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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2025
In 1120 Notre Dame of Paris received a fragment of the True Cross from a former canon, Ansel, who had joined the First Crusade and become cantor of the Holy Sepulchre. The history of the relic was sought out, documented, inserted into the liturgy and in time revised according to political and cultural developments. This article reconstructs the story of the relic's arrival in Paris, and the way in which, through the successive narratives attached to it, it slowly gained and grew in meaning, giving definition to the Church of Paris and ultimately to the kingdom of France.
BNF = Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Charleville BM = Médiathèque Voyelles, Charleville-Mézieres; BSG = Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris; KBR = Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Brussels; PL = Patrologia Latina
Earlier versions of this argument were presented in Cécile Caby's seminar at the Sorbonne in 2022 and at the Medieval History Workshop at Harvard in 2023. I thank Sean Field and Christopher MacEvitt for reading drafts of this article. I am deeply indebted to Marc Smith for invaluable help with dating relevant manuscripts below. I further extend my thanks to this Journal's reviewer.
1 By ‘space’ I mean the abstracted, ambiguous, and ever permeable idea of a territorial expanse or area, often a spatial imaginary, in this case the expanse that constituted the notion of ‘Christendom’ in the medieval period. By ‘place’ I intend to evoke something more akin to a dot within that spatial imaginary understood in relationship to other ‘dots’ (places) on the map. In this case, the ‘place’ was understood, variably, as ‘the cathedral of Notre Dame’, as ‘Paris’ and as ‘the kingdom of France’. These ideas have been often theorised. See first Henri Lefebvre, The production of space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford 1991. See also Yi-fu Tuan, Space and place: the perspective of experience, Minneapolis, Mn 1977, and Doreen Massey, For space, London 2005. These frameworks, as they are related to the medieval world, are discussed fruitfully in Boulton's introduction to Meg Boulton, Jane Hawkes and Heidi Stoner (eds), Place and space in the medieval world, New York–Oxford 2018, pp. xv–xxv.
2 Paulinus of Nola, Epistolae, ed. Wilhelm Hartel, Vienna–Prague–Leipzig 1894, ep. xxxi.6, p. 274; Robin Margaret Jensen, The cross: history, art, and controversy, Cambridge, Ma 2017, 49.
3 Cara Aspesi suggests that it was quickly after 1099: ‘The contribution of the cantors of the Holy Sepulchre to crusade history and Frankish identity’, in Margot Fassler and Katie Bugyis (eds), Music, liturgy, and the shaping of history (800–1500), Woodbridge 2017, 278–96.
4 Rubrics vary. Calendars often call it the feast ‘de susceptione sancte crucis in ecclesia parisiensis’ (as in BNF, ms Latin 1052, fo. 4v; see also BNF, ms Latin 1026, fo. 4v). Common also was the ‘festum in ecclesia beate marie parisiensis de susceptione sancte crucis’, as for instance in BNF, ms Latin 10482. It can also just be the feast ‘de cruce in ecclesia parisiensi’ (as in Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris, ms 203, fo. 4v), or other variants. The rubric in the sanctorale often specifies Notre Dame specifically, as in ‘Sciendum est quod prima dominica augusti faciendum est duplex festum in ecclesia beate marie parisiensis de susceptione sanctis crucis’: BNF, ms Latin 1026, fo. 223v. At the Sainte-Chapelle, the rubric read ‘In festo sancte crucis quod celebratur prima die dominica augusti’: KBR, ms IV.472, fo. 128v.
5 Included in Breviarium Parisiense, illustrissimi & reverendissimi in Christo Patris D. D. Caroli-Gaspar-Guillelmi de Vintimille, ex comitibus Massiliæ du Luc, Parisiensis archiepiscopi … ac venerabilis ejusdem ecclesiæ capituli consensu editum: pars aestiva, Paris 1736, 458, and others.
6 Jannic Durand and others, Le Trésor de Notre-Dame de Paris: des origines à Viollet-le-Duc, Paris 2023, 56, 64–6 (cat. no. 16). The relic remained at Notre Dame until 1793. Parts of it were returned to Notre Dame in 1803. See Ambroise Guillois, Explication historique, dogmatique, morale, liturgique et canonique du catéchisme, Paris 1864, 167.
7 BNF, ms Latin 93, fo. 261v. ‘De ligno sanctae crucis’ appears at the head of a list with seventy-eight entries, some of which list multiple relics. I thank Julia M. H. Smith for sharing with me her forthcoming work on this relic list: ‘Relics and the politics of empire: Hilduin of Saint-Denis and his crypt, 825–34’, EHR (forthcoming). Like most such lists, the Saint-Denis relic list begins with Dominical relics and then proceeds with Apostolic relics, Roman relics and then local relics. On relic lists and their logic see Philippe Cordez, ‘Gestion et médiation des collections de reliques au Moyen Age: le témoignage des authentiques et des inventaires’, in Jean-Luc Deuffic (ed.), Reliques et sainteté dans l'espace médiéval, Saint-Denis 2006, 33–63, esp. pp. 47-9. Other such lists for Paris churches are somewhat later in date, but probably reflect early collection practices or claims. See, for instance (for Saint-Magloire, dating to c. 1138), Jean-Luc Deuffic, ‘L'Exode des corps saints hors de Bretagne (viie–xiie): des reliques au culte liturgique’, in Reliques et sainteté dans l'espace médiéval, Saint-Denis 2005, 371. A thirteenth-century relic list for Saint Victor survives in BNF, ms Latin 14673, fo. 56r–v, which includes ‘de ligno crucis’ although not in first place.
8 The claim to this relic was made in the famous Descriptio qualiter, a text composed probably sometime between the mid-eleventh century and the second quarter of the twelfth century. Its Latin text has been published three times, representing three different manuscript recensions: Federica Monteleone, L'anonimo di Saint-Denis: una fortunata storia di reliquie, Bari 2012; Gerhard Rauschen and Hugo Loersch, Die Legende Karls des Großen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1890; and Ferdinand Castets, ‘Iter Hierosolymitanum ou voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople: texte Latin d'après le ms. de Montpellier’, Revue des langues romanes xxxvi (4th ser. iv) (1892), 468: ‘spineam coronam et unum de clavis Domini qui in carne eius infixus fuerat et de ligno crucis et alia quedam sancta sanctorum ad ecclesiam ter beatissimi Dyonisii martyris devote attulit’. The scholarship is reviewed in Jerzy Pysiak, The king and the crown of thorns: kingship and the cult of relics in Capetian France, trans. Sylwia Twardo, Berlin 2021, 21–36.
9 A cross relic is probably attested at Saint-Germain-des-Prés by Abbo of Saint-Germain's Bella parisiacae urbis (c. 900), in the account of Paris's resistance to the Viking siege of 885–7: Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Viking attacks on Paris: the Bella parisiacae urbis of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, trans. Nirmal Dass, Paris 2007, ii. 308–9. It is not entirely certain whether this episode indicates a cross relic, or simply a ceremonial or liturgical cross, but it is generally thought to indicate the first. If Abbo was speaking of a relic, it may perhaps date to the foundation of the abbey by Childebert i in the sixth century, which was originally dedicated to ‘Saint Vincent and the Holy Cross’. An eighth-century hagiographical source refers to a golden cross and an eleventh-century source stated that Childebert had brought a golden cross encircled with previous gems: Didier Busson, Paris, Paris 1998, 349–50. This may be the golden cross that the Provost of Paris wanted to purloin around the year 1080, although the story does not make it clear whether this was a reliquary cross or not. For this episode see Michel Félibien and Guy Alexis Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Paris 1725, i. 133.
10 Jean Lebeuf, Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocèse de Paris, Paris 1883–93, iii. 384–5; Anatole Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix: recherches sur le développement d'une culte, Paris 1961, 34–5.
11 Jörg Oberste, The birth of the metropolis: urban spaces and social life in medieval Paris, Leiden 2021, 30–41.
12 ‘Necessarily’ because altars required relics, and relics were involved in the consecration of churches. On these questions see Nicole Hermann-Mascard, Les Reliques des saints: formation coutumiere d'un droit, Paris 1975, 162–8.
13 Léopold Delisle, ‘Notice sur un sacramentaire de l'église de Paris’, Mémoires de la Société imperiale des antiquaires de France ser. iii/3 (1857), 165–71; Durand and others, Le Trésor de Notre-Dame, 58 (with further bibliography).
14 Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson (eds), The origins of feasts, fasts, and seasons in early Christianity, London 2011, 70–1 (the chapter on the Triduum); Paul F. Bradshaw, Egeria, journey to the holy land, Turnhout 2021, 80–1.
15 Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix, 56–64; Louis van Tongeren, ‘The cult of the cross in late antiquity and the Middle Ages: a concise survey of its origins and development’, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana xxxviii (2010), 59–75 at p. 65.
16 For the readings (lections) as practised in Paris, I have consulted BNF, ms Latin 15181, fos 286r–289v, which draws material from Lamentations ii.13–18 (lections 1–3); Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, LXI–LXX (lections 4–6) and Hebrews iv.11–v.1 (lections 7–9). On the veneration of a relic of the True Cross see Tongeren, ‘The cult of the cross’, 59–75 at p. 66. Since the fourth century in Jerusalem, and the seventh century in Rome, the Good Friday liturgy involved the veneration of a relic of the True Cross, a practice that was adopted in northern Europe: Louis van Tongeren, ‘Imagining the cross on Good Friday: rubric, ritual and relic in early medieval Roman, Gallican and Hispanic liturgical traditions’, in Juliet Mullins, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh and Richard Hawtree (eds), Envisioning Christ on the cross:Ireland and the early medieval West, Dublin 2013, 34–51.
17 On the origins of the feast of the Inventio crucis in Frankish areas see Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix, 164. More recently, with a review of the debate, see Stephan Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius learns humility: two early Latin accounts composed for the celebration of exaltatio crucis’, in Millennium: Jahrbuch zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr./Yearbook on the culture and history of the first millennium C.E., Berlin 2009, 152 n. 24. On the origins of the feast of the Exaltatio crucis, first in Rome and then from Rome to the Frankish lands see Louis van Tongeren, Exaltation of the cross: toward the origins of the feast of the cross and the meaning of the cross in early medieval liturgy, Leuven 2000. This has an extremely helpful summary of conclusions at pp. 275–84.
18 Craig M. Wright, Music and ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550, Cambridge 1989, 67. Use of both feasts is widely documented in Francia. Tracing the liturgy specifically for Paris before 1200 has long been stymied by a surprising absence of liturgical sources, the conundrum of which was addressed in David Hughes, ‘Parisian calendars of the later Middle Ages’, in Bryan Gillingham and Paul Merkley (eds), Chant and its peripheries: essays in honor of Terence Bailey, Ottawa 1998, 277–309. Hughes proposed that earlier volumes may have been ‘driven out’ by a liturgical reform or reorganisation of the liturgy around 1200. Our earliest calendars for the Paris secular church (and not its storied monasteries) include both the 3 May (Inventio crucis) and the 14 September (Exaltatio crucis) feasts, for which see Norman Smith, ‘The Parisian sanctorale, ca. 1225’, in Thomas Drescher (ed.), Capella antiqua München, Tutzing 1988, 251, 55, 59, 60. On occasion, earlier recensions or usages survive in later copies in non-elite volumes or working volumes, such as with the examples discussed below with BSG, ms 2618 and Charleville BM, ms 86.
19 BNF, ms Latin 2294, fos 84v, 32r (the foliation is not sequential). The sacramentary includes a further series of standard ‘benedictiones sanctae crucis’ at fos 83v–84v. On this manuscript see Delisle, ‘Notice sur un sacramentaire’, 165–71.
20 Our evidence for the text used in the office in the Paris Church starts only in the thirteenth century. See, for instance, Bibliothèque de l'Université, Paris (= Sorbonne), ms 1220 (breviary), fos 367r–369v, drawing from BHL 4169 (Inventio), and fos 484r–479v, drawing from BHL 4178 (Exaltatio), and Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, ms 397, fos 92v–93v (a thirteenth-century Paris lectionary). The two texts circulated widely before 1100, as can be traced through the Légendiers Latin site at <https://legendiers-latins.irht.cnrs.fr/>. Evidence that BHL 4169 (Inventio crucis) was known in the Paris area in the eleventh century can be found in Bibliothèque Mazarine, ms 1711, fos 387v–398v, a hagiographical collection belonging to Saint-Denis. For BHL 4178 (Exaltatio crucis) see BNF, ms Latin 16820, fos 18v–21v, 160v–164r (a twelfth–century legendary from Saint-Denis), and BNF, ms Latin 11754, fos 72v–75v (early thirteenth-century legendary from Saint-Germain-des-Prés).
21 On liturgical historia see Ritva Jonsson, Historia: études sur la genèse des offices versifiés, Stockholm 1968. See also now David Hiley (ed.), ‘Historiae’: liturgical chant for offices of the saints in the Middle Ages, Venice 2021.
22 BHL 4169. The full text can be found easily in Boninus Mombritius, Sanctuarium, seu vitae sanctorum, Paris 1910, i. 376–9. The Sanctuarium was originally published in Milan in 1477, and represents the basic medieval textual tradition. For translation from one tenth-century (Spanish) exemplar see E. Gordon Whatley, ‘Constantine the Great, the Empress Helena, and the relics of the holy cross’, in Thomas Head (ed.), Medieval hagiography: an anthology, New York 2000, 77–95, starting at p. 86, from which I take the translations that follow.
23 Whatley, ‘Constantine the Great’, 79. According to Légendiers latins <https://legendiers-latins.irht.cnrs.fr/8865> the earliest attestation of BHL 4169 dates to 701-800, and is Cod. Guelf. 404.3 Novi (13). The standard history of the development and transmission of this narrative to the West is found in Stephan Borgehammar, How the holy cross was found: from event to medieval legend with an appendix of texts, Stockholm 1991. See importantly also Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: the mother of Constantine the Great and the legend of her finding of the True Cross, Leiden 1992, 179–80. Also useful is Barbara Baert, A heritage of holy wood: the legend of the True Cross in text and image, Leiden 2004.
24 The text is drawn from BHL 4178. Borgehammar (‘Heraclius learns humility’, 145–202), reedited and translated at pp. 180–91. On the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross more generally, see Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross. The full text can also be found in Mombritius, Sanctuarium, i. 379–81.
25 Anatole Frolow, ‘La Vraie Croix et les expéditions d'Héraclius en Perse’, Revue des Études Byzantines xi (1953), 88–105; Sara Mashayekh, ‘Khosrow in Jerusalem: Sasanians, Romans, and the removal of the True Cross’, e-Sasanika xviii (2017), 1–11.
26 Some scholars associate the feast of the encaenia in Jerusalem (to which Egeria was witness) with the feast of the Exaltatio crucis in Byzantium, since the Armenian lectionary includes a cross feast on 14 September. Others see the origin of the feast of the Exaltatio crucis in Byzantium in the seventh century. See Holger Klein, ‘Niketas und das Wahre Kreuz: kritische Anmerkungen zur Uberlieferung des Chronicon Paschale ad annum 614’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift xciv (2001), 580–7, and ‘Constantine, Helena, and the cult of the true cross in Constantinople’, in Jannic Durand and Bernard Flusin (eds), Byzance et les reliques du Christ, Paris 2004, 31–59; and Tongeren, ‘The cult of the cross’, 62.
27 Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius learns humility’, 148.
28 ‘Regina voti compos effecta salutare lignum seccari per medium fecit: ut dimidiam Crucem Constantinopolim deferret ad filium: et aliam Hierosolymis thecis argenteis conditam reseruaret’: Mombritius, Sanctuarium, i. 379. I take translations from Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius learns humility’, 180–1.
29 ‘Multorum itaque temporum labente curriculo … ligni salutaris partem, quam religiosa regina ibi in testimonium uirtutis reliquerat’: Mombritius, Sanctuarium, i. 379–80; Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius learns humility’, 180–3.
30 The two letters are Archives Nationales, Paris, K//21/A, n° 1/6 and n° 1/7. Cuno of Praeneste's confirmation of the new feast is K//21/A, n° 1/8. These have been newly edited by the Telma project (Chartes originales antérieures à 1121 conservées en France, for which the landing page is <http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr/outils/originaux/> [accessed 29 November 2023]), bearing the respective reference numbers of 2162, 2167 and 2164. The letters have been printed many times before this: PL cxcii.729–32; Gérard DuBois, Historia ecclesiae parisiensis, Paris 1690, ii. 16–18; Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa: qua series et historia archiepiscoporum, episcoporum, et abbatum Franciae vicinarumque ditionum ab origine ecclesiarum ad nostra tempora deducitur, & probatur ex authenticis instrumentis ad calcem appositis, Paris 1715, vii, instrumentum 44; and (along with Cuno of Praeneste's privilege) in Miriam Rita Tessera, ‘La croce del legato: Conone di Preneste, il papato e i riflessi della missione in Oriente’, in Maira Pia Alberzoni and Pascal Montaubin (eds), Legati, delegati e l'impresa d'Oltremare (secoli XII–XIII): atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Milano, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 9–11 marzo 2011, Leiden 2014, 139–60. The two letters are translated in Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, Letters from the East: crusaders, pilgrims and settlers in the 12th–13th centuries, Farnham–Burlington, Vt 2010, 39–42. The accepted redating of Ansel's two letters to 1120 and 1121 is in Geneviève Bautier, ‘L'Envoi de la relique de vraie croix à Notre-Dame de Paris en 1120’, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes cxxix (1971), 387–8, with sources listed at p. 88 n. 1. Images of all three documents are reproduced in Durand and others, Le Trésor de Notre-Dame, 59–61, catalogue numbers 11–13. Cuno of Praeneste's confirmation does not bear a date, but for its probable date and place of issue see Tessera, ‘La croce del legato’, 159–60.
31 Aspesi, ‘The contribution of the cantors’, 278–96 at p. 80.
32 Heribert Meurer, ‘Zu den Staurotheken der Kreuzfahrer’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte xlviii (1985), 65–76 at p. 66.
33 Nikolas Jaspert, ‘The True Cross of Jerusalem in the Latin West: Mediterranean connections and institutional agency’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (eds), Visual constructs of Jerusalem, Turnhout 2014, 207–22 at p. 218.
34 As in n. 58 below.
35 This is reported by the liturgy discussed below (earlier version, lection 2). On Ansel's emotional ties to Notre Dame of Paris, and his effort to establish confraternal association between it and the Holy Sepulchre, see Micol Long, ‘Memory and materiality in the letters and gifts sent by Ansellus “de Turre” from Jerusalem to Paris, ca 1120’, Reti Medievali Rivista xxiv (2023), 77–96.
36 Jean Lebeuf argued for a town called Fontenay-sur-Louvre (today Fontenay-en-Parisis). The true identity of this town as ‘Fontenay sur Louvres and Parisis’ and not ‘Fontenay sous Bagenux’ is the primary concern for Lebeuf in a chapter entitled ‘Dissertation sur le Fontenay du diocèse de Paris, où plus probablement arriva l'an 1109 la Ste Croix envoyée de Ierusalem’. See Jean Lebeuf, Dissertations sur l'histoire ecclesiastique et civile de Paris, suivies de plusieurs eclaircissemens sur l'histoire de France, Paris 1739, pp. i–xxviii.
37 Margot Fassler, ‘Who was Adam of St Victor? The evidence of the sequence manuscripts’, Journal of the American Musicological Society xxxvii (1984), 233–69, and Gothic song: Victorine sequences and Augustinian reform in twelfth-century Paris, Cambridge 1993, 64–72.
38 Zurab Avalishvili, ‘The cross from overseas’, Georgica: A Journal of Georgian and Caucasian Studies i (1936), 3–11. On the possibilities for the identity of the Georgian queen see Miriam Rita Tessera, ‘Le donne e la traslazione delle reliquie di Oltremare in Occidente nel secolo xii’, Reti Medievali Rivista xxi (2020), 105–45 at p. 113.
39 Jean Richard, ‘Quelsque Textes sur les premiers temps de l'église latine de Jérusalem’, in Recueil de travaux offert à M. Clovis Brunel, Paris 1955, 420–30 at pp. 23–6; Johannes Pahlitzsch, ‘Georgians and Greeks in Jerusalem (1099–1310)’, in Krijnie N. Ciggaar, Adelbert Davids and Herman G. B. Teule (eds), East and West in the Crusader states: context, contacts, confrontations: acta of the congress held at Hemen Castle in September 2000, Leuven 2003, 35–51 at pp. 35–7.
40 Nonas Augusti (=4 August). ‘Obit Ansellus precentor ierosolimitanus, qui dedit nobis pretiosissimam partem dominici crucis, cuius anniversarium debet fieri prima dominica augusti, quam in honore eiusdem crucis tunc ad nos transmississe sollempniter celebramus’: BNF, ms Latin 5185CC, fo. 254v. The manuscript dates to the end of the thirteenth century. See Charlotte Denoël, ‘Le Fonds des manuscrits latins de Notre-Dame de Paris à la Bibliothèque nationale de France’, Scriptorium lviii (2004), 131–73 at p. 135. The text is printed in Benjamin Guérard (ed.), Cartulaire de l'église Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris 1850, iv.126.
41 Wright, Music and ceremony, 275–6. The use of Laudes crucis can be traced in all extant Paris missals containing the feast. See, for example, BNF, ms Latin BM 1112, fo. 184v; BNF, ms Latin 9441, fo. 163v; BNF, ms Latin 8885, fo. 439v; BSG, ms 97, fo. 222v. For the text of Lauda crucis see Guido Maria Dreves and Clemens Blume (eds), Analecta hymnica medii aevi, Leipzig 1886–1925, repr. New York 1961, liv.189–90. The sequence makes no mention or nod to the reception or the relic itself, but its themes are resonant with the Exaltation feast, which, in any event, served as the base formulary for the feast: Fassler, Gothic song, 64–72. The attribution to Adam of Saint Victor is not universally accepted. Nicholas Weisbein argued in 1947 that Laudes crucis Attolamus was written by the Latin poet Hughes Primat: ‘Le «Laudes crucis attollamus» de Maître Hugues d'Orléans dit le Primat’, Revue du moyen âge Latin iii (1947), 5–26.
42 Tessera, ‘La croce del legato’, 139–60.
43 ‘Legitur in evangelio multa quidem et alia signa fecisse Jhesum in conspectu discipulorum suorum, que non sunt scripta in libro hoc, et vos multa legistis, sed non omnia. Multa enim habent Greci quȩ non habent Latini’: appendix I, Ansel's letters: from <http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr/outils/originaux/charte2167/>, lines 2–3.
44 See n. 24 above.
45 ‘quatenus si una eis pars ad comburendum auferretur, tali modo aliae partes reservarentur’: appendix I, Ansel's letter: from <http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr/outils/originaux/charte2167/>, line 8.
46 Barber and Bate, Letters from the East, 41–2.
47 For the relationship between Christian communities in Jerusalem after the conquest of Jerusalem see Christopher MacEvitt, The crusades and the Christian world of the East: rough tolerance, Philadelphia, Pa 2008.
48 On this point see further Julia M. H. Smith, ‘Eleventh-century relic collections and the Holy Land’, in Renana Bartal, Neta B. Bodner and Bianca Kühnel (eds), Natural materials of the Holy Land and the visual translation of place, 500–1500, London 2017, 19–35, and Anne Lester, ‘The tasks of the translators: relics and communications between Constantinople and northern France in the aftermath of 1204’, in Laura Morreale and Nicholas Paul (eds), The French of Outremer: communities and communications in the crusading Mediterranean, New York 2018, 179–200.
49 Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix, 68–72. See also Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders: 1095–1131, Cambridge 1997, 144–5, 81–2; Nicholas Paul, To follow in their footsteps: the crusades and family memory in the high Middle Ages, Ithaca, NY 2012, 90–133; and Benjamin Z. Kedar, Inventive Jerusalem, Ithaca, NY 2025, 84–92.
50 Much literature engages this point, for example Giles Constable, ‘Jerusalem and the sign of the cross (with particular reference to the cross of pilgrimage and crusading in the twelfth century)’, in Lee I. Levine (ed.), Jerusalem: its sanctity and centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, New York 1999, 371–81, and ‘The cross of the crusaders’, in Crusaders and crusading the twelfth century, Farnham 2008, 45–91.
51 Jaspert, ‘The True Cross of Jerusalem’, 207–22.
52 Holger A. Klein, Byzanz, der Westen und das ‘wahre’ Kreuz: die Geschichte einer Reliquie und ihrer künstlerischen Fassung in Byzanz und im Abendland, Wiesbaden 2004, 193 (for Ansel) and ‘Eastern objects and western desires: relics and reliquaries between Byzantium and the West’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers lviii (2004), 283–314. This is of course before the Islamic conquest of the seventh century. Between the fourth century and the period of Islamicate control of the region, as amply attested in late antique sources, a robust circulation of fragments of the True Cross emanated from Jerusalem itself. See n. 15 above.
53 ‘cum ceteris christi comilitonibus ad liberationem ierusalem perrexit; qui capta urbe et a sordibus ydolatrie, per dei misericordiam liberate’: appendix I, recension 1 (lection i)/recension 2 (lection ii).
54 ‘Quesistis qua ratione, qua necessitate portio ista de dominica cruce assumpta fuerit’ (line 1): appendix I, Ansel's second letter.
55 Guibert of Nogent, Monodies, and, On the relics of saints: the autobiography and a manifesto of a French monk from the time of the crusades, trans. Joseph McAlhany and Jay Rubenstein, New York 2011, pp. vii, xxxix. Rubenstein and McAlhany date the treatise to 1119 or c. 1120.
56 François Dolbeau, ‘Une Version inédite du miracle des ardents (BHL 3345)’, Journal des savants (1983), 151–67 at p. 164.
57 Gustave Fagniez, ‘Inventaires du trésor de Notre-Dame de Paris’, Revue Archéologique n.s. xxvii, xxviii (1874), 399; Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix, 311 (no. 298). The adoration of the cross (in a cross relic) was a standard feature of the Good Friday liturgy in the Frankish/Gallican rite. This of course naturally depended on the availability of such a relic. On this practice see Tongeren, ‘Imagining the cross’, 42–4.
58 On the group of reliquary crosses made in Jerusalem in the second quarter of the twelfth century, probably in the workshop of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, see Meurer, ‘Zu den Staurotheken der Kreuzfahrer’, and ‘Kreuzreliquiare aus Jerusalem’, Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Württemberg xiii (1976), 65–76, 7–17; Bianca Kühnel, Crusader art of the twelfth century: a geographical, an historical, or an art historical notion?, Berlin 1994, 125–53; Jaroslav Folda, The art of the crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187, Cambridge 1995, 83 (for this relic), 97–100, 293–4 (for cross reliquaries from the workshops in Jerusalem); Antonio Cadei, ‘Gli ordini di terrasanta e il culto per la vera croce e il sepolcro di cristo in Europa nel xii secolo’, Arte medievale ii (2002), 51–70. The fine example of a double-armed reliquary cross, now held at the Louvre (Musée du Louvre, Départment des Objets d'Art, no. OA 3665), was probably initially sent to an Italian location, where it was further encased in a western-style frame, bearing both Greek and Latin inscriptions. On this cross see Meurer, ‘Zu den Staurotheken der Kreuzfahrer’, 70, and Folda, The art of the crusaders, 293. The comparison has recently been made in Durand and others, Le Trésor de Notre-Dame, 56.
59 Fagniez, ‘Inventaires du trésor’, 252, 399; ‘sanctuarium sancte crucis’ (dating to 1213): Guérard, Cartulaire, i. 93. Sanctuarium is a capacious enough term that it could refer to either relic, reliquary, oratory or church, so here could either refer to the container or the place in the church where it was stored.
60 Fagniez, ‘Inventaires du trésor’, 252, 399.
61 Anne Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Les Foires de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis: revue des données et révision des opinions admises’, Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes cxlv (1987), 286–8, 306–7; Antoine Jean Victor Leroux de Lincy and Lazare Maurice Tisserand, Paris et ses historiens aux 14e et 15e siècles: documents et écrits originaux recueillis et commentés, Paris 1867, 262–3. For the altar's placement see Wright, Music and ceremony, 99.
62 See note 41 above for the mass. The earliest surviving Paris breviaries that include the feast simply direct the reader to the liturgy for the Exaltation of the Cross. Several early thirteenth-century volumes testify to this layer of the practice. Bibliothèque de l'Université (= Sorbonne), ms 1220, fo. 427v, includes instructions (‘Sciendum est quod semper in prima dominica augusti faciendum est dupplex in ecclesiae Parisiensi de susceptione sancte crucis, sicut infra in festo Exaltationis scriptum est’) and no proper texts. The same is true of Houghton Library, Harvard, ms Riant 9, fo. 117v (‘Sciendum est quod in prima dominica augusti faciendum est festum duplex in ecclesia parisiensi de susceptione sancte crucis; fallit tamen quandoque sicut notatum est in kalendario In susceptione sancte crucis quere totum preter legendam in exaltatione sancte crucis’). Earlier volumes title the feast simply the ‘de susceptione sancte crucis [or †]’ as in BNF, ms Latin 1112, fo. 184v, a missal dating to c. 1225. Note that the feast is not found in BNF, ms Latin 748, which, according to Rebecca Baltzer, is the oldest surviving breviary for Notre Dame of Paris, dating probably from the first decade of the thirteenth century: ‘The sources and the sanctorale: dating by the decade in thirteenth-century Paris’, in Benjamin Brand and David J. Rothenberg (eds), Music and culture in the Middle Ages and beyond: liturgy, sources, symbolism, Cambridge 2016, 111–44 at pp. 131, 133.
63 Gustav Kühnel, ‘Heracles and the crusaders: tracing the path of a royal motif’, in Daniel Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (eds), France and the Holy Land: Frankish culture at the end of the crusades, Baltimore, Md 2004, 63–76; Guilherme Queiroz de Souza, ‘Heraclius, emperor of Byzantium’, Revista Digital de Iconografía Medieval vii (2015), 27–38; Bartlomiej Dzwigala, ‘Constantine, Helena and Heraclius in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem’, this Journal lxxii (2021), 18–35; Anastasia Sirotenko, ‘Erinnern an Herakleios: zur Darstellung des Kaisers Herakleios in mittelalterlichen Quellen’, unpubl. PhD diss. Munich 2020; M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, ‘Louis ix, Heraclius, and the True Cross at the Sainte Chapelle’, in M. C. Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein (eds), Political ritual and practice in Capetian France: essays in honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Turnhout 2021, 265–99. When, in the seventeenth century, the liturgy was rewritten for the third time, the lections reframed the story within the story of the crusades in general, beginning with Urban ii's call in 1095. See the Breviarium Parisiense (1736), 460–1.
64 As indicated in our earliest evidence, dating from the early thirteenth century. See, for example, BNF, ms Latin 1112, fo. 184v.
65 See n. 18 above on the lack of sources for the period before 1200. I am grateful for Marc Smith's opinion on the question of the dates of these volumes. It is he who suggests a date of ‘no earlier than the third quarter of the thirteenth century’ (personal communication, 12 May 2023). Victor Leroquais had dated BSG, ms 2618 to the second half of the thirteenth century: Les Bréviaires manuscrits de bibliothèques publiques de France, Paris 1934, iii. 457. Rebecca Baltzer gave the date as the 1260s, but also states that the manuscript represents the state of the liturgy in the 1220s: ‘Another look at a composite office and its history: the feast of susceptio reliquiarum in medieval Paris’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association cxiii (1988), 1–27 at p. 5 and ‘The sources and the sanctorale’, 111–41 at p. 31. One indication that it reproduced an outdated liturgy is that it does not include materials for the Feast of the Crown of Thorns. Leroquais made a very rare error in his catalogue: Bréviaires, iii. 457–8. In his entry for this manuscript at fo. 311, he correctly listed the rubric as ‘De susceptione sancte crucis’ (not corone), but he identified it as a feast for 11 August (which would be the day on which the Crown of Thorns was celebrated in Paris), and a few lines later wrote ‘la fête la plus récente est celle de la réception de la sainte couronne d'épines (1239)’. But this is incorrect. The feast at 311r–312r is for the Reception of the Cross, and it is followed by feasts for SS Sixtus (6 Aug., 312r), Donatus (7 Aug., 312v), Lawrence (10 Aug., 313r) and Hippolytus (13 Aug., 315r). The Crown of Thorns would have fallen between the last two. See Leroquais, Bréviaires, iii. 458. The error has been transmitted more recently: see Chiara Mercuri, Corona di Cristo corona di re: la monarchia francese e la corona di spine nel medioevo, Rome 2004, 220. Regarding Charleville, BM 86, Baltzer dates this volume to the ‘late 1230s’, and Leroquais to the first half of the thirteenth century: Baltzer, ‘The sources and the sanctorale’, 131, 33; Leroquais, Bréviaires, i. 279. Note that the Paris, BSG ms 2618 text is the longer of the two, and presumably the text in the Charleville manuscript was simply a cut-down from a copy of that longer version. My assumption is that it originally circulated more widely than these two manuscripts indicate.
66 ‘Ad removendam vero eorum hesitationem quibus gloriosam dictam crucem transmiserat per suas litteras inter cetera continentes scripsit eis’: appendix I, recension 1 (lection 5).
67 In 1725, when Felibien published his history of Paris, he could say that the relic was still in Notre Dame's possession, and also that they had the ‘authentic acts sent at the same time from Jerusalem by the canon Ansel’: Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, i.144.
68 Specifically, to Paris. The new emperor, Baldwin i, sent to Philip Augustus relics from the imperial chapel, including two cross relics (or one that Philip divided in two). Philip distributed one of these to Notre Dame, which they received without much fanfare, and the other to Saint-Denis. We know about the one at Notre Dame only from a reference in the cathedral's thirteenth century obituary to ‘a cross from the Lord's glorious cross which was sent to [Philip] from the regions of Constantinople’. The reference to the Constantinopolitan origins distinguished this apparently minor relic from Ansel's prized Jerusalem relic: Guérard, Cartulaire, iv.110. For the broader phenomenon see Paul Edouard Didier Riant, Exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae fasciculus documentorum minorum, ad exuvias sacras constantinopolitanas in occidentem saeculo XIII translatas, spectantium, & historiam quarti belli sacri imperijq(ue) gallo-graeci illustrantium, Geneva 1877, repr. Paris, 2004, and Frolow, La Relique de la vraie croix, 387–8, no. 461.
69 M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, ‘Louis ix and the triumphal cross of Constantine’, French Historical Studies xlvi (2023), 3–35.
70 Rubrics vary. See n. 4 above.
71 ‘Deus ineffabili gratia sua exalto prospiciens parisiensem dignatus sit visitare ecclesiam. Nam velud si aliquis de arbore aliqu<e>m ramum amputaret ut alias transplantaret; ita dominus noster ihesus christus, de gloriosa cruce illa in qua ipse veraciter et misericorditer pro nobis dignatus est pati mirabili ordinatione sua partem passus est auferri, & de oriente in occidentem transfretari ut exinde parisiensem ecclesiam ad honorem matris sue irradiaret; et ex eius fulgore totam galliam illustraret’: appendix I, recension 2 (lection 1).
72 For example, BNF, ms Latin 1052, fos 445r–446v. The lections are taken up in early printed breviaries, such as the Breviary of c. 1500 (BSG OEXV 743 Res).
73 Hermann-Mascard, Les Reliques des saints, 364–402; Patrick J. Geary, Furta sacra: thefts of relics in the central Middle Ages, Princeton 1978.
74 For example, with the story of a translation of Sainte Foy. The text is translated in Pamela Sheingorn, The book of Sainte Foy, Philadelphia, Pa 1995, 263–74. This text was composed between 1020 and 1060. See p. 26 of Sheingorn's introduction.
75 Alfred J. Andrea and Paul I. Rachlin, ‘Holy war, holy relics, holy theft: the Anonymous of Soissons's “De terra Iherosolimitana”: an analysis, edition, and translation’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques xviii (1992), 147–75 at pp. 151–2; David Perry, Sacred plunder: Venice and the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, University Park, Pa 2015.
76 Anne Lester, ‘What remains: women, relics and remembrance in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History xl (2014), 311–28; ‘Remembrance of things past: memory and material objects in the time of the crusades, 1095–1291’, in Megan Cassidy-Welch (ed.), Remembering crusades and crusading, London–New York 2016, 73–94; ‘Translation and appropriation: Greek relics in the Latin West in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, in Simon Ditchfield, Charlotte Methuen and Andrew Spicer (eds), Translating Christianity (Studies in Church History liii, 2017), 88–117; and ‘The tasks of the translators’, 179–200. See also Perry, Sacred plunder. The classic study on the idea of the translatio imperii is Werner Goez, Translatio imperii: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenken und der politischen Theorien im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, Tübingen 1958.
77 M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, ‘Between historical narrative and liturgical celebrations: Gautier Cornut and the reception of the Crown of Thorns in France’, Revue Mabillon xxx (2019), 91–145 at pp. 125–6 (§§9–10).
78 David Townsend, ‘The “versus de corona spinea” of Henry of Avranches’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch xxxviii (1988), 154–70; Carin Ruff, ‘The “versus de corona spinea” of Henry of Avranches and the iconography of kingship in the reign of Louis ix’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch: internationale Zeitschrift für Mediävistik xxxviii (2003), 379–88.
79 The text has been printed three times: Emmanuel Miller, ‘Review of Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, Journal des Savants (1878), 292–309, 389–403 at pp. 292–309 ; Natalis de Wailly, ‘Récit du treizième siècle sur les translations faites en 1239 et en 1241 des saintes reliques de la passion’, Bibliotheque de l'École des Chartes xxxix (1878), 401–15; and Girolamo Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliotrafica della terra santa e dell'Oriente franciscano, ii, Firenze 1913, 306–11.
80 ‘Clericus cuidam Ansellus nomine natus parisii’: appendix I, recension 1 (lection 1)/recension 2 (lection 2).
81 Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘Quand et comment Paris devint capitale’, Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France cv (1978), 17–46.
82 Franco Morenzoni, ‘Parler au pape au nom du roi: le discours d'Ancel Choquard au pape Urbain v (avril 1367)’, Studi medievali 3rd ser. xlviii (2007), 317–66.
83 ‘Nunquid etiam pariter hanc terram Francie pretulisse uidetur Dominus urbi per istarum sanctarum reliquiarum suarum exhibitionem et presentiam?': ibid. 353.
* Lebeuf, ‘Dissertation sur le Fontenay du diocèse de Paris, pp. v–ix. The two final paragraphs of Lebeuf's transcription, which speak of further letters between the Church of Paris and Ansel in Jerusalem, veer from what is found in most versions of this recension. I have noted these sentences in the notes.
† See n. 30 above.
‡ continentur] Oratio: Deus qui unigeniti filii tui domini nostri Ihesu Christi precioso sanguine humanum genus redimere dignatus es, concede propicius ut qui ad adorandam vivificam crucem adveniunt a peccatorum suorum nexibus liberentur. Add. P. N.B.: This is a standard prayer used for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. See Eugene Moeller and Jean-Marie Clément (eds), Corpus Orationum, Turnhout 1992– , no. 2149.
§ posterorum P ] posterum memorie B
** de] om. B
†† capta B] cauta P
‡‡ eiusdem] om. eiusdem P
§§ gratulantes P] gratulati B
*** gratiarum P] grarum B
††† divino] om. B
‡‡‡ corrected G from cupiensbat
§§§ promissioni P] promissione B
**** memoratum P] memoriam B
†††† explevit B] implevit P]
‡‡‡‡ voti P] noti B
§§§§ se] iam add. B
***** cum] praedicto illo add. B
††††† dominico B
‡‡‡‡‡ From this point onwards, the text copied by LeBeuf in 1739 diverges, reading: ‘Susceptis tamen his litteris prefato Parisiensi episcopo velut alteri Thomae sanctae incredulitatis adhuc inerat scrupulus, upote dubitanti qua ratione vel quo eventu res tam pretiosa et tam diligenter custodita, in tot portiones posset disstribui. Itaque non fuit ei pigrum rescribere venerabili illi jam dicto Ansello et postulare ab eo ut de re tanta eum redderet certiorem. Quibus litteris episcopi visi, venerabilis vir ille Ansellus per alias litteras episcopo parisiensi sic respondit. Quaesistis qua ratione, qua necessitate portio ista de dominica cruce assumpta fuerit.’ Note that this text is a slightly embellished version of Recension 1, lectio 5, suggesting a separate variant or an intermediary version of the text, for which I know of no other existing evidence.
§§§§§ exulta] inquam add. B
****** quasi P] velud B
†††††† credentibus P] fredentibus B
‡‡‡‡‡‡ et P] atque B
§§§§§§ honorata P] honorificata B
******* fluxit B] flexit P