Chapter 4 - The Sum of the Parts: Motivations, Visibility, Messaging, and Final Assessment

Summary

THE READING OF the Heribert Shrine presented above is not intended to deny the validity of other readings of the shrine. Rather, it hopes to demonstrate how richly meaningful and multilayered its images can be even when aimed at different groups of viewers. As Cynthia Hahn has observed, “The aim of hagiography was not to be found in any creation of the hagiographer, pictorial or textual, but in inducing a movement beyond words and images—in creating an effect on the soul.”

Motivations for and Financial Feasibility of the Shrine's Creation

As for its construction, one concedes that from the point of view of its creators the shrine was primarily a worthy receptacle of and tribute to the saint who lies within it that would serve as a vehicle of edification for those who viewed it. On the other hand, the consequences of its production could also serve other less spiritual ends. For example, the rivalry that existed among pilgrimage sites could also lead to oneupmanship in the competition for renown. Certainly the arrival of the relics of the Three Kings in Cologne in 1164 provided an opportunity for a “pre-emptive strike” on the abbey's part since the shrine by Nicholas of Verdun that houses their relics was not begun until the 1180s and not completed until about 1230. Given the view of Paul Strait that “No single act of religious devotion in the history of medieval Cologne was as magnificent as this delivery of stolen relics,” their arrival and consequent popularity might well have stimulated the Abbey of Deutz to consider enhancing the shrine of its founder with scenes corroborating Heribert's saintly life, a plausible inference since the creation of the Heribert Shrine's medallions coincides with the time period after the arrival of the relics of the Magi and before the beginning of the shrine that houses them. It is also plausible, as Susanne Wittekind notes, that the shrine served as a justification and defence of the Benedictine cloister of Deutz in the face of two new rising monastic orders, especially the Cistercians, who were supported by Cologne's archbishop Rainald of Dassel, and the Premonstratensians. In addition, shrines of gold and precious gems were a means of attracting pilgrims to a site and thus became a moneymaking proposition.