougard’s edition are consistently superior, so the livret is unlikely to be dependent on the 1511 version. Tougard’s analysis of the typeface and other characteristics of the printing style of the livret led him to conclude that it was printed for Pierre Regnault (the bookseller of Rouen who also commissioned the 1507 Norman Appendix to the Golden Legend) by Jean Le Bourgeois, between 1492 and 1498.22 Not only was the livret the first version of Romanus’ life to include the dragon slaying and privilege episode, but that episode was also given prominence by the printer. The cover of the livret showed Romanus and the prisoner, the latter holding the end of а stole wrapped like а leash around the neck of а firebreathing, winged creature. Here is the legend of the dragon and the privilege, as it appears in the vernacular epitome: En се mesme temps advint ung autre miracle qui nest pas а celer. Il у avoit hors la porte de Rouen en la partie septentrionale ung grant serpent et cruel qui devoroit les hommes et envelimoit lair jusques bien loing, et faisoit de grans dommages а la cite et aux habitans dicelle. Quant saint 18 Jacobus de Voragine, La Légende Dorée, trans. Jean de Vignay (Rouen: Richard Goupil, 1511), folios 234–235. 19 Although the 1511 translation took little from the “Norman Appendix” of 1507 (Jacobus de Voragine, La Légende Dorée, trans. Jean de Vignay [Rouen: Pierre Regnault, 1507]), the 1518 Caen reprint of the “Norman Appendix” used the illustrations and the vita of St. Roch, which had been added in 1511 (Jacobus de Voragine, La Légende Dorée, trans. Jean de Vignay [Caen, 1518]). 20 See above note 5 for the vita by Fulbert. 21 See above note 3. Tougard discovered а copy of the slim livret saved from destruction by having been bound into the back of a copy of Joannes Commirius, Officium s. Gildardi Rotomagensis Archiepiscopi (Rouen, 1702). 22 See the notes to the text in Tougard, La Vie de S. Romain, рp. а–с.

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Rommain en eut ouy parler, meu de pitie sen alla devers la iustice seculiere affin quon lui donnast ung homme condamne а mort pour у mener avec lui, laquelle chose il obtint facilement. Adonc le saint homme vestu des armes de leglise, menant avec lui ledit criminel, vint au lieu avec la croix et leaue benoiste, de laquelle il arrousa ledit serpent au nom de Dieu en faisant le signe de la croix et le lia de son estolle et le bailla au peuple pour tuer. Pour laquelle cause chacun an est rendu au chapitre de leglise ung homme qui а desservi la mort et est delivre par le merite du saint. If Tougard’s dating is correct, and there is no reason to dispute it, it is likely that the livret was composed in preparation for or during the royal investigation of 1485, under Charles VIII. We find the complete story, as it appears in the livret, in the king’s confirmation privilege.23 Charles’ 1485 document became the cornerstone of all future confirmations, those of Louis XII (1512) and Henry II (1554, 1557, 1559). The royal battle against the capitular privilege was not rejoined until the reign of Henry IV, who, in 1597, obviated the more scandalous abuses of the privilege by limiting its application to those not accused of theft, murder, heresy, lèsemajesté, or counterfeiting.24 For over а century, the Chapter of Rouen had enjoyed in peace the full use of а right which gave them а measure of independence from the French monarchy; even after 1597, hundreds of individuals were liberated for lesser crimes. But what had worked against the early-modern monarchy proved to be no match for the modern state. Without hesitation, the Revolution abolished the privilege in 1791, relegating it to the sphere of historical curiosities.

23 Published among the notes to the text in Nicolas Rigault, Vita sancti Romani episcopi Rotomagensis е vetere martyrologio nunc primum edita (Paris: Thierry & Chevalier, 1609), folios 42–50. Also see above note 5 for this version of the vita. 24 See Floquet, Нistoire du privilège, vol. I, р. xvii. Нis successor Louis XIII, however, was somewhat more circumspect before the power of the saints, and even petitioned the Chapter of Rouen for some small fragment of а relic of Romanus in 1638. By that time, rouennais relics were in short supply, given the major destructions by the Calvinists in 1562. Happily, what was believed to have been his original coffin survived the Wars of Religion, and since 1804 has been the principal relic of the new parochial church of St. Romain, near the train station on the right bank of Rouen. For the above, see Van Нecke, De sancto Romano, рp. 85–86.

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4 Т H E A C TA ARCHIEPISCOPORUM ROTOMAGENSIUM А monastery or cathedral product?

Among his Vetera Analecta of 1675, Jean Mabillon published а chronicle of the archbishops of Rouen, which he called the Acta Archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium, from а manuscript of the Benedictine abbey of St. Ouen of Rouen, now Rouen BM 1406 (Y.41).1 Geneviève Nortier has dated the manuscript to the end of the eleventh century, during the abbatiate of Nicholas, largely on the basis of the presence of his anathema on those who might steal the book (fol. 23v).2 The codex is а uniform production of а single scriptorium at а single time, including the rubricated indications of lectiones. Many of the saints commemorated (including the rouennais saints Gildardus, Remigius, and Romanus) were acquired for the abbey by Abbot Nicholas from St. Medard of Soissons in 1090; an account of that translation (BHL 7319а) is preserved in Rouen ВМ 1406 (folios 47–49). However, on fol. 47v of BHL 7319а, Nicholas is described as excellentis memorie and was, therefore, presumably dead. The most recent attempt at the chronology of the abbots of St. Ouen is that of Marjorie Chibnall, who gives Nicholas’ dates as 1036–1091/92.3 The codex was evidently produced between 1090 and с. 1093. Mabillon considered the copy he published to be the autograph copy of the chronicle, and identified the author as either Theoderic, monk of St. Ouen, known for his verse vita of St. Audoenus (Ouen), or as Fulbert, an archdeacon of the

1 Rouen, BM 1406 (Y.41), folios 1–12; Jean Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, 4 vols. (Paris: Martin and Boudot, 1675–1685), 2.424–457 (reprinted in PL 147.273–280). For the contents of the manuscript, see the Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Départements, 52 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886–1960), 1.404–409, and CCHR, pp. 220–224. 2 Geneviève Nortier, “Les bibliothèques médiévales des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie. Chap. VIII: La bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Saint-Ouen de Rouen,” Revue Mabillon 48 (1958): 249–257, at 255; reprinted in Geneviève Nortier, Les bibliothèques des abbayes bénédictines de Normandie (Caen: Caron, 1976). 3 OV 2.298, note 3.

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cathedral.4 The authorship of Theoderic was championed by the Maurists, who saw the description in the Acta Archiepiscoporum of the tumult of 1073, when the monks of St. Ouen with an armed band of men attacked Archbishop John while he was celebrating the mass for the festival of St. Audoenus, as incontrovertible evidence; the New Potthast follows this lead.5 Fulbert the archdeacon, however, has also had his defenders, notably the original Potthast and, most recently, Marjorie Chibnall.6 Perhaps the most important reason that а monastic origin for the text has been sometimes questioned is that there is also а copy of the chronicle in the Ivory Book of the Cathedral of Rouen, now Rouen ВМ 1405 (Y.27).7 The manuscript is а recueil factice, whose contents were not bound together until early in the thirteenth century; а few documents, running into the eighteenth century, were inserted later.8 The moment at which the cathedral copy of the Acta Archiepiscoporum was originally made cannot, therefore, be apprehended quite as precisely as can be that of the St. Ouen copy; nevertheless, we can have а pretty good idea. The cathedral copy is incomplete, breaking off in the middle of the entry concern4 Mabillon, Analecta, 2.226. The sole copy of Theoderic’s vita Audoeni is also in Rouen 1406; nothing is known of the author beyond his presence in the abbey under Nicholas (François Pommeraye, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Ouen [Rouen: Lallemant, 1662], р. 339). 5 HLF 8. 367 and August Potthast et al., Repertorium Fontium Historiae Medii Aevi, 11 vols. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1962–2008), 4.107. 6 OV 2.xxvi–xxvii and August Рotthast, Bibliotheca historica Medii Aevi, 2 vols. (Rev. ed. 2; Berlin: Weber, 1896), 1.511. Тhе “archdeacon Fulbert” in question is otherwise known only as the author of а vita Romani (unknown to BHL; compare BHL 7313а/b, 7314, and 7315). However, as а result of the discovery of the full, original version of Fulbert’s vita Romani, I have been able to identify it as а product of the mid-tenth century, and not of the later eleventh century, when it would have to have been written for its author also to be responsible for the chronicle of the archbishops. [At the time of writing this article, I here referred readers to my dissertation (Lifshitz, “Dossier”) for a fuller treatment of Fulbert and his compositions; at this point, interested readers should instead consult Lifshitz, Norman Conquest.] 7 Rouen ВМ 1405 (Y.27), pp. 26–36. For the contents of the manuscript, see Catalogue général des manuscrits, 1.399–404 and CCHR, р. 219. 8 We can be fairly certain of the moment of binding of the theretofore separate segments into а single codex due to some folio rearrangement evidently undertaken at that time. The last folio of the noted office of St. Romanus (now рp. 86–91) originally contained only а few lines and was otherwise blank. When the quires containing the vita and office of Romanus were bound into the codex, immediately preceding the vita Audoeni (рp. 92–128), this last folio was cut off, the very long rubric introducing the vita Audoeni was erased, and the end of the office for Romanus was written in over the erasure (р. 92). The original last folio of the office (now р. 60) was moved to where it could serve for the final passages of the thirteenth-century capitular customs, which had been begun (by а thirteenth-century hand) in the blank space at the end of the vita Gildardi (р. 58). The same hand used the blank space at the bottom of р. 167 after the “desinit” of the vita Hugonis for а confirmation of prebends by Archbishop Walter (1184–1208), and squeezed some letters of Walter on procurations onto р. 23. Finally, the same scribe has copied what is described by а modern title in the manuscript as “De visione et obitu beati Maurilii” (the predecessor of John on the archiepiscopal throne) onto р. 41, the blank verso page of the last folio of the “metrical catalogue” of the archbishops of Rouen (following the prose chronicle that is the focus of this paper).

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ing John of Avranches (1062–1079), predecessor of William Bona Anima of Caen (1079–1110), with whose accession the Acta in Rouen BM 1406 end, just when the chronicler begins to criticize John. The text in Rouen BM 1406 reads: “Hic uero fuit uir progenie nobilis, liberalibus imbutus disciplinis. Is alias satis strenuus animi fuit impatientissimus. Crudescebat in ео hic morbus et ut ita dixerim exaggerabatur.” The chronicler tells, in great detail, the story of the violent clash of 1073 between the archbishop (who was in the wrong) and the monks of St. Ouen in the time of Nicholas of Normandy, being careful to add, “Quod non derogatorie, non insultatorie, sed consultorie censuimus scribere.” The copy in Rouen BM 1405 breaks off after “imbutus,” and а later hand supplies the final word in the sentence (from Rouen BM 1406), “disciplinis.” The incompleteness of the cathedral version alone would seem to indicate that the monastery version was the original. Although any specific identification of the author is pure conjecture (there is no explicit statement concerning authorship in the manuscript and the earliest attempt at identification was Mabillon’s), it is possible to demonstrate the origin of the text with much greater certainty than has been recognized thus far. The purpose of this paper is to add some heretofore unconsidered evidence to the debate, all of it supporting the view that the original text was composed in the monastery of St. Ouen. The most important source for the Acta was the metrical catalogue of the archbishops, which follows that chronicle in both Rouen BM 1405 and Rouen BM 1406. In Rouen BM 1406, both texts are written by the same hand and form а codicological unit; in Rouen BM 1405 they are separate and distinct. The original copyist of the metrical catalogue in Rouen BM 1405 goes through Maurilius (d. 1067), whereas the original hand in the Rouen BM 1406 copy goes through William of Caen (d. 1110). The first continuation of the metrical catalogue in Rouen 1405 brings it up to William. Apparently the metrical catalogue was written first, by someone connected primarily with the cathedral, before 1067. Someone from St. Ouen then used the catalogue to write а prose chronicle that could serve as а historical framework for the shipment of relics received by Nicholas from St. Medard of Soissons in 1090 (which included three former archbishops of the see: Gildardus, Romanus, and Remigius) and, at the same time, that individual updated the metrical catalogue. Let us focus on the opening, rather than on the closing, names on the list. The cathedral had no relics of Nicasius and little interest in him. When he was finally placed on the calendar of the Church of Rouen, the responses for his office were taken from the liturgy for All Saints’ Day and the lectiones from the common of martyrs, indicating а total absence of texts.9 It is not surprising, then, that Nicasius’ name does not appear anywhere on the original, cathedral, version of the metrical catalogue in Rouen BM 1405, which begins: “Antistes sanctus Mallonus 9 See Аmand Collette, Histoire du bréviaire de Rouen (Rouen: Mégard, 1902), р. 144; Nicasius’ festival is on October 11.

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in ordine primus /Excoluit plebem doctrina Rodomagensem.”10 Nicasius’ cult, on the other hand, had been centered on and promoted by the monastery of St. Ouen since the transfer there of his relics in 1032.11 The Acta in Rouen BM 1406 open with а discussion of the priority of Nicasius or Mallonus; the author concludes with а compromise, that Nicasius was “primus ordinatus” (by Pоре Clement), whereas Mallonus was “primus in sede locatus.” Nicasius is also placed at the head of the metrical catalogue in Rouen BM 1406. The scribe of Rouen BM 1405 omitted this entire potentially embarrassing issue when making the copy of the Acta for the Cathedral, as he was later to omit the criticisms of Archbishop John. The fact that the version of the Acta in Rouen BM 1406 is fuller than that in Rouen BM 1405 might tempt one to argue that the cathedral version was the original, rather than that the cathedral scribe omitted unpleasant portions of the text. Purely logical arguments about the names on the list cannot alone conclusively settle to everyone’s satisfaction the question of whether the cathedral or the monastery was responsible for the composition of the Acta. Happily, some of the entries in the chronicle contain traceable or otherwise telling information. The entry for Archbishop Gildardus in the Acta (identical in both copies) identifies him as the brother of St. Medardus, bishop of Soissons, and mentions the writings of Fortunatus on the two brothers: “Beatus Gildardus frater beati Medardi quorum beatam uitam magnifico stilo beatus Fortunatus scripsit. Una enim die nati fuerunt, una etiam die ordinati, una quoque die migrauerunt ad Christum.” Nothing in the known cathedral documentation could have served as а source for the notice on Fortunatus. The copy of the vita Gildardi (BHL 3539) in the Ivory Book, the only extant copy belonging to the cathedral chapter, varies from the two surviving earlier copies (Paris, BN lat. 13345 [BHL 3539а], from St. Medard of Soissons, and Paris BN lat. 5565 [BHL 3539b], from St. Ouen of Rouen) precisely in its omission of the hymn to Medardus and Gildardus ascribed in those codices to Fortunatus.12 Furthermore, the cathedral copy of BHL 3539b was itself copied from Paris BN lat. 5565, the St. Ouen сору. Significantly, the beginning of the Gildardus text (the hand changes at р. 46) and the Acta in Rouen BM 1405 were both copied by the same scribe at roughly the same time, for the margins, rulings, number of lines per page, method of marking initials of sentences, not to mention the calligraphy, are absolutely identical. Finally, the connection with St. Medardus was of paramount importance to the abbey of St. Ouen, for his abbey in Soissons was not only the source for BHL 3539а, but also for the St. Ouen relics of the 10 Rouen BM 1405, p. 36; а later hand has added, at the top of the catalogue, the following couplet: “Antistes Rothome datus а Clemente Nicasius /Si non sedisti, capud allegando stetisti.” 11 For the account of the migrations of his relics, see BHL 6084, by John, monk of St. Ouen. BHL 6084, along with two passiones of Nicasius (BHL 6081 and 6083) comprise the first section of individual hagiographical texts (folios 17–36) following the Acta and the metrical catalogue of the archbishops in Rouen ВМ 1406. 12 Rouen ВМ 1405, рp. 42–56. See the Appendix to this chapter for the ascription of Paris BN lat. 5565 to St. Ouen.

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saint, carried off from Rouen several centuries earlier and returned as part of the shipment of 1090. Without the intermediate sojourn at St. Medard of Soissons, the monks of St. Ouen could not authenticate their relics of Gildardus. The Medardus connection was not, however, of particular interest to the cathedral chapter, and the couplet concerning Gildardus in the metrical catalogue, а cathedral product, does not mention any relationship with Medardus. According to the chronicle of the archbishops, Gildardus’ successor was Flavius, during whose tenure, we are told, а church of St. Peter was built in the suburbs of Rouen, in which the body of St. Audoenus was later buried. The source of the passage was BHL 151, the second vita of Audoenus, а copy of which exists in both Rouen BM 1405 and Rouen BM 1406. It is highly unlikely that the cathedral’s copy, in general riddled with errors, was the source for the Acta, since many of the errors occur precisely in the relevant chronicle passage, which follows Rouen BM 1406 exactly: ipsa aecclesia in qua sancta membra [menbra – Rouen BM 1405] in расе quiescunt miro opere quadris [quaris – Rouen BM 1405] lapidibus manu gotthica [manugoticha – Rouen BM 1405] а primo Lothario [Lohario – Rouen BM 1405] rege Francorum.13 The long entry concerning Remigius, which is based on his vita, points to St. Ouen as well. Remigius was one of the saints whose relics were acquired by Nicholas for St. Ouen in 1090, along with Gildardus and Romanus. He is not represented in any of the breviaries of France catalogued by Leroquais,14 and the only extant medieval сору of а vita of Remigius (BHL 7174) is in Rouen ВМ 1411 (U. 64), а thirteenth-century lectionary of St. Ouen.15 According to both BHL 7174 and the Acta of the archbishops, Remigius was sent by his brother, King Pippin, at the request of their brother Carloman, now а monk of Monte Cassino, to retrieve the body of Benedict from Fleury and return it to Italy. Both Remigius and his retinue were struck blind attempting to carry out their orders, and the archbishop swore that no attempts would ever again be made to move the relics.16 13 Other errors in the cathedral copy include: “Interea summo ardebat studio ut monasteria et lоса sancta construeret per portas francorum prouintias” (Rouen BM 1405 р. 111) where it should read “per totas francorum prouintias”; or “scotiatus iam choris sanctorum” instead of “sociatus” (Rouen BM 1405 p. 122); or “Transmisso namque sequana” for “transmissa”; and “in eiusdem regionibus” for “eisdem” (Rouen BM 1405 p. 105). 14 Victor Leroquais, Les bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 5 vols. (Paris: Protat frères, 1934). 15 See Catalogue général des manuscrits, 1.415–419 and CCHR, рp. 196–200. 16 BHL 7174 ends with the translation of Remigius’ relics from Rouen to Soissons in the ninth century, and does not mention the translation back to Rouen in 1090. It is very possible that the original composition of the Vita did not take place at Rouen, but that the monks acquired а copy of it at the time of the translation. The main argument of the vita is intended solely to demonstrate that the monastery of Fleury did possess the relics of St. Benedict, and that by divine will they were never

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The earliest evidence of interest in Remigius from the cathedral side dates from the episcopate of Francis of Harley (1614–1651), who first introduced his festival into the Breviary of Rouen in 1642.17 Given the above considerations, it seems hardly possible that the original version of the Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium could have been composed by anyone whose primary affiliation was to the cathedral church of the town. It is interesting that we owe the chronicle of the archbishops, not to the institution most obviously interested in the episcopal succession, but to that institution’s great rival, the abbey of St. Ouen. Even more interesting is the fact that, where the two traditions of the rouennais archiepiscopal succession differed, the abbatial one came to dominate, even though the abbatial tradition was much later and much less trustworthy than the cathedral tradition. I refer above all to the addition to the list of Nicasius, а saint whose relics were possessed by the abbey of St. Ouen, as the first archbishop of the town and initial apostle of the region. In all of the oldest and most reliable episcopal lists for the see, as in the original version of the metrical catalogue produced by the Cathedral, Mallonus takes pride of place and Nicasius is nowhere in evidence.18 Yet, all extant late medieval copies of the rouennais episcopal list follow Rouen BM 1406 in placing Nicasius at the head of the list.19 The abbey to be removed from there. The substance of the text therefore leads one to suspect that the vita was composed at Fleury. Thomas Head, who is presently completing а book on the hagiography of the diocese of Orléans, where Fleury is located, has informed me that а slightly different version of the story does appear in the Fleury sources, specifically in Adrevald of Fleury, Miracula sancti Benedicti, ed. Eugène De Certain (Paris: Renouard, 1858), I, 13–17, pр. 34–42. [This work was subsequently published as Thomas F. Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).] The rouennais and fleuriac traditions differ only in that the latter describes the miraculous deterrent as lights and sounds, with no reference to the blinding (and subsequent healing) of Remigius’ party. On the other hand, the author of BHL 7174 refers to Remigius as “patronus noster” and apparently knew а “catalogus” of the archbishops. These facts do point to а rouennais composition, but it certainly seems likely that Adrevald was somehow the source for the story. Much more work is needed on Remigius’ dossier before anything can be stated with assurance. 17 Соllette, Histoire, р. 156. 18 See Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 3 vols. (Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1900–1915), 2.201–205 and Еugène Paul Sauvage, “Elenchi Episcoporum Rotomagensium,” AВ 8 (1880): 406–428. The reliable lists are in Angers ВМ 275 (266) of the ninth century, from St. Aubin of Angers; St. Omer ВМ 764 of the tenth century, from St. Bertin; Paris BN lat. 1805 of the late tenth century, from Fécamp; Le Havre ВМ 332 (А.34) of the eleventh century, from Fontenelle; and Paris BN 5296В (а сору of St. Omer 764) of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, from Bergues-St.-Winnoc. 19 Rouen ВМ 1333 (U. 46) of the twelfth century, from Jumièges; Paris BN lat. 6042 of the twelfth century, from Mont-St.-Michel; Paris BN lat. 4863 of the thirteenth century, from Mortemer; Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensis lat. 553 of the thirteenth century, from Jumièges; and Paris BN lat. 5195 of the fifteenth century, of unknown origin. An interesting case is presented by the list in Paris BN lat. 14663, according to which Nicasius was sent to Rouen by Pоре Clement but did not ever occupy the archiepiscopal throne (see fol. 24). The manuscript came

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of St. Ouen was the primary promoter of the cult of St. Nicasius. Indeed, veneration of Nicasius and his fellow martyrs of the Norman Vexin was so intense at St. Ouen, that St. Pientia, according to legend his first and most important supporter in the region, appeared in the abbey’s litanies and was honored with an octave to her festival.20 It seems that monastic networks of textual diffusion were much more important in the dissemination of historical information in the middle ages than were the official pronouncements of the hierarchical church.

to the BN from the Augustinian house of St. Victor of Paris; it was produced at the very end of the fourteenth century. 20 See the thirteenth-century Breviary and Missal of St. Ouen, Rouen ВМ 192 (А. 531). The only other extant medieval liturgical codex in which Pientia appears at all is the Breviary of MontSaint-Michel that is now Avranches ВМ 39.

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APPENDIX: THE ORIGIN OF PA R I S B N L AT . 5 5 6 5 2 1

Paris BN lat. 5565 has never been studied.22 As it now stands, the codex is arranged as а lectionary per circulum anni beginning with the feast of St. Paul to be used for readings at table in а Benedictine monastery.23 We must try to localize the production and use of the manuscript by means of its sanctoral. It was copied in the twelfth century. Folios 1–9 form а libellus containing а Latin translation of Linus’ passio of St. Paul (BHL 6570) with а nearly full-page illustration of Paul in majesty on fol. 9. There are twelve marginal lectiones and а note in the top margin of fol. 8v “Hic iacet in tumba rosa,” perhaps а reference to the burial site at the abbey in question of their relics of St. Paul. On fol. 9v of this irregular but complete octonian quire is а rubric announcing the passio of Nicasius, Quirinus, and company. However, the following quire (folios 10–17; octonian, regular, and complete) contains not the expected text, but rather the passio of Margaret of Antioch (BHL 5306; 12 lectiones) with no identifying rubric; an intervening gathering must have been lost or moved elsewhere. The opening quire is of а slightly different style of production from that of the rest of the codex, which seems to be the product of а rebinding in the later middle ages. The first quire does not necessarily share а common origin with the rest of Paris BN lat. 5565, but neither should its evidence be discounted entirely. The rest of the saints commemorated in Paris BN lat. 5565 are as follows: – the Seven Sleepers (feasts in September, June, and July; no divisions); – Silvester (feast December 31; eight lectiones); – Vincent (feast January 21; twelve lectiones); 21 Paris BN lat. 5565 (formerly Regius С 4428): full lines, 121 folios (24 and 25 duplex); see CCHP, 2. 470. I thank Luc Ferrier for his help with the codicological analysis of this manuscript. 22 The only portion of it to have received any serious attention is the Legend of the Seven Sleepers, which was edited by Мichael Huber, “Textbeiträge zur Siebenschläferlegende des Mittelalters,” Romanische Forschungen 26 (1909): 462–583 and 825–836, at 482–494. Huber does not attempt to localize the manuscript. 23 At 21.5 х 15 cm, it was far too small for the choir. There are always eight or twelve readings, though it should be noted that the lectio divisions are all marginal.

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– George (feast April 23; twelve lectiones); – Gildardus with Romanus and Remigius (feast June 8; eight lectiones); – Samson (feast July 28/29; eight lectiones); – Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus, and Beatrice (feast July 29; no lectio divisions); – Victor, Felicianus, and Alexander of Marseilles (feast July 20/21/28; no lectio divisions). According to extant breviaries of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, there are only two Benedictine abbeys in France whose sanctoral corresponded to the contents of Paris BN lat. 5565: St. Wandrille de Fontenelle and St. Ouen of Rouen. Both communities rendered cults to Gildardus and company, Nicasius and company, and Samson of Dol. Both also had the Seven Sleepers and Victor of Marseilles inscribed on their calendars. Silvester, Vincent, George, and Felix and company are all universal, specifically Gregorian, saints.24 Of the two abbeys, St. Ouen is the stronger possibility, since relics of Nicasius and Gildardus are known to have existed there. Furthermore, Goubert insisted that there was somewhere а copy of the acta sancti Nicasii in а manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century from St. Ouen of Rouen, which added to the known passio other sections on the translation to Rouen of 1032 and which had been used by François Pommeraye, François Farin, and Arthur Du Monstier, all seventeenth-century students of the sacred history of “Neustria.”25 The opening quire of Paris BN lat. 5565 may have been taken from that now-lost manuscript. Finally, there is no vita or translatio of Gildardus in Rouen BM 1406, which contains the important offices for the abbey of St. Ouen, nor in any other manuscript that has survived from the abbey. Yet the account of the 1090 translation of Gildardus, Romanus, and Remigius to St. Ouen in Rouen BM 1406 (BHL 7319а) used the earlier translatio (BHL 3539b), so there must have been а copy at the abbey. It is also very likely that the interpolation into the vita Gildardi of the passage concerning Gildardus’ consecration of St. Laudus (found on folios 99v-100v of Paris BN lat. 5565) took place at Rouen, where there was а collegial of St. Lô.26 Thus, the ascription of Paris BN lat. 5565 to St. Ouen fills а mysterious gap in our conception of the abbey’s collection. Only two of the 155 manuscripts presently preserved at Rouen that came to the library via St. Ouen, that is Rouen BM 1406 and Rouen BM 1411, are thought to have survived intact from the medieval period of the library. Most of those manuscripts, whenever and wherever 24 For all the above, see Leroquais, Les bréviaires. 25 L. Goubert, Notice sur S. Nigaise, apôtre du Vexin, et dissertation sur le lieu de son martyre (Paris: Authorial Autograph, 1867). 26 The interpolation was omitted from “Vita Sancti Gildardi,” ed. Poncelet, but the original passage from the vita Laudi was published CCHP, 1.496, the Appendix to Paris BN lat. 5283, an eleventh-century manuscript. The passage in Paris BN lat. 5565 varies somewhat from the text in Paris BN lat. 5283.

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they were originally copied, were acquired by the abbey after the Maurist reform of 1660.27 The disappearance of the medieval library of the abbey is attributed by Pommeraye to several fires of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.28 However, Paris BN lat. 5565 (like Rouen BM 1406) would never have been stored in the library but rather in the refectory, to be used for readings, and thus could easily have survived all of the disasters which destroyed the library collection.

27 Nortier, “Les bibliothèques médiévales.” 28 François Рommeraye, Нistoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Ouen (Rouen: Lallemant, 1662).

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This essay addresses the issue of who, among the pre-modern and modern bishops and archbishops of Rouen, did, and who did not, become а saint.1 Eight saints both appear in liturgical manuscripts and possess hagiographical dossiers: Nicasius, Mallonus, Evodius, Gildardus, Romanus, Audoenus, Ansbertus, and Hugo.2 Eight more prelates of Rouen have been accorded the title “saint” in various texts, yet are either not commemorated in any extant liturgical manuscripts or boast no medieval vita tradition; they remain no more than extras in that cast of thousands that is the chorus sanctorum.3 Finally, at least two occupants of the see, who by most standards were likely candidates at least for the title “saint,” if not for an active cult, were unable even to get а foot in the door of the casting office. Examination of the legends surrounding their names demonstrates that there are no key virtues, no crucial miracles, no critical topoi of sanctity shared by all, or even most, of the sainted individuals. Nor could one conclude by any stretch of the imagination that the Divine Hand had favored the most deserving with merited veneration and let the rest fall into respectful relative oblivion for, while some of the former languished unrecognized, some of the most venerated were little more than literary fictions. An analysis of the evolution, implantation, and diffusion of the successful liturgico-literary cults has revealed the essential common denominator among the holy eight: all were favored with monastic connections and therefore at some 1 I have used either “bishop” or “archbishop” depending solely upon whether the individual’s tenure pre-dated the Carolingian reorganization of the church. Research for this paper was supported in part by а Faculty Development Grant from Florida International University. 2 Presence in а liturgical manuscript must be taken as irrefutable evidence that devotional cults were in fact rendered to them. Such manuscripts are inventoried in Victor Leroquais, Les bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 5 vols. (Paris: Protat frères, 1934) and Victor Leroquais, Les Pontificaux manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 3 vols. (Paris: Protat frères, 1937). 3 Victricius, Innocentius, Evodius, Flavius, and Praetextatus are first designated as saints on the twelfthcentury synoptic episcopal lists for the province of Rouen (Rouen, ВМ 1333 [U.46], fol. 37v; Paris, BN lat. 6042, fol. 1v; and Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensis lat. 553, folios 11r–11v).

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time or other found their cults being promoted by а monastic atelier. Four “superstars,” who appear in the largest number of liturgical codices (in descending order: Audoenus, Romanus, Gildardus, and Nicasius) ultimately shared the benefits of having their cults publicized by the same atelier, the Benedictine monastery of St. Ouen of Rouen. The other “holy” occupants of the see achieved, sometimes relatively late, а moderate degree of fama (in descending order: Ansbertus, Mallonus, Evodius, and Hugo) as а result of their adoption by monastic centers which possessed their relics.4 Those bishops and archbishops, on the other hand, whose reputations were entrusted solely to the see itself (such as Victricius and Maurilius), either did not pass beyond the level of extras, or have never been officially considered saints at all. Nicasius represents а textbook case of the medieval equivalent of the studio star system, whereby the abbey of St. Ouen took an obscure martyr about whom nothing was known and, putting the full weight of the atelier behind him, implanted his liturgical cult and his literary fama all across Normandy and beyond.5 Nicasius was commemorated as а martyr of the Vexin in the martyrology composed by Usuard just before 865.6 In approximately 1032, his relics were procured by the abbey of St. Ouen of Rouen.7 Тhere, hagiographical traditions concerning the martyr were first concocted by associating him with St. Dionysius. Dionysius is named among the seven “original” apostles to the Gauls by Gregory of Tours and, from the middle of the eighth century, was promoted by the monastery of St. Denis as а figure of the late first century, sent by the bishop of Rome Clement I.8 Nicasius was presented by the scriptorium of St. Ouen as the companion of Dionysius and the first bishop of Rouen, ordained by Clement himself. Nicasius does not appear on any of the early episcopal lists of Rouen.9 He is first introduced into that tradition by the monk of St. Ouen who “updated” the series of distiches on the occupants of the see and composed а chronicle of the archbishops at the end of the eleventh century. “Bishop” Nicasius was soon accepted almost everywhere, with the abbey of St. Ouen being considered the exclusive possessor of the relics of the apostle of Normandy. The cult of Nicasius was not accepted by the archiepiscopal see.10 4 All are represented in between twenty-five and fifty-five items in Leroquais, Les bréviaires. 5 He appears in seventy-three different breviaries in Leroquais, Les bréviaires, and he was also endowed by St. Ouen with several passiones which exist in а large number of medieval copies (BHL 6081–6083). 6 He is commemorated on October 11, with two companions, Quirinus and Pientia, whose relics are attested at Gasny, in the Soissonais, in 872; see Le martyrologe d’Usuard: Texte et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), pp. 83 and 319–320. 7 See the translatio account by John, monk of St. Ouen (BHL 6084). 8 Charles de Clerq and Pietro Burchi, “Dionigi, Rustico ed Eleuterio,” BSS 4:650–661. 9 Found in Angers, ВМ 275 (266), fol. 110, of the ninth century; St. Omer, ВМ 764, folios 52r–52v, of the tenth century; Paris, BN lat. 1805, fol. 45v, of the late tenth century; and Le Havre, ВМ 332 (А.34), folios 61v–62r, of the eleventh century. The list in Paris BN lat. 5296B, р. 188, of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, is an exact сору of the St. Omer list. 10 For instance, the obituary of the Cathedral Church of Rouen compiled in 1329 (Paris, ВN lat. 5196) listed deceased benefactors of the see under the festivals of Ansbertus (fol. 11v), Hugo (fol. 26v),

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Although Mallonus appears in the first spot on all the oldest episcopal lists of the see of Rouen,11 no information was preserved there about his life. There is no reason to doubt but that he was originally buried in the vicinity of Rouen or that he was translated, probably during the Viking raids, to the fortress of Pontoise, where а house of secular canons was founded at some uncertain date.12 The location of Pontoise in, as it were, the “Frankish march” assured its unsettled destiny as Capetian kings and Norman dukes maneuvered for territorial position. Indeed, the collegial church pertained in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to St. Père of Chartres, St. Victor of Paris, and La Trinité of Fécamp, in turn.13 It was from Pontoise, under those three houses, that the cult of Rouen’s first bishop was launched and propagated, whereas there is no certain evidence of interest in Mallonus by the see, even to counter Nicasius, until the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The case of Evodius bears many similarities to that of Mallonus. He appears on all of the episcopal lists of Rouen in the ninth position (the tenth after the addition of Nicasius), placing his pontificate in the early part of the fifth century. Because the legendary tradition concerning Evodius is purely fictional and extremely late, we cannot rely on it for the history of his mortal remains. We know only that the Premonstratensians, who founded an abbey at Braine in the Soissonais in 1130, claimed to have his relics and in 1244, as part of а program of promotion of his cult, upgraded the reliquary in which he was preserved, most likely providing him with his vita at that time. The cult of Evodius was only absorbed at Rouen from the late fourteenth century.14

11 12 13

14

Audoenus (folios 61v and 63r), Gildardus (fol. 41v), Romanus (folios 76v and 78v), Evodius (fol. 73r), Victricius (fol. 56v), and Mallonus (fol. 76v); Nicasius is conspicuous by his absence. Only in the late fourteenth century was his festival placed on the calendar of the secular church, but not as the apostle to Rouen; rather, the cathedral commemorated him with non-specific readings drawn from the Common of the Martyrs and from the liturgy for All Saints Day (Amand Collette, Histoire du bréviaire de Rouen [Rouen: Mégard, 1902]). Through the mistaken ascription of the archiepiscopal chronicle to а cathedral clerk and the tendency to treat the abbey and the see as, collectively, “the church at Rouen” rather than as rival institutions, scholars have failed to notice that the cult of Nicasius was never embraced by the see. For the chronicle and the distiches, found in Rouen ВМ 1405 (Y.27), рр. 26–36, and Rouen ВМ 1406 (Y.41), folios 1–11, as well as references to earlier secondary literature, see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 119–125 and 466–470 and Felice Lifshitz, “The Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium: А Monastery or Cathedral Product?” АВ 108 (1990): 337–347 (forthcoming [now Chapter 4 in this collection]). See above note 9. GC 11:124 and 133; Bernard Bossue, De Sancto Mallono, AASS October 9:561–565; Henri Platelle, “Mellono,” BSS 8:588–590. The liturgical evidence indicates that Mallonus’ cult was implanted earliest at, and then promoted from, both Fécamp and Paris; see the entries for him in Leroquais, Les bréviaires. As there was no information about his life available, the readings for his office were based оn the Common for confessor-pontiffs (Platelle, “Mellono,” 589). Paul Viard, “Evodio,” BSS 5:396; Jacobus Bueus, De Sancto Evodio episcopo confessori Rothomagi in Normannia, AASS October 4:241–248; BHL 2798; Collette, Histoire du bréviaire; GC

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The degree to which а monastic connection was essential for cultic success, and no mere coincidence, becomes evident when we turn to Gildardus, bishop of Rouen early in the sixth century.15 His deposition may have been commemorated at Rouen on June 8 from the time of his death. There is, however, not а single shred of evidence that the church of Rouen ever attempted to promote his cult or to provide itself with any written traditions concerning his life and works; rather, deprived of any monastic connection, his relics were left to languish in the suburban church of Notre Dame with minimal pomp or circumstance. Gildardus owes the development of his dossier and cult entirely to the coincidence of his deposition date with the festival of St. Medardus, patron of the monastery of St. Medard of Soissons. The monks of St. Medard, learning that their patron shared а feast day with Gildardus, convinced Charles the Bald that the two saints, presented as blood brothers, should bе reunited in death. On the royal command, the relics of Gildardus were transferred to St. Medard of Soissons, where he was provided for the first time with literary traditions, and whence his cult was promoted. The case of Romanus, who was promoted by the archiepiscopal see,16 is particularly interesting because it represents а major departure from the usual practice of the see, а departure that was precipitated by the challenges and crises that attended the collapse of the Carolingian polity. Romanus was an obscure bishop of Rouen, who had occupied the see in the early seventh century and who was buried in the same suburban church as was Gildardus. The monks of St. Medard who came for Gildardus in the mid-ninth century were convinced by the inhabitants of the town to leave а portion of Gildardus with them, in return for а portion of Romanus (specifically, his head). The body of Romanus, which remained at Rouen, became а focal point of devotion for the people during the period of the Norse settlements, when the conversion of intermittent streams of not-alwaysdocile new settlers was of paramount importance to what remained of the Carolingian ecclesiastical hierarchy. Because Romanus had become, as protector of Rouen during the raids, almost synonymous with the battle of Christians against pagans, he was catapulted to the center of cultic attention. А vita was composed in approximately 943 under the patronage of Archbishop Hugo, recently promoted from the house of St. Denis, а vita designed to illustrate the superior strength of the Christian God and of legitimate royal authority. The promotion of Romanus in connection with the early conversion of the Normans was necessitated by the fact that relics of Audoenus were not available at Rouen, having been transferred late in the ninth century to Gasny-sur-Epte.17 9:488–493. The verses inscribed on the new reliquary accord with the vita. For the translation festival, see the entries in Leroquais, Bréviaires. 15 For Gildardus’ cult and dossier, see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 22–44 and 349–361. 16 For all of what follows, including editions and English translations of all the texts in Romanus’ dossier, see Lifshitz, “Dossier.” 17 The claim of the abbey that his relics were returned to Rouen in 918 is generally regarded as specious; see for instance, Olivier Guillot, “La Conversion des Normands peu après 911: Des

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Bishop Audoenus had been the greatest benefactor and non-regular abbot of St. Pierre of Rouen (soon to be the eponymous monastery of St. Ouen of Rouen), where he was honored with his own cult from the time of his immediate successor Ansbertus, and where he was provided with а massive dossier and а thriving cult.18 He is not only the most important and well-known of the episcopal saints; he is the most important and well-known of the Norman saints. Arguably, had Audoenus’ relics been available in that period of most critical archiepiscopal need, we would still have barely heard of Romanus today. The cults of Ansbertus and Hugo, the last two of the eight liturgico-literary saints, are also indicative of the extent to which, aside from their one flirtation with cultic promotion in the case of Romanus, the prelates of Rouen were indifferent to the cults of their predecessors. It is as а monk and abbot of Fontenelle, where he was buried, that Ansbertus is primarily known, and the story of his dossier and cult is the story of the monks of that house.19 There is, on the other hand, no evidence that the Cathedral of Rouen was interested in the cult of Ansbertus. The cathedral possessed nothing more than an undistinguished eleventh-century copy of his vita, which was not used liturgically and was sufficiently removed from the main lines of the transmission to be left uncollated by Levison in his edition.20 Ansbertus’ festival was only introduced on the calendar of the Church of Rome in 1280.21 Finally, the feast of an Archbishop Hugo of Rouen was celebrated from а relatively early date both at Jumièges (where he was buried) and Fontenelle. Hugo

18

19

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reflets contemporains à l’historiographie ultérieure (Xe-XIe siècles),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 24 (1981): 101–116 and 181–219, at 216–217 for logical arguments concerning the unlikelihood of such an event in 918. For the assignment of the translation away from Rouen to the late ninth century, rather than to the traditional date of 841, see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 150–152. See BHL 750–762 and the no less than 184 separate medieval breviaries covering the whole of northern Gaul in which he is commemorated (Leroquais, Les bréviaires). Within decades of his death, he was celebrated in two separate festivals, that of his deposition and that of the translation (performed by Ansbertus), into а marvelous new tomb in the monastery of St. Pierre. For the account of the translation, see сhapters 18–19 of the vita Audoeni 1 (BHL 750). The secondary bibliography оn Audoenus is vast; I will confine myself to mentioning the biography by Elphège Vacandard, Vie de Saint Оиеп, évêque de Rouen (641–684). Étude d’histoire mérovingienne (Paris: V. Lecoffre, 1902). Through them, he achieved а substantial level of liturgico-literary fame. Not only is his vita tradition quite solid, but he appears in fifty-five extant medieval breviaries (Leroquais, Les bréviaires.) The cathedral copy of BHL 520а is now contained in a thirteenth-century compilation, Rouen ВМ 1405 (Y.27), рр. 129–164; see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 466–470 and 487–488. There are nо lectio divisions on the text of the vita, which would have indicated an active cult. Furthermore, it was present in the twelfth century in the library of the cathedral (see the catalogue оn folios 50–53 of the cartulary of the cathedral, Rouen ВМ 1193 [Y.44)), rather than in the sacristy or the treasure, where were kept items used for devotional purposes. My own examination of the cathedral copy puts it as derivative of the Jumièges tradition, probably through the Jumièges manuscript that is now Rouen ВМ 1380 (U.55), folios 191r–209v. Suzanne Langlais, in Leroquais, Les bréviaires, vol. 1, p. cxv.

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probably had been abbot of both houses, not to mention bishop of Paris and Bayeux, in the heyday of Carolingian pluralism. А third locus of implantation of Hugo’s cult was the abbey of St. Vaast of Arras, which gained control in 1040 of а priory at Haspres in the Cambrésis claiming to contain the relics of Hugo. Yet his festival was only instituted at Rouen itself in 1309 by decree of the cathedral chapter.22 Perhaps more compelling than the tales of the eight men “in” and their monastic connections, are the tales of some of the eight men “out,” none of whom had monastic connections. The liturgico-literary obscurity of St. Victricius is mysterious, unless we recognize the necessity for а monastic connection and the perennial indifference of the see to the veneration of its own. The illustrious career of Victricius was of indubitable historicity and significance, yet at no point in the Middle Ages was even а brief vita composed for him. Victricius was, rather, first promoted by early modern scholars such as Baronius, Du Saussaye, and the Bollandists, who published the first Vita Victricii, written in the eighteenth century by an acolyte of the church of Rouen.23 Although Victricius’ importance was recognized by the cathedral by the thirteenth century, he was never promoted or publicized, and his cult remained totally restricted to the town of Rouen.24 For fama to spread, а monastic scriptorium was а sine qua non. Two other figures whose cultic potential was ignored by the see were Praetextatus and Remigius. Praetextatus’ “martyrdom” (as it were) at the hands of Queen Fredegunda was never exploited. It was not indeed as though his fate were unknown at Rouen, for the story of his “martyrdom” occupies а substantial portion of the chronicle of the archbishops, and the distiches on the archbishops refer explicitly to Praetextatus as а martyr.25 Yet his festival was not placed on the calendar of the see until 1640, by Archbishop Francis of Harley.26 Since no monastic 22 Joseph Van Der Straeten, “Vie inédite de S. Hughes,” АВ 87 (1969): 215–260 and Joseph Van Der Straeten, “L’auteur des Vies de s. Hugues et s. Aycadre,” АВ 88 (1970): 63–73; Collette, Histoire du Bréviaire, p. 164; Langlais in Leroquais, Les bréviaires, vol. 1 p. cxv; entries in Leroquais, Les bréviaires. Admittedly, there was no major promotion of Hugo from Fontenelle, Jumièges, or St. Vaast either, although he was endowed with а dossier (BHL 4032–4033) by the monastic scriptoria. 23 The earliest vita of the saint in the technical, hagiographical sense is that by Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes (Vita, ed. A. Bruno, AASS August 2:193–197), although his story had recently been told by the two seventeenth-century historians of the see, François Farin, La Normandie Chrestienne, ou l’Histoire des archevesques de Rouen (Rouen: Louis du Mesnil, 1659) and François Pommeraye, Histoire des archevesques de Rouen (Rouen: Laurens Maurry, 1667). The only general modern biographies are Elphège Vacandard, Saint Victrice, évêque de Rouen (IVe-Ve s.) (Paris: V. Lecoffre, 1903) and the comprehensive multi-part article Jacob Mulders, “Victricius van Rouaan: Leven en Leer,” Bijdragen. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie en Theologie 17 (1956): 1–25 and 18 (1957): 19–40 and 270–289. 24 See Collette, Histoire du bréviaire, p. 148 and the entries in Leroquais, Les bréviaries; all of the breviaries and missals in which his cult is commemorated pertained to the archiepiscopal church itself. 25 For both texts, see above note 10. 26 Collette, Histoire du bréviaire, p. 213.

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connection ever presented itself, he is possessed of no dossier whatsoever. As for the Carolingian Remigius, about whom а number of legends were circulating in monastic circles throughout the Middle Ages, his festival was also only placed оn the calendar of the church of Rouen by Francis of Harley, in 1642.27 The advantages that could be attained by the conscientious exploitation of saintly cults, especially in the central Middle Ages, are well known. The massive indifference of the archiepiscopal see toward the potential inherent in the sanctification of its occupants is therefore remarkable. We might, at first glance, assume that the see of Rouen was simply burdened by а crippling handicap in this regard as а result of the elegantly labeled “exodus of holy bodies” that accompanied the intensified Viking, “pagan” presence in the region in the last quarter of the ninth century.28 Certainly no one would deny that the raids and translations were disruptive, but they cannot be adduced to account for what amounts to а pattern of hagiographical indifference.29 No efforts are known to have been made to promote the cults of the pontiffs of Rouen, or even to keep track of their relics prior to the Viking era, aside from Ansbertus’ translation of Audoenus into the monastery of St. Pierre (which did nothing for the see, per se). Gildardus, Audoenus, Ansbertus, and Hugo, saints who were being promoted by the monasteries of St. Medard, St. Ouen, Fontenelle, and Jumièges before the Viking raids, were all abandoned by the see to the total control of those houses and their rivals. Nothing, for example, was made of the head of Gildardus, left in Rouen by the monks of St. Medard. During the raids there was no break in occupation of the see of Rouen itself, and the archbishops were therefore in а position to exercise damage control. Furthermore, even if we emphasize the importance of the losses of the late ninth century, no efforts were made to recoup those losses once the religious and military situation became stabilized in the latter part of the tenth century and after. Surely the dukes would have granted them, rather than St. Père of Chartres or Fécamp, control of the relics of the first bishop, St. Mallonus (had the archbishops aggressively lobbied for it). The relics of both Victricius and Evodius were apparently transferred to Braine in the Soissonais. The castrum at Braine was probably subject to the church of Rouen for most of the tenth century and beyond, during which time nothing was made of

27 Collette, Histoire du bréviaire, pp. 156 and 211. For the connection of his relics with St. Medard of Soissons, see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 22–44, 122–126 and 93–118. Furthermore, it was believed at Fleury in the ninth century that Remigius had been part of а failed attempt to remove the relics of St. Benedict from that house. That legend later formed the basis of the entry for Remigius in the chronicle of the archbishops (see above, note 10) and of the vita (BHL 7174) with which Remigius was finally provided, almost certainly by а monk of St. Ouen, soon after 1090. 28 I refer to the phrase of Albert Legris, “L’exode des corps saints au diocèse de Rouen (IXeXIe siècles),” Revue Catholique de Normandie (1919): 125–136, 168–174, and 209–221. 29 Already in the twelfth century, Orderic Vitalis indicted not only the disruptions of the pagan Vikings, but also the negligence of the Norman ecclesiastics as responsible for the losses of the period (OV 3.282–285).

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the relics of either saint by the see of Rouen; Evodius’ relics were finally snapped up by the abbey of Prémontré in the mid-twelfth century. That there is а general pattern of lethargy evident in the behavior of the see is further demonstrated by the fact that nothing was ever made of the potential cults of certain Norman-era archbishops. The legend of Franco was entrenched by the end of the eleventh century when he appears in а relatively long notice in the chronicle of the archbishops as the “prudens pontifex et bonus populi auxiliator” who converted, civilized, and baptized Rollo.30 Yet no moves ever were made toward sanctifying а man who held (however erroneously) such а central place in Norman sacred history and in the history of the archiepiscopal see. More compelling is the case of Maurilius. Within decades, if not years, of his death in 1067, Archbishop Maurilius was venerated as а saint by the cathedral clergy; that he was actually venerated is no mere conjecture, for the cathedral’s copy of the chronicle of the archbishops is divided into lectiones for his deposition day. His memory also was highly respected at the abbey of St. Ouen, for he was not only а monk himself, but also devoted much of his career to the advancement of strict Benedictine monasticism. Furthermore, the see unquestionably controlled his relics, which were entombed in the cathedral, and, as already mentioned, possessed а reliable and flattering contemporary vita for him, albeit one composed by а monk of St. Ouen.31 Finally, rumors of other miraculous events associated with him, but not included in the vita, were also circulating; one, concerning an out-of-body experience that Maurilius had on his deathbed, is preserved by William of Malmesbury.32 The single exception to the pattern of lethargy and indifference is the cult of St. Romanus, first promoted in the tenth century by Archbishop Hugo in order to help encourage the Norman settlers to assimilate Frankish Christian values. However, it was Hugo’s successor Robert, son of Richard I and Gunnor, to whom we owe the concerted effort to promote Romanus, which ultimately resulted in his becoming the official patron of the archdiocese. Once again circumstances drove the archbishop to involve himself in cultic promotion in order to meet а critical challenge to the church of Rouen. This time the challenge came, not from “pagan” foreigners, but from Christian circles within Normandy. Robert’s episcopate coincides with the first solid evidence of monastic “reform” in the region, in some sense inaugurated with the re-foundation of Fécamp in 990, although not effectively gotten underway until the arrival of William of Dijon to rule that house in 1001.33 It was at approximately the same time, at the end of 30 For the chronicle, see above note 10. The source of the image is Dudo, De Moribus, pp. 165–171. 31 For the chronicle, written by а contemporary of Maurilius, see above note 10; for his epitaph, see OV 3.88–93 and 198–199. 32 William of Malmesbury, Historia Regum Anglorum atque Historia novella, ed. Тhomas Duffus Нardy (London: English Historical Society, 1840), p. 268. 33 For the failure of the reform movement in Normandy until the eleventh century, see Neithard Bulst, Untersuchungen zu den Кlosterreform Wilhelms von Dijon (962–1031) (Bonn: L. Röhrscheid, 1973), pp. 178–179.

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the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century, that the abbey of St. Ouen was successfully reformed, attaining for perhaps the very first time its own regular abbots.34 From the days of St. Audoenus, if not before, the monastery had been dependent on the prelates of the town; now, the entire ecclesiastical power structure in Normandy was altered in one fell swoop. And therein lies some of the explanation for the pattern of indifference on the part of the see to hagiographical cults: in the absence of important local competitors, there had been no need for the prelates to establish а separate power base or а separate identity. Meanwhile the veneration of Audoenus, who was the very symbol of the control of the abbey by the see, was being vigorously promoted by the abbey itself. Тhе monastic independence movement presented а critical challenge for the secular church, one which grew more threatening in the course of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. For а while the cult of Romanus was among the primary weapons in the archiepiscopal arsenal during the battle with the abbey.35 Nevertheless the archbishops were out of their depth and never mastered the fine art of cultic orchestration at which monastic ateliers so excelled. Robert’s successors allowed themselves to be undercut by the abbey in the one sphere wherein they held а distinct advantage: by not retrieving certain relics of Romanus that had been transferred to St. Medard of Soissons. One consequence of the reform of St. Ouen had been the creation of а second high ecclesiastical office at Rouen, which predictably enough was filled by а member, albeit an illegitimate one, of the ducal house. The illegitimate son of Duke Richard III, Abbot Nicholas of St. Ouen, had been maneuvered by “the family” away from the throne itself and into а monastic career.36 Nicholas first sought to neutralize Romanus by countering the cathedral’s missionary saint with St. Ouen’s own new discovery Nicasius, original apostle of Normandy.37 When Archbishop William Bona Anima, between 1070 and 1090, translated Romanus 34 The single fullest treatment of the details of rouennais ecclesiastical history is still to be found in the works of the Maurist François Pommeraye. All of the evidence for the centuries-long dependency of the abbey on the cathedral is marshalled by Pommeraye in his Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Ouen (Rouen: Lallemant, 1662), pp. 130–245; he is mistaken only in dating the establishment of а regular abbacy to the middle of the tenth century (see above note 33). In agreeing with Bulst, Untersuchungen, pp. 178–179, I would add that the tacit assumptions of Fulbertus, writing his vita Romani in the mid-tenth century, were that Romanus ruled as bishop over the local monastic community (Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 97–98 and 112, note 18.) 35 For Robert, and for all that follows on Romanus’ cult at Rouen, see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 99–103 and 113–116. 36 For Nicholas, the ducal house, and the abbatial office, see Eleanor Searle, Predatory Кinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 176, 197–198, and 302. 37 Nicasius was provided with that hallmark of the missionary in the hagiographical tradition, а dragon-slaying miracle (BHL 6082). Eventually, this aspect of the challenge of Nicasius was somewhat mitigated when the dragon-slaying miracle was transposed to bесоmе an attribute of Romanus. For the theme of the dragon-slaying in rouennais hagiography, see Felice Lifshitz, “Тhе Privilege of St. Romanus: Provincial Independence and Hagiographical Legends at Rouen,” АВ 107 (1989): 161–170 [now Chapter 3 in this collection].

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from the chapel by the cathedral to the cathedral itself and with much ceremony proclaimed Romanus the official patron of the archdiocese, Nicholas responded in 1090 by obtaining Romanus’ head from Soissons, sponsoring the creation of а new collection of miracles for Romanus, and presenting the abbey to the populace as the alternative locale for the celebration of the patron’s mandatory cult. Because Nicholas was, furthermore, both willing and able to offer large sums of money and much treasure to the house of St. Medard, he obtained not only the head of Romanus, but an entire shipment of powerful and prestigious saintly remains which included the body of Bishop Gildardus.38 After the demoralizing semi-debacle of Romanus, the archbishops made little further use of saintly patrons in their battle to subjugate the monasteries to the hierarchical church; alternative strategies, such as demanding written professions of faith from the abbots in their diocese, were emphasized.39 The monasteries continued to exploit holy intercessors as part and parcel of their arsenals, although forged charters and decretals played an increasingly prominent role, over forged hagiographical dossiers, in that litigious and papalist era.40 Тhе narrow and artificially delimited category of archiepiscopal saints cannot guarantee any certainty about the general nature and function of cults in Normandy, let alone in Latin Christianity; however, they are likely to be а reliable indicator of the degree of involvement of the metropolitan see in hagiographical devotion in the province; and in Normandy, they were decidedly not involved. Peter Brown, in The Cult of the Saints,41 argued convincingly for the centrality of episcopal orchestration in the spread of saintly devotions. For any number of reasons, one would suspect а priori that Brown’s model, evolved in the context of the late antique Mediterranean, is unlikely to be applicable to northern Europe, certainly not after the time of Victricius; the case of the cults of the bishops and 38 For а contemporary account of the translation (BHL 7319а), see Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 417–418. 39 When hagiographical weapons were used, Romanus remained the saint of choice. Geoffrey Brito, for instance, “displayed” the body of Romanus, but was unable to make anything of his show of power. An account of the incident is preserved in Rouen, Archives départementales de la SeineMaritime, G.3666; I thank David Spear for the reference. 40 See OV 1.63–77 for monastic immunity and episcopal rigidity in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries; also see the general study of Jean-François Lemarignier, Étude sur les privilèges d’exemption et de jurisdiction ecclésiastique des abbayes normandes depuis les origines jusqu’en 1140 (Paris: Piccard, 1937), esp. pp. 21–25 and 213–215 for the papal letters forged at St. Ouen с. 1130. It is not а little ironic that Audoenus himself was one of the great adversaries of monastic privileges and exemptions in his own day; all of the monastic foundations of his reign were kept tightly under his control. An interesting example of the monastic use of relics and cults in the later stages of the struggle is the fécampois legend of the Precious Blood, allegedly received through Joseph of Arimathea; the legend was invented between 1090 and 1120 in response to the episcopalist claims of the so-called Norman Anonymous, which sought to impose archiepiscopal authority on Fécamp, based, among other things, on anteriority of foundation (Lemarignier, Etude, pp. 197–199). 41 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

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archbishops of Rouen, at least, demonstrates that it was not. Furthermore, the motor of episcopal promotional activity in Brown’s schema, that of competition between ecclesiastical and lay elites, is entirely irrelevant to the situation at Rouen. Consistently the most powerful generators of saintly cults in medieval Normandy were the monastic houses, and the most powerful motor of cultic generation in Rouen was intra-ecclesiastical competition. The great contribution of Brown’s study has been to show how the cults of the saints cannot be understood outside the particular social and political milieu in which they were produced. The cult of the saints is not а seamless garment cloaking the subsidiary altars of а monolithic, uniform Latin Christianity, but а phenomenon whose nature and function must be expected to reflect changing sociopolitical realities, and the cults of the prelates of Rouen at least do seem to have reflected the realities of the “age of monks” in northern Europe. From another point of view, however, Brown’s revisionist thesis has been misleading because it has tended to obscure the operation of certain social forces and dynamics whose importance can never be dismissed. In identifying episcopal action as at the center of the propagation of the cult of the saints, he rejected the long-standing, post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment, characteristically “modern” view of such veneration as а vestige of pre-Christian phenomena, which could not be cleansed from popular attitudes by а more rationalistic clerical elite.42 That а belief in the intercessional power of relics permeated all levels of medieval society can be doubted by no one. However, I would be hard-pressed to recall а single phenomenon of cultural history which has united all social ranks in an undifferentiated mass. This study has focused entirely on those saints who achieved liturgico-literary fame, who were popular with the literate clerical groups who wrote, read, copied, recited, and listened to hagiographical texts, and who compiled the liturgical books of their home bases. Such popularity could not be transferred to the rank-and-file. St. Audoenus is the only episcopal saint to whom anything like а significant number of Norman parochial churches have been dedicated; he is represented by 111 dedications, or 2.5 percent of the total.43 Even in this case, the dedications may have more to do with efforts to promote Audoenus than with evidence of the success of the promotion, since in fact it is most often the founders who determine the titulary saint of an edifice, not the potential parishioners. Of the rest, only Romanus and Gildardus are parochial patrons, possessed of four and three parishes respectively, а minute and insignificant fraction of the total.44 42 Thus the most recent introductory textbook on central medieval ecclesiastical history includes а lengthy harangue on the centrality of the miraculous and the veneration of saints to all of medieval Christianity, with no distinction of social ranks (Gerd Tellenbach, Die Westliche Кirche vom 10. bis zum frühen 12. Jahrhundert [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988], pp. 82–90). 43 Jean Fournée, Le culte populaire des saints en Normandie (Paris: Société parisienne d’histoire et d’archéologie normandes, 1973), p. 29. 44 Fournée, Le culte populaire, p. 29.

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Regardless of parochial dedications, the real indicators of popular sanctity are things like frequency of invocation, patronage of lay brotherhoods and other organizations, and, most importantly, secondary patronage. Most parishes evolved, through the workings of the vox populi, а patronus loci quite distinct from the rarely invoked, official patronus ecclesiae. By such measures, none of the bishops or archbishops of Rouen (except very marginally Audoenus) can be considered to have been popular saints in Normandy. The field was instead dominated by such figures as (in the modern vernacular for graphic, if somewhat anachronistic effect) La Sainte Vièrge, sa mère Anne, St. Antoine, Ste. Barbe, St. Benôit, St. Blaise, Ste. Catherine, St. Clair, St. Fiacre, St. Martin, St. Nicholas, St. Ortaire, St. Sebastien, and а few others.45 What are we to make, in the end, of our “eight men in,” or of the traditions of sanctity at Rouen? Whatever we make of it all, it should be within the framework of clerically venerated, liturgico-literary saints whose status was largely dependent upon having good publicity agents. Yes, all segments of society believed in saints, but which saints?

45 Fournée, Le culte populaire, p. 29. See also Jean Fournée, “Quelques facteurs de fixation et de diffusion du culte populaire des saints: Exemples Normands,” Bulletin Philologique et Historique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1982–1984 (Paris, 1986): 119–134, and esp. 119–121.

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6 S T. R O M A N U S O F R O U E N Frankish missionary in Viking Normandy

In 942, William Longsword, son of Rollo and second leader of the Vikings of the Seine Valley and the town of Rouen, was assassinated by followers of Count Arnulf of Flanders.1 The event was the culmination of a reign that had already been rich in drama, punctuated by incessant conflicts both internal and external. Despite these problems, William took the first, increasingly less hesitant, steps in the direction of the dominant Frankish culture of the day; at the moment of his assassination he seemed, more than ever before, on the verge of assimilating “Normandy” to Francia, and of taking his place among the magnates of the era as a Christian prince of the Carolingian world.2 But at home, the former followers of his father, a leader who remained half-“pagan” and half-pirate until his death,3 as well as newcomers from the Nordic world, all much more closely attached and devoted to their traditional culture than was William, did not always agree with their new leader’s “foreign policy.” 1 This talk summarizes the argument of my forthcoming book Presenting the Past: The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria and Historical Revisionism in Western Francia [actually, Lifshitz, Norman Conquest]. It is not possible, within the limits of a single talk, to specify all the considerations (often quite technical and complicated) that have led me to propose (for instance) a particular date of composition for a given text, or the particular stages in the diffusion of a given cult. For complete data relevant to the cult of St. Romanus, as well as critical editions of his biographies and his miracles, see Lifshitz, “Dossier.” 2 For the general history of the period: David Bates, Normandy Before 1066 (London: Longman, 1982); Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship: The Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Philippe Lauer, Le Règne de Louis IV d’Outremer (Paris: Bouillon, 1900). Flodoard of Reims (Les Annales de Flodoard, ed. Philippe Lauer [Paris: Picard, 1905], anni 927–933, pp. 39–55) and Richer of Reims (Histoire de France [888–995] ed. and trans. Robert Latouche, 2 vols. [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1964], vol. 1, p. 104) record the beginnings of the establishment of ties of friendship between William and the Franks (which can also be seen as the beginnings of the tendency of William to intervene in Frankish affairs). 3 Flodoard, anno 925 pp. 29–30. See also the “planctus,” a contemporary text describing the beginning of William’s reign: “Hic in orbe transmarino natus patre in errore paganorum permanente, matre quoque consignata alma fide, sacra fuit lotus unda. Cuncti flete pro Willelmo. Moriente infidele suo patre surrexerunt contra eum belliquose, quos confisus Deo valde sibi ipse subjugavit dextra forte. Cuncti flete pro Willelmo” (Jules Lair, Etude sur la vie et la mort de Guillaume Longue-Epée [Paris: Picard, 1893], p. 6, Verses II–III).

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Already during his lifetime William Longsword had to suppress a revolt by Nordic warriors, a revolt inspired (according to Dudo of St. Quentin) by antiFrankish sentiments. These are the words Dudo placed in the mouth of a Norman prince, Riulf, addressing his companions at arms: Our lord William, scion of a most noble stock of the Frankish race, deprived of our counsel, and incited by animosity for our afflictions, obtains for himself Frankish friends. Truly, he is trying to drive us entirely out of the realm and roughly subdue the necks of those who remain with the yoke of servitude.4 Having crushed the rebels, William drew even closer to several Frankish lords, whose advice incited the Norman leader to affiance his sister (Gerloc) to William of Poitiers, while William of Rouen himself embarked upon a relationship with the daughter of Heribert.5 By 939 at the latest, William of Rouen had been completely integrated into the political and personal intrigues of Francia, for in that year he appeared alongside Hugh, Heribert, and Arnulf among those whom Flodoard showed (as if the event were unworthy of any particular remark) swearing fidelity to King Otto, and then (in the next year) laying siege to Reims and Laon.6 Still worse: this half-Frankish lord considered himself fully Christian; once more according to Dudo: had it not been for William’s deep devotion to his duties as a sovereign, he would have become a monk!7 Dudo indicates how much religion had played a key role in the conflict, when he recounts how William behaved after having crushed the rebels: Harshly would he overpower the arrogant and the malevolent; respectfully would he raise high the humble, and the benevolent. By words and gifts he would bring pagans and unbelievers to the worship of the true faith; he would drive believers to praise of Christ.8 In all probability it was the birth in 933 of a son, whom William took care to have baptized, that precipitated the rebellion against him.9 The assassination, less than 4 “Noster senior Willelmus, nobilissimo Franciscae stirpis semine genitus, Francigenas amicos acquirit sibi, nostro consilio priuatus, nostraeque afflictionis animositate inuestigatus [recte ‘instigatus,’ according to the manuscripts Rouen BM 1173 (Y. 11) fol. 21v and Berlin, SB-PK Philipps 1854 fol. 37v]. Nos uero conatur regno penitus extrudere, remanentiumque colla iugo seruitutis duriter opprimere” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 187). All English translations are my own. 5 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 192–193. 6 Flodoard, anni 939–940, pp. 73–77. 7 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 179–180. 8 “Opprimebat superbos et maleuolos seueriter, exaltabat humiles et beneuolos reuerenter. Paganos et incredulos muneribus et uerbis adducebat ad cultum verae fidei, credentes urgebat ad laudem Christi” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 193). 9 Dudo, De moribus, p. 219.

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a decade after the failure of the revolt, unleashed a reactionary furor, and put the question of the identity and future of “Normandy” back on the table. At that moment, William’s son Richard was still very young, and the Carolingian King Louis IV seemed weak as well, the result of multiple rebellions. To “traditionalist” adherents of “paganism” and Viking independence, the hour must have seemed propitious for a complete rejection of the policy of rapprochement supported by William; thus, the warriors of the Bessin, of the Roumois, of the Evrecin refused to accept the authority of the young Richard, or that of King Louis, and that of the religion of the Carolingian church. A deep crisis followed immediately upon the assassination. Demonic idols possessed, according to their medieval Christian enemies, both formidable power and a very real existence. It is essential to underline this fact: the presence, in a given region, of devotees of the deities of yesteryear (in other words, of idolatry) was considered to pose enormous dangers for local inhabitants. Wherever someone, no matter who, venerated idols, demons would find a home. And that is why Frankish ecclesiastics reacted with such energy to the terrifying changes represented by tenth-century Viking immigrants. The months of postassassination crisis during the mid-940s, described in detail by Dudo of St. Quentin, constituted a period of enormous importance for the history of “Normandy.”10 The church of Rouen saw that it stood at the edge of catastrophe, and sought to escape from what seemed to be imminent disaster. As it turned out, thanks to the support of other princes such as Hugh, count of Paris and duke of France, Louis IV From-Beyond-the-Sea triumphed militarily, and won “Normandy” for the Frankish world. Richard himself, heir of the assassinated Norman prince, assumed power at Rouen, where he vigorously pursued his father’s assimilationist policies. By the end of the tenth century, of all the “principalities” that had emerged from the empire of Charlemagne, the duchy of Normandy had become perhaps the strongest conservative bastion of Carolingian values and institutions, of Frankish values and institutions.11 Yet, in the middle of the tenth century, the battle still raged on two levels: the mundane, where it was fought with the armaments typical of military warfare, and the spiritual, where it was fought with the armaments of religion, namely, relics and hagiographical writings. In the case discussed here, it was a question above all of the legend of St. Romanus, a text describing in minute detail the continuous battles of this holy bishop of Rouen against an army of devils, zealots who fought him at every turn, albeit always without success. In addition to Hugh of Paris and King Louis, the 10 Out of the total 200 pages that Dudo’s narrative runs to in Lair’s edition, almost half focus on the beginning of the reign of Richard I. 11 Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918); R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and Their Myth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), pp. 20–37; Bates, Normandy Before 1066, pp. 1–32; Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 78–82 and 199–206.

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other Frankish personality who played a crucial role at Rouen during the crisis of the 940s was archbishop Hugh, raised to the metropolitan see from the abbey of Saint-Denis-in-France by William Longsword, doubtless as part of the latter’s policy of assimilation. It is to Hugh that we owe the creation of both the dossier and the cult of St. Romanus, a bishop of Rouen who was, until that moment, not even well-known, let alone venerated. I have discovered two copies of a vita Romani written by a certain Fulbert at the behest of Hugh, as well as a collection of miracles of the same saint written at the beginning of the eleventh century, during the episcopate of Robert.12 St. Romanus is presented by his first hagiographer as a noble Frank of royal blood, and as a heroic missionary in sixth-century Neustria. According to this text, he waged war against the ferocious idolatry of the inhabitants of the region with a violence that was, frankly, epic. What is more, inspired by a prophetic spirit, he foresaw the Norman conquest, which he interpreted as part of a providential divine plan, indeed as an important chapter in the sacred history of the world. The cult of St. Romanus was initially promoted by Hugh of St. Denis and by Prince Richard I, and then continued by their respective successors, Archbishop Robert and his brother Richard II, both of them sons of Richard I. Romanus became the patron saint of the town of Rouen, and then of all Normandy. The spread of his cult among the elites of the region facilitated the striking victory of Christian and Carolingian, indeed European, values in the land of the Vikings of Neustria. The vita written by Fulbert offered the Norman gens a national myth comparable to that “Mother of all National Myths,” the story of the ancient Israelites, conquerors who seized the land of the Canaanites with divine approval. Key here, as in all national myths of this type, is the following: these myths aim to justify conquests, in advance or (more normally) ex post facto, through the stunning move of transforming military history into sacred history. Norman sacred destiny looms large both in Dudo’s history, and in that of Orderic Vitalis, a Norman author of the twelfth century;13 the theme made its first appearance in the legend of St. Romanus. The holy bishop and his demonic adversaries never exchanged random words of bravado in the course of their extensive confrontations. For instance, when they clashed in front of a temple of Venus, both hurled very specific prophecies at their opponents. One typical demon – proud, longwinded, and self-important – claimed responsibility for the future Norman conquest of the territory of Rouen, an event that would transpire against the background of several relic translations. He declared to St. Romanus: Indeed, on this day of iniquity you cast us forth from our seats. So I will also rouse against you a nation from the extreme ends of the sea and the 12 Paris, BN lat. 13090 folios 112v–124v and Evreux, BM 101 folios 17v–29v. Both the biography and the miracles are unpublished and therefore do not have BHL numbers. 13 OV.

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unknown islands, that will compel your people, ejected as well from their own dwellings, to seek seats in an outer region, or to serve foreign lords in their own homes. But that will not be the end of the calamity. For I will also bring it about that your bones and those of other slaves of God, removed from their own seats for fear of that conquering nation, will assume an unwilling pilgrimage of exile and, carried all through alien territories, seek new seats for themselves.14 Romanus, more reliably clued into the designs of Heaven than this devil, replied: Truly, that nation by predestination strives towards the goal of regeneration by God, nor can the way of predestined salvation be closed off to them. . . . Moreover, that place which that nation will pervade with barbaric cruelty will be for it the effective cause of that hoped-for salvation, since the name of Christ which it would otherwise never have heard will it soon hear there, and having heard it, will faithfully believe, and having believed will magnificently worship, and thus will it become a chosen people, a holy nation. . . . Truly, as soon as that nation, reborn in Christ, has been imbued with lordly sacraments, it will bring back our bones with highest veneration to the proper seat, from whatever lands it shall hear they have been translated to.15 Concerned to assure that no one missed the point, the author took care to have St. Romanus return to this theme at the earliest opportunity. The town of Rouen having been flooded by the Seine, the saint drove back the waters and forbade them ever to return. Next, he explained the sacred significance of the flood to the people of Rouen: For these waters are merely a foretelling of the piratical army of enemy nations that will one day come against you, who will completely subjugate the occupied boundaries of your territory with unheard-of savageness, 14 “Tu quidem inique hodie a sedibus nostris exturbas, suscitabo et ego tibi gentem aduersam ab extremis finibus maris et ignotis insulis, que tuos quoque a propriis laribus eiectos, exteme regionis sedes querere, aut certe intra proprios lares externis dominis famulari compellet. Sed ne in hoc calamitatis terminus herebit. Nam et ego ossa tua et aliorum seniorum Dei pro metu superuenture gentis a sedibus propriis remota, inuitam exilii peregrinationem assumere, et girouaga deportatione faciam per alienas regiones sedes sibi querere” (Paris BN lat. 13090 fol. 120r). All English translations from the vita Romani are my own. 15 “Hec sane prefinitu sibi a Deo sue reparationis terminum spectrat, nec ei intercludi poterit predestinate uia salutis. . . . Locus autem quem barbarica feritate persuasura est illi erit effectiua causa insperate salutis, quia Christi nomen quod alias necdum audierat ibi mox audiet, auditumque fideliter credet, et creditum magnifice recolet, et ita fiet de gente adultera genus electum, gens sancta. . . . Gens sane ista mox ut in Christo regenerata dominicis fuerit imbuta sacramentis, ossa nostra de cunctis terre partibus ad quas translata esse audierit, summa cum ueneratione ad sedem propriam reportabit” (Paris BN lat. 13090, folios 120r–120v).

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and subject your descendants to their dominion. . . . However, know this: that nation about which we are speaking, until now still in the grip of the error of heathendom, as soon as it shall hear the name of Christ, will take up the worship of the Catholic faith, and go on to foster its subjects in great peace.16 The moment at which the Vikings of the Seine Valley and of the town of Rouen became the “Normans” was the moment at which the majority of them learned and accepted that the history of their battles and adventures formed part of the plan of a Lord who led them to “Normandy” precisely so that they could settle there, prosper, and – above all – find salvation in Christ. The missionary personage of St. Romanus, a Frankish noble of warrior heritage both personal and national, persuaded them of all that. In this way, Carolingian ecclesiastics (including Hugh, Fulbert, and Dudo) endowed their patrons with a politico-religious identity that suited the tastes, traditions, and aspirations of the latter, but without straying far from the shelter of dominant continental and Latin ideas. It must also be among this same group of men that we should seek the architects and engineers of the blueprints that rendered ducal Normandy so very “Carolingian” and conservative in comparison with other eleventh-century “principalities.” At the same time, no assimilation process is purely unidirectional. The victorious Vikings were captured speedily enough by this new identity, constructed on the foundations of the Carolingian world; but it was another matter to impose this identity on the conquered! Before the end of the eleventh century, as we have already seen, the cult of St. Romanus became obligatory throughout Normandy. Richard I considered St. Romanus to be the patron of the town of Rouen; his son, Archbishop Robert, deliberately and in various ways preferred the cult of Romanus while disfavoring that of St. Audoenus. Soon the heroic missionary of the Normans officially eclipsed St. Audoenus, pious patron of Neustrian monasticism, who had previously been the best known, most popular, and most venerated saint of the diocese.17 Note that, at this stage in the development of the legend of Romanus, devotees situated his life chronologically in the seventh century, just before the pontificate of Audoenus. Thus, the introduction of the cult of St. Romanus involved more than the conversion of rebellious, pagan Vikings; the change brought with it a revolution in patronage and, subsequently, a transformation in regional identity. 16 “Aque iste prelocuntur uobis aduersarum gentium quandoque piraticum superuenturum exercitum, qui uestre huius regionis fines occupatos, inaudita feritate perdomabit, et posteros uestros per tempus et per spatium temporis, suo subiugabit dominio. . . . Illud autem scitote, quoniam gens illa de qua loquimur gentilitatis errore adhuc detenta, mox ut Christi nomen audierit, catholice fidei cultum arripiet, et populum sibi subiectum multa in pace confouere persistet” (Paris BN lat. 13090, fol. 122r). 17 Jean Fournée, Le culte populaire des saints en Normandie (Paris: Société parisienne d’histoire et d’archéologie normandes, 1973), p. 29; Felice Lifshitz, “Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity,” Haskins Society Journal 2 (1990): 63–74 [now Chapter 5 in this collection].

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The imagined character of the Gallo-Frankish Roumois and Seine Valley before the arrival of the Vikings seems to have been based on the idea of “pious Neustria.” Surviving hagiographical sources bespeak a milieu and an age in which Christianity was a tacit and incontestable given, in which the remnants of “paganism” no longer mattered at all, even marginally; there is not a shred of evidence of evangelizing activity under the direction of, or even with the participation of, the occupants of the metropolitan see. I will go farther: there is no recognition in these texts of the need for any anti-pagan action. To the contrary, according to the author of the oldest vita of Audoenus, the diocese of Rouen was, at the time, simply flourishing, bursting with saints, holier than any other diocese in all of Gaul.18 In these hagiographic texts, the reader repeatedly witnesses the foundation of monasteries, sometimes accompanied by debates over their proper governance. Either way, however, for Merovingian and Carolingian hagiographers, to found monasteries was to convert souls from the world to Christ; no one seemed concerned with conversion from paganism to the Christian faith. Most striking is the suspicion that, without exception, these hagiographers considered monastic life as an absolute impediment to missionary activity.19 In themselves becoming “Normans,” the Germanized Gallo-Romans of Neustria had to suffer the imprint of a new imagined character: according to the legend of the obligatory patron of the diocese, namely Romanus, there had been devout “pagans” among them still in the seventh century, who had finally been evangelized only as a result of a series of spectacular anti-demoniacal confrontations. Despite the fact that the new identity was fabricated by Franks, in the hands of the Vikings these images only favored the conquerors. According to the narratives by Fulbert and by Dudo, the history of the region only took on sacred significance with the arrival of the Vikings, entrusted with the sacred mission to secure the salvation of “Normandy.” Thus, St. Audoenus gave way to St. Romanus, and “pious Neustria” melted in the face of the rival “Norman myth” of the elites. This transformation in mentality would endure into modern times. In 1835, the classic history of the province, L’Histoire de Normandie by Philippe Licquet, remained completely silent on the religious history of the period before 911, with the exception of the pontificate of 18 Vita Audoeni (BHL 751/752) c. 24, ed. Gulielmus Cuperus, De sancto Dadone vel Audoeno episcopo Rotomagi in Normannia, AASS August 4:815. For St. Audoenus in general, see Elphège Vacandard, La Vie de St Ouen, évêque de Rouen (641–684). Étude d’histoire mérovingienne (Paris: V. Lecoffre, 1902). 19 For example, Vita Godonis (BHL 3594) c. 8, ed. Godefridus Henschenius, AASS May 6:799. The texts that form the evidentiary basis for my assertions here are: BHL 750–753 (St. Audoenus), BHL 8804–8805 (St. Wandregisel), the Gesta Abbatum Fontenellensium (ed. Samuel Loewenfeld, MGH SRG 2 [Hanover: Hahn, 1886]), BHL 520a (St. Ansbert), BHL 4675 (St. Lambert), BHL 1907–1908 (St. Condedus), BHL 3851 (St. Erblon), BHL 3594–3595 (St. Godo), BHL 6805/6 (St. Philibert), BHL 181 (St. Aichardus), BHL 831–835 (St. Austreberta), BHL 3437–3441 (St. Geremarus), BHL 4899–4900 (St. Leutfredus), BHL 8811–8813 (St. Waningus), the Libellus de revelatione, aedificatione et auctoritate Fiscannensis monasterii (PL 151:707–710), and BHL 3539 (St. Gildardus).

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Romanus, filled with dramatic conflicts against the presumably dominant paganism of the seventh century; Licquet’s narrative then moved on to the true messiah of the superstitious and bestial Neustrians: Rollo!20 Yet, St. Romanus also suffered some setbacks and reversals, beginning around this same time. The “Norman myth” of the tenth century, a heroic and sacred myth, does not correspond well to contemporary ideas and prejudices, which tend towards the egalitarian and the anti-aristocratic. More recent works on the history of the province begin in completely different ways from older narratives; for instance, Hommes et Cités de Normandie, written in 1965, opens with this resounding sentence: “La Normandie a existé avant les normands.”21 And what a paradise this Neustrian region was! Monasteries, a flourishing faith, saints, cultivated fields, meadows, with fine arts and literature to boot, all witnessed the wealth and piety of the inhabitants. As for St. Romanus: he of course still has his feast, every October, but his reputation is diminishing. Thus, his tenth-century biography, preserved in two copies, one in the very heavily used Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, have just been gathering dust. I exaggerate, but only a bit; historians of Normandy just don’t like St. Romanus: he is a fiction, which is disturbing enough, and an outmoded aristocratic fiction to boot. Today, historians prefer St. Audoenus.

20 Théodore Licquet, Histoire de Normandie depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la conquête de l’Angleterre en 1066 (Rouen: Frère & Periaux, 1835), pp. 20–31. 21 Jean Cathelin and Gabrielle Gray, Hommes et cités de Normandie (Paris: Editions du Sud, 1965), p. 9.

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7 THE POLITICS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Тhе memory of bishops in eleventh-century Rouen At the beginning of the eleventh century the suburban monastery of St. Ouen of Rouen was placed under the control of its own regular abbots and thus became, for the first time since its foundation in the seventh century, independent of the bishops of Rouen.1 This regular reform of St. Ouen inaugurated at Rouen an extended period of competition between the abbeу and the episcopal see, а competition similar to the contemporaneous intra-ecclesiastical battles raging particularly at Tours and Orléans, as well as throughout the south of France.2 The battle between the two rouennais institutions was fought on many fronts: through competition for noble patronage, through competition for relics, through monumental building campaigns, and so forth.3 The battle was also fought on а less material, more symbolic plane: through the sponsorship of rival saints’ cults, including the production of historical narratives connected with those venerations. In locality after locality in eleventh-century France, controversies, conflicts, and threats to (normally ecclesiastical) community identity stimulated the creation of new imagined pasts.4 1 Earlier versions of this essay, under different titles, were read at the Modern Languages Association conference in San Diego in December 1994, and as an invited seminar presentation at the Université de Tours in April 1995. The research used for the oral presentations was funded bу а Columbia University Travelling Grant in 1986–1987 as part of the author’s doctoral work. Research to develop the article version was supported by а mini-grant from Florida International University for summer 1996. The article has benefited from discussions with Sheila Delany, Robert Stein, Nancy Gauthier, Jacques Le Maho, Louis Violette, Nina Caputo, and Joseph F. Patrouch. 2 Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: Тhе Diocese of Orléans (800–1200) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), esp. pp. 202–281; Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), esp. pp. 17–20; Аmy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). 3 The controversy has been chronicled in near-comprehensive detail by Louis Violette, “L’église métropolitaine de Rouen pendant la première période normande (Xe–XIe siècles)” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Université de Paris-X, 1994). 4 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 215–217; for theoretical discussions and modern parallels, see Аnthony Р. Cohen, Тhе Symbolic Construction of Community (New York: Routledge, 1985); Peter Alter, Nationalismus (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1985); Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: Тhе Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

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Bishop Audoenus (French: Ouen) of Rouen, the seventh-century founder of his eponymous monastic house of St. Ouen, had been for many centuries the primary recipient of the saintly venerations of the people of Rouen; in other words, he had been the most important figure in the past history of Rouen. During the period when the аbbеу and the see were connected (that is, from the seventh through the tenth centuries), Audoenus had been а particularly convenient symbol of the rouennais urban past. However, since Audoenus represented, and indeed embodied, а degree of intimacy between аbbеу and cathedral which had been superseded in the eleventh century, it no longer suited the purposes of historians, either of the аbbеу or of the see, to spotlight him as the key figure in the development of the church and town of Rouen. Both revisionist historiography and the promotion of saints’ cults therefore proceeded, in eleventh-century Rouen, in two mutually exclusive directions. Indeed, cathedral historians had already begun to shift their emphasis, as early as the mid-tenth century, away from the pontificate of St. Audoenus to that of St. Romanus, а predecessor of Audoenus who had lived and died before the аbbеу was even founded.5 On at least two occasions in the eleventh century, in 1053 and 1073, the monks of St. Ouen and the clergy of the Cathedral of Rouen clashed publicly over the issue of the relics and festival celebrations of the historical saints of the region. The 1053 incident marked the first public appearance of а complete newcomer to the cultic world and imaginative memory of the town of Rouen: Nigasius, the monastic counterweight to Romanus.6 Nigasius’ festival was fixed as October 11 from at least the ninth century, when he is commemorated (with his companions Quirinus and Pientia) as а priestly martyr of the Vexin in Usuard’s Martyrology, the calendar of saints’ feasts first compiled at St.-Germain-des-Prés near Paris and then adopted by most Latin churches.7 The date of October 11 was perfectly suited to syphon enthusiasm away from Romanus’ October 23 feast, which in early eleventh-century Rouen marked the first renewed burst of celebratory steam after the major August 15 festival of the Virgin Mary. In 1053 the monks of St. Wandrille de Fontenelle, carrying their own relics (such as those of St. Vulframnus), fled the drought- and famine-plagued countryside for the diocesan capital of Rouen. А monk of the community described their reception in the narrative known as the Inventio et miracula sancti Vulframni.8 The Fontenelle refugees were greeted, outside the city, by the canons of the 5 For the Norman-era eclipsing of Audoenus through the cult of St. Romanus, see Lifshitz, Norman Conquest. 6 Any work оn Nigasius must begin with L. Goubert, Notice sur s. Nigaise, apôtre du Vexin, et dissertation sur le lieu de son martyre (Paris: Authorial Autograph, 1867) handwritten and distributed to interested (mainly French) libraries by the author. The book contains transcriptions of а number of important manuscript sources. 7 Le martyrologe d’Usuard: Техtе et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), p. 319. 8 Inventio et miracula sancti Vulfranni, ed. Jean Laporte, Mélanges publiés par la Société de l’Histoire de Normandie, 14е série (Rouen, 1938), pp. 8–83, at 56–60 (chapters 38–41). For the text see Ian

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Cathedral of Rouen, the latter bearing relics of Romanus, who was rapidly rising (through support of the cathedral clergy) to the status of principal patron of the town. The two processions merged into one and began to return to the cathedral, each holding aloft their standards, namely Romanus and Vulframnus. But then the unexpected occurred: Thus, accompanied by this crowd of devoted people, we were advancing through the town аnd feeling no violence of immoderate pressure, when suddenly there came forward with the body of St. Nigasius а whole chain of monks of St. Ouen, whitened by their albs and cloaked in their habits, and they stood in our way holding before them candles, and crosses likewise, and incense-burning censers, and in this way they bеgаn to lead us away, chanting with great honor. Moreover, once we had gone а bit further, there arrived а multitude of nuns, resounding with the sweet melody of their voices.9 The cathedral canons were powerless to stop the two-pronged advance of male аnd female regular clergy, and the Fontenelle visitors were led, behind the standard of St. Nigasius, not to the cathedral but to St. Ouen; there they deposited their relics аnd rested. Ву 1073 the competition between the аbbеу and the Cathedral of Rouen had escalated well beyond the competition for prestigious guests аnd had even erupted into outright violence, for in that year а bаnd of monks from St. Ouen physically attacked Archbishop John while he was celebrating, in the cathedral, а mass for the festival of St. Audoenus.10 Violent incidents similar to the attack оn Archbishop John of Rouen also took place at Tours, аnd over identical issues of where and bу whom the cults of the region’s patrons would be celebrated.11 Such tensions аnd conflicts саn bе understood as identical, mutatis mutandis, to the battles which have been waged in more recent times over non-sainted embodiments аnd symbols of local history and local identity. Furthermore, pubic expressions of identity through the celebration of particular patrons, whether in the form of permanent monuments or of annual processions at festivals, are only part of the story.12 The reason we саn know what visions of the past Romanus, Nigasius, or any other saint represented is that those

9 10 11 12

Wood, “St. Wandrille and its Hagiography,” in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to John Taylor, eds. Ian Wood and Graham А. Loud (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 1–14; and Elizabeth М.С. Van Houts, “Historiography and Hagiography at St. Wandrille: The ‘Inventio et Miracula Sancti Vulframni,’” Anglo-Norman Studies 12 (1990): 233–251. Inventio et miracula sancti Vulfranni, chapter 41, ed. Laporte (my translation). “Chronicon Rotomagense, anno 1073,” ed. Рhilippe Labbé, in Nova Bibliotheca Manuscriptorum Librorum, 2 vols. (Bourges: Cramoisy, 1657), vol. 1, p. 367. Farmer, Communities of St. Martin, pp. 38–77, esp. 38–49. А discussion, with extensive bibliography, of the political symbology of relics can bе found in David А. Warner, “Henry II at Magdeburg: Кingship, Ritual and the Cult of Saints,” Early Medieval Europe 3 (1994): 135–166.

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who promoted their festivals also wrote biographies (as well as other sorts of narratives) concerning them. The representations of the past which are contained in those historiographic narratives are as politicized and context-driven as are those of аnу other kind of historiography. The ghettoization of biographies of those who have been considered “saints” into а category called “hagiography” during the past century and а half has often obscured their historiographical, and therefore their political, nature.13 А particularly apt parallel to the 1053 and 1073 Rouen incidents is the imbroglio over the erection of monuments to Walther von der Vogelweide and Dante Alighieri in the South Tyrol in 1889 and 1896.14 Both Walther and Dante represented radically divergent visions of the past history, and consequently of the present identity, of the Tyrol: should public commemoration and therefore official proclamation declare the region to bе “German” or “Italian?” At Rouen in the eleventh century, saintly patrons as divergent as Walther and Dante were proposed bу the cathedral and the monastery, respectively, as symbols of the local past that would bе suitable for supplementing the increasingly outmoded Audoenus: Romanus and Nigasius. It is crucial to emphasize, however, that the eleventhcentury rouennais battles are parallels not precursors of the nineteenth-century Tyrolean battles. The latter wording would imply that public rituals concerning the bodies of saints belong to some earlier, immature stage of development of а process whose telos culminates in more “modern” ritual forms. For one thing, rituals concerning saints have hardly been superseded, and they continue to take place; for another, one point of this essay is to emphasize that the eleventh-century conflicts and rituals were fully as politicized as have been any nineteenth- and twentieth-century manifestations of memorializing symbology. In this, I second Annabel Wharton in questioning “the assumption of disjunction between modernity and premodernity” and “the ubiquitous absence of the past in contemporary accounts of urbanism.”15 * 13 For the development of the category “hagiography” as а means of obscuring the politicized nature of certain narratives, see Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre.” The label has, however, not prevented certain recent authors from discerning the political importance of the texts, even when they have themselves retained the label. See, for instance, Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints; Wood, “St. Wandrille and Its Hagiography;” Van Houts, “Historiography and Hagiography;” and above all Paul Fouracre, “Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography,” Past and Present 127 (1990): 3–38. 14 John W. Cole and Еric R. Wolf, Тhе Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley (New York: Academic Press, 1974), p. 55. 15 Annabel Wharton, “Preface,” Special Issue: Maps of Authority: Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern Urban Landscape, ed. Annabel Wharton, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26 (1996): 385–389. All the articles in that volume attempt to show modernists the relevance of pre-modern phenomena to subjects that modernists have mistakenly considered uniquely modern. Similar arguments are made bу Nicholas Birns, “Medieval Historiography,” Clio 26 (1997): 229– 242, concerning the works of both medieval historians and historians of the Middle Ages.

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It is not difficult to understand why the community of the аbbеу of St. Ouen preferred not to heroize Romanus, who was after all the predecessor of their own founder; the cult of Romanus therefore focused historical memory on а moment when the episcopal see had nо local rivals for spiritual prestige and power. However, the abbey’s proposed replacement bishop-saint of Rouen, Nigasius, was not а choice that makes any obvious logical sense. Nigasius was an obscure martyr of the Vexin who had no connections with Rouen until the monks of St. Ouen began to present him as the original, first-century bishop of that see, thereby effectively ascribing apostolic origins to the Church of Rouen. Even more superficially nonsensical was the reaction of the cathedral clergy: instead of embracing such а (theoretically) prestigious vision of their own past, the cathedral clergy resolutely rejected the cult of Nigasius until well into the twelfth century; even then his cult received only grudging approval, and he is venerated bу the Cathedral of Rouen with nothing more than readings from the Common for Martyrs, having never been graced with his own personal commemorative service.16 The promotion of apostolicity by the abbey and its rejection by the cathedral runs completely counter to all scholarly assumptions about the attractiveness and the value, supposedly for all episcopal sees, of claiming apostolic origins. From before the French Revolution until World War I, one of the most heated continuing debates in European historiography concerned the dates of foundation of the various episcopal sees of France. The point which engendered the greatest controversy was the claim, made by а number of French dioceses, that their churches had been founded either by apostles who surrounded Jesus himself or by direct or indirect disciples of those apostles. Two things were assumed by nearly all parties to the debate: that the apostolic “legends” had been originally produced and promoted during the (so-called) “Мiddle Ages” by the very churches whose foundation dates were in question, and that the purpose of the “legends” had been either to bring those communities greater prestige on the basis of antiquity of foundation or merely to flatter local vanity.17 The fact that apostolic status was being promoted in eleventh-century Rouen by а rival institution of the one being “honored” is puzzling given current understandings of claims to ancient foundation. But things are not always as they are presumed to be. For instance, numerous thirteenth-century histories, long universally assumed to have been French royalist in origin and intention, have been shown to be products of the antiroyalist 16 Аmand Collette, Histoire du Bréviaire de Rouen (Rouen: Mégard, 1902), p. 144. 17 Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 3 vols. (Paris: Thorin, 1894–1915); Albert Houtin, La controverse de l’apostolicité des églises de France аи XIXe siècle (Rev. ed. 3; Paris: Picard, 1903). For further bibliography and а discussion of this issue with specific references to Bayeux, see Felice Lifshitz, “Representations of Christianization in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ . . . of Bayeux (?),” in Thе World of Gregory of Тours, eds. Ian Wood and Кathleen Mitchell (Leiden: Brill, 1998). [The actual published title of this article was “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” and the actual date of publication was 2002.]

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Flemish aristocracy; superficial readings based on the assumption that а narrative about the French monarchy must necessarily be а narrative in favor of the French monarchy had long discouraged any scholars from asking questions about patronage and the details of composition, which were recently uncovered by Gabrielle Spiegel.18 So too in the case of the memory of bishops at Rouen: а narrative about the bishops of Rouen is not necessarily а narrative in favor of the bishops of Rouen. The relics of Nigasius and his companions, Quirinus and Pientia, had рrоbаblу been preserved in the neighborhood of Meulan and Vaux-sur-Seine where, according to the author(s?) of their passio (the account of their martyrdom), Nigasius and Quirinus had combined to perform their most famous and spectacular miracle.19 However, in 872 their relics could be found (temporarily) at а villa at Gasny, technically in present-day Normandy. There they came to the attention of the community of St. Ouen of Rouen, some of whose members had fled with relics of Audoenus to that very locale during the period of the Viking raids. In 872, Archbishop-Abbot Riculfus of Rouen-St. Ouen visited all the Gasny relics, noting the presence of Nigasius and his companions in the same locale as Audoenus; however, Riculfus expressed personal concern and responsibility only for the relics of Audoenus, going on to establish а local endowment to ensure а proper cult only to that saint during his unfortunate temporary exile.20 Yet this very priestly martyr Nigasius, to whom Riculfus was, in 872, completely indifferent, would suddenly be described in an eleventh-century biography as the original bishop of Rouen; he is said to have been the companion of St. Dionysius, а student of St. Paul (known to medieval ecclesiastics as the apostle, converted directly by Jesus in а vision), and to have been consecrated by Роре Clement of Rome, the immediate successor and student of St. Peter, himself an original disciple of Jesus. How could such а transformation of Nigasius and such а memory of Christian origins be beneficial to the abbey of St. Ouen and detrimental to the episcopal see? Violette has already tried to resolve the puzzle of why the abbey of St. Ouen (in effect) promoted apostolicity for the see of Rouen, and why the ungrateful see turned а cold shoulder to the enterprise. Не concluded that the only way to explain the historiographic stance of the abbey was through economic motivations: since St. Ouen possessed relics of Nigasius from 1032 onwards, the abbey wanted to 18 Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: Тhе Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Тhirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 19 GC 8: 1285–1287; Cornelius Byeus, De Sanctibus Nigasio, Quirino, Scubiculo seu Scuviculo et Pientia Martyribus Vadiniaci in Pago Vilcassino. Commentarius Historico-Criticus, AASS October 5: 510–550, at 532–535; François Pommeraye, Histoire des archevesques de Rouen (Rouen: Laurens Maurry, 1667), pp. 35–37. 20 Philippe Lauer, “Les translations des reliques de Saint Ouen et de Saint Leufroy du IXe au Хе siècle et les deux abbayes de la Croix-Saint-Ouen,” Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1921): 119–136, at 130–131; see also Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve, ed. Georges Tessier (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1943–1955), no. 259, рр. 86–89, and no. 407, рр. 406–411.

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attract visitors by claiming possession of the remains of an apostolic-era figure.21 In the context of other contemporaneous activities by the community of St. Ouen, it is logical that Violette should be thinking along these lines. The best-known products of the historiographic atelier of St. Ouen of Rouen in the mid-eleventh century are the various accounts of the miracles worked over the preceding century and а half by St. Audoenus.22 No sophisticated reading strategies are required to recognize how these miracle stories served clear-cut economic and political motives. One narrative describes how the monks of St. Ouen had persuaded the Norman Duke Richard I in 944/945 to grant them complete independence from the bishop of Rouen, in execution of а privilege supposedly originally granted by King Charles the Bald in the late ninth century. Equally heavy-handed is the description of how, in 918, the Norman Prince Rollo donated to the monastery the entire eastern suburb of Rouen and exempted the house from comital authority and all fiscal exactions, or the one about how Duke Richard I promised to provide the monastery with perpetual lighting for the altars of Peter and Audoenus, as well as to endow the house with two nearby villas and а large amount of moveable wealth. Some writings about the saintly heroes of the local past were thus clearly intended to produce economic advantages, as the above examples concerning the miracles of Audoenus should amply demonstrate. Perhaps further wealth and prestige could have been counted оn to accrue to the abbey of St. Ouen through its possession of apostolic-era relics such as those of Nigasius. But the fact that the cathedral vigorously opposed the cult of Nigasius at Rouen implied that antiquity per se was not necessarily seen as а good thing in the eleventh century;23 something more must have been at stake concerning the historical significance of Nigasius. We must break away from the assumption that “antiquity” was necessarily and inevitably read as а good thing, and consider the particular circumstances of this case. * In order to resolve the apostolicity puzzle, it will be necessary to look more closely at when and how Nigasius was transformed from the obscure martyr of the Vexin commemorated (along with thousands of other saints) by Usuard in the ninth century to the apostolic-era bishop of Rouen promoted by the monks of St. Ouen in the eleventh century. In particular, we must look more closely at the earliest extant 21 Violette, “L’église métropolitaine de Rouen,” pp. 357 and 399. 22 BHL 756, 757, 760, 761, ed. Guilelmus Cuperus, AASS August 4: 820–847. For their composition, see Jean-Claude Richard, “Les ‘miracula’ composés en Normandie aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” Positions des Тhèses de l’École des Chartes (Paris: École des Chartes, 1975), pp. 183–189. 23 In fact, Cristina La Rocca has recently shown how it was only in the course of the eleventh century that some towns on the Italian peninsula began claiming ancient local ruins as their physical ancestors as а way of gaining prestige in the present. Not only were the eleventh-century urban genealogies new phenomena, but they were also simultaneously opposed by а counter-attitude of explicit indifference towards antiquity (Cristina La Rocca, “Using the Roman Past: Abandoned Towns and Local Power in Eleventh-Century Piemonte,” Early Medieval Europe 5 [1996]: 45–69).

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evidence for the process of transformation (or historiographical revision) itself. Paradoxically, the historical/representational value of the apostolic-era “Nigasius” to the monastic community of St. Ouen in its conflicts with the episcopal see was precisely to undercut cathedral claims to regional authority. There are numerous extant manuscript copies of the passio of Nigasius and related narratives, whose evidentiary value has never been fully explored or appreciated, primarily because the versions that circulated in Normandy and the versions that circulated in the Ardennes have always been treated separately.24 Separate treatment of the two streams of transmission is completely unjustified, since the narratives were clearly connected from the start. In both Norman and Ardennes manuscripts the biographies are followed by accounts of how the monasteries of St. Ouen of Rouen (in 1032) and St. Remacle of Malmédy (by 1042) acquired the relics of Nigasius and Quirinus, respectively, with both accounts cross-referencing the other and referring readers to other monastic houses for additional information.25 Furthermore, the oldest extant сору of all (written at Malmédy, probably by 1042) has been completely disregarded, due to either ignorance of its existence or misinformation concerning its age.26

24 The Norman manuscripts all date from the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, and were formed into an edition by Goubert, Notice sur S. Nigaise, pp. 332–370 (BHL 6081). The manuscripts are: Paris BN lat. 5565, and Rouen ВМ 1406 (Y. 41), from the monastery of St. Ouen; Rouen ВМ 1391 (U. 39) and Rouen BM 1399 (U.2), from the monastery of Jumièges; Evreux ВМ 101, from the monastery of St. Wandrille of Fontenelle (later passing to the Cathedral of Evreux); and Rouen ВМ 1404 (U. 20), from the monastery of Fécamp. А slightly shorter version (BHL 6082) circulated in the Ardennes. The edition of this version was published from Lièges ВМ 256, Namur ВМ 2, and fifteen additional twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century manuscripts from the monasteries of St. Trond and St. Hubert, as Passio Nicasii, Quirini, et Scuviculi, AB 1 (1882): 628–632. The only scholarly discussion of the Ardennes evidence is Baudouin de Gaiffier, “St. Mélance de Rouen, vénéré à Malmédy, et St. Mélas de Rhinocolure,” AB 64 (1946): 54–71. 25 Translatio Nigasii et socii (BHL 6084), eds. Еdmond Martène and Ursin Durand, in Тhesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris: Florentin Delaulne et al., 1717), vol. 3, coll. 1677–1682; Translatio Malmundarium et miracula (BHL 7040–7041), ed. Cornelius Byeus, AASS October 5: 550–558. 26 Berlin, SB-PK theol. lat. quart. 201, written at Malmédy in the early to mid-eleventh century. There is also а sixteenth-century сору of the entire manuscript made at Malmédy, now Berlin SB-PK theol. lat. quart. 215. Both manuscripts are listed in Valentin Rose’s official catalogue of the Berlin collection, but no scholar concerned with Normandy or the Ardennes had ever stumbled upon the reference until the 1980s. At that point Philippe George, as part of а project on the eleventh-century scriptorium of Stavelot-Malmédy, sent а graduate student to investigate Berlin SB-PK theol. lat. quart. 201, who reported (erroneously) that the manuscript was really а product of the late twelfth century, having been misled by the addition of а late twelfth-century list of the relics of the house on the final folio of the early eleventhcentury manuscript (Philippe George, “Erlebald [+1193], gardien des reliques de Stavelot-Malmédy,” Le Moyen-Age 90 [1984]: 375–382). There is also а passio Nigasii (BHL 6081) in another manuscript of the first half of the eleventh century, Paris BN lat. 15436, from either St. Germain l’Auxerrois or St. Marcel of Paris. The existence of these two pre-1050 manuscripts renders impossible the dating by Violette (“L’église métropolitaine de Rouen,” p. 345) of the composition of the biographies of Nigasius to the end of the eleventh century. The remaining manuscripts of the passio (or epitomes of it) are Paris BN lat. 1864

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The transformation of Nigasius from а minor martyr of the Vexin to an apostolicera bishop of Rouen seems to have been а joint project of St. Ouen of Rouen and of Malmédy. The biography of Nigasius is so perfectly suited for а dual need that it was almost certainly crafted as а result of some collusion on the part of St. Ouen and Malmédy. I will turn next to how the depiction of Nigasius as apostolic-era bishop of Rouen could have helped the monks of St. Ouen in their efforts to throw off the yoke of their friendly neighborhood bishop. As for the needs of Malmédy, although Nigasius (who was claimed by St. Ouen) was the authoritative episcopal figure in the biography, it was Quirinus who was actually said to have performed all of the reported miracles. This point would seem extremely odd were it not for the need to endow Quirinus (who was claimed by Malmédy) with independent appeal. Thus, when the two saints were separated, St. Ouen gained а useful historical symbol, while Malmédy gained а powerful, miracle-working relic. In fact, the lack of interest in shaping Nigasius as а wonder-worker is а particularly telling indication that the monks of St. Ouen were not concerned primarily to attract pilgrims with the relics of Nigasius (relics being considered а source of miraculous power), but had something else in mind. The situation at Stavelot-Malmédy is less interesting than that at Rouen from the point of view of historiographic memorialization, for the community of Malmédy seems to have been interested only in amassing some sort of respectable relic collection, independent of the symbolic value of these relics. Stavelot-Malmédy was originally founded as а double monastery, with Malmédy dependent upon Stavelot. In 980 the community of Malmédy began а campaign for independence, trying to throw off the yoke of the abbot of Stavelot. The imperial-political level of the unsuccessful campaign, which lasted into the 1070s, has been chronicled by Ursula Swinarski and Thomas Vogtherr, although without any reference to Nigasius or Quirinus.27 In 1042 there was а major intensification of the struggle, as the community of Stavelot consecrated for themselves а new church which they claimed was centered around the newly discovered tomb of St. Remaclus, founder of both Stavelot and Malmédy. Neither community, least of all Malmédy, was rich in relics, since both were located deep in the Ardennes; the houses were so out of the way that they were visited by their ultimate rulers (the imperial family) no more than once every hundred years!28 Today the ruins of Stavelot and Malmédy are virtually impossible to (а fourteenth-century manuscript from the abbey of Bonport), Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensis latinus 593 (an epitome, in а twelfth-century manuscript from St. Léger of Soissons), Alençon ВМ 21 (а fourteenth-century manuscript from Mortagne), Rouen ВМ 1415 (U. 17; а fifteenth-century manuscript from Fécamp), and Rouen ВМ 1412 (А. 40) (а sixteenth-century manuscript from St. Ouen of Rouen). 27 Ursula Swinarski, Herrschen mit den Heiligen: Kirchenbesuche, Pilgerfahrten und Heiligenverehrung früh- und hochmittelalterlicher Herrscher (c. 500–1200) (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991), pp. 110–119; Thomas Vogtherr, Der König und die Heilige: Heinrich IV, der heilige Remaklus und die Mönche des Doppelklosters Stablo-Malmédy (Munich: Stiftung Historisches Kolleg, 1990). 28 Swinarski, Herrschen mit den Heiligen, p. 110.

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access without an automobile. The monks of Malmédy were thus in а desperate situation: it would not be easy to explain how any significant relic, besides the body of the saintly founder who had clearly at some point wandered through the region but which was already claimed by Stavelot, could have appeared in so remote а region. Yet possession of some relics (especially powerful miracleworking ones) was an absolute necessity in the eleventh century in order to be considered worthy of an independent spot on the conceptual and actual landscape.29 The daring solution at Malmédy was to claim possession of а number of relics (such as those of Quirinus) said to have соmе from Normandy, because such а claim could be made to seem plausible through the excuse of Viking-era disruptions; indeed, the notion that Viking raids during the ninth and tenth centuries had resulted in the exodus of multiple precious relics out of Normandy was used by а number of institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to support their otherwise dubious claims to all sorts of exotic items.30 Thus, in 1042, just after touting the existence at Stavelot of the tomb of Remaclus, Abbot Рорро of Stavelot may have been forced to “recognize” the presence in the Malmédy community of relics of rouennais saints, such as Quirinus and Audoenus.31 Thus, there exists evidence that Nigasius was “remembered” as the apostolicera bishop of Rouen by 1042. However, it was at Malmédy that Quirinus’ relics were venerated and, more importantly, at Malmédy that the earliest extant manuscript of the passio of Nigasius was made.32 At what point did commemoration of Nigasius begin at Rouen? Violette dated the composition of the passio Nigasii, along with а number of other writings concerning the see of Rouen, to the very end of the eleventh century; however, he did not know of the existence of the Malmédy manuscript of the passion narrative (in fact he paid no attention to any non-rouennais evidence), nor did he know of the processional conflicts of 1053 reported in the inventio Vulframni.33 Violette instead placed the construction of

29 The seminal work on the importance of relics in the period is Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Тhefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Rev. ed. 2; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 30 Felice Lifshitz, “The Мigration of Neustrian Relics in the Viking Age: The Myth of Voluntary Exodus, the Reality of Coercion and Theft,” Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995): 175–192 [now Chapter 10 in this collection]. 31 De Gaiffier, “St. Mélance de Rouen,” pp. 58–62; Philippe George, “Documents inédits sur le trésor des reliques de l’abbaye de Stavelot-Malmédy et dépendances (XIe–XVIIe siècles),” Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire de l’Academie Royale de Belgique 153 (1987): 65–108 and 127–179. 32 It is quite possible that the Malmédy manuscript served as the exemplar for а whole tradition of later copies, since the prologue is missing in most other copies of the text; the layout of the passio Nigasii in Berlin SB-PK theol. lat. quart. 201 obscures the existence of the prologue (which begins on fol. 26v) through the insertion of а benediction for the ornaments of the altar between the prologue and the passio proper (which begins on fol. 31r with an extremely large, elaborate and eye-catching decorated initial). The prologue is written in the same hand and thus by the same person as the passio proper and the other saints’ lives in the manuscript, so it is not an interpolation. 33 See above note 8.

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Nigasius as а historical emblem of the town of Rouen at the very end of the eleventh century, in approximately 1090, as part of а multipronged attempt on the part of the cathedral clergy to increase the prestige of the see.34 The problem with this view, of course, is that the cult of Nigasius was promoted by the abbey of St. Ouen, not by the cathedral; therefore Violette (as we have already seen) dismissed any historically representative dimension for the commemoration of Nigasius and simply ascribed the abbey’s enthusiasm for Nigasius to the monks’ desire for financial gain from possession of the apostle’s relics. Given that Malmédy was using the relics of Nigasius’ companions from as early as 1042 to help establish the community’s independence from Stavelot, there is no reason that the monks of St. Ouen, so clearly involved with the shaping of the Nigasius-Quirinus pair from the very beginning, should have waited half а century to make use of their creation, particularly when they possessed relics of the saint from as early as 1032. It is true that members of the cathedral community did not begin to write historical justifications for their own power and prestige until the end of the eleventh century; nevertheless, Violette himself has shown that by 1030 the cathedral had acquired sufficient property, revenues, jurisdictional rights and connections with patrons to threaten to prevent the abbey from ever achieving de facto independence from the see despite the community’s de iure liberation from the bishop through the recently completed regular reform.35 Thus, it seems logical that as early as the 1030s, when the cathedral was already threatening to overshadow the monastery, the community of St. Ouen would have begun to commemorate the life and death of St. Nigasius. I would argue that already at this date the monks of St. Ouen “remembered” and celebrated St. Nigasius as the apostolicera proto-bishop of Rouen described in the passio Nigasii, precisely because that memory of an apostolic-era foundation of the see of Rouen undermined the current occupant of the see’s claims to authority in the town. From the very moment of the legalization of Christianity as an accepted religion of the Roman Empire early in the fourth century (and indeed even before), the establishment of an episcopal constitution for the nascent churches of both Latin and Greek Christendoms depended upon the historical claim of “apostolic succession:” namely, the claim that the bishops of the various sees could trace their authority backwards in а series of unbroken chains to the apostles, the disciples and, ultimately, to Jesus Christ himself.36 Lists of the bishops of Rouen are extant 34 Violette, “L’église métropolitaine de Rouen,” p. 345. 35 For the cathedral’s amassing of resources around 1030, see Violette, “L’église métropolitaine de Rouen,” pp. 25–101. 36 One of the fullest and most important treatments of the chain of apostolic succession as а justification for present authority is the Ecclesiastical History of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the first Christian history ever written, which was composed in several stages during the early decades of the fourth century. The most important and influential example of the specific elaboration of such claims for the benefit of а single institution is the Liber Pontificalis (Pontifical Book) of the Roman Church, а collection of the lives of the bishops of Rome arranged in chronological order from Peter to Pius II (d. 1464); the first stage of the original compilation was made in the sixth

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from the ninth century and later, although proponents of episcopal authority at Rouen did not compose full-fledged chronicles (rather than mere lists) of their predecessors until the very end of the eleventh century; those narratives are analyzed in detail by Violette, who understands them quite properly as an attempt to demonstrate that the succession of bishops of Rouen formed а continuous chain from the origins of the see to the man who presently occupied that see, thus connecting the current bishop to the early Christian church.37 But Nigasius is another matter, for Nigasius as commemorated by the monks of St. Ouen functioned precisely to undermine the vision of authoritative continuity embodied in the episcopal lists of the see of Rouen. All the episcopal lists of Rouen that were composed before the end of the eleventh century began with а certain Mellonus; little (or even nothing) was known about this saint, yet there was always complete agreement that he had flourished well after the era of Christian beginnings, perhaps as late as the early fourth century. The St. Ouen addition of Nigasius to the beginning of the episcopal list and the chronological placement of Nigasius in the apostolic era suddenly created а gaping hiatus between the authoritative apostolic age, when disciples of Sts. Peter and Paul (such as “Nigasius”) wandered through Gaul spreading the Gospel, and the new beginnings of later centuries when figures such as Mellonus occupied the sees of the Roman Empire. There was, according to the historians of St. Ouen (and Malmédy), no unbroken chain of apostolic succession leading to the current occupant of the see of Rouen. Instead, the chain had clearly been ruptured after Nigasius. It is surely significant that the oldest extant manuscript of the passio Nigasii, the Malmédy сору now in Berlin, opens with biographies of Sts. Peter (folios 1–10) and Paul (folios 11–25) as the prelude to the biography of Nigasius, Quirinus, and companions (folios 26–44), followed by the account of the translation (the technical term for а relic transfer) of Quirinus’ relics to Malmédy (folios 45–53) and of the miracles he performed there (folios 53–86). Peter’s speech to the population of Rome, who gather for his crucifixion, centers on his gratitude to Jesus for having taught him personally what to preach, something that cannot (according to Peter) be learned through books (folios 7v-8r), while Nigasius’ own life story begins precisely “Post uenerandam passionem beatissimorum Petri ас Pauli apostolorum” (“After the to-be-venerated passion of the most blessed apostles Peter and Paul”; fol. 31r). The early post-Jesus links in the apostolic chain are thus clearly emphasized, thereby underlining the historical inability to prolong the chain unbroken after Nigasius. Thus, celebrating the memory of Nigasius did not confer apostolic status on the see of Rouen; quite the contrary: it highlighted the fact that the see did not have apostolic status. or seventh century, probably by а member of the Roman clergy. The widespread adoption of the chain-of-apostolic-succession technique by bishops all over Europe is described in Michel Sot, Gesta episcoporum, gesta abbatum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981). 37 Еugène Paul Sauvage, “Elenchi episcoporum Rotomagensium,” AB 8 (1889): 406–427; Violette, “L’église métropolitaiпe de Roueп,” pp. 200–202.

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It is possible that the idea for the shaping of the obscure martyrs Nigasius and Quirinus into apostolic-era figures was suggested to the St. Ouen/Malmédy authors by the widespread publicity surrounding the attribution of apostolic status to St. Martial of Limoges, а vision of the past promoted by Ademar of Chabannes and disputed at three successive councils held at Poitiers (1023), Paris (1024), and Limoges (1029/31).38 Just as many individuals and institutions rejected (for whatever reasons) the apostolicity of Martial, it is no wonder that the rouennais cathedral clergy refused to recognize the historicity of an apostolic-era Nigasius. Yet the cathedral did recognize, almost immediately in the 1030s, the existence of Nigasius as а bishop of Rouen who had sat at some point. In an account of miracles worked by St. Romanus, produced under the patronage of Archbishop Robert of Rouen (d. 1037), Nigasius is included in а list of Robert’s illustrious predecessors; however, he is named after Mellonus, between Mellonus and Audoenus, а sixth-century bishop.39 Nigasius was thus clearly known at Rouen in the 1030s, and the cathedral clergy tried at first to assimilate him to cathedral historiography in а non-threatening way. However, as the monks of St. Ouen became more insistent about publicizing Nigasius’ apostolic status, the cathedral clergy tried instead to ignore the new arrival. * As the field of representation of the past matures, pre-nineteenth-century examples of historiographic shaping should not be marginalized. There is а risk that recent developments, such as the battle over Tyrol monuments referred to earlier in this chapter, will be isolated from а tradition of similar battles that have raged for centuries. Such periodized compartmentalization of struggles over memory inhibits and possibly prevents full understanding of both the modern and pre-modern phenomena. For instance, one author has gone on record with the manifestly, almost absurdly, false assertion that processions organized around dead bodies were а novelty in the early twentieth century and has failed to see any significance to the fact that the early twentieth-century processions under consideration were originally conceived by а clergyman; yet that clergyman was clearly working within а long tradition of urban processionals.40 Likewise, the authors and editor of an otherwise excellent recent collection of essays on memorialization consistently assume that the commemorative activities they analyze are distinctly modern innovations which seem to have developed, as far as I can discern from the discussions, completely ех nihilo.41 Meanwhile, another author has written 38 For the coпtroversies surrouпdiпg Martial, see Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, МA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 39 Evreux ВМ 101 folios 29v–33r; Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 188–191 and 271–272. 40 K.S. Inglis, “Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad,” History & Memory 5 (1993): 7–31. 41 Commemorations: Тhе Politics of National Identity, ed. John Gillis (Princetoп: Princeton University Press, 1994). Like Inglis, “Entombing Unknown Soldiers,” Thomas W. Laqueur (“Memory аnd Naming in the Great War,” in Commemorations, ed. Gillis, pp. 150–167), treats two of London’s

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about “medieval” historiography as а form of literary emplotment without utilizing any of the relevant insights concerning historical emplotment that could have been gained from reading the works of the famous Hayden White, let alone of lesser-known figures such as William Reddy or John Fiske.42 Yet another author has analyzed а “medieval” instance of suppression of the immediate past through distortion and forgetting without reference to infamous recent examples of similar suppressions, such as the Holocaust denials publicized by Pierre Vidal-Naquet.43 I do not mean either to denigrate the work of these authors or to imply that they are particularly or personally at fault in failing to traverse vast temporal expanses in order to make diachronic comparisons. The assumed disjunction between the “medieval” and the “modern” is professionally systemic and is reinforced at almost every turn; unfortunately, scholarly understanding does not always benefit from treating the “medieval” and the “modern” as non-converging parallel universes. Beyond the realm of scholarship, it has even been argued that actual events of recent history, such as the Holocaust, were in part а result of the way the “modern” has been conceptualized so as to obscure the continued importance of religion.44 According to Dominick LaCapra, “modern” social and cultural forms are in many ways recycled versions of “medieval” practices, but the “religious” element of those practices (as а way of painting them as novel?) has been denied, repressed, and displaced; however, that which is repressed only returns elsewhere, compulsively and in even more virulent forms, such as when the “modern” secular religion of Nazism included cults, rituals, and ceremonies that were in effect displaced versions of earlier “medieval” constellations. We need hardly follow LaCapra’s psychoanalytic orientation to the letter, or ascribe any causality as far as the Holocaust itself is concerned to the myth of the secular “modern,” simply to recognize the existence of that myth, the fact that it is а myth, and the way it misleads scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century memorial practices.45

42

43

44 45

martyr shrines (the empty Cenotaph оn Whitehall and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) as though they had nо antecedents. Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Науdеn White, Metahistory: Тhе Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); William Reddy, Money and Liberty in Modern Europe: А Critique of Historical Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); John Fiske, Тelevision Culture (Lоndоn: Routledge, 1987), which describes the conveпtional emplotments of ТV news segments (“The Strike,” “The Election,” “The War”). Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory: Essays оn the Denial of the Holocaust, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). Dominick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: History, Тheory, Trauma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 169–220. On October 4, 1997 in Washington, D.C., the “Promise Keepers,” an evangelical Christian men’s group, rallied on the Mall in what has been called the largest religious service in U.S. history; any

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In sum, it is а mistake for scholars to treat the “medieval” and the “modern” in isolation rather than in dialogue. On the one hand, the study of “medieval” saints’ cults should provide insights into the workings of “modern” imagined communities such as nations, particularly as regards the sorts of public rituals that have long been associated with holy relics, rituals which clearly formed the matrix and backdrop for the developments of so-called secular memorial days.46 On the other hand, the study of Holocaust remembrance should provide insights into (for instance) the workings of earlier memorial practices, such as Christian martyr cults, particularly if LaCapra’s psychoanalytic (therefore universalizing, ahistorical) understanding of the way humans react to trauma can justifiably be applied to а pre-Freudian world, such as fourth-century Europe. The benefits of such an approach can only be tentatively grasped at this stage. I can only hope that the future will bring closer diachronic cooperation and cross-fertilization between “medievalists” and “modernists” so that the potential benefits can be more fully explored.

historian who tells the story of modernity as the story of secularization is, quite frankly, fooling themselves. The question, however, is why that myth is purveyed. 46 For the museum as а site of “quasi-religious” rituals of secular citizenship, see Carol Dunсаn аnd Allan Wallach, “The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis,” Marxist Perspectives 1 (1978): 28–51; and Carol Dunсаn, “Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, eds. Ivan Каrр апd Steven Lavine (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1991), pp. 88–103.

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8 T H E C U LT S O F T H E H O LY BISHOPS OF ROUEN FROM 396 TO 996 The role of oral traditions and popular actions

Before the arrival of the Vikings, the memory of local bishops had (with rare exceptions) been neither cherished nor cultivated at Rouen in written or official form. Beyond some rare manipulations of relics in times of crisis (such as, for instance, the elevation near the end of the seventh century by Bishop Ansbert of the body of his immediate predecessor St. Audeonus, in symbolic and imaginary combat against the Carolingian conquest of Neustria and of Rouen, a town still tied to the Merovingian dynasty), the cathedral neglected any and all memorial activities in regards to the bishops of Rouen.1 In contrast, it appears that the local population played a nearly preponderant but hitherto barely recognized role in the creation of the cults rendered to the bishops of Rouen. The case of St. Gildardus reveals how thoroughly the official memory of local bishops was neglected at Rouen. Between 844 and 847, the relics of three bishops of Rouen were translated to St. Medard of Soissons. The account of this translation (BHL 3540), composed a few decades later by Odilo of St. Medard, centers on Charles the Bald, who seeks to satisfy the desire for those relics that was tormenting the monks of Soissons, the king’s beloved residence.2 According to these monks of Soissons and, following them, according to the king, St. Gildardus was the twin brother of St. Medardus; in view of this relationship, the king decided to reunite the two brothers at Soissons, and to remove the relics of Gildardus from the control of the citizens of Rouen, albeit against the latter’s will. According to Odilo, the people of Rouen waged a daring battle against the monks of Soissons and the messenger of the king in a failed attempt to keep the relics of St. Gildardus at home with them. Once they realized how useless it was to resist the king, the population of Rouen came to an agreement with the monks of St. Medard: the lat1 Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 38–56. 2 Felice Lifshitz, “The ‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered. The Date of the Translation of Gildardus of Rouen to Soissons,” AB 110 (1992): 329–340; Felice Lifshitz, “The Migration of Neustrian Relics in the Viking Age: The Myth of Voluntary Exodus, The Reality of Coercion and Theft,” Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995): 175–192 [now Chapters 9 and 10 in this collection].

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ter would receive the decapitated body of Gildardus, the head of St. Romanus, and the entire body of St. Remigius, all former bishops of the town, whereas the head of Gildardus would remain at Rouen.3 Thus, in the middle of the ninth century, St. Romanus was considered by the people of Rouen as secondary to St. Gildardus, whose sacred head the population of the town wished to save, at any cost. Gildardus was a popular saint in Rouen, so popular that the church of Notre Dame, where his body had rested from the beginning of the sixth century, had come to be known as St. Gildard. Yet, no bishop of Rouen ever cultivated the memory of the saint in written form. Gildardus’ head remained at Rouen even after the translations of 844/847, but no one from among the literate elites of the town produced a history of his life or his pontificate. Odilo of St. Medard criticized those responsible for historical memory at Rouen for having failed to write a biography of St. Gildardus, as a result of which he was forced simply to adapt the biography of Medardus by pseudo-Fortunatus (BHL 5865) to Gildardus, on the assumption that the twin brothers had led twinned lives.4 Still worse: even at Rouen itself there was no choice but to accept this recycled biography as the official history of Gildardus when, near the end of the eleventh century, the body of the saint returned from Soissons, under the auspices of the abbot of St. Ouen of Rouen.5 Beyond Gildardus, the other Gallo-Roman or Frankish bishops who occupied the see of Rouen and who (like Victricius, Pretextatus, or Remigius) would seem to have been suitable subjects for (at a minimum) a biography or (at a maximum) an official cult, received neither.6 A similar situation obtained in northern Italy. Jean-Charles Picard has called attention to the complete lack of interest in episcopal historiography in that region during the early Middle Ages.7 Picard attributed this indifference with regards to the bishops of northern Italy to the fact that strong civil and pre-Christian traditions prevailed over Christian identities, which rendered every project of commemoration of a local bishop superfluous 3 “. . . ut pro capite uenerabilis Gildardi caput sanctissimi Romani eiusdem ciuitatis archiepiscopi ac totum sancti Remigii sacratissimum corpus qui apud nos fertur domnus Remigius similiter ipsius urbis presul secum deportare liceret” (Paris, BN lat. 13345 fol. 149v = BHL 3450; “Vita Sancti Gildardi,” ed. Poncelet, p. 403). 4 “Vita beati et uenerabilis patroni nostri sancte sedis Rothomagensis ecclesie archiepiscopi Gildardi antiquorum incuria hactenus latuit postposita: quam, annuente Dei misericordia, exordiar posterorum pro posse tradere notitie. Cuius uite uirtutes licet nequeam fideli specialiter sicut uellem stilo declarare, tamen dubium non est quod ceteris Dei electis cum ei generales extiterit, cum quibus etiam sortitus est premia regni celestis” (“Vita sancti Gildardi,” ed. Poncelet, pp. 394–395). 5 For example, this biography furnished the liturgical readings for the Cathedral of Rouen in Rouen BM 1405 (Y.27), pp. 42–58, and for the monastery of Fécamp in Paris BN lat. 5296 folios 47v–50r and in Rouen BM 1388 (U.32) folios 45v–46r. 6 Felice Lifshitz, “Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity,” The Haskins Society Journal 2 (1990): 63–74 [now Chapter 5 in this collection]. 7 Jean-Charles Picard, Le souvenir des évêques: sépultures, listes épiscopales et culte des évêques en Italie du Nord des origines au Xe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), pp. 567–576 and 713.

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and subversive. Unfortunately, this explanation has nothing to do with the situation at Rouen, where one can hardly discern any civil traditions that might have competed with the memory of bishops. Before the arrival of the Vikings, the bishops of Rouen never demonstrated any enthusiasm for the project of fabricating episcopal saints, or for the creation of an episcopal historiography. Throughout the ninth century, the Christian Empire of the Franks was sporadically besieged by “pagan” pirates. Near the end of the century, some of these conquered and settled in Neustria, specifically in the diocese of Rouen. It was this crisis that motivated the men of the cathedral to promote, in various ways, the cult of St. Romanus, including by commissioning written narratives of the life of this former bishops of the see of Rouen. Here as elsewhere, contemporaries sought to understand and to gain control over spectacular recent events through the creation of a new historiography.8 In the ecclesiastical province of Reims, for example, where inhabitants had to suffer (more than elsewhere) Viking violence, several centers of literary and historiographic production arose in the course of the ninth century, with the episcopal seat preeminent among them.9 Likewise in the Orléanais, the reaction to each and every Viking raid (in 854, 865, and 879) included the production of narrative texts.10 The need to find a discursive strategy to explain the disturbances of the era was actually more acute at Rouen than at Reims, or Orléans, or any other location; in the ecclesiastical province of Reims, the threat dissipated, whereas in the ecclesiastical province of Rouen, it moved in. I would like to concentrate on the rouennais response to this crisis, a response that produced an official cult to Romanus, holy bishop of Rouen. I will avoid a simple narration of the history of the bishops – sainted or not – of Rouen. Many such narratives already exist, and have been written since the end of the eleventh century.11 For my own part, I prefer to spotlight St. Romanus, and to focus above all on this particular saint, who has too often been insufficiently valued. I encountered him for the first time ten years ago, in November 1986, at the time of his feast (a lively carnival) in Rouen. I had, at that moment, barely begun my research on the cults of Norman saints, and it was Romanus who taught me what a saint’s cult can be. It was he who taught me about popular cults, and above all that they have not fallen into desuetude everywhere in today’s France. But despite his crushing popularity (or perhaps because of his popularity?) historians have, for a long time now, neglected St. Romanus. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his-

8 Pauline Stafford, Unification and Conquest. A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Edward Arnold, 1989), pp. 4–9 and 16–23. 9 Jacques Hourlier, “Reims et les Normands,” Mémoires de la Sociéte d’Agriculture, Commerce, Sciences et Arts du Département de la Manche 99 (1984): 87–96. 10 Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints. The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 50–53. 11 Louis Violette, “L’Eglise metropolitaine de Rouen pendant la première période normande (Xe–XIe siècles)” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Université de Paris-X, 1994).

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torians have been above all interested in historical “truth;” thus, St. Romanus has been something of a poor relation in comparison with other holy bishops of Gaul, generally judged to be more deserving of attention primarily due to their biographies, edited and published in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. In contrast, within the framework of the sixteenth centenary of the Cathedral of Rouen, I would like to offer him almost the totality of my attention, to celebrate the millennium of his patronage of the town of Rouen. The Benedictines of Paris, for their part, gave up trying to explain the popularity of St. Romanus, confessing that historians can scarcely see any reason for his great popularity.12 The main thrust of the entry on Romanus in their great work, which encompasses all saints as well as all those beatified, is that the biographies of Romanus are completely lacking in value – a judgment that in itself explains why they were so mystified by the popularity of the saint! Around the middle of the tenth century, the monk Fulbert of Jumièges wrote a biography of Bishop Romanus of Rouen, at the behest of the bishop of the day, Hugh.13 As a result of longstanding local indifference to episcopal historiography, he did so without even being able to take advantage of an episcopal list for the see of Rouen; although he was able to utilize some texts that were available at Jumièges as models,14 none specifically concerned Romanus. Thus, the most important source from which Fulbert was able to benefit was oral popular tradition. It is true that the vita of St. Romanus by Fulbert of Jumièges does not inform us concerning the “real” events of the Merovingian world, or the actions that took place. Nevertheless, this tenthcentury vita is precious, because it informs us about the memory of the bishop, the memory of the saint who – before the 960s – became the official patron of the Norman duchy.15 A millennium later, the only way to approach this saint is through a text, a product (it would seem at first glance) of the literate world of the clergy. My intention here is to tease out from the text of this first biography of St. Romanus the contributions of popular oral tradition to the historical image of the saint. In the case of St. Romanus, it seems that popular memories of the saint determined the outlines of the official history that were then fixed in written form by clerical authors such as Fulbert. And that is perhaps why St. Romanus remains, to this day, the holy patron of the town of Rouen, a saint whose popular feast could be the envy of many other saints of the Hexagon.

12 Benedictins de Paris, Vies des saints et des bienheureux selon I’ordre du calendrier avec l’historique des fêtes, 13 vols. (Paris: Letouzey, 1952), vol. 10, pp. 790–791. 13 Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 137–179. 14 For the continuity of monastic life at Jumièges, see Nathalie Manoury, “Les bâtiments conventuels de l’Abbaye de Jumièges (VIIe–XVIIe siècles),” Archéologie Médiévale 26 (1996): 77–107. 15 From the 960s ducal coinage bore the inscription “Sce Romane Rotom Civi” (Françoise Dumas-Dubourg, Le Trésor de Fécamp et le monnayage en Francie occidentale pendant la seconde moitié du Xe siècle [Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1971], nos. 6042–6044 pp. 98–100).

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Hippolyte Delehaye asserted 90 years ago that, in the creation of saints’ lives, there is a process of molding by clerics of pre-existent images preserved by the populations of a given locale; the cleric modifies the character and the structure of an oral legend, in order (for instance) to accentuate its “religious” meaning.16 When it’s possible to make a comparison between oral traditions and contemporary writings, it is easier to disentangle the effects of the clerical operation on an oral legend; but, as far as the first vita of St. Romanus is concerned, we have nothing but the written version.17 After an interval of 1,000 years, how could one possibly discern the exact relationship between the written version of the biography and the oral legends of the tenth century? Instead of automatically classifying “fabulous” or “superstitious” or “folkloric” motifs as pertaining to the “popular” or “folkloric” mentality (as most scholars do),18 I have utilized a method of reading and analysis that has permitted me (I hope) to avoid the disadvantages and biases tied to the conventional methods that have been favored up to now. In my view, the episodes in Fulbert’s vita Romani, in which both the saint and the entire population of the town of Rouen figure prominently, derive from oral tradition. The fact that all of these episodes are already in themselves richly polyvalent betrays their origin in a fragmented and fractured – that is, real – milieu, in which various people narrate, simultaneously, divergent and competing tales. The story of St. Romanus did not arise in the uniform imagination of a single author. In his vita by Fulbert, St. Romanus begins to save the town soon after his arrival in Rouen: There was, just north of town, a stone edifice built in the shape of an amphitheater, with high walls, in which a narrow path led to an underground grotto. There, the subterranean “house” was surrounded by parallel arcades. This “house” was known as “the domicile of Venus,” because people who frequented prostitutes could be found there. But, above 16 Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Légendes hagiographiques (Rev. ed. 3; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1927), pp. 12–100. 17 Raymond Fourasté, “Saint Exupère d’Arreau,” in Les saints et les stars: le texte hagiographique dans la culture populaire, ed. Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), pp. 101–132. 18 For example, C. Grant Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948); André-Jean Festugière, “Lieux communs littéraires et thèmes de folkore dans l’hagiographie primitive,” Wiener Studien 73 (1960): 123–152; Raoul Manselli, “La Religione popolare nel Medioevo: prime considerazioni metodologiche,” Nuova Rivista Storica 58 (1974): 29–43, at 33–37; Jean-Claude Schmitt, “‘Religion populaire’ et culture folklorique,” Annales: E.S.C. 31 (1976): 941–953, at 948; Aron J. Gurevich, Contadini e Santi. Problemi della cultura populare nel Medioevo, trans. Luciana Montagnani (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), p. 8; Clare Stancliffe, Saint Martin and his Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 160–166; Aron J. Gurevich, “Oral and Written Culture of the Middle Ages: Two ‘Peasant Visions’ of the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Century,” in Aron J. Gurevich, Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Jana Howlett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 51–66.

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ground, inside the periphery of the exterior wall, there was a spacious area, in the middle of which loomed a skillfully-constructed sanctuary, in which priestly place there stood an altar, bearing the inscription “Venus.” It was said that one could often hear there the murmur of unclean spirits, as if they were coming from far-flung regions of the earth to some sort of council, during which each and every one was forced to give an accounting of his activities, and then each was honored highly according to the magnitude of his evil deeds, but beaten if he had been lazy. Just beyond the sanctuary there was a horrible cavern in a certain dark place, within indeed very spacious, but it hid its incalculable depths with a narrow inlet. Nor could any man see it for himself, because a sulfurous whirlwind emitted, through this tiny entry hole, noisome vapors and unbearable stenches as well as a pitch-black flame, as a result of which the buildings of the neighboring town were frequently devastated by the cruel fire, and many people were killed by its smoking odor.19 It is hardly possible to isolate, in this ensemble portrait of the premises that St. Romanus (accompanied by the people of Rouen) would soon destroy, the or a problem, the or a reason to attack the locale. According to archeologists and public works engineers in Rouen, it’s a historical fact that the Roman amphitheater (of which one still finds remnants when commencing new construction projects in the town) toppled at some unknown date.20 Evidently, urban tradition associated the name of Romanus with the destruction. What matters in this regard is that Fulbert brought together a number of different motifs to elucidate the desperate situation in which the inhabitants of Rouen found themselves, and out of which St. Romanus was reputed to have led them. Fulbert dared not suppress even the least part of the multipolar tale that had been told to him about the ruins of the amphitheater: the ancient amphitheater had been 19 Erat iuxta urbem ipsam a septentrionali latere, lapideo opere constructa in modum amphiteatri muralis machine altitude, in qua subterraneum speleum angustum iter introeuntibus prebebat. Domus illic subterranean, latebrosis fornicibus cingebatur. Hanc “domicilium Veneris,” propter scortantium usus apellabant. Verum desuper intra ambitum muri exterioris spaciosa patebat area, in cuius medio fanum artifici opere constructum eminebat, in quo ara editiori loco stabat, et desuper titulus Veneris. De quo loco aiebant sepe inmundorum spiritum murmur auditum et quasi ad aggregatum concilium de longinquis terre partibus conuentum statutum, in quo rationem operum suorum pro se quisque reddere cogebatur, et pro magnitudine scelerum altius quisque honorabatur, pro inertia uero uerberibus afficiebatur. Post fanum huiusmodi sub obscuro quodam loco spelunca horribilis erat, introrsum quidem spaciosa, sed angusta fauce inestimabilem profundi altitudinem celabat. Sed neque uisu hominis aduerti poterat, quia hiatu ipso sulphureus uortex tetros uapores exalabat, et intolerabiles fetores, cum quibus flamme piceus horror erumpens, uicine urbis edificia seuo sepe uastabat incendio, multos uero fumifero necabat odore (Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 248). 20 Nancy Gauthier, “Rouen pendant le haut Moyen-Âge (650–850),” in La Neustrie. Les pays au nord de la Loire de 650 à 850, ed. Hartmut Atsma, 2 vols. (Beihefte der Francia 16; Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 1–20, at p. 2.

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a haunt for prostitutes; the ancient amphitheater-brothel had been a temple to the goddess Venus; the ancient amphitheater-brothel-pagan temple had been a meeting place for demons; the ancient amphitheater-brothel-pagan temple-demonic meeting hall was adjacent to a deep cavern that spewed noxious fumes and flames. All told, the former amphitheater-brothel-pagan temple-demonic meeting hallsulfurous cavern threatened the social fabric of Rouen where, to make matters worse, the Seine overflowed its banks every two or three months, as we learn a bit later in the history written by Fulbert.21 As a cleric and a historian, Fulbert added a spiritual dimension: Romanus’ lifesaving operation fulfilled a biblical antitype (the expulsion of the money changers from the Temple of Jerusalem).22 Moreover, he integrated the episode into a larger narrative and historical framework encompassing the Incarnation of Jesus, the mission of the apostles, and the conversion of the Franks, as well as the “purification” of Rouen.23 Having achieved this “purification,” St. Romanus could go on to prophecy about the future, specifically about the salvation of the Vikings at Rouen. Fulbert the historian, writing in the middle of the tenth century, took care to explain the true meaning of the event; therefore he had Romanus predict the arrival and salvation of a maritime nation at Rouen.24 The reference to seafaring people is followed by the second episode involving the saint and the entire population of the town.25 The destruction of the ancient amphitheater-brothel-pagan temple-demonic meeting hall-sulfurous cavern north of Rouen did not put an end to the danger, since the Seine continued to menace the town. This second episode is substantially less picturesque than the first, and we need only attend to its general character. The tale is, once again, multipolar, full of complications and overlapping, even clashing, points, pointing to its genesis in oral tradition: the Seine inundates the town by two different routes at the same time; the inundation is even more devastating for having taken place in the middle of the night, and when the bishop was out of town. Back in Rouen, St. Romanus chases the waters out of the town and forbids them ever to return. From that day onwards, according to Fulbert, the Seine never again dared to inundate the town of Rouen. The need to produce a coherent narrative imposed certain limits on Fulbert; it was necessary for him to separate, in order to be at all logical, the “earth-air-fire” plagues (represented by the ancient amphitheater) from the “water” plague (represented by the river) because the anti-plague remedies applied by St. Romanus could not be identical in all cases. But Fulbert did tie the two episodes closely together. First of all, he mentioned the inundations of the Seine at the end of the ancient amphitheater episode, where they had no narrative function. More

21 22 23 24

Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 240. Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 247. Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 237–240. Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 250. Also see Gregorio Penco, “Le figure bibliche del vir Dei nell’agiografia monastica,” Benedictina 15 (1968): 1–13. 25 Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 252–253.

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importantly, according to the prophetic interpretations articulated by St. Romanus after each episode, the two episodes actually constituted a single story, in so far as (at the end of the day) both signified exactly the same thing: the arrival and the salvation of a seafaring nation.26 According to oral tradition, or rather to oral traditions, St. Romanus saved the town of Rouen from every disaster possible; he “purified” the town and healed the town; he kept it safe from the ancient amphitheater-brothel-pagan temple-demonic meeting hall-sulfurous cavern-flood. All the fragments in this bundle would eventually regroup around a symbol that would in and of itself be able to express the totality of these distinct meanings: the dragon known at Rouen by the name Gargouille. Dragons do not exist in scientific reality, but they do exist in imagination, in a semiotic reality where they signify (if we can believe exegetes and folklorists) precisely and simultaneously things such as “paganism,” “the dangers posed by nature,” “unbridled sexuality,” and so on, that one would otherwise have to convey (if this symbol were lacking) through clumsy, unmanageable phrases such as “ancient amphitheater-brothel-pagan temple-demonic meeting hall-sulfurous cavern-flood.”27 At a later period, it would be said (quite efficiently) that Romanus had subjugated a dragon named the Gargouille at Rouen.28 The dragon, which spits fire and blows smoke and slithers in the riverbed, had become an extremely widespread semiotic device permitting authors and artists to express concisely many different things at one time, without the need for recourse to prolonged or multipolar narrations.29 But let us return to the tenth century. I suggest here that the luxurious polysemy and overlapping layers of the first written vita of Romanus, which enabled the vita to “speak” to many different people at the same time, indicates that this biography arose out of the actual oral and popular traditions in circulation in Rouen around the middle of the tenth century and explain the fact that St. Romanus has remained so popular a full

26 Fulbert, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 253 (second prophesy). 27 For the biblical sources (or perhaps simply some biblical uses) of the image, see Genesis 3, Jubilees 3:17–23, 2 Corinthians 11:3, Revelations 12: 1–9 For interpretation of the imagery, see Périklès Petros Joannou, Démonologie populaire-Démonologie critique au XIe siècle. La vie inédite de S. Auxence par M. Psellos (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971), p. 12; Alba Maria Orselli, “Santi e Città. Santi e demoni urbani tra tardoantico e alto medioevo,” Settimane 36 (1988): 783– 830, at 788–791; Arnold Van Gennep, Manuel de folklore français contemporain, 4 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1937), vol. 3, pp. 423–424; Roger Devigne, Le Légendaire des provinces françaises à travers notre folklore (Paris: Horizons, 1950), p. 52; Michael Camille, Image on the Edge. The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 78–93. 28 Felice Lifshitz, “The Privilege of St. Romanus: Provincial Independence and Hagiographical Legends at Rouen,” AB 107 (1989): 161–170 [now Chapter 3 in this collection]. 29 Jacques Le Goff, “Culture ecclésiastique, culture folklorique au Moyen-Âge: Saint Marcel de Paris et le dragon,” Richerche storiche ed economiche in memoria di Corrado Barbagallo, ed. Luigi De Rosa, 3 vols. (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 53–90. Le Goff denies that the symbol possessed any polyvalence during the first centuries of its utilization, and insists that, in the later period, clerics and lay persons held to two distinct, contradictory interpretations of the symbol. His views do not reflect the situation at Rouen.

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millennium later, when so many people eagerly celebrate his feast each October. Fulbert of Jumièges could have, had he wished, described the metahistorical significance of the acts of Romanus without basing the prophetic glosses of the saint on episodes that were already explicitly polyvalent and fragmented: a singular flood or a pagan sacred grove or a demon-infested temple would have been sufficient to unleash Romanus’ prophecies concerning the Vikings. The fact that Fulbert instead immortalized in writing a holy personage who combated all possible plagues demonstrates that this monk of Jumièges was familiar with a rich and varied oral tradition, and wished to suppress no part of it. A saint who could arouse such strong emotions, the way Romanus could around the middle of the tenth century, would not have been handed over to the monks of St. Medard, in exchange for the head of the very popular Gildardus, in the middle of the ninth century. The reputation as protector of the town of Rouen that Romanus enjoyed in the middle of the tenth century must date from the second half of the ninth century. Given that it was precisely during the second half of the ninth century that the town of Rouen was conquered by Norse pirates, I have concluded that the inhabitants of the town attributed to the presence there of the relics of St. Romanus the fact that Rouen so quickly returned to calm and indeed to prosperity. In fact, the town of Rouen during the reign of Rollo was a town very much on the rise.30 During the second half of the ninth century, the inhabitants of Rouen apparently transferred the decapitated body of St. Romanus into the area within the town walls, and deposited it in a chapel housed in one of the towers of the former Roman wall. Twentieth-century archeologists have registered several inundations of the Seine that occurred in the course of the early Middle Ages; the most intense of these reached precisely to the level of the chapel of St. Romanus in the tower of the Roman wall. One could easily imagine that the saint had watched over the town from this locale. The inhabitants of Rouen were grateful. As for Fulbert of Jumièges, he incorporated into the vita Romani the fruits of the rich oral and popular tradition that had crystalized around St. Romanus. But Fulbert had not received his commission from the inhabitants of Rouen; quite the contrary – his patron was the archbishop of the town, Hugh of Saint-Denis, who had been promoted to the see of Rouen by William Longsword.31 Fulbert was working, in a sense, for the ducal family. Thus, he utilized rouennais traditions, but did so for his own purposes and to serve the needs of his patron. By placing prophetic interpretations of the events recounted in the vita into the mouth of

30 Jacques Le Maho, “Les fouilles de la cathédrale de Rouen de 1985 à 1993. Esquisse d’un premier bilan,” Archéologie Médiévale 24 (1994): 31–36. I owe the information in the remainder of this paragraph to personal conversations with Le Maho. [Le Maho subsequently made his findings public in a series of publications on early Norman Rouen; see his Principal Bibliography at www. unicaen.fr/craham/spip.php?article180&lang=fr, accessed December 4, 2018.] 31 Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 157–179; Felice Lifshitz, “La Normandie carolingienne. Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources negligés,”Annales de Normandie 48 (1998): 505–524 [now Chapter 15 in this collection].

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St. Romanus, Fulbert transformed stories of the Vikings in Rouen into stories of the salvation of the Vikings in Rouen. From the middle of the tenth century, the conquered Neustrians and the conquering Normans together celebrated the holy patron of the town of Rouen, St. Romanus; but the former celebrated the salvation of the town from the Vikings, whereas the latter celebrated the salvation of the Vikings at Rouen. Four years ago, I spoke in Angers about the official character of St. Romanus in his guise as patron of the elites of Normandy, and I refer anyone who wishes to know more about the saint of the conquerors to the Acts of that colloquium.32 This time, I wanted to emphasize instead more fundamental, more basic, and more durable aspects of the cult of St. Romanus; I have sought to highlight the popular basis of his cult and perhaps therefore also of his continued popularity.

32 Felice Lifshitz, “Saint Romain, Missionnaire franc dans la Normandie des Vikings,” in Voix d’Ouest en Europe, Souffles d’Europe en Ouest, ed. Georges Cesbron (Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 1993), pp. 23–30 [now Chapter 6 in this collection].

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Part III

Historiographic discourse and saintly relics Beyond Rouen

9 Т H E “ E X O D U S O F H O LY BODIES” RECONSIDERED The translation of the relics of St. Gildardus of Rouen to Soissons

The “exodus of holy bodies” from the diocese of Rouen, to use the evocative and elegant expression of Albert Legris, written in 1919 is one of the most powerful and compelling images that modern historians have produced in describing the Central Middle Ages and the Viking age.1 However, the historiography of the Norman invasions in this century, much like that of the earlier Great Invasions or Barbarian Invasions, has tended primarily towards revision of such older, catastrophic scenarios. Despite the general trend, the “exodus of holy bodies” aspect of the catastrophic scenario has not been revised, and Legris’ article remains the only synthetic work concerning relic translations out of the future Normandy. He ascribes every translation known to have taken place out of the future Normandy to fear of the Vikings, and inaugurates а long period of Viking-induced disruptions as early as 841. Most of the sources for the “exodus,” for the most part а series of translationes, have never been studied in great enough detail to provide а truly accurate picture of the reaction of Neustrian ecclesiastics to the Viking raids of the late Carolingian period, even by Legris. In this article, I will look primarily at one of those translationes, namely the Translatio Gildardi (BHL 3540), which Legris connected with the first wave of the “exodus.” Two points will emerge: first, scholars have probably been mistaken in the dates they have assigned to the event itself; second, the reasons behind the translation were entirely unrelated to the issue of Viking raids and therefore cannot be used to demonstrate any discontinuity in the church at Rouen as early as the 840s. Relics of Gildardus, bishop of Rouen in the early sixth century, had certainly arrived at Soissons by 848, when the metrical martyrology of Wandelbert of Prüm names Gildardus and Medardus as “Progenies meritumque pium quos iungit et ara.”2 Gildardus is also present on June 8 in the Martyrology of Usuard, written 1 Albert Legris, “L’exode des corps saints au diocèse de Rouen (IXe-XIe siècles),” Revue Catholique de Normandie 28 (1919): 125–136, 168–174, and 209–221. 2 Wandelbert of Prüm, Martyrologium, ed. Еrnst Dümmler, in MGH Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini (Berlin: Weidman, 1994), vol. 2, р. 587, lines 328–329.

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by the monk of St.Germain-des-Prés for Charles the Bald in 865. Usuard’s editor, Dubois, notes that the mention of the see of Rouen is placed after the saint’s name, Usuard’s consistent practice when а given saint was currently buried elsewhere, another confirmation that а translation had by then taken рlасе.3 There is also an authentic diploma of Charles the Bald, of which the original is still preserved, confirming the presence of relics of Gildardus at St. Medard between 866 and 870.4 Finally, there is the calendar of Heiric of Auxerre, compiled before Heiric’s death in 876, in which Gildardus appears as а saint of Soissons.5 But when precisely, and more importantly, why, had the relics been transferred? According to BHL 3540, Charles the Bald, attending the feast of Medardus at the saint’s abbey in Soissons and hearing of the close relationship Medardus and Gildardus had enjoyed during their earthly lives (they were thought at the time to have been twin brothers), commanded that Gildardus’ relics be brought from Rouen to the monastery at Soissons.6 Poncelet, in 1889, dated the translation to Soissons to 838/40, on the basis of certain information in Nithard’s History of the Sons of Louis the Pious, completed by the author in 843, which has since been shown to be an interpolation of the eleventh century.7 The interpolation describes an 841 translation at Soissons in which several rouennais relics (“Gildardus, Serenus et domnus Remigius Rotomagorum archiepiscopi”) were included. First, this was taken to demonstrate that Gildardus et al. were at Soissons by 841; second, because Poncelet did not consider it possible that there could have been two translations of the same set of relics in one year, he moved the translation to Soissons back а few years. Legris, curiously enough, seems to have partially accepted and partially rejected the evidence of the interpolation, taking the date of 841 but applying it, not to а second

3 Le Martyrologe d’Usuard: Texte et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), р. 243. 4 Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve, ed. Georges Tessier (Chartes et diplômes relatifs à l’histoire de France 8–10; Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1943–1955), no. 338, рр. 248–254. 5 Вaudouin De Gaiffier, “Le calendrier d’Héric d’Auxerre du manuscrit de Melk 412,” AB 77 (1959): 392–425. 6 “Vita Sancti Gildardi,” ed. Poncelet, pp. 402–405. There are two manuscript copies: а tenth-century copy from St. Medard of Soissons in Paris BN lat. 13345 and an eleventh- or twelfth-century copy from St. Ouen of Rouen in Paris BN lat. 5565. For the ascription of the latter manuscript to St. Ouen of Rouen, see Felice Lifshitz, “The Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium. А Monastery or Cathedral Product?” AB 108 (1990): 345–347 [now Chapter 4 in this collection]. There is also а critical edition and English translation of BHL 3540 in Lifshitz, “Dossier,” рр. 349–355. 7 Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, ed. and trans. Philippe Lauer (Paris: Champion, 1926). The relevant interpolation is on fol. 11v of Paris BN lat. 9768, the only surviving manuscript of the work. For the interpolation, see Е. Müller, “Die Nithard-lnterpolation und die Urkunden- und Legendenfälschungen im St. Medardus-Кloster bei Soissons,” in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 34 (1909): 681–722, esp. 687; Georges Tessier, “Un diplôme inédit de Charles le Chauve pour Saint-Médard de Soissons,” Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1948–1950 (1952): 75–90; and De Gaiffier, “Calendrier d’Héric d’Auxerre,” рр. 401–402.

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translation, but to the original translation from Rouen to Soissons. Dubois avoided the issue by giving а range of dates, 838–841.8 However, it is more likely than not that the translation from Rouen had not yet taken place. In fact, а multiple translation did take place at St. Medard in 841, with the assistance of Charles the Вald, and the event was commemorated in а diploma whose text has been preserved. The diploma witnesses the presence there at that time only of saints Medardus and Sebastian.9 The view that the date 841 is somehow significant has been reinforced by а specious connection of the translation with Abbot Hilduin of St. Medard, who died in 841. The opening lines of BHL 3540 do in fact describe certain exploits of Abbot Hilduin, but hardly connect him with the rouennais relics. The discussion of Hilduin is confined to describing his earlier participation in а translation of Roman saints to Soissons during the time of Louis the Pious. This entire section, comprising about one third of the text, is nothing more (and nothing less) than background information, before the anonymous author proceeds to describe the relic transfers that are his main concern. The Translatio account deserves to be quoted in extenso, not only to demonstrate the fact that it places the events of Hilduin’s day in the somewhat distant past, previously described in another written account, but also because of the extremely favorable vision the author has of the state of the Christian churches in Francia at а time when numerous relic translations are taking place: Tempore præcedenti, regnante piissimo cæsare Cludouico, ас monarchiam totius orbis romani decenti potestate regente, pro maxima pacis tranquillitate, in tantum inoleuit excellentia christianæ religionis, ut multorum [sic] amplificarentur spacia æcclesiarum, et deuotione fidelium ех longinquis regionibus quique catholici ad propria loca deueherent sanctorum corpora, tam proprio studio, quam etiam imperatorio suffulti patrocinio. Еа tempestate reuerentissimus abbas ех monasterio sanctorum Dionisii, Germani et Medardi Hilduinus in palatio regis enitebat archicapellanus fidelissimus, et in bonis actibus famosissimus. Hic аb imperatore Romam delegatus, ignauiam quorundam compescuit, qui in apostolicum superbæ insurrexerant, et merita quamplurimorum sanctorum supplici deuotione adiit, inuisit, et reuerentissime excoluit. Quorum patrocinia reuertens in patriam fratribus suis elegantissime intimauit, et ut aliquorum sanctorum corpora in patrium solum conaretur deportare uel proprio ingenio seu auctoritate regia, аb ipsis monachis legitur adhortatus fuisse.10 8 Martyrologe d’Usuard, ed. Dubois, p. 87. 9 Recueil des Actes de Charles II le Chauve, ed. Tessier, no. 462, рр. 525–528. Although the diploma in its current state is а forgery, existing only in early modern copies, Tessier concluded elsewhere that it preserved the memory of а genuine lost document (Tessier, “Un diplôme inédit”). 10 Paris BN lat. 13345, folios 147v–148r.

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As is described in the Translatio account by Odilo of St. Medard (BHL 7545), cited here by the author of BHL 3540, Hilduin brought relics of the martyr Sebastian and Pоре Gregory to Soissons in 836.11 And so: Ех omnibus itaque mundi partibus innumeris concurrentibus populorum cateruis, ita supradictorum Dei fidelium frequentabantur suffragia, ut numerum uideretur excedere summa, quæ ibi оb devotionem deferebantur populorum.12 As the background to the later, equally successful, attempts by the monks of St. Medard to increase their mass of relics, Hilduin’s activities were certainly inspirational; but he himself is not mentioned again, and BHL 3540 seems to place the translation of Gildardus et al. at least а few years into the reign of Charles the Bald, and presumably after the Treaty of Verdun in 843, after which the vexed issue of the division of Louis’ empire among his sons was more or less settled, affording the king both the leisure and the power to command such а transfer. The text explicitly states that Charles had already overcome а certain number of perils and had had time to become а frequent visitor to the abbey: Per idem tempus obeunte piissimo Cludouico cæsare, ас pro obitu suo Francis ingerente maximum meroris luctus, principatum regni nobilissimus suscepit filius supradicti principis Carolus, per omnia secla memorandus. Qui ех multis periculis Deo protegente erutus, ас ideo in omnibus magis deuotus, sedule sanctis adherebat religionibus. Inter quas in prospectu urbis Suessæ, erat monachorum congregatio, cui familiarissimus idem augustus semper existebat. Quam sepius deuotionis studio ео uisitante, ас pro amore quem erga Dei electos inibi quiescentes habebat frequentante, quodam die transitus beatissimi ас toto orbe memorandi domni nostri Medardi natalis sollempnitas imminebat, cui etiam prædictum principem interesse contigit.13 It was then that he commanded the translation for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Viking disruptions, but rather due to pious motivations that were all of а piece with the passions that had earlier resulted in the transfer of Sebastian and Gregory from Rome. Charles is made to say: Si pater et mater beati Medardi carnales geminos carnaliter natos, firmissimas sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ protulerunt columpnas humana generatione, quos uno die natos, uno eodemque die clericatos, ас simili modo in pontificatus honore sublimatos, unius uero hore tempore de hoc seclo 11 PL 132: 579–622. 12 Paris BN lat. 13345, fol. 148v. 13 Paris BN lat. 13345, fol. 148v.

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migrasse, et regni cælestis brauia simul percepisse procul dubio cognoscimus, ut quid eorum corpora defunctorum spatia terrarum diuidunt, quos in hac uita cum plenitudine diuini operis caritas fidesque Christianæ religionis iunxit, ас sinus Abrahæ in cælesti patria pariter complectitur? Studeat siquidem per nostram auctoritatem fraterna contio ad locum quantotius properare, in quo beatissimi Gildardi fratris domni nostri Medardi, humana hactenus iacuisse noscuntur, et quia inibi indecenter tractari perpendimus, ас iuxta fratrem condigno honore prout ingenium nostrum fuerit collocemus.14 If BHL 3540 is to be trusted, there is no justification for dating the translation of Gildardus, Romanus, and Remigius out of Rouen in 841 or earlier, and there is certainly no justification for connecting the translation with Viking incursions. How much reliance can be placed, then, on the Translatio Gildardi? Traditionally, the Translatio has been classed with the Vita Gildardi (BHL 3539), either as outright apocryphal15 or of slight historical value.16 In judging reliability, however, it is essential to distinguish between the Vita, which purports to describe events of the sixth century, and the Translatio, which only purports to describe events of the ninth century. The oldest extant copy of BHL 3540 is in а tenth-century manuscript, now Paris BN lat. 13345, that was probably originally produced at St. Medard of Soissons itself.17 The codex is an artificial collection that entered the Bibliothèque Nationale from St.Germain-des-Prés; most of its previously separate segments can be traced back further into the possession of the abbey of Rebais.18 Although the provenance of the Soissons folios appears to be Rebais, the origin is not. The section opens with а first-grade decorated initial, to begin the Vita of Gregory the Great. The text is internally divided by the original scribe into eight lectiones, indicating that it was produced at а Benedictine house that venerated the sainted роре. There follow two Vitae of Medardus, the Vita and Translatio of Gildardus, and Miracles of 14 Paris BN lat. 13345, folios 148v–149r. 15 Godefridus Henschenius and Daniel Papebroch, De Sancto Gildardo, episcopo Rotomagensi in Gallia. Commentarius historicus, AASS June 2: 67–69, at 67. 16 “Vita Sancti Gildardi,” ed. Poncelet, p. 389. 17 CCHP gives the tenth century in general; Müller, “Die Nithard-lnterpolation,” р. 713 and Léopold Delisle (Inventaire des manuscrits de Saint-Germain-des-Prés conservés a la Bibliothèque Impériale, sous les numeros 11504–14231 du fonds Latin [Paris, A. Durand, 1868], p. 226) tend toward the later years of the century, referring specifically to folios 88–215. The remainder of the codex, an artificial collection, dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 18 François Dolbeau, “Anciens possesseurs des manuscrits hagiographiques latins conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 9 (1979): 183–238, at 227. In his edition of the Translatio of Sebastian and Gregory (Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti in Saeculorum Classes Distributa, eds. Luc d’Achéry et al. [Paris: Robustel, 1672–1701], Saeculum IV part 1, pp. 383–414, at p. 383), Mabillon noted that the Rebais codex gave Rodoinus, rather than Odilo, as the sender of the epistle to Ingrannus; as this is the case in Paris BN lat. 13345, the section of the codex bearing the Soissons texts (folios 117–184) probably also came to St.-Germain via Rebais.

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St. Sebastian. It is hard to believe that such а combination of texts could have been produced anywhere but at St. Medard of Soissons, whose most important relics were precisely those of Gregory, Sebastian, and Medardus and Gildardus. There has never been any suggestion that BHL 3540 was composed anywhere other than at St. Medard. Given that we have an old manuscript witness that almost certainly comes from the scriptorium of the abbey itself, we can at least be assured that the transmission of the text is likely to have been sound and reliable. Let us turn then to less formal considerations. An analysis of the Translatio Gildardi cannot be isolated from consideration of other hagiographical products of the same scriptorium, such as the Мiracula and Translatio of Sebastian and Gregory (BHL 7545) mentioned earlier. The author of BHL 7545, Odilo of St. Medard, is known to us through а letter he wrote to Hucbald of St. Amand, in which he mentions the work as his own.19 The date at which Odilo composed BHL 7545 is normally given as approximately 930 because the text is preceded, both in Paris BN lat. 13345 and in the only other copy (now Paris BN lat. 18311), by an epistle addressed to а certain Ingrannus. Ingrannus is supposed to be the Dean of St. Medard who was promoted to the see of Laon in 932.20 However, in Paris BN lat. 18311 there is no sender’s name in the salutation itself; instead, only а title attributes the letter to “Oydelo.” And in Paris BN lat. 13345 the author of the letter is said to be Rodoinus, both in the rubric and in the salutation. It is not necessarily true, therefore, that the author of the epistle was the author of the text following it in the manuscript; that is, it is not necessarily true that the author of the epistle was Odilo at all. Indeed, it is much more likely that the author of the epistle was “Rodoinus,” for the letter tells us that Ingrannus had requested him to describe the translation of Sebastian to Soissons and the miracles he had worked there because, up till then, the great deeds of Christ through his servant had gone unreported in silence. But BHL 7545, Odilo’s work, was not the first to break the silence concerning Sebastian; in fact Odilo explicitly refers in his work to an earlier written account, а “schedula” of Rodoinus: Enimuero superest hodietenus in chartophylacio nostro schedula Rodoini ad memorabilem Hilduinum abbatem transmissa, in qua numerosa plurimum capitulatione uirtutum eius insignia breuiata personaliter habentur inserta, quorum summa in conum redacta, surgit in millibus quatuor centum septuaginta.21 The assumption that Odilo wrote the letter to Ingrannus was both an unwarranted and an erroneous one on the part of the rubricator of Paris BN lat. 18311, which 19 PL 132: 627–630. Hucbald had sent Odilo а copy of his own composition, the Vita Lebuini, and requested а copy of the latter’s work on Sebastian. 20 Flodoard of Reims, Les Annales de Flodoard, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris: Picard, 1905), anno 932, р. 54. Flodoard Put Ingrannus’ death in 936. 21 PL 132:622.

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has resulted in the equally erroneous identification of Ingrannus with the bishop of Laon circa 932, and а false dating of Odilo’s period of literary activity to that year as well. There is no chronological foothold in а connection between Odilo of St. Medard and Ingrannus of Laon circa 930. But if the Sebastian/Gregory text is not dated by Ingrannus, there is nothing of substance within the text itself that precludes an earlier date of composition than с. 930. In fact, to date Odilo’s writing back by several decades, to с. 900 at the latest, would eliminate several problems posed by having BHL 7545 written at such а late date. First of all, Hucbald’s Vita Lebuini was written soon after 917, and it is evident that the translatio of Sebastian was written before the Vita Lebuini, given that Hucbald asks for а copy of the already-existing text when sending along his own work. Then, there is the mystery of Odilo’s apparently astronomical age, а problem first posed by Holder-Egger.22 Hucbald was in his nineties when he died in 930 and therefore must have been almost in his eighties at the time of his correspondence with Odilo, yet Hucbald addressed Odilo as significantly the elder of the two.23 It would certainly be stretching the outer limits of tenth-century life expectancies for Odilo to have had а flourishing writing career in 930. It is above all in relation to the writings of Odilo that the Translatio Gildardi has been dated. The author of the Translatio Gildardi evidently knew and used Odilo’s work, so ВНL 3540 could not be considered to date from before the mid-tenth century.24 I would go even further, and suggest that the author of the Vita and the

22 “Ex translatione sancti Sebastiani auctore Odilone,” ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SS 15/1; Hanover: Hahn, 1887), рp. 377–391, at p. 377, notes 2–3). 23 In asking Hucbald to be less deferential, Odilo writes: “Non debuissetis me annorum numero aestimare, nec sapientiam canis, sed canos sapientiae reputare, Salomone testante: ‘Cani hominis prudentia eius’” (“You ought not to have judged me by the number of my years, nor ascribe wisdom to gray hairs, but rather gray hairs to wisdom, by the witness of Solomon: ‘The gray hairs of а man are his prudence’”). 24 Müller (“Die Nithard-lnterpolation,” р. 713) put the date of composition in the late tenth century. Вaudouin de Gaiffier (“Les sources latines d’un miracle de Gautier de Coincy: L’apparition de Ste. Léocadie à S. Ildephonse,” AB 71 [1953]: 100–132, at 119) went even further and identified the Translatio as part of an ensemble of hagiographical pieces composed by the monks of St. Medard in the eleventh century to accredit their relics. In fact, the age of the folios in Paris BN lat. 13345 makes de Gaiffier’s contention impossible. To whom was Odilo referring when he spoke of the “principes” and the “primores” of the region of Rouen? Any such reference is usually automatically taken to situate а text after (usually long after) the Viking settlement of 911/912. But both were in general use to indicate the “great,” the “magnates,” the “notables” throughout the Merovingian and Carolingian periods (Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi, ed. Аlbert Blaise [Turnhout: Brepols, 1975], s. v. “primores”). “Principes” is used in the charters of Charles the Simple for any powerful person, including the royal consort (Recueil des actes de Charles III le Simple, roi de France, ed. Philippe Lauer [Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1940], no. 49 р. 108 or no. 57 р. 124). It can hardly be considered an anachronistic error referring to the Viking conquerors, since the only thing we are told about the “principes” of the region is that they were incapable (“non valentibus”) of contradicting the royal orders, “nam territi fuerant, ne cum gravi impetu regia super eos manus inferretur” (“for they were terrified, lest the royal hand be turned against them with grave fury”).

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Translatio of Gildardus was Odilo himself. Someone who has chosen to write an account of the miracles and 836 translation of one set of saints to his monastery is precisely the type of individual who would choose to write an account of the life and 844/847 translation there of another set of saints. It is also more comprehensible that Odilo, rather than some other author, would devote the first third of the Translatio Gildardi to summarizing the background of the translations of Sebastian and Gregory. There is good reason to believe that BHL 3540 was written by а sort of specialist on the relics of St. Medard, that is Odilo of St. Medard, who flourished in the latter part of the ninth century, and who would seem to be а highly reliable witness for the relic collection of the house in the mid-ninth century. Unless we feel prepared to dismiss out of hand the evidence of а near-contemporary text, we must conclude that the translation of Gildardus, with Romanus and Remigius, out of Rouen was not precipitated by any fear or destruction caused by Viking bands. Consider, rather more briefly, another set of translations assigned by Legris and others to 841, the first “wave” in the exodus: Audoenus with Nicasius, Quirinus, Scuviculus, and Pientia. The evidence for the event comes entirely from literary sources of the eleventh century emanating from the abbey of St. Ouen (BHL 757–758 and 6084) in connection with claims to have retrieved those very same relics in 918.25 Another eleventh-century text, also from St. Ouen, the additamentum to the second Vita of Audoenus (BHL 751b), tells us that the saint lay in the place to which he had been moved by St. Ansbertus for 162 years, until 842, when the “Normanni” devastated Rouen.26 Finally, Pommeraye, in the sixteenth century, knew а charter (which he appears to have found in the archive of the abbey of St. Ouen) in which Riculfus, archbishop of Rouen and abbot of St. Ouen in the 860s, legitimates the presence of relics of Audoenus and соmраnу at Gasny priory, where they are said to have

The evidence of the Vita Gildardi, written at the same time as the Translatio, is more complex. On fol. 144 of the Paris BN lat. 13345 copy of the Vita, Rouen is called the “metropolis danorum.” But this reading is not found in any of the other witnesses to the text (which derived ultimately from the same сору used by the scribe of Paris BN lat. 13345) and more likely is itself an explanatory interpolation in Paris BN lat. 13345, made when the text was recopied at St. Medard later in the tenth century. Poncelet (“Vita sancti Gildardi”) did not believe the reading was part of the original text, and put it in the apparatus of his edition, taking instead the readings of Paris ВN lat. 5565 and the other manuscripts. 25 Translationes Audoeni (BHL 757–758) and Translatio Nigasii et socii (BHL 6084), eds. Еdmond Martène and Ursin Durand, in Тhesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris: Florentin Delaulne et al., 1717), vol. 3, соll. 1669–1682. The only manuscript witnesses are Rouen BM 1406 (Y.41) of the eleventh century (from the abbey of St. Ouen) and Rouen BM 1411 (U.64) of the thirteenth century (also from St. Ouen). The block of texts published by Martène includes а spurious charter of Rollo (Fauroux, Recueil, р. 20) purporting to donate the land of Longpaon to the abbey of St. Ouen at the time of the return of the saint’s relics in 918. 26 Vita Audoeni episcopi Rotomagensis, ed. Wilhelm Levison (MGH SRM 5; Hanover: Hahn, 1910), pp. 536–567, at р. 549.

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been moved “causa metus Nordmannici.”27 No other copies of the charter or earlier references to it are known, and there is now no sign of the manuscript source. More significantly, the document does not seem to have existed at the time of the composition of the Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium in the late eleventh century, for it would most likely have been mentioned along with the other charters of Riculfus given the interest in the relics of Nicasius at St. Ouen at the time. On the other hand, there is the evidence presented by near-contemporary and documentary sources. First, there is the entry for Audoenus in the Martyrology of Usuard: “Civitate Rotomago, sancti Audoeni confessoris, qui saeculum salubriter despiciens, sanctitatis merito episcopii adeptus est honorem.”28 As was already mentioned above in connection with Gildardus, Dubois perceived that it was Usuard’s consistent practice to place а locative before the name of the saint when the saint’s relics were still in that place, and after the name when they had been translated elsewhere. By this standard Audoenus’ relics were still at Rouen when Usuard wrote in 865. Usuard’s information is confirmed by two authentic charters of Charles the Bald, for the abbey of St. Ouen and the church of Rouen, dated 876 and 863, respectively, both of which still survive in their original copies.29 In the former, the emperor confirms the properties and rights of the house, “ubi praeciosissimus confessor Christi Audoinus corpore requiescat;” in the latter, he confirms the possessions of Archbishop Wanilo’s see, “in honore sanctae [Dei] genetricis semper virginis Mari[e] sanctique Petri apostolorum principis, almi Audoeni ceterorumque sanctorum ibidem quiescentium fundate.” Therefore the relics of Audoenus did not depart from Rouen before 876, and the reason for the transfer is not given by any reliable source. We may assume that the reason was fear of the Normans, but we must realize that that is only an assumption, the same one made by John of St. Ouen, presumed author of the translationes of Audoenus, in the eleventh century. There is basis here for further adjustment of the old catastrophic scenario. No body of work has done more to revise the catastrophic scenario of the Viking raids than that of Lucien Musset.30 In fact the vast majority of the research done on the region in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries has tended to support а conclusion of а remarkable degree of continuity of Carolingian institutions.31 We see

27 François Рommeraye, Нistoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Ouen (Rouen: Lallemant, 1662), рр. 130–131 (for the story) and рр. 398–399 (for the text). 28 Le martyrologe d’Usuard: Texte et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), р. 289. 29 Recueil des Actes de Charles II le Chauve, ed. Tessier, no 259, рр. 86–89 and no 407, рр. 406–411. 30 His most recent synthetic pieces are Lucien Musset, “Rouen au temps des Francs et sous les ducs,” in Histoire de Rouen, ed. Мichel Mollat (Toulouse: Privât, 1979), рр. 31–74, and Lucien Musset, “Monachisme d’époque franque et monachisme d’époque ducale en Normandie: lе рrоblèmе de lа continuité,” in Aspects du monachisme en Normandie, ed. Lucien Musset (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 55–74. 31 See the summary in R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), рр. 20–37. Davis emphasizes how like the ninth century was the eleventh century,

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now that there is no solid evidence for an “exodus of holy bodies,” or а series of Viking-precipitated relic transfers out of the future Normandy from the mid-ninth century. Yet the image of а hemorrhage of relics was one of the main points out of which the catastrophic scenario was originally constructed, apparently from as early as the eleventh century when John of St. Ouen looked back on the history of his region. But Gildardus and company were moved, in the 840s, for reasons entirely unrelated to the Normans; Audoenus was not moved until after 876, when the Norman presence was constant, at which point we must begin to speak of settlement, and not of raids. The Viking raids of the mid-ninth century were not nearly as disruptive as they have been portrayed.

without considering the tenth century to account for that fact. Nevertheless, the catalogue of points of continuity is impressive despite the author’s own conclusions.

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10 T H E M I G R AT I O N O F NEUSTRIAN RELICS IN THE VIKING AGE The myth of voluntary exodus, the reality of coercion, and theft

Introduction: reconsidering the voluntary exodus scenario1 I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail. -J.M. Kemble (1849)2

In 1989, Richard Hodges demonstrated what J.M. Kemble had suspected: that certain posterior written narratives (such as Bede’s eighth-century Historia Ecclesiastica and the even later Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) mask, rather than illuminate, what seems to have transpired in the British Isles during the fifth through the seventh centuries.3 In this chapter, I will address narratives concerning another type of migration, the supposed exodus, out of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen, of

1 Earlier drafts of this article were read by Patrick F. Geary, whom the author wishes to thank for advice, admonitions, and encouragement; and by Rosamond McKitterick, in her capacity as editor of Early Medieval Europe. The suggestions of Dr. McKitterick, and of the journal’s reviewers, have greatly improved this article. I am particularly grateful to Elizabeth M.C. Van Houts for making some of her unpublished work available to me. 2 John Mitchell Kemble, The Saxons in England: A History of the English Commonwealth till the Period of the Norman Conquest, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1849), vol. 1, p. 16. 3 Richard Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement: Archeology and the Beginnings of English Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); for other recent challenges to the discourses of Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, see Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in AngloSaxon England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) and Walter Goffart, “The Historia Ecclesiastica: Bede’s Agenda and Ours,” Haskins Society Journal 2 (1990): 29–46.

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relics of saints of Merovingian Neustria during the ninth- and tenth-century transition from Carolingian to Viking (or Norman) rule in that region. Many authors have commented on blatant forms of Frankish anti-Viking historiography, as represented for instance by the Annals of St. Bertin and the Annals of St. Vaast.4 However, it is a more subtle aspect of anti-Viking historiography, namely the thesis that there was a hemorrhage of relics and clerics out of Neustria in the face of invading Viking hordes, that has most effectively imposed a discourse of disruption and rupture on the historiography of Neustria-Normandy, in spite of a significant amount of evidence for continuity.5 Suspicion concerning the widely accepted thesis of Viking-induced relic hemorrhage should be immediately aroused by the following observation: no transfers of relics out of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen are recorded by contemporary annalists, such as those of St. Bertin and St. Vaast, despite the fact that those authors were sometimes obsessively concerned with chronicling Viking disruptions, and the fact that relic transfers generally were recorded by ninth-century annalists, in that such events were so well suited to a chronological treatment both concrete and itemized.6 It is to Orderic Vitalis that we owe the initial synthetic formulation of the “exodus of holy bodies” scenario, to borrow the elegant and evocative phrase of Legris.7 That twelfth-century monk of St. Evroult’s massive Historia Ecclesiastica 4 Annales Bertiniani/Les Annales de St. Bertin, eds. Felix Grat, Jeanne Vieillard, and Suzanne Clemencet (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France, 1964); The Annals of St. Bertin: Ninth-Century Histories, Volume I, ed. and trans. Janet Nelson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991); Annales Vedastini/Jahrbücher von St. Vaast: Quellen zur Karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, ed. and trans. Reinhold Rau (Ausgewählte Quellen zur Deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 6; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1958); Horst Zettel, Das Bild der Normannen and der Normanneneinfälle im westfränkischen, ostfränkischen and angelsächsischen Quellen (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1977); Régis Boyer, Le mythe viking dans les lettres françaises (Paris: Porte-Glaive, 1986). 5 For synthesis and references concerning continuity, see Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative,” and Felice Lifshitz, “La Normandie Carolingienne. Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources negligés,” Annales de Normandie 48 (1998): 505–524 [now Chapters 11 and 14 in this collection]. Three of the most important older studies are Jean Yver, “Les bases du pouvoir ducal en Normandie,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th series, 28 (1950): 135–152; Lucien Musset, “Les domaines de l’époque franque et les destinées de la regime domaniale du IXe au XIe siècle,” Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie 49 (1942–45): 7–98; and Lucien Musset, “Monachisme d’époque franque et monachisme d’époque ducale en Normandie: le problème de la continuité,” in Aspects du monachisme en Normandie, ed. Lucien Musset (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 55–74. It would be tedious to catalogue references to the near-ubiquitous belief that there was a flood of Viking-induced relic transfers in the later Carolingian period; let this quotation from the standard work on the subject of relic translations suffice: “Eine ganze Reihe . . . Translationen hatte ihren Anlaß in einem der durchgehenden Phänomene des 9. Jahrhunderts, die die Aufmerksamkeit der Forschung in hohem Maße beansprucht hat: Die Einfälle der Normannen, die die Flüchtung der Kostbaren Heiligengebeine verursachten” (Martin Heinzelmann, Translationsberichte und Andere Quellen des Reliquienkultes (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), p. 99. 6 Heinzelmann, Translationsberichte, pp. 58 and 96. 7 Albert Legris, “L’exode des corps saints au diocèse de Rouen (IXe–XIe siècles),” Revue Catholique de Normandie 28 (1919): 125–136, 168–174, and 209–221; also see Lucien Musset, “L’exode des reliques du diocèse de Sées au temps des invasions normandes,” Bulletin de la Société historique

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has determined the lines of Norman historiography during much of the twentieth century. Yet Orderic Vitalis was no neutral observer of the late Carolingian and Viking eras. His judgmental history of the pre-“reform” era is written from the teleological perspective of the eventual triumph of the righteous “reformers.”8 Compounding the Mercian-born Orderic’s distaste for the pre-“reform” era in general is a certain hostility toward the Vikings (Normans) in particular.9 Furthermore, he had himself been originally trained in the historiography of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, a piece of anti-Viking propaganda par excellence.10 The present study will examine the various relic translations adduced by Orderic Vitalis, or by historians who have followed his lead, to support their vision of disruption. Orderic and his adherents have not only exaggerated the number of relic translations that took place in the ninth and tenth centuries, but have also, and more importantly, misunderstood (or misrepresented) the complex nature of those relic transfers that did occur. I will argue that the movement of Neustrian relics out of the archdiocese of Rouen in the ninth and tenth centuries was less a matter of exodus than of theft.11 Relics were stolen from Viking-dominated Neustria or, having initially been voluntarily removed by their Neustrian keepers, were prevented from returning to the Viking principality by outside forces. We shall only be able to understand “theft” as a substitute for “exodus” by appreciating the nature of relic devotions during the period in question. In the eyes of many observers in the ninth and tenth centuries, that is in the Age of the Vikings, sacred relics possessed a powerful virtus. Thieves who stole relics wished to receive concrete benefits from their new acquisitions; they wished to benefit from the patronage of a powerful saintly intercessor, not fill a crypt with useless dust-collectors. Relic collectors asked not what they could do for their saintly patrons, but what their saintly patrons could do for them.12 The relics of the saints of Ouche, one of the few specific cases

8 9 10 11

12

et archéologique de l’Orne 86 (1970): 3–22. For Orderic’s depiction of late-Carolingian and Viking-dominated Normandy as a “wasteland,” due in part to the exodus of relics, see OV 2.6–7 and OV 3.120–123, 282–285 and 302–361, esp. 302–305. OV 2.198–201 and 286–299, and OV 3.6–35 and 80–93. See his insulting portrait of the Norman character in William the Conqueror’s deathbed speech (OV 4.80–87). OV 1 passim. For a discussion of similar phenomena, but from a different viewpoint, see Patrick F. Geary Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Rev. ed. 2; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). As Widukind of Corbie commented, in reference to the translation of relics of St. Vitus from Paris to Corbie in 836: “ex hoc res Francorum coeperunt minimi, Saxonum vere crescere” (Widukind of Corbie, Res gestae Saxonicae/Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von Korvei, eds. and trans. Albert Bauer and Reinhold Rau [Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 8; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971], p. 66). For the expectation that relics would provide protective patronage, just as would any other dominus, an expectation particularly strong during the late ninth-, tenth- and eleventh-century age of weak kingship, see Heinzelmann Translationsberichte, pp. 41–42 and Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval

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mentioned by Orderic to support his exodus thesis, were not taken off to Brie, itself apparently under attack from Hungarians, to protect the relics; they were stolen (as Orderic indeed admits that they were!), so that Ebrulfus and his companions might exercise their protective patronage in favor of new, and needier, devotees.13 Neustrian relics from the province of Rouen became something of a hot commodity in Francia during the tenth century. I am not the first person to notice the trend. Paradoxically, Orderic Vitalis himself, despite an overall discourse that enmeshed each relic translation in a context of Viking-induced rupture, commented at one point that late-Carolingian Neustria had not, in fact, been destroyed by the Vikings but by the Franks and Flemings, whose keenness to acquire relics of saints of the province of Rouen he likewise acknowledged.14 Neither Orderic nor any other author, however, has pursued the lines of reasoning clearly suggested by any recognition of the dimension of theft, evidently because it could not be made to square with other assumptions about ninth- and tenth-century history. To account for the thefts of Neustrian relics requires a rethinking of late Carolingian and early Norman events in the broadest possible terms. I would suggest that the desirability of the relics of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen arose precisely because it was recognized how well those relics had protected their own homelands from depredation during the ninth century. The forcible removal of relics from the Viking principality of Rouen is itself evidence of the felicity of the region and of its continuous enjoyment of prosperity,15 conditions which rendered possession of its protective patrons desirable. The myth of exodus has served to reinforce a discourse of disruption and rupture in NeustrianNorman historiography; the context of theft, presented here, is a building block in a wider argument for prosperity and continuity across the late Carolingian and early Viking period. Mind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). Relics which failed to provide protection would not themselves be coddled but rather humiliated (Patrick F. Geary, “L’humiliation des saints,” Annales: E.S.C. 34 [1979]: 27–42). 13 For the saints of Ouche, see p. 218. This is not to claim that no relics were moved to protect the saintly remains, or to deny that some actors in the relic wars had a less animistic notion of the character of the pignora sanctorum; certainly, the last thing that I would wish to argue is that there was “a” uniform “medieval mind” when it came to the subject of relics. 14 OV 3.306–361, esp. 314–315 and 326–327. 15 For the economic prosperity of Viking Normandy, see Lucien Musset, “Les invasions scandinaves et l’évolution des villes de la France de l’Ouest,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 43 (1965): 320–322; Lucien Musset, “Les conditions financières d’une réussite architecturale: les grandes églises romanes de Normandie,” in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet à l’occasion de son 70e anniversaire, eds. Pierre Gallais and Yves-Jean Riou (Poitiers: Société d’études médiévales, 1966), pp. 307–314; Lucien Musset, “La renaissance urbaine des Xe et XIe siècles dans l’Ouest de la France: problèmes et hypothèses de travail,” Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles): Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande (Poitiers: C.É.S.C.M, 1974), pp. 563–575.

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The royal touch: coerced translations of Neustrian relics The relics of the most important saint of Frankish Rouen, namely bishop Audoenus, were removed from Rouen sometime after 876 (and not, as was long believed, as early as 841).16 Dudo of St. Quentin explicitly places the removal of Audoenus’ relics in connection with Rollo’s arrival in 876, although he also implicitly assigns the translation to the late 880s, the period corresponding to all the other events reported by Dudo in connection with Rollo’s settlement.17 It is, however, the circumstances surrounding the return of the relics of Audoenus to Rouen that are most enlightening. Lauer long ago argued that more than mere coincidence links the famous 918 charter of Charles the Simple concerning the monastery of La-Croix-St.-Ouen 16 Felice Lifshitz, “The ‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered: The Date of the Translation of the Relics of St. Gildardus of Rouen to Soissons,” AB 110 (1992): 329–340 [now Chapter 9 in this collection]. Legris (“L’exode des corps saints”) apparently misinterpreted BHL 751b, the additamentum to the “B” stream of Audoenus’ ninth-century biography, which states that the saint’s rouennais relics were disturbed in 841/42 by a Viking attack on near-by Jumièges, not that they were removed from the city; see Vita Audoeni episcopi Rotomagensis, ed. Wilhelm Levison (MGH SRM 5; Hanover: Hahn, 1910), pp. 536–567, at p. 549. The disturbing of Audoenus’ relics in 841/42 is also noted in an eleventh-century translatio Audoeni immediately before the description of the actual transfer of the relics in the 870s; however, that text merely juxtaposes the two events, which are not connected causally. The eleventh-century author uses “tunc” (“then” as in “next”) to move from the 841/42 attack to the later translation, instead of an indicator such as eo tempore (“at that time”): “[Northmanni] gentili rabies furentes uastauerunt rothomagum et seccenderet monasterium ipsius idibus mai anno dominice incarnationis octingentesimo quadragesimo secundo, regnante Karolo rege Francorum. Tunc a Riculfo rothomagensi archiepiscopo et ab episcopis et abbatibus totius regni sacratissimum corpus eleuatur, et totum ex integro sine aliqua sui diminutione cum digno honore in feretro auro gemmisque precioso collocatur. Inde etiam ob metum infandorum gentilium a monachis Wadiniacum deportatur, ubi aliquot annis miraculis choruscantibus requieuit” (Translationes Audoeni [BHL 756 and 757], eds. Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, 5 vols. (Paris: Florentin Delaulne et al., 1717), vol. 3, соll. 1669–1682, and ed. Guilelmus Cuperus, AASS August 4: 820–847). The narratives are cited here from the only manuscript witnesses, Rouen BM 1406 (Y.41) fol. 221v (an eleventh-century manuscript from St. Ouen of Rouen) and Rouen BM 1411 (U.64) fol. 97r (a thirteenth-century manuscript from St. Ouen of Rouen). The author of the translationes used an 872 charter of Riculfus, archbishop of Rouen and abbot of St. Ouen, according to which the prelate made provisions for the support of Audoenus’ exiled relics at Gasny; those relics were back at Rouen by 876, according to a charter of Charles the Bald. For the charters, see Philippe Lauer, “Les translations des reliques de Saint Ouen et de Saint Leufroy du IXe au Xe siècle et les deux abbayes de la CroixSaint-Ouen,” Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1921): 119–136, at 130–131, and Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve, ed. Georges Tessier (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1943–1955), no. 407, рр. 406–411. For discussion of further evidence concerning the relics of Audoenus, see Lifshitz, “‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered” and, for the transfers of the other saints present at Gasny in 872 (Nigasius and his companions), see Felice Lifshitz, “The Politics of Historiography: The Memory of Bishops in Eleventh-Century Rouen,” History and Memory 10 (1998): 118–137 [now Chapter 7 in this collection]. 17 Dudo, De moribus, p. 170. This is one of only two uses of dominical years in his entire massive narrative. For detailed discussion of the date of Rollo’s arrival, see Lifshitz, “La Normandie Carolingienne”.

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in the Mérey, and the claim by the author of the translatio Audoeni (BHL 756) that the people of Rouen requested and received the relics of Audoenus back from the Franks in 918. I would, however, construct the connection between the two events somewhat differently than does Lauer.18 According to the 918 charter, King Charles felt it was his duty to look after the relics of exiled saints that were not receiving the veneration due to them. King Charles was concerned about a minor monastery such as La Croix being able to render due respect to one of the greatest saints of Frankish Gaul, namely Audoenus of Rouen, whose principal relics had apparently been brought to La Croix some time during the previous few decades to join the lesser remains that had been at the monastery since the late seventh century, when the house had been founded in Audoenus’ honor.19 The solution to King Charles’ dilemma is recorded in the charter: on the suggestion of marquis Robert, abbot of St.-Germain-des Prés, King Charles placed the house of La Croix and all its properties (at least, those which had not fallen to Rollo) under the control of St.-Germain, a house that was clearly up to the task of assuring the proper veneration for Audoenus. The community of St. Germain could easily, at that moment, have taken Audoenus’ relics to Paris and established them there for good. The royal authority of Charles the Simple had given monks of the Ile-de-France control over a primary treasure of rouennais heritage. The claim by the eleventh-century author of the translatio Audoeni (BHL 756) that the people of Rouen went to the king of the Franks in 918 and persuaded him to cede control of the relics to them is, against such a background, entirely plausible. It was the threat of the permanent loss of 18 Lauer, “Les translations des reliques,” pp. 119–136; for the charter, see Recueil des actes de Charles III le Simple, roi de France, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1940), no. 92, pp. 209–212. While Lauer’s scenario is unnecessarily complicated, a more recent simplifying attempt to deny completely that the relics of Audoenus returned to Rouen in 918 falters in its failure to provide any alternative hypothesis for the return of the treasure, at the time the most important relics claimed by the town of Rouen; see Olivier Guillot, “La conversion des Normands peu après 911. Des reflets contemporains à l’historiographie ultérieur (Xe–XIe siècles),” Cahiers de civilization médiévale 24 (1981): 101–116 and 181–219. 19 The relics of Leutfredus (founder of La Croix) and of his brother Agofredus had never been any place other than La Croix, so they could neither be covered by the category of exiled saints, nor would the level of veneration available to them at La Croix have seemed inappropriate in any case. Lauer is again complicating things unnecessarily by conjecturing that Leutfredus’ relics had been transferred out of (what would later be called) Normandy to an unnamed spot in 851 (“Les translations des reliques,” pp. 132–133). BHL 4900, a brief narration, describes how the bodies of Leutfredus and Agofredus were temporarily hidden for fear of the “Marcomanni” until, on June 21, 851, the bishop of Evreux dug up the bodies and placed them in the church (Translatio Leutfredi [BHL 4900] ed. Wilhelm Levison [MGH SRM 7; Hanover: Hahn, 1920], p. 18). Leutfredus then appears in Usuard’s 865 Martyrology under June 21, with his relics still located in pago Madriacensi (Le Martyrologe d’Usuard: Texte et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965), р. 251). If BHL 4900 really commemorated an 851 translation out of the future Normandy, why would the author bother to record the translation in minute detail down to the dominical year, calendar day, regnal year, and indiction, and not say where the bodies had been taken?

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Audoenus’ relics, occasioned by King Charles’ placement of La Croix under the authority of St.-Germain-des-Prés, that would have prompted the inhabitants of Rouen to petition King Charles for the relics. Only the vigorous action of the inhabitants of the Viking-ruled principality could prevent Neustrian relics from slipping away into acquisitive Frankish treasuries.20 Another version of the return of Audoenus’ relics to Rouen emphasizes the role of Rollo in convincing the king of the Franks to disgorge the relics, even underlining the need for Rollo to threaten King Charles with war if the king failed to surrender the treasure.21 Had Audoenus’ relics been lost on a permanent basis to the populace of Vikingruled Rouen, the responsibility for that loss would not have fallen on the shoulders of Rollo and his followers: only Carolingian royal policy, or the policy of the community of monks of St.-Germain-des-Prés, could have prevented the return of the relics to Rouen. On this occasion, Charles the Simple permitted the Neustrian relics to return to the territory under Viking control because, according to Robert of Torigni, he did not wish to offend Rollo.22 Such a conciliatory spirit did not, however, last very long. Indeed, according to the eleventh-century translatio of Audoenus, during the 950s an unsuccessful attempt to steal those very relics and remove them once more from Viking control was made by two Frankish monks.23 Furthermore, despite the Frankish failure to retain control of Audoenus’ relics in 918, and the reported failure of Frankish monks to repossess those relics in the 950s, in the late twelfth century a Parisian historian suddenly claimed possession of the treasured saintly remains. The Continuator of Aimoin of Fleury’s royalist history of the kings of the Franks, writing at St.-Germain-des-Prés around 1165, claimed that the monks of La-Croix-St.-Ouen in the Mérey had fled to St.-Germain

20 The 918 date for the return of Audoenus’ relics has been accepted by Fauroux, Recueil, p. 20 and Lucien Musset, “Ce qu’enseigne l’histoire d’un patrimoine monastique: Saint-Ouen de Rouen du XIe au XIe siècle,” in Aspects de la société et de l’économie dans la Normandie médiévale (Xe–XIIIe siècles), eds. Lucien Musset, Jean-Michel Bouvris, and Véronique Gazeau (Caen: Centre d’Études Normandes, 1988), pp. 114–129, at p. 120. The only obstacle to my suggestion is that, according to BHL 756, the relics would have arrived back at Rouen on February 1, 918. For discussions of the dated charter embedded in the narrative see Marjorie Chibnall, “Charter and Chronicle: the use of archive sources by Norman historians,” in Church and Government in the Middle Ages, eds. Christopher N.L. Brooke, David Luscombe, Geoffrey Martin, and Dorothy Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 1–17 at p. 7, whereas Charles the Simple’s charter concerning La Croix was given on March 14, 918. Since the charter in the eleventh-century account is not itself authentic, however, the specific date of February 1 can probably be dismissed, along with falsified points such as the immunity clause, as inventions of later authors. 21 Robert of Torigni, “Additamenta,” in The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elizabeth M.C. Van Houts, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), vol. 2, pp. 201–203. 22 See note 21. 23 Translatio Audoeni (BHL 757), in Rouen BM 1406 (Y.41) fol. 212r and Rouen BM 1411 (U.64) fol. 97v. Whether or not this attempted theft “actually” took place, it is significant that the author considered monks coming to Normandy from Francia to steal Neustrian relics during the 950s a plausible theme.

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before a threatening Viking horde, bringing all of their relics, including those of Audoenus, with them.24 With Audoenus’ relics we see in microcosm the variegated thematic, which ought to replace the monochromatic scenario of a terror-induced “exodus of holy bodies” out of Viking-occupied Neustria in the historiography of the later Carolingian Empire: royal intervention, outright theft, and mendacious claims to possession embedded in royalist propagandistic contexts. Thefts of relics from the diocese of Rouen had begun as early as the 840s, before the Vikings even became a major presence in the Seine valley. Consider the translation of the relics of bishops Gildardus, Romanus, and Remigius of Rouen to St. Medard of Soissons between 843 and 847 (BHL 3450).25 Charles the Bald had commanded monks of St. Medard to bring Gildardus’ relics from Rouen to his favored monastery at Soissons, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Viking disruptions. However, the citizens of Rouen, struggling to oppose the will of those seeking the relics (since they were unable to sustain so great a loss to their whole province without either great injury or even civil sedition), all came out into the open and almost reached the point of war. But the oft-mentioned monks, animated more by the love and election of God, and strengthened by royal power, disregarding the threats of those trying to frighten them, bravely and ruthlessly pursued the task which had torn them away from their own place. Indeed, the leaders of that region were unable to oppose them, for they were terrified lest the royal force be turned upon them with grave fury and the whole region be thus devastated. Unwillingly they acquiesced, but not without the greatest melancholy.26 The inhabitants of Rouen were coerced to disgorge their relics by the royal authority of Charles the Bald, who wished to reward a favored monastic house. This amounts to a theft; however, because nothing sanctioned by “public” authority can, technically, be illegal, we might call it instead a “coerced translation.” The fate to which Gildardus, Romanus, and Remigius had been forced to submit, the same fate that Audoenus would so narrowly escape in 918, overtook 24 Aimoin, Libri quinque de gestis Francorum, ed. Jacques du Breul (Paris: Ambroise et Jérôme Druart, 1603), Book V, chap. 4, p. 348. 25 “Vita Sancti Gildardi,” ed. Poncelet, pp. 402–405. For the date of composition and authorship of the translation account, see Lifshitz, “The ‘Exodus of Holy Bodies’ Reconsidered.” 26 “Tandem contraire nitentes uoluntati querentium, quia damnum ingens totius prouincie sue nequirent sustinere, uel sine grandi injuria, seu etiam sine ciuili seditione, ciues loci illius se omnimodo fatentes, pene ad bella commorebantur. Sepedicti uero monachi, plus dei amore et predestinatione animati, et regia potestate roborati, minis terrentium postpositis, accerime ac inportune insistebant operi, quo de loco suo fuerant auisi. Primoribus siquidem regionis illius contradicere non ualentibus, nam territi fuerant, ne cum graui impetu regia super eos manus inferretur, ac sic omnis illa regio deuastaretur, non sine maxima mestitia, inuiti adquieuerunt.”

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another major Neustrian figure, St. Marculfus of Nanteuil, in 906. The transfer of the relics of Marculfus to Corbény was accomplished by a charter of Charles the Simple (the foundation charter for Corbény), a text now preserved only in the twelfth-century cartulary of St. Remi, but one which Lauer believed to go back to a lost original of 906.27 The 906 charter is, more than anything, a witness to the mildness of Viking-era disruptions in Neustria. According to Charles’ charter for Corbény, the monks of Nanteuil had come to the royal villa at Corbény in 906 ob nimiam atque diutinam paganorum infestationem, yet had then almost immediately begun to return home to the Cotentin. King Charles, however, refused to permit them to depart, desiring to keep Marculfus in Francia, and so he founded a priory around the “refugee” relics.28 The definitive factor in the preceding examples of the loss of Neustrian relics by their original possessors was royal coercive power, not fear of the Vikings. Furthermore, at least in the case of Marculfus, clear ideological advantages accrued to Frankish royalty as a result of the forced acquisition. Corbény, the priory of St. Remi of Reims where Marculfus’ relics were said to have been brought from the Cotentin, became an integral part of the Frankish royal coronation ordo. It was the relics of Marculfus that conferred on the French kings, who made a pilgrimage to Corbény after their consecration, the ability to cure scrofula by means of the royal touch.29 If the simplified Viking-induced exodus scenario were correct, transfers of Neustrian relics out of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen would have come to a halt as the tenth century progressed, and as the Vikings themselves became pacified. Yet that is not the case. We have already seen that an attempt may have been made by some Franks to steal the relics of Audoenus from Rouen in the 950s. This eleventh-century assertion is not implausible given the temper of the times. Various Frankish armies spent much of the middle of the tenth century attempting to despoil Richard I, grandson of the Viking Rollo, of his inheritance, and to reclaim

27 Reims, Archives départementales de la Marne, H 1411 (Cartulaire B de Saint-Remi) p. 109/fol. 56; Recueil des actes de Charles III, ed. Lauer, no. 53, pp. 114–116. For the flight of the monks of Nanteuil, see Walther Vogel, Die Normannen und das fränkische Reich bis zur Gründung der Normandie, 799–911 (Aalen: Scientia, 1973), p. 387 and Musset, “L’exode des reliques,” p. 4. 28 Charles goes on to recognize that one cannot simply insist upon keeping relics that belong to another locale without proper license; therefore he asserts that the archbishop of Rouen, the bishop of Coutances, and the other bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen had all agreed in council that Corbény might continue to shelter the Cotentin relics, to which effect they have sent him written documentation. As a result, the priory of Corbény can feel secure in its possession of Marculfus. If the charter is a later forgery and relics of Marculfus were not brought to Corbény in 906, we might look for their removal around 940, when Gerard of Brogne, a major thief of Norman relics, was in control of St. Remi of Reims. For Gerard’s greatest coup, the seizure of the relic treasures of Fontenelle, see p. 219; for his activity at Corbény, see Chronique ou Livre de fondation du monastère de Mouzon, ed. and trans. Michel Bur (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1989), pp. 56, 135, and 161–163. 29 Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastiques, 32 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1912 -) vol. 13, coll. 808–809, s.v. Corbény; Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols. (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1980–1998), vol. 3, coll. 222–223, s.v. Corbény.

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Neustria for Francia. When Rollo’s son, William Longsword, was assassinated by henchmen of Count Arnulf of Flanders in 942, every single northern Frankish prince, including the various royal ones, began to descend in regular waves upon the orphaned Richard’s territories; he himself was even kidnapped at one point by King Louis IV. It was not until 965 that the borders of the Viking principality were closed to Frankish and Flemish adventurers.30 Normandy was a war zone during the decades when the following transfers took place. Several saints of Sées, namely Ebrulfus, Ansbertus, and Evremundus, were the victims of a kidnapping from the abbey of Ouche, such that they eventually ended up in the possession of the abbey of Rebais, in Brie. Two different versions of the theft narrative are known, one composed in the eleventh century at Rebais, the other composed in the twelfth century in Normandy, by Orderic Vitalis.31 The two versions disagree on the date of the theft; the Rebais tradition puts it under a King Robert (either 922–923 or 996–1006), while Orderic dates it to 944, in the aftermath of William Longsword’s assassination. What matters for us is that both narratives are in accordance in placing the “blame” squarely on a rich inhabitant of the Soissonais who took advantage of his presence in Normandy as part of an invading, aggressive Frankish army (whether of King Robert or of Hugh the Great) to steal the relics and donate them to Rebais. Yet another of the mid-tenth-century thefts was perpetrated by a prince not technically possessed of royal status, but rather (in this case) by a scion of the Carolingian house who seems to have been aspiring to such status. Arnulf of Flanders was the grandson of Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, and the son of Aelfthryth, daughter of Alfred of Wessex. He combined the ambitiousness of the Carolingian and Wessex dynasties with the acute sense of historiographic manipulation common to the two royal houses. Aelfthryth already must have had big plans for her son when she named him Arnulf, recalling the founder of the dynasty usually called “Carolingian.” Arnulf of Flanders used Carolingian models in innumerable ways in his battles for prominence in the tenth century.32 One thing he needed to pursue his ambitions was to get Duke William of Normandy, Rollo’s son, out of the way; this he accomplished in 942/943 when he had William assassinated. The other thing he needed was a relic base that could serve both as a source of miraculous virtus and as a symbol of identity for a political community.33 30 Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative,” Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 79–90; Dudo, De moribus, p. 221 ff.; Philippe Lauer, Le règne de Louis IV d’Outremer (Paris: Bouillon, 1900), pp. 187–243. 31 Translatio Ebrulfi et Ansberti Resbacum (BHL 2379), ed. Jean Mabillon, in Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti in Saeculorum Classes Distributa, eds. Luc d’Achéry et al. (Paris: Robustel, 1672–1701), Saeculum V, pp. 226–227; OV 3.314–331 (BHL 2375). 32 Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 71–73. 33 The classic statements of the dynamics of the manipulation of relic collections as a method of achieving political power remain Heinzelmann, Translationsberichte (passim and esp. pp. 24–37)

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In 944, Arnulf acquired a major relic base: the remains of saints Wandregiselus and Ansbertus from St. Wandrille de Fontenelle. The monks of Fontenelle seem, without a doubt, to have fled from their monastery in the diocese of Rouen, bearing their relics with them, as a result of perceived threats from “pagan” Vikings. After a remarkable series of peregrinations, the relic-bearing refugee community of Fontenelle settled at Boulogne in approximately 885.34 Yet these relics, like those of Audoenus, might well have returned to Normandy had it not been for the anti-Norman aggression of Arnulf and the Flemings, engaged in a war against Normandy, for in 944 the Fontenelle relics were wrested by Arnulf and his collaborator, Gerard of Brogne, from the people of Thérouanne and forcibly brought to Flanders.35 Arnulf must have been drawn to Wandregiselus as to a magnet: the saint was sometimes asserted, almost certainly falsely, to have been himself a member of the Carolingian family,36 and by 952/954 Arnulf was claiming Wandregiselus among his own ancestors.37 Arnulf not only acquired new saintly weapons for himself and his cause; he forestalled any possibility that the patronage of

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and Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). The group travelled, beginning in 858, to Amiens, Étaples, Outreau, and Boulogne-sur-Mer, before returning to Fontenelle in 861; then, in 865, they made another round-trip through Austrasia, stopping at St.-Riquier, Outreau, and Étaples, returning to Fontenelle in 869; in 875 they went to stay for a while at Blagny-sur-Ternoise, but returned again to Fontenelle in 882; in 885, on the point of giving up on Austrasia, they instead turned south to Chartres, before their final move to Boulogne. The itinerary described here follows the findings of the most recent work on the subject: Jean Fournée, “Quelques facteurs de fixation et de diffusion du culte populaire des saints: Exemples Normands,” Bulletin Philologique et Historique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1982–1984 (Paris, 1986): 119–134, at 123–124. Earlier important studies include Hans Van Werveke, “Saint-Wandrille et Saint-Pierre de Gand (IXe et Xe siècles),” in Miscellanea Mediaevalia in memoriam Jan Frederick Niermeyer, eds. Dirk P. Blok et al. (Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1967), pp. 79–92 and Ferdinand Lot, Études critiques sur l’abbaye de Saint-Wandrille (Paris: Champion, 1913). The Flemish account of the 944 seizure of the relics as we now possess it was written around 1117, but reproduces in part an account of the translation composed soon after the events by a monk of Ghent who had taken part in the triumphal procession of the relics from Boulogne; see Une translation de reliques à Gand en 944: Sermo de adventu sanctorum Wandregiseli, Ansberti et Uulframni in Blandinium, ed. Nicholas N. Huyghebaert (Brussels: Commission Royale d’Histoire, 1978) [BHL 8810], pp. xxxvi–xliii, lxxxii–lxxxviii, and cvii. The nucleus of the sermo asserts that the Fontenelle relics were taken from Boulogne through aggressive action and against the will of the bishop and people of Thérouanne (paragraphs 24–27). Also see Van Werveke, “Saint-Wandrille et Saint-Pierre,” p. 81. Gesta abbatum Fontenellensium, eds. Fernand Lohier and Jean Laporte (Rouen and Paris: Société de l’histoire de Normandie, 1936) I.2 and Vita Wandregiseli (BHL 8805) I.1, ed. Petrus Boschius (AASS July 5: 272–281, at 272). For the most recent discussion of the dates of composition (or compilation) and authorial purposes of these two ninth-century narratives, see Ian Wood, “SaintWandrille and its Hagiography,” in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to John Taylor, eds. Ian Wood and Graham A. Loud (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 1–14. Witger of St. Bertin, Genealogiae comitum Flandrensium, ed. Ludwig C. Bethmann (MGH SS 9; Hanover: Hahn, 1851), pp. 302–304.

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Wandregiselus and Ansbertus might be pressed into Norman service.38 To strip Normandy of its saintly friends in the midst of a war must be understood as a military strategy, designed to increase the Viking principality’s vulnerability.

The migration of Neustrian relics in the Viking Age: evolution of a royalist “topos” The cessation of Frankish and Flemish aggression against Normandy, or rather the effective closing of the borders of the duchy to potential Frankish and Flemish aggressors in the latter part of the tenth century, seems to have put an end to the phase of translations in which the ruling elites, up to the level of Carolingian kings, played a decisive role in the quasi-public, quasi-official transfer of saintly treasures. There is some indication, however, that the theft of desirable Neustrian relics from the Viking principality continued on a less formal level up to the end of the tenth century. If we can believe Hariulf of St. Riquier, writing just before 1088, a cleric of Bayeux who was distressed by the lack of appreciation displayed locally for the valuable Neustrian heritage of the Bessin, surreptitiously removed the relics of St. Vigor of Bayeux to Ponthieu, where they were genuinely valued, in approximately 981. But there is the rub: can we believe Hariulf?39 We have already seen that a late-twelfth-century Capetian royalist historian of St.-Germain-des-Prés falsely claimed possession of relics of Audoenus. Aimoin’s Continuator and Hariulf are not the only late-eleventh- and twelfth-century historians to claim possession of the Neustrian relics of Normandy. In some cases, such as that of Hariulf, no earlier evidence either supports or disproves the claim, which comes out of nowhere in the late eleventh century; more importantly, the church

38 For a thorough discussion of the later controversy concerning whether the body of St. Vulframnus had also been removed from Fontenelle along with those of Wandregiselus and Ansbertus, or had remained continuously in Normandy, see Elizabeth М.С. Van Houts, “Historiography and Hagiography at St. Wandrille: The ‘Inventio et Miracula Sancti Vulframni,’” Anglo-Norman Studies 12 (1990): 233–251. 39 Hariulf, “Adventus beatissimi Vigoris episcopi a Neustria in Pontivum” and “Assertio de sancto Vigore,” in Chronique de l’abbaye de St Riquier, ed. Ferdinand Lot (Paris: Picard, 1894), pp. 162–166 and 186–188. The composition of Vigor’s own biography (“Vita Sancti Vigoris” [BHL 8609 and 8611–8613], ed. Carolus De Smedt, AASS November 1: 297–305) has been dated over the past few centuries to anywhere between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, with the two most recent contributions to the debate advocating the late eleventh century and the late eighth or ninth centuries, respectively (John Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor of Bayeux,” AB 102 (1984): 303–312 and Nancy Gauthier, “Quelques hypothèses sur la redaction des vies des saints évêques de Normandie,” in Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes. Miscellanea in onore di Victor Saxer [Studi di Antichità Christiana 48; Vatican City, 1992], pp. 449–468, at p. 455). Howe’s arguments seem well founded in principle; however, it is equally plausible that the biography was composed at St. Riquier (or elsewhere) as at Cerisy-le-Forêt. In any case, neither the various versions of the vita Vigoris nor the scholarship on the question offers any help in resolving the main question at issue here, namely how and when and, indeed, whether relics of Vigor were taken out of the province of Rouen.

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of Bayeux never riposted in any way. In other cases, such as that of Audoenus, the claims of extra-Norman institutions to possession of Neustrian relics were disputed by intra-Norman institutions. It may well be that, by the later eleventh century, the idea of the removal of Neustrian relics from the ecclesiastical province of Rouen during the ninth and tenth centuries had become such a plausible topos, that this plausibility permitted false claims to possession of similar treasures to be made even by those who had not been lucky enough to acquire relics either through royal favor or through pillaging opportunities before the dukes of an independent Normandy put a stop to such activities. The utilization of this topos would then have contributed substantially to twelfth-century and later mythologized visions, such as that of Orderic Vitalis, of an “exodus of holy bodies” out of the province of Rouen.40 Two cases are particularly relevant here: the relics of the houses of Jumièges and of Fécamp.41 There is already fairly extensive literature on the enigma of the principal Jumièges relics that were claimed from the middle of the eleventh century, both by Jumièges itself and by the priory of St. Vaast of Arras at Haspres in the Cambrésis.42 The only full-scale discussions devoted to the issue of the supposed relic translations to Haspres are highly equivocal: neither Van der Straeten nor Laporte considered the late Picard claims to be fully cogent, yet both concluded (albeit reluctantly) that some sort of exodus of clerics and relics out of Jumièges must have taken place, in order, for instance, to explain the presence of a cult to the

40 The psychological dynamic has here already been made explicit by Marjorie Chibnall, who singled out Orderic’s visit to Haspres, where he was told the (possibly completely false) story of the Viking-induced flight of the relics of Jumièges, as among the most formative experiences of that historian’s entire life (OV 1.13–20). 41 It is not possible here to detail the complex and extensive evidence for continuity across the late Carolingian and early Viking periods at Jumièges and Fécamp, evidence which renders much more plausible the Jumièges and fécampois sides of the disputes discussed below. For references concerning the issue of continuity, see above note 5, to which should be added here a study particularly relevant to Jumièges, showing that the properties held by the abbey remained absolutely intact throughout the ninth and tenth centuries: Lucien Musset, “Les destinées de la propriété monastique durant les invasions normandes (IXe–XIe siècles). L’exemple de Jumièges,” in Jumièges. Congrès scientifique du XIIIe centenaire (Rouen, 1954), ed. René-Jean Hesbert, 2 vols. (Rouen: Lecerf, 1955), vol. 1, pp. 49–55. 42 The mid-eleventh-century Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium claims that the Jumièges relics of saints Aichardus and Hugo had been brought to Haspres by refugee monks in the time of the extremely destructive Rollo. Haspres was, at the time, a priory of Jumièges, but authority over the priory is said to have been transferred to the nearby house of St. Vaast in an attempt to curb the obscene behaviors of the wild monks resident in the priory; the house of Jumièges was compensated for the loss by the acquisition of Angicourt. The exchange of the properties is commemorated both by the Cambrai gesta and by contemporary charter evidence, though only the gesta mentions the relics. See Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium II.29 (PL 139: 134–135) and Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges (824–1204) conservés aux archives de Seine-Inférieur, ed. Jules Joseph Vernier (Rouen: A. Lesteringant, 1916), pp. 24–26. The claim that the Jumièges relics were in fact moved to Haspres has been most recently endorsed by Elizabeth M.C. Van Houts (Gesta Normannorum Ducum, vol. 1, p. xxiii).

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saints of Jumièges (Aichardus and Hugo) in Picardy.43 Yet the presence of relics and cults of Jumièges saints at Haspres or elsewhere in the Cambrésis is easily explicable through the constant connections which had existed between Jumièges and that region from the beginning of the eighth century.44 It is certainly not impossible that Jumièges relics were in the control of the abbey of St. Vaast of Arras in the eleventh century. Yet any explanation for the Picard possession of Neustrian relics originally pertaining to the ecclesiastical province of Rouen can be no more than the result of more or less informed, more or less prejudiced conjectures on the part of eleventh-century and later historians. There is no direct ninth- or tenth-century evidence concerning the relics of Aichardus and Hugo.45 The mid-eleventh-century author of the Cambrai gesta attributed St. Vaast of Arras’ purported possession of relics of Aichardus and Hugo to a Vikinginduced exodus of clerics from Jumièges almost two centuries earlier. Would it not be equally plausible to suggest that, if St. Vaast of Arras controlled Jumièges relics, the acquisition might have been made in 954 when, in his capacity as lay abbot of St. Vaast, Count Arnulf of Flanders (still at war with the Norman Prince Richard) and Gerard of Brogne were engaged in the project to reform St. Vaast and Jumièges? And what of the explanation of a fourteenth-century historian, who emphasized the ways in which relic translations were sometimes hostile takeovers tantamount to theft, when he explained that relics of Aichardus and Hugo were present in the Cambrésis because the prior of Haspres and the bishop of Cambrai had successfully persuaded the emperor to forbid the return of the relics to the Viking principality when the Normans tried to take the relics back to Jumièges?46 The case of the relics of Fécamp, unlike those of Jumièges, is one that has not yet attracted much scholarly attention. In the twelfth century, a monk of the Burgundian monastery of Gigny began claiming possession of the relics of three évreçin saints, Aquilinus, Taurinus, and Florentia, asserting that those relics had been saved from the Norman “dogs” and “pigs” during the attacks of Rollo and brought to Lezoux (Puy-de-Dôme) then to Gigny.47 Meanwhile, the Norman monastery of 43 Joseph Van Der Straeten, “La vie inédite de S. Hughes, évêque de Rouen,” AB 87 (1969): 232–260; Jean Laporte, “La date de l’exode de Jumièges,” in Jumièges, ed. Hesbert, vol. 1, pp. 47–48. 44 C. Vion and P. Hassein, “Les témoins liturgiques du culte de saint Aychadre,” in Jumièges, ed. Hesbert, vol. 1, pp. 365–370; P. Logie, “Jumièges et St. Riquier,” in Jumièges, ed. Hesbert, vol. 1, pp. 199–207; Jean Laporte, “Étude chronologique sur les listes abbatiales de Saint Riquier,” Revue Mabillon 49 (1959): 101–136, at 107; Hariulf, Chronique de Saint Riquier, ed. Lot, p. 43. 45 The only relevant evidence is the remark by the author of the late-ninth-century vita Aichardi (BHL 181) that the relics of Aichardus and Hugo were still buried and causing miracles at Jumièges (Vita Suspecta, ed. Joannes Perierus, AASS September 5: 85–100, at 98). 46 Jacques de Guise, Annales historiae illustrium principum Hannoniae, ed. Ernst Sackur (MGH SS 30/1; Hanover: Hahn, 1896), pp. 44–334, at pp. 169–170. 47 Paris BN nal 2261, a twelfth-century manuscript from Cluny, contains an interpolated version of Taurinus’ tenth-century inventio, adding a short notice on the necessity of bringing the saint’s relics to Lezoux, as well as a full account of the translation to Lezoux and on to Gigny (“Historia inventionis primae” [BHL 7992] and “Historia translationis eius” [BHL 7995], ed. Petrus Boschius, AASS August 2: 643–650). In a variation on the coercion theme, this author has said that the relics

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Fécamp also claimed to have the relics of Aquilinus and Taurinus.48 Yet the claims of Gigny have been accepted by scholars, against the claims of Fécamp, precisely on the basis that a massive exodus of relics is known to have taken place out of late-Carolingian Neustria and early-Viking Normandy due to fear of the Vikings.49 Not only is there no good reason to accept the claims of the twelfth-century monk of Gigny, there is very good reason to be suspicious of those claims. The state of war between the Norman dukes and the Frankish kings (as well as other continental princes) may have temporarily subsided in the late tenth century, but the state of hostility did not disappear. Furthermore, that hostility had been, by the middle of the eleventh century, transmuted into a more lasting and virulent strain of belligerence: the one that pitted Norman dukes and Anglo-Norman kings against the Capetian kings of “France.” Was it not, after all, one of the foremost Capetian royalist historians who falsely claimed relics of Audoenus in the twelfth century? The portrait of the Norman Conquest of Neustria drawn by the anonymous twelfth-century monk of Gigny is one of unmitigated cruelty and savagery. Meanwhile, the putative relics of Aquilinus, Taurinus, and Florentia in Burgundy, like those of Marculfus at Corbény discussed above, were regularly paraded around their new homes during the twelfth century.50 From the Capetian royalist point of view, any negative publicity surrounding the Norman predecessors of the Angevin rulers of England would have had undoubted ideological merit and appeal. And the “exodus of holy bodies” scenario is charged with negative implications for the rulers of the Viking principality. Through the pilgrimage to Corbény connected with the royal coronation ordo, Marculfus was used in Francia-France to keep alive a vision of the Normans as a menace, and of Francia-France as a safe haven.51 Relics of Serenicus of

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themselves refuse to return home to Evreux when their previous owners come, only a short time after the translation, to get them back again. Fécamp may have been endowed with control of the principal relics of St. Taurin of Evreux, as a reward from its consistent benefactors, the Norman dukes, as early as the tenth century (OV 3.47; Sermo de sancto Taurino, in Paris BN lat. 1805 folios 46rv, a tenth-century manuscript from Fécamp). In any case, Fécamp was a major center of diffusion of the cults of both Aquilinus and Taurinus. The story of Aquilinus (BHL 655) that was read aloud at table in the monastery of Fécamp during the twelfth century has been preserved in the parvum passionarium of Fécamp (Paris BN lat. 5296, folios 102r–103r), and is identical to the story in the twelfth-century Burgundian manuscript from Cluny (less a series of moralizing diatribes) Paris BN nal 2261 folios 149r–150v (“Vita Sancti Aquilini episcopi Ebroicensis,” ed. Benjaminus Bossue, AASS October 8: 505–510). It is unlikely that the monks of Fécamp had left their évreçin relics in obscurity for well over a century then heard of a biography of Aquilinus being circulated in Burgundian circles and rushed to insert excerpts from that biography into their most important volume of readings. Benjaminus Bossue, “Commentarius Praevius,” AASS October 8: 489–505, at 504–505; Petrus Boschius, “Commentarius Praevius,” AASS August 2: 635–639, at 636. BHL 7996 describes the circumvectio of the Gigny relics through Burgundy in 1158 (“Circumvectio,” ed. Petrus Boschius, AASS August 2: 650–656). Heinzelmann’s discussion of narrative accounts of relic transfers emphasizes primarily the fact that such accounts seem genuinely intended to convey the specific realities of the concrete historical moment in which the events are set (Translationsberichte, pp. 56–61).

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St.-Cenéri-le-Gérei in Normandy were claimed in the twelfth century by ChâteauThierry, another Capetian stronghold, where those relics were, from the twelfth century, asserted to have been brought due to the destructions of the Vikings during the reign of Charles the Simple.52 The Capetian Philip I, likewise, claimed quite suddenly in 1091 that the royal fortress at Pontoise was the proud owner of the relics of Mallonus, first bishop of the see of Rouen according to most episcopal lists.53 The royal domain at Moussy-le-Neuf in the diocese of Meaux was also the center from which the cults of saints Opportuna of Montreuil-la-Cambe and Chrodegang of Sées were diffused in the Parisian region.54 Relics whose presence in France and absence from Normandy was attributed to Viking depredations were being publicized by the twelfth century from four separate Capetian strongholds: Corbény, Chateau-Thierry, Pontoise, and Moussyle-Neuf. The Ile-de-France was effectively ringed with a cordon sanitaire of powerful Neustrian relic-shrines-in-exile. One has to wonder why Capetian kings would be interested in celebrating the memory of the saints of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen, if not for the purpose of underlining their own current possession of the relics in question. Consider the case of St. Ebrulfus, one of the Neustrian saints whose relics had been stolen during the mid-tenth-century wars between the Franks and the Normans.55 Ebrulfus in his own setting had a long and venerable history; his first biography had been composed within years of his death in 706 by an author who may have known him personally.56 The forest of Ouche where Ebrulfus is said to have spent his active career was presented by the saint’s early biographer as such a pious place in the late seventh century that most of the inhabitants of the region (even ruffians and brigands) had deep religious convictions, at the minimum devoting themselves to supporting Ebrulfus and his ever-growing group of followers, at a maximum becoming most perfect monks themselves. In the Hiémois, Ebrulfus would have stood for the historical piety of the region. Instead, he stood for something entirely different outside Normandy: that the present-day inhabitants of the region were no longer pious enough to deserve him. It may be that the imagery of the “exodus of holy bodies” was, from its very first articulation, bound up with a royalist cause. The specific case of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen should not be isolated from late-Carolingian Francia as 52 Musset, “L’exode des reliques,” p. 12; Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas Blin, Vies des saints du diocèse de Séez et histoire de leur culte, 2 vols. (Laigle: Pascal Montauzé, 1873), vol. 1, pp. 418–433. 53 Benjaminus Bossue, “Commentarius Praevius, AASS October 9: 554–570, at 564. In the twelfth century, Orderic explained the presence of Mallonus’ relics in the royal fortress at Pontoise as a result of flight before the Viking invaders at the end of the ninth century (OV 3.50–51). 54 Musset, “L’exode des reliques,” pp. 10–11; Fournée, “Quelques facteurs de fixation,” pp. 125–126. 55 See p. 218. 56 Vita Ebrulfi (BHL 2374 similis) in OV 1.204–211; Jean Laporte, “Les origines du monachisme dans la province de Rouen,” Revue Mabillon 31 (1941): 1–13, 25–41, and 49–68, at 36; Marjorie Chibnall, “The Merovingian Monastery of St. Evroul in the Light of Conflicting Traditions,” Studies in Church History 8 (1972): 31–40, esp. 33–37.

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a whole. Marc Bloch’s catastrophic scenario of massive ninth- and tenth-century Francia-wide, Viking-induced relic translations depended, as far as we can judge from his own citations, entirely on the assertions of Ermentarius.57 The refugee reliquary that Ermentarius made famous was that of St. Filibertus of Jumièges, who had died and been buried at Noirmoutier in the Vendée. Apparently, the monks of Noirmoutier had been forced by Viking raids to abandon their coastal monastery, and to set up on the mainland, at Déas, in 836. Ermentarius, a monk of Déas (St.-Philibert-de-Grandlieu), appears to have wanted as quickly as possible to escape the Atlantic backwater in which he was living and travel in the glamorous circles of the most powerful men of the Carolingian world. Ermentarius sent to Archchaplain Hilduin an old biography of Filibertus (BHL 6805) and an account (composed by himself) of the many antiViking miracles Filibertus had been working in the Vendée (BHL 6808); in the accompanying letter (BHL 6807), Ermentarius begged Hilduin to bring Filibertus to the attention of the king and promised that, if Hilduin did what Ermentarius wanted, the latter would dedicate to the archchaplain more books about the saint’s anti-Viking activities.58 It was, however, Charles the Bald who fully appreciated the publicity value of taking in saintly refugees. Charles founded a monastery in Burgundy that would stand as a lasting symbol of the need for protection, protection he would provide if everyone would stand behind him, against the Vikings. The foundation of Tournus as a new home for Filibertus took place in 875 at St. Denis, the site of so many of the most ideologically charged moments in Carolingian dynastic history. Like Corbény after it (in 906), Tournus was founded specifically as a refuge for relics fleeing before Vikings, and was endowed lavishly. Charles treated the foundation as a major event: to the foundation charter was attached a gold seal inscribed Karolus res Francorum/Renovatio regni Francorum, and two Byzantine crosses mounted on globes were drawn so as to appear to “support,” like twin pillars, the dating line. The narratio of the charter describes how it is the task of the Christian emperor to provide for servi Dei, especially those paganorum truculentos impetus fugientes.59 The cult of Filibertus, victim of Viking ravages, was publicized energetically from Tournus. A late ninth-century Jumièges historian, author of the first biography of Filibertus’ successor Aichardus, opined that Filibertus was the most famous of all the saints of Neustria.60 Echoes of Ermentarius’ letter and miraclecollections could still be heard in the twelfth century, when they were explicitly 57 Marc Bloch, Feudal Society I: The Growth of Ties of Dependence, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 54–55. 58 “Epistula Ermentarii ad Hilduinum,” ed. Wilhelm Levison (MGH SRM 5; Hanover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1910), pp. 604–605; Ermentarius, Miracula Filiberti, ed. René Poupardin, Monuments de l’histoire des abbayes de Saint-Philibert (Noirmoutier, Grandlieu, Tournus) (Paris: Picard, 1905), pp. 19–58. 59 Lyon, Bibliothèque de la Ville 5403; Georges Tessier, “Diplôme de Charles le Chauve pour St.-Philibert de Tournus (19e mars 875),” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 93 (1932): 197–207. 60 Vita Suspecta Aichardi (BHL 181), ed. Perierus, AASS September 5: 85–100, at 89.

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cited by the Burgundian monk of Gigny to support his claims to the relics of Evreux,61 and in the twentieth, when they served as the sole witness to massive Viking destructiveness for Marc Bloch. Like Ebrulfus in his new home at Rebais, Filibertus could no longer stand historically for the piety of the communities he had ruled in Neustria; Filibertus at Tournus, in his new context, was transformed into a monument of the depredations of the Viking Normans. Neither Ebrulfus nor Filibertus has been “translated” since.

61 BHL 7992 chapter 5 (see note 47).

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11 APOSTOLICITY THESES IN GAUL The Histories of Gregory and the “hagiography” of Bayeux

Introduction1 From before the French revolution until the First World War, one of the most heated debates in European historiography concerned the dates of foundation of the episcopal sees of France.2 The point that engendered the greatest controversy was the claim, made by a number of dioceses, to have been founded either by apostles who surrounded Jesus himself, or by direct or indirect disciples of those apostles, most notably under the direction of Pope Clement I at the end of the first century. It was assumed by nearly all parties to the debate: first, that the apostolic or Clementine “legends” had been originally produced and promoted by the very churches whose foundation dates were in question; and second, that the purpose of the “legends” had been either to bring those communities greater prestige on the basis of antiquity of foundation, or merely to flatter local vanity.3 Local prestige, as a social asset believed to result from ancient foundation, was indeed a major motivating factor for the discussants of the apostolicity theses during the nineteenth century. The most impassioned defenders of the theses of apostolic foundation tended to be parishioners if not clerics attached to the churches in

1 A shorter version of this chapter was presented at the International Medieval Congress (Leeds, 1994) under the title “The Transition from Paganism to Christianity in Gaul: The Clementine Thesis from the History of Gregory of Tours to the Ghetto of Hagiography;” a longer version of this chapter was presented at the Université François Rabelais de Tours in April, 1995, under the title “Les débuts du christianisme en Gaule: tradition et histoire.” I would like to thank Nancy Gauthier, Linda Jones Hall, and Ian Wood for suggestions which have substantially improved the final draft of this chapter. 2 Albert Houtin, La controverse de l’apostolicité des églises de France au XIXe siècle (Rev. ed. 3; Paris: Picard, 1903). 3 “Fraudes pieuses,” “légendes flatteuses,” “glorieuses traditions” designed to impart “un caractère plus auguste” to the foundation of the episcopal sees of Gaul are some of the oft-repeated phrases used in connection with Gallic apostolicity theses (Houtin, Controverse, pp. 5–9). So as to avoid implicitly authorizing such views in spite of the explicit arguments of this paper, I deliberately prefer the term “theses” to “legends.”

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question. The scholarly volumes that resulted from their endeavors were always published by a local publishing house, often at church expense, and were thereafter locally distributed.4 However, the importance of a “prestige factor” depends upon the widespread existence of a particular (reverential) attitude towards “Antiquity,” something which cannot be assumed to have been continuously operative throughout European history just because it was a feature of (for instance) nineteenth-century consciousness.5 However, there is often little evidence to link the apostolicity theses of Gaul positively to the churches and localities in question until after those theses are known to have already been in circulation; nevertheless, such a connection has been a universal premise of the discussion.6 This chapter addresses some of the assumptions which have structured scholarly treatments of apostolicity claims in Gaul, using the apostolic saints of Bayeux to provide concrete examples. Two themes will be treated at length: first, the differential strategies of reading which have been applied, on the one hand, to Gregory of Tours and, on the other hand, to almost every other (normally anonymous) medieval author; second, the tendency to connect anonymous narratives primarily with the location described therein. My interest is not to determine the truth or falsity of the apostolic theses of Gaul; rather, it is to discuss them from a historiographical perspective.7

Reading and re-reading Gregory of Tours The currently reigning standard story of Christianization in Gaul holds that all apostolicity theses are “false” and Gregory of Tours is the responsible scholar’s best guide. 4 For example, the Abbé Eugène Séris Do (honorary canon of Bayeux, chaplain of the Visitation of Caen and member of the Société des Antiquaires de Normandie) was the great defender of the apostolic-foundation thesis of Bayeux. His Origines chrétiennes du pays-Bessin. Recherches historiques et critiques sur Saint Regnobert, second évêque de Bayeux (Caen: Le Gost-Clérisse, 1861) was commissioned, and its publication supported, by Bishop Didiot of Bayeux. The work was published at Caen, at the expense of the church of Bayeux. 5 For attitudes towards ancient relics in nineteenth-century France, see Philippe Boutry, “Les saints des catacombes. Itinéraires français d’une piété ultramontaine (1800–1881),” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Age-Temps Modernes 91 (1979): 875–930. 6 The only study made during this century of the apostolic saints of Bayeux used the following as a point of departure: that the cults rendered to the ancient bishops of Bayeux were originally created at Bayeux with the intention of increasing the prestige of the see and the town (Colette Acher, “Les débuts du christianisme à Bayeux” [Mémoire de Maitrise, Université de Rouen, 1988], p. 2). How misguided such presumptions can be has been recently demonstrated by Gabrielle Spiegel, who shows that numerous thirteenth-century histories, universally assumed to have been French royalist in origin and in intention, were in fact produced by the anti-royalist Flemish aristocracy; see Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past. The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in ThirteenthCentury France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 4–5. Also see Appendix 1 in this chapter for the case of Trophimus and the foundation of the church of Arles. 7 Frank D. Gilliard, “The Apostolicity of Gallic Churches,” Harvard Theological Review 68 (1975): 17–33 has answered the “true or false” question to my satisfaction.

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Gregory lists in Book I, chapter 30 of his Ten Books of Histories the “seven original apostles” to the Gauls, whom he places in the time of Emperor Decius (247–251): Gatianus of Tours, Trophimus of Arles, Paulus of Narbonne, Saturninus of Toulouse, Dionysius of Paris, Stremonius of Clermont, and Martialis of Limoges. This assertion stands virtually unchallenged in “critical” works of religious history. At the same time, the “critical” school of historians tends to dismiss as “legend” any conflicting stories of early Christian communities in Gaul (aside from the well-known case of the church of Lyons), even those told by Gregory himself. For Raymond Van Dam, for instance, Gregory is reporting reliable tradition when he describes the third-century missionary saints in his Ten Books of Histories, whereas the bishop of Tours’ various discussions of first- and secondcentury martyrs and Christian communities in his Eight Books of Miracles are to be read as inventions or fabrications of the sixth century.8 But then, in the latter works Gregory is generally deemed to be writing “hagiography,” and therefore does not have to be believed, for the connotations of “hagiography” – as the category was constructed in the nineteenth century – have pre-determined that any vision of the past believed to have been generated within its purview would either be dismissed completely or understood as an expression of mendacious vanity.9 I answer that: if Gregory of Tours is reliable, then Gregory of Tours is reliable, both when his assertions support an apostolic historiography and when they contradict it. However, Gregory has been subjected to a differential methodology of reading, depending upon his own style of writing. The thumbnail sketch of evangelization presented by Gregory in the Ten Books of Histories is couched in what might be called a “realistic” style, in which only human agency and events perceptible to the average observer can be said to figure. The information conveyed in this realistic style has tended to be read as “real,” as though a realistic discursive strategy were a guarantor of truth. On the other hand, the various passages from Gregory’s Glory of the Martyrs that contradict the Ten Books “Group of Seven” scenario are written in a non-realistic narrative style, complete with dream-visions, interventionist angels, and the like. Although the ultimate authority remains the word of Gregory, bishop of Tours, the non-realistic style has been read as invalidating the information. Consider some examples of the way Gregory “the historian” has been read in connection with the Christianization of Gaul. Baedorf argued that the 8 Gregory of Tours, The Glory of the Martyrs, trans. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), chapters 50, 55, and 56. 9 Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre.” Martin Heinzelmann’s recent study (“Hagiographischer and historischer Diskurs bei Gregor von Tours?” in Aevum inter utrumque. Mélanges offerts à Gabriel Sanders, Instrumenta Patristica XXIII, eds. Marc Van Uytfanghe and Roland Demeulenaere [Streenbrugge: Abbatia Sancti Petri, 1991], pp. 237–258) does not deal with the passages in Gregory’s work that bear on the apostolicity issue, namely Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. Bruno Krusch (MGH SRM 1.2; Hanover: Hahn, 1885), pp. 34–111, at chapters 47, 48, 50, 55, and 56 and Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum, ed. Bruno Krusch (MGH SRM 1.2; Hanover: Hahn, 1885), pp. 284–370, at chapters 2, 27, 29, 76, 79, and 83.

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biography of Bishop Regnobertus of Bayeux, which makes the saint a disciple of the first-century pope Clement, was a forgery, solely on the grounds that the Vita Regnoberti placed the activities of its hero, along with those of Martialis, Dionysius, and Saturninus, in the first century; such a chronology he deemed to be absolutely impossible and clearly a lie, because Gregory of Tours placed the lifetimes of the latter three missionaries in the third century.10 But let us also notice how Baedorf cites the authority of Gregory. Baedorf does not say that “Gregory believed,” still less that “Gregory asserted” or “Gregory claimed” or any similar construction that would have left an opening for the critique of Gregory’s assertions and beliefs. Instead, Baedorf says “zur Zeit Gregors von Tours glaubte man,” implying that Gregory merely transmitted universally held understandings, understandings without bias or favoritism that benefitted no one in particular and therefore were constructed and promoted by no one in particular. For his study of the evangelization of the Lugdunensis Secunda, the province to which Bayeux pertained, Herval likewise stuck close to the authoritative testimony of the bishop of Tours, but for different reasons than Baedorf; Herval used as his foundation the assumption that we can know nothing about the process of Christianization in Gaul except what Gregory of Tours tells us, because Gregory, “bien que vivant en des temps barbares, a cependant conservé . . . toute la lucidité d’un esprit critique.”11 Of greater general interest than either Baedorf or Herval is Louis Duchesne. Duchesne’s three-volume, anti-apostolic Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule12 has attained the canonical status of a reference work in “critical” circles.13 Duchesne’s method was, in itself, telling: to test local episcopal catalogues against the “données fournies par les récits de Grégoire de Tours et quelques autres documents historiques.”14 Gregory of Tours, in Duchesne’s view, only passed on “data;” the Group of Seven scenario in the Ten Books of Histories Duchesne described as a current belief which Gregory merely “harvested” or “collected” rather than created or asserted, whereas only later would the Gregorian scenario

10 Balthasar Baedorf, Untersuchungen über die Heiligenleben der westlichen Normandie (Ph.D. Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität-Bonn, 1913), pp. 66–67. 11 René Herval, Origines chrétiennes. De la IIe Lyonnaise gallo-romaine à la Normandie ducale (IVe -XIe siècles). Avec le texte complet et la traduction intégrale du De Laude Sanctorum de saint Victrice (396) (Rouen: H. Maugard, 1966), p. 10. 12 Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 3 vols. (Paris: Thorin, 1894–1915). 13 Gilliard, “Apostolicity,” pp. 18 and 30. The hegemony of Duchesne and his followers has not gone completely unopposed; for pro-apostolic historiography after 1903, see Jacques Zeiller, “Les origines chrétiennes en Gaule,” in Introduction aux études d’histoire ecclésiastique locale, ed. Victor Carrière, 3 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1934–1940), vol. 3, pp. 31–51, esp. pp. 48–49. Zeiller himself is a good example of a historian who treats Duchesne as a canonical reference work, as well as of the tendency to assume that all apostolicity narratives are productions of the churches in question aimed at increasing local prestige. 14 Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, vol. 1, p. 4.

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be “retouchée de diverses façons par les hagiographes, dans l’intérêt des prétentions locales.”15 The overweening influence exercised by a single paragraph in the Ten Books of Histories of Gregory of Tours has long been recognized by those who wished to propose alternative scenarios for the evangelization of Gaul. The first elaborate challenge to Gregory’s reliability as a historian was made by Hilduin of St. Denis in the methodological preface to his biography of St. Dionysius, whose lifetime Hilduin placed in the first century.16 In the preface, Hilduin surveys the sources available for writing the history of Christian evangelization in Gaul, many of which (he points out) circulated in very imperfect codices, in copies constantly modified by their scribes. Hilduin indicts Gregory of Tours for the latter’s failure to track down reliable copies of the “original histories.” Hilduin is also distressed that some historians, such as Gregory, write of Greco-Roman antiquity without knowing the Greek language, a fault which (to Hilduin’s mind) inevitably leads those authors astray in their conclusions. But in the end, even Hilduin is fooled by Gregory’s masterfully dunce-like presentation of self. Hilduin forgives the simple bishop of Tours for the latter’s non-critical belief in the traditions which he passed on; after all, it was not a result of any sly maneuverings on the part of the bishop of Tours, but of the religious man’s benign simplicity.17 In the seventeenth century, René Ouvrard recognized the centrality of Gregory of Tours enough to subtitle his pro-apostolic volume “On the mission of the first evangelical preachers to the Gauls in the time of the Apostles and of their immediate Disciples, and of the use that has been made of the writings of Sts. Sulpicius Severus and Gregory of Tours, and of the abuse that has been made of them in this matter and in other similar ones.”18 The Abbé Do, the most vigorous defender of the apostolic foundation of Bayeux, complained at the end of the nineteenth century that modern criticism “avait tout sacrifié à un texte fautif de Grégoire de Tours.”19

15 Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, vol. 1, p. 48, note 1. One final example of a scholar who measured all other sources for Christian activities in Gaul against the testimony of Gregory of Tours is Léon Cristiani, “Liste chronologique des saints de France,” Revue d’histoire de l’église de France 31 (1945): 1–96, esp. 1–17. 16 Hilduin of St. Denis, Rescriptum Hilduini de vita Dionysii (BHL 2173), in PL 106: 13–22. 17 “Caeterum parcendum est simplicitati viri religiosi Gregorii Turonensis episcopi, qui multa aliter quam se veritas habeat aestimans, non calliditatis astu, sed benignitatis ac simplicitatis voto, litteris commendavit” (Hilduin, Rescriptum, in PL 106:20). 18 Ouvrard particularly blamed Letaldus of Micy’s tenth-century anti-apostolic Vita sancti Juliani (BHL 4544; PL 137: 781–796) for having begun the rise of Gregory’s ill-deserved reputation for reliability, in the face of more truthful ancient traditions (René Ouvrard, Défense de l’ancienne tradition des églises de France. Sur la mission des premiers predicateurs évangeliques dans les Gaules, du temps des apostres ou de leurs disciples immediats et de l’usage des écrits des saints Grégoire de Tours et de Sévère Sulpice et de l’abus qu’on en a fait en cette matière et en d’autres pareilles, 2 vols. [Paris: Lambert Rouland, 1678], vol. 1, pp. 113–117 and vol. 2, p. 115). 19 Do, Origines chrétiennes, p. iii. See pp. 42–124 for his sustained attack on the believability of Gregory of Tours, perceived incorrectly by Do as the only evidence in favor of the anti-apostolic school.

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Few respected scholars any longer read Gregory of Tours the way he was read by his opponent Hilduin, that is, as a simple transmitter of current belief.20 Students of late Roman and Merovingian Gaul now see Gregory as a clever manipulator of historical imagery and as an exponent of particular partisan causes. Auerbach’s famous 1946 discussion of Gregory in Mimesis surely represents the last time a great scholar directly analyzed Gregory’s narrative style as a function of the bishop of Tours’ sophomoric inability to do anything but reflexively imitate the concrete reality around him.21 Particularly since Thürlemann’s 1974 study of Gregory’s historical discourse, there have been few who have asserted that the superficial impression given by Gregory’s writings, namely that “die Ereignisse scheinen sich selbst zu erzählen,” is anything other than a deliberate discursive strategy on the part of the bishop of Tours.22 Nevertheless, the insights of the last few decades concerning Gregory the artistic, creative historian have not been brought to bear on the issue of Roman-era Christianization. Gregory’s specific assertion that Christianity first came to Gaul as a whole from Rome in circa 250 C.E. with the mission of the seven bishops was still described, in the most recent work on the subject of the apostolicity controversy, as the mere reporting of a “probably reliable tradition.”23 It is thus ironic that one case of apostolic historiography which does seem to be an example of false claims to prestige through antiquity of foundation is precisely one which has never (to my knowledge) been seen in that light: Gregory’s famous third-century Mission of the Seven. Gregory came from a Gallo-Roman senatorial family of counts, judges, and bishops of Clermont. Gregory was unabashedly a publicist for the see of Tours and the cause of St. Martin, both of whose prestige he increased tremendously (thereby not incidentally increasing his own).24 How can this background not be relevant to his presentation, in however “realistic” a narrative style, of the seven

20 For a survey of scholarly opinions on Gregory of Tours as a writer, as well as more sophisticated assessments of his achievement, see Giselle de Nie, Views from a Many-Windowed Tower. Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), pp. 1–22, supplemented with Walter Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History (550 800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 112–234; Adriaan H.B. Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth Century Gaul: The Histories of Gregory of Tours Interpreted in Their Historical Context (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994) and Martin Heinzelmann, Gregor von Tours (538–594): “Zehn Bücher Geschichte,” Historiographie, und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994). 21 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 67–83. 22 Felix Thürlemann, Der historische Diskurs bei Gregor von Tours. Topoi und Wirklichkeit, Geist und Werk der Zeiten: Arbeiten aus dem Historischen Seminar der Universität Zürich 39 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1974). 23 Gilliard, “Apostolicity,” p. 32. 24 Luce Pietri, La ville de Tours du IVe au VIe siècle. Naissance d’une cité chrétienne (Paris-Rome: École française de Rome, 1983).

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contemporaneous original missionaries to the Gauls? Tours and Clermont, alone of the seven, are almost certainly much later foundations than Gregory implies in his egalitarian Group of Seven; on the other hand, Arles and Paris are significantly older than Gregory’s scenario would imply. Yet Gregory’s deceptively simple, discursively “realistic” thumbnail sketch scenario of the original evangelization of the Gauls elegantly presented his own see, Tours, and the see which had become a semi-permanent office in his family, Clermont, as no younger than the great sees of the Gauls, such as Arles in Provence. As for the sole exception to his uniformizing chronology of foundation, namely the church of Lyons: in that special case Gregory claimed to have been himself a descendant of one of the famous martyrs, giving his own family a key position in the Christian genealogy of Gaul.25 Gregory of Tours was no simpleton. It is time to rethink the picture of the past created by this particularly influential historian; even more importantly, it is time to examine more seriously the theses of his many rivals, most of whom were not lucky enough to be saved, as he was, from the “hagiographers’” ghetto. “Legendary” or not (and many of the apostolic theses may well be), the texts in question can be fruitfully exploited as sources for an otherwise source-poor period, rather than relegated to the trash bin as a result of unfavorable comparisons with Gregory of Tours, or of the injudicious application of the label “hagiographic.” However, if the apostolicity theses of Gaul are to be studied with seriousness, they must also be studied with caution, as I hope to show in the rest of this paper.26

The apostles of Bayeux? In the second half of this chapter, I will examine some of the material concerning the apostolic foundation of the see of Bayeux. I will present global conclusions I have drawn from the appreciation of each manuscript witness within the actual context of its known production and/or transmission (in the Parisian region or Burgundy), rather than in the “ideal” context of its assumed relevance and significance to Bayeux.27 In contrast to the case of Gregory of Tours’ claims for the foundation of Tours and Clermont, the apostolicity theses connected with Bayeux

25 Gregory, Liber in gloria martyrum, chapter 48; Gregory, Liber in gloria confessorum, chapter 90; Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum X, eds. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (MGH SRM 1.1; Rev. ed. 2; Hanover: Hahn, 1951), pp. 1–537, at Book I, chapter 29; Gregory of Tours, Liber Vitae Patrum, ed. Bruno Krusch (MGH SRM 1.2; Hanover: Hahn, 1885), pp. 211–283, at chapters 6 and 8. 26 For another example of the need for greater caution than has hitherto been exercised concerning the origins of the apostolicity theses of Gaul, see appendix 1 on Trophimus and the foundation of the church of Arles. 27 Historians and literary historians should treat manuscripts individually, just as art historians treat statues and church apses individually, rather than as variant “versions” of a theoretical ideal text; see Bernadette A. Masters, Esthétique et manuscripture. Le “moulin à paroles” au moyen âge (Heidelberg: Winter, 1992).

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do not seem to have been originally elaborated for the benefit of that see itself. Once decoupled from an assumed Bessin origin, those “legends” become important sources in their own right, often in completely unexpected ways.28 The historiographic vision of the apostolic foundation of the see of Bayeux by saints Exuperius (Spire) and Regnobertus is not attested in such a way as to support the assumption that those representations of the past were originally intended to increase the prestige of the church about which the history was written.29 Uniformly, the narratives themselves have been preserved in manuscripts produced and transmitted by institutions other than the church of Bayeux, the one supposedly concerned with its own early history. Not a single manuscript in which either biographies or translations of these two Norman bishops has been preserved or transmitted is of Norman provenance or Norman origin. Instead. the relevant manuscripts as well as the location of the very relics of the apostolic saints “of Bayeux” themselves point to institutions other than the church which they had supposedly evangelized; both Exuperius and Regnobertus were celebrated by certain non-Norman churches at a level far exceeding anything ever established at Bayeux itself. Indeed, “Exuperius” and “Regnobertus,” about whose Bessin career stage we know nothing, were made into Exuperius and Regnobertus, the apostolic-era bishops of Bayeux, by non-Bessin historians after their removal from Bayeux itself. None of this inspires much confidence in treatments of the Bessin apostolicity materials that have tried to understand them as products of and in the context of the church of Bayeux itself; yet, that is the only way these apostolicity narratives have ever been read.30 Although the majority of extant evidence connects Exuperius and Regnobertus with locations other than Bayeux, one source sheds some light on the veneration of Regnobertus at Bayeux itself: a ninth-century eye-witness account of the 846/847 transfer of Regnobertus’ relics out of Bayeux.31 According to the

28 Anyone wishing to pursue further the study of the apostolic cults of Bayeux should still begin with Jules Lair, “Études sur les origines de l’évêché de Bayeux. I: Saint Exupère, Saint Regnobert, Saint Reverend; II: Saint Exupère, Saint Rufinien, Saint Loup; III: Saint Manvieu, Saint Contest, Saint Vigor,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 23 (1862): 89–124; 24 (1863): 281–323; 29 (1868): 33–55. Lair himself made the point that the question of apostolic foundation only became a major issue at Bayeux itself in the fifteenth century and after; however, that insight never led him to decouple the initial elaboration of the apostolic historiography from the church of Bayeux (Lair, “Études. II,” pp. 284 and 286). 29 See Appendix 2 in this chapter for the manuscript evidence concerning Exuperius and Regnobertus. 30 Nancy Gauthier, “Quelques hypothèses sur la rédaction des vies des saints évêques de Normandie,” in Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes. Miscellanea in onore di Victor Saxer [Studi di Antichità Christiana 48; Vatican City, 1992], pp. 449–468, summarizes all relevant scholarly assessments of the previous few centuries. 31 Translatio Regnoberti (BHL 7063), ed. Daniel Papebroch, AASS May 3: 620–624, from two Burgundian manuscripts (of St.-Vivant-sous-Vergy and of Auxerre), both of which have since been lost. I accept the usual identification of the author as a ninth-century eyewitness, possibly the priest Joseph, former notary of Pepin of Aquitaine, writing in 867/869, given how perfectly the

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translation account, Regnobertus began to appear to a certain Herveus, telling him to call attention to his neglected tomb in the basilica of St. Exuperius. Herveus approached Bishop Freculf of Lisieux, who helped Herveus sneak into Bayeux, at the time occupied and oppressed by Bretons, and remove the bones of Regnobertus to the vicinity of Lisieux, where a church was built for the relics, and generously endowed by Charles the Bald. In 846, the Breton Nominoe had seized Bayeux for Lothar, Charles’ rival. It seems that the party of Charles the Bald responded by smuggling the remains of a prominent figure in local history (that is, Regnobertus) out of the occupied enemy territory and ensconcing them in the Liévin, a region still loyal to Charles, in order to prevent Regnobertus’ relics from exercising their virtus and patronage in favor of the Bretons and Lothar. In the eyes of the ninth-century historian, the Frankish capture of Bishop Regnobertus from behind enemy lines led in a linear fashion to the recognition on the part of the next Breton prince, Erispoe, that Neustria belonged to the Western Franks, as the Bretons abandoned both their claims to the Bessin (acknowledging the authority there of Charles’ son, Louis the Stammerer) and their East Frankish, anti-Charles alliance.32 Thus, manipulations of the relics of Regnobertus need to be taken into account in order to achieve a balanced understanding of Carolingian military strategy: Charles removed them from Breton control, and the loss of the relics of Regnobertus was felt, by the Breton forces, as a crushing blow to their military might.33 This

events described seem to fit into ninth-century politics as scholars now understand them (Gauthier, “Quelques Hypothèses,” pp. 453–454; André Chédeville and Hubert Guillotel, La Bretagne des saints et des rois, Ve-Xe siècle [Rennes: Ouest France, 1984], p. 292). In contrast to the absence of local Bessin confirmation of the extra-Norman stories concerning the apostolic-era activities of Exuperius and Regnobertus discussed in Appendix 2, a version of this Burgundian-witnessed story of Regnobertus’ translation (BHL 7066, ed. Do, Origines chrétiennes, pp. 205–207) can be found in thirteenth- and fifteenth-century breviaries of Bayeux: Bayeux, MM BC 73 fol. 294v; Bayeux, MM BC 74 fol. 332; Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 279 (129 T.L.) folios 463v–464v; Bayeux, MM BC 70 folios 107r–108v; Bayeux, MM BC 72 folios 332r–332v; Bayeux, MM BC 75 folios 445r–446r; and Bayeux, MM BC 76 folios 354r–354v. 32 Here is the concluding portion of the narrative: “quapropter villam quae vocatur Veteres domus veniens [Carolus], venit ad eum ibi Britonum Hilispogius princeps, cum filio praefati nobilissimi regis, Ludovico nomine: ibique Hilispogius, consilio cum Francorum nobilissimis habito, Ludovico regis filio Neustriae regnum dedit, et in hac regni parte eum regnare constituit” (Translatio Regnoberti, ed. Papebroch, p. 624). The political implications of the installation of the remains of Regnobertus in Neustria, and outside of the Breton-dominated Bessin, were clear to the author of the account, who closes the description of the construction of the new church with the following words: “fit gaudium totius patriae” (Translatio Regnoberti, ed. Papebroch, p. 622). A thousand years later, Smith attributed Erispoe’s withdrawal from the Bessin only to King Charles’ counteroffer of Nantes, Rennes, and part of Poitou (Julia M.H. Smith, Province and Empire. Brittany and the Carolingians [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], pp. 86–108, esp. p. 97). I, however, am tempted to give weight as well to the contemporary commentator’s perception of the motivations of the various combatants. 33 For relic thefts as a crucial part of ninth- and tenth-century military strategy, Felice Lifshitz, “The Migration of Neustrian Relics in the Viking Age: The Myth of Voluntary Exodus, the Reality

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positive finding, however, must be balanced by a negative one: it is not possible, on the basis of the translation account, to know what Regnobertus was believed to have done to acquire a reputation at Bayeux or Lisieux, or with the party of Charles the Bald, or even when he was believed to have done it. Once removed from Bayeux, Regnobertus’ relics were eventually said to represent the second, apostolic-era bishop of the church of Bayeux; that alone does not warrant the conclusion that he was venerated as such in Bayeux itself before his removal.34 From the translation account, one learns only that Regnobertus was a bishop of Bayeux. Although Exuperius and Regnobertus seem to have been figures of some (although what?) significance in early-ninth-century Bayeux, neither is known to have been commemorated in public holidays there before the thirteenth century.35 If there is some significance to the introduction of the cults of the apostolic-era bishops Exuperius and Regnobertus to Bayeux in the thirteenth century, it is not that of local pride in ancient origins; the introduction into the Bessin of a revised version of local history in the thirteenth century surely needs to be seen in the context of the conquest of Normandy by King Philip Augustus of France in 1204 for, according to the texts in question, the church of Bayeux was founded by a disciple of the apostolic-era Bishop Dionysius of Paris. Would this vision of the past not provide a mark of the see’s historically intimate relationship with, but also subordination and abasement before, the centralizing royal capital of Paris? Thus, the apostolicity theses of Bayeux seem to have been introduced to the Bessin in the thirteenth century, along with French royal power, from centers in Burgundy and the Parisian Basin. Even then, the apostolic visions of the local past did not particularly matter to anyone at Bayeux, despite their mere inclusion, from the thirteenth century, in the breviaries of the cathedral church and those of its canons. There is little in the presentation of the so-called apostles of Bayeux to distinguish them from other saints in the relevant late-medieval breviaries; indeed, without the help of a modern research aid, I would not easily have been able to find the readings for the apostolic saints of Bayeux in the codices, so little do they stand out.36 Instead, they are drowned in an ocean of other figures. The jampacked breviaries in use in Bayeux (and elsewhere) from the thirteenth century onwards were the result of research projects to “collect” saints. Thirteenth-century Norman breviary compilers, now integrated into the realm of France, would have discovered in Parisian and Burgundian libraries materials pertaining to bishops Exuperius and Regnobertus “of Bayeux,” and would “naturally” have included of Coercion and Theft,” Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995): 175–192 [now Chapter 10 in this collection]. 34 For the way relics change their meanings and symbolic functions when plunged into new contexts, see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Rev. ed. 2; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 35 See the thirteenth-century breviaries of Bayeux in Bayeux, MM BC 73, Bayeux, MM BC 74, and Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 279 (129 T.L.). 36 Victor Leroquais, Les bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 5 vols. (Paris: Protat frères, 1934).

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those materials in codices intended for sale and use at Bayeux. But it should not surprise anyone familiar with devotional trends of the period that the festivals that are highlighted in these late-medieval breviaries, the ones graced with (musically) noted offices and gold-backed illuminations, are the Dominical and Marian ones as well as those connected with other biblical figures; the festivals of obscure local figures from dim moments in the historical past do not receive such treatment.37 However, as obscure and irrelevant at Bayeux as Exuperius and Regnobertus may have been during earlier centuries, they became the focal point of concerted local attention during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.38 By the midnineteenth century, the apostolic bishops Exuperius and Regnobertus had become as central to local Bessin identity as kilts and bagpipes had become for Scottish national identity.39 Like so many other early-modern and modern “invented traditions,” the apostolic-era bishops of Bayeux were represented, in the nineteenth century, in such a way as to render their implied centrality “from time immemorial” almost unquestionable. The figurative episcopal catalogue on the choir vaults of the cathedral of Bayeux, painted early in the nineteenth century, has fooled every observer from Do (in 1861) to Acher (in 1988) into assuming the paintings were as old as the choir of the cathedral itself.40 Cathedral authorities continue to conspire in the hoax; the style of the paintings tricks most eyes into reading the catalogue as “medieval,” and nothing in the cathedral proper would abuse a viewer of that too-rash conclusion. The Cathedral of Bayeux (in 1994 a tourist attraction in commemoration of an anniversary even more rousing for most Europeans than the simultaneously celebrated Year of Gregory of Tours, namely the Normandy Landings) is filled at every step with detailed public explanations of every stage of its construction and reconstruction. Concerning the figurative episcopal catalogue, however, a discrete silence is maintained. Eventually, then, Exuperius and Regnobertus did come to be viewed, by some at Bayeux at least, as apostolic-era bishops of the see. But the connection between the saints and their present-day cultic site is one of relatively recent manufacture in the broader scheme of things. Surely many other materials concerning apostolicity

37 See especially Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 279 (129 T.L.). 38 The “Counter-Reformation” eventually had a major effect on the local Bessin interest in apostolic origins. Explicitly inspired by Cardinal Charles Borromeo’s call to research in ancient history, Bishop François de Nesmond of Bayeux encouraged Hermant, a curé of Maltot, to write the first history of the see of Bayeux from its origins to the present: Jean Hermant, Histoire du diocèse de Bayeux (Caen: Pierre F. Doublet, 1705). 39 Eric Hobsbawm, “Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14. A closer parallel than Scottish tartans is the series of apostolic cults of Sicily, which became a marked feature of regional piety suddenly and only after the counter-reforming Jesuit Ottavio Gaetani’s (1556–1620) “collection” and “edition” of the Vitae sanctorum Siculorum (Salvatore Pricoco, “Un esempio di agiografia regionale: La Sicilia,” Settimane 36 [1988]: 319–345). 40 Jean Marie, Bayeux, ville d’art. Les constructions religieuses (Bayeux: Imprimerie Bayeusaine, 1968), p. 40; Do, Origines chrétiennes, p. 1; Acher, “Débuts du christianisme,” p. 23.

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theses in Gaul (or elsewhere) could yield insights into the modalities of historical representation over the past two millennia. Dislodging new meanings from these long-despised materials will be impossible, however, unless they are unchained from the anchor of a single paragraph in Gregory of Tours’ Ten Books of Histories and liberated from the “hagiographic” straitjacket, one of whose “sleeves” has been the assumption of local origins in the interest of anciently justified prestige.

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APPENDIX 1: TROPHIMUS AND THE APOSTOLIC F O U N D AT I O N O F T H E CHURCH OF ARLES

Only one Gallic apostolic-foundation thesis has been repeatedly and painstakingly researched over the past century: the story of Trophimus, first bishop of Arles. Even in this case, which has received microscopic attention, the discussion has always included the assumption of a local, self-interested origin for the apostolicity thesis.41 Yet, there exists no positive evidence to link the origin of the thesis of the apostolic foundation of Arles by Trophimus to the church of Arles itself; rather, the theme of the Rome-directed antique foundation of the church of Arles is evidenced first (and, for decades, only) in papal rather than Arlesian sources, a point which is absolutely consistent with Dvornik’s argument that the very idea of apostolicity was a mid-to-late-fourth-century innovation owed to the Roman church, and long resisted elsewhere.42 41 For the relevant sources, previous scholarly literature, and the current state of the question, see Ralph Whitney Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-Century Gaul (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989), esp. pp. 49–60. More recent discussions of the church of Arles (such as Martin Heinzelmann, “The ‘affair’ of Hilary of Arles (445) and Gallo-Roman identity in the fifth century,” in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, eds. John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], pp. 239– 251, and William Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles. The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994]) add nothing of significance to Mathisen’s views on the fifth century. 42 Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), esp. pp. 40–44 and 63–71. For the (indisputable) papal utilization of the idea of apostolicity, see Michael Borgolte, Petrusnachfolge und Kaiserimitation. Die Grablegen der Päpste, ihr Genese und Traditionsbildung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1989), esp. pp. 28–33. In contrast, apostolic-era saints seem not to have been particularly venerated in Gaul; instead, late antique cults focused on Roman martyrs such as Julian of Brioude and on recent bishops such as Martin of Tours (Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985], pp. 167–170). Indeed at Arles itself (again in contrast to Roman building strategies), there is no clear evidence for a monumentalization of episcopal power in connection with Trophimus during the fourth, fifth, or even sixth centuries; rather, the martyr Genesius and the recent bishop Hilary dominated the cultic scene (Simon T. Loseby, “Arles in Late Antiquity: Gallula Roma Arelas and

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The assumption that the story of Trophimus must have had an Arlesian origin has probably contributed to the further assumption, repeated for over a century since Duchesne’s fundamental study yet recently demonstrated to be erroneous, that bishop Patroclus of Arles had been not only present at Rome but also instrumental during the election of pope Zosimus in 417, who then “rewarded” Patroclus (in a quid pro quo) with a metropolitan status justified by reference to Trophimus.43 In fact, Patroclus had no proven contacts with Zosimus before the latter began to reorganize the Gallic hierarchy to the direct benefit of Arles (and the indirect benefit of Rome); furthermore, Zosimus’ policies in Gaul as well as his references to the mission of Trophimus are explicable entirely within the framework of nascent papal ideologies of apostolicity combined with papal programs for ecclesiastical reorganization in response to the ever-mutating civil organization of the late-fourth and early-fifth-century Roman Empire. That the theme of an apostolic-era foundation of the see of Arles by Trophimus was integrated into local Arlesian historical consciousness in the late 440s does not require us to posit that the original claim to ancient foundation by Trophimus was suggested to pope Zosimus by Patroclus of Arles; in fact, the broader implications of known papal policies as well as the state of the evidence authorize the opposite conclusion: that Zosimus of Rome introduced Patroclus to the story of the Roman-directed missionary Trophimus in order to facilitate papal administrative control in southern Gaul.44 Since the time of Duchesne it has been recognized that the motivation for utilizing the thesis of the foundation of Arles by Trophimus came from the papal side; it is time to recognize the possibility that the thesis itself originated in Rome, rather than assuming an Arlesian birthplace.45

Urbs Genesii,” in Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, eds. Neil J. Christie and Simon T. Loseby [Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996], pp. 45–70). 43 Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, vol. I, pp. 86–106; Michael E. Kulikowsi, “Two Councils of Turin,” Journal of Theological Studies, NS 47 (1996): 159–168, at 165–166. 44 The Arlesian embrace of the apostolic Trophimus (for which, see Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism, pp. 177–179) was not even lasting; the oldest extant episcopal catalogue of Arles (in a Sacramentary of Arles written c. 900; see Paris BN lat. 2812 fol. 2v) does not begin with Trophimus, whose name was added by a later, eleventh-century, hand (Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, vol. 1, pp. 249–262). There is simply no positive evidence on which to paint Patroclus of Arles as the father of the Trophimus thesis, as is done by Georg Langgärtner, Die Gallienpolitik der Päpste im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert. Eine Studie über den apostolischen Vikariat von Arles (Bonn: Hanstein, 1964), pp. 23–26 and 42–44. Langgärtner himself shows that the story is more in keeping with Roman traditions, since Pope Innocent I had already claimed that all the Latin churches owed their foundations to Rome. It is chronologically unjustified to cite (as does Langgärtner, along with most historians of the church of Arles) a 450 letter in which certain bishops of southern Gaul embrace the Trophimus thesis as evidence that pope Zosimus originally derived his knowledge of Trophimus, as embodied in his letters of 417, from the church of Arles. See Epistolae Arelatenses Genuinae, ed. Wilhelm Gundlach (MGH Epistolae 3; Berlin: Weidmann, 1892), pp. 1–83, at pp. 5–3 for Zosimus’ letters of 417 and pp. 17–20 for the 450 letters of the Gallic bishops. 45 Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux, vol. 1, pp. 89–95.

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APPENDIX 2: MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR EXUPERIUS A N D R E G N O B E RT U S “ O F B AY E U X ”

The main center of commemoration for Exuperius was the collegial church of St. Spire of Corbeil, in the diocese of Paris and in the archdiocese of Sens; in fact, it was as “Exuperius de Corbolio” (not of Bayeux) that the saint appeared on the calendar under 1 August in a fifteenth-century Breviary of Lisieux, a town not far from Bayeux!46 The earliest datable reference to Exuperius, first apostle to Bayeux, is an entry in the tenth-century Sens manuscript of the pseudo-Hieronymian Martyrology.47 I would argue that the denizens of Corbeil were the first to represent Exuperius as the apostolic-era missionary of Bayeux.48 The oldest manuscript that attributes the specific character of a Clementine-Dionysian apostle to any of the saints of Bayeux is Paris BN lat. 15437, an eleventh-century manuscript whose provenance is St. Marcel of Paris and which contains a biography of Exuperius; that biography (BHL 2811) is the only text in the manuscript that is divided into (six) readings, indicating an active cult at a secular church.49 This manuscript is part of a multi-volume legendary cycle whose other known volume is Paris BN lat. 15436; I suggest that the origin of the legendary set is Corbeil. While there is no evidence of an active cult to Exuperius anywhere else in the eleventh century,

46 Leroquais, Les bréviaires manuscrits, vol. 1 p. 117, as part of his description of a manuscript whose shelf mark he gives as Bayeux BC 662; however, I have not personally consulted this manuscript, and there is a chance it has been lost or destroyed, because no manuscript with that shelf mark, and no Breviary of Lisieux, currently figures among the relevant holdings (https://ccfr. bnf.fr/portailccfr/jsp/index_view_direct_anonymous.jsp?record=eadcgm:EADI:FRCGMBPF140476201-02a.xml, accessed May 25, 2020). For Exuperius and Regnobertus at Corbeil, see Fasti Corbolienses. Carmen Historicum in varias anni tempestates quadripartitum (Paris, BN lat. 9969), an anonymous compilation of local history produced between 1786 and 1797. 47 Martyrologium Hieronymianum, eds. Joannes Baptista de Rossi and Ludovicus Duchesne (AASS Nov. 2: xv). 48 Indeed, that the Vita Exuperii was written at Corbeil has already been suggested by Paulette Cavailler, “Les Reliques de S. Exupère à Corbeil,” Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique de Corbeil, d’Étampes et du Hurepois 73 (1967): 117–138. 49 Paris BN lat. 15437 folios 92r–95r.

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he was already the most important saint of Corbeil. Furthermore, the biography of Exuperius in this manuscript matches precisely the story of Exuperius’ life as described by Jean de la Barre from a manuscript of Notre-Dame de Corbeil.50 Among the few other saints who were particularly venerated at Corbeil were Nigasius and Quirinus, martyrs of the Vexin. Very few copies of their passio are extant, but one can be found in the other volume of the legendary set in question, Paris BN lat. 15436. In contrast to the long, elaborate biographies of Exuperius that can be connected with Corbeil, all extant Breviaries of Bayeux note only the “factoid” that Exuperius was a Clementine-Dionysian missionary (which matches the beginning of the Corbeil vita) then dedicate the rest of their readings for the festival of Exuperius to that bishop’s supposed sermons concerning St. Peter; in other words, the Bessin readings for Exuperius consisted of a series of excerpts from the Gospels, and had little to do with the biography of the Clementine-Dionysian bishop venerated at Corbeil.51 It seems the inhabitants of Bayeux only grudgingly accepted the apostolic figure of Exuperius, whereas his relics were carried in solemn procession around Corbeil annually from at least 1317.52 The next oldest manuscript concerning Exuperius is Paris BN lat. 14364, a late-twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century manuscript whose origin is St. Victor of Paris (thus, the vicinity of Corbeil). The text in this manuscript (partially published as BHL 2812) describes not only Exuperius’ Clementine mission, but also the story of his successor Regnobertus, as well as how the relics of Exuperius made their way to the Parisian region, where the canonry of St. Spire of Corbeil was constructed.53 This is the oldest extant text to imbue Regnobertus with the specific character of an apostolic-era bishop of Bayeux. Regnobertus was also an important saint of Corbeil. Whereas no Norman copies of Regnobertus’ biography are attested, Arthur du Monstier paraphrased a now-lost manuscript of Corbeil for his seventeenth-century report on Regnobertus.54 The only attestation to a full manuscript vita and translatio of Regnobertus is to a lost manuscript of Varzy, also known to Du Monstier and Papebroch.55 Relics of Regnobertus were housed

50 Jean de la Barre, Les antiquitez de la ville, comté et chatelenie de Corbeil (Paris: Nicolas and Jean de la Coste, 1647), pp. 33–39 and 45–48; the author also discusses the importance of Quirinus at Corbeil. 51 Bayeux, MM BC 73 fol. 272v; Bayeux, MM BC 74 folios 288r–288v; Bayeux, MM BC 70 folios 66r–67r; Bayeux, MM BC 72 fol. 302v; Bayeux, MM BC 75 folios 414r–414v; Bayeux, MM BC 76 folios 324v–325r; Bayeux, MM BC 77 folios 487v–488v; and Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 279 (129 T.L.) folios 433r–434v. Compare BHL 2813, partially edited by Do, Origines chrétiennes, pp. 208–209. 52 Fasti Corbolienses, fol. 1v. 53 De sancto Exuperio (Paris BN lat. 14364, folios 138v–140v). 54 Arthur du Monstier, Neustria Sancta (Paris BN lat. 10051), folios 208r–208v (BHL 2810). 55 Du Monstier, Neustria Sancta, folios 128r–137v and Daniel Papebroch, “De Sanctis Confessoribus Ragnoberto Episcopo et Zenone Diacono,” AASS May 3: 618–619, at 618; the text was partially published as BHL 7060/7061.

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at the priory of St. Regnobert of Quingy in the Franche-Comté (a dependency of the abbey of Baume-les-Messieurs in the diocese of Besançon), at St.-Vivantsous-Vergy in the Côte-d’Or, and at the collegial church of Varzy (near Nevers), a favorite residence of the bishops of Auxerre.56 The bishop of Bayeux, on the other hand, had to request relics of Regnobertus from the church of Auxerre in 1714.57

56 Jean Manlier, BSS vol. 11, cols. 83–84; Godefridus Henschenius, “Appendix de Reliquiis Sancti Ragnoberti,” AASS May 3: 624–625; Do, Origines chrétiennes, pp. 201–203. 57 GC 11: 350.

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Part IV

Dudo of St. Quentin and the Gesta Normannorum

12 DUDO’S HISTORICAL N A R R AT I V E A N D T H E NORMAN SUCCESSION OF 996

Two years before his death in 996, Richard I of Normandy approached one of his followers, Dudo of St. Quentin, and, through a series of techniques ranging from blandishments and embraces to threats and insults, persuaded the cleric to accept a literary commission: Two years before his death, as frequently was my habit, I was with the extraordinary Duke Richard, son of the Marquis William [d. 942/3], wishing to pay him my obligation of service, because of the innumerable benefits which, without any merit of my own, he had deigned to bestow upon me. One day, approaching me, he began to embrace me with the arms of a most compassionate love and to move me with his sweetest speeches and to soften me up with pleasing prayers, nay rather to denounce me and to swear in charity that if I had been capable of any understanding, I would have attended to his long-desired inclinations, that is to say that I would have described in writing the customs and deeds of the Norman land, yea indeed the rights which he asserted in the realm of his great-grandfather Rollo.1

1 “Ante biennium mortis eius, more frequentativo fui apud eximium ducem Ricardum Guilelmi marchionis filium volens ei reddere meae servitutis officium propter innumera beneficia quae absque meo merito mihi dignatus erat impertiri. Qui quadam die adgrediens coepit brachiis piissimi amoris me amplecti, suisque dulcissimis sermonibus adtrahere atque precibus jocundis mulcere, quin etiam detestari et jurare in charitate ut si qua possem ratione animis suis diu desideratis mederer, scilicet ut mores actusque telluris Normannicae, quin etiam proavi sui Rollonis quae posuit in regno jura describerem” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 119). All English translations are my own. Dudo’s life has been treated by Barbara Vopelius-Holtzmann, Studien zu Dudon von Saint-Quentin dem ersten Geschichtschreiber des Normandie, 987–1015 (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Göttingen, 1967). The most important evidence for Dudo’s connection with the court of Richard I is the charter of Richard II whereby, in 1015, Dudo was permitted to bequeath to the congregation of St Quentin “ecclesias quas dedit [Richardus I] ei in beneficio” (Fauroux, Recueil, pp. 100–102). For synthetic treatments see David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London: Longman, 1980), and Eleanor Searle,

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Dudo, distressed by his own insufficient mastery of “the dialectics of syllogism” and of “rhetorical arguments,” sent a copy of the finished text to Adalbero of Laon, in order that every jagged edge of wrongful uncertainty be utterly and radically lopped off by your sharpest battle axes, which are composed of the purest steel of complete wisdom. Almost half of this work seems not to have any regard for utility unless it be weeded by your reaping of the wild thistles of superfluity.2 Dudo’s extremely long prosimetrical history does indeed contain much material that is extraneous to, and thus tends to disguise, the main argument. Happily, however, Dudo took care to inform his audience explicitly of the commission as he had received it from Richard I, elsewhere describing how the aged duke furnished him with the details of the argument to be committed to writing. After forty-one lines of verse addressed to Archbishop Robert of Rouen in praise of the prelate’s father, Richard I, who was deceased by the time the work was brought to completion, Dudo exclaims: Behold, my account will prate about whatever it can, Behold, my treatment will also prate likewise, I will declaim, roaring, drawing forth from my heart with a vehement cry What he related when still alive, I will declaim, roaring with my cry.3 Dudo’s historical narrative, like those of other medieval historians, was consciously and deliberately contrived to achieve particular purposes within the context of certain individual circumstances.4 The key to understanding the

Predatory Kinship: The Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). A version of this article was presented before the American Historical Association in December 1991 under the title “What Dudo wrote, or, On Hacking through the Wild Thistles of Superfluity in the Works of Medieval Historians.” Research support was provided by the Florida International University Foundation. I would like to thank Dr. Christoph von Steiger of the Burgerbibliothek Bern for his generous offer to extend the library hours, Patrick Geary for his comments on the AHA paper, and Joseph F. Patrouch III for his keen editorial eye. 2 “. . . ut omnis scrupulositas injustae ambiguitatis, tuis acutissimis bipennibus, ex purissimo calibe sapientiae confectis, funditus atque radicitus amputetur. Pene dimidia pars huius operis minime videtur respicere ad negotium utilitatis nisi te messore sarriatur carduis superfluitatis” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 119). 3 “Garriet ecce meus poterit quaecumque relatus,/ Tractatusque simul, garriet ecce metis,/ Voce boabo fremens vehementi corde retractans,/ Quae retulit vivens voce boabo fremens” (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 124–125). 4 For a study of four of Dudo’s predecessors, conducted explicitly along these lines, see Walter Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History: Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988). On a smaller scale, I have applied the same principles that are operative in this study to another panegyrical serial biography connected with the Norman

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circumstances of composition, in Dudo’s case, lies in the two poles of his professional existence, as witnessed in the prefatory epistle extensively quoted above. The narrative was largely determined on the one hand by the experiences and desires of Richard I, in the double guise of informant and patron, and on the other by the effects the work might be calculated to have on the only individual known to have been singled out as a target audience, Bishop Adalbero of Laon. Furthermore, it is crucial to be sensitive to the probable psychological and emotional state of historical personages to the extent that such things can be inferred from their known experiences. The childhood experiences of Richard I are of capital importance for a thorough understanding of his life-long preoccupations. The most widely available printed edition for the study of Dudo’s text is that made by Jules Lair in 1865. Lair’s edition is best described as semi-critical. He collated most of the manuscripts, picking the best readings from so many defective exemplars, and provided a substantial apparatus, although his attribution of variants was not always accurate and some significant variants were omitted entirely. He occasionally took liberties with the text, and made a number of errors, usually through misreading his own transcriptions. However, very few corrections involve anything more elaborate than plugging in the readings of either the Rouen BM 1173 (Y 11) or the Berlin SB-PK 1854 copy; these two are the oldest complete witnesses.5 Lair’s edition is serviceable, as long as one is aware of his few egregious errors.6 Unfortunately, the passage describing Richard’s granting of the commission is one of the few instances where the edition is seriously faulty. Here, Lair altered the Latin text and, in his French introduction, in two ways mistranslated the key phrase. Lair’s alteration of the relevant Latin passage involved adding an “et” as well as several unwarranted punctuation marks, switching one word from the plural to the singular (“animis suis” to “animi sui”) and then misleadingly rendering “iura” as “lois” (laws) and “proavus” as “aïeul” (grandfather).7 According to Lair,

dynasty, in Felice Lifshitz, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae: A Political Pamphlet of the Eleventh century?’ The Haskins Society Journal 1 (1989): 39–50 [now Chapter 17 in this collection]. 5 All citations here include my own corrections to Lair’s edition, based on an examination of the manuscripts. 6 Despite the fact that a meticulous edition would make innumerable changes in Lair’s edition, very few of those changes would affect the sense of the text. It is true that Lair did not use Bern, Burgerbibliothek Bongars 390, which is the oldest surviving copy, dating from no later than the first half of the eleventh century, yet the Bern manuscript is an extremely error-laden, often incoherent, copy with no progeny that I have been able to determine, whose importance is overrated by Gerda Huisman, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum,” Anglo-Norman Studies 6 (1984): 122–135, at 126. The signs in the Bern manuscript which Huisman compares to paragraph marks, and which appear where more complete copies of the text break into verse (for the Bern copy includes only the prose portion of the prosimetrical treatise) are chapter division marks not witnesses of the project to expand an earlier, original prose redaction with verses. They appear in the locations in which they do because in all of the manuscripts (unlike in Lair’s edition) the end of each chapter is signaled by the insertion of a verse. 7 Compare Dudo, De moribus, p. 119 (Lair’s printed edition) with the corrected version cited above in note 1.

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the purpose of the narrative was to write “the history of the Normans and of his [Richard I’s] grandfather Rollo, who had given them laws.”8 To make “Rollo” the subject of the sentence, although the case of his name is in the genitive, requires a very awkward syntax. Furthermore, the “proavus” (greatgrandfather), who can be no one but Rollo, is modified by the possessive adjective “suus” and not “eius,” indicating that the subject of the finite verb in the phrase, namely “posuit,” is the individual who possesses the illustrious ancestor. The use of “suus” rather than “eius” tends to exclude the possibility of the “proavus” being the subject of “posuit,” for he would then have to be his own grandfather. Dudo’s grammar is not always scrupulously correct, so the argument is hardly air-tight; nevertheless, even were the suus/eius distinction to be disregarded, the syntax still flows more smoothly if Richard II, Rollo’s great-grandson, is taken as the subject of “posuit.” That “proavus” means great-grandfather, not grandfather, is quite straightforward; that “iura” means “rights” not “laws” needs to be demonstrated from Dudo’s usage. “Ius,” “iura,” “iure,” or related words in Dudo’s text normally carry the connotation of “right,” and especially of rights of possession, whereas he just as consistently uses some form of “lex” when referring to positive legislation or to customary law. “Ius” sometimes connotes “law,” but only when paired with some form of “lex,” “decretum,” or some similar word and never in isolation. Consider the following citations: quod mei iuris est meusque pater tenuit, quod tui iuris est quodque tuus;9 decet quod terram haereditario iure Ricardo . . . possidendam . . . auctorizes . . . largitus est terram haereditario avi patrisque iure possidendam;10 Omnes qui occidentur non tibi est ius vindicare;11 Mitte Ricardum, postulo, ephebum, quod sua iura impleat alma;12 terram a Sequana usque ad mare haereditario iure ab eo possidendem dono regis;13 res dominici iuris indecenter sibi usurpabat. . . . “Nonne post avi patrisque necem possidere hanc iure haereditario debeo?”14 Quae possederat soror sua iure femineo;15 and pro populi requie pia iura tenebat.16 8 “. . . l’histoire des Normands et de son aïeul Rollon, qui leur avait donné des lois” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 21). Shopkow translates the commission as to “write down the customs and deeds of Normandy, and especially of his forefather Rollo, in pleasing words and the customs that he instituted in his realm” (Leah Shopkow, “The Carolingian World of Dudo of St. Quentin,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989): 19–37, at 35). Huisman gives the commission as to describe “the customs and deeds of the Norman land and also the laws introduced by his grandfather Rollo” (Huisman, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradition,” p. 122). 9 Dudo, De moribus, p. 143 lines 11–12; compare the usage at p. 160 line 4, p. 168 line 8, p. 270, line 15, and p. 279 line 29. 10 Dudo, De moribus, p. 226 lines 4–12. 11 Dudo, De moribus, p. 228 line 27 – p. 229 line 1. 12 Dudo, De moribus, p. 229 lines 51–54. 13 Dudo, De moribus, p. 235 line 24. 14 Dudo, De moribus, p. 248 lines 23 and 34–35. 15 Dudo, De moribus, p. 288 line 28. 16 Dudo, De moribus p. 291 line 35. Other uses can be found at pp. 126 line 14, 128 line 17 (verse), 134 line 5, 140, 145 line 11 (verse), 153 lines 8–9 (verse), 170 line 16 (verse), 171 line 18,

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Lair altered and mistranslated the text to try to make sense of defective witnesses, but the solution to the difficulty does not lie in twisting the syntax of the phrase, or in mistranslating “iura” and “proavus.” The manuscripts of Dudo’s work all share a tendency to give proper names in an incorrect grammatical case, and occasionally even to give an incorrect name entirely. Evidently, this results from the fact that proper names were frequently completely capitalized, or rubricated, or in some way treated differently from the body of a text and were, therefore, initially left blank to be filled in later by a second scribe. When the names were added by a later scribe, who either did not or could not read and comprehend the text, they were more often than not given in the case of whatever noun happened immediately to precede them in the sentence, whether or not such a choice made syntactical sense.17 The solution may well be that the text was meant to read “Ricardus” in the nominative, but that a later scribe, who did not read the text carefully, instead inserted “Rollonis” in the genitive to match the “proavi,” which preceded the blank. Dudo’s commission would thus have been to describe “the customs and deeds of the Norman land, yea indeed the rights that Richard [II] asserted in the realm of his great-grandfather” (mores actusque telluris

182 lines 21–22, 185 line 34, 186 line 8 (verse), 192 line 7, 196 lines 19–20, 200 lines 24–25, 211 lines 19–20, 213 line 109, 224 line 16, 227 line 14, 228 line 2, 229 line 29 (verse), 234 lines 6–7, 245 lines 18–19, 248 line 6 (verse), and 251 line 1 (for the “ius” complex) and pp. 128 line 14, 130 line 27, 135 lines 7–11 (verse), 139 line 50, 153 lines 8–9, 170 line 16 (verse), 171, line 18, 173 line 11, 173, lines 19–20, 181 line 33, 182 lines 21–22, 183 lines 7–8, 191 line 17 (verse), 196 lines 22–23, 200 lines 24–25, 200 lines 26–27, 201 line 25, 205 lines 8 and 22, 206 lines 6–7, 213 line 109, 221 lines 22–23 (verse), 223 lines 8–9, 229 line 5, 229 lines 31 and 47 (verse), 234 line 19 (verse), 245 lines 18–19, 251 lines 6–7, 255 line 15, 258 lines 21–22, 259 lines 33 and 49–50 (verse), 262 lines 21–22 and 30, 263 line 15, 267 line 6, 269 line 8, 270 line 23, 279 line 22, 290 line 4, and 292 line 11 (for the “lex” complex). 17 The following is an incomplete list of such errors; similar errors continue with comparable rates of frequency across the various principal manuscripts throughout the entire text. These errors are most frequent with the names William and Richard, who had some claims to be treated by scribes in a manner befitting saints, and much rarer with Anstign or Rollo. The list indicates, for the most part, how many times for each cited page of Lair’s edition the corresponding manuscript versions give a proper name in an incorrect case; special notes are added when the manuscripts give an incorrect name or leave the space blank. The sigla are F (Berlin, SB-PK Philipps 1854, whose provenance is the house of Fécamp), J (Rouen, BM 1173 [Y. 11], whose provenance is the house of Jumièges), and X (Bern, Burgerbibliothek Bongarsiana 390, whose provenance is unknown). Page 120: F; 158: F, J, X; 171: F, J, X; 180: F; 182: J, X; 191: X; 192: X; 194: X; 195: X (5 times); 196: X; 197: F, X (4 times); 198: F, J (twice), X (4 times); 199: J (1 case error plus incorrect names twice), F, X (missing name twice); 200: F, J, X (missing name twice); 202: J, X; 203: J, X (twice); 204: J, X (3 times); 205: J, X (twice); 213: F, J (missing name); 218: X, J (incorrect name in incorrect case 4 times); 219: X, J (incorrect name); 220: F, J, X (twice); 221: F, J (incorrect name); 222: F, J, X; 223: F, J, X (multiple examples of all three kinds of errors); 224: F, X (twice), J (3 times); 225: J, X (5 times), F; 226: J, X (twice); 228: F, J, X (incorrect name twice); 229: F (1 blank plus one incorrect name), J (2 blanks), X (1 blank plus one case error); 230: J, X (twice); 234: J, X; 235: J, X. That a central medieval copyist might not understand the text that he or she was copying would not be an isolated case; see Guglielmo Cavallo, “Libri scritti, libri letti, libri dimenticati,” Settimane 38 (1990): 759–794.

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Normannicae, quin etiam proavi sui Ricardus quae posuit in regno iura). Indeed, that is precisely what Dudo does describe in his history. The narrative, commissioned two years before the death of Richard I, had an immediate political purpose, namely to establish the rights of Richard II, son of Richard I, in the realm of his great-grandfather Rollo, and thus ensure a smooth transition of power. I am not, however, suggesting that Dudo’s historical narrative ought to be treated, anachronistically, as political propaganda.18 It is an undisputed axiom of European historiography that the reformers of the sixteenth century saw greater success than their innumerable medieval predecessors precisely because certain characteristically (early) modern social and technological factors were suddenly coming into play; Dudo’s intended audience, in 996, could not possibly have been a wide-ranging Frankish (or even Norman) political class in whose eyes he wished to exalt the Normans in general or their rouennais rulers in particular.19 The target of an obviously polemical work, seeking to influence events in the world of tenth-century politics, was necessarily a very restricted and specific one; in this case, we know the target to have been Adalbero of Laon. For Dudo of St Quentin, Adalbero was not only the local diocesan, but also a scholarly and literary mentor. Adalbero was a scholar and writer of renown, best known nowadays for a work of his old age, the Carmen to Robert the Pious, as well as being a product of the great school of Reims where his uncle Adalbero had been archbishop. Thus, Dudo may well have been in earnest desiring correction and advice from the hand of a better writer, certainly a better educated scholar, than he felt himself to be. Dudo’s extensive eulogy to Adalbero’s merits, which covers over four pages in Lair’s densely packed edition (115–119), does not result only from his respect for the bishop’s authorial qualities; both Dudo and Adalbero also shared an old-line Carolingian mentality in a world where the times were changing quickly.20 However, it is to Adalbero’s most blatant political activities that we must look to understand why he was the target audience of Dudo’s highly politicized narrative. 18 Out of all twentieth-century comments on Dudo’s purpose, the most voluminous example of presenting our author as a falsifying propagandist aiming to effect a generalized shift in the public image of the Normans is Henri Prentout, Étude critique sur Dudon de St-Quentin et son histoire des premiers ducs Normands (Paris: Picard, 1915). 19 Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) shows how very “literate” was the ninth-century Frankish world. However, there is no indication of routine mass (re)production of individual texts. If large-scale repetitive reproduction of a single text is not evidenced in this period when so many great monastic houses were eagerly building library collections, it is hardly likely that Dudo would have had any confidence in the widespread diffusion of his narrative. McKitterick’s reckoning of the numbers of membranes required to produce codices of various sizes (138–141) should certainly make one hesitate before affirming that any author could count on their work being reproduced and circulated. 20 Adalbéron de Laon, Poème au Roi Robert, ed. and trans. Claude Carozzi (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1979), pp. ix–xix; Shopkow, “Carolingian World of Dudo,” pp. 29–32; Georges Duby, The Three Orders. Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 44–55 and 83–87. Duby ascribed to a now-outdated idea of the date at which Dudo wrote.

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Bishop Adalbero was a major political force in his own right, a member of one of the most powerful and well-connected families of Lorraine and the Ardennes, a man powerful enough to have single-handedly foiled an anti-Capetian thrust by the Carolingian Charles of Lorraine in 991, then to have led a conspiratorial coup attempt against King Hugh Capet (indeed a failed coup attempt) and still lived thrivingly to tell the tale. When Adalbero succeeded in re-entering Laon in 991, under the pretense of negotiating with King Charles, he had taken the Carolingian claimant prisoner and kept him in captivity until the latter’s death in 993. Meanwhile, Adalbero and Odo I of Blois-Chartres worked together to overthrow Hugh Capet, and to install Odo himself on the West Frankish throne.21 By 995 Adalbero would be conspiring once more against Hugh Capet, this time in favor of Otto III.22 In 994, peace was made between the blésois and Capetian factions. Despite having overreached himself, Odo was still a hulking figure on the scene in 994, in possession of Blois-Chartres, Tours, and Châteaudun from his father, and having also acquired Reims and the Soissonais in the 980s from his mother, a daughter of the house of Vermandois. Through his own wife and his siblings he could claim solid alliances with the royal house of Burgundy, with Aquitaine, and with Bourges. The only lord who could stand between Normandy and Odo’s rémois/soissonais agglomeration at that moment was the bishop of Laon, who controlled a key stretch of the plains of Champagne. It was in 994 that Richard I gave Dudo of St. Quentin his commission. The situation was not to be substantially ameliorated by the death of Odo in 996, the same year in which Richard I died, for Odo’s widow Bertha married the Capetian King Robert the Pious, who controlled the Ile-de-France and who became the protector of Odo’s minor heirs, thus putting the final brick in the edifice of alliances that left Normandy completely surrounded. If one adds to the equation the consistent hostility of the Flemish counts, the only other major regional dynasty, the direness of the situation becomes starkly evident. Of utmost concern, therefore, was to persuade the bishop of Loan, and perhaps through him some of his regional ecclesiastical colleagues, to abandon the Thibaudian and Flemish houses as vicious and diabolical, as indeed they are presented throughout Dudo’s work, and to accept the unalterable rights of the house to its patrimony. Once one has hacked through the superfluous wild thistles, it emerges clearly that the main theme of Dudo’s narrative is the right to peaceful possession of one’s patrimony, precisely the sort of argument one would logically expect to find in a narrative commissioned by Richard I, near the end of his life, as he contemplated 21 For the ambitions of the house of Blois-Chartres-Champagne, see Michel Bur, La formation du comté de Champagne, v. 950 – v. 1150 (Nancy: Université de Nancy, 1977). 22 Shopkow’s idea that Dudo hoped to use the influence of Adalbero to get at the French court is a seductive one (“Carolingian World of Dudo,” p. 33), but Adalbero’s own behaviour clearly indicates that he was a force to be reckoned with in and of himself, and must have been recognized as such by his contemporaries. Furthermore, such an aim would have been predicated upon precisely the type of semi-assured diffusion of texts which strikes me as unlikely in the pre-modern centuries. In any case, the major threat in the 990s came not from the weak, almost fictional royal power, but from the rising stars of other regional competitors such as Odo of Blois.

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the future of his lands and of his son Richard II. Although not always consonant with modern tastes, Dudo’s artistry should not be ignored; treating his composition as a narrative with plots and leitmotifs permits its themes to emerge clearly.23 There is a very clear plot, and we must operate on the assumption that it was deliberate. Part and parcel of the renaissance of Dudo studies in the 1980s was precisely to uncover the artistic, the poetic, even the epic dimensions of his work, so visible when placed in the context of Scandinavian sagas, or of classical Latin literature such as Virgil’s Aeneid and Fourth “prophetic” eclogue, or of the biographies of late Carolingian saints.24 However, the influence of the Hebrew Bible and of Judaic sacred history has never been sufficiently emphasized, not even by R.H.C. Davis in The Normans and Their Myth. In this case the omission is surprising, given that Davis deals explicitly with the grandest issues surrounding ethnogenesis.25 Perhaps the Bible is overlooked for precisely the same reason that sacred historical resonance was, in fact, so crucial in eliciting predictable audience responses to Dudo’s narrative: the tale of the Israelite settlement of Canaan is practically part of the collective unconscious for those reared in the (so-called) western tradition. Direct, explicit reference to, or citation of, biblical texts is by no means required for the parallel to be evoked in the mind of a medieval churchman. On the other hand, ignorance of the Bible has been a counterproductive feature of much of the twentieth-century approach to medieval history.26 Whatever the cause of the 23 Consider the following appraisal by a late éminence grise of medieval Norman historical writing: “C’est le plus desespérant des historiens; on n’en tire, à grand peine, que des lieux communs. Sans doute il se tenait-il surtout pour un styliste, mais ses efforts perpétuels sont infiniment lassants. Il est diffus, verbeux, ampoule, lent, pretentieux et creux, et semble souvent n’avoir plus pour préoccupation que de sortir honorablement du flot de paroles sous lequel il se noie lui-même. La recherche la plus exagérée de la floriture verbale s’allie à la pensée la plus indigente. Au total, il a édifié un monument impérissable de l’art de parler pour ne rien dire” (“[Dudo] is the most disappointing of historians; one can hardly pull anything from him except common places and that with great effort. Doubtless he mistook himself for a stylist, but his constant efforts are exceedingly tedious. He is vague, verbose, bombastic, slow, pretentious and hollow, and he often seems preoccupied by nothing more than escaping honorably from the torrent of words under which he has drowned himself. The most exaggerated pursuit of the verbal flourish is joined with the most impoverished thought possible. In sum, he built an imperishable monument to the art of speaking in order to say nothing at all”; Lucien Musset, “Le satiriste Garnier de Rouen et son milieu (début du XIe siècle),” Revue du Moyen âge Latin 10 [1954]: 237–266, at 240–241). 24 Elizabeth Van Houts, “Scandinavian Influence in Norman Literature of the Eleventh Century,” Anglo-Norman Studies 6 (1984): 109–121; Eleanor Searle, “Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of St. Quentin,” Viator 15 (1984): 119–137; Philippe Bouet, “Dudon de St-Quentin et Virgile: ‘L’Enéide’ au service de la cause normande,” Cahiers des Annales de Normandie 23 (1990): 215–236; Shopkow, “Carolingian World of Dudo.” 25 He writes: “can it be that the only way to make a nation is by the creation of a myth?” and “once a history has been written about a people, that people becomes a historical ‘fact’” (R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and Their Myth [London: Thames and Hudson, 1976], p. 16). Yet, in the whole work there is only a single and passing reference to the notion of Normandy as a divinely promised land (p. 59). 26 “I can recall spending a whole year in 1933–1934 studying the reign of the Emperor Charles the Bald with the great Ferdinand Lot. We studied every aspect of the Capitulary of Quiercy, the revolt of Boso, the first cracks in the Carolingian Empire and the early symptoms of feudalism.

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neglect, it should be remedied in the case of Dudo, as it has been sporadically elsewhere. Like all medieval intellectuals, Dudo drew primarily on two main sources of literary models and themes: the Persianized and Hellenized writings of the Jews of the Ancient Near East, and the Latin writings of the later Roman Republic and Early Empire. Recent scholarship has rendered the debt of medieval authors, even outside periods of (so-called) renovatio, to pre- and non-Christian traditions increasingly obvious.27 Of course, not all the ancient models were exploited immediately, but were viewed through the synthesizing prism of the Latin Fathers, such as Augustine, and of others less gargantuan. The tremendous influence of Virgil on Dudo’s language and style is clearly demonstrated by the catalogue of his Virgilian borrowings and reminiscences as compiled by Bouet; Bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe, like Augustine a North African, had illustrated for his vast medieval following precisely how to allegorize Virgil.28 It does not in the least detract from the centrality of Dudo’s use of the “secular” tradition of Rome as Christianized by Fulgentius to point out that the prototype for all tales of settlement in a divinely promised land had to be the story of the ancient Israelites. According to Dudo, the Normans had merely vindicated to themselves a land repeatedly promised to them in divinely inspired dream-visions; such echoes of sacred history, of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, conferred an irreproachable legitimacy on territorial claims.29 What was never mentioned was the image of Charles clothed in all the sanctity and power of an Old Testament ruler, which is now seen as a clue of the first importance for his habits of thought and springs of action.” Thus does Richard W. Southern begin his tribute to Beryl Smalley, to whose endeavors alone, and particularly to whose 1941 book The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, he attributes the fact that some medievalists are now, in the latter part of the century “aware of the presence of the Bible in their midst” (Richard W. Southern, “Beryl Smalley and the Place of the Bible in Medieval Studies, 1927–1984,” in The Bible in the Medieval World. Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, eds. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 1–16, at p. 1. 27 This has proved to be true even in regard to what to the uninitiated might seem to be a characteristically and uniquely Christian and “medieval” (in the pejorative sense of the term) set of historical narratives, namely biographies of saints. There is a useful synthetic discussion of the sources and contexts of this particular form of medieval historical writing in Thomas Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 15–32. For the continuing influence of Greek and Roman historiography on medieval historians of every ilk, see The Inheritance of Historiography, 350–900, eds. Christopher Holdsworth and T.P. Wiseman (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986) and Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History. 28 Bouet, “Dudon de St.-Quentin et Virgile.” The identity of Fulgentius, expositor of Virgil, with the bishop of Ruspe in modern Tunisia remains a matter of debate; see Leslie George Whitbread, Fulgentius the Mythographer (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971), pp. 3–11. All we need to focus on is the immense popularity of certain works attributed to Fulgentius throughout the Middle Ages, especially his Mythologiae and his Expositio continentiae Virgilianae; see Fabii Planciadis Fulgentii Opera, ed. Rudolf Helm (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898). The famous “mythographer” is one of the few authors Dudo mentions by name (Dudo, De moribus, p. 120). 29 As Beryl Smalley herself writes: “A Christian historiographer takes the Old and New Testaments as his starting-point. Medieval writings on history make little sense to a reader who does not know his Bible. A medieval writer will normally quote from the Scriptures; he will also refer and allude.

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The parallels between the earliest narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible and Dudo’s history are very strong, not only from the literary point of view, but also as regards to their own historical place in the formation of the “nations” of which they speak. The earliest skeletal narratives of Israelite sacred history date from approximately two centuries after the conquest and settlement of Canaan, when the community had developed to the point of establishing a monarchy, a political capital, a worship-centralizing temple, and the rest, under David and Solomon; only then was the period of wandering truly closed, and the identity of the “nation” forged in relation to a specific territory.30 The Norman “national” consciousness, likewise, crystalized almost a century after Rollo and his band first became active in the Seine valley. Both are examples of the process of “ethnogenesis,” whereby a polyethnic and nomadic group of shifting composition, little “racial unity,” and minimal difference to distinguish them from their neighbors is transformed through territorialization and the consequent exaltation in the status of their leaders into a nation with a particular history and identity.31 Let us consider Dudo’s narrative as a whole.32 As the story opens, a wave of ritual expulsions is threatened in “Dacia,” whose king seeks to profit unscrupulously from the recent death of a certain Rollo’s father in order to expel him and unjustly deprive him of his patrimonial lands. This king ultimately succeeds through deceit and treachery, but Rollo is thereafter both consoled and guided by prophetic visions of his future predestined glory, in this life (at Rouen) and in the next. Despite the peaceful intentions of Rollo’s band of exiled followers, who wish only to secure the freedom to trade in order to provision themselves, they are repeatedly and without provocation attacked by local inhabitants wherever they go in the British Isles and in Francia. In their seizure of the Roumois, they are at first unopposed; no lords are currently in possession, so it is effectively fair game, although unreasonable and hostile Franks soon descend upon Rollo and his men.33 Indeed, the Roumois is more than fair game; it is the Norman “promised land.”

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Biblical diction and biblical stories colour his tale” (Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975], p. 27). Peter R. Ackroyd, “The Old Testament in the Making,” in Cambridge History of the Bible, eds. P.R. Ackroyd, C.F. Evans, and G.W.H. Lampe, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969–1970), vol. 1, pp. 67–112. The most complete study of a similar transformation is Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans. Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University California Press, 1988), pp. 1–171. It should be noted that Rollo would not be identified with Moses, who died while the Israelites were still in the desert, but with Joshua, who led the holy war and conquest. The tale of the Viking warlord Anstign, presented as “Book I” in Lair’s edition, is part of the prefatory materials in the manuscripts and thus does not form part of the historical narrative. Dudo, De moribus, pp. 144–146 (for the first English encounter), 149–150 (for Frisia) and 154–155 (for the Roumois).

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Allusions to Rollo’s providential destiny litter Dudo’s narrative from the moment of the hero’s expulsion from Dacia: And once the Dacians have been reconciled with the Franks, Vast, fertile Francia will bring forth Kings and pontiffs, dukes, counts and prelates From your blessed scions, themselves formed From the seed of most noble worshippers of Christ. Under them the world will be rich, exulting in Christ its prince, And under them churches will be everywhere made fruitful, And in their new never-ending progeny those churches will rejoice. Yea indeed, once they have been thrice purified by three-fold baptism, Immense throngs will be thereafter brought on high by them, rather than damned.34 Immediately before his actual departure, Rollo hears a voice in his sleep, saying: Arise fleetly, Rollo, going hastily across the deep in your boat, proceed to the Angles; there you will hear that you will return safe and sound to your homeland, and that in it you will, without defeat, enjoy perpetual peace.” When Rollo had recounted this dream to a certain wise and Christian man, the latter explained it with a speech of this type: “In the course of time, you will be purified by sacrosanct baptism and will become an especially worthy Christian and, away from the deception of this wavering world, will one day reach the Angles, that is the angels and, with them, you will have the peace of perennial glory.”35 Dudo ends this chapter with another prophetic and consoling apostrophe: According to the fated order, after many perils of war And after the marine swellings of the foaming sea, You will have power by right, blossoming with merits, a patrician, A never-ending Christ-worshipper, loftier than the Frankish hall. 34 “Francia de que tuis genitis fecunda beatis/ Spermate nobilium concretis christicolarum,/ Dacigenis cum Francigenis iam pacificatis,/ Gignet ingens/ Reges, pontificesque, duces comites proceresque/ Sub quibus orbis ovans pollebit, principe Christo,/ Et quibus ecclesiae fecundabuntur ubique/ Atque novo quorum gaudebunt, perpete fetu,/ Ter trinae quin quibus baptismate punficatis,/ Iam superum turmae decimae vice perditae adactae” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 144). 35 “‘Rollo, velociter surge, pontum festinanter navigio transmeans, ad Anglos perge. lbi audies quod ad patriam sospes revertens, perpetuaque pace in ea sine detrimento frueris.’ Hoc somnium quum cuidam sapienti viro et christicolae retulisset, huiusmodi sermone intrepretatus est: ‘Tu vergente venturi temporis cursu sacrosancto baptismatae purificaberis, praedignusque christicola efficieris, et ab errore fluctuantis seculi ad Anglos, scilicet Angelos, usque olim pervenies, pacemque perennis gloriae cum illis habebis’” (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 144–145).

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And you will seize the deserved crown as a very worthy reward And you will deserve to enjoy, in the deity, the highest good.36 The message of the voice is then reinforced by that of a dream-vision, interpreted for Rollo by a Christian captive along similar lines, as revelatory not only of his future heavenly salvation, but also of his less-remote earthly might: Through the flying creatures of diverse classes with crimson left wings, whose most boundless outer edge you were not able to make out with your sight, you are to understand men of diverse provinces with shieldbearing arms, an innumerable magnitude of whom you will also see collected together, having become your fideles. Through the winged creatures moistened in the fountain and washed in it by turns and eating in a common act of consumption, a populace polluted by the infection of the ancient fraud, to be washed by figurative baptism, to be fattened by the nourishment of Christ’s sacrosanct body and blood. Through the nests which they were building around the mountain, you are to understand the ravaged town walls which are to be rebuilt. Birds of diverse species were obeying you, men of diverse realms, having reclined at your table, will yield obedience by serving you.37 With Rollo bogged down in Frisia, Dudo interjects: Come, Rollo, why do you remain, tarrying in those lands? Cease, desist, this decision is better for you, That in the coming age of a pre-disposed time You will endure the battles of the abominable Frankish nation And be harassed beyond measure by Aquitanian wars. After this You will seize your rewards, along with the present of perpetual life.38 36 “Ordine fatali post multa pericula belli,/ Ferventis pelagi post aequoreosque tumore/ Perpes christicola, Francisca celsior aula,/ Patricius meritis florescens, iure valebis,/ Emeritam et capies condigna merce coronamI In summoque bono deitate mereberis uti” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 145). 37 “‘Per volucres diversorum generum, laevas alas habentes puniceas, quarum infinitissimam extremitatem exhaurire visu non poteras, homines diversarum provinciarum scutulata bracchia habentes, tuique effecti fideles, quorum innumeram multitudinem coadunatam videbis, animo deprehendas. Per alites fonte infusas et in eo alternatim ablutas communique comestione edentes, populum antiquae fraudis contagio pollutum typico baptismate abluendum sacrosancti corporis et sanguinis Christi alimonia saginandum. Per nidos quos circum montes faciebant vastatarum urbium moenia reaedificanda intelligas. Tibi aves diversarum specierum obtemperabant, tibi homines diversorum regnorum serviendo accubitati obedient’” (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 146–147). 38 “Rollo, quid en terris morulans versans in istis/ Desine, parce, tibi magis haec sententia praestat,/ Venturo quoniam proclivi temporis aevo/ Praelia Franciscae gentis dire patieris,/ Atque fatigeris nimium bellis Aquitanis/ Hinc/ Praemia perpetuae capies cum munere vitae” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 151).

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Finally, Rollo and his band sail up the Seine to Rouen, where the decision to settle is quickly taken, for Rollo’s followers, “prescient of the future and imbued with a presentiment of divine inspiration,” immediately identify the Roumois with the territory revealed in their leader’s vision.39 So certain is Rollo that the Roumois is his pre-destined replacement patrimony, that he will soon refuse an offer to rule half the land of the Angles in order to settle in Rouen.40 What, then, do the literary echoes and leitmotifs in Dudo’s history imply? Not only is Rollo’s dynasty’s possession of the land ultimately a chapter in sacred history, their iura (rights) have been repeatedly vindicated in battle, confirmed by the sacramenta (oaths) of the other princes, including the royal one, and continually justified by their beneficial stewardship of the realm.41 There can be no legitimate challenge to Richard II’s possession of his great-grandfather’s realm, and anyone seeking to mount such a challenge would be deserving of every type of reproach. That Richard I should have been thinking, anxiously, about the fate of his son after his own death is totally explicable in the light of his own experience, and in light of his prejudices concerning the Franks that seem to have resulted from those experiences. We must always keep in mind that Richard not only commissioned the work, but also told the author what he wanted written in it. If we are to judge by the image of the Franks in Dudo’s work, it is little wonder that Richard I did not trust them to recognize the rights of his son and heir. Richard’s father, and Rollo’s son, namely William Longsword, had been cut down in his prime as a result of his entanglements in the politics of northern Francia. Once more, as Dudo tells the tale, the root of all evil is unjust spoliation, as the treacherous Count Arnulf of Flanders has dispossessed the Castellan of Montreuil. William, ever the representative of legitimate succession and inheritance, comes to the rescue and, for his trouble, is assassinated by Arnulf’s men.42 The single largest continuous segment of Dudo’s text is then devoted to detailing the trials and tribulations of the young

39 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 151–153. 40 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 158–160. Later, even with help from the Burgundians and from miracle-working relics of the Virgin Mary, the Frankish princes cannot dislodge Rollo and prevent his band from achieving their desire, or rather, fulfilling their destiny (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 160– 166). In the end, Rollo becomes a Christian, lavishly endows numerous religious establishments, and rules wisely until his death, honorably refusing to support the coup attempt of Robert the Strong against the Carolingian king of the Franks (pp. 170–174). 41 Besides fracases already mentioned, Rollo and his descendants successfully face internal and external enemies on the battlefield in Dudo, De moribus, pp. 185, 191, 240–243, 248, 255–260, 272, and 275. Oaths are taken recognizing Rollo’s family’s possession of their lands in Dudo, De moribus, pp. 168, 182, 225, and 247. Loud asserts that part of the “Norman myth” as constructed by Dudo was a reputation for cunning and trickery (Graham A. Loud, “The ‘Gens Normannorum’ – Myth or Reality?” Anglo-Norman Studies 4 [1982]: 104–116 and 204–209, at 111–112). However, the Normans of Dudo’s narrative are entirely trustworthy; it is instead the Franks and the other enemies of the Normans who consistently break pacts and truces and, in fact, perjure themselves after having sworn the sacramenta. The result of this Dudonic prism is that every battle in which the Normans engage is not only justified, but technically even defensive. 42 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 203–207.

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Richard I as he tries, between 943 and 946, to secure his inheritance against the repeated machinations and attacks of King Louis IV, Arnulf of Flanders, the King of Germany, and Queen Gerberga of western Francia. Two sets of forces had combined to make the years following the assassination so dangerous for Richard: the usual territorial ambitions of other regional magnates, seeking to profit by the youth of the slain leader’s heir, and the strong internal reaction of “pagan” traditionalists, who sought to break the dynasty’s grip for their own independentist reasons. The threatened resurgence of “paganism” within former Frankish lands then served to fuel even further the anti-Norman ardor of Christian magnates of all ranks; at the very least it seemed to justify any and every level of intervention in Norman affairs.43 Richard’s experience is poignantly described by Dudo, beginning with the immediate aftermath of the assassination, presumably on the basis of the duke’s own recollections: However, King Louis of Francia, hearing that William Duke of the Normans, deceived by the ingenuity of Count Arnulf of Flanders, had been martyred for the sake of the stability of the sacrosanct church and of holy faith and of peace, and for the sake of his own fidelity, felt severe pain, and hastened quickly to Rouen. However, King Louis made Richard, a boy of such great beauty, come to him and, weeping with deceitful and fraudulent goodwill, took him up and kissed him and, not letting him go, compelled him to dine and to lie with him. For indeed the following day the king kept with himself the boy of such great honor and withheld him from the rearer who wanted to lead him to another house in order to bathe and watch over him. A second and a third day, the king repeatedly did not allow the foster father, burning with desire, to do it but withheld the boy with a resolute heart.44 Under the fraudulent double pretext that Richard would receive a better education in the royal palace at Laon than in his own household at Rouen, and 43 The fullest modern narrative account of the whole period, extensively documented as well, is still Philippe Lauer Le Règne de Louis IV d’Outremer (Paris: Bouillon, 1900), pp. 87–184; a concentrated discussion of the crisis of the 940s may be found in Felice Lifshitz, “S. Romain de Rouen, Apôtre franc dans la Normandie des Vikings,” in Voix d’Ouest en Europe, Souffles d’Europe en Ouest, ed. Georges Cesbron (Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 1993), pp. 23–30 [now, in English translation, Chapter 6 in this collection]. 44 “Audiens autem rex Franciae Luthdovicus quod, Arnulfi Flandrensis comitis versutia deceptus, pro stabilitate sacrosanctae ecclesiae sanctaeque fidei et pacis, proque fidelitate sui martyrizatus esset dux Northmannorum Willelmus, multum condoluit et concite Rotomagum properavit. Rex autem Luthdovicus ad se venire fecit Ricardum, tantae pulchritudinis puerum, lacrymansque affectu doloso et fraudulento, suscepit et oscalatus est eum, retinensque coegit epulari et recubare secum. Sequenti namque die nutritori tanti honoris puerum volenti deducere ad alteram domum ut balnearet et custodiret eum, prohibuit rex et detinuit secum. Secundo et tertio die identidem altori aestuanti facere non sinit rex, verum prohibuit obstinato corde” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 224).

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that Louis would lead him on a retaliatory expedition against the Flemings, the king manages to steal away with the boy. At this point, Dudo interjects a lament: Beat your breast, Rouen, for now your boy, The mighty marquis given to you by right, Is at hand, a prisoner, quivering, And is lead away, oh grief, like a foreigner, By the king and the Frankish viceroys, While the Dacian prelates, slow of mind, stand by.45 As Dudo tells it, Louis accepts a weighty bribe from Arnulf to ignore the count’s guilt and resolves to keep the boy imprisoned forever, not even permitting him to pass outside the walls of Laon.46 The child is only liberated as a result of a ruse concocted by the tutor assigned by King Louis to guard the boy, for he is personally horrified by the injustice of such a captivity.47 It would be tedious to continue rehearsing every episode of Richard’s turbulent life during the years following his father’s death, episodes jammed with a monotonous and finally wearying regularity into thirty or more action-packed pages in Lair’s edition of the text. It is important to emphasize, however, how Dudo underscores the sufferings of the poor innocent youth Richard (presumably, again, at the aged duke’s own prompting) when, for instance, he asks King Louis in another lament, “Why do you now do damage to this as yet harmless upright boy?”48 Arnulf of Flanders, more continuously involved in the anti-Richardian schemes than any other individual, is perceived as “desiring to torment the young man Richard.”49 Having made it through those traumatic youthful years does not guarantee for Richard a life of peace, for he will still have to face, in the 960s, intrigues and attacks by Theobald of Chartres, by a new wave of Scandinavian adventurers, and finally by a coalition of Frankish and Flemish forces, including the new West Frankish King Lothar; the adult duke’s response to those renewed challenges occupies a further twenty-three pages of the text. It is almost beyond question that Richard I, nearing the end of his life, would have been concerned about the succession and about a smooth transfer of power, given the crises which he himself had weathered. Such issues would have been of much more pressing concern than would some generalized desire to present the

45 “Rotomage tuus modo puer,/ Marchio iure potens tibi datus,/ Captus adest quia plange tremulans/ Regeque Francigenisque Satrapis/ Ducitur heu dolor advena velut,/ Dacigenis stolidis proceribus” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 228). 46 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 228 and 230. 47 Dudo, De moribus, p. 231. 48 Dudo, De moribus, p. 238. 49 Dudo, De moribus, p. 254.

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Normans as “civilized” or to create a monument to the glories of the dynasty, the type of motivation that is normally posited for the commission. Thus, Davis on Dudo’s history: a rambling and verbose book of inordinate literary pretentions and with many apostrophes in verse . . . its purpose was obviously to demonstrate that by the end of the tenth century the Normans had shed their bad Viking qualities and become good Christian citizens. The francization of the Normans is, therefore, its main theme.50 Yet, as we have seen, Rollo’s Normans in Dudo’s narrative history are never possessed of “bad Viking qualities” in the first place, but are always peace-seeking, justified, and divinely guided; the plot of the narrative cannot possibly be the story of how they shed their bad qualities. Furthermore, “public relations” interpretations of Richard’s intentions will always come up against the problem of how to guarantee diffusion of the desired images.51 In any case, even if Richard could have guaranteed an audience for a revamped public image, it is hard to see why he would have felt such cosmetic treatment necessary. The Norman princes were already respected in the most rarified social strata by the 990s; by 1002 a princess of the Norman house, Emma, would sit on the throne of England. All the evidence for the reign of Richard I bespeaks a region in which any western Frank would have felt at home, one with a developed money economy and an administration more modelled on the Carolingian standard than that of any other regional ruler. Normandy could also boast a viscount in every pagus, enforcing justice in the law courts, collecting tolls, and claiming public rights such as to military service. In things ecclesiastical as well, the Norman

50 Davis, The Normans and Their Myth, pp. 51–52. 51 Similar arguments might be brought to bear against Eleanor Searle’s version of Dudo’s purpose. However, in this case, the intended audience is more local, namely, certain Norse elites who could presumably be corralled into attending public readings of Dudo’s epic tale at the ducal residences in Rouen or Fécamp. Searle’s argument is that Dudo sought to vindicate the authority of Rollo’s descendants vis-à-vis other recently arrived Norse in the area, and that his method for demonstrating the legitimacy of that authority revolved around the “peace-weaving” marriage of Richard I to Gunnor, a robust and heroic daughter of a pagan war-leader, probably of the Cotentin (Searle, “Fact and Pattern in Heroic History,” pp. 132–137). The entire argument depends upon the idea that Dudo’s narrative was shaped with Gunnor “at the writer’s elbow” (p. 122). Searle cites the phrase wherein Dudo describes one of Gunnor’s attributes as being “of capacious memory and filled with a treasure-house of recollections” (Dudo, De moribus, p. 289). Given that Gunnor arrives on the scene only in the late 960s when Dudo in fact stops his narrative, it is hard to see how this phrase could have been intended by him to indicate, however obliquely, that she was a crucial source for his tale. Furthermore, the effects of Lair’s edition have again made themselves felt, for he interpolated the name of Richard’s bride, that is Gunnor, into the text (Dudo, De moribus, p. 289) when in fact it is not given in any of the oldest and most important manuscript copies (F, J, X, or Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 276; see note 17 for sigla).

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church under Richard had begun the rise that would make it the most admired in Francia by the middle of the eleventh century.52 Dudo has been difficult to read, and unpopular in our times, not because he mythifies the Normans, trying to present them as what they were not, but precisely because he does not mythify them enough, certainly not beyond the usual level of Latin historians, who reflexively echoed sacred and Roman history almost without consciously trying to do so. Historians cannot nowadays look at Dudo’s Normandy without first consciously purging themselves of the remnants of the Viking myth, a myth whose fluid and plastic content has included everything from the Incarnation of Evil, enemy of the Christian cleric, to the Nordic Übermensch, hero of the Romantics. Boyer’s 1986 study, Le mythe viking dans les lettres françaises, spotlights the pervasive double-edged image of the Viking in the European mind. He shows how, confronted by the strangeness of those men from the north, Europeans have constructed a Viking either deified or degraded, but in all respects a Titan, capable of functioning as the repository of every exaggerated fear and desire.53 He shows clearly the force of the exaggerated image of the Viking in European literature from the time of Abbo and Wace, to name but two authors, both of whom saw the strange aggressors as the scourge of God. However, to Dudo of St. Quentin, neither Rollo nor William, still less Richard I, was alien. Richard especially, in his Carolingian-style court, as he rewarded the canon of St. Quentin in all the usual ways, was not a very promising candidate for mythification beyond the level of praise expected from the author of a commissioned history; Dudo knew him too well. Modern authors have been puzzled to find that Dudo shows the Norman leaders in a light that barely distinguishes them from other contemporary domini. In consequence, some have accused Dudo of lying, because everyone knows that the Northmen were not just like everybody else; still others have found the titanic Nordic barbarian, paragon of cruelty, cunning and military virtus, in Dudo’s account despite its pronounced absence. Onto the imprecise image of the pirate from the north writers have, into this century, projected every possible fantasy. Dudo, on the other hand, despite his “baroque” and literary turn of mind, was not concerned with fantasies, but with down-toearth problems like succession and patrimony, problems that affected known and concrete people. The concerns of the Norman court at Rouen were utterly mundane and not, in the end, very romantic. There is a consensus among scholars concerning the deeply “Carolingian” ways of the Norman duchy. It is the great paradox of Norman historiography that the recognition of the Carolingian nature of the region should coexist with 52 Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919); Davis, The Normans and Their Myth, pp. 20–37; Bates, Normandy Before 1066, pp. 1–32; Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 78–82 and 199–206. 53 Régis Boyer, Le mythe viking dans les lettres françaises (Paris: Porte-Glaive, 1986), pp. 213–215.

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a thorough-going reluctance to consider seriously a “continuity” scenario rather than the “reconstruction” one that makes Dudo appear remarkably mendacious. Continuity is very much suggested by the overwhelming evidence of prosperity and institutional stability during the reign of Richard I.54 The hypothesis of a fairly continuous structure in Normandy is not incompatible with a mid-century crisis, particularly given the ease with which, in the end, that crisis was resolved. The fact that Richard I, despite his youth and so much opposition, managed to accede to a functioning government would then seem much less mysterious to the modern eye.55 Presenting the Normans (falsely) as “civilized” was not Richard’s aim when he commissioned the work from Dudo. No matter how much continuity is posited, we must still recognize (as Richard would have) that the moments of succession are always the most critical ones in personally ruled political units, even when the heir is not underage, and Richard would have been overly sensitive to such issues in any case. He was worried, not about the image of his dynasty, but about its rights (iura), which were not always respected in the 990s, as the recent coup attempt of Odo I had so vividly demonstrated. Would the chain hold at the point of greatest stress? In the turbulent free-for-all of the late tenth century, it was a good bet that some other northern Frankish prince, even the royal one, would seek to benefit at the moment of Norman weakness; the only hope was to prevent key figures from approving their ambitions, key figures such as Adalbero, who combined crucial territorial holdings with a taste for playing king-maker. The transition of power, in fact, came off extremely smoothly, with no aid from Dudo’s plaint, which was not completed in time to play a role in the succession; the historian’s infamous prolixity probably got the better of him and threw him behind schedule. The moment of danger having passed, Dudo even intended to abandon the project entirely, but was urged by both Richard I’s son and the deceased duke’s half-brother to continue.56 Although the history was brought to completion under Richard II, the plan of the work was marked by the original commission, and Dudo forged ahead, wild thistles of superfluity and all.

54 One might also gently suggest that if conquerors wish to make their risk of life and limb worthwhile, they need a tribute-collecting structure, and such structures, once in place, tend to survive transfers of power at the top. Studies of the successive layerings of conquest in the British Isles have demonstrated the tendency to utilize structures in place; for the evidence of the survival of Celtic/British (and therefore, pre-Roman) forms and units of assessing renders all the way into the Anglo-Saxon period and beyond, see James Campbell, “The Lost Centuries, 400–600,” in The Anglo-Saxons, eds. James Campbell, Eric John, and Patrick Wormald (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 20–44, at 41–42. One might also analogise the Norman settlement to the late Roman situation, when a self-interested preservationism marked the relations between the barbarian rulers of the fifth and sixth centuries, and the Roman institutions they found in place, in so far as the latter had not already devolved beyond recognition (Walter Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980]). 55 Dunbabin, France in the Making, p. 80. 56 Dudo, De moribus, p. 119.

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Translator’s prefatory statement The primary aim of this translation is to make available to students a primary source to serve as an introduction to a period in European history, namely the tenth century, which is very poorly supplied at present with material suitable for classroom use. If my own experience in classrooms can be taken as a guide, introductions to translations for teaching purposes can often be venerated by students out of all proportion to their value, and tend to remain influential for much longer than their orientations can be said to match the mood of the professoriate utilizing the texts. In hopes of avoiding encouraging such a development, I will confine myself in this introduction to explaining the rationale behind the translation, while providing only minimal “guidance” concerning the author, his period, or his project.

The date of composition of the text If we can believe Dudo himself, writing in the dedicatory letter to Bishop Adalbero of Laon that serves as a preface to the work, Duke Richard I of Normandy commissioned a history from the cleric of St. Quentin and, after Richard’s death, other members of the Norman ducal house continued to patronize the author in the hopes that he would complete the task. Dudo writes that the commission was delivered two years before the death of Richard I. According to the oldest manuscript copies of Dudo’s narrative, that doleful event took place either in 996 or 1002. The former year, 996, is the one that is usually deemed acceptable by scholars; however, it is symptomatic of the difficulties involved in studying the period in question that the later date, 1002, was both preferred by the scribes of the oldest extant manuscript copies of the text (Bern, Burgerbibliothek Bongars 390 of the early eleventh century and Berlin, SB-PK Philipps 1854 of the late eleventh century) and was left “uncorrected” by the owners of the Berlin manuscript, namely the monks of the Norman monastery of Fécamp, the very place where Duke Richard died and was buried.

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If determining the date at which Dudo began to write is difficult, determining the date at which he finished writing is even more problematic. Returning to the author’s dedicatory epistle to Bishop Adalbero, we find that Dudo there possesses, in the salutation, the title “decanus” (dean) of the community of canons of St. Quentin in the Vermandois. Because this same Dudo is called simply a “canonicus” (canon) of St. Quentin in a charter of Duke Richard II which dates from 1015, it is usually concluded that Dudo completed his Norman history late in 1015, after receiving a promotion to “decanus.”1 Because the charter itself survives in the original, and not in some later copy, its own authenticity is not in doubt.2 Nevertheless, the reasoning behind this particular terminus post quem (“limit after which”) is not iron-clad. Let us consider the charter of 1015. Dudo himself wrote the first four lines of the 1015 charter, calling himself the “capellanus” (chaplain) of Duke Richard II. Another scribe wrote the rest of the charter and called Dudo a “canonicus.” The appellation does not, therefore, have the kind of authority it would have had had it come from Dudo’s own pen. Yet, even if Dudo did use the title “canonicus” in 1015, that would not in and of itself preclude his already having become the “decanus” of the congregation. When a canon became dean of St. Quentin, he did not thereby cease to be a canon of the community; witness the following verbal construction from a typical charter in the Cartulary (collection of charters) of St. Quentin, which refers to “the dean and the other canons of the church of blessed Quintinus.”3 The 1015 charter represents, in a sense, Dudo’s will, whereby he is guaranteed by Richard II that he may bequeath to his monastic family certain benefices which he had been given by Richard I; at this moment, it is understandable that Dudo would have emphasized his status as a member of the familia (or community) of the monastery, rather than his official position over it. Finally, if Dudo was not the dean of the community at the time of the 1015 charter, there is no reason to assume that he necessarily became dean after drawing up the charter rather than that he had been dean before drawing up the charter. The deanship of a canonry is not a lifetime position from which one cannot abdicate; indeed, it is precisely the sort of position from which one might resign in order to become the “capellanus” of Duke Richard II, the position which Dudo describes himself as holding in the charter of 1015, as well as in a ducal charter of 1011 that is also from his own hand (and extant in the original).4 To complicate matters even more, let us add to the evidentiary calculus materials beyond the dedicatory epistle and the two ducal charters. Can we be certain that we ought to trust the salutation of the dedicatory epistle when it refers to

1 For instance, Leah Shopkow, “The Carolingian World of Dudo of St. Quentin,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989): 19–37. For the charter, see Fauroux, Recueil, no. 18 pp. 100–102. 2 Paris BN, Collection de Picardie 352 no. 1. 3 “. . . ecclesie beati quintini decanus ceterique canonici” (Paris BN lat. 11070, no. 74 fol. 86r). 4 Fauroux, Recueil no. 13, pp. 86–89; Rouen, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime 14 H 915A.

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Dudo as the “decanus” of St. Quentin, whether in 1015 or at any other time? The dedicatory epistle does appear in a number of the earlier manuscript copies of the text; however, none of those is separated from the date of Dudo’s own writing by fewer than several decades. On the other hand, the Annals of St. Quentin, written in a ninth-century manuscript from St. Quentin and then updated by tenthand eleventh-century hands contemporary with the events recorded, describe the rule of “abates” (abbots) and “custodies” (guardians) throughout the period in question, with no reference to anyone named Dudo, or indeed to any “decani.”5 Against a background of such uncertainty, it is difficult to see how we can assert anything more specific than that Dudo wrote the history which is translated here during the late tenth and/or early eleventh centuries, while associated in a variety of ways with the ruling family of ducal Normandy.

The text on which the translation is based Dudo’s history of Viking Normandy, like the vast majority of texts written before the age of the printing press, survives in a fairly large number of manuscripts, all of which differ from one another in a variety of ways, but most of which were copied during the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the hey-day of the popularity of the text.6 This translation renders, for the most part, the copy produced, in the second half of the eleventh century, at Mont-St.-Michel, a monastery just off the French coast near the “border” between the regions of Normandy and Brittany. The manuscript was owned, in the twelfth century, by the Norman monastery of Fécamp, also on the Channel coast, and is listed in the twelfth-century library catalogue of that house under the title “Gesta Normannorum” or “Deeds of the Normans.”7 That manuscript is now Berlin, SB-PK Philipps 1854. I decided, in the course of making this translation, not to “re”-construct and translate “the” text as it hypothetically left the pen of its author, but to make available “a” text of Dudo’s history that was actually read, or which (at least) was actually present in someone’s library collection. The first few drafts of the translation, made in the late 1980s, in fact did render that composite version of the various manuscripts (i.e. the “edition”) created by Jules Lair and published in 1865.8 The next few drafts rendered my own attempt at a “critical edition,” 5 Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana lat. 645; Annales Sancti Quintini Veromandensis, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann (MGH SS 16; Hanover: Hahn, 1859), pp. 507–508. The Benedictines of St. Maur, in contrast, present the governance of the house to have involved lay abbots and deans throughout the period; however, they provide no source for “Vivianus,” said to have been the “decanus” in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, before Dudo (GC 11: 1038–1054). 6 Gerda Huisman, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum,” Anglo-Norman Studies 6 (1984): 122–135. 7 Huisman, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradition,” p. 122; Jonathan J.G. Alexander, Norman Illumination at Mont St.-Michel, 966–1100 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 40 and 235. 8 Dudo, De moribus.

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that is, yet another composite version of the various manuscripts, evolved in part through consultation with Gerda Huisman of the National Library of Groningen in The Netherlands. However, the final few drafts and, ultimately the version here presented, were the result of my becoming, in approximately 1993, absolutely persuaded that “editions” of medieval texts can only be, at best, misleading. I was first introduced to the debate over the value of so-called “critical editions” approximately ten years ago (at the time of writing, in the mid-1980s), when Joseph-Claude Poulin of the Université Laval gave me a copy of an article by Leonard Boyle.9 Boyle argued that despite the enormous difficulty inherent in any attempt to “recreate” the “original” version of a pre-printing-era text as it left the pen of its author, if the editor were careful and painstaking enough, taking into account every possible clue offered by the various manuscript witnesses, they could succeed. At the time I was persuaded by his arguments, and it was under the influence of his call for scrupulous transcriptions that I began my own attempt to establish “the” text of Dudo’s narrative. However, Boyle’s arguments soon came to appear, to my mind, completely beside the point. It now seems to me to be irrelevant whether we can or cannot accurately re-construct the version of a text produced by a given author at a particular moment. If, by grace of some mysterious cosmic luck, we succeed, we will still only offer to our readers a text that almost no one ever saw; if, as is more likely, we fail, we offer to our readers a text that no one ever saw, a figment of our own imaginations. Some of the more radical participants in recent literary-critical debates have attacked the very idea of an “author” for pre-printing-era texts.10 I do not deny the reality or the importance of the person of Dudo of St. Quentin, but I do insist that we shift our focus, when dealing with pre-1450 texts, away from the “modern” construct of the edition and towards the pre-“modern” concrete reality of the manuscript.11 Unfortunately (perhaps), my courage has sometimes failed me. I have made concessions and compromises and have, in a number of ways, sacrificed “authenticity” for “readability.” The chapter divisions, sentence divisions, and intra-sentence punctuation of the translation are those of the Berlin manuscript. However, the Arabic numerals assigned to the chapters are my additions. Furthermore, none of the manuscripts, including the Berlin one, contain paragraph divisions, except on the first few pages of the text, where new paragraphs are indicated by extra-large, 9 Leonard E. Boyle, “Optimist and Recensionist: ‘Common Errors’ or ‘Common Variations’?” in Latin Script and Letters A.D. 400–900: Festschrift Presented to Ludwig Bieler on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, eds. John J. O’Meara and Bernd Naumann (Leiden: Brill, 1976), pp. 264–274. 10 For instance, Bernadette A. Masters, Esthétique et manuscripture. Le “Moulin à paroles” au moyen âge (Heidelberg: Winter, 1992); note, however, that Masters does not so much attack the idea of an author as propose a completely new way to conceptualize the pre-modern author as a collective person. 11 Two recent examples of this approach are: John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro De Buen Amor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) and Pamela Gehrke, Saints and Scribes: Medieval Hagiography in its Manuscript Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

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colored initials. At one more courageous point in time, I did render each chapter as a continuous, breathless, run-on paragraph. But a reader (of a grant proposal) complained, begging for a break, a chance to get a cup of coffee. Coffee is itself a “modern” drug, introduced into Europe around the same time as the printing press and the (scholarly) edition. There should not be coffee breaks built into this translation, but there are, and they are totally of my own creation. Paragraph structure can play a large role in determining meaning, in determining how a given text is read; therefore I urge the reader to keep in mind the artificiality of the breaks in the translation. Likewise, it is well to be aware that neither Arabic numerals in general, nor the convention of citing texts by numerical indicators, both of which are standard features of “modern” scholarship and which have caused me to number the chapters for the convenience of readers (as well as to harass the text with precise Biblical citations in the form of footnotes, another scholarly convention), have any relevance to the Frankish world around the year 1000. Finally, eleventhand twelfth-century Latin scribes rarely capitalized anything. Therefore, the vast majority of capitalized words that do not begin new sentences (most significantly words referring to the God of the Christians) are a result of my concessions to “modern” conventions. Yet there is a more dramatic way in which I have departed from the Berlin manuscript, sacrificing (to repeat the formula) authenticity for readability. Sometimes, no matter how hard I puzzled over the text, I could not understand the version in the Berlin manuscript, whereas the substitution of the readings from some other manuscript (or recourse to Dudo’s own source material) made the passage perfectly clear. I therefore made the (extremely difficult) decision to use alternate manuscripts on certain occasions. However, I must emphasize that this has been a technique of last resort, always a reluctant concession; the occasional concessions to readability are not tantamount to a complete capitulation before the siren-song of the edition. Every time I have “overridden” the readings of the Berlin manuscript, I have indicated that fact in a note; the reader should not be able to forget the artificiality of the text at those moments.12 The manuscript version to which I have appealed most frequently was produced in the second half of the eleventh century at St. Augustine, Canterbury; it is now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 276. The translation, therefore, is a modified version of a single manuscript of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum, representing a compromise between my desire to

12 There is a single exception: because proper names were frequently added (by a rubricator, writing in red) after the body of a text had already been written out, proper names are frequently given in the wrong grammatical case; on occasion, an entirely inappropriate name is inserted by the rubricator. This sort of error is almost ubiquitous in the Berlin manuscript, as it is in many of the other manuscripts. To indicate every time I corrected the case of a proper name would be intrusive even beyond the level of potential gains made in the direction of revealing certain features of a manuscript culture. Therefore, I have only noted periodically that I am correcting the proper names. For detailed discussion of the problems of proper names in the manuscripts, see Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative” [now Chapter 12 in this collection].

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teach students something about tenth-century Francia and my desire to teach students something about manuscript culture.

The principles of translation Most of the text is in late-Carolingian Latin. A few isolated words or short phrases are in Greek; they too have been translated into English, with an indication in the notes that the original was Greek. Most of the text is written as an alternation of rhymed prose with even more elaborately metered verse, a style known as prosimetrum. Only a few short passages bear no clearly discernible signs of some sort of rhyme scheme or versification. The difficulty, or at least the awkwardness, of the Latin text itself is often attributable to Dudo’s desire to express himself in metered verse or in rhymed prose, as for instance he veers between redundant repetitiveness to make sure a line is sufficiently long, and ambiguous ellipses to make sure a line is sufficiently short.13 From a very early date, certain copyists rejected the verse portions of the narrative, which are often maddeningly obscure, and reproduced only the prose sections; this is true even of the oldest surviving copy (Bern, Burgerbibliothek Bongars 390), and of most copies made during the thirteenth century and after. Nevertheless, this translation, intended as it is to give students a feeling for one cultural sphere of Europe around the year 1000, includes (as it had to) both prose and verse. However, I have attempted to render neither the meter nor the rhymescheme, the latter in any case being effectively non-reproducible in a non-declined language such as English. Despite the fact that my approach to the base text to be translated has been completely transformed over the years, my principles of translation have remained stable throughout the entire project, which I began in late 1987. I was, at the time, writing my doctoral dissertation under the direction of J.M.W. Bean (1928–2012), after completing a number of years of close study with him concerning every (?) medievalist’s nightmare, “feudalism,” the subject of the majority of his own published research. While I cannot say that he in any way endorses the tack I have taken in producing this translation, he himself initially suggested that I undertake it. Furthermore, through the numerous brain-twisting, head-cracking assignments for written and oral presentations on “feudalism” that he gave me between 1980 and 1984, he has exercised an enormous influence on the way I myself conceptualize medieval sociopolitical relations and structures. Therefore this translation is dedicated to him. I undertook this translation, in 1987, with the explicit intention of providing a text that could be used in university classrooms by professors who (like me) considered “feudalism” to be a worse-than-useless historiographic construct. I have 13 The distortions and obscurities required by the desire to stick to a meter are discussed by Jan M. Ziolkowski, Jezebel. A Norman Latin Poem of the Early Eleventh Century (New York: Lang, 1989).

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long believed, and continue to believe, that “feudal tenure” (or, following the preferred phraseology of Susan Reynolds’ recent study, “the law of fiefs”) has some relevance to understanding European society after the twelfth and particularly after the thirteenth century.14 However, “feudal relations” do not begin to offer a way to understand “medieval” Europe in general. Furthermore, for someone like myself, whose primary expertise lies in the centuries before 1100, the idea that medieval Europe was “feudal” does not in the least correspond to my understanding of the period. Yet, most if not all the sources available in translation for undergraduates seemed to be devoted to demonstrating the centrality of “feudal relations” to the Middle Ages. I therefore undertook to make a translation of one of the texts which has often been seen as central to the debate over feudalism, a translation whose primary guiding principle has been not to read the characteristics of post-twelfth-century legal ideas of feudal tenure anachronistically into the tenth-century situation. My “a-feudal” orientation aroused hostility on the part of evaluators of the translation during a series of failed attempts to acquire grant support for the project. Fortunately, the recent publication of Susan Reynolds’ Fiefs and Vassals has rendered it unnecessary for me to justify this approach by discussing here, at length, the problems and confusions that have been created by historians who have translated pre-twelfth-century texts as though a whole series of words and phrases had single, well-defined, precise, legal, technical “feudal” meanings in the tenth century. Reynolds’ discussion of the issue of “feudal” vocabulary is far better than anything I could ever have hoped to produce; the interested reader is therefore urged to read her treatment of the issue. Those who are less impassioned by the problem of “feudalism” can content themselves with the knowledge that this translation has been informed by the desire to avoid imposing unwarranted technical, legalistic meanings on words such as beneficium, fidelis, honor, officium, tenere, possession, and the like. Other conventions adopted by the translator include: 1) extremely familiar personal names such as William, Richard, and Henry have been fully Anglicized; 2) relatively unfamiliar personal names of ninth- and tenth-century personages have only been slightly Anglicized, being kept as close to the Latin as possible (e.g. Rodulfus is Rodulf and Anstignus is Anstign); 3) names of saints already long-dead when Dudo wrote are not Anglicized at all, but are left unchanged in the Latin (e.g. Medardus, Eligius, Quintinus); 4) place names are given in their modern vernacular equivalents (e.g. St. Quentin).

14 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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Latin historian of Normandy. Dudo served as sometime chancellor for early Norman dukes and was dean of St. Quentin in his native Vermandois. Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum (Deeds of the Normans) was commissioned in 994 by Duke Richard I and completed due to the continued patronage of the ducal house. This history of the reigns of Richard I and his predecessors (also called De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum [On the Customs and Deeds of the First Dukes of Normandy]) is written in prosimetrum (rhythmic prose alternating with verse) and includes extensive “invented” scenes and conversations. Dudo’s narrative was extremely influential in subsequent centuries; however, a number of authors, particularly in the twentieth century, have seen Dudo as a mendacious panegyrist for the Norman dukes. Dudo may also have written the history of the monastery of Fécamp contained in the manuscript Rouen, BM 528 (A.362).

Texts Dudo, De moribus.

References Lifshitz, Norman Conquest. Leah Shopkow, “The Carolingian World of Dudo of St. Quentin,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989): 19–37.

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15 CAROLINGIAN NORMANDY An essay on continuity, using neglected sources

A paradox: prosperity and culture in Viking Normandy1 Among the various principalities that developed out of the Carolingian Empire, Normandy – where “foreigners” (Vikings) took the reins of power – was exceptional. This exceptional character of Normandy was neither a heritage from the natal lands of the conquerors, nor a result of new forms created by those conquerors in their new location. On the contrary, the exceptional character of Normandy was a result of the fact that pre-existent Carolingian institutions were preserved in the region to an extraordinary degree. The administration of Richard I (943–996), more than any other princely administration of the era, retained a Carolingian character, including (for instance) a vicecomes who was responsible for justice, military service, and tolls in each pagus.2 The dominant legal practices and customs of scribes in Normandy were, from the 960s at the latest, Carolingian.3 Tenth-century Norman denarii were carefully struck according to strict minting regulations.4 Rollo’s dynasty maintained a monopoly on minting, stabilizing the values and weights of the coinage throughout the tenth century. In contrast, the other princes of Francia (including the kings) lost their Carolingian minting rights;

1 The main arguments in this article were initially presented at the Sarasota/New College Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference (March 1994), and at the International Congress of Medieval Studies (May 1994). For discussion and other guidance concerning the topics covered here, I thank François Avril, David Bates, Georges Beech, François Dolbeau, Nancy Gauthier, Olivier Guillot, Martin Heinzelmann, John Howe, Richard Landes, Jacques Le Maho, Leah Shopkow, Ralph V. Turner, and Louis Violette. 2 Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919); David Bates, Normandy Before 1066 (London: Longman, 1980), pp. 24–38 and 147–188; Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 37–43, 89–92 and 199–206. 3 Emily Zack Tabuteau, Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 5–6. 4 Françoise Dumas-Dubourg, Le trésor de Fécamp et le monnayage en France occidentale pendant le seconde moitié du Xe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1971), pp. 17–18, 24, 27.

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thus, in the tenth century, the coinage of Rouen was the only currency issued by a Frankish prince that circulated outside the kingdom.5 Before the end of the tenth century, Rouen was a cosmopolitan town where a cultivated public supported poets and dramatists.6 Monastic life – although threatened – on the whole survived.7 Several medievalists have even used the term “renaissance” to describe the late tenth-century situation.8 One particular monk, a fugitive from Mont-Saint-Michel, even devoted himself to the exercise of his financial talents during this time period in Rouen, where recent excavations have revealed urban growth throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, when the town attracted new inhabitants (Franks?) from the surrounding area.9 The cultural ambitions of the Norman elites were founded on the commercial prosperity and demographic growth of the era, evidenced by the foundation of many new towns and by increased levels of monetary exchange.10 Norman coinage can serve as 5 Dumas-Dubourg, Trésor de Fécamp, pp. 51–52 and 58–59. 6 Jan Ziolkowski, Jezebel: A Norman Latin Poem of the Early Eleventh Century (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 40–46. 7 Lucien Musset, “Monachisme d’époque franque et monachisme d’époque ducale en Normandie: Le problème de la continuité,” in Aspects du monachisme en Normandie: IV-XVIIIe siècles, ed. Lucien Musset (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 55–74, esp. 59–63. 8 Lucien Musset, “Sur la connaissance du grec et de l’écriture runique en Normandie sous Richard II: une erreur d’attribution,” Annales de Normandie 3 (1953): 84–87, esp. 84; Pierre Riché, “La ‘renaissance’ intellectuelle du Xe siècle en Occident,” Cahiers d’histoire XXI (1976): 27–42. On the connection between the economy and cultural productivity in the tenth century, Robert S. Lopez, “Still Another Renaissance,” American Historical Review 57 (1951–52): 1–21, Robert S. Lopez, “An Aristocracy of Money in the Early Middle Ages,” Speculum 28 (1953): 1–43, and Robert S. Lopez, The Tenth Century. How Dark the Dark Ages? (New York: Rinehart, 1959). 9 Lucien Musset, “Le satiriste Garnier de Rouen et son milieu (début du Xle siècle),” Revue du Moyen Age Latin, 10 (1954): 237–266, and Lucien Musset, “Rouen au temps des Francs et sous les ducs (Ve siècle-1204),” in Histoire de Rouen, ed. Michel Mollat (Toulouse: Privat, 1979), pp. 31–74, at p. 40. The archeologist in charge, Jacques Le Maho, informed me of the results of recent excavations at Rouen when we met in Tours in April, 1995. According to Le Maho, a calculated policy on the part of the Carolingian kings likely provoked the migrations in question. In my view, the possibility that Rollo, William Longsword, and/or Richard I stimulated this growth should not be excluded. In the tenth century, the Viking conquerors of the “Danelaw” in the east of England stimulated the economy throughout the island to the point of a “first industrial revolution” (Richard Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement: Archeology and the Beginnings of English Society [London: Duckworth, 1989], pp. 150–185; Peter H. Sawyer, Kings and Vikings. Scandinavia and Europe, AD 700–1100 [London: Methuen, 1982]). 10 Lucien Musset, “Les invasions Scandinaves et l’évolution des villes de la France de l’Ouest,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 43 (1965): 320–322; Lucien Musset, “Les conditions financières d’une réussite architecturale: les grandes églises romanes de Normandie,” Mélanges offerts à René Crozet à l’occasion de son 70e anniversaire, eds. Pierre Gallais and Yves-Jean Riou (Poitiers: Société d’études médiévales, 1966), pp. 307–314; Lucien Musset, “La renaissance urbaine des Xe et Xle siècles dans l’Ouest de la France: problèmes et hypothèses de travail,” in Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe-XIIe siècles): Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande (Poitiers: C.É.S.C.M, 1974), pp. 563–575. It is worth noting explicitly that the truce of 991 negotiated by the pope between the king of England and Richard I never specifies the cause of their “inamicitia;” therefore, one cannot conclude from that document that the Vikings of Normandy were still engaged in piracy as

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a symbol of tenth-century Normandy: it evoked the era of the Carolingian king, Charles the Bald.11 Consider Fécamp, which very early became a center of Norman power: the period of disturbance in the life of the Carolingian town was very brief, if not ephemeral, and the ducal residence at Fécamp, with its traditional style, was the sole princely residence in France comparable to Carolingian palaces, above all that of Aachen.12 Deep into the tenth century, the “vocabulary” of Norman religious architecture (at Jumièges, at Mont-Saint-Michel, at Saint-Wandrille de Fontenelle, at Querqueville, at Fécamp) included nothing but forms long established, even since the reign of Charlemagne;13 the monastery of Jumièges (where monastic life continued without rupture during the period of the Viking conquest) and that of Fécamp were almost copies of the great Carolingian house of Saint-Riquier.14 The spare and geometric décor of Norman religious buildings preserved Carolingian sculptural traditions.15 Manuscripts produced between the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the eleventh century at Fécamp, and particularly at Jumièges, are all remarkable for their fidelity to “Carolingian classicism.”16 Artisanal and craft production in Normandy was characterized, into the eleventh or even the twelfth century, by a conservative bent, whereas artisans elsewhere had by that time long abandoned Carolingian forms.17

11 12

13

14

15 16

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opposed to legitimate commerce (William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols. [London: Rolls Commission, 1887–1889], vol. 1, pp. 191–193). Dumas-Dubourg, Trésor de Fécamp, p. 29. Annie Renoux, “Fouilles sur le site du château ducal de Fécamp (Xe–XXe siècles): Bilan provisoire,” Anglo-Norman Studies 4 (1982): 133–152; Annie Renoux, “Palais capétiens et normands à la fin du Xe siècle et au début du Xle siècle,” in Le roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an mil, eds. Michel Parisse and Xavier Barral i Altet (Paris: Picard, 1992), pp. 179–191. Georges Lanfry, “L’église carolingienne Saint-Pierre de l’abbaye de Jumièges,” Bulletin monumental 98 (1939): 47–66; Eric Gustav Carlson, “Religious Architecture in Normandy, 911–1000,” Gesta 5 (1966): 27–33; Lauren Wood Breese, “Early Normandy and the Emergence of Norman Romanesque Architecture,” Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988): 203–216, esp. 211. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 122–136. My argument was partially anticipated by Jean Laporte, “La date de l’exode de Jumièges,” in Jumièges. Congrès scientifique du XIIIe centenaire (Rouen, 1954), ed. René-Jean Hesbert, 2 vols. (Rouen: Lecerf, 1955), vol. 1, pp. 47–48 and by Lucien Musset, “Les destinées de la propriété monastique durant les invasions normandes (IXeXIe s.). L’exemple de Jumièges,” in Jumièges, ed. Hesbert, vol. 1, pp. 49–55, at p. 51. Maylis Baylé, “Interlace Patterns in Norman Romanesque Sculpture: Regional Groups and their Historical Background,” Anglo-Norman Studies 5 (1982): 1–20. François Avril, Manuscrits normands, XI-XIIe siècles: Catalogue de l’exposition de 1975 par la Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen (Rouen: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1975), pp. 7–8, 11–12, and 22–29. Several manuscripts from Jumièges, characterized by scripts, ornamentation, and production methods of the ninth or tenth century, such as Rouen BM 1377 (U. 108) and Rouen BM 1378 (U.40), are dated by Avril (with no solid reason) to the eleventh century. For an alternative dating of Rouen BM 1378 to the abbacy of Anno in 942/943, instead of to the eleventh century, see Joseph Van Der Straeten, “L’auteur des vies de S. Hugues et S. Aycadre,” AB 88 (1970): 63–73, esp. 70. The Cathedral of Coutances (1030–1048) is the last example of Carolingian architectural traditions (Joel Herschman, “The Eleventh-Century Nave of the Cathedral of Coutances: A New

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Thus, the Neustria that was “ravaged” by the Vikings in the ninth century seems to have become, paradoxically, super-prosperous Normandy in the tenth century, a region where Carolingian models (whether in administration, in minting, or in architecture) were still available everywhere. I have examined elsewhere the image of Neustria as having been destroyed by barbarian Vikings; this historiographic image is late and, more importantly, is part and parcel of a highly partisan anti-Norman historiography that renders it suspect and unworthy of belief.18 To better understand this apparent paradox, it is necessary to return to the beginnings of Norman power in the Seine Valley, and above all to the Frankish and Carolingian bishops who worked to integrate the conquerors.19

One more time: contemporary reflections and later historiography on the conversion of the Normans Seven archbishops served at Rouen between 869 and 892.20 Olivier Guillot has called attention to the multiple successive versions of the conversion of the Vikings of Rouen as constructed by Richer of Reims. According to the first draft of Richer’s history, the archbishop of Reims and Duke Robert baptized the Seine Valley Vikings, whereas according to the second draft of Richer’s history, Archbishop Wito of Rouen (solidly attested from 892) baptized the Seine Valley Vikings.21

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Reconstruction,” Gesta 22 [1993]: 121–134, esp. 131–132); ornamentation at Caen near the end of the eleventh century demonstrates, for the first time, the influence of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Italian, and other artistic traditions (Baylé, “Interlace Patterns,” p. 20); manuscripts produced at Fécamp and at Mont- Saint-Michel following Carolingian prototypes begin finally in the twelfth century to bear some traces of the so-called “Romanesque” style, when the latter had already triumphed in all scriptoria outside of Normandy (Jonathan J.G. Alexander, Norman Illumination at Mont-St-Michel, 966–1100 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Charles R. Dodwell, The Pictorial Arts of the West, 800–1200 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 120–122, and 191–196; Avril, Manuscrits normands, pp. 15–17). Distinguishing between manuscripts from the Carolingian school of Tours (for example, Paris BN lat. 1, 2, and 266) and those produced much later in ateliers at Mont-St.-Michel (for example, Avranches BM 50 and 210) and Fécamp (for example, Rouen BM 1 [A. 4]) is not an easy task. Felice Lifshitz, “The Migration of Neustrian Relics in the Viking Age: The Myth of Voluntary Exodus, the Reality of Coercion and Theft,” Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995): 175–192 [now Chapter 10 in this collection]. Very little has been written on the topic. Jacques Boussard, “Les évêques en Neustrie avant le réforme grégorienne (950–1050 environ),” Journal des savants (1970): 161–196 does not cover the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. More useful is Michel Parisse, “Princes laïques et/ou moines. Les évêques du Xe siècle,” Settimane 38 (1990): 449–513 and, for Normandy, Olivier Guillot, “La conversion des Normands peu après 911. Des reflets contemporains à l’historiographie ultérieure (Xe–XIe s.),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 24 (1981): 101–116 and 181–219. The episcopal list of Rouen was written by the monks of Fontenelle during their exile at Saint-Bertin in Flanders (Saint-Omer BM 764 folios 52r–52v, from the tenth century; there is a copy of the list in Paris BN lat. 5296B, p. 188). Troyes, Archives Départementales de l’Aube 6 H 2, ed. Robert-Henri Bautier, Recueil des actes d’Eudes, roi de France (888–898) (Paris: Imprimerie nationale – C. Klincksieck, 1967), no. 30, pp. 130–135; Gerhard Schmitz, “Das Konzil von Trosly (909). Uberlieferung und Quellen,”

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On the other hand, Dudo of St. Quentin credits Archbishop Franco of Rouen with the conversion and dates the baptism of Rollo to 912.22 It is possible to reconcile the accounts of Richer and Dudo: Wito of Rouen and Hervé of Reims baptized the Normans of the Seine, perhaps repeatedly, after 892, but Franco of Rouen baptized them for the very first time near the end of the 880s. Guillot has also called attention to the letters exchanged between Wito and Hervé concerning the problem of the pseudo-Christians of the Seine, without fully appreciating the implications of the archbishop of Rouen’s main complaint: his flock repeatedly submitted to multiple baptismal ceremonies without ever changing their behavior.23 Dudo’s narrative has functioned as a serious obstacle to attaining a clear understanding of the history of the bishops of Rouen because (in keeping with the reading “method” normally applied to Dudo by historians) the “facts” reported by the canon of St. Quentin should simply be rejected, yet the three dates he mentions should be seen as completely reliable: the arrival of Rollo at Rouen in 876 during the pontificate of Franco, Franco’s baptism of Rollo at Rouen in 912, and the death of Richard I at Fécamp in 996.24 Yet, why rely upon Dudo’s dates, while scornfully disregarding virtually the totality of the history in which they are embedded? Dudo’s own historiographical conceptions did not assign any great value to the precise dating of events. In contrast, the dominant historiographical conceptions of contemporary historians now place a high value on dates, which seem to be so clear, true, real, certain, and (above all) easy to memorize. Nevertheless, we must free ourselves from this approach because, if we simply ignore his specific dates, all the phenomena Dudo describes in connection with the arrival and baptism of Rollo can easily be dated to the 880s, including the pontificate of Franco.25 According to the only copy of a rouennais episcopal list made in the diocese of Rouen itself (presumably at Fécamp near the beginning of the eleventh century), the pontificate of Franco took place after those of Riculfus (attested in documents of the 870s) and of John, and before those of Gunhard and of Wito (attested from 892).26 Was the Bishop Franco who ordered a liturgical manuscript from Bishop Adelelmus of Sées during the reign of Charles the Fat (885–887) our archbishop

22 23 24 25 26

Deutsches Archiv 33 (1977): 341–434, at 347–356; Isolde Schroder, Die westfränkischen Synoden von 888 bis 987 und ihre Uberlieferung (MGH Hilfsmittel 3; Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1980), pp. 153–160 and 189–197); Lifshitz, “Dossier,” pp. 70–72; Richer of Reims, Histoire de France, 888–995, ed. and trans. Robert Latouche, 2 vols. (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1930), vol. 1, pp. 68–70. Dudo, De moribus, p. 170; Guillot, “La conversion des Normands.” Paris, BN lat. 4280A folios 102r–106v, a tenth-century manuscripts from Reims (PL 132:661–674). Dudo, De moribus, pp. 151, 170 and 299. As Jules Lair has already noted (Dudo, De moribus, p. 62). François Pommeraye, Histoire des archevesques de Rouen (Rouen: Laurens Maurry, 1667), pp. 216–219; Paris BN lat. 1805 fol. 41v; Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 157–161. For Wito, see note 21.

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of Rouen?27 King Charles plays a key role in Dudo’s narrative, but that Charles is normally identified as Charles the Simple (893–922). Yet, according to the Annals of St. Bertin, the Vikings reached Rouen in 885/886, just before a series of events that, according to Dudo, followed their arrival in the Seine Valley: the siege of Paris (885); a rebellion in England against the Viking King Guthrum-Athelstan (circa 886); and a war against the Vikings by Prince Berenger of Rennes, lord of the Cotentin, whose daughter was captured by Rollo after several battles in the Bessin in 888/890.28 As for the siege of Chartres, so many contradictory accounts of the event exist (sometimes by a single author) that, taking all the evidence into account, it could have taken place as early as 857 or as late as 911.29 The date of 912 that Dudo gives for the granting of the county of Rouen to Rollo and for the latter’s baptism would require us to identify the king responsible for these events as Charles the Simple. However, it is much more likely that a Frankish king would have accepted the establishment of the Vikings at Rouen in the late 880s, when the warriors from the North were consistently winning military victories, than around 912, when the Franks had been emerging victorious from many of the battles of the previous decades.30 Perhaps more importantly: it is completely unbelievable that, in 912, Charles the Simple would have allowed Duke Robert to become the godfather of Rollo (who took the baptismal name “Robert”). Conferring an office on a “pagan” war leader, and insisting at the same time upon the baptism of that leader, was a technique utilized repeatedly by Charles the Fat, as it had been by his ancestors Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald.31 For this strategy to succeed, it was necessary for the king (or the emperor) himself to act as the baptismal sponsor because it was exclusively through this Christian kinship relation that the king acquired rights of suzerainty over the new Christian. Dudo 27 Paris BN lat. 2294; Balthasar Baedorf, Untersuchungen über die Heiligenleben der westlichen Normandie (Ph.D. Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität-Bonn, 1913), pp. 127–130. 28 Annales Bertiniani/Les Annales de St. Bertin, eds. Felix Grat, Jeanne Vieillard, and Suzanne Clemencet (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France, 1964); Dudo, De moribus, pp. 60 and 156–159; Alfred P. Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850–880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 254; The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. Elizabeth M.C. Van Houts, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), vol. I., p. 32 note 2; Walter Vogel, Die Normannen und das fränkische Reich bis zur Gründung der Normandie (799–911) (Aalen: Scientia, 1973), pp. 358–359. I thank Richard Abels for alerting me to the rebellion of 886. 29 Dudo, De moribus, p. 162. Lair’s in-depth study, which aims to defend Dudo’s 912 date for the baptism of Rollo, only succeeds in demonstrating the impossibility of definitively establishing the date of the siege; for instance, Paul of St-Père de Chartres himself gives two contradictory versions of events (Jules Lair, Le siège de Chartres par les normands (911) [Caen: Henri Delesques, 1902], pp. 5–8; Cartulaire de l’abbaye de St. Père de Chartres, ed. Benjamin E.C. Guérard, 2 vols. [Paris: Crapelet, 1840], vol. 1, pp. 5–9 and 46–48). 30 Vogel, Die Normannen, p. 397. 31 Arnold Angenendt, Kaiserherrschaft und Königstaufe: Kaiser, Könige und Päpste als geistliche Patrone in der abendländischen Missionsgeschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984), pp. 215–223 and 260–262; Julia M.H. Smith, Province and Empire. Brittany and the Carolingians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 110–113 and 192.

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put the following sentence into Rollo’s mouth, whereby Rollo acknowledged the results of having become Robert’s godson: “Quae meae potestatis sunt, sui iuris sint, et quae mei iuris, suae potestatis sint.”32 I propose the following scenario: Archbishop Franco acted as the intermediary between Rollo and King Charles the Fat (886); Charles was driven out of the kingdom (887); Charles died, while the sons of Robert the Strong (Robert and Odo) became, respectively, marquis of Neustria and king of Western Francia (888); before the consecration of the new king, his brother Robert completed the truce negotiated by Franco and sponsored Rollo at the moment of his baptism.33 Recall that Richer of Reims credited Robert with the baptism of the Seine Vikings. Another historian, Ademar of Chabannes, placed the baptism and the establishment of the Vikings at Rouen in the first year of the reign of the usurper, Odo.34 In the absence of a legitimate king, Robert could sponsor the political baptism of Rollo without detriment to royal power.35 Why would Dudo have inserted two erroneous dates (876 and 912) into his history? In these two cases when Dudo, against his habitual practice, utilized an anno Domini dating method, he had himself been fooled by his own sources: now-lost relic translation narratives (for it cannot be by chance that the two dates reported by Dudo relate to transfers of saints’ relics).36 Although it is now impossible for us to evaluate these lost sources, we can recognize that all the chronological difficulties in Dudo’s history would vanish were we to remove these two dominical years; the best approach would be to reject Dudo’s two dates (whose origin we cannot verify) and retain Dudo’s larger narrative of the 880s, whose informants are known.37 Unfortunately, Dudo’s two dates (or rather, the dates of the two lost translation narratives) have exerted an almost immeasurable influence on Norman 32 Dudo, De moribus, p. 168. 33 Jan Dhondt, Étude sur la naissance des principautés territoriales en France (IXe-Xe siècles) (Bruges: De Tempel, 1948), pp. 112–114; Recueil des actes de Robert 1er et de Raoul, ed. Jean Dufour (Paris: Imprimerie nationale – C. Klincksieck, 1978), pp. xci–xcii; Recueil des actes du roi Eudes, ed. Bautier, no. 30, pp. 130–135. 34 Ademar of Chabannes, Chronicon, ed. Georg Pertz (MGH SS 4; Hanover: Hahn, 1841), p. 123; Ademar of Chabannes, Chronique, ed. Jules Chavanon (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1897). 35 The famous charter of March 918 does not necessarily refer to anything beyond certain specific properties; Charles the Simple breathed not a word about the entire county of Rouen, or about Neustria from the Epte to the sea, when he gave St-Germain-des-Prés certain properties of the abbey of la Croix-S.-Leufroy “praeter partem ipsius abbatiae quam annuimus Normannis Sequanensibus, videlicet Rolloni eiusque comitibus” (Paris, Archives Nationales, K 16, no. 9, ed. Philippe Lauer, Recueil des actes de Charles le Simple, roi de France [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1940], no. 92, pp. 209–212). 36 In the case of 912, the text in question was a translatio Audoeni, written at the end of the tenth century and now lost, that served as a source for BHL 756 and 757, translationes Audoeni written in the middle of the eleventh century and preserved in Rouen BM 1406 (Y. 41) and Rouen BM 1411 (U. 64), manuscripts from the abbey of St. Ouen (Lifshitz, “Migration of Neustrian Relics”). As for 876, the text in question was a translatio of Saint Hameltrude, whose relics were (according to oral tradition?) brought by Rollo to Jumièges (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 151–152). 37 Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative,” p. 103.

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historiography.38 For instance, rouennais episcopal lists copied after the middle of the eleventh century, that is, when Dudo’s history had achieved extensive distribution, reverse the order of the pontificates of Franco and Wito (against the order of the older list, copied at Fécamp) in order to have Franco occupy the see of Rouen in 912, after Wito.39

The bishop from Saint-Denis, bringer of Carolingian continuity: Archbishop Hugh (942–989) At the end of the ninth century when Rollo and his faithful followers entered the scene, most Neustrian towns and their administrative districts (pagi) were effectively governed by their bishops; Dudo himself shows both Rouen (with Franco) and Chartres under the control of their bishops.40 In so far as Carolingian administrative practice was concerned, no rupture took place at Rouen during the period in question. Rollo and his followers arrived in the late 880s. Archbishop Franco managed their settlement and organized their initial baptism. From 892 onwards, archbishop Wito experienced Rouen as a perfectly livable “Carolingian” episcopal see; he remained there for decades on end, establishing a modus vivendi with the new count, with whom it was necessary to share power. This division of governing power at Rouen must have brought with it the reorganization of urban space and property that Jacques Le Maho, the archeologist responsible for the town, has been describing for the ninth and tenth centuries.41 After this division of power, the unforeseen destiny of Archbishop Hugh became to support the authority of the future counts of Rouen, the members of 38 Leah Shopkow, “Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1984). 39 Rouen BM 1406 (Y. 41), an eleventh-century manuscript from St. Ouen of Rouen; Rouen BM 1405 (Y. 27), an eleventh-century manuscript from the Cathedral of Rouen; Paris BN lat. 4863 fol. 112v, a twelfth-century manuscript; Paris BN lat. 6042 fol. 1v, a twelfth-century manuscript from Mont-St-Michel; Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Reginensis lat. 553 folios 5v and 157v, a thirteenth-century manuscript from Fontenelle; Paris BN lat. 14663 fol. 24v, a fifteenth-century manuscript; and Paris BN lat. 5195 fol. 4r, a fifteenth-century manuscript. 40 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 152–153 and 161–162; Reinhold Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft zwischen Königstum und Fürstenmacht: Studien zur bischöflichen Stadtherrschaft im westfränkischfranzösischen Reich im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1981); Reinhold Kaiser, “Royauté et pouvoir episcopal au nord de la Gaule (VIIe-IXe s.),” in La Neustrie. Les pays au nord de la Loire de 650 à 850, ed. Hartmut Atsma, 2 vols. (Beihefte der Francia 16; Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 143–160; Margarete Weidemann, “Bischofsherrschaft und Königstum in Neustrien vom 7. bis zum 9. Jahrhundert am Beispiel des Bistums Le Mans,” in La Neustrie, ed. Atsma, vol. 1, pp. 161–193; Jules Lair, Le siège de Chartres, pp. 34–35; Jane Welch Williams, Bread, Wine and Money: The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 22. 41 I am very grateful to Jacques La Maho for the extensive information he has shared with me over the years, both in conversation and in private correspondence, in advance of the publication of his research findings. [A complete listing of his publications is available at www.unicaen.fr/craham/ spip.php?article180&lang=fr; accessed May 30, 2020.]

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Rollo’s dynasty. William Longsword chose Hugh when the latter was still a monk at Saint-Denis.42 Yet, when he arrived at Rouen, the new archbishop found chaos: William had been assassinated by Count Arnulf of Flanders and Norman rebels, while foreign princes (Franks, Bretons, and Flemings) and the king himself were all jostling to deprive his son Richard I, only nine years old at the time, of his patrimony.43 As it turned out, Richard did get his inheritance. Even more astonishing, before the end of Richard’s reign, Normandy was (as we have already seen) prosperous, unified, vibrant, and possessed of a Carolingian administrative structure. Without denying the contribution of Richard himself, I would suggest that it was primarily Hugh who was responsible for the success of Rollo’s grandson. Hugh, a man of the church and carrier of Carolingian values and techniques, acted as the guarantor of peaceful continuity in Viking Normandy. The services rendered by Hugh to Richard I were generously rewarded. Much of the property of the Tosny family originated in donations and confirmations of gifts by Richard I and Richard II to members of Hugh’s family.44 Virtually, the first charter ever issued (in 968) by a Norman prince (at least, the first one to survive) gives several properties to the monastery of Saint-Denis, the religious familia of Hugh (whose name stands at the head of the list of signatories).45 Once he was completely assured of his inheritance, Richard I even gave Hugh minting rights, an extremely rare privilege in Normandy where “public” rights were rigorously controlled.46 All of this testifies to the debt Richard I felt to Hugh. What did this archbishop, who came to Rouen from the mother house of St. Denis, do for William’s son? In the first instance, his cultural activities facilitated the establishment of a Norman principality. He patronized architects, artists and writers, as did all his colleagues in the tenth-century Frankish episcopate.47

42 Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium, ed. Jean Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, 4 vols. (Paris: Martin and Boudot, 1675–1685), 2.424–457 (reprinted in PL 147.273–280); Felice Lifshitz, “The Acta Archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium: A Monastery or Cathedral Product?” AB 108 (1990): 337–347 [now Chapter 4 in this collection]; Louis Violette, “L’église métropolitaine de Rouen pendant la première période normande (Xe-XIe siècles)” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Université de ParisX, 1994). 43 Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative”; Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship: The Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 79–90; Bates, Normandy Before 1066, pp. 13–15; Philippe Lauer, Le règne de Louis IV d’Outremer (Paris: Bouillon, 1900), pp. 87–143; Jules Lair, Étude sur la vie et la mort de Guillaume Longue-Épée (Paris: A. Picard et fils, 1893). 44 Lucien Musset, “L’aristocratie normande au XIe siècle,” in La noblesse au moyen âge, XIe-XVe siècles. Essais à la mémoire de Robert Boutruche, ed. Philippe Contamine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976), pp. 71–96, esp. p. 78; Lucien Musset, “Aux origines d’une classe dirigeante: les Tosny, grands barons normands du Xe au XIIIe siècle” Francia 5 (1977): 45–80, esp. 48–49; Lucien Musset, “Un lignage de grands barons normands du Xe au XIIe siècles: les Tosny,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th series, 44 (1966): 188–189. 45 Fauroux, Recueil, no. 3, pp. 70–72. 46 Dumas-Dubourg, Trésor de Fécamp, pp. 91–97. 47 Parisse, “Princes laïques et/ou moines,” pp. 464–470.

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Hugh maintained an episcopal chancery and he may have revived the practice of diocesan synods beginning in 950.48 There was a school of liberal arts located in Rouen from his pontificate onwards.49 He was a particular supporter of the poet Moriuth.50 It is very likely to Hugh that we owe the plaint on the death of William Longsword, an example of the genre (traditional from the ninth century onwards) of plaints for Carolingian princes.51 As the incumbent at the cathedral, he must have had some role in the creation of the poetic inscription on one tenth-century tombstone there.52 There has even been some speculation concerning the circulation of the written version of the “Song of Roland” in tenth-century Normandy; perhaps Hugh of Saint-Denis had some role in the creation of the chanson, given his obvious interest in an epic description of Christian combat against “pagans.”53 The monastery of Saint-Denis, whence Hugh came to Rouen, had served the Carolingian dynasty from the very beginning of its political rise: monks and abbots of the community wrote literary monuments celebrating the dynasty; they promoted the cults of saints and relics that were favorable to the dynasty; they built architectural monuments glorifying the dynasty; and they supplied philosophical treatises (above all those attributed to the Areopagite) that supported a hierarchical political structure.54 Hugh drew on his formation in the Dionysian arts of public48 See his charter for St-Germain-des-Prés (Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de St-Germain-des-Prés, des origines au début du XIIIe siècle, ed. René Poupardin, 2 vols. [Paris: Champion, 1909–1910], vol. 1, no. 49, pp. 73–74), and Schroder, Die westfränkischen Synoden, pp. 347–348. 49 Dudo, De moribus, p. 120; Fulbert of Jumièges, Miracula Romani (Evreux BM 101 fol. 30r); Warner of Rouen, “Satire Deux,” verses 7 and 16, ed. Musset, “Le satiriste Garnier.” It matters little whether the school was attached to the cathedral or to the monastery of St-Ouen, because the two institutions were governed for many centuries by the archbishops of Rouen (Felice Lifshitz, “Eight Men In: Rouennais Traditions of Archiepiscopal Sanctity,” Haskins Society Journal 2 [1990]: 63–74; [now Chapter 5 in this collection]). A cathedral school, independent of the monastery’s school, was established at a later date, around the end of the pontificate of Robert, who died in 1027 (Jean-Michel Bouvris, “L’école capitulaire de Rouen au XIe siècle,” Études normandes 35 [1986]: 89–103, at 93). 50 Warner of Rouen, “Satire Un,” verses 341 and 451, ed. Henri Omont, “Satire de Garnier de Rouen contre le poète Moriuth (Xe-XIe siècle),” Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de France 31 (1894): 193–210. 51 Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 227–232; Jules Lair, Étude sur la vie et la mort, pp. 66–68; Phillipp August Becker, “Der Planctus auf den Normannenherzog Wilhelm Langschwert (942),” Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 43 (1940): 190–197, at 193–195; Bernard Leblond, L’accession des Normands de Neustrie à la culture occidentale (Xe-XIe siècles) (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1966), pp. 19–20. 52 Léopold Delisle, “Inscription découverte à Rouen,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 50 (1889): 508. 53 Gérard Moignet, La chanson de Roland: texte original et traduction (Paris: Bordas, 1989), pp. 18–19 and 47; Pierre Bouet, “L’épopée et les Gesta Guillelmi de Guillaume de Poitiers,” Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes 6 (1974): 669–692, at 669. 54 “Clausula de unctione Pippini regis,” ed. Bruno Krusch (MGH SRM 3; Hanover: Hahn, 1896), p. 465; passiones of St. Denis (BHL 2171–2175); Dionysiaca. Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués à Denys l’Aréopagite, ed. Philippe Chevalier, 2 vols.

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ity and manipulation of images of the past to help the son of the late William Longsword. Archbishop Hugh of Rouen commissioned biographies of three “Norman” bishops, promulgated their cults, and built buildings and founded communities dedicated to the commemoration of those three saints: St. Romanus of Rouen, St. Laudus of Coutances (both Merovingian-era bishops), and St. Taurinus of Evreux (supposed to have lived in early Christian times). I have written elsewhere about St. Romanus; here I mention only the church of Saint-Romain, completed before 960, and the dominant theme in the Vita Romani presumably commissioned by Hugh: that of the divine destiny of the Vikings of Rouen to rule the duchy of Normandy.55 The bishops of Coutances, driven out of the Cotentin, had their seat at Rouen throughout the tenth century; there they officiated at the church of Saint-Lô, formerly the church of the Holy Saviour, after it had been enlarged and embellished by Hugh.56 The Vita Laudi, probably commissioned by Hugh for liturgical readings during the celebration of the office of the saint in this new cult center, has but a single theme: the Cotentin had been Christian for a very long time (and thus, the population there would be wrong to reject the authority of the dukes and the archbishops of Rouen).57 In 964, Duke Richard and Archbishop Hugh together founded the abbey of SaintTaurin at Evreux.58 Evreux, like Coutances, was located far from the capital of the

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(Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937); Laurent Theis, “Dagobert, St-Denis, et la royauté française au moyen âge,” in Le métier d’historien au moyen âge: études sur l’historiographie médiévale, ed. Bernard Guenée (Paris: Université de Paris, 1977), pp. 19–30; Gabrielle Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of St Denis: A Survey (Brookline, MA: Classical Folia Editions, 1978); Sumner McKnight Crosby, The Abbey of St. Denis, 475–1122 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942); Martin Heinzelmann and Joseph-Claude Poulin, Les vies anciennes de Ste. Geneviève de Paris. Études critiques (Paris: Champion, 1986); Giovanni Tabacco, “Agiologia e demonologia come strumenti ideologici in età carolingia,” Settimane 36 (1988): 121–153. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 137–179; Dumas-Dubourg, Trésor de Fécamp, pp. 98–100; Miracula Romani (Evreux BM 101 fol. 34r), ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 277. For the prophecies of the saint, see Fulbert of Jumièges, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 234–266. Liber de statu ecclesiae Constantiniensis-Gesta Gaufredi (GC 11: 918); Emile-Auber Pigeon, Histoire de la cathédrale de Coutances (Coutances: E. Salettes Fils, 1876), pp. 14–17 and 20–31; David Douglas, “The Norman Episcopate Before the Norman Conquest,” Cambridge Historical Journal 13 (1957): 101–115, at 101–102; Vita Laudi (BHL 4729/4730) c. 8, in Rouen BM 1399 (U. 2) folios 62v–64r (a twelfth-century manuscript from Jumièges). A libellus including a notated office (BHL 4728, divided into nine readings) for St. Laudus can be found in Paris BN lat. 5283 folios 118r–194v (an artificial collection). The readings are erroneously published in CCHP vol. 1 pp. 494–500 as if there were ten. The text is always dated by scholars to the tenth or eleventh century (Baedorf, Untersuchungen über die Heiligenleben der westlichen Normandie, pp. 45–49), although the oldest copy dates from eleventh-century Rouen (Lifshitz, “The Acta Archiepiscoporum,” pp. 345–347). Fauroux, Recueil, no. 5, pp. 74–76; Adolphe-André Porée, Le nécrologe de l’abbaye de St-Taurin d’Evreux (Caen: Henri Delesques, 1889), pp. 320–326. The Vita Leutfredi (BHL 4899), ed. Wilhelm Levison (MGH SRM 7; Hanover: Hahn, 1920), written near the end of the eighth century, assumes the existence of a Merovingian-era school in the Evreux area, but not the existence of a monastery dedicated to the memory of St. Taurinus. According to this text, St. Leutfredus was

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duchy/archbishopric at Rouen. The construction of the monastery was preceded by the inventio of the saint, whose personality (according to the Vita Taurini written in concert with the foundation of the cult site) was modeled on that of St. Denis of Paris, patron of the house where Archbishop Hugh received his training.59 Carolingian continuity in the duchy of Normandy has long been recognized by scholars, but it has been explained as the result of a process of rebuilding ex nihilo, because specialists have systematically ignored the man from the Carolingian “fortress” of Saint-Denis, Archbishop Hugh. It is to Hugh that we ought to attribute the survival, indeed the entrenchment, of Carolingian administrative and cultural forms, and of the hierarchical cosmology that supported Carolingian governmental structures. Nevertheless, I do not want to completely forget Richard I, or neglect his contribution to the rise of Norman power. Richard I and Hugh both worked together to create the duchy of Normandy as much as the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. Richard II was not the first to utilize the title “duke” (dux) in his rule over Normandy;60 the ducal title made an appearance in authentic Norman charters

a student in search of knowledge, someone who “. . . ad suburbanum praefatae civitatis tetendit, ubi venerandus confessor Christi Taurinus, praesul quondam eiusdem loci, requiescit, veniensque ad locum, aedituum domus Dei allocutus, voluntatis suae intentionem reseravit. At ille libenter eum audiens, unanimo affectu tractavit, et quia mente sincerus et corpore pulcher esset, fraterna dilectione ei ministrare curavit. Ut autem magistrum repperit, qui sibi operam in litterarum eruditione impenderet, cum documento linguae morum probitate coepit alios anteire . . . coepto operi magis ac magis insistere coepit, quousque, omnibus sodalibus transcensis, magistrum quoque suum aequiperare videretur. Cumque omnia epotasset, in quibus idonei doctores erant, quos in eodem vico invenerat, ad alium vicum, cui Condatus vocabulum est, festinus migravit. Sed cum nec ibi virum inveniret, qui sibi satisfaceret ad omnia quae quaerebat, quam citissime loco recessit et ad urbem Carnotensem quae in vicino erat convolavit, ubi diversorum studiorum doctrinam abundare cognoverat, ad propriam possessionem remeavit. Cum autem fama reversionis eius ad vicinos pervenisset, cognoscentes in eo divinarum litterarum sapientiam coruscare, filios suos ab eo edocendos offerebant . . .” (Vita Leutfredi, ed. Levison, MGH SRM 7, pp. 9–10). Jacques Dubois has already noted how the localization of the body of Taurinus in the martyrology of Usuard (written near the end of the ninth century) as “apud castellos Ebroas” actually implies no monastic or ecclesiastical connection (Le martyrologe d’Usuard. Texte et commentaire, ed. Jacques Dubois [Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965], pp. 281–282). Orderic Vitalis doesn’t mention any monastery at all in connection with the relics of Taurinus during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods; to the contrary, he believed that the relics of Taurinus were preserved at Fécamp (OV 3.38–47). 59 Paris BN lat. 989, a tenth-century manuscript, may well contain the autograph copies of the Vita Taurini (folios 8v–24v = BHL 7991) and of the inventio Taurini (folios 24v–30v = BHL 7994), along with several sermons for the feasts of the saint (folios 30v–40v). The two narrative texts are divided into eight or twelve readings, for the use of a monastic community. These parchment leaves, originally produced in Evreux, were brought to Fécamp, accompanied by relics of the saint, near the end of the tenth century or at the beginning of the eleventh century, when the abbey of St-Taurin of Evreux was subjected to the authority of Fécamp; it was at Fécamp that Paris BN lat. 989 was bound during the eleventh or twelfth century. BHL 7990/7992 are versions of the biography and of the inventio written by a monk of Fécamp after the arrival of the évrecines relics. 60 In the tenth century, lawyers were non-existent and therefore juridical theories of “feudalism” are irrelevant to my subject here; see Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints:

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of the tenth century, and Richer of Reims calls Rollo, William, and Richard I all “dukes” of the Normans.61 Richard I, still very young at the time of his father’s death, fought for years for his inheritance, which he always conceptualized as a “duchy.” For example, in 963/964 Richard subscribed to a charter of King Lothar with the following phrase: “S. Richardi, filii Guillelmi ducis Normanie.”62 Not that Richard had much of a choice in 963, other than to insist upon his status as “the son of Duke William.”63 Lois Honeycutt has recently called attention to how a number of women utilized this same strategy to strengthen their (oftenchallenged) claims to political power.64 In 965, Richard I took control of his inheritance and was, after that date, never again attacked. In that same year, he guaranteed a donation to St-Père of Chartres of property located in Dreux by a charter issued as duke of Normandy, with no reference to his father.65 The Parisian basin was well outside of the territory in which Richard would have, “legally” or “feudally,” possessed actual rights; but then, after the twenty years of armed combat that was required to persuade Frankish and Flemish princes to recognize his own rights of inheritance, why should Richard simply accept the “rights” of other princes? Richard’s claim to function as the guarantor of the peaceful possession of properties in the Ile-de-France was part of a more general policy of intervention in this area during the 960s, a policy perhaps inspired by Hugh of Saint-Denis. In fact, Richard even tried to pull the abbey of Saint-Denis itself into his sphere of influence through generous donations; Archbishop Hugh was the first to sign his name to Richard’s charter of donation for this monastic house.66

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The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) and Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Juridical theories did not begin to exercise significant influence until after 1100 and, therefore, “feudal” premises for discussions of pre-1100 Normandy can only be misleading (contra Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Quelques observations au sujet des débuts du ‘duché’ de Normandie,” in Droit privé et institutions regionals: Études historiques offertes à Jean Yver, eds. Robert Aubreton, Robert Carabie, Olivier Guillot and Lucien Musset [Mont-SaintAignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et Du Havre, 1976], pp. 691–709). Fauroux, Recueil, nos. 2 and 5; Richer, Histoire de France, vol. 1, pp. 64, 156, 172, 178. Two eleventh-century translationes Audoeni (BHL 756 and 757), based on two tenth-century deperdita, also repeatedly use the ducal title. Werner attempts to reject Fauroux, Recueil, no. 2, albeit with some twisted reasoning; he prefers the late (C) family of transmission of the charter to the anterior family (BD) published by Fauroux, yet simultaneously denounces the chronological errors found in the later version (Werner, “Quelques observations,” p. 692 note 4). Fauroux, Recueil, no. 1, pp. 67–68. Fauroux, Recueil, no. 5, pp. 74–76 is also worth noting in this context; there Richard presents himself (probably in 962/964) as “Richardus filius Willelmi, dux Normanniae” and “piisimus Normanorum princeps Richardus Willelmi filius.” Lois Honeycutt, “Female Succession and the Language of Power in the Writings of Twelfth-Century Churchmen,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), pp. 189–201. Fauroux, Recueil, no. 2, pp. 68–70. Fauroux, Recueil, no. 3, pp. 70–72.

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To demonstrate that the princes of Normandy sometimes utilized the ducal title in the tenth century is not tantamount to demonstrating that the princes of Normandy always used the ducal title in the tenth century. In a single document, Richard I once used marduo [sic], comes, and Normannorum princeps.67 In certain circumstances, more extreme claims could be temporarily set aside to facilitate the pursuit of more conciliatory policies. Richard I’s charter for Saint-Denis, executed in 968 in the presence of Hugh Capet after the two men had come to an agreement on their modus vivendi, didn’t use the ducal title, whereas previously, when the Franks and the Normans had been engaged in outright warfare, Richard had not hesitated to call himself a “duke.”68 In 968, Richard I didn’t intervene in the affairs of the Ile-de-France, and Hugh didn’t interfere in the affairs of Normandy.69 It may be that, in the 970s and 980s, Richard I was less of a “duke” than his father William had been, in so far as the latter was assassinated in the course of meddling in both Frankish and Flemish affairs.70

Crisis of faith: demons and politics Although there is clear evidence of continuity across the Carolingian-Norman divide, we also find traces of a crisis, one that was more psychological than political. Before the arrival of the Vikings, authors in Neustria (Merovingian or Carolingian) scarcely ever thematized the supernatural. From time to time, those possessed by demons were healed by some thaumaturgical saints; but corporeal and spiritual maladies, produced by demons and healed by saints, abound in Christian literature, beginning with biblical narratives, to such an extent that miraculous healings dominate every other type of miracle in the biographies of saints by a proportion of 100 to 1.71 Thus, the occasional reference to such a healing in a Neustrian vita is not, in itself, particularly significant. The demon who tempts a human being to sin is also a very widespread theme.72 Yet there are other types of demonic action that are far less omnipresent and, as a result, more significant as indices of the mentality of an era or a locale when they do appear. 67 68 69 70

Fauroux, Recueil, no. 3, pp. 70–72. Fauroux, Recueil, no. 3, pp. 70–72. He was mostly concerned with Fécamp and Coutances (Fauroux, Recueil, nos. 4 and 6). According to the planctus on the death of the duke, William wished to rule in the manner of a king: “Hic audacter regem Hlodowicum/ sibi fecit seniorem regnaturum, / Ut cum eo superaret hostem suum, / Regnaretque regum more. / Cuncti flete pro Wilelmo” (Planctus verse 4, ed. Becker, Der Planctus, p. 194 and Lair, Étude sur la vie et la mort, p. 66). 71 C. Grant Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948), p. 103; C. Grant Loomis, “Hagiological Healing,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8 (1940): 636–642; František Graus, “Hagiographie und Dämonenglauben – zu ihren Funktionen in der Merovingerzeit,” Settimane 36 (1988): 93–120, at 103 and 109–116. 72 Charles Pietri, “Saints et démons: L’héritage de l’hagiographie antique,” Settimane 36 (1988): 15–90, esp. 40; Gregorio Penco, “Sopravvivenze della demonologia antica nel monachesimo medieval,” Studia Monastica 13 (1971): 31–36.

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Saints are, nowadays, studied in contextualized ways, with the goal of revealing the relationship between saints and society; perhaps it would be possible to do the same thing for demons (beyond the omnipresent demons of temptation and illness).73 In the totality of the writings produced in the future Normandy before Rollo’s arrival in the Seine Valley, there is but a single example of a demon: the (weak and ineffectual) demon discovered in the church of Saint-Ouen by Leutfredus, abbot of La Croix in Mérey.74 The subsequent arrival of the Vikings transformed the mentality of authors in the region, the majority of whom were churchmen. Even though the settlement of the Normans in the area caused nothing resembling an actual catastrophe, the event was perceived (as d’Haenens noted twenty-five years ago), psychologically, metaphysically, as a catastrophe. For ecclesiastics and those in monastic life in the Carolingian Empire, the conquest of Neustria by Rollo and his “pagan” followers unleashed panics, senseless flights with no specific goal in mind, analogous to the “Great Fear” of 1789.75 From the very moment when the Vikings became a genuine presence in the Seine Valley, demons entered the religious literature and historiography of the region. Consider, for instance, the collection of biographies of and writings by monks and monastic founders of late antiquity as well as of some abbots of Jumièges, amounting to a quasi “history of monasticism,” produced at Jumièges in the 880s.76 Perpetual combats against demons form a particularly important theme in this collection’s biography of Aichardus, and these demons inaugurated a completely new era in terms of the representation of diabolical power in Neustria.77 Whereas their predecessors had sought to tempt human beings to sin, or to render them sick, the demons of the Viking decades lived in concrete material reality, in the visible world, and battled against human beings with mundane weapons. For instance, Aichardus saved his monks from a demon who tried to crush them under an enormous tree.78

73 Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations (Liège: Faculté de droit, 1969); Pierre Delooz, “Towards a Sociological Study of Canonized Sainthood in the Catholic Church,” in Saints and their Cults in the Middle Ages, ed. Stephen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 189–216. 74 Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 51–56 and 134–135. 75 Albert d’Haenens, Les invasions normandes, une catastrophe? (Brussels: Flammarion, 1970). 76 This collection, Rouen BM 1377 (U. 108), contains: a treatise of Jerome on the life of monks (BHL 6524), two older vitae of Paul (BHL 6596) and Anthony of Egypt (BHL 609), followed by two anonymous vitae written specifically for the collection, one of Aichardus, second abbot of Jumièges (BHL 181), and the other of Hugh, fifth abbot of Jumièges (BHL 4032a). See Joseph Van der Straeten, “L’auteur des vies de s. Hugues et de s. Aychadre,” AB 88 (1970): 63–73 and Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 122–136. John Howe has recently discovered several neglected tenth-century manuscripts of the biography of Hugh; see John Howe, “The Hagiography of Jumièges (Province of Haute-Normandie). (SHG VII),” in L’hagiographie du haut moyen âge en Gaule du Nord: manuscrits, textes, et centres de production, ed. Martin Heinzelmann (Beihefte der Francia 52; Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2001), pp. 91–125. 77 Vita Suspecta Aichardi, ed. Joannes Perierus, AASS September V: 85–100, at 94–96. 78 Vita Suspecta Aichardi, ed. Joannes Perierus, AASS September V: 85–100, at 94.

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This latter type of diabolical action, which I am terming “political,” is extremely rare in Christian literature. Yet, it dominates in two vitae written by Fulbert of Jumièges in the 940s, when the level of political and ecclesiastical disruption in Normandy was severe. Fully a half of Fulbert’s (extremely prolix) Vita Romani is devoted to the threat of demons.79 In his Vita Aichardi the same author develops the demonophobic theme in a monastic context, reworking the anonymous Vita Aichardi of the 880s.80 Each of the heroes, Romanus as well as Aichardus, emphasizes the corporeal and dangerous reality posed by the demons, who resemble street gangs terrorizing the inhabitants of the diocese of Rouen.81 Many of the Vikings of Normandy, above all those of the Cotentin, remained faithful to their ancestral deities. After the death of William Longsword and during the minority of his son Richard, these men of the Cotentin allied with other “pagans” who had recently arrived from the north, with the goal of protecting and even reviving their traditional culture.82 Beyond that, the growing and commercially vibrant town of Rouen could also boast, beginning in the tenth century, a significant Jewish community.83 It seems that Fulbert’s sensitivity to active demons may have reflected his feeling of being surrounded by “pagans.” The psalter of Alcuin, increasingly available in Gaul from the early ninth century onwards, offered authors at Jumièges an explanation for the presence of demons: according to Psalm 95:5, “omnes dii gentium daemonia” (“all the gods of the heathen [are] demons”).84 To evangelize pagans meant to fight against demons, who wished to 79 Fulbert of Jumièges, Vita Romani, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, pp. 234–266. 80 Fulbert of Jumièges, Vita Aichardi (BHL 182) in Rouen BM 1399 (U. 2) folios 33v–45v and in Rouen BM 1409 (Y. 189) folios 2r–35r (both from eleventh-century Jumièges). The text was copied (without its preface) by Jacobus de Guisia near the end of the fourteenth century for his “Annales Historiae Illustrium Principum Hanoniae” (Valenciennes BM 784–786); these annals were published as Jacques de Guyse, Histoire de Hainault traduite en français, avec le texte latin en regard, ed. and trans. Agricol-Joseph Fortia d’Urban, 19 vols. (Paris: Sautelet, 1826–1838), including the Vita Aichardi (vol. 8, pp. 40–137; BHL 182beta). The preface, which mentions the author Fulbert, was printed by Laurentius Surius, De probatis Sanctorum historiis, 6 vols. (Cologne: Calenius and Quentel, 1570–1575), vol. 5, p. 239 (BHL 182alpha). 81 When Romanus crossed the threshold of the temple north of Rouen, “innumera demonum legio relicta sede, longo ordine cum horrendo ululatu, se in altum aera extendit. . . . Quibus uenerandus pontifex ait, ‘Ecce iam fratres non ludificante somno neque per falses imagines, sed uisu conspicuo infernales legiones et diabolica castra contuiti estis, ex quibus certum experimentum uobis nisi bruta animalium pectora gestatis, sumere fas est, quanta uobis et urbi pericula ex eorum affinitate instabant’” (Fulbert of Jumièges, Vita Romani fol. 120v, ed. Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 251). As for Aichardus, he also emphasized the material reality of the demons who were assailing his monks: “Non sunt haec, fratres mei, uana somnia, nec illusio phantastica” (Fulbert of Jumièges, Vita Aichardi [BHL 182beta]). 82 See note 43. 83 Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society. Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); Georges Duval, Restauration et réutilisation des monuments anciens: techniques contemporaines (Liège: Mardaga, 1990), pp. 180–183. I thank Anne Bossoutrot and Jean-Loup Ribière for the latter reference. 84 Psalm 95: 5, ed. Robertus Weber, Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart: Württemburgische Bibelanstalt, 1969); Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols. (Munich: Artemis Verlag,

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be worshipped themselves.85 All the examples of the theme of “political” demons in Christian literature that have been noted thus far by scholars are connected with moments when Muslim, Jews, “heretics,” or “pagans” challenged the claims of Christian ecclesiastics.86 In contrast, there are only demons of temptation and of illness in the works of Gregory the Great, who lived at a time when “pagan” religions were no longer a threat to the Christian church in central Italy.87 The imagined world of Fulbert of Jumièges, a world “infested” by demons, was a product of this moment in the history of Neustria when nothing any longer seemed sure or certain. In the end, the crisis remained effectively metaphysical and psychological, because the physical world and its socio-political structures stayed solidly in place throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, despite their fragile appearance.

1980–1998), vol 3, coll. 476–487, s.v. “Dämonen, Dämonologie.” For the Hebrew tradition, which prefers “sculptilia” (idols, products of human hands) to “daemonia” (animate and dangerous deities), see Alba Maria Orselli, “Santi e città. Santi e demoni urbani tra tardoantico e alto medioevo,” Settimane 36 (1988): 823–827. 85 James Thayer Addison, The Medieval Missionary: A Study of the Conversion of Northern Europe AD 500–1300 (New York: International Missionary Council, 1936), p. 151; Hans-Dietrich Kahl, “Die ersten Jahrhunderte des missionsgeschichtlichen Mittelalters. Bausteine für eine Phänomenologie,” in Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte II: Die Kirche des Früheren Mittelalters, ed. Knut Schäferdiek, 2 vols. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 11–76, at pp. 40–41. 86 Périclès-Pierre Joannou, Démonologie populaire-démonologie critique au XIe siècle. La vie inédite de S. Auxence par M. Psellos (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1971); Michael Psellos, “De opere daemonum,” trans. Jeffrey Burton Russell, in Jeffrey Burton Ruseell, Lucifer. The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 40–43; Salvatore Pricoco, “Un esempio de agiografia regionale: La Sicilia,” Settimane 36 (1988): 319–376, at 338, 345–356 and 359–364; Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, De miraculis, ed. Denise Bouthillier (Corpus ChristianorumContinuatio Medievalis 83; Turnhout: Brepols, 1988); Maria Rosa Menocal, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History. A Forgotten Heritage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 38–55; Tilmann Buddensieg, “Gregory the Great, the Destroyer of Pagan Idols. The History of a Medieval Legend Concerning the Decline of Ancient Art and Literature,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965): 44–65; Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 18–24 and 57–72. The possible influence of apocalyptic ideas on demonophobic Norman literature during the tenth century cannot be categorically ruled out, but I am nevertheless not persuaded that it played an important role; all the disturbances in Normandy during the periods of apocalyptic enthusiasms (the 940s and the 1040s) can be explained without reference to apocalyptic expectations (Richard Landes, “Millenarismus absconditus. L’historiographie augustinienne et le millénaire du haut moyen âge jusqu’à l’an Mil,” Le Moyen Age 98 [1992]: 356–377 and Richard Landes, “Sur les traces du Millenium: La ‘Via Negativa,’” Le Moyen Age 99 [1993]: 5–26). 87 Sophia Boesch Gajano, “Demoni e miracoli nei ‘Dialogi’ di Gregorio Magno,” in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés, IVe-XIIe siècles, eds. Pierre Riché and Évelyne Patlagean (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981), pp. 263–281.

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16 T R A N S L AT I N G “ F E U D A L ” V O C A B U L A RY Dudo of St. Quentin

I The academic debate over “feudalism” is essentially a debate over the meaning(s) of words.1 Europeans have utilized a variety of words and phrases to describe their imagined and experienced social and political lives. Until recently, scholars tended to view that language as itself relatively non-problematic, and to focus their intellectual energies on understanding the “real” structures and institutions supposedly revealed by linguistic signs; the complexities of language itself received little attention. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, trained in the paradigm of modern textuality, one of whose hallmarks is “the dogged taking of signs for things,” rarely lingered long over the terminology which formed the core of the evidence for the “feudal Middle Ages;” instead, “Much of the discussion of fiefs, as of vassalage, seem[ed] . . . to assume the identity of words with concepts, our concepts with medieval concepts, and all three with the phenomena.”2 The (post-modern?) recognition that signs are hardly the stable equivalents of things promises, if tenaciously explored, to result in a more sophisticated understanding of social and political structures. The false assumption that vocabulary itself remained stable and corresponded to stable institutions has tended to mask complexity and to obscure change over time. Thus, “feudalism” has been seen as a comprehensive symbolic system, unchanged from the ninth through thirteenth centuries, a system surrounding and constituting feudo-vassalic relations through rituals of homage, fidelity and investiture.3 That vision of “medieval” Europe, 1 This essay is dedicated to J.M.W. Bean, with whom I first tackled the problem of “feudalism” as a graduate student. I also wish to thank John Howe, C.P. Lewis, Susan Reynolds, the anonymous journal referee, and (above all) Stephen D. White, whose brief but pithy comments helped me think about my material in new and fruitful ways. 2 John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de Buen Amor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 28; Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 13. 3 Jacques Le Goff, “The Symbolic Ritual of Vassalage,” in Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 237–287.

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exemplified by (among others) Le Goff, was elaborated primarily on the basis of entries in a dictionary of medieval Latin.4 Unfortunately, the praxis of dictionaries is to extract and abstract words from their contexts of usage, and to reduce their multiple potential connotations to one or more limited denotations, independent of specific context. There is in fact very little likelihood that the limited definitions of Latin words that were enshrined in dictionaries during the nineteenth century and earlier correspond in every case, or even in most cases, to the meanings which those words bore in every locality during every century of the thousand-year-long “Middle Ages;” it is particularly unlikely that older dictionaries can be accurate guides to the meaning of words during periods such as the tenth century, which has only recently begun to receive sympathetic scholarly attention. If we can move beyond the dictionary mentality which asserts the stable equivalence of sign and signified, and instead concentrate for a while upon individual cases of the contextualized usage of language, we should be able to arrive at a nuanced understanding of the ways in which Europeans have experienced and imagined their social and political lives. A few historians have already begun to analyse the language of sources in real detail; with this chapter, I hope to continue in that direction by analysing the language of one rich (yet heretofore unjustly neglected) source: Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum, begun at the request of Richard I of Normandy in 994, and possibly completed not long thereafter.5 Whether or not Dudo was a reliable reporter of the factoids of early Norman history is immaterial. He has been both vigorously defamed and (somewhat less) vigorously defended for well over a century.6 What matters for my present purposes is that the dean of St. Quentin composed an extremely verbose description of a series of political intrigues, in the course of which he utilized a vocabulary that he considered meaningful to his audience. I hope to suggest, primarily as a methodological model, some of the complexities of tenthcentury socio-political discourse through scrupulous analysis of that vocabulary. This chapter concerns only Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum, a text that I know particularly intimately. I do not wish to imply that every discursive analysis of the language of medieval politics would lead in the same direction as does the study of Dudo’s language; George Beech, for instance, has carried out such an analysis and yet retained essentially intact the traditional framework of feudo-vassalic 4 Charles du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887). 5 Steven Fanning, “Emperors and Empires in Fifth-century Gaul,” in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, eds. John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 288–297; Thomas Zotz, “In Amt und Würden: zur Eigenart ‘offizieller’ Positionen im früheren Mittelalter,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 22 (1993): 1–23; Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative.” For the date of completion of the work, see this chapter’s appendix. 6 The classic attack on Dudo’s reliability is Henri Prentout, Étude critique sur Dudon de Saint-Quentin et son histoire des premiers ducs normands (Paris: Picard, 1915); for further bibliography concerning Dudo, see Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997).

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relations.7 Furthermore, I make no claims concerning the relationship between Dudo’s discursive modes and “real” institutions; that is a problem of another order, one which I address only peripherally in this chapter, and one which can perhaps best be addressed only after we have come to grips with the language(s) of politics per se. Nevertheless, I do hope that this chapter will encourage more historians to abandon the homogenizing and simplifying pedagogical crutch known as “feudalism” by showing how inadequate it is for understanding Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum. For it does seem to me, however much I might hesitate to extrapolate from Dudo’s language to “reality,” that there must be some “historical” (and not merely discursive) significance to the inadequacy of the feudo-vassalic framework for understanding Dudo’s narrative; after all, Dudo was the historian of ducal Normandy, the territory about which C. H. Haskins wrote: “it is plain that Norman society in 1066 was a feudal society, and one of the most fully developed feudal societies in Europe.”8

II In 1987, I began translating into English Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum.9 The primary methodological principle shaping my translation has been to try to construe the sense of the text through (and after) achieving an intimate acquaintance with Dudo’s language and usage, not through reliance on a priori assumptions about supposedly universal and uniform “medieval” institutions, or through reliance on authoritarian dictionaries. I particularly mistrusted dictionaries and reference works precisely when they claimed to be guides to the legal terminology associated with “feudalism” or “feudo-vassalic relations,” knowing as I did the extent to which legal structures and terminology had been transformed between the neglected period around 1000, when Dudo wrote, and the intensively studied epoch of the twelfth century, and later, the era on which traditional understandings 7 George Beech, Yves Chauvin, and Georges Pon, Le Conventum (vers 1030): un précurseur aquitain des premières épopées (Geneva: Droz, 1995); George Beech, “The Language of an Early Eleventh-Century Aquitainian Narrative as a Reflection of Contemporary Life” (paper delivered to the Haskins Society, November 1996). 8 Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), p. 5. 9 I cite (in parentheses in the body of the text) both my transcription of an eleventh-century Fécamp manuscript of Dudo’s text (Berlin SB-PK, Philipps 1854, cited by folio number, and available through ORB: Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies at http://163.238.55.65/libindex.html; accessed June 1, 2020) and the semi-critical edition of the text available by Jules Lair (Dudo, De moribus, cited by page number). [My transcription is now also edited on the Bibliotheca Augustana at www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost11/Dudo/dud_no00.html; accessed June 1, 2020.] The citations to Dudo De moribus are a convenience, but I recommend that the reader utilize my transcription if at all possible. Lair’s edition is full of errors (only a handful of which I have pointed out in this essay) and rarely matches the transcription. The divergences between his edition and my transcription are usually not due to Lair’s having preferred manuscripts other than the Fécamp one, but rather to simple errors on his part.

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of the “Middle Ages” (and, ipso facto, of “medieval” Latin) have largely been based.10 Despite my conscious intention to avoid anachronistic translations, I sometimes found myself imposing a “feudal” hierarchy upon Dudo’s text. For instance, I was for many years incapable of seeing what Dudo’s actual usage of the word dux meant about its meaning in (his) tenth-century socio-political discourse. Dudo used the term dux for Richard of Normandy and for the Robertian Hugh the Great of Paris; he also used dux for Anstign, the leader of a Viking war-band whose activities occupy the opening chapters of the narrative, and for St. Quintinus, under whose protective (and pseudo-military) patronage he placed the work (fol. 5r; Dudo, De moribus, p. 121).11 As a result of my assumption that a dux, or duke, ruled a territorial agglomeration and possessed a status in a (“feudal?”) hierarchy below a rex (king) but above a comes (count), I at first refused both to Anstign and to Quintinus the title “duke” which Dudo had accorded them; indeed, I obscured the fact that Dudo considered Anstign and Quintinus “dukes” comparable to Hugh and Richard by translating dux, when applied to the former figures, as “leader.” Ironically enough, in this I followed (among others) K. F. Werner, from whose arguments concerning Norman intitulature I had otherwise managed to remain independent.12 Only when confronted with my own divergent translation choices in the course of compiling a glossary of Dudo’s usage did I recognize that a “duke,” for Dudo, was a temporary military leader and not a ranked official ruler of a stable territory in a “feudal” hierarchy.13 Now, instead of interpreting

10 I have found the most persuasive and apposite demonstration of this transformation to be Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: the Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), combined with the related arguments of Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). The specific strand of transformation in “feudal” vocabulary has since been the focus of Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals. 11 I utilize the names given to his characters by Dudo himself, not the names created by scholarly convention to refer to those personages; thus, I refer to “Anstign” not “Hasting.” I deliberately wish to avoid evoking a sense of (false) familiarity with Dudo’s text; instead, I prefer to jar the reader into looking as attentively as possible at the narrative. The text is extremely sophisticated, and has only just begun to profit from scholarly readings that approach it with sufficient seriousness; see, for instance, the exemplary essays in Dudone di San Quintino, eds. Paolo Gatti and Antonella Degl’lnnocenti (Trent: Dipartimento di Scienze Fililogiche e Storiche, 1995). The reader may also find my translations jarring. My English translations in general are intended to mirror the manuscript and thus, it is hoped, to expose as much as possible about the original text, rather than to obscure its characteristic features through “modernization.” 12 Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Quelques observations au sujet des débuts du ‘duché’ de Normandie,” in Droit privé et institutions régionales: Études historiques offertes à Jean Yver, eds. Robert Aubreton, Robert Carabie, Olivier Guillot and Lucien Musset (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et Du Havre, 1976), pp. 691–709; Felice Lifshitz, “La Normandie carolingienne. Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources negligés,” Annales de Normandie 48 (1998): 502–524 [now in English translation as Chapter 15 in this collection]. 13 This is precisely the conclusion reached concerning the meaning of dux in Robert Helmerichs, “Princeps, Comes, Dux Normannorum: Early Rollonid Designators and their Significance,”

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Dudo’s political discourse through an anachronistic hierarchy of “feudal” titles, I would argue that Dudo’s usage of dux functioned within his narrative to denigrate the Capetian ancestor, the Robertian Hugh the Great, who is literally always and more importantly solely called “duke,” to the point that it becomes his defining epithet and almost a part of his name; Dudo thereby insistently underlined the extra-juridical basis and ephemeral nature of the power exercised by “Duke Hugh the Great,” subtly contributing (for the contemporary, non-“feudal” reader) to the disparaging portrait of the Robertians which marks the explicit plot of the narrative.14 In contrast, the Norman rulers such as Richard were only sometimes duces in Dudo’s narrative; more often they were comites, marchiones, patricii, or (most often) all of the above. The moral of the story, however, is more significant than to provide some insight into Dudo’s anti-Robertian political alignment: if a translator whose primary motivation was to avoid “feudalizing” anachronisms nevertheless fell prey to such errors, how much more must translations of medieval sources that have been carried out by devotees of (or by those indifferent to) “feudalism” be pervaded by distorting interpretive strategies? I hope, therefore, to stimulate readers to look with particular care at other translations from “medieval” texts (including their own), as well as to consider the impact of the evidence of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum on the debate over “feudalism.” The potential evidence provided by the plot and the language of Dudo of St. Quentin’s history of early Normandy has been virtually ignored throughout this entire century of sustained scholarly discussion of “feudalism;” I cannot do more in this chapter than scratch the surface of the ways in which attention to Dudo’s long and complicated text might affect the terms of that debate.15 The present paper will address one aspect of one version of the various “feudalisms” which have long been seen as characteristic of the European Middle Ages: the feudovassalic relations described in Le Goff’s classic article, relations which formed the main subject of Susan Reynolds’ Fiefs and Vassals. I will discuss the language of the first third of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum, culminating in the meeting at SaintClair-sur-Epte between the Viking Rollo and the king of western Francia, with a focus on anything that might be considered relevant to feudo-vassalic relations. Although I focus only on a few selected passages, I analyze them in the light of the narrative and language of the entire text. Haskins Society Journal 9 (2001): 57–78. [This glossary is no longer accessible to me, but exists only in legacy format on floppy disk drives.] 14 Dudo’s negative portrait of the Robertians has been noticed by, among others, Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 147–149. 15 See the discussions by and references to earlier literature in Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals; Thomas N. Bisson, “The ‘Feudal Revolution,’” Past and Present 142 (1994): 6–42; Dominique Barthélemy, “Encore le débat sur l’an mil,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 74 (1995): 349–360; Dominique Barthélemy and Stephen D. White, “Debate: the ‘Feudal Revolution,’” Past and Present 152 (1996): 196–223.

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As an illustration of the importance of considering the entire Gesta Normannorum when discussing individual passages, I would like to correct one common reading of the text that I believe is incompatible with Dudo’s intention: the idea that Rollo and his war-band claimed to be of roughly equal social status at the time of their initial settlement in Francia because when asked, “What authority does your lord discharge?” they replied, “None, for we are of equal power” (fol. 22r; Dudo, De moribus, p. 54).16 This assertion was never meant by Dudo to be taken seriously. The quoted interview at Damps between Rollo’s band and three messengers from the Franks (namely Anstign and two bilingual warriors) takes place after the reader has repeatedly seen Rollo recognized (both by sui and by others such as King Alstem of the Angles) as the senior of the warriors gathered around him; the reader knows that these Vikings have a “lord,” and the reader knows that they know they have a “lord.” The verbal exchange at Damps recorded/invented by Dudo shows the Vikings playing a particularly infuriating diplomatic game with Anstign, whom they continue to torment, refusing to answer properly any of his questions; when they claim to have no lord, they are quite simply lying, a fact which is not obvious to someone who has not attentively read the entire narrative. Based on years of repeated reading and translating of Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum, I will argue that what historians have called feudo-vassalic relations played little role in the way he conceptualized and articulated to himself and others the socio-political world in which he lived. Elements of that complex known as feudo-vassalic relations, such as lordship, obligatory service, ritualized hand gestures, benefices, oaths, and the like, do occasionally appear in Dudo’s descriptions of the political world of late Carolingian Francia; however, the elements do not appear together, and a deliberate act of synthesizing on the part of the historian would be required in order to bring together under a single umbrella elements that are not necessarily connected in Dudo’s own vision. Furthermore, synthesis alone would not suffice to construct feudo-vassalic relations out of Dudo’s narrative; selection and suppression would also be required, for the smorgasbord of sociopolitical vocabulary that he offers the twentieth-century reader is also amply laden with elements drawn from a discourse of public power organized around (classical and Carolingian?) concepts such as res publica and amicitia.17 The importance of proto- or potentially “feudal” elements in Dudo’s world-view has to be assessed in light of the strong presence of “statist” elements normally considered to be incompatible with “feudalism.”

16 The most recent scholar to take this passage at face value is Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, pp. 152–153. All English translations from Dudo are my own. 17 Leah Shopkow, “The Carolingian World of Dudo of Saint-Quentin,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989): 19–37. For a completely different (and in my opinion faulty) approach to the Norman character and to Norman amicitia, see Emily Albu [Hanawalt], “Predatory Friendship: Evidence from Medieval Norman Histories,” in The Changing Face of Friendship, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 115–129.

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III For this chapter I searched my electronic transcription of the first third of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum, up to the meeting of Rollo and Charles at Saint-Clairsur-Epte, for: all words connected with dominatio (which modern Anglophone scholars call “lordship”);18 all words connected with obligations or service;19 and all words that might be said (according to traditional conceptions of the feudo-vassalic complex) to form the nexus between dominatio and seruitium.20 Seruitium, dominatio, fidelitas, beneficia, and the like certainly existed in Dudo’s sociopolitical discourse and in medieval Europe. What does not seem to have existed on Dudo’s mental map was a crystalized complex of “feudo-vassalic relations:” vassalian obligations to loyalty and service pledged through a ceremony of oaths and homage to a lord in exchange for benefices. Such a complex could be constructed by historians if they were to bring together scattered elements from disparate sections of the narrative. However, such an active work of synthesis along “feudalizing” lines seems unjustified given the complicating presence in Dudo’s narrative of completely non-“feudal” elements; in the Gesta Normannorum, ritualized exchanges and/or transfers of oaths, gifts, etc. established bonds of amicitia, not of vassalage, or constituted temporary peace treaties, within an omnipresent sociopolitical framework of “public” royal power. Furthermore, it is rarely clear that the potentially “feudal” terms that might constitute the building blocks of a “feudal” edifice actually carry any technical “feudal” sense even taken individually, let alone once incorporated into an elaborated complex. All the conflicts, negotiations, and alliances described by Dudo take place within one of three regna (realms) defined as res publicae, namely Dacia,21 Anglia,22 or Francia,23 where royal figures possessed imperium (sovereignty). Dudo’s usage 18 Such as: dominatio, dominium, dominor, domina, dominatrix, dominus, ducamen, ditio, gubernaculum, gubernatio, gubernator, guberno, imperito, imperium, impero, modero, moderor, moderamen, moderator, monarchia, principatus, principor, princeps, senior. For the transcription, see note 9. 19 Such as: famula, famulus, famulo, famulor, famulatus, mancipium, mancipo, minister, deseruio, serua, seruus, seruio, seruitium, seruitus. 20 Such as: beneficium, fidelitas, fides, munus, officium, tributum, sacramentum. 21 For Dacia as a res publica, see fol. 15r (Dudo, De moribus, p. 141). 22 For Anglia as a res publica, see fol. 24r. (Dudo, De moribus, p. 159). Some manuscripts other than the Fécamp copy include an additional passage defining the regnum anglorum as a res publica (Dudo, De moribus, p. 158); this passage will not turn up in a search of the transcription. 23 I include here the passage concerning the res publica of Francia because of its relevance to the overall plot of the narrative as it culminates at Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. The king of Francia says to Bishop Franco of Rouen: “Regnum cui praeesse debeo desolatur. Terra aratro non scinditur, res publica et captiuatur et occiditur. Obesse Rolloni nequeo, qui cotidie meis priuor. Quapropter paternitatem sanctitatis tuae rogo et deprecor, ut adquiras nobis apud Rollonem sequestram pacem trium mensium, et si forte his diebus christianum fieri se uoluerit, maxima beneficia ei dabimus, magnisque donis eum remunerabimus” (“The realm which I ought to rule is deserted. The land is not rent by the plough, the res publica is both taken captive and destroyed. I am unable to hinder Rollo, for I am daily deprived of my followers. Wherefore am I asking and deprecating your

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is further evidence that the abstract public power embodied in a res publica was part of socio-political discourse long before the academic explosion of the twelfth century, and supports Susan Reynolds’ controversial portrait of central medieval political organization: in Dudo’s view of all three regna, Dacia, Anglia, and Francia, individuals owed service and fidelity as subjects to rulers in a res publica, not as vassals to a lord because of a beneficium.24 Indeed, the word uassallus itself appears only once in Dudo’s narrative (a point which is consistent across all the manuscripts): in the midst of the virtue catalogue with which some Frankish magnates describe Rollo’s qualities to the king of Francia (folios 27r-27v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 166), and not in the context of any ritual of oath-taking, land-granting, or the like.25 Dudo’s usage supports no translation that would render “vassal” a technical term; it would, perhaps, best be translated as “fighter.” When the reader first meets Rollo and his short-lived brother Gurim, they rule (as their father did before them) an independent monarchia which had never been subjected to the imperium of the king of the res publica of Dacia; Rollo and Gurim did not, therefore, owe him seruitium, fidelitas, etc. for they were not his subjects.26 They were, however, able to enter into an alliance of amicitia (friendship) with the king, and to establish, through an exchange of munera (gifts, presents, tributes), paternal holiness to obtain for us from Rollo a negotiated peace of three months and if, perhaps, during that time he should wish to become a Christian, we will give him the very greatest favors and repay him with great gifts;” folios 24v–25r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 160). 24 Dudo should be added to the scanty evidence of “republican” vocabulary marshaled by Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 25 and by Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 293 and 325. 25 The reading “uassalius” on line 32 of Dudo, De moribus, p. 167 is simply and completely mistaken; all the manuscripts read “uas” (for instance, see fol. 28v of my transcription). 26 The entire discussion of this non-relationship takes place without any allusion to any sort of beneficium as potentially constitutive of a bond (“feudal” or otherwise). Once more I cite the relevant passages in full because of their bearing on the broader plotline culminating at SaintClair-sur-Epte: “Illis vero in diebus senex quidam erat in partibus datiae, omnium rerum affluentia locupletisimus innumerabiliumque militum frequentia undique secus constipates, qui numquam colla suae ceruicis cuipiam regi subegit, nec cuiuslibet manibus gratia seruitii manus suas commendando commisit. Qui datiae regnum pene universum possidens, affines datie et Alaniae terras sibi uendicauit, populosque sibi praeliis quamplurimis ui et potestate subiugauit” (“But in the region of Dacia there was in those days, a certain old man, most opulent with an abundance of all goods, and surrounded on all sides by a crowd of innumerable warriors, a man who never lowered the nape of his neck before any king, nor placed his hands in anyone else’s hands in committing himself to service. Holding almost the entire realm of Dacia, he claimed for himself the lands bordering on Dacia and Alania, and by force and power he subjugated the populace to himself through very many battles;” folios 15r–15v and Dudo, De moribus, pp. 141–142). Dudo goes on to put the following words in Rollo’s mouth: “‘Rex siquidem huius regni [Daciae] molitur nos supergredi, nostraeque monarchiam ditionis inuadere, nosque et uos omnes perdere et antequam hereditariam nostrae dominationis terram mancipet sue regiminis terra in antipando preoccupemus hostiliterque resistendo aduentu eius’” (“‘If indeed the king of this realm is attempting to step over us and to attack the authority of our monarchy and to ruin us and all of you, let us, both in anticipating and in resisting his arrival, occupy like an enemy the land under his own rule, before he seizes the land of our hereditary lordship;’” fol. 16r and Dudo, De moribus, pp. 142–143).

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one of the many horizontal bonds which occupy such a prominent place in Dudo’s vision of the ninth- and tenth-century political landscape: “Thus, both come to a conference at the time settled upon for swearing the alliance; enriched by reciprocal gifts, they are allied” (fol. 16r; Dudo, De moribus, p. 143). There is nothing in this dyadic relationship that could be considered vertical or feudo-vassalic: there are no claims to dominatio, no obligations to service or fidelity, no oaths, no promises, no fiefs. The same is true of other alliances described by Dudo, such as those between Anstign and King Charles of Francia (fol. 12v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 137), between Rollo and Ragnar of Frisia (fol. 20v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 151), and between Rollo and King Alstem of the Angles. Rollo’s relationship with Alstem develops over the course of many folios/ years, but always remains a horizontal one of mutual aid; it is crucial to notice that Dudo uses the term beneficia within this horizontal context, as Rollo says to Alstem: “I thank you, the superior of all kings, for these willing boons (beneficia) and, since I do wish it, go ahead and bring to pass everything you have recounted as needing to be done between you and me. I will not linger very long in your realm but, as swiftly as I am able, I will go to Francia. In whatever land I be, I will stay your friend till the end, united in an alliance of indissoluble esteem.” Absolutely inextricably allied through these words, marvelously enriched through these agreements about their mutual affairs, each with his followers returned home. (fol. 19r; Dudo, De moribus, p. 148) Indeed, the relationship between Rollo and King Alstem of the Angles nicely encapsulates and illustrates the dominant discourses preferentially utilized by Dudo to describe the sociopolitical landscape of the ninth and tenth centuries: a royal res publica in which subjects owe fidelity and service, accompanied by the possibility of establishing alliances of amicitia with peers or non-subjects. Alstem rex anglorum consistently feared that the gens (nation) subject to him as king might abrogate its promised loyalty; in contrast, there is never any hint of feudo-vassalic subordination or verticality in the relationship of amicitia which he had established with Rollo, and Alstem never becomes Rollo’s lord.27 Soon enough, the Angles do in fact rebel against the sovereign rule of King Alstem; when Dudo has Alstem summon Rollo, through a messenger, to fulfill the pact of mutual aid by coming to the king’s assistance during the rebellion, the historian makes it clear that the messenger is subordinated to his own lord Alstem, but that Rollo is an independent actor (folios 23r-23v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 158). Here the contrast between the subordinated status of the Angles, who owe service and

27 See Alstem’s speech to Rollo, folios 18v–19r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 148.

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fidelity, and the peer status of Rollo, who owes amicitia, becomes quite clear as Alstem speaks to Rollo: “I owe you the very greatest thanks for, because of me, you left behind a realm given to you by God and hastily came to my assistance. You are not ignorant of the reason why I have sent for you to aid me? This realm, which I rule and profit, is being laid waste, and the dignity of my rule being brought to nothing, for the Angles, elated and corrupted by rash haughtiness, are unwilling to obey my commands. Falling away from me, they have conspired among themselves and, rejecting me and my service (seruitium), account me of slight value, indeed even snatch for themselves the profits of my small towns. Thus I pray you to help me dash them to pieces and scatter them and crush them and tread down their insolent strength, so that they be brought back, even if unwilling, to my service (seruitium) and sharply undergo whatever punishment they deserve. Therefore I will give you the moiety of my realm, and I will of my own accord grant you half the store of all my household furnishings. And, thus bound by an indestructible alliance of united friendship, let us together hold the realm and administer its goods, and those of the whole office (honor).” (folios 23v-24r; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 158–159) In Dudo’s story, the Angles did not owe seruitium to their king because they were his vassals or because they had received any beneficia from him; the context of their subordination was (like that of the Dacians) a res publica. Dudo did not present Rollo as a vassal or subordinate of Alstem. Nevertheless, if someone were to read Dudo quickly and/or selectively, while ignoring the broader context of the amicitia between Rollo and Alstem, relying for interpretive aid on standard dictionaries of medieval Latin, and assuming that feudo-vassalic relations were the primary way people organized themselves in the “Middle Ages,” they probably would conclude that Rollo was a “vassal” of Alstem. Consider the following passage, in which dux Rollo replies to rex Alstem’s request for help against the rebelling Angles: His Rollo donis laetus legatos muneribus praemaximis ditatos, cum gratiarum actione ad regem remisit seque per eos famulaturum regi mandauit. (folios 19v-20r; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 149–150) A translator who, unhampered by the broader narrative, approached those lines through the sanctioned definitions of (for instance) the widely used Mittellateinisches Glossar of Habel and Gröbel, would almost inevitably produce an English text that placed Rollo in a feudo-vassalic relation to Alstem; the only possible meanings suggested by Habel and Gröbel for famulare and famulatus connote 215

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vertical subordination.28 In contrast, a translator who recognized the context of horizontal amicitia for the royal-ducal relationship would be forced to temper or even reject the sanctioned “feudal” readings, and rethink the potential denotations and usages for famulare, famulatus, etc. when they appear in polite, formal conversations and diplomatic language. I have translated the passage: “Delighted with these gifts Rollo sent back to the king as an act of thanks ambassadors enriched with the very greatest tributes; and he sent word through them that he himself was about to attend the king.”29 Seruitium is another word of which a translator must be particularly wary. It is ubiquitous in Dudo’s formal, formulaic salutations, where it “means” (effectively) nothing: “Qui conspectui illorum adsistens; talia coram profudit dicens. Alstignus dux dacorum uobis fidele seruitium et omnes pariter sui sorte dacia cum ipso eiecti” (folios 10r-10v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 133); “Omnium praepotentissimus patritius duxque dacorum precellentissimus Rollo noster senior, et aduocatus tibi fidele seruitium tuisque amicitiae munus inconuulsum” (folios 18r-18v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 147); “Rollo dux northmannorum tibi amoris et amicitie inextricabilis quin etiam seruitii pactum” (fol. 28r; Dudo, De moribus, p. 167); “Rotbertus dux francorum tibi fidele seruitium” (folios 28r-28v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 167). I would even argue that the statement made by Rollo’s followers to Rollo concerning negotiations with the king of Francia, “Remitte regi episcopum ut si dederit tibi quod spopondit te dicat suo seruitio promptum esse” (fol. 28r; Dudo, De moribus, p. 167), is itself an example of a polite use of seruitium with little or no sociopolitical content; I have translated it as: “Send the bishop back to the king to say that you are ready at his service, if he should give you what he has promised.” Of course, as we have already seen, seruitium is not always an empty word of politeness. Dudo’s King Alstem expected seruitium from the Angles, and considered the latter to be in a state of rebellion when they refused seruitium within the context of his res publica. Seruitium could also be actively and voluntarily given to a princeps (leader) in exchange for adiutorium (assistance) and tutela (protection), as when the threatened youths of Dacia sought the help of Rollo and Gurim in their struggles with the Dacian king; significantly, the beneficia which appear in the context of these negotiations as described by Dudo are only holdings already possessed by the Dacian youths, and remain external and irrelevant to the relationship of tutelage established in exchange for seruitium.30 28 Famulare is translated as “knechten”; famulari as “dienen, dienstbar sein”; famulatus as “Dienstbarkeit, Knechtschaft, Bedienung, Dienst, Heeresfolge”; see Edwin Habel and Friedrich Gröbel, Mittellateinisches Glossar (Rev. ed. 2; Uni-Taschenbucher 1551; Paderborn: Schöningh, 1989), col. 147. 29 For another example of the potentially misleading utilization of the language of diplomacy between Rollo and Alstem see fol. 24r (Dudo, De moribus, p. 159). 30 I quote the passage in full because of its relevance to the later foot-kissing episode at Saint-Clairsur-Epte: “‘Ferte nobis auxilium, subuenite nobis in adiutorium; sub tutela uestrae protectionis morabimur uestrumque seruitium incessanter faciemus. Rex autem noster uult a datia nos exterminare, fundisque nostris atque beneficiis nos per omnia priuare.’ . . . Tunc duo illi fratres suppliciter

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Given the fact that words such as seruitium and beneficium encompass so large a range of possible and often unclear meanings in Dudo’s usage, including even usages that verge on empty politeness, it seems clear that (for Dudo at least) they were not part of any “feudal” technical vocabulary.31 Thus, feudo-vassalic relations, as traditionally conceived, fail to help us understand Dudo’s sociopolitical vocabulary. What is more, despite over a decade of close analysis of the text, I myself am still puzzled by certain passages in the Gesta Normannorum, passages that seem to hint at the existence, around the year 1000, of ways to conceptualize sociopolitical relations that twentieth-century scholars have not yet even begun to grasp. For instance, what really does Dudo mean when he has Robert of Francia’s emissary, who is arranging for Robert to become Rollo’s baptismal sponsor (a position of superiority?) and amicus (a position of equality?), say to Rollo that Robert “faciet . . . uestrum seruitium” (fol. 28v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 168)?32 Is this mere diplomatic politeness, or is some position of inferiority implied? The use of the second person plural form of the possessive adjective further complicates the matter, for Rollo is otherwise addressed by the messenger in the singular. Consider yet another passage, this one quite famous: Dudo’s explanation of how he originally received his commission to write the Gesta Normannorum: “Ante biennium mortis eius ut more frequentatiuo fui apud eximium ducem Ricardum, Willelmi marchionis filium, uolens ei reddere meae seruitutis officium, propter innumera beneficia quae absque meo merito mihi dignatus erat impertiri” (fol. 3v; Dudo, De moribus, p. 119). If words such as seruitus can evoke no more than the proper etiquette of the diplomatic world, and if beneficia can be granted as part of the establishment of a horizontal bond (as they were when Rollo entered into an amicitia with Alstem), how can a historian feel completely confident in their understanding of Dudo’s (perception of his) relationship with Richard of Normandy? It is even possible (although certainly counterintuitive and probably unlikely) that Dudo was not in any way subordinated to Richard. It may well be that we do not now possess the discursive tools ourselves to understand how Dudo conceived of his relationship with the Norman prince (let alone how the Norman prince thought of his relationship with the cleric from Vermandois). precantibus responderunt dicentes ‘Auxiliabimur optime uobis uosque regalium minarum securos morari in datia atque res uestre proprietatis faciemus quiete tenere.’ Illi autem haec audientes, Rollonis et Gurim osculo expetiuerunt pedes atque ilico super dictis principum remearunt gratulantes” (“‘Bring us aid, come to our assistance; we will stay under your protecting care and be incessantly in your service. Our king, on the other hand, wishes to banish us from Dacia, and to rob us forever of our estates and beneficia.’ . . . Then those two brothers replied, saying to the youths who were praying supplicatingly: ‘We will aid you as best we can and will bring it to pass that you stay in Dacia and calmly occupy your properties, untroubled by royal threats.’ They, however, hearing these things, kissed the feet of Rollo and Gurim, and immediately returned home, rejoicing over what their leaders had said;” fol. 15v and Dudo, De moribus, p. 142). 31 Serious students of “feudalism” should ponder the variety of uses of beneficium in Dudo’s text (see folios 3v, 15v, 19r, 22r, 24v, 42v, 49v, 56r, 57r, 57v, 59v, 64v, 71v, 73r, 76r, 81r, 81v, 83v, 85v, 86r, 86v, and 90r; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 119, 142, 148, 155, 160, 199, 218, 232, 234, 235, 238, 248, 261, 263, 269, 279 [twice], 283, 285, 286, 287, and 294). 32 Lair has “tuum seruitium” but all of the earliest and best manuscripts read “uestrum.”

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IV Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum is primarily of interest to historians of Frankish politics as the earliest narrative description of the process by which the Viking Rollo came to rule a portion of Carolingian Neustria; the remainder of this chapter will be devoted to an analysis of the language used by Dudo to recount the negotiations leading to the famous agreement made at Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Rollo and King Charles.33 Two principles will guide my discussion: the necessity to consider the entire narrative context of each episode analyzed, and the avoidance of unjustified conflation of separate episodes into a vast mish-mash of “feudal” vocabulary. All the negotiations take place within the framework of the royal res publica of Francia (fol. 27r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 165); however, the negotiations break down into two stages: at first the Franks offer (unsuccessfully) beneficia such as cash (just as had earlier been offered to Anstign) in return for recognition of royal public authority through a temporary cessation of raids; later, the Franks offer (successfully) amicitia. The first important point is the following: the usage of all words such as beneficia is confined to the first, failed, stage of negotiations and does not figure in the settlement actually achieved. The first time the Franks approach Rollo’s band, they send Anstign as an intermediary; he offers the Viking group beneficia in exchange for their recognition of King Charles’ public sovereignty. They refuse: Again Anstign: “Are you willing to lower your necks before King Charles of Francia and to devote yourselves to his service, and to draw many beneficia from him?” They replied: “We will never subjugate ourselves to anyone nor cling to anyone’s service nor take beneficia from anyone. The beneficium that would please us best is the one that we will claim for ourselves by force of arms and in the hardship of battle.” (fol. 22r and Dudo, De moribus, pp. 154–155) In determining what Dudo meant by beneficium in this specific context, it seems logical to consider all aspects of the narrative, including the fact that Dudo has Anstign propose the terms. Anstign was considered an emissary capable of offering to Rollo’s band the same sort of arrangement that he himself had earlier made; he himself had given peace in return for munera (tributes): Peace-making ambassadors are directed to harsh Anstign. Afterwards, assuaged by the rendered payments of a tributary sum and gradually appeased by the weight of the tribute exacted from the Franks, he is not rejecting the peace that was being requested but, of his own accord, is 33 The classic discussion is Ferdinand Lot, Fidèles ou vassaux? Essai sur la nature juridique du lien qui unissait les grands vassaux à la royauté depuis le milieu du IXe jusqu’à la fin du XIIe siècle (Paris: Bouillon, 1904), pp. 177–185.

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giving it for a longer time! Thus, once an unshattered peace between the chiefs has been secured, he is being escorted to the king, with whom he has fixed, under an inextricable agreement, tributes for a four-year peace. Allied in turn by mutual will and by imperial agreements, they are made, of one mind, united. And Francia rested. (fol. 12v and Dudo, De moribus, p. 137) The tributes which Anstign accepted were collected and handed over to him and his followers by the Franks themselves; in other words, Anstign was bought off. Anstign was then sent to offer Rollo’s band a similar arrangement: cash tribute (beneficia) in return for peace. But Rollo’s band reacted with horror to the suggestion that they negotiate for tribute, and insisted that they would seize their beneficia by force of arms; the Viking newcomers had just finished deriding Anstign himself for having “come to a bad end” (fol. 22r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 154), a charge which I take to refer to the lack of military prowess he had displayed in permitting himself to be bought. A second Frankish attempt to offer cash tribute (beneficia) in return for a temporary truce was likewise rebuffed.34 The actual process by which Rollo and his followers finally did resolve their hostilities with the Franks had nothing to do with beneficia (of any kind), at least as Dudo tells the story. Bishop Franco, acting as King Charles’ intermediary, proposed a pact of amicitia with Rollo: “ut pax et concordia atque amicitia firma et stabilis atque continua omni tempore inter te et illum permaneat” (“so that the peace and concord and friendship between you and him might endure forever, constant and steadfast and uninterrupted” [fol. 27v and Dudo, De moribus, p. 166]). Already more than fifty years ago, Lemarignier asserted that the relationship established at Saint-Clair was a horizontal amicitia, which is certainly consistent with Dudo’s presentation of events; however, Lemarignier went on to incorporate that friendship into a broader “feudal” structure, so that the ceremony at Saint-Clair became an example of “hommage de paix.”35 This is precisely, I think, where scholars have gone wrong in reading into Dudo’s narrative feudovassalic structures and concepts such as “homage,” which are not necessarily justified by the story the historian tells. Although Rollo (at least according to Dudo) never accepted tributes, gifts, or presents (munera, beneficia, etc.) from King Charles of Francia, he did recognize the latter’s sovereignty as a rex, namely his right to seruitium and fidelitas in the res publica of Francia. Franco, acting as Rollo’s messenger, had informed Charles: If you were to give him your daughter, as you said, as his consort, and that maritime land as an eternal holding from generation to generation,

34 See above, note 23. 35 Jean-François Lemarignier, Recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales (Lille: Bibliothèque universitaire, 1945), pp. 75–84.

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he will give you his hands, subjugating himself through an obligation of fidelity, and he will incessantly fulfill your service. (fol. 28r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 167) Thus, at Saint-Clair, Rollo “placed his hands in the king’s hands, something which neither his father nor his grandfather nor his great-grandfather had ever done for anyone” (fol. 29r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 169). Did Dudo, a man writing around the year 1000 whose vocabulary should reveal something of the sociopolitical conceptualizations of his era, see this ceremony between Rollo and Charles as constituting a feudo-vassalic bond? I would argue that he did not. Too many of the elements that might render a relationship feudo-vassalic (such as beneficia, or vassalage, or oaths of fealty, or words of dominatio) are absent. For instance, Charles is never a “lord” (dominus), but always a rex, regnant in a res publica. Moreover, the primary action which (according to Dudo) took place at Saint-Clair was not the donation of the maritime land by Charles to Rollo (whether as a beneficium or not), but the recognition and guarantee by Charles to Rollo that the maritime land in question was fully and perpetually heritable by the latter’s heirs. No oath of any kind (including of fealty to a lord) was taken by Rollo at Saint-Clair; the oath that was sworn at Saint-Clair was sworn to Rollo by King Charles of Francia and the other Franks, the first of a long string of such oaths, which form (as I have argued elsewhere) the central theme of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum:36 For the rest, King Charles and Duke Robert and the counts and chief prelates and abbots have sworn to patrician Rollo, with an oath of the Catholic faith on their life and limbs and the honor of the entire realm, that he would have and hold the designated land, and bequeath it to his heirs, and that the succession of his descendants from generation to generation would have and tend it throughout the course of all time. (folios 29r-29v and Dudo, De moribus, p. 169) The Frankish failure to honor the oaths taken by their leaders at Saint-Clair, and thus to recognize the rights of Rollo’s heirs to their patrimony, is in fact the main theme of the entire rest of Dudo’s narrative. Thus, the oath-taking ceremony Dudo emphasized was not one that established a dyadic vertical feudo-vassalic relationship between Rollo and Charles, but rather one that guaranteed the heritability of Rollo’s holdings. A royal guarantee of full heritability, something no other power could legally undertake to assure, was no small thing; Dudo himself recognized the value of royal generosity by telling the story of how the Franks wanted Rollo to kiss the feet of King Charles in return for the royal largesse (fol. 29r and Dudo, De moribus, p. 169). Famously, or infamously, Rollo refused to perform the act himself, and had one of his followers

36 Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative.”

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raise the king’s foot to his own mouth to kiss it, not incidentally, of course, toppling the king to the ground. In having the Franks request that Rollo kiss the feet of King Charles, what did Dudo imagine that gesture would convey? Would the performance of this ceremony have constituted a feudo-vassalic bond between Rollo and King Charles, or been tantamount to the former’s recognition of his position of subordinate vassalage vis-à-vis King Charles, or to a recognition that he “held” his land as a “fief” from Charles? In fact, Dudo helps the reader understand what he meant by the foot-kissing at Saint-Clair, for that particular foot-kissing episode was not the first time that Rollo was involved in such a ceremony. Several years earlier, when Rollo was still in Dacia, his feet (and those of his brother Gurim) had been kissed by the youths of Dacia, as an expression of gratitude for precisely the same thing for which Rollo himself should have been grateful at Saint-Clair: Rollo and Gurim had undertaken to guarantee to the youths of Dacia their inheritances, their continued peaceful possession of their patrimonies: Then those two brothers replied, saying to the youths who were praying supplicatingly: “We will aid you as best we can and will bring it to pass that you stay in Dacia and calmly occupy your properties, untroubled by royal threats.” They, however, hearing these things, kissed the feet of Rollo and Gurim, and immediately returned home.37 Dudo’s plot is extremely tight throughout the Gesta Normannorum; I would argue that he deliberately echoed the earlier foot-kissing in the later one. By utilizing the identical ceremony in both instances, Dudo underlined the parallelism between the two incidents and instructed us to read the later one through the earlier antitype; at the very least, he gave his twentieth-century readers, so remote from the sociopolitical world he described, more than one clue as to the significance of the gesture in his mind. In both cases, the kissing of another’s foot is a gesture of gratitude, acknowledging the role of the kissee (Rollo, Gurim, or King Charles) in guaranteeing the peaceful possession of heritable property; however, in neither case does the foot-kissing constitute an acknowledgement of vassalage, or subordination, or of dependent tenancy in return for a “fief” on the part of the kisser.

V Whatever the “realities” of the relationship between Duke Rollo and King Charles, or between the future Normandy and the future France, may have been, Dudo of St. Quentin did not seem to conceive of that relationship as being feudo-vassalic and certainly did not present it as being so. It could be argued that Dudo deliberately crafted a falsified depiction of the negotiations and settlement at Saint-Clair

37 For the Latin text, see note 30.

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so as to render Rollo (and more importantly Rollo’s descendants) independent of the “feudal monarchy” of Capetian France; certainly there is a long tradition in Dudo scholarship, going back at least to the massive study by Prentout, of accusing the Norman historian of falsification.38 In this case, however, I would prefer to learn from what Dudo’s language and conceptualizations can tell us about sociopolitical relations around the turn of the first millennium. Even though Dudo does not present Rollo as the vassal of King Charles, neither does he portray Rollo or Rollo’s descendants as independent of the king of Francia. Rollo recognizes the authority of King Charles qua king in the res publica of Francia with its attendant rights to seruitium and fidelitas. Dudo’s intention was not to help Rollo’s heirs weasel out of a situation of subordination before the Crown of Francia, but rather to see that Rollo’s heirs came into their rightful patrimony, an inheritance which he insisted ought to have been guaranteed by the oaths of the Franks and of their king.39 Simply by insisting upon that juridical situation, Dudo ipso facto recognized that the regnum Francorum possessed sovereignty (imperium) over Normandy. What benefit would there have been for Dudo’s patrons if their historian cast their subjection (falsely) as that of subjects to a rex in a res publica rather than as vassals to a lord in a feudal hierarchy? Even if it were the case that some benefit could be found for such a deception, it would still remain significant that an alternative discourse of public authority was even available to be exploited by Dudo in the first place. I would argue that the vocabulary Dudo used was the vocabulary with which he, circa 1000, in fact thought, and through which he articulated to himself the sociopolitical landscape of Francia. That vocabulary was multi-faceted, and included the conception of public power.

38 Prentout, Étude critique sur Dudon de Saint-Quentin. 39 Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative.”

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If we can believe Dudo himself, writing in the dedicatory letter to Bishop Adalbero of Laon that serves as a preface to the work, Duke Richard I of Normandy commissioned a history from the cleric of St. Quentin and, after Richard’s death, other members of the Norman ducal house continued to patronize the author in the hopes that he would complete the task. Dudo writes that the commission was delivered two years before the death of Richard I. According to the oldest manuscript copies of Dudo’s narrative, that doleful event took place either in 996 or 1002. The former year, 996, is the one that is usually deemed acceptable by scholars; however, it is symptomatic of the difficulties involved in studying the period in question that the later date, 1002, was both preferred by the scribes of the oldest extant manuscript copies of the text, and was left “uncorrected” by the owners of the Berlin manuscript, namely the monks of the Norman monastery of Fécamp, the very place where Duke Richard died and was buried.41 If determining the date at which Dudo began to write is difficult, determining the date at which he finished writing is even more problematic. Returning to the author’s dedicatory epistle to Bishop Adalbero, we find that Dudo there possesses, in the salutation, the title decanus (dean) of the community of canons of St. Quentin in the Vermandois. Because this same Dudo is called simply a canonicus (canon) of St. Quentin in a charter of Duke Richard II which dates from 1015,42 it is usually concluded that Dudo completed his Norman history late in 1015, after receiving a promotion to decanus.43 Because the charter itself survives in the original and not in some later copy, its own authenticity is not in doubt.44 Nevertheless, the reasoning behind this particular terminus post quem is not iron-clad.

40 This appendix fundamentally repeats arguments originally made in the introduction to my English translation of Dudo, De moribus [now Chapter 13 in this collection]. 41 Bern, Burgerbibliothek Bongars 390 of the early eleventh century and Berlin SB-PK Philipps 1854 of the late eleventh century. 42 Fauroux, Receuil, no. 18 pp. 100–102. 43 Most recently, Shopkow, History and Community. 44 Paris BN, Collection de Picardie 352, no. 1.

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Let us consider the charter of 1015. Dudo himself wrote the first four lines of the 1015 charter, calling himself the capellanus (chaplain) of Duke Richard II. Another scribe wrote the rest of the charter and called Dudo a canonicus. The appellation does not, therefore, have the kind of authority which it would have had had it come from Dudo’s own pen. Yet, even if Dudo did use the title canonicus in 1015, that would not in and of itself preclude his already having become the decanus of the congregation. When a canon became dean of St. Quentin, he did not thereby cease to be a canon of the community; witness the following verbal construction from a typical charter in the cartulary of St. Quentin, which refers to “the dean and the other canons of the church of blessed Quintinus.”45 The 1015 charter represents, in a sense, Dudo’s will, whereby he is guaranteed by Richard II that he may bequeath to his monastic family certain benefices which he had been given by Richard I; at this moment, it is understandable that Dudo would have emphasized his status as a member of familia or community of the monastery, rather than his official position over it. Finally, if Dudo was not the dean of the community at the time of the 1015 charter, there is no reason to assume that he necessarily became dean after drawing up the charter rather than that he had been dean before drawing up the charter. The deanship of a community is not a life-time position from which one cannot abdicate; indeed, it is precisely the sort of position from which one might resign in order to become the capellanus of Richard II, the position which Dudo describes himself as holding in the charter of 1015, as well as in a ducal charter of 1011 that is also from his own hand (and extant in the original).46 To complicate matters even more, let us add to the evidentiary calculus materials beyond the dedicatory epistle and the two ducal charters. Can we be certain that we ought to trust the salutation of the dedicatory epistle when it refers to Dudo as the decanus of St. Quentin, whether in 1015 or at any other time? The dedicatory epistle does appear in a number of the earlier manuscript copies of the text; however, none of those are separated from the date of Dudo’s own writing by fewer than several decades. On the other hand, the Annals of St. Quentin, written in a ninth-century manuscript from St. Quentin and then updated by tenth- and eleventh-century hands contemporary with the events recorded, describe the rule of abbates (abbots) and custodes (guardians) throughout the period in question, with no reference to anyone named Dudo, or indeed to any decani.47 Against a background of such uncertainty, it is difficult to see how we can assert anything more specific than that Dudo wrote the history during the late tenth (and possibly the early eleventh) century.

45 “. . . ecclesie beati quintini decanus ceterique canonici” (Paris BN lat. 11070, no. 74 fol. 86r). 46 Fauroux, Recueil no. 13, pp. 86–89; Rouen, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime 14 H 915A. 47 Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana lat. 645; Annales Sancti Quintini Veromandensis, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann (MGH SS 16; Hanover: Hahn, 1859), pp. 507–508. The Benedictines of St. Maur, in contrast, present the governance of the house to have involved lay abbots and deans throughout the period; however, they provide no source for “Vivianus,” said to have been the “decanus” in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, before Dudo (GC 11: 1038–1054).

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17 THE ENCOMIUM EMMAE REGINAE A “political pamphlet” of the eleventh century?

The century from Alfred the Great to Edward the Martyr had been arguably the “golden age” of the Old English kings, but when Ethelred II the “Ill-Counselled” ascended the throne in 979, he was both too young and too inexperienced to defend the wealth of England against the redoubled forces of Danish imperialism under the leadership of Svein Forkbeard.1 Ethelred’s marriage in 1002 to Emma of Normandy, rather than to a noble English lady, probably intended to strengthen the English position in the military arena of the northern seas, could not prevent the Danish conquest of England, and Emma seems not to have hesitated to marry the son of the conqueror, Cnut, in 1017. The name Encomium Emmae Reginae derives from the title given by Duchesne in 1619 to a brief anonymous and untitled panegyric on the house of Svein.2 The Encomium is dedicated to, devoted to the praise of, and (most importantly) written on the command of Queen Emma. The gist of the argumentum is that, just as Virgil’s Aeneid was completely devoted to the praise of the Emperor Augustus, so the Encomium is entirely devoted to the praise of Queen Emma, even though much of it concerns her only indirectly. The queen’s motives and aims in commissioning the work must, therefore, be at the center of any attempt to understand its value and significance. The most intriguing thing about the text is the Encomiast’s (and, by extension, Emma’s) treatment of Edward the Confessor and Alfred, the truth of whose parentage is, as it were, “suppressed.” Ethelred is never mentioned by name in

1 See Laurence Marcellus Lawson, Canute the Great and the Rise of Danish Imperialism During the Viking Age (London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912), the most recent study of that monarch, for the background to Svein’s conquest, and Eric Christiansen, “Canute and his World,” History Today 36 (1986): 34–39. I thank Simon Keynes and Miles Campbell for their thoughtful critiques of earlier drafts of this paper. 2 Encomium Emmae Reginae is actually an abbreviation of Duchesne’s full title, “Emmae Anglorum reginae Richardi I ducis Normannorum filiae encomium,” ed. André Duchesne, in Historiae Normannorum Scriptores Antiqui (Paris: Foüet, Buon & Cramoisy, 1619), pp. 163–177. I cite the text in this essay from Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. and trans. Alistair Campbell (London: Royal Historical Society, 1949).

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the Encomium. Emma’s marriage to that unlucky English monarch is likewise unmentioned, and, therefore, no explicit statement is ever made as to the identity of the father of Emma’s sons, Edward and Alfred. To Alistair Campbell and to C.N.L. Brooke the omission was explicable as a matter of “artistic necessity” and of Emma’s personal vanity, the only way to paint a perfect, panegyrical, even hagiographical picture of a queen who had married her dead husband’s enemy.3 Both scholars, however, subscribed to the older view, which afforded the Encomium only literary significance as a panegyric to individual or dynasty, but saw no political import. It was Sten Körner’s contribution to raise in 1964, for the first time in the debate, the issue of the immediate political background of the text and to assign a political purpose to everything in it, including the omission of Emma’s connection with the old Wessex dynasty.4 All the literature on the Encomium since then has accepted the political, propagandistic nature of the text. Eric John has described the Encomium as “a political pamphlet for the occasion,” and its author as “writing for contemporaries in a political crisis.”5 Barlow, for one, has abandoned his own previous opinion and accepted Körner’s view, that is, that the Encomium was written exclusively for Hardacnut, Emma’s son by Cnut, and against Edward, to discredit the latter’s claim to the throne and to strengthen the former’s.6 Eric John, unlike Barlow, stopped short of total agreement with Körner, and has suggested that the manipulative “suppression” of Ethelred as the father of Edward and Alfred is not central to the political purpose of the work simply because the intended audience must have been fully cognizant of the true situation, just as the intended audience of the London Times knows the duke of Edinburgh is the queen’s husband.7 For John, the Encomium is a relatively undisguised polemic in favor of Emma herself, as the “bearer of legitimacy,” and against the Thorkells, Godwines, and potential anarchistic troublemakers of the realm; as he puts it, “the English were warned they would despise Queen Emma at their peril.”8 John exposed many of the weaknesses in Körner’s anti-Edward thesis, but he did not pursue the implications for Edward of his own insights about Emma’s centrality as the “bearer of legitimacy.” Whether in 1037 or 1041, the greatest possible danger for Emma lay in Hardacnut’s death and the rejection of Edward’s

3 Encomium, ed. Campbell, p. xlvi; Christopher N.L. Brooke, “Historical Writing in England Between 850 and 1150,” Settimane 17/1 (1970): 223–247, at 237. 4 Sten Körner, The Battle of Hastings, England, and Europe, 1035–1066 (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1964). 5 Eric John, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae: A Riddle and a Solution,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 63 (1980): 58–94, at 65 and 94. 6 Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 47–49. In a much earlier work on the subject, Barlow had espoused the then unusual view that Emma was not hostile to her sons by Ethelred (Frank Barlow, “Two Notes: Cnut’s Second Pilgrimage and Queen Emma’s Disgrace in 1043,” English Historical Review 73 [1958]: 649–656). 7 John, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae,” pp. 62–65. 8 John, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae,” pp. 91 and 94.

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claims. The only sensible, forward-looking position for her to assume in the “political crisis” of the 1030s and 1040s was one which supported and promoted Edward’s claim to the English throne directly after that of Hardacnut, who was Cnut’s publicly acknowledged heir. The omissions in the Encomium can be seen as supporting precisely such a policy. The Encomiast gives the impression not that Edward and Alfred were Cnut’s biological sons, but that Cnut nevertheless adopted them as his “legitimate sons,” and would have been perfectly content for either of them to occupy the throne if his preferred heir, his biological son, could not. Or at least that is the impression the author sought to convey to his readers, whatever the “truth” may have been. For example, when Cnut and Emma designate Hardacnut as heir, they “alios uero liberales filios educandos direxerunt Normanniae” (“sent in fact their other legitimate sons to Normandy to be brought up”).9 As Körner points out, this scenario is not historically accurate; Edward and Alfred were sent to Normandy in 1013 to protect them from Svein, not in 1017 to be raised as the sons of Cnut.10 Furthermore, and contrary to Korner’s treatment of it, the oath allegedly made by Cnut to Emma as a precondition of their marriage by no means excluded Alfred and Edward (only Harold Harefoot) from the succession; Cnut is said to have sworn only that no sons of his by any other woman would succeed.11 Finally, the opening chapter of Book 3, which sets up the conflict over the succession, gives the impression that all three of these “legitimate sons” are to be considered by the reader as the rightful heirs of Cnut: Mortuo Cnutone rege honorificeque sepulto in monasterio in honore Santi Petri constructo [Wyntonie], domina regina Emma sola remansit in regno dolens de domini sui morte amara et sol(l)icita pro filiorum absentia. Namque unus eorum, Hardecnuto scilicet, quem pater regem Danorum constituit, suo morabatur in regno, duo uero alii in Normanniae finibus ad nutriendum traditi cum propinquo suo degebant Rotberto. Unde factum est, ut quidam Anglorum pietatem regis sui iam defuncti obliti mallent regnum suum dedecorare quam ornare, relinquentes nobiles filios insignis reginae Emmae et eligentes sibi in regem quendam Haroldum. . . . Quem electus mutuensque futuri aduocat mox archiepis9 Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 34–35. 10 Körner, Battle of Hastings, p. 54. For the texts, see Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, eds. John Earle and Charles Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892–1899), vol. 1, p. 144, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, ed. and trans. Dorothy Whitelock with David C. Douglas and Susie I. Tucker (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961), p. 93. 11 “Sed abnegat illa, se unquam Cnutonis sponsam fieri, nisi illi iusiurando affirmaret, quod numquam alterius coniugis filium post se regnare faceret nisi eius, si forte illi Deus ex eo filium dedisset” (“But she refused ever to become the bride of Knútr, unless he would affirm to her by oath, that he would never set up the son of any wife other than herself to rule after him if it happened that God should give her a son by him;” Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 32–33). Also see Körner, Battle of Hastings, pp. 58–59.

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copum Aelnotum, uirum omni uirtute et sapientia preditum, imperatque et orat se benedici in regem. . . . Abnegat archiepiscopus, sub iureiurando asserens se neminem alium in regem filiis reg(i)nae Emmae uiuentibus laudare vel benedicere: “Hos meae fidei Cnuto commisit; his fidem debeo et his fidelitatem seruabo.12 None of Körner’s evidence for Emma and Hardacnut’s hostility to Edward is contemporary. On the other hand, the Encomiast, Emma’s spokesman, paints throughout a very positive picture of Ethelred’s two sons. The Encomium explains Edward’s refusal to invade England in order to depose Harold Harefoot on the grounds that the English nobles had not sworn allegiance to him, but rather to Hardacnut. In Körner’s opinion Edward’s reticence was meant to imply a renunciation of his claims to the throne.13 Yet, in practical terms, Edward’s decision was not unwise, but rather one based on respect for the wishes of the English magnates and the dead king. Not even Hardacnut came to the throne by force of arms. Alfred was rasher, but his tragic end serves to discredit not Edward, as though he “should have gone himself,” but rather Harold, who had the etheling executed, and the treacherous English who betrayed him. Alfred is even glorified as a martyr whose tomb is graced by miracles, although the Encomiast describes the gloriosi Alfridi martyrium in greatly abbreviated form, since “Est quippe nullus dolor maior matri, quam uidere uel audire mortem dilectissimi filii,” and in any case it was difficult even for the author to linger over the tragedy.14 There is certainly no hint here that Emma felt anything other than affection for Alfred. Finally, it is well to remember the Encomiast’s avowed principle of glory by familial association; Alfred was Edward’s brother, and to have a saint for a brother could only redound to the benefit of Edward’s own reputation. Emma did not go so far as to try to pass Edward and Alfred off as sons of Cnut, but she did seek to associate them as much as possible with the victorious house of Svein Forkbeard. It is striking that even Emma’s own heritage, probably Norwegian, is “suppressed” in the Encomium in favor of a vague and general association 12 “When Knútr was dead and honorably buried in the monastery built at Winchester in honor of St. Peter, the lady, Queen Emma, remained alone in the kingdom, sorrowing for the bitter death of her lord and alarmed at the absence of her sons. For one of them, namely Hörthaknutr, whom his father had made king of the Danes, was in his own kingdom, and two others were sent to the country of Normandy to be brought up. And so it came to pass that certain Englishmen, forgetting the piety of their lately deceased king, preferred to dishonor their country than to ornament it, and deserted the noble sons of the excellent Queen Emma, choosing as their king one Haraldr. . . . Soon after being chosen, this man, fearing for the future, summoned Archbishop Aethelnoth, a man gifted with high courage and wisdom, and commanded and prayed to be consecrated king. . . . The archbishop refused, declaring by oath that while the sons of Queen Emma lived he would approve or consecrate no other man as king: ‘Them Knútr entrusted to my good faith; to them I owe fidelity and with them I shall maintain faith’” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 38–41). 13 Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 48–49; Körner, Battle of Hastings, p. 69. 14 “Indeed there is no greater sorrow for a mother than to see or hear of the death of a most dear son” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 44–45).

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with a conquering race.15 That conquering race can only be assumed to be Danish, given the closed framework of the text, wherein Norway is no more than a province under Danish rule. Emma, Edward, and Alfred are all associated with the Danish conquerors, Svein and Cnut, and dissociated from the weak, disorganized, and conquered English (of whom more anon), who ought to be grateful (we are made to believe) to have at last received some good government. Many of the passages cited above, particularly the opening section of Book 3 quoted at length, were also brought forward as evidence by another student of the text, Miles Campbell.16 Working independently, we have both arrived at the conclusion that the Tendenz of the Encomium, insofar as it concerns Edward the Confessor, would have supported rather than contravened his claim to the throne. But if we can agree that Edward was not meant to be the target of the Encomium, we are still left wondering who was. Campbell suggested that the target of the work was Svein Estrithson, the son of Cnut’s sister Estrith, whom Campbell considers a rival to Edward after Hardacnut’s death in 1042.17 The most important piece of evidence cited by Campbell for the threat posed by Svein Estrithson to Edward is the account in Adam of Bremen of how Edward, already on the throne but fearful that Svein would challenge him, designated the Danish king as his heir.18 Adam wrote shortly before 1075 and his main informant was the Danish king himself.19 But must we not be suspicious of claims made by any monarch in the years following 1066 to have been designated heir of Edward the Confessor? Even were we to agree that Emma had the foresight before the death of Hardacnut to protect Edward against Estrithson’s eventual claims, we would have to admit that her spokesman, the Encomiast, did a singularly bad job. There is absolutely nothing in the text that would arouse suspicion of or opposition to the Dane’s claims. In fact, as a full-blooded Dane and a warrior whose blood relationship to Cnut was of the first order (being the son of his sister), his prestige would have been only increased by the Danish panegyrical tendencies of the work. He would not even have been precluded from claiming the throne by the oath imputed to Cnut on his marriage to Emma, since Cnut swore only that no sons of his own by another woman would ascend the throne. Every one of the above exegeses of the hidden political agenda in the Encomium has begun with the unquestioned premise that the English (either contemporaries or posterity) were the intended audience for the work, whatever has been said 15 David C. Douglas, “Rollo of Normandy,” English Historical Review 57 (1942): 417–436, at 429; the argument is reiterated in David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 6. 16 Miles M. Campbell, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae. Personal Panegyric or Political Propaganda?,” Annuale Mediaevale 19 (1979): 27–45, at 37–41. 17 Campbell, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae,” pp. 34–35. 18 Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. F.J. Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 108. 19 Peter Sawyer, Kings and Vikings: Scandinavia and Europe, 700–1100 (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 17.

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about their likely degree of understanding of its various dissimulations. The purpose of the project has always been assumed to have been to persuade the English political classes to support or oppose one or another party or individual during a period of prolonged crisis over the succession. I would suggest that this very premise, which has treated the Encomium as the equivalent of a twentieth-century political pamphlet, is fallacious. Let us reconsider the question of the intended audience and the nature of political propaganda in the eleventh century. The 1040s are not the 1540s or the 1640s. Propaganda warfare and political pamphleteering, so important in England during the Reformation and the Civil War, could have had nothing like that later impact before the invention of the printing press, to mention but one of the myriad preconditions for modern-style political action. Not only is the notion of effecting changes in public opinion by means of the written word anachronistic for the eleventh century, the very concept of “public opinion” is itself anachronistic for that time. Nor does that manuscript history point to a very wide diffusion of the work: three of the four extant manuscripts are early-modern copies, and their existence affirms only the genealogical and antiquarian obsessions of that era, not any widespread knowledge of the work in the Middle Ages.20 This is not to say that propaganda did not exist before the invention of the printing press, but rather that the target of an obviously polemical work in the eleventh century is likely to have been of another sort altogether. As for the English, they in fact come off very badly in the Encomium. Svein’s initial conquest is achieved with ease, as the Danes encounter only minimal resistance, completely unorganized and unled, a “Great Fyrd” left to its own devices. The natives, we are told, were doomed from the outset, due to the tremendous prowess and valour of the noble Danish forces.21 The conquered land, which is not even a civilized place, boasts no government or nobility, simply ineffectual inhabitants. The portrait of the English is no different when we arrive at the account of Cnut’s encounters with renewed resistance, explicitly called a barbaricus furor after Svein’s death.22 Once again the overwhelmingly superior military prowess of the Danes takes the day, this time with a little help from the prophetic banner under which they fight, and from divine providence, which removes the upstart princeps Edmund, in order to leave England in peace under the strong and generous rule of the Danish king Cnut. Nevertheless the English repeatedly committed treacherous acts against their lords, for example betraying Alfred, or turning to Harold Harefoot. What else could have been expected from a host that had repeatedly turned and fled to “dishonorable refuges” (inhonesta refugia), not only in the heat of battle, but sometimes even before the battle was joined, or from a host infested with treacherous lieutenants like Eadric?23 Cowardice in battle and lack of loyalty to one’s lord 20 21 22 23

For the manuscripts, see Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. xi–xix and 3. Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 20–21. “Barbarous furor” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, p. 16). Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 25–26.

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were roundly despised in this still “Germanic” cultural universe, if I may be permitted the term. As for Cnut’s royal consort, she is chosen specifically because she too sprung from a conquering people, the Viking rulers of Normandy, who “sibi partem Galliae uendicauera[n]t, inuitis Francigenis et eorum principe.”24 Finally, absolutely no attempt was made by the Encomiast to heal old wounds by minimizing the devastation and death-toll suffered by the native English in the several skirmishes with the noble Danish conquerors; if anything, these episodes are described in lingering detail.25 Such passages, combined with the suppression of the native Wessex dynasty, would more likely have raised the ire of the English than their support for any advocated programs. It is not that the author manifests any enmity for the English, but simply that the latter clearly do not rate on the scale of those virtues that really matter. Both the limitations imposed by eleventh-century circumstances and the negative portrait of the Anglo-Saxon natives indicate that Emma’s aim in commissioning the polemical Encomium could not have been to rally English public opinion to her side, either by frightening them with the spectre of “the world of Thorkell” (as John proposed), or by convincing them that Edward had no right to succeed Hardacnut on the throne (as Körner and Barlow hold), or even by convincing them that Edward had a better claim than Svein Estrithson (as Miles Campbell has most recently suggested).26 Perhaps it would not be amiss to reexamine our other assumptions concerning the Encomium. Since Duchesne first studied the text in 1619 and pronounced his opinion on it, no one has ever questioned his views as to the date of composition and the authorship of the Encomium: 1040–1042 by a monk of St. Bertin in Flanders. Taking first the authorship, the fact that the author recounts as an eyewitness the visit of Cnut to that house in 1026 and at the same time refers to himself as the uernula (native or homeborn slave) of St. Omer and St. Bertin is certainly very strong evidence in favor of that identification.27 Furthermore, Ganshof has found that the author can be considered a “legitimate authority” for things Flemish, and especially for Bruges.28 As for the date of composition, there can be little doubt but that the

24 “[S]he was much desired by the king, and especially because she derived her origin from a victorious people, who had appropriated for themselves part of Gaul, in despite of the French and their prince” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 32–33). 25 See, for example, the description of how the English were destined to die at the hands of the noble Danes (Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 20–21). 26 John, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae,” p. 84 and passim; Barlow, Edward the Confessor, pp. 47–49; Körner, The Battle of Hastings, pp. 54–59; Campbell, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae,” pp. 37–41. 27 “Haec et alia his mirificentiora a domno Cnutone gesta uidi ego, uester uernula, Sancte Audomare, Sancte Bertini, cum fierent uestris in caenobiis” (“These things and others more wonderful were seen done by the Lord Knútr by me, who am your servant St. Omer and St. Bertin, when they came to pass in your monasteries”; Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 36–37). 28 François L. Ganshof, “Response,” Settimane 17/1 (1970): 248–260, at 259 (concerning Brooke, “Historical Writing”).

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Encomium was completed during the two-year reign of Hardacnut. The obvious villain in the Encomium is the usurper King Harold Harefoot, Cnut’s son by an Englishwoman, who succeeded Cnut in 1035, until his sudden death in 1040. The Encomiast tells how the English chose Harold as king: quem esse filium falsa aestimatione asseritur cuiusdam eiusdem regis Cnutonis concubinae plurimorum uero assertio eundem Haroldum perhibet furtim fuisse subreptum parturienti ancillae, impositum autem camerae languentis co[n]cubinae, quod ueratius credi potest.29 Harold was chosen over the rightful heir of Cnut and Emma both, that is, Hardacnut, while the latter was preoccupied with the overseas portion of his paternal inheritance. Harold’s status as a usurper is, not incidentally, confirmed by the archbishop of Canterbury’s refusal to consecrate him. Finally, Harold reveals his true character as one who hates religion and the Church and as a foul murderer, who executes Hardacnut’s brother, Alfred, and forces the rightful king’s mother, Emma, to flee to Flanders. Because Harold was already dead and Hardacnut installed on the throne by the time the work was completed, scholars have felt it necessary to look elsewhere for the target of so obviously propagandistic and partisan a tract. But again, consider the evidence. The final paragraphs of the work and the argumentum with which it opens recount how the message of Harold’s divinely ordained death was brought to Emma in Flanders and how Hardacnut, Emma, and Edward went on to the peaceful joint rule of England. Neither of these points necessarily rules out the possibility that the inception of the project and most of its execution may date from the reign of Harold, particularly since the argumentum, like most proper introductions, appears to have been written after the rest of the text. Emma was in exile in Flanders with Baldwin V from 1037 to 1040. It seems safer to assume that the author was contacted, commissioned, and informed as to the preferred content of the Encomium during the period of Emma’s exile. Are we then to believe that he waited several years, indeed until after the queen had returned to England, to begin writing? With the simple admission that the project was commissioned and begun while Emma was on the spot in Flanders, the entire problem of the purpose of the work evaporates. No subtle exegesis is required to divine the intent behind the clear message of the work: the usurper Harold has no justifiable claim to the English crown. I suggest that the work was composed in 1039 in Flanders, when Hardacnut, finally in control of Denmark, joined his mother in Bruges and undertook to raise 29 “. . . who is declared, owing to a false estimation of the matter, to be a son of a certain concubine of the above-mentioned King Knútr; as a matter of fact, the assertion of very many people has it that the same Haraldr was secretly taken from a servant who was in childbed and put in the chamber of the concubine, who was indisposed, and this can be believed as the more truthful account” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 38–41).

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a fleet against Harold Harefoot. The Encomium demonstrated above all the legitimacy of Hardacnut’s claims and bothered to include nothing about Cnut that did not bear directly on the succession, except his outstanding generosity to Flemish monasteries and his great piety, which led him to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome. Emma’s specific aim would have been to gain the support of Count Baldwin the Pious, her protector, for Hardacnut’s great enterprise of staking a claim to his father’s English domains. However, before the work could be completed, Harold died and the naval venture became unnecessary. Once we conceive of the Encomium as written not for the English but for a foreign court, the issues of subtle factual omissions and the assumptions of the audience that have so puzzled all modern students of the work are cast in an entirely different light. It would be asking a lot to expect either Emma’s protector, Baldwin V, or her confidant, the Encomiast himself, or indeed any foreigner, to know the truth about the queen’s domestic relations; private matters such as Cnut’s feelings and intentions were precisely the sort of thing for which one would have had to take her word. Emma’s deception of the intended audience, and I reiterate, most likely of even the author himself, was probably a complete success. The key is to recognize several immediate political aims for the Encomium, rather than any monolithic one: to put Hardacnut on the throne, to position Edward as his heir apparent, and to glorify the memory of Emma’s third son, the “martyred” Alfred. It is true that propaganda works backwards as well as forwards, and that the Encomium could have been intended as retrospective justification for Hardacnut’s rule against the now-dead Harold. But what motivation, what serious need could there possibly have been for such a work once Hardacnut was already on the throne? Harold had no known heirs or partisans, and the only possible choice as rallying-point for a “pro-Harold” party, which would of necessity have been a “pro-English” party, was Edward the Confessor himself. That would put us right back where we began, with Edward the target of Emma’s propaganda. If Emma did not “hate” her “first family,” or try to exclude Edward from the succession in favor of Hardacnut, how are we to explain the events of 1043? According to the C text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for that year: “And soon after this the king brought all the lands his mother owned forcibly into his own control and took from her all that she owned in gold and silver and things beyond description.”30 Miles Campbell, here following Körner, adduces in explanation the story that the queen tried to instigate an invasion of England against Edward by Magnus of Norway. This thesis was originally put forward by Goscelin of St. Bertin in his Translatio Mildredi at the end of the eleventh century, but most commentators, such as Barlow, have considered the story of the proposed invasion no more than a wild, slanderous rumor.31 Miles Campbell, arguing for the veracity of 30 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, vol. 1, pp. 162–163; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, p. 107. 31 Goscelin of St. Bertin, Translatio Mildredi (BHL 5961) describes the translation of the abbess of Thanet’s relics to Canterbury, with the permission of Cnut, in 1035. The text is partially published

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the account, explains that Emma would have been angered against Edward for permitting Earl Godwine, her mortal enemy, to become influential and powerful and would, therefore, have been moved to conspire with the only possible available champion, King Magnus of Norway, to topple Edward and thereby take revenge upon him.32 Although eschewing the older psychological portrait of Emma as an “unnatural mother,” Campbell is willing to present her as a “vindictive woman.” While it is certainly not impossible that Emma was vindictive, her comportment throughout these decades of crisis over the succession indicates that she was not politically naive. To encourage the invasion of a country and the toppling of one’s own son, the reigning king, by a foreign monarch is at no time an intelligent policy. Such a plot would have harmed not only the country and her son, but also herself. What sort of position would she hold if Edward were deposed? She was surely past the child-bearing years by this point and could hardly have hoped to negotiate yet another marriage with a conquering Viking. The evidence of personality and behaviour do not lead to the conclusion that Emma would have conspired against her own son. Edward was, however, eager to believe himself betrayed, not at all surprising given the events of the early years of his life, which could only have been perceived as a rejection by his parents, and he may well have thought his mother was engaged in such activities. The Vita Mildredi preserves the rumor that Emma was in contact with Magnus of Normandy. Adam of Bremen preserves the tradition that Edward suspected Svein Estrithson of planning to seize the English throne. Perhaps what Emma was really up to was this: to encourage and support Magnus in his conquest of Denmark in order to keep Svein busy there and diverted from England. Svein only managed to establish himself in Denmark against Magnus in 1047, and Denmark was his major preoccupation, as it had been Hardacnut’s, for it was the core of his paternal inheritance. Having got wind of messages between his mother and Scandinavia in such circumstances, King Edward drew the wrong conclusion. As plausible as this bit of speculation may or may not seem, let us remember that a cause need only be sufficient to create its effect. Had Edward believed that his mother conspired to topple him from the throne and install a Norwegian on it, he would have been justified in a degree of rage that could not have been satisfied merely by stripping Emma of her wealth and leaving her in peace.

from a twelfth-century manuscript, London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B XX, folios 166r–196v, at 177v, in Thomas Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862–1871), vol. 1, pp. 380–381. Also see Frank Barlow, “Two Notes,” pp. 649–656, esp. pp. 655–656 for the translatio, which he publishes in toto. There is an illuminating discussion of the point in Frank M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 426–427. 32 Miles Campbell, “Emma, reine d’Angleterre: mère dénaturée ou femme vindictive?,” Annales de Normandie 23 (1973): 97–114, at 112–114; Campbell, “The Encomium Emmae Reginae,” pp. 44–45.

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He might have executed her for treason; he surely would have imprisoned or exiled her. Edward had good reasons to resent his mother, but the Encomium is evidence that, once Cnut had died, she tried to make it up to him. Contemporaries, unlike modern commentators, believed that the Encomium presented the Confessor as Hardacnut’s rightful heir. The Flemish illuminator who decorated the only surviving medieval copy of the work, probably the presentation copy for Emma herself, illustrated the frontispiece of the manuscript with a representation of the queen, Hardacnut, and Edward receiving a copy of the Encomium from its kneeling author.33 The English scribe who updated the Encomium after Edward’s accession provided this alternative ending: His itaque fratribus concorditer regnantibus mors media intercidit et regem Hardechnutonem uitalibus auris abstulit. Regem mater et frater maximo cum luctu honorifice sepeliunt. Mortuo Ardechnutone in regnum successit Edwardus, heres scilicet legittimus.34 It was too little, too late. Edward was understandably not inclined to accept Emma’s deceptive portrait of his own life, as an adopted son of Cnut rather than as a refugee from him, even if she was publishing it “for his own good.” There is no denying that Emma preferred Hardacnut; when Cnut was alive she most likely had no choice, as Edward and Alfred were nothing to him but the unlucky children of a toppled and weak king. Cnut quite naturally designated his biological son as his heir.35 If Emma continued to prefer Hardacnut in her widowhood, that is because it was still the only possible choice: Hardacnut had Scandinavian forces at his disposal; Edward had only the potential of aid from the child William the Bastard; Cnut had already made his magnates swear oaths to Hardacnut, Edward had no friends or experience in England; Flemish aid in placing Hardacnut on the throne was a distinct possibility, Flemish aid for a Norman prince, given the rivalry that existed between the dukes and the counts, was completely out of the question. But no amount of pragmatic reasons can ease the pain of a child who feels rejected by a parent. Edward didn’t hate his mother, but he did feel hurt by her and that, whatever she had done for him, it wasn’t enough. Let us take our cue from a contemporary explanation for Edward’s repudiation of his mother, that is

33 London, British Library, MS Additional 33241 fol. 55 and Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. xi–xii. 34 “Thus while the brothers were ruling together in concord, death intervened and carried king Hardacnut off to heaven. His mother and brother buried the king honorably, with the greatest sorrow. With Hardacnut dead, Edward succeeded him on the throne, as the legitimate heir” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, p. 52; translation mine). This alternative ending has been preserved only in a sixteenth-century copy, now in Paris BN lat. 6235; Campbell believed it might have come from the hand of the Encomiast himself (pp. xv–xvi). 35 Encomium, ed. Campbell, pp. 34–35.

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the D version of the Chronicle for the year 1043, which tells how Edward and his advisors: genge to Wincestre on unwaer on Þa hlaefdian and bereafedan hi aet eallon Þan gaesaman Þa heo ahte. Þa waeron unatellendlice. for Þan Þe heo waes aeror Þam cynge hire suna swiðe heard. þæt heo him laesse dyde Þonne he wolde aer Þam Þe he cyng waer. and eac syððan and leton hi Þaer siððan binnan sittan.36

36 “And this year, a fortnight before St. Andrew’s Day, the king was advised to ride from Gloucester, together with Earl Leofric and Earl Godwine and Earl Siwand and their retinue, to Winchester. And they came unexpectedly upon the lady, and deprived her of all the treasures which she owned, and which were beyond counting, because she had formerly been very hard to the king, her son, in that she did less for him than he wished both before he became king and afterwards as well. And they allowed her to stay there afterwards” (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, vol. 1, p. 168; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, p. 107).

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18 SIFTING FOR FICTIONS Women in Dudo of St. Quentin’s androcentric Gesta Normannorum

Introduction: Dudo’s androcentrism Despite much work on women in the last few decades, and a lively interest in Dudo of St. Quentin, no one has examined how women as a group appear, or don’t appear, in Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum.1 Other medieval historians have been luckier. An analysis of his (twelfth-century) successor Orderic Vitalis’ Historia Ecclesiastica found women to be highly visible and involved throughout the narrative.2 An analysis of his (sixth-century) predecessor Gregory of Tours’ Decem Libri Historiarum argued that women were more than simply visible and involved: they were outright central.3 Finally, Dudo’s contemporaries Richer of Reims, Flodoard of Reims, and Liutprand of Cremona (among others) pay so much attention to the doings of elite women that Simon MacLean has presented tenth-century women not only as significant in political reality, but also as central to historical representation and political discourse.4 Clearly, some medieval male clerical authors were able to write history in a way that fully included (elite) women and their concerns. As we shall see, this is absolutely not true of Dudo, whose Gesta Normannorum is overwhelmingly androcentric, not only in comparison with the narratives of many of his peers but also in comparison with his own sources of inspiration such as the Aeneid. Dudo’s generalized exclusion of women from view is itself significant, as are his

1 A shortened version of this chapter was presented at The Global North Conference in Stockholm, Sweden in August of 2019. 2 “Family history is one of the principal themes of his ‘little book’ (as he called it); and women occur all through its pages as part of a family with responsibilities and property rights” (Marjorie Chibnall, “Women in Orderic Vitalis,” Haskins Society Journal 2 ([990]: 105–121, at 111). 3 Gregory “was keenly interested in relating information on women and presenting themes on matters such as widowhood, holiness and femininity, royal marital policy, and politically influential women,” so much so that “no study of the bishop, his society, or indeed the transformation of the West in general can proceed without sufficiently considering the women in his works” (Erin T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite [Leiden: Brill, 2015], pp. 161 and 1). Also see Jennifer McRobbie, “Gender and Violence in Gregory of Tours’ ‘Decem libri historiarum’” (Ph.D. Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2012). 4 Simon MacLean, Ottonian Queenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 2–3.

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rare moments of inclusion of women in the narrative. This essay attends to both the inclusions and the exclusions in Dudo’s text, and culminates with a suggestion for why he might have deliberately wished to construct and represent the Norman past in thoroughly androcentric terms. Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum (Deeds of the Normans) was commissioned in 994 by Duke Richard I and completed, after the latter’s death in 996, due to the continued patronage of members of the ducal house.5 This history of the reigns of Richard I and his predecessors William Longsword and Rollo, with a prefatory section focusing on another Viking chief named Anstign, is written in prosimetrum (rhythmic prose alternating with verse) and includes extensive “invented” scenes and conversations. Most specialists have believed, for a number of reasons, that Dudo was still writing as late as 1015 or even as late as 1026, the date at which Richard I’s son and successor Richard II died and was in turn succeeded by his own son Robert.6 In contrast, I argued (in 1994) that the narrative is best understood in the context of the final years of the reign of Richard I and the opening years of the reign of Richard II, and I tried (in 1996) to throw into question the significance of 1015 as a chronological marker, in order to support the possibility that Dudo might have been finished writing long before that date.7 However, I never formulated an explicit argument in favor of a particular terminus ad quem earlier than 1015. In 2000, Mathieu Arnoux provided a solid argument in favor of an early terminus ad quem, namely 1001, an argument that I enthusiastically embrace.8

5 The narrative is also sometimes called De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum (On the Customs and Deeds of the First Dukes of Normandy), the title given to it by Jules Lair (Dudo, De moribus). Pierre Bouet, “Le duc Richard Ier selon Dudon de Saint-Quentin et Guillaume de Jumièges,” Annales de Normandie 64 (2014): 15–37 at pp. 30–31 defends Lair’s title as an apt description of the text. Benjamin Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2015) and Katherine Cross, Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c. 950–1015 (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2018) have adopted the title Historia Normannorum. However, Gerda Huisman long ago demonstrated that the most accurate title (if we judge by the medieval evidence) is Gesta Normannorum (Gerda Huisman, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum” AngloNorman Studies 6 [1984]: 122–136, at 122). I use Gesta Normannorum in the text of this chapter, abbreviated as GN in the notes, and I quote my own 1996 English translation of the text, available through ORB: Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies at http://163.238.55.65/libindex.html (accessed June 3, 2020); for convenience, I also include the corresponding page references for Lair’s printed edition (Dudo, De moribus) and for another English translation (Dudo, HN). The quotations from Dudo’s GN in this essay sometimes differ slightly from the version available on ORB in so far as I have here “modernised” their punctuation, something I hesitated to do with the original translation, when I aspired to convey the scribal conventions of the manuscripts. 6 For instance, Claude Carozzi, “Des Daces aux Normands: le mythe et l’identification d’un peuple chez Dudon de Saint-Quentin,” in Peuples du Moyen Âge: problèmes d’identification: séminaire Sociétés, idéologies et croyances au Moyen Âge, eds. Claude Carozzi et Huguette Taviani-Carozzi (Aix-en-Provence: University of Provence, 1996), pp. 7–25, at p. 9. 7 See Chapters 12, 13, and 16 in this collection. 8 Mathieu Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum and beyond Dudo: Some Evidence on early Norman Historiography,” Anglo-Norman Studies 22 (2000): 29–48.

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Arnoux’s argument for a relatively early completion date of the Gesta Normannorum turns on demonstrating: that Dudo wrote the Chronicle of Fécamp (in Rouen BM 528 [A.362] fols. 185r-187v); that Dudo utilized his already-completed or nearly completed Gesta Normannorum for that chronicle; and that the chronicle itself was completed by 1001.9 Additional support for Dudo’s authorship of the Chronicle of Fécamp is provided by the fact that the chronicle shares the androcentrism of the Gesta Normannorum. While the opening chapters of the Fécamp chronicle recount the Merovingian-era history of the site, including its status as a women’s religious community, through extensive verbatim block quotations from older narratives, as soon as Dudo begins to compose his own narrative (from paragraph 4 when, in the reign of Louis the Pious, the sanctimoniales flee before Viking raiders), women completely vanish from the scene.10 For Dudo, Fécamp’s female religious belonged firmly to and in the past, and have no relevance to the Norman present of the masculinized site. Instead, Dudo’s spotlight follows exclusively male figures: the Norman dukes, other male magnates, male saints (sometimes represented by their relics), and male clerics; the ducal palace at Fécamp is a marvelous place where William Longsword can beget his son Richard with no acknowledged female participation. A recurrent focus of scholarship on Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum has been on the ethnic origins imputed to the Normans.11 Scholars have disagreed over which ethnic or geographic origins were uppermost in Dudo’s vision of Norman identity, without noticing one consistent feature that cuts across all the various strands of his picture: an exclusively androcentric vision of the relevant characters, both major and minor.12 More than one commentator has noticed that Dudo transposed themes borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid from a female figure (Virgil’s Dido) to a male figure (his king Alstem, commonly known as Aethelstan); these scholars have not, however, recognized how this transposition forms part of Dudo’s larger pattern of ignoring women.13 Dudo’s 9 Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum,” esp. pp. 31, 32, and 41. See Chapter 14 in this collection for my 1998 suggestion that Dudo wrote the chronicle. 10 Chronicle of Fécamp, ed. Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum,” pp. 43–46 and Appendix 3 pp. 46–48 (for Dudo’s verbatim recycling of older texts). 11 Two examples out of many: Magali Coumert, “Les récits d’origine et la tradition historiographique Normande,” in L’historiographie médiévale Normande et ses sources antiques (Xe-XIIe siècle), eds. Pierre Bauduin and Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2014), pp. 137–154 and Ewan Johnson, “Origin Myths and the Construction of Medieval Identities: Norman Chronicles 1000–1100,” in Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages, eds. Richard Corradini, Rob Meens, Christina Pössel, and Philip Shaw (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), pp. 153–164. 12 This deficiency is perhaps about to be remedied by a forthcoming article: Fraser McNair, “‘A girly man like you can’t rule us real men any longer’: Sex, Violence and Masculinity in Dudo of SaintQuentin’s Historia Normannorum,” Anglo-Norman Studies 42 (2020). 13 Francine Mora, “Dudon de Saint-Quentin et ses deux traducteurs français, Wace et Benoît,” in Dudone di San Quintino, eds. Paolo Gatti and Antonella degl’Innocenti (Trent: Dipartimento di Scienze Fililogiche e Storiche, 1995), pp. 49–75, at p. 72 and Fabio Stok,

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Gesta Normannorum constructs Norman identity as masculine in multiple ways, not least through a consistent and detailed focus on all types of warfare, an activity in which only men are shown to participate. Dudo lavishes so much attention on things military that one specialist has been able to produce a series of articles on the twinned subjects of Dudo as a (praiseworthy) military historian and of Dudo as a (reliable) source for military history.14 Women hardly matter at all in Dudo’s testosterone-soaked vision of Norman history and Norman identity.15 I will suggest that this feature of the narrative may have been a deliberate strand of his multi-faceted purpose in the late 990s. It cannot simply be dismissed as endemic to medieval historiography, as the counter-examples of Orderic Vitalis, Gregory of Tours, and Dudo’s own contemporaries demonstrate. Elite Carolingian and Ottonian women were active in multiple ways, as historians have increasingly emphasized in recent years.16 We know this because so many contemporary authors did take the time to report on a wide range of aristocratic women’s actions, including relatively minor ones, such as how Queen Gerberga (one of the few named female figures in Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum) donated a cloth woven with gold as a shroud for the tombs of her parents, Henry I and Mathilda.17 This is the sort of detail that never appears in Dudo’s narrative, in contrast to his gushingly unstaunched expansive dilations on all things military and on the doings of men. Furthermore, from Antiquity through at least the twelfth century, (male) authors considered it necessary to include female characters in their origin myths.18 It is, therefore, significant that Dudo pointedly does not include women in any part of his account of Anstign’s career, or in his description of the early stages of Rollo’s career (in Dacia and Anglia). Dudo went out of his way to invent a family (a father and a brother) and a backstory for Rollo, but stopped short of giving him any female relatives, even a mother. Dudo’s malign (and androcentric) portrait of villainous violent male Vikings was in line with, but

14

15

16 17 18

“Il Mondo Geo-Antropico di Dudone,” in Dudone, eds. Gatti and degl’Innocenti, pp. 131–159, at pp. 149–150. Most recently, Bernard S. Bachrach, “Writing Latin History for a Lay Audience c. 1000: Dudo of Saint Quentin at the Norman Court,” Haskins Society Journal 20 (2009 for 2008): 58–77 (with references there to the same scholar’s earlier studies of Dudo as a military historian). Work on Norman identity as constructed in the narrative histories, beginning always with Dudo, has certainly recognized “the culture of mayhem and predation,” the “bestial cunning,” the “feral qualities,” and the “brutality and treachery” at the core of this “explosive and predatory identity,” but has done so without explicitly acknowledging the ways in which that violent militarism genders Norman identity as essentially masculine (Emily Albu, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion [Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001], pp. 6 and 45). For instance, Valerie L. Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid, ed. and trans. Sean Gilsdorf (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), pp. 85 and 126. Patrick J. Geary, Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

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also exceeded, the historiographical conventions of his day.19 The most we can say about women until we are approximately one fifth of the way through the total text is that some biologically female figures entirely lacking in agency and subjectivity must be recognized among the inhabitants of Dacia, where the lascivious male subjects of Dudo’s attention sire many children upon them, as well as among the inhabitants of the regions subjected to Anstign’s raids, where they are raped, taken captive, or slaughtered.20 Apparently, in Dudo’s vision, there were no women at the beginning, only men. Female figures appear principally in three ways, and only at a few selected moments, in the course of Dudo’s massive narrative: as rescuers of their imprisoned male relatives; as consorts of the ducal line (Rollo, William Longsword, and Richard I); and in an elaborate pair of anecdotes set immediately after Rollo’s conversion to Christianity and settlement in Normandy. My analysis of the ways in which Dudo represents women in his Gesta Normannorum is essentially a study of his discursive strategy, rather than of tenth-century “historical reality.” This endeavor necessarily involves some attempt to distinguish between two different content categories in the narrative: those sections that corresponded to Dudo’s understanding of “historical truth,” and those sections that constituted his own “plausible inventions” (which he and his contemporaries understood to be compatible with historical truth).21 This is not because I seek to mine the text for evidence of “what really happened.” To the contrary: it is because I believe that Dudo’s “plausible inventions” (in other words, his fictions) are especially likely to be significant as indicators of his values and aims. Instead of the more conventional, positivist, approach of sifting for facts, I approach Dudo’s narrative with the intention of sifting for fictions, with the understanding that a decision to invent a gap-filling anecdote is per se a sign of a high stakes concern.

19 Pierre Bouet, “Hasting, le Viking pervers selon Dudon de Saint-Quentin” Annales de Normandie 62 (2012): 215–233; Alheydis Plassmann, “Die Wirkmächtigkeit von Feindbildern – die Wikinger in den fränkischen und westfränkischen Quellen,” in Die Wikinger und das fränkische Reich: Identitäten zwischen Konfrontation und Annäherung, eds. Kerstin P. Hofmann, Hermann Kamp, and Matthias Wemhoff (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2014), pp. 61–83. 20 “For these nations, greatly inflamed by lascivious unchastity, and ravishing very many women with singular baseness, by performing in this way, men beget from them countless filthy offspring through mingling in a union of unlawful sexual union” (Dudo, GN, chapter 2, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 129 and Dudo, HN, p. 15), or: “Wives, ravished by many men, are lamentably led away, foreigners. Every girl is dishonorably deflowered by them” (Dudo, GN, chapter 2, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 131 and Dudo, HN, p. 17). 21 For Dudo’s adherence to the rhetorical doctrine of “narratio probabilis,” see Justin C. Lake, “Truth, Plausibility, and the Virtues of Narrative at the Millennium,” Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009): 221–238, esp. 234–235. On the crucial need for Dudo’s overall picture to be believable, independent of the specific details of events, see Hermann Kamp, “Die Macht der Zeichen und Gesten. Öffentliches Verhalten bei Dudo von Saint-Quentin,” in Formen und Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter, ed. Gerd Althoff (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2001), pp. 125–155, esp. pp. 127–129.

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Women to the rescue: a critique of Richard I’s absent mothers There are three instances in the Gesta Normannorum of an elite male being held prisoner by his political and military rivals: Ragnar Longneck (captured in battle by Rollo when the latter was raiding in Frisia); King Louis IV (captured by the Normans and held prisoner at Rouen); and Dudo’s original patron, Duke Richard I (kidnapped as a youth by King Louis IV after the assassination of his father William and imprisoned at Laon). Ragnar and Louis, both non-Normans, are in Dudo’s narrative rescued thanks to their non-Norman wives (an unnamed woman and Queen Gerberga of Francia, respectively) in passages that constitute virtually the only examples in the entire text of women exercising any kind of agency. The importance of this particular type of activity is underlined by the fact that Ragnar’s wife, who raises a ransom for her husband and delivers some of Rollo’s captured followers to the Norman chief, is the very first individualized female character to appear in Dudo’s narrative, approximately one fifth of the way through the entire text.22 While Queen Gerberga’s exertions on behalf of King Louis correspond to “real” historical events, Dudo’s emphasis on the theme of rescue by female kin through a doubling transposition onto Ragnar Longneck is almost certainly a plausible invention.23 The significance of this theme in the overall narrative becomes clear when we contrast the rescues of Ragnar and Louis with the plight of the young Richard I, poignantly described by Dudo in what is the single largest continuous segment of the Gesta Normannorum.24 As Dudo tells it, not a single Norman woman lifted a finger during those stressful years to try to help the Norman boy Richard.25 The child was liberated through a ruse concocted by a certain 22 “Then Ragnar’s wife weeping and wailing, having called her leaders together concerning him, has sent for Rollo to return her lord to her in return for the twelve captured counts. Having received her embassy, Rollo immediately has sent back to her saying ‘Ragnar will not be returned to you but he will be decapitated, unless you first hand my companions over to me, and moreover give me whatever gold and silver there is in his duchy, yea indeed the tribute payment of that region, along with an oath of the Christian way of life.’ Soon Ragnar’s consort, distressed by this mournful embassy, has sent the captured counts back to Rollo and all the gold and silver which she was able to find. Yea indeed with suppliant and intercessory words she has sent to Rollo whatever had been granted to the sacred altars, along with the revenue of that duchy, while swearing that she neither had more metal nor could she exact any, so that he might hand over her husband to her. . . . And having allied Ragnar to himself, and having enriched him with extremely great presents and gifts, yea indeed having handed over to him the moiety of the despatched tribute, Rollo has immediately sent him back delighted to his wife” (Dudo, GN, chapter 9, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 150–151 and Dudo, HN, pp. 33–34). 23 Dudo GN, chapters 41 and 42; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 245–246 and Dudo, HN, pp. 119–120. 24 For the enormous percentage of Dudo’s narrative that is consumed by detailing the travails of Richard I in the immediate aftermath of his father’s assassination, see Pierre Bouet, “Le duc Richard Ier,” pp. 19 and 36. 25 Bouet, “Le duc Richard Ier” points to Richard I’s “quasi-absence” from his own story (p. 20) during these years; however, Richard’s “quasi-absence” is nothing compared to the complete invisibility of his female relatives.

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Osmund, the (male) tutor assigned by Louis to guard the child captive.26 Rescuing male kinfolk was one of the few “political” acts that Dudo clearly endorsed as “proper” behaviour for elite women; it was also a duty whose call Norman women had epically failed to heed.27 Before we leave the theme of aristocratic women who rescue their male kinfolk, it is worth spending a bit more time on the cases of Queen Gerberga and of the women who abandoned the young Richard I. Queen Gerberga is the only woman in the entire Gesta Normannorum who both appears on multiple occasions and (in stark contrast to most of the female members of the Norman ducal house, who generally remain anonymous) is regularly designated by her proper name.28 Nevertheless, even her footprint in Dudo’s narrative is incredibly faint compared with what historians (based on contemporary evidence) now understand her enormous significance to have been in her own lifetime.29 Dudo’s treatment of Queen Gerberga was perfectly calibrated to his aim: to represent elite women as politically irrelevant in most circumstances, while simultaneously acknowledging some justified but extremely limited roles, such as rescuing their male relatives at moments of great danger, something the women of the Norman ducal house had (by implicit comparison) signally failed to do. Between 942 and 946, in the aftermath of William Longsword’s assassination, the boy Richard I was in major danger. Despite the fact that Dudo describes these years in extraordinary detail, he never shows a single woman even trying to help the young duke, let alone actually succeeding. This amounts to an indictment of both Richard’s birth mother (for whom, see the discussion of Sprota below) and 26 Dudo, GN, chapter 36; Dudo, De moribus, p. 231 and Dudo, HN, pp. 105–106. 27 I use “proper” here in the sense of “correct,” with no implication that the expectation was exclusive to women. Men were also expected to care enough about their families to rescue them from imprisonment, as we learn from the story of the warrior who abandoned his attempt to shelter the fugitive King Louis IV when Bernard of Rouen captured his wife, children, livestock, and equipment (Dudo, GN, chapter 41; Dudo, De moribus, p. 244 and Dudo, HN, p. 118). 28 Queen Gerberga is included by Dudo among the many conspirators who plot to disinherit Richard I (Dudo, GN, Chapters 48 and 49; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 265–267 and Dudo, HN, pp. 139–141). For Dudo’s treatment of Queen Gerberga in connection with the baptism of her son Lothar, see pp. 250–251. Her appearance in these other contexts renders her the sole exception to Dudo’s pattern of including women only in connection with the three main themes highlighted in this chapter. Queen Gerberga’s extraordinary level of successful political action over the long term would have made it difficult for Dudo to minimize her more than he did while still constructing a “plausible” story, given that “Gerberge semble avoir connu une destinée éclatante jusqu’à ses derniers jours” (Jean Verdon, “Les veuves des rois de France aux Xe et XIe siècles,” in Veuves et veuvage dans le haut moyen âge, ed. Michel Parisse [Paris: Picard, 1993], pp. 187–198, at p. 198). 29 For instance, Queen Gerberga was “an integral member of the Ottonian family . . . as influential as any of her male relatives in the shaping of East-West Frankish relations (and thus the course of post-Carolingian high politics) in the 940s, 50s, and 60s. . . . due in no small part to the claims to power she pursued in the old middle kingdom as a legacy of her first marriage to Giselbert, dux in Lotharingia” (MacLean, Ottonian Queenship, pp. 50–51). Maclean devotes two entire chapters to Queen Gerberga, the sister of Otto I who married the West Frankish King Louis IV (936–954).

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of his suddenly widowed stepmother (for whom, see the discussion of Leyarda below) and, I would argue, effectively constitutes by extension an indictment of the women of the Norman ducal house (in comparison with the wives of Ragnar and Louis). These omissions also functioned in the narrative to highlight the enormity and number of threats that Richard I faced and overcame, but only with the help of other men, above all Bernard of Senlis. Bernard of Senlis was, in Dudo’s account, the single most instrumental person in the survival and ultimate success of Richard I. Dudo consistently describes Bernard as Richard’s uncle, with no further elucidation. Bernard was Leyarda’s brother, but Dudo details Bernard’s support for Richard without ever mentioning Leyarda, even to explain the unclenephew relationship; this is but one of the ways in which Dudo maintains complete radio silence concerning the women of the Norman ruling family during the crisis that formed the centerpiece of his entire history. By ignoring Sprota and Leyarda completely, Dudo constructs a family saga in which men make decisions and take actions, with absolutely no regard for or input from their female kin.

Delible liaisons: the women of the Norman ducal house The second individualized female figure to appear in Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum (after Ragnar’s wife) is the mother of William Longsword: “But once Rollo has passed a year besetting Paris in the siege, he makes for Bayeux, and he has taken possession of it by force and has utterly destroyed the entire city and has claimed for himself captives and spoils from the whole region. Glad, he has at one time even brought with him the daughter of prince Berengar, the maiden Popa, beautiful in appearance, grown strong from the arrogant blood of a very powerful man, and has joined her to himself in sexual union. And he has sired by her a son named William.”30 Dudo briefly mentions Popa again at the beginning of his third book: “Thus did William become born in the town of Rouen, a most glorious duke and very mighty count and most esteemed athlete for the eternal king; he was begotten of distinguished stock: that is of a Dacian father namely Rollo and a Frankish-born mother namely Poppa.”31 The two sentences that Dudo devoted to Poppa would seem to be quite straightforward, but historians have been far from unanimous in their treatment of this particular princess. One point of contention concerns the status of Rollo’s relationship with this woman. Eric Christiansen’s English translation presents the relationship as beginning with forcible capture, but ending in formal marriage; in contrast, my English translation implies that Popa willingly accompanied Rollo and that their relationship remained an informal sexual union.32 That such starkly different interpretations 30 Dudo, GN, chapter 11, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 157 and Dudo, HN, pp. 38–39. 31 Dudo, GN, chapter 15, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 170 and Dudo, HN, p. 57. 32 The difference turns on how to translate “adducere” and “connubium.” Unfortunately, I am no longer able to access my glossary of Dudo’s usage due to changes in software and hardware since the mid-1990s. I can nevertheless say that “connubium” (which I have translated as “sexual

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of the situation are possible is not incidental, and it is not surprising that scholars sometimes use equivocating, even opaque, circumlocutions to describe the situation. For instance, Stafford comments that William Longsword was not born of a “certainly full marriage” and that Dudo “does not describe . . . [his] mother . . . in ways which would suggest full marriage.”33 But my goal here is not to take a stand one way or the other on the nature of Rollo’s relationship with William Longsword’s mother; rather, it is to emphasize that Dudo’s description of the situation lacks clarity. Scholarly debate over Poppa does not end with the question of the nature of her bond with Rollo; in fact, it extends to the question of her very existence. For Pierre Bauduin, Rollo’s marriage to Poppa of Bayeux, daughter of Prince Berengar, marquis of Neustria, plays a major role in his vision of Rollo’s Normandy as the royally sanctioned continuation of Carolingian Neustria in terms of territorial delimitation; for Bauduin, Rollo is better understood as the successor of his father-in-law within Carolingian structures than as a Viking conqueror.34 In contrast to the elaborate structure that Bauduin has erected around Dudo’s Poppa, Janet Nelson argues that Dudo’s story of Poppa is a complete and indeed implausible fiction.35 Building on Nelson, Elizabeth Van Houts has erected an alternative edifice, identifying William Longsword’s real mother as (probably) an Irish Christian woman living in the Orkneys or Scotland, while speculating that Dudo’s informants in the ducal family fed him the false story of Poppa in order to misrepresent William as having been born and bred as a good Christian in Normandy, and to mask the truth, reflected in a (943) planctus for the assassinated Norman chief, that William was born overseas to a pagan father and a Christian mother.36

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union”) is the same word Dudo twice used to describe the wanton and lascivious sexual excesses of Dacian youths (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 129 and 141). Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventhcentury England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 211. Pierre Bauduin, “Chefs normands et élites franques, fin IXe- début Xe siècle,” in Les fondations scandinaves en Occident et les débuts du duché de Normandie, ed. Pierre Bauduin (Caen: Publications de CRAHM, 2005), pp. 181–194, esp. pp. 188–189 and 192. Also see Pierre Bauduin, La première Normandie (Xe-XIe siècle). Sur les frontières de la haute Normandie: identité et construction d’une principauté (Caen/Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004). Janet Nelson, “Normandy’s Early History since Normandy Before 1066,” in Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250. Essays for David Bates, eds. David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 3–16, esp. pp. 9–12. Elisabeth van Houts, “The Planctus on the Death of William Longsword (943) as a Source for Tenth-century Culture in Normandy and Aquitaine,” Anglo-Norman Studies 36 (2104): 1–22, esp. 9 and 17. For the manuscripts, editions, translations, and interpretations of this text, see Robert Helmerichs, “The planctus for William Longsword” (http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/documents/planctus/ planctus/index.html; accessed June 3, 2020). The text may have been commissioned by William’s sister from Martin, whom she herself had previously sent to Normandy from Poitiers to re-found the abbey of Jumièges (Van Houts, “The Planctus on the Death of William Longsword,” p. 7); I have previously suggested that it was commissioned by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen (Felice Lifshitz, “La Normandie carolingienne. Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources negligés,” Annales de Normandie 48 [1998]: 505–524, at 516; an English translation of this essay is now

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Van Houts’ argument is unnecessarily complicated. Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum does not contradict the planctus in terms of Rollo’s religion at the time of William’s birth. Rollo is a pagan Viking raider in Dudo’s narrative when he meets Poppa, and he is still a pagan Viking raider when (in the next sentence) Dudo reports the birth of William (chapter 11). Dudo takes care to separate his report that William was born in Rouen (chapter 15, in Book 3 devoted to William) from his account of Rollo’s conversion and rule as a Christian (chapters 12 and 13, in Book 2 devoted to Rollo), and nothing in the text implies that the conversion preceded the birth. As for William’s place of birth (overseas or at Rouen), I reiterate my 1995 suggestion that the two texts do not contradict one another.37 The planctus survives in two manuscripts, whose readings both diverge from each other and are regularly “emended” in order to create comprehensible wordings.38 Van Houts describes this textual situation as “instability.”39 The relevant stanza (number 2) requires modification simply to be comprehensible at all, and the most sensible course of action in my view is to modify the text so that it aligns with what we know from other sources, including Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum: that Rollo (not William) was born overseas.40

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Chapter 15 in this collection). Dudo lavished attention on Martin as William’s spiritual adviser, but (in keeping with his pattern of minimizing the significance of the women of the Norman ducal house) breathed not a word about William’s sister’s role in the re-foundation of Jumièges and characteristically failed to name her at all when reporting her marriage to William of Poitou (Dudo, GN, Chapters 22 and 25, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 192–193 and 200–202, and Dudo, HN, pp. 69–70 and 76–78). Lifshitz, Norman Conquest, p. 174, with translations of stanzas 2 and 3. For instance, every translator, including myself, has modified the text of stanza 3 (which, in the manuscripts, indicates that Rollo was still an infidel at his death) so that the “faithless ones” can be those who rebelled against William. This alteration brings the text in line with what we know to be true from multiple sources, namely that Rollo did convert to Christianity. The Clermont-Ferrand manuscript reads: “Mori/ente infidele suo patre surrexe/runt contra eum belliquosae quo/confisus deo ualde sibi ipse subiu/gavit dextra forte cuncti flete pro,” and the Florence manuscript reads: “Moriente infi/delis suo patre su/reserunt con/tra eum bellicau/sa quos confisus Deo/valde sibi ipse su/iugaui dextra/fortis. Conti filte.” I have translated this as: “When his father died, faithless ones rose up in arms against him, and he subjugated them to himself with a strong right hand, mightily strengthened by God. All lament for William.” For facsimiles of the manuscripts and the texts as emended by a variety of editors and translators, see Helmerichs, “The planctus.” Van Houts, “The Planctus on the Death of William Longsword,” pp. 3, 9, and passim. The Clermont-Ferrand manuscript reads: “Hic in orbe transmarino natus/patre. in erore paganorum per/manente. mater quoque consignata/alma fidem sacra fuit lotus unda/Cuncti flete pro uuillelmo,” and the Florence manuscript reads: “Hic in orben transma/rino natus patre in errerore paganorum permanete/matrem quoque/consignata alma/fide sacra fuit lu/tus unda: comti.” I have translated this as, “He was born into the world of a father from overseas, still persisting in the error of the pagans, and of a mother who was sealed with the nourishing faith, so he was washed by the sacred water. All lament for William.” Jules Lair’s solution to the grammatical problems of both manuscript witnesses was to correct the opening words to “Hac in urbe, transmarino natus patre,” that is, “Born in this town [Rouen, where the planctus was first recited] to a father from overseas” (Jules Lair, Étude sur la vie et la mort de Guillaume Longue Épée [Picard: Paris, 1893], pp. 6 and 66). For facsimiles of the manuscripts (in this case crucial, because Helmerichs’ transcriptions do

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None of this is to say that Dudo’s account of Poppa should be considered reliable information. Indeed, that very question is ultimately peripheral. Scholars are missing the point when they engage in contortionist mental gymnastics around Poppa’s demographic details. The most important way in which Dudo misrepresented William’s mother/Richard I’s grandmother/Richard II’s great-grandmother, the woman with whom Rollo established a connubium, lay not in what he told us in the few words he spared to sketch her background, but in his virtual disappearance of her for most of his narrative. Dudo’s most important point about Poppa was that she really didn’t matter anyway.41 Dudo is equally taciturn concerning the mother of Richard I by William Longsword. I have already noted her stunningly complete invisibility in the narrative during the dangerous years of Richard I’s youth. Dudo’s few brief mentions of this unnamed woman (itself a strategy to minimize her significance) paint a picture of her as a fully legal wife of William; whether that picture is accurate or not (and it does conflict with other testimonies) is less important than is the fact of Dudo’s lack of serious attention to her.42 This is how Dudo describes the initiation of the relationship: [William’s] chaste abstinence was being profusely published abroad, nor would he devote himself to the allurements of begetting succeeding generations. Therefore with his companions compelling him, not with any human frailty of sexual desire besetting him, but lest an heir to so great a lineage and so great an office and position of leadership either be wanting or be absent, he bound himself in the lust-producing right of renewing the succession to a certain most noble maiden of extremely fine appearance, profusely prudent in deliberation, even more copiously circumspect in public affairs, most fitly appropriate in comportment, most

not always match the manuscripts pictured immediately above them) and the texts as emended by a variety of editors and translators, see Helmerichs, “The planctus.” 41 Dudo’s taciturnity in regards to Poppa (concerning whose historicity or fictionality, I am agnostic) is thrown into high relief in contrast to the prolixity with which he treats Rollo’s entirely fictional second wife, Gisela, who exists in the narrative solely to serve as the focal point of an invented and highly gendered conflict (see pp. 414–415 for analysis). For Rollo’s marriage to Gisela as an invention, see Janet Nelson, “Normandy’s Early History,” pp. 9–10 and Bauduin, “Chefs normands et élites franques,” pp. 182–183. 42 For Flodoard of Reims, Richard I’s mother was a(n unnamed) Breton captive and concubine; for William of Jumièges, she was a woman named Sprota linked to William more danico who gave birth to Richard at Bayeux; for Robert of Torigny she was subsequently linked more danico to a man named Esperling, by whom she gave Richard I a half-brother Rodulf of Ivry (one of Dudo’s patrons). For all these alternatives, see The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elizabeth M.C. Van Houts, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), vol. 1, pp. xxxviii and 78–79; David Crouch, The Normans: The History of a Dynasty (Hambledon: Continuum, 2007), p. 26; The Annals of Flodoard of Reims, 916–966, ed. and trans. Steven Fanning and Bernard S. Bachrach (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), p. 37.

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judiciously eloquent in speech, most elegantly and artfully skillful in womanly administration.43 The short chapter closes with a verse apostrophe, in which the author encourages William to forge ahead with “the right of the lawful bed by which you have pledged yourself in alliance.”44 He clearly did so, for soon after a messenger comes to William from Fécamp to announce the birth of a son from his (still unnamed) “most esteemed consort” (“ex conjuge dilectissima”).45 Dudo repeats his report of the joyous event in the preface to Book 4: “the venerable matron, having labored to bring forth the boy of divine memory, sent a certain young recruit named Fulchard to disclose to duke William the much-desired matter of the sired descendant.”46 Thus, although the unnamed mother of Richard I possesses qualities such as eloquence of speech and circumspection in public affairs, Dudo never puts any words into her mouth, nor does he show her engaging in any public affairs. Moreover, Dudo never tells us her name, although every chapter of his narrative is filled with the specific names of male figures, even minor ones like the messenger Fulchard. By assiduously naming every male who steps on the stage of his narrative, yet failing to name Richard I’s mother, Dudo sends a strong signal about how little the women of the ducal family matter. Dudo’s androcentric message is also conveyed by the way he immediately rushes Richard’s unnamed postpartum mother off the stage, and shifts all the action concerning the newborn babe to a separate chapter in which three named men (Bishop Heinric of Bayeux, Count Botho of Rouen, and Duke William) take charge of the infant; his mother is completely absent from all subsequent developments concerning the boy, beginning with his baptism.47 This brings us to the second time Dudo utilizes Queen Gerberga to reinforce his themes, for Dudo tells a tale in which Queen Gerberga is sidelined in connection with the baptism of her son Lothar (born in 941). Dudo is absolutely alone in asserting that King Louis IV, upon learning of the birth of the boy, sent William Longsword to Laon to stand as godfather to his son.48 Although no other medieval source corroborates Dudo’s claim, none contradicts it either, with the result that some historians explicitly name William as Lothar’s godfather, whereas most ignore the topic entirely.49 Whether William Longsword was Lothar’s godfather or not, what matters for this 43 Dudo, GN, chapter 18, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 185–186 and Dudo, HN, p. 63. 44 Dudo, GN, chapter 18, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 186 and Dudo, HN, p. 64. 45 Dudo, GN, chapter 21, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 191 and Dudo, HN, pp. 68–69. 46 Dudo, GN, chapter 29, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p .218 and Dudo, HN, pp. 94–95. 47 Dudo, GN, chapter 30; Dudo, De moribus, p. 219 and Dudo, HN, p. 95. 48 Dudo GN, chapter 23; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 198–200 and Dudo, HN, pp. 75–76. 49 For instance, Ferdinand Lot, Les derniers Carolingiens: Lothaire, Louis V, Charles de Lorraine (954–991) (Chartres: Durand, 1890), p. 10 names William as Lothar’s godfather, referring to Dudo as his source, whereas Bauduin, “Chefs normands et élites franques,” p. 193 names William as Lothar’s godfather, but cites no source.

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study of Dudo’s discourse around women is not the fact (or fiction) of that relationship, but rather the way he describes the baptism in relation to the infant’s mother, Queen Gerberga.50 What Dudo describes is thoroughly unilateral action on the part of King Louis IV, who betrays no need or desire to consult with Queen Gerberga about the important diplomatic decision concerning how best to exploit the birth of their son to further the family’s network of political alliances. Yet, Queen Gerberga was in complete control of the process of plotting and planning to benefit her son Lothar.51 Shaping two separate stories of elite baptisms (for Richard and for Lothar) as events in which mothers played no significant role helped Dudo naturalize the notion that even lordly women were politically irrelevant. Moving on from Richard I’s useless birth mother (named by historians, but not by Dudo, as Sprota) we come to his equally useless stepmother (named by historians, but not by Dudo, as Leyarda).52 This unnamed woman, the daughter of Count Heribert II of Vermandois, appears briefly in Dudo’s narrative when William Longsword (unilaterally, with no need for discussion with or consent from the women concerned) marries his (unnamed) sister to count William of Poitou and himself marries the (unnamed) daughter of Heribert: [William] respectfully escorted [his sister], honorably encircled with an abundant supply of wedding things, and carried by female horses artfully girded with horse-trappings laden with gold and amber, along with a very great crowd of innumerable slaves of both sexes, and surrounded by many chests filled and loaded with silk vestments embroidered with gold, to the Poitevin court. Moreover Herbert seeing that William of Rouen was strong and was gaining strength and gleamed affluently in Christ through both spiritual and bodily virtue and through very great deeds, on the advice of duke Hugh the Great gave his own daughter to that man. In marvelous nuptial state and elegantly bolstered by unheardof adornments of indescribable office and rank and surrounded on all 50 Dudo could have had heard reports of William’s involvement in Lothar’s baptism, for instance from Bishop Adalbero of Laon (977–1031), to whom he dedicated his Gesta Normannorum (and who would presumably been in a position to know the details of a royal baptism performed at Laon), or from Dudo, Lothar’s fidelis, who appears in one of the king’s documents for 977 and who must have been related to the historian. For one discussion of the dedication to Adalbero, see Coumert, “Les récits d’origine,” p. 149. For Lothar’s fidelis regis Dudo, see Jean-François Lemarignier, “Les fidèles du roi de France (936–987),” in Structures politiques et religieuses dans la France du haut Moyen Âge. Recueil d’articles rassemblés par ses disciples, eds. Jean-François Lemarignier and Dominique Barthélemy (Rouen: Université de Rouen, 1995), pp. 207–231, at pp. 218–219. 51 Regine Le Jan, “Entre Carolingiens et Ottoniens: Les voyages de la reine Gerberge,” in Les assises du pouvoir. Temps médiévaux, territoires africains, eds. Odile Redon and Bernard Rosenberger (St. Denis: Presses universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 163–173, at p. 169. 52 See e.g. Van Houts, “The Planctus on the death of William Longsword,” pp. 2 and 14 (including the erroneous assertion that Dudo credits Leyarda with arranging William’s funeral in the Cathedral of Rouen).

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sides by a multitude of invaluable horses, William magnanimously conducted her to the citadels of the town of Rouen.53 After these few lines in his massive narrative, Dudo never mentions either William’s wife or his sister again, including at the funeral of their assassinated husband and brother, although he takes care to underline the presence of various named men (alongside the boy Richard) at that sad event.54 He clearly paints a picture of a world in which women, wives, and marriages are at best incidental (beyond their crucial role of participating in “the lust-producing right of renewing the succession”). As Dudo tells it, Richard I’s own funeral arrangements a half century later were made entirely by the dying duke and by his brother Rodulf of Ivry, with no input from any female members of the ducal family.55 Dudo continues to emphasize above all else the procreative role of women (to the exclusion of any sociopolitical, religious, or cultural activities) in his brief mentions of the marital alliances of the next duke, Richard I. In the midst of the kaleidoscopic political machinations of Richard’s youth, Duke Hugh the Great (with the approval of another named man, Count Bernard of Senlis) affiances his unnamed daughter to Richard, “in accordance with all the designated and sworn requirements of a marital bond . . . for the sake of offspring and of the succession.”56 The marriage to the still-unnamed girl takes place when Richard is “rich in the power of virile fertility” and the young duke’s followers report that Hugh’s daughter “hesitates little to yield to the force of a masculine seed, for she is now fit for the mingling of nuptial marriage and for the appropriate embrace of delightful copulation.”57 As it turns out, however, and as Dudo reveals in the apostrophe accompanying this chapter, Hugh’s daughter’s degree of receptivity to the force of a masculine seed was somewhat exaggerated: No descendant or heir to rule the populace Will be born to this maiden who is now being conveyed But, by command of the divine will,

53 Dudo, GN, chapter 22, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 192–193 and Dudo, HN, pp. 69–70. 54 “Truly, they have immediately honorably interred his sacrosanct body, placed swiftly on a bier and borne (with great wailing) to the city of Rouen, in the church of the blessed Mary, mother of God. In fact, almost the entire sorrowful province has come together, mourning with unutterable sorrow and sending deep sighs up to heaven, indeed also bringing with them his son, Richard by name. Before the body is stored in the tomb, Berengar and Alan and the rest of the Bretons and the leaders of the Normans, seeing him, have said (greatly wailing): ‘Ah, the grief, we have lost a lord; of one mind, let us make a lord.’ Immediately enthroning the boy named Richard (of holy memory!) and willingly become his fideles, of one mind they have made him their duke” (Dudo, GN, chapter 27, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 208–209 and Dudo, HN, p. 84). 55 Dudo, GN, chapter 60; Dudo, De moribus, p. 297 and Dudo, HN, pp. 170–173. 56 Dudo, GN, chapter 43, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 263 and Dudo, HN, p. 125. 57 Dudo, GN, chapter 47, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, p. 264 and Dudo, HN, p. 138.

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At a future time there will appear a celestial maiden Of the Dacian race, noble, nourishing, Beautiful, celebrated and reverend, Worthy, forechosen and worshipful, Cautious in deliberation, prudent, discreet, She alone will the equitable marquis, duke Richard, Select for himself from among many, Uniting with her in marriage and, after the alliance has been covenanted, As time passes to her will be born The nourishing offshoot of a worthy heir.58 Dudo here alludes prophetically (and, as is characteristic for him in connection with the women of the Norman ducal house, anonymously) to Richard I’s second wife (and Richard II’s birth mother). Dudo of St. Quentin’s absolute commitment to anonymizing the women of the Norman ducal house has heretofore not been recognized, due in part to unwarranted and misleading interventions in the text by the editor of its most widely used edition, namely Jules Lair. There are numerous such interventions in the passage describing how Richard I eventually sired multiple children; there Lair inserted into his printed text of the Gesta Normannorum both the names “Emma” (for Richard’s first wife, daughter of Hugh the Great) and “Gunnor” (for Richard’s second wife, the Dacian woman), and the information that Emma died “absque liberis” (“without children”), despite the fact that neither the names nor the phrase appear in any of the oldest and most important manuscripts.59 Here is my translation of the relevant passage, which includes yet another example of how Dudo names minor male characters, while omitting the names of significant women, and of how he avoids imputing any subjectivity, agency, or even activity to a woman; he describes how Richard disburses his first wife’s property and joins a second woman to himself, a woman who possesses many qualities but performs no actions, not even childbirth: But in the course of that time, his wife, that is the daughter of duke Hugh the Great, passes away and, sorrowful over this desolating loss, he has sent to Hugh, his deceased wife’s brother, for some household servants who would disburse to the sacrosanct church and to the poor whatever 58 Dudo, GN, chapter 47, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 264–265 and Dudo, HN, p. 139. 59 Dudo, De moribus, pp. 288–289, misrepresenting all three surviving eleventh-century manuscripts and of the sole surviving early twelfth-century manuscript: Bern, Burgerbibliothek Bongars 390, folios 96r–96v (a Norman manuscript of unknown provenance); Rouen BM 1173 (Y. 11), fol. 59v (from Jumièges); Berlin, SB-PK Phillips 1854, folios 87r–87v (from Fécamp); and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 276 (the oldest English witness, probably from St. Augustine’s in Canterbury, whose folio divisions are somehow missing from my transcription). Eric Christiansen’s English translation follows Lair’s text (Dudo, HN, p. 163).

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his sister possessed by feminine right. Truly duke Hugh has sent back to Richard, duke and patrician, to distribute everything abundantly and abundantly according to his own will. Then Richard, that mightiest duke of copious bounty, has divided that great treasure of gifts among all the churches of all Francia and Normandy, yea indeed he has copiously disbursed very many of his own possessions to the poor for the sake of her soul. And then, conquered by the needling frailty of pleasureseeking humanity, he has sired by his concubines two sons (and as many daughters), one of whom is named Godfrey, the other William. Finally, he has joined himself to a maiden of shining majesty, descended from an extremely famed family of noble Dacians and the most beautiful of all Norman maidens and the most circumspect concerning the constantlychanging results of public and civil affairs and well versed in the talents of feminine artistry and discreetly strong in richly fertile eloquence and profusely endowed with the treasure of a capacious memory and power of recollection and fortified by an abundance of all goods, and he has amicably allotted her to himself in an alliance of forbidden union. But, knowing her to be descended from the well-known stock of an extremely noble seed, the Norman magnates, very much planning both for a successor and an heir and an offspring who would be salvation-giving for the populace, have spoken to the mightiest duke Richard with soft voices and downturned faces: “Although you, mightiest lord duke, may be as judicious as is possible in your wisely-musing scrutiny of all the Franks, and the Normans, and the Burgundians, and of all realms, we wonder why you still have not devised who shall rule the populace, now subordinated to your extremely mighty authority, after your lamentable and obligatory death? For, becoming very much frightened at the possible downfall of a future defeat, we fear lest, lacking an advocate and heir after the mournful loss of your death-day, foreign nations tread us under foot.” Then Richard: “I have until now presided over and benefitted this state, as I have been able, with the aid of your extremely advantageous advice; will you make clear to me what you have decided in your hearts about this matter?” And they: “In our opinion, the providence of the highest divinity has joined to you this Dacian woman whom you now cherish, so that an heir might be born for this land from a Dacian father and mother, an heir who will be its hardiest defender and advocate. For she is descended from a domineering race, beautiful and elegant in her appearance, circumspect and prudent in her deliberations, of devout mind, disciplined heart, discreet speech, gentle comportment, diligent and wise in every matter. We request that she be joined to you by the inextricable alliance of matrimonial prerogative so that, as the final lot of your death draws near to hand, the land of your duchy might be ruled advantageously and steadily by her salvation-giving offspring.” Thus has the extremely holy duke Richard, applauding this advice with pleasure, betrothed her to 254

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himself according to matrimonial law, in the presence of a gathering of bishops (with the clergy) and rulers (with the laity), and in the course of time he has sired by her (“ex ea . . . genuit”) five male progeny and three female.60 Hidden among the eight progeny of Richard I’s relationship with (the unnamed) Gunnor (regularized in approximately 989) is Dudo’s final (unnamed) woman of the Norman ducal house: Emma (early 980s – 1052), future queen of both England and Denmark.61 We shall meet her again.

The princess and the peasant: women in Rollo’s Normandy The third way in which women appear in Dudo of St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum is as significant protagonists of the two completely invented episodes that constitute literally the entirety of what Dudo tells us about the reign of Rollo after his conversion to Christianity and settlement at Rouen: the tale of the devious female peasant of Longpaon and the story of the Carolingian princess Gisela’s duplicitous subterfuge against her husband, Rollo.62 Both anecdotes, more than 60 Dudo, GN, chapter 58, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 288–290 and Dudo, HN, pp. 163– 164. Lair (Dudo, De moribus, p. 290) claims that there is a variant in both the Rouen and Berlin manuscripts that reads “ex qua genuit Ricardum, Robertum, Emmam reginam Anglorum matrem et Edwardi, Badiam, Matildem.” In fact this variant appears in neither of those manuscripts (see Rouen BM 1173 [Y. 11] fol. 59v and Berlin SB-PK Phillips 1854 fol. 88r). Only a few lines later (still on p. 290 of his edition), Lair interpolates a line into the text (“In suburbio Rotomagensi, ecclesiam sancti Petri sanctique Audoeni instauravit”) that he claims comes from the Rouen manuscript, but that is also incorrect; furthermore, the line does not appear in any of the manuscripts that I transcribed in preparation for making a (subsequently abandoned) critical edition of the text (Rouen, Berlin, Bern, and Cambridge) or in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D VIII (which I also examined). Lair utilized a copy of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum (Alençon BM 20, a thirteenth-century manuscript from St. Evroult) that we can no longer access, because it burned down in a fire in Lair’s own house (Dudo, De moribus, pp. 106–107; Huisman, “Notes on the Manuscript Tradition,” p. 124); perhaps those interpolations came from that lost manuscript. Christiansen (Dudo, HN, p. 224) asserts that the interpolation containing the siblings’ names appears in the Rouen manuscript (which is false) and in London, British Library, MS Royal 13 B XIV, a twelfth-century Canterbury witness unknown to Lair, that I have not examined (according to Huisman, “Notes on the manuscript tradition,” p. 124 copied directly or indirectly from Cambridge Corpus Christi College 276). Christiansen (Dudo, HN, p. 164) includes without comment the interpolated (and completely unjustified) line about St. Ouen, translating “instauravit” (founded, erected, established) as “restored.” 61 Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventhcentury England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 209–211. 62 For the scholarly consensus that the marriage of Rollo to Gisela is Dudo’s invention, see note 41. For discussion of the literary antecedents of Dudo’s invented marriage of Rollo and Gisela, see Fabio Stok, “Il Mondo Geo-Antropico di Dudone,” in Dudone, pp. 131–159, at p. 155 and Dudo, HN, p. 195 note 199. For the story of the peasant couple as part of a complex of “mensonges” constituting “l’image d’un Rollon législateur . . . un mythe inventé de toutes pieces, destiné à

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any other passage in the entire massive narrative, are saturated with gendered significance, as Rollo responds to female defiance of his authority with acts of savage violence. In the first anecdote, a male peasant complies with Rollo’s prohibition on attempting to protect oneself against theft by leaving his agricultural implements behind in the field during his meal break, and his wife (for unexplained reasons, but presumably because she did not trust that Rollo’s simultaneous prohibition against theft itself would be widely obeyed) hides the tools to teach him a lesson; although the man’s initial complaint to Rollo is made in all innocence, by the time a thorough investigation reveals that his wife is the thief, the man has learned the truth and become, effectively, a co-conspirator, as a result of which both husband and wife are executed by hanging. Rollo explains the sentence to the male farmer thus: “You will deservedly die under two ordinances. The one, that you are the head of the woman and you ought to have chastised her. The other, that you were an accessory to the theft and were unwilling to disclose it.” In the second anecdote, Gisela conceals from her husband Rollo ambassadors sent by her father King Charles, which leads the recently converted Viking’s followers to accuse him of being “uxurious and womanish,” and to speculate “that Robert had not known her according to conjugal law. And immediately, moved by wrath, the duke caused the young recruits, carefully concealed in their house, to be apprehended and led to the public marketplace and slaughtered there by the assembled populace.”63 Despite their close juxtaposition in the text, these two anecdotes have not been discussed together, nor have they been subjected to a gendered analysis. Dudo here used the fact that even women would dare to defy Rollo’s authority to signal that the duke was no longer fit to rule, even though he was still capable of brutally punishing both the women and any men who cooperated with them. The Norman ducal line spends the entire narrative being challenged by other men; the only way to differentiate this moment of challenge as substantially different from the mundane run of the mill battles endemic to tenth-century Francia was to show even (properly obedient) women defying the ruler’s authority. Clearly this is a moment of crisis, and the chapter culminates with the transfer of authority from Rollo (now perceived as “womanish”) to William Longsword. William himself subsequently faced (but averted) a similar crisis, when he was accused of l’édification d’une ‘représentation scripturale’ du pouvoir ducale,” see Gilduin Davy, Le duc et la loi. Images et expressions du pouvoir normatif dans le duché de Normandie, des origines à la mort du Conquérant (fin du IXe siècle-1087) (Paris: De Boccard, 2004), pp. 164–175, esp. pp. 170–171. Insofar as none of the literary or legal antecedents or parallels cited by Davy include defiant peasants, I would suggest that some of the inspiration for Dudo’s inventiveness in this particular case derived from the peasant movement in the Seine valley that emerged during the first decade of Richard II’s reign, and that was brutally suppressed by Dudo’s patron, Rodulf of Ivry, whose properties were particularly affected by the movement (for which, see Bernard Gowers, “996 and All That: The Norman Peasants’ Revolt Reconsidered,” Early Medieval Europe 21 [2013]: 71–98, at 71, 82–83, and 90–93). 63 Dudo, GN, chapter 13, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 171–173 and Dudo, HN, pp. 51–53.

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being “womanish” by his followers, but was able to demonstrate that such “rough and filthy words” did not accurately describe him.64 The gendered message is unmistakable: if being “womanish” disqualified a man from a leadership position in Normandy, how much more completely disqualifying would it be to be, simply, an actual woman?

The androcentric accent of Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum: cui malo? As we have now seen, most of the passages in which Dudo includes substantive female characters belong in the category of “narratio probabilis:” Gisela, the peasant of Longpaon, and two of the three elite rescuers of imprisoned male relatives. In addition to telling these few expansive stories, Dudo occasionally glanced at Queen Gerberga of Saxony, and at the women of the Norman ducal house, but did so in ways that systematically minimized their significance and denied their agency. He could certainly have told us more about them, starting with their names, and shown them doing any number of things, even minor ones such as organizing or even attending the funerals of their husbands or the baptisms of their sons. Instead, Dudo anonymized, invisibilized/disappeared, and de-responsibilized the consorts and mothers of Rollo, William Longsword, Richard I, and Richard II. The question I now explore is whether there is any way that such a picture of elite women would have benefited Dudo’s patrons and informants, namely Duke Richard I, his half-brother Count Rodulf of Ivry, and his son Duke Richard II.65 I will argue that there was a reason that these men, during the late 990s, would have encouraged their historian to depict women in the way that he did, although my suggestions here are not meant to deny the many other concerns that clearly weighed on Dudo and his patrons, and that influenced the shape and content of his narrative, concerns that have been discerned by multiple scholars over the past several decades.66 64 Dudo, GN, chapter 20, trans. Lifshitz; Dudo, De moribus, pp. 189–190 and Dudo, HN, p. 67. 65 Dudo, HN, pp. xxiii – xxvii; note that Archbishop Robert is listed here by Christiansen as a possible fourth patron, but there is nothing in Dudo’s text to explicitly peg him a patron, as opposed to a potential reader and critic. 66 For the complexity of the situation that Dudo had to navigate in order to please his patrons, not only in Normandy but also back home in Vermandois, see above all Leah Shopkow, “The Man from Vermandois: Dudo of St-Quentin and his Patrons,” in Religion, Text, and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honor of J.N. Hillgarth, eds. Thomas E. Burman, Mark D. Meyerson, and Leah Shopkow (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002), pp. 302–318. The fact that Dudo was (as Shopkow shows) trying to balance Carolingian vs Robertian/Capetian interests makes even more sense if he completed the entire narrative by c. 1000, when the dynastic rivalry was still quite fresh (the transition from the last Carolingian king of West Francia, Lothar V, to the first Capetian king of West Francia, Hugh Capet, having transpired in 987), rather than decades later, when the Carolingians had quite clearly lost (Hugh’s son and successor Robert II having successfully ruled as king from 996–1031).

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Historians of ducal Normandy are used to thinking of the ruling family as a pack of aggressive warriors hunting in concert to expand the territory under their common and mutually beneficial control. It is a powerful vision aptly summed up in the title of the book that introduced it in 1988: Eleanor Searle’s Predatory Kinship.67 Yet there is ample evidence that the Norman ducal family was (in the words of Pauline Stafford) “beset by the usual family tensions.”68 Arnoux spotlighted one aspect of this internal family drama in his discussion of the steps taken by Richard I to neutralize, to the extent possible, his son Robert (before 989–1037) as a potential rival to his other son Richard (978–1026).69 Robert accepted his fate (that is, to serve as archbishop of Rouen and count of Evreux) during the reign of Richard II (996–1026), but appears to have tried to block (unsuccessfully) the succession of Richard II’s son Robert; after some military confrontations at Rouen and Evreux, and a period of exile for the archbishop, Robert returned to Normandy to cooperate with his nephew duke Robert until the latter’s death in 1035.70 My suggestion is this: in the 990s, Robert was not the only child of Richard I and Gunnor whose ambitions had to be tamped down. There was also Emma, in whom “we can see the most striking evidence of a woman having internalized the ethos of her family and class, intensely masculine as that ethos was. . . . The world into which Richard’s daughter Emma was born was one of fear and fearlessness . . . the ethos of the Norman ducal family . . . that of predation, expansion, conquest. . . . And it was the inheritance of Emma, no less than of her brother, Richard II.”71 Dudo’s Gesta Normannorum may paint a picture of a political world in which elite women were insignificant, but that picture was very far from reflecting the realities of his lifetime. Theophanu imperator had only recently died in 990, having ruled the Empire from 972 as consort of Otto II and, from 983, as regent for Otto III; this Byzantine princess was but the most spectacular of the Ottonian women who regularly threw their weight around in tenth-century politics, whether through secular positions (like Louis VI’s Queen Gerberga) or ecclesiastical ones (like the heads of imperial women’s houses such as Gandersheim and Quedlinburg).72 More importantly, and closer to home, Gunnor (to whom Dudo refused a single verb of action, not even to admit that she had given birth to Richard I’s children, rather than that he had “sired them by her”) was acting as the politically formidable regent

67 Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship. The Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 68 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, p. 209. 69 Arnoux, “Before the Gesta Normannorum,” pp. 39–40. 70 Richard Allen, “‘Praesul praecipue, atque venerande’: The Career of Robert, Archbishop of Rouen, 989–1037,” in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300, eds. Leonie V. Hicks and Elma Brenner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 153–183, at p. 165. 71 Eleanor M. Searle, “Emma the Conqueror,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher J. Holdsworth, and Janet L. Nelson (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989), pp. 281–288, at p. 283. 72 Phyllis G. Jestice, Imperial Ladies of the Ottonian Dynasty: Women and Rule in Tenth-Century Germany (New York: Palgrave, 2018), pp. 179–206.

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and “head of the kingdom” for her young son Richard II at the very moment when Dudo was constructing his narrative.73 The notion that Emma would also have wanted a piece of the political pie (or at least an ecclesiastical piece, comparable to Gandersheim or Quedlinburg) simply cannot be dismissed out of hand. Emma was surely a victim (perhaps the most important victim) of Dudo’s “almost unbelievably conflict-free” story of the tenth-century Norman line of descent moving easily from one father to one son “so as to leave no rival to Richard II.”74 As it turned out, Emma did end up with a role that matched her level of political ability and ambition when she married King Aethelred of England in the spring of 1002, the first continental noblewoman in almost 150 years to take up the position of English queen.75 Not that this was her own first choice; she certainly made the best of it, but (given her druthers?) she probably would have preferred something closer to home.76 Indeed, Moira Buffini’s insightful 1999 historical drama Silence lets its protagonist Ymma of Normandy fantasize about what would have happened had her mother (like Silence’s) hidden her gender and raised her as a boy: “Oh my God I’d be Duke of Normandy!”77 Moments of fantasy aside, Emma (like Archbishop Robert) accepted the sole ducal authority of her brother Richard II, and returned to Normandy in 1013–1014 to live at her brother’s court when Aethelred (temporarily) lost the English throne to Svein.78 There, she must have been both irritated and inspired (as the future sponsor of the Encomium Emmae Reginae) by recitations of Dudo’s captivating, yet androcentric, Gesta Normannorum.79 By that point, however, she very much had her own fish to fry, which is clear from the 1017 marriage to Cnut the Great that made her Queen of England, Denmark, and Norway – a position superior to anything she could have achieved by staying in Normandy.

73 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 212–214. 74 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, pp. 212–213, with the (in my view erroneous) ascription of this unbelievable story to Gunnor, following Eleanor Searle, “Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of St. Quentin,” Viator 15 (1984): 119–137, at 122. Searle’s argument that Gunnor was a key informant for Dudo was accepted by Van Houts as recently as 2014 (“The Planctus on the death of William Longsword,” p. 17), but her name is normally omitted from the list of Dudo’s informants (e.g. Shopkow, “The Man from Vermandois,” p. 304). See Lifshitz, “Dudo’s Historical Narrative,” note 54 (now Chapter 12 in this collection) for an explicit argument against Searle’s view. 75 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, p. 209. 76 “Abandoned among a people who hated or at best distrusted her and her people, she might have shriveled into nonentity. But Emma as we know was not made of such stuff” (Searle, “Emma the Conqueror,” p. 285). 77 Moira Buffini, “Silence,” in Moira Buffini, Plays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp. 209–296, at p. 236. I owe this reference to Kim Mattice Wannat’s May 2019 production of this play at the University of Alberta Studio Theatre. 78 Elizabeth M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000 – c. 1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), p. 121. 79 Benjamin Pohl, “Poetry, Punctuation and Performance: Was there an Aural Context for Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum?” Tabularia 16 (2016): 177–216.

259

MANUSCRIPTS CITED

Alençon BM 20 Alençon ВМ 21 Angers ВМ 275 (266) Avranches ВМ 39 Avranches BM 50 Avranches BM 210 Bayeux MM BC 70 Bayeux MM BC 72 Bayeux MM BC 73 Bayeux MM BC 74 Bayeux MM BC 75 Bayeux MM BC 76 Berlin SB-PK Philipps 1854 Berlin SB-PK theol. lat. quart. 201 Berlin SB-PK theol. lat. quart. 215 Bern Burgerbibliothek Bongars 390 Cambridge Corpus Christi College 276 Evreux BM 101 Le Havre ВМ 332 (А.34) Lièges ВМ 256 London British Library MS Additional 33241 London British Library MS Cotton Nero D VIII London British Library MS Cotton Vespasian B XX London British Library MS Royal 13 B XIV Lyon Bibliothèque de la Ville 5403 Namur ВМ 2 Paris Archives Nationales, K 16 Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 279 (129 T.L.) Paris BN Collection de Picardie 352 Paris BN lat. 1 Paris BN lat. 2 Paris BN lat. 266 Paris BN lat. 989 Paris BN lat. 1805 Paris BN lat. 1864 Paris BN lat. 2294 Paris BN lat. 2812 Paris BN lat. 4280A

260

MANUSCRIPTS CITED Paris BN lat. 4863 Paris BN lat. 5195 Paris ВN lat. 5196 Paris BN lat. 5283 Paris BN lat. 5296 Paris BN lat. 5296В Paris BN lat. 5565 Paris BN lat. 6042 Paris BN lat. 6235 Paris BN lat. 9768 Paris BN lat. 9969 Paris BN lat. 10051 Paris BN lat. 10052 Paris BN lat. 11070 Paris ВN lat. 13090 Paris BN lat. 13345 Paris BN lat. 14364 Paris BN lat. 14663 Paris BN lat. 15436 Paris BN lat. 15437 Paris BN lat. 18311 Paris BN nal 2261 Reims Archives départementales de la Marne, H 1411 Rouen Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime, G.3666 Rouen Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime 14 H 915A Rouen BM 1 (A. 4) Rouen ВМ 192 (А. 531) Rouen BM 528 (A. 362) Rouen BM 1173 (Y. 11) Rouen BM 1193 (Y. 44) Rouen ВМ 1333 (U. 46) Rouen BM 1377 (U. 108) Rouen ВМ 1380 (U.55) Rouen BM 1388 (U.32) Rouen ВМ 1391 (U. 39) Rouen BM 1399 (U. 2) Rouen ВМ 1404 (U. 20) Rouen ВМ 1405 (Y.27) Rouen BM 1406 (Y. 41) Rouen BM 1409 (Y. 189) Rouen ВМ 1411 (U. 64) Rouen ВМ 1412 (A. 40) Rouen ВМ 1415 (U. 17) St. Omer ВМ 764 Troyes Archives Départementales de l’Aube 6 H 2 Valenciennes BM 784–786 Vatican City Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana lat. 645 Vatican City Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensis lat. 553 Vatican City Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensis lat. 593

261

INDEX

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park 30, 31n14 Acta Archiepiscoporum Rothomagensium (Mabillon) 57–63, 123 Acta Sanctorum 13, 24 Adalbero of Laon 164–165, 168–169, 181–182, 223 Adelelmus of Sées 193 Alcuin of York 7–8, 204 Alighieri, Dante 90 amicitia (friendship) 211–219 ancient privilege 51 androcentric historiography 15 androcentrism 239–243 Annals of St. Quentin (St. Quentin) 183, 224 Ansbert, Bishop 102 anti-plague remedies 108 apostolic foundation of Bayeux 149–154 apostolicity theses in Gaul: apostolic foundation of Bayeux 149–154; Gregory of Tours 144–149, 153–154; introduction to 143–144; St. Exuperius 150–153, 157–159; St. Regnobertus 146, 150–153, 157–159; Trophimus, Bishop 155–156 apostolic succession 97–98, 97n36 archiepiscopal sanctity in Rouennais traditions 67–78 Arnulf of Flanders 79, 134–135, 138, 177, 197 baptism 80, 173–174, 193–196, 217, 245n28, 250–251, 251n50, 257 Barbarian Invasions 115 Basilica della Santa Casa 30–31 Bayeux, apostolic foundation of 149–154 bearer of legitimacy 228

Benedictines of Paris 105 beneficium, defined 187, 213, 213n26, 217–218 Bernard of Senlis 246 Bibliotheca hagiographica latina (BHL) 12–13, 50 Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris 86 Bigot, Jean 51 bishops: apostolicity theses in Gaul 155–156; in Carolingian Normandy 196–202; cult of the holy bishops of Rouen 102–111; in eleventh-century Rouen 87–101; gesta of 12–13; see also individual bishops; individual saints bleeding among genres 12 blurring among genres 12 Capet, Hugo, King 169 Carolingian Normandy: demonic action 202–205; historiography on conversion of Normans 192–196; Hugh, Archbishop 196–202; Viking influence on 189–192; see also Normandy Catholic Church 24, 42 central medieval historiography 8n16 Charles the Bald 102, 116–119, 123, 134, 141, 151 Charles the Fat 193–195 Charles the Simple 130–131, 194, 212–222 Christianity: baptism 80, 173–174, 193–196, 217, 245n28, 250–251, 251n50, 257; conversion to 8; Frankish Christian values 74; Jesus 31, 91–92, 97–98, 108, 143; Latin Christianity 77 Christianization in Gaul 144–149 Christianization in Rome 171 Christina the Astonishing 44 chronicle-cartularies 13, 19

262

INDEX

Chronicle of Fécamp (Dudo of St. Quentin) 241 Church of Arles 155–156 Clement I (Bishop and Pope) 68, 92, 143, 146 Clementine-Dionysian missionary 157–159 Cnut the Great 227–238 coerced translations of Neustrian relics 129–136 collaborative authorship 35 communal authorship 35 Comparative Hagiology collective members 37, 46 construction of hagiography 42 courtly romance 30 “critical” school of historians 145 cross-over among genres 12 cult of Ansbertus 71 cult of a saint 5, 5n7, 77 cult of Elvis Presley 37 cult of Evodius 69 cult of St. Nicasius 63, 68, 68n10, 91, 93, 97 cult of St. Romanus 50, 74–75, 79n1, 82, 84, 91, 104, 111 cult of the holy bishops of Rouen 102–111 Cult of the Saints, The (Brown) 26–27, 76

Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (Stephen) 20 Ethelred II, King 227 European historiography 6, 6n11 evolution of a royalist topos 136–142 exodus of holy bodies 115–124, 132

Delehaye, Hippolyte 5–6, 106 demonic action 202–205 demonic idols 81 derivative genre of hagiography 42n59 Dionysian historiographic production 18 disciplinary lying 45 Divine Plan 17, 82 dominatio (lordship) 212–214 dragon-slaying miracle 75n37 dramatic literary productions 30 Dudo of St. Quentin: androcentrism and 239–243; coerced translations of Neustrian relics 129–136; dux, translation of 209–210; feudalism and 186–187, 206–222; Gesta Normannorum 181–187, 206–224, 239–259; Norman succession narrative 163–180, 193–196; post-assassination crisis narrative 81 dux, translation of 209–210

Gallo-Romans of Neustria 85 genre labels 12–13, 19, 42n59 Gerberga, Queen 244–245, 257 German nationalism 23 Geschichtswissenschaft 23 Gesellschaft (Society) 22–23 Gesta gentis Francorum 18 Gesta Normannorum (Dudo of St. Quentin): feudalism and 181–187, 206–224; women in 239–259 gesta of bishops 12–13 ghettoization of biographies 90, 149 Glory of the Martyrs (Gregory of Tours) 145 Godwine, Earl 236 “graphy” morpheme 39–42 Great Invasions 115 Gregory of Tours 38–39, 68, 144–149, 153–154 grosse Geschichtsschreibung 18 Group of Seven 149

Edward the Confessor 227–238 Emma, Queen 227–229 Encomium Emmae Reginae 227–238 episcopal gesta 12, 19

feudalism: challenges to 29n10; defined 206–208; Dudo of St. Quentin and 186–187, 206–222; juridical theories of 200n60; legal terminology of 208–209; symptoms of 170n26 feudo-vassalic relations 206–208, 210–212, 214–215, 217, 220–221 fidelitas, defined 212–213, 219, 222 Fiefs and Vassals (Reynolds) 187 folkloric mentality 106 foreign policy 79 Forkbeard, Svein 227 Francis of Assisi 44 Francis of Harley 62, 72–73 Franco, Archbishop 196 Franco of Rouen 193 Frankish anti-Viking historiography 126 Frankish Christian values 74 Freculf of Lisieux, Bishop 151 Fulbert of Jumièges 105–110, 204

hagiographa, defined 19–20 hagiographers 8, 21, 27, 41 hagiographical legends 49–56

263

INDEX

hagiographical materials 3, 5n7, 6n10, 9, 37 hagiographical vs. historiographical genre 4n4, 5–7, 19n62 hagiographic romance 30 hagiography: advance of 32; connotations of 145; construction of 42; defined 5–7, 15, 19–21, 34, 44n63; derivative genre of 42n59; development of 90n13; genre and 12–13, 19; ghettoization of biographies 90; introduction to 3–8; medieval hagiography 10n30, 35; nineteenth century 19–24; positivism and 8–12; Romish hagiography/ hagiographists 20; summary of 24–25; twelfth century anachronism 13–19; as useless and misleading 32–39; see also twenty-first century hagiography Hagiography and the Cult of Saints (Head) 27–28 Hagiography Society 28 “hagio” morpheme 43, 43n61 Hariulf of St. Riquier 136 Harold Harefoot, King 232, 234 Hebrew Bible 23, 35, 42, 170–172 Heiric of Auxerre 116 Hilduin of St. Denis 117, 147 historiae, defined 5 Historia Ecclesiastica (Vitalis) 126–127, 239 historiography: androcentric historiography 15; central medieval historiography 8n16; on conversion of Normans 192–196; Dionysian historiographic production 18; European historiography 6, 6n11; Frankish anti-Viking historiography 126; hagiographical vs. historiographical genre 4n4, 5–7, 19n62; politics of 87–101; realistic historiography 15; re-writings/ re-visions as historiographical 8; sacred historiography 39; secular historiography 17; teleological secular-national historiography 17 History of the Norman Conquest (Freeman) 20 History of the Sons of Louis the Pious (Nithard) 116 Holocaust 100–101 Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Bynum) 26–27 Hommes et Cités de Normandie (1965) 86 Hugh of St. Denis 82, 196–202 Huisman, Gerda 184

imperium (sovereignty) 212–213, 222 Ingrannus of Laon 120–121 Israelite settlement of Canaan 170 Ivory Book of the Cathedral of Rouen 58 Jesus 31, 91–92, 97–98, 108, 143 John of Avranches 59 John of St. Ouen 124 juridical canonization 16 Lanzoni, Jesuit 24 Latin Christianity 77 laudatio parentum 13 Legenda Aurea (de Voragine) 55 Légende Dorée 54–55 Le mythe viking dans les lettres françaises (Boyer) 179 L’Histoire de Normandie (Licquet) 85 lieux de mémoire (collective memory spaces) 37 liturgical Rogations 49–50 livret 55–56 Longsword, William 79–83, 110, 134, 175, 197–198, 204, 241, 244–257 Louis IV, King 81, 244, 250 Louis the Pious 116–117, 194, 241 Lugdunensis Secunda 146 Madonna of 115th Street (Orsi) 26–27 Margaret of Antioch 64 marginal lectiones 64 martyr/martyrology 68, 72, 115–116 Maurilius, Archbishop 74 Maurist reform (1660) 66 Medieval Europeanists 36 medieval hagiography 10n30, 35 metrical verse biographies 7–8 migration of Neustrian relics in Viking Age: coerced translations of 129–136; evolution of a royalist topos 136–142; introduction to 125–128 monastic independence movement 75 Monumenta Germaniae Historica (von Stein) 22–23, 105 multi-disciplinary study of war 46 National Library of Groningen 184 Nazism 100–101 neo-positivist prejudices 11 Neustrian monasticism 84 Neustrian relics migration see migration of Neustrian relics in Viking Age New Testament 35

264

INDEX

Nicholas of Normandy 59 Nicholas of St. Ouen 75–76 nineteenth century hagiographical texts 19–24 Normandy: bishops in Carolingian Normandy 196–202; Conquest of Neustria 138–139; ducal house women 246–255; Viking Normandy 181–187; see also Carolingian Normandy; Gesta Normannorum Normans and Their Myth, The (Davis) 170 Norman succession (996) 163–180 Odilo of St. Medard 102–103, 118–121 Odo I of Blois-Chartres 169 oral traditions 105–110 out-of-body experiences 74 pagans/paganism 81, 104, 109, 176, 194, 203–205, 247–248 Paris BN lat. 5565 codex 64–66 parochial patrons 77 Patroclus of Arles, Bishop 156 patronus ecclesiae 78 patronus loci 78 per circulum anni 64 Philip Augustus, King 52, 152 plausible inventions 243–244 Poppa of Bayeux 247 positivism 8–12 post-assassination crisis narrative 81 Praetextatus 72 Predatory Kinship (Searle) 258 Premonstratensians 69 prestige factor 144 “Privilege of St. Romanus” 49–56 prophetic interpretations 109–111 provincial independence 49–56 public opinion concept 232 quasi-hagiographical biography 18, 34 Quirinus 92, 94–99 Qu’ran 35 Ragnar Longneck 244 realistic historiography 15 regna (realms) 212–213 relic translations 115–124 religion, acceptance of 31 religion-like way 41, 45 remembrance of things 12–13 rémois / soissonais agglomeration 169 renovatio periods 141, 171

re-writings/re-visions as historiographical 8 Richard I, Duke 93, 163–181, 189, 193, 197–202, 241, 244–249, 258–259 Richard II, Duke 163–180, 182, 200–201, 223–224, 240 Richard of St. Medard 52–53 Richer of Reims 192, 195, 201, 239 Robert of Rouen 74–75, 99 Robert of Torigny 11, 131 Robert the Pious 18, 168 Robert the Strong 175n40, 195 Rogation Days 49–50 Rollo (Viking ruler of Normandy) 163–180, 189, 193–195, 212–222, 246–257 Roman curia 16 Romish hagiography/hagiographists 20 Rotman, Tamar 38–39 Rouen: archiepiscopal sanctity in Rouennais traditions 62, 67–78; bishops in eleventh-century Rouen 87–101; coinage of 190–191; cult of the holy bishops 102–111; exodus of holy bodies from 115–124, 132; Ivory Book of the Cathedral of Rouen 58; St. Ouen of Rouen 65, 68, 74, 87–101; traditions of archiepiscopal sanctity 62, 67–78 sacred historiography 39 sanctification 16, 73 secular historiography 17 self-identified hagiographic scholarship 44–45 seruitium, defined 212–213, 215–217, 219, 222 Soissons monastery 115–124 Spirit of Historical Truth 10 St. Ansbertus 67, 73 St. Audoenus 67, 71, 73, 75, 77, 85, 88–99, 124, 129–130 St. Denis abbey 17–18 St. Dionysius 68, 147 St. Evodius 67, 69, 73–74 St. Exuperius 150–153, 157–159 St. Filibertus of Jumièges 141–142 St. Gildardus 65, 67, 70, 73, 76, 102–103, 115–124, 132–133 St. Hugo 67, 70–73 St. Mallonus 67, 69, 69n13, 73 St. Medardus 70, 75, 103, 120, 132 St. Nicasius 62–65, 67–68, 75n37, 88–99, 123 St. Ouen of Rouen 65, 68, 74, 87–101

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St. Pientia 63 St. Quentin 182–183, 224 St. Regnobertus 146, 150–153, 157–159 St. Remacle of Malmédy 94–96, 94–97, 94n26, 96n32 St. Remigius 61–62, 61n16, 72–73, 103, 132–133 St. Romanus 67, 75–76, 79–86, 88–89, 103, 104–111, 132–133 St. Spire of Corbeil 157–159 St. Vaast of Arras 137–138 St. Victricius 72, 73 St. Wandrille de Fontenelle 65, 88–89, 135 Suger (1122–1151) 17, 18 teleological secular-national historiography 17 Ten Books of Histories (Gregory of Tours) 145–147, 154 Theobald of Chartres 177 Theoderic, monk of St. Ouen 57–58 Thomas of Cantimpré 35 topoi of sanctity 67 translatio Audoeni 130 translatio Gildardi 115–124 troisième race history 18 Trophimus, Bishop 155–156 twelfth century hagiographical texts 13–19 twenty-first century hagiography: remembering twentieth century 26–32; stumbling blocks in 39–46; as useless and misleading 32–39 Übermensch, Nordic 179

vernacular literary depictions of suffering 30 verse biographies 7–8 Vetera Analecta (Mabillon) 57 Viking Age migration of relics see migration of Neustrian relics in Viking Age Viking Normandy 181–187 Vikings: exaggerated image in literature 179; independence of 81, 84–85; influence on Carolingian Empire 189–192; raids by 69, 73, 96, 118, 123–124; relics stolen from 127, 131; salvation of 108, 111 Virgil 24, 170–171, 227, 241 Vita Aichardi 204 Vita Gildardi 119, 122 Vita Laudi 199 Vita Lebuini 121 Vitalis, Orderic 82, 126–127, 137, 239 Vita Mildredi 236 Vita Regnoberti 146 Vita Romani 83, 109–110, 199, 204 von der Vogelweide, Walther 90 vox populi 78 William Bona Anima of Caen 59, 75–76 William of Malmesbury 74 William of Poitiers 9 witch burnings 12–13 women: androcentric accent of 257–277; in Gesta Normannorum 239–259; in Norman ducal house 246–255; political power and 201; as rescuers 244–246; in Rollo’s Normandy 255–257

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