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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2017
This article explores the connections between the translation of an early Christian relic to the Château de la Roche-Guyon in the mid-seventeenth century and the writing of local sacred histories by the priest and prior Nicolas Davanne. It finds that the translation of a finger bone of St Pientia was the culmination of efforts by a local scholar to revive the sacred history of the Vexin and to celebrate the regional liturgical traditions associated with its early Christian martyrs. In doing so, it finds support for the recent historiography on local, sacred histories which emerged during the Counter-Reformation in response to liturgical standardization. The article also discusses the unstable nature of relics as material objects and explores the ways in which relics were continually reinvested with meaning. It is shown that Pientia's relic was not only part of a defence of a local spiritual heritage in response to Trent, but also part of a claim to an early Christian spiritual heritage for a deviant and heretical movement within the Church.
1 The word used in the document was chasse, an old French word for reliquary, deriving from capsa, Latin for ‘box’ or ‘coffer’: Bartlett, Robert, Why can the Dead do such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 2013), 264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Cergy-Pontoise, Archives départementales du Val d'Oise [hereafter: ADVO], fonds privées, 10 J, 747, ‘Reliques: certificats et visites’.
3 Gourdon, Vincent and Trévisi, Marion, ‘Âge et migrations dans la France rural traditionnelle. Une Etude à partir de l'an VII à la Roche-Guyon’, Histoire, économie, et société 19 (2000), 307–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 311. For a recent history of the château and its gardens from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Wick, Gabriel, Un Paysage des lumières. Le Jardin Anglais du Château de La Roche-Guyon (Paris, 2014)Google Scholar.
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6 Kalas, Robert J., ‘Marriage, Clientage, Office Holding, and the Advancement of the Early Modern French Nobility: The Noailles Family of Limousin’, SCJ 27 (1996), 365–83Google Scholar, at 379.
7 Davanne, Nicolas, La vie et martyre de sainct Nigaise, premier archevesque de Roüen, S. Quirin, prestre, & S. Scuviculle Diacre ses compagnons, & de sainte Pience, jadis dame de La Rocheguyon; ensemble le recueil de la Translation de leurs sainctes reliques, et fondation du prieuré Saint Nigaise au fort de Meulent ou ils reposent (Rouen, 1627)Google Scholar. I have also consulted the 1643 reprint, but throughout this article, I cite the 1627 edition.
8 Davanne, Nicolas, Recueil d'actes et contracts, faicts par M Nicolas Davanne, prestre ancien prieur du prieuré S. Nigaise au fort de Meulant; et encores par autres personnes pour fondations & Decorations audit prieuré & ailleurs; avec un breve description dudit prieuré selon son estat, en l'année 1656 (Rouen, 1656)Google Scholar.
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10 Rutkowski, Katarzyna, ‘Reformation of the Relic: Lydgate's and Milton's Saint Edmund’, in Robertson, Elizabeth and Jahner, Jennifer, eds, Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred (Basingstoke, 2010), 135–53Google Scholar, at 135.
11 This is a reference to a point made excellently by Hahn, Cynthia in her study of medieval reliquaries: ‘What do Reliquaries do for Relics?’, Numen 57 (2010), 284–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 312. Reliquaries were, she argues, like relics, ‘restless’ as they were ‘lifted, gestured with, carried in processions, opened and closed’.
12 ADVO, fonds privées, 10 J, 31, ‘Inventaire après décès’, 1672.
13 The tourist website of the château describes the chapel: <http://www.chateaudelarocheguyon.fr/content/heading14575/content16393.html>, accessed 8 July 2015.
14 ADVO, fonds privées, 10 J, 747.
15 Geary, Patrick, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 110Google Scholar; Rebillard, Éric, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity, transl. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings and Jeanine Routier-Pucci (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2009), 67Google Scholar.
16 Geary, Patrick, ‘Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics’, in Appadurai, Arjun, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), 169–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 181; see also Reames, Sherry L., ‘Reconstructing and Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century Office for the Translation of Thomas Becket’, Speculum 80 (2005), 118–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Hahn, ‘What do Reliquaries do for Relics?’, 312. Pientia's teeth were among the relics at Avranches listed in an inventory: Herrick, Samantha Kahn, Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 149Google Scholar.
18 Herrick, Imagining, 17–18.
19 Nicasii, Passio, in ‘Appendix ad catalogum codicium hagiographicorum civitatis et academiae Leodiensis’, AnBoll 5 (1886), 372–4Google Scholar; ‘Appendix ad catalogum codicium hagiographicorum civitatis Namurcensis’, AnBoll 1 (1882), 628–32, both cited in Herrick, Imagining, 154. See also Herrick, Samantha Kahn, ‘Heirs to the Apostles: Saintly Power and Ducal Authority in Hagiography of Early Normandy’, in Adam J. Kosto, Alan Cooper and Robert Berkhoffer, eds, The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe 950–1350 (Aldershot, 2005), 11–24;Google Scholar A. Legris, ‘Les Premiers martyrs du Vexin. Saints Nicaise, Quirin, Scuvicule, Pience (11 octobre)’, Revue catholique de Normandie (1912), 280–96.
20 Davanne, Recueil, 42.
21 Christian, William, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 127.Google Scholar
22 Davanne, Recueil, 44–9.
23 Ibid. 46.
24 Ibid. 3.
25 Ibid. 6.
26 Ibid. 12.
27 Dubois, Jacques, ed., Le Martyrologe d'Usuard. Texte et commentaire, Subsidia Hagiographica 40 (Brussels, 1965)Google Scholar, cited in Herrick, Imagining, 155.
28 Herrick, Imagining, 45. The Bollandists gave a history of Nicasius and Pientia (ActaSS, Oct. 5: 513), but did not reproduce the Passio Nicasii. Herrick notes that the text of the Passio is accessible in part in the Bollandists’ catalogues: ‘Le Pouvoir du passé apostolique’, in Hagiographie, ideologie et politique au Moyen âge en Occident. Actes du colloque international du Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale de Poitiers, 11–14 septembre 2008, ed. E. Bozóky (Turnhout, 2012), 129–38, at 129 n. 2. The Livre Noir at Saint-Ouen is also mentioned in Lucile Tran-Duc, ‘Enjeux de pouvoir dans le Livre Noir de l'abbaye Saint-Ouen de Rouen’, ibid. 199–210, at 200.
29 Violette, Louis, ‘Nicaise, du martyr du Vexin au Saint Rouennais. Valorisation des reliques par l'hagiographie au XIe siècle’, in Dumoulin, Olivier et Thelamon, Françoise, eds, Autour des morts: mémoire et identité (Rouen, 2001), 377–86Google Scholar, at 377.
30 Herrick, Imagining, 149.
31 Réaux, Émile, Histoire de Meulan (Meulan, 1865)Google Scholar, 40–1.
32 Davanne, Vie, 79–80.
33 Ibid. 87–92, 94–101; their death at 102.
34 Ibid. 104–5.
35 Ibid. 106.
36 Ibid. 87–107.
37 Ibid. 50–1.
38 Ibid. 51–2.
39 Ibid. 54.
40 Ibid. 89.
41 Ibid. 92–3.
42 Ibid. 26, 79–80. Today, a nineteenth-century construction stands on the site of the earlier chapel destroyed in the Revolution, depicting Nicasius by the side of the crucified Christ.
43 Tingle, Elizabeth, ‘The Sacred Space of Julien Maunoir: The Re-Christianising of the Landscape in Seventeenth-Century Brittany’, in Coster, Will and Spicer, Andrew, eds, Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005), 237–58Google Scholar, at 251. Devotion to sites such as this had been helping to create ‘holy places’ for centuries: Markus, R. A., ‘How on Earth could Places become Holy?’, JECS 2 (1994), 257–71Google Scholar, at 257.
44 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Sacred Topography and Social Memory: Religious Change and the Landscape in Early Modern Britain and Ireland’, JRH 36 (2012), 31–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 31; eadem, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2011), 223– 225, on sites of martyrdom.
45 Ditchfield, Simon, ‘What was Sacred History? (Mostly Roman) Catholic Uses of the Christian Past After Trent’, in Van Liere, Katherine, Ditchfield, Simon and Louthan, Howard, eds, Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012), 72–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 73.
46 Ditchfield, Simon, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, 1995);Google Scholar Louthan, Howard, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar; Harris, A. Katie, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City's Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, MD, 2007)Google Scholar. Noreen, Kirstin also presents a convincing case for the Jesuit use of early Christian martyrs: ‘Ecclesiae Militantis Triumphi: Jesuit Iconography and the Counter Reformation’, SCJ 29 (1998), 698–715Google Scholar.
47 Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History, 10.
48 Ibid. 233–4.
49 Collette, A., Histoire du Bréviaire de Rouen (Rouen, 1902), 233Google Scholar.
50 McManners, John, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar, 2: 45–50.
51 Stumberg Edmunds, Martha Mel, Piety and Politics: Imaging Divine Kingship in Louis XIV's Chapel at Versailles (Newark, NJ, 2002), 267Google Scholar.
52 Collette, Histoire, 245.
53 This edition survives in Paris, Bibliothèque Saint Geneviève, 8BB 1194 INV 1369, 8BB 1195 INV 1370.
54 Brown, Peter, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, 2nd edn (London, 2015), 34;Google Scholar Lafferty, Sean, ‘Ad Sanctitatem Mortuorum: Tomb Raiders, Body Snatchers and Relic Hunters in Late Antiquity’, EME 22 (2014), 249–79Google Scholar, at 266.
55 Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Thinking with Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Early Modern World’, Critical Inquiry 35 (2009), 552–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 555–9; Luria, Keith P., Territories of Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble (Berkeley, CA, 1991), 115.Google Scholar Scholars have also noted how the elite constructed private crypts and chapels in parish churches to participate in local devotions in the Counter-Reformation era: Tingle, Elizabeth C., Purgatory and Piety in Brittany c.1480–1720 (Aldershot, 2012).Google Scholar
56 Davy-Rigaux, Cécile, ‘Charpentier Plain-Chantiste’, in Cessac, C., ed., Les Manuscrits autographes de Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Wavre, 2007), 239–50Google Scholar, at 239.
57 Davanne's sketches and notes on the history of the monastery of Saint-Nicaise, now archived in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Archives départementales des Yvelines, fonds 24H, were drawn upon by Victor Cotron – prior of the monastery between 1669 and 1672 – whose Chronique de saint Nicaise was a ‘preparatory work’ for the Gallia Christiana: Tétard, Madeleine Arnold, Histoire de la vie religieuse à Meulan (Juziers, 2009), 10Google Scholar.
58 The interest of the Port-Royalists in the early Christians has been explored in Neveu, Bruno, Érudition et religion aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1994)Google Scholar; Quantin, Jean-Louis, Le Rigorisme chrétien (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar.
59 Strayer, Brian E., Suffering Saints: Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in France 1640–1799 (Eastbourne, 2012), 52.Google Scholar
60 ADVO, fonds privées, 10 J, 31, ‘Inventaire après décès’, 1672. This collection of books complemented a fuller selection in her oratory in Paris. This is explored fully in Hillman, Female Piety, 111–14.
61 Martin, Henri-Jean, Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle 1598–1701, 2 vols (Geneva, 1999)Google Scholar, 1: 496, 2: 928–9.
62 These relics are recorded in the visitation documentation and in the probate inventory of 1672. This hypothesis was first presented in Hillman, Female Piety, 92–3. The idea of the ‘company’ kept by relics shaping their meaning is from Hahn, Cynthia, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries 400–c.1204 (Philadelphia, PA, 2012), 12Google Scholar. Interestingly, the Liancourts’ interest in the ancient spiritual heritage of La Roche-Guyon was perpetuated by the eighteenth-century proprietors, who commissioned an ‘ancient’ portal to be designed on the Tour de Guy as an allusion to their family lineage; this is explored in Wick, Gabriel, ‘Hubert Robert (1733–1808) and the Renovation of the Tour de Guy at the Château de La Roche-Guyon’, Garden History 41 (2013), 224–44Google Scholar, at 233.
63 Bozóky, Edina and Vanderputten, Steven have shown how relics were symbols of authority: ‘Voyages de reliques et demonstration du pouvoir au temps féodaux,’ in Voyages et voyageurs au Moyen Age, Actes des congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l'enseignement supérieur public 26 (Paris, 1996), 267–80Google Scholar; ‘Itinerant Lordship: Relic Translations and Social Change in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Flanders’, French History 25 (2011), 143–63, respectively.
64 Robertson and Jahner, ‘Introduction’, in Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects, 7.