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Material Christianity in the Early Medieval Household

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Julia M. H. Smith
Julia M. H. Smith*
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

Tu autem cum oraveris, intra in cubiculum tuum, et clauso ostio, ora Patrem tuum in abscondito: et Pater tuus, qui videt in abscondito, reddet tibi. (‘But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door. Pray to your Father in private, and your Father, who sees into concealed places, will reward you’: Matt. 6: 6)

Manuscript D.V.3 in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin is a fat, late eighth-century volume of martyr narratives. Produced at Soissons, probably in the nunnery of Notre-Dame, it may be no coincidence that eighteen of its forty texts concern female martyrs. A further four address familial groups in which wives or mothers play prominent roles. The earliest Latin version of the passion of St Adrian (BHL 3744) is among them: one of many late, ‘novel-esque’ accounts of martyrdom, it is constructed out of clichéd formulae and predictable tropes for post-persecution audiences, like others of its genre. Lacking any historical verisimilitude about the age of persecutions, the passion of Adrian is characteristic of this group of hagiographies in offering valuable insights into domestic Christianity in the age in which it was composed: it brings into sharp focus links between women and material Christianity within the late antique household, the theme this essay pursues into the Carolingian period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 50: Religion and the Household , 2014 , pp. 23 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2014

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References

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7 As I argued in Smith, Julia M. H., ‘Did Women have a Transformation of the Roman World?’, CH 12 (2000), 552–71.Google Scholar

8 See Garver, Valerie, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca, NY, 2009);Google Scholar Stone, Rachel, Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar, with full earlier bibliography in both. See also Smith, Julia M. H., ‘Gender and Ideology in the Early Middle Ages’, in Swanson, R. N., ed., Gender and Christian Religion, SCH 34 (Woodbridge, 1998), 51–73.Google Scholar

9 I summarize drastically: see Loveluck, Christopher, ‘The Dynamics of Elite Lifestyles in the “Rural World”, AD 600-1150: Archaeological Perspectives from northwest Europe’, in Bougard, François, Le Jan, Régine and McKitterick, Rosamond, eds, La culture du haut moyen âge: une question d’élites? (Turnhout, 2009), 139–70;CrossRefGoogle Scholar idem, ‘Problems of the Definition and Conceptualisation of Early Medieval Elites, AD 450-900: The Dynamics of the Archaeological Evidence’, in Bougard, François, Goetz, Hans-Werner and Le Jan, Régine, eds, Théorie et pratiques des élites au haut moyen âge (Turnhout, 2011), 21–68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fleming, Robin, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 23 (2001), 1–22;Google Scholar Garver, Valerie, ‘Textiles as a Means of Female Religious Participation in the Carolingian World’, in Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari and Vuolante, Ville, eds, Ancient and Medieval Religion in Practice (Helsinki, 2014), 133–44.Google Scholar I am grateful to Val Garver for allowing me access to her work in advance of publication.

10 Bowes, , Private Worship, Public Values, 125–52;Google Scholar Dossey, Leslie, ‘Sleeping Arrangements and Private Space: A Cultural Approach to the Subdivision of Late Antique Homes’, in Brakke, David, Deliyannis, Deborah and Edward, Watts, eds, Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Farnham, 2013), 181–97.Google Scholar

11 Loveluck, , ‘Definition and Conceptualisation’, 52–7;Google Scholar idem, ‘Dynamics of Elite Lifestyles’, 154-7. Of the five royal estates inventoried in the so-called Brevium exempla from the reign of Charlemagne, only one had its own chapel: MGH Capit. 1, 254-6, no. 128, cl. 25-39, chapel in cl. 32.

12 Dossey, , ‘Sleeping Arrangements’.Google Scholar

13 Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, ed. Brooks, N. P. and Kelly, S. E., 2 vols, Anglo-Saxon Charters 17–18 (Oxford, 2013), 2: 853, 855 (no. 104)Google Scholar, with comments at 860-1. For Old English būr as equivalent to cubiculum or camera, and for examples of royal business conducted there, see the Old English Dictionary. A to G Online, at <http://www.doe.utoronto.ca>, last accessed 25 July 2013.

14 Leyerle, , ‘Pilgrim eulogiae ’, 225.Google Scholar

15 Vita Eligii 1.8, 12 (MGH SRM 4, 675, 679).

16 For similar practices in other medieval periods and places, see Herrin, Judith, ‘The Icon Corner in Medieval Byzantium’, in Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B. and Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, eds, Household, Women and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2005), 71–90;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Webb, Diana, ‘Domestic Space and Devotion in the Middle Ages’, in Spicer, Andrew and Hamilton, Sarah, eds, Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2005), 27–47.Google Scholar

17 Vita Gcraldi confessoris 9; Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum Latinorum antiquorum saeculo xvi qui asservantur in Bibliothcca Nationali Parisiensi, 3 vols (Brussels, 1889-93), 2: 399. I accept the arguments of Matthew Kuefler that Odo of Cluny wrote the vita brevior of Gerald but not its longer version: ‘Dating and Authorship of the Writings about Saint Gerald of Aurillac’, Viator 44/2 (2013), 49-97, and am grateful to him for sharing his work with me in advance of publication.

18 Constantius, Vita S. Germani 22 (ed. René Borius, Vie de Saint Germain d’ Auxerre, SC 112, 164-7); Venantius Fortunatus/Baudonivia, De vita Sanctac Radegundis 1.5, 2.15 (MGH SRM 2, 366-7, 387); De virtutibus sanctae Geretrudis 4 (MGH SRM 2, 466).

19 Liber vitae patrum 7.2 (MGH SRM 1/2, 238).

20 Liber in gloria confessorum 84 (MGH SRM 1/2, 352).

21 On Gregory, his family and familial saints’ cults, see Raymond, Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 50–68.Google Scholar

22 For a photograph of a small sixth-century gold locket-style reliquary of Byzantine manufacture but found in Spain, see Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, 59 (fig. 36).

23 Liber in gloria martyrum 83 (MGH SRM 1/2, 94-5), but he does not reveal where he placed it at night. Gregory has numerous other stories of relics which protect crops, vines and fruit trees.

24 For a detailed description of an estate oratorium as a separate building with windows, locked door and its own custodian, see Liber in gloria martynum 8 (MGH SRM 1/2, 43). See Weidemann, Margarete, Kulturgcschichte der Mcrowingerzeit nach den Werken Gregors von Tours, 2 vols, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Monographien (Mainz, 1982), 2: 130 Google Scholar, for other villae with their own oratoria. As early as 517, the Council of Epaone, cl. 25, railed against saints’ relics kept in estate prayer rooms in places where there were no diocesan clergy in the vicinity and tried to prevent the ordination of clergy to these private chapels unless they were properly resourced: Concilia Galliae A. 511–A. 695, ed. C Munier, CChr. SL 148A, 30.

25 Liber in gloria confessorum 3 (MGH SRM 1/2, 300-1). Gregory’s details of sixth-century domestic furnishings are assembled by Weidemann, Kulturgcschichte, 2: 358-62.

26 Liber de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi 1.35, 2.32 (MGH SRM 1/2, 155, 170-1).

27 This paragraph summarizes my earlier articles, ‘Einhard: The Sinner and the Saints’, TRHS 6th ser., 13 (2003), 55-77; and ‘“Emending Evil Ways and Praising God’s Omnipotence”: Einhard and the Uses of Roman Martyrs’, in Kenneth, Mills and Grafton, Anthony, eds, Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing (Rochester, NY, 2003), 189–223.Google Scholar See also Patzold, Steffen, Ich und Karl der Groβe. Das Leben des Höflings Einhard (Stuttgart, 2013).Google Scholar

28 Translatio SS. Marcellini et Petri 2.3 (MGH SS 15/1, 246); ibid. 2.5 (247), for celebrating vespers and nocturns there.

29 Ibid. 3.11 (251-2).

30 Ibid. 4.8 (258-9), for a further example of a miracle in an atypical setting.

31 Vita Galli vetustissima 9 (MGH SRM 4, 255). For a similar story of the domestic generation of a relic in the diocese of Thérouanne, see Annales de Saint-Berlin, ed. Grat, Félix, Vieillard, Jeanne and Clémencet, Suzanne (Paris, 1964), 92 (s.a. 862).Google Scholar

32 Folcuin of Lobbes, Vita Folquini episcopi Morincnsis 14 (MGH SS 15/1, 430). For analogous examples, see Miracula S. Reginae (ActaSS Sept. 3, 42); Hincmar, Vita Remigii episcopi Remetisis 26 (MGH SRM 3, 322-3).

33 Fouracre, Paul. ‘The Origins of the Carolingian Attempt to Regulate the Cult of Saints’, in Howard-Johnston, James and Hayward, Paul Anthony, eds, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 1999), 143–65.Google Scholar

34 See, for example, Koopmans, Rachel, Wonderful to Relate: Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 2011), 141 Google Scholar, on the domestic origins of Thomas Becket’s cult in the hours immediately following his murder. I am very grateful to Rachel Koopmans for drawing my attention to the numerous Becket miracles in household settings narrated by Benedict of Peterborough but omitted from other Becket miracle collections.

35 Brown, Peter, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton, NJ, 2012), 479–526 Google Scholar, quotation at xxv.

36 Wood, Susan, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Boniface always travelled with relics: Willibald, Vita S. Bonifatii 8 (ed. W. Levison, MGH SRG i.u.s. 57, 49), as did Liudger: Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, 4 vols (repr. Aalen, 1960), 1: 7 (no. 11). Willehad was saved from death when the reliquary around his neck deflected an assassin’s blow: Vita S. Willehadi 4 (ActaSS Nov. 3: 843). See also Widric, Vita S. Cerardi Tullensis 3 (ActaSS Apr. 3: 210), for a cleric in the bishop’s retinue who was travelling by boat and lost his locket reliquary into the water.

38 Miracula S. Dionysii 1.20 (ActaSS OSB 3/2: 349-50).

39 Vita Gcraldi confessoris 6, 15 (Catalogus … in Bibliotheca Nationali Parisiensi, 2: 397, 401).

40 Odo of Glanfeuil, Historia translations S. Mauri 2.16 (ActaSS Jan. 1: 1055).

41 Asser’s Life of King Alfred 104, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1904), 90.Google Scholar

42 For overviews and bibliography, see Bagnoli, Martina et al., eds, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe (New Haven, CT, 2010);Google Scholar Legner, Anton, Reliquien in Kunst und Kult: zwischen Antike und Aufklärung (Darmstadt, 1995);Google Scholar Hahn, Cynthia, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012).Google Scholar

43 Agius, Vita Hathumodae 15, 22 (MGH SS 4, 171-2, 173-4). Paxton, Frederick. S., Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxony: the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhansen and Hathumoda of Candershcim (Washington, DC, 2009), 40–7, 58–72,Google Scholar supersedes previous discussions.

44 For moveable wealth in the Frankish lands, see Le Jan, Régine, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe–Xe siècle). Essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995), 60–8;Google Scholar and, for adjacent regions, Bougard, François, ‘Trésors et mobilia italiens du haut Moyen Age’, in Caillet, Jean-Pierre and Bazin, Pierre, eds, Les trésors de sanctuaires de l’Antiquité à l’époque romane (Paris, 1996), 161–97;Google Scholar Davies, Wendy, ‘Notions of Wealth in the Charters of Ninth- and Tenth-Century Christian Iberia’, in Devroey, Jean-Pierre, Feller, Laurent and Le Jan, Régine, eds, Les élites et la richesse au haut moyen âge, Collection Haut Moyen Age (Turnhout, 2010), 265–83;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Crick, Julia, ‘Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth in pre-Conquest England’, in Donald, Moira and Hurcombe, Linda, eds, Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective (Basingstoke, 2000), 17–37.Google Scholar Selected references to relics in lay charters of donation are noted by Wood, Proprietary Church, 455-7.

45 For emphasis on personal ownership of relics, see Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, ed. Stengel, Edmund. E., Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen und Waldeck 10 (Marburg, 1956–8), 1/2: 227–31, 372–9 Google Scholar (nos 154, 264). In 784, when Emhilt endowed a nunnery on land inherited from her parents she formalized the transaction ‘in the presence of the relics of St Mary which are my very own, which 1 myself acquired and which are in my very own casket’ (ibid. 229, no. 154); fifteen years later, she handed the nunnery over to Fulda, complete with all the reliquaries and other liturgical furnishings in its church (ibid. 377, no. 264). Cf. Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and transl. Whitelock, Dorothy (Cambridge, 1930), 20–1, 24–7 Google Scholar (nos 8, 10), for the will of the late tenth-century Anglo-Saxon ealdorman Æthelmær (no. 10) securing himself burial rights in Winchester New Minster with a grant of land, gold and ‘my shrine’, and the will of his contemporary, the noblewoman Ælfgifu (no. 8), whose request for burial in Winchester Old Minster included ‘her shrine with her relics’ as well as much else.

46 ‘Our reliquary, inside which we have placed as many relics as possible’ was part of the initial endowment from Roger, count of Limoges, and his wife Euphrasia for the monastery of Charroux in c.773: Chartes et documents pour server à l’histoire de l’abbaye de Charroux, ed. de Monsabert, D. P. (Poitiers, 1910), 60 Google Scholar. Cf. the grant made in 802 by Waluram (father of Hrabanus Maurus) to Fulda of his own church at Hofheim, with its landed endowment and all its fittings, including its ‘relics in caskets and in crosses’: Urkundenbuch des Klosters Fulda, ed. Stengel, 1/2: 410-12 (no. 283), at 411.

47 Hahn, Cynthia, ‘Metaphor and Meaning in Early Medieval Reliquaries’, in De Nie, Giselle, Morrison, Karl. F. and Mostert, Marco, eds, Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Turnhout, 2005), 239–63, at 243–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Julia Crick (‘Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth’) has noted that the ‘unusually close’ association between women, wills and moveable wealth in late Anglo-Saxon England has interesting parallels in episcopal wills: the continental evidence would benefit from a similar analysis.

49 Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Cysoing et ses dépendances, ed. de Coussemaker, Ignace, 2 vols (Lille, 1880), 1: 1–5 Google Scholar (no. 1). For its wider significance, see McKitterick, Rosamond, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), 245–8;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kershaw, Paul, ‘Eberhard of Friuli, a Carolingian Lay Intellectual’, in Wormald, Patrick and Nelson, Janet. L., eds, Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007), 77–105;Google Scholar La Rocca, Cristina and Provero, Luigi, ‘The Dead and their Gifts. The Will of Eberhard, Count of Friuli and his Wife Gisela, Daughter of Louis the Pious (863-864)’, in Theuws, Frans and Nelson, Janet. L., eds, Rituals of Power from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), 225–80.Google Scholar

50 Goldberg, Eric, ‘“More devoted to the Equipment of Battle than the Splendor of Banquets”: Frontier Kingship, Martial Ritual and Early Knighthood at the Court of Louis the German’, Viator 30 (1999), 41–78, at 61–2.Google Scholar

51 As argued by La, Rocca and Provero, , ‘The Dead and their Gifts’, 254. For the full text of Elbuncus’s will, see Le carte degli Archivi Parmensi dei sec. X–XI, ed. Drei, Giovanni, 2nd edn (Parma, 1930), 51–6 (no. 9).Google Scholar

52 Carttilaire de Cysoing, 7-9 (nos 3-4).

53 Ibid. 10-11 (nos 5-6).

54 Ibid. 8-11 (nos 4-5).

55 Magnani, Eliana, ‘“Un trésor dans le ciel”. De la pastorale de l’aumône aux trésors spirituels (IVe–IXe siècle)’, in Burkart, Lucas et al., eds, Le trésor au moyen âge. Discours, pratiques et objets (Florence, 2010), 51–68.Google Scholar

56 Liber de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi 1.2 (MGH SRM 1/2, 139).