**The Liturgy in the Middle Ages**

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**Jaume Aurell**

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*Editor* Jaume Aurell University of Navarra Spain

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This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal *Religions* (ISSN 2077-1444) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special issues/Liturgy Middle Ages).

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## **Contents**


## **About the Editor**

### **Jaume Aurell**

Jaume Aurell (saurell@unav.es) is Professor of Medieval History and Historiography at the University of Navarra (Spain). His books include *Authoring the Past. History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia* (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), *Theoretical Perspectives on Historians' Autobiographies: From Documentation to Intervention* (New York: Routledge, 2016); *Genealog´ıa de Occidente: Claves Hist´oricas del Mundo Actual* (Barcelona, Pensodromo, 2017) and ´ *Medieval Self-Coronations: The History and Symbolism of a Ritual* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). He has edited *Rethinking Historical Genres in the Twenty-First Century* (London Routledge, 2016) and co-edited *Political Theology in Medieval and Early Modern Europe*. *Discourses, Rites, and Representations* (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). He is co-editor of the Series "Medieval and Early Modern Political Theology" (Brepols). He is member of the Editorial Board of *Rethinking History*. *Journal of Theory and Practice*.

## **Preface to "The Liturgy in the Middle Ages"**

In early Christianity, the word "liturgy" referred to a public work or a service in the name of/on behalf of the people. In the Middle Ages, liturgy adopted multiple ceremonial forms, some of them remaining in the sacred sphere and others transferred to the temporal and political spheres, gaining a central space in the public life. This collective volume examines the concept, theory, practice, and representations of the liturgy in the Middle Ages, including its sacramental developments, its religious and political implications, its forms of ritualization, and its doctrinal presumptions. It aims to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue between history, theology, canon law, art history, political philosophy, and symbolic anthropology. It privileges the examination of the transferences between the spiritual and the temporal, the sacred and the profane, the political and the religious.

> **Jaume Aurell** *Editor*

### *Editorial* **Introduction: The Charisma of Liturgy in the Middle Ages**

**Jaume Aurell**

Department of History, University of Navarra, 31009 Pamplona, Spain; saurell@unav.es

This collective volume is devoted to the various manifestations of liturgy in the Middle Ages, based on a great variety and wealth of primary sources. Coming from diverse historiographical and disciplinary traditions, the authors have focused on different aspects of liturgy, but all with the common denominator of seeking to trace the notion of liturgy and some of its ritual manifestations, as well as its spiritual, political and material ramifications.

The word "liturgy" was originally used in a Christian context to refer to "public work" or "service in the name/on behalf of the people". In Christian tradition, liturgy is synonymous with the participation of the People of God in divine action. In the New Testament, the word "liturgy" refers not only the celebration of divine worship, but also to the proclamation of the Gospel and active charity. Christian liturgy has been endowed with charisma since Antiquity. As articulated by St Paul in the twelfth chapter of his epistle to the Corinthians in the mid-first century, charisma refers to a supernatural gift given to a member of the Christian community, the benefits of which do not remain within the charismatic person, but always spread out to the service of other members of the community. Its broader synonym, charisma, has also been applied to other historical realities, such as the "the charisma of distant places", in Peter Brown's expression for late antique societies, or "the charisma of objects", in C. Stephen Jaeger phrase. Recent research promoted by Jaeger holds that charisma can be understood as an aesthetic phenomenon that can manifest itself through any artistic, literary, material or ritual expression. The terms "charisma", "aura" and "charm" can be usefully rehabilitated as critical concepts for analysing art, literature and film—their aesthetics, their impact on audiences and social psychology. The notion of charisma thus extends to religious ceremonies, with all their splendour and mystery, capable of inspiring the same kind of admiration and impulse to imitate as charismatic living figures.

Liturgy has always fascinated scholars, but acquired special prominence in the midtwentieth century, when prestigious historians such as Ernst H. Kantorowicz began to approach the liturgical sources in a systematic manner, especially in his *Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Workship* (1946). Liturgy ceased to be a fringe interest, fit only for theologians specialising in Christian ceremonies, to also become the domain of historians, art historians and anthropologists interested in its ritual dimension.

The new liturgists broadened the scope of the liturgical sources, without which it is difficult to understand the social and political dynamics of the medieval world. These studies have shown not only that analysis of the liturgical sources illuminates some fascinating manifestations of medieval religiosity and spirituality, but also that they contribute decisively to forging the attendant political and social realities. The influence between liturgy and politics is reciprocal, so both benefit from this fruitful encounter while at the same time preserving a certain degree of autonomy from each other. Political theology, theorised by Carl Schmitt and practised by Ernst H. Kantorowicz as a means of analysing the transfers that take place between religion and politics, endures as an effective method for analysing the most varied manifestations of medieval liturgy, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate.

### **1. The Spirit of the Liturgy**

Based on the documentary and symbolic richness of the liturgy, the contributions to this volume can be grouped into three areas: the first deals with the proper notion

**Citation:** Aurell, Jaume. 2022. Introduction: The Charisma of Liturgy in the Middle Ages. *Religions* 13: 566. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13060566

Received: 17 May 2022 Accepted: 15 June 2022 Published: 19 June 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

of liturgy, together with the key concept of the sacramental *character*; the second focuses on the relationship between liturgy and power; and the third analyses the material and iconographic dimension of liturgy.

The first group of contributions focuses on the very notion and definition of liturgy in the Middle Ages, delving into some of its more strictly spiritual manifestations. The concept and practice of medieval liturgy becomes a tool capable of uniting core ritual manifestations with fringe ritual manifestations. Nils Holger Petersen explores the capacity of liturgy to embrace what was seemingly marginal in medieval society, as he handles three apparently diverse but interestingly linked concepts in the medieval religious setting: liturgy, ritual and theatre. This makes him question the excessively rigid, tradition-bound notion with which some simplify the concept and practice of liturgy, a simplification which reduces it to the mechanical repetition of long-established ceremonials. He focuses on two ceremonies devised for Easter time, developed in twelfth-century Europe. These liturgies did not initially present any classification problems for the participants, who clearly perceived their connection to tradition. However, analysis of their development over time reveals a clear tendency towards experimentation and renewal in terms of traditional liturgical procedures. This leads us to investigate the key concept of the "transformation of rituals", which must always maintain a delicate balance between a legitimising tradition and innovation that enabled them to adapt to the zeitgeist.

The examples examined by Peterson indicate that even on one of the most sacred feasts such as Easter day, the liturgy was innovative and flexible. However, at the same time, they confirm that this "ritual innovation" was generally restricted to liturgical manifestations that did not affect their most sacrosanct ceremonies, such as the Eucharist and the overall structure of the mass. These ceremonial transformations are all the more striking in an age when tradition had an enormous legitimising power. The justification for the changes was normally made by reference to that tradition, and the alterations in the rituals thus had to be legitimised theologically, for example, by a new explanation of the sacraments, which in turn implied transformations in liturgical practices. This all has implications for the modern researcher, too, who must be sensitive to all the forces at play in this equilibrium between tradition and innovation, permanence and change, and which, therefore, require interdisciplinary and intermedial approaches (i.e., *intermediality*).

After the ritual transformations analysed by Peterson, Juan Rego's contribution focuses on the more stable and permanent nature of medieval liturgy: the indelible character (*character indelebilis*) that some ritually transmitted sacraments provide. His sources are not strictly ritual–ceremonial, as most of the contributions to this volume are, but rather discursive–theological. Some scholastic theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth century reprised the concept of indelible character, which had first appeared in the late antique patristic sources to designate some permanent qualities transferred to the recipients of some particular sacraments. The new theologians used the restricted code of Aristotelian psychology to transfer the indelible character of baptism—to which those original late antique sources referred—to the priesthood. Rego examines the metaphorical nature of some of the new concepts developed, especially by Thomas Aquinas, and the iconic value they assign to the indelible mark left by some sacraments, which contributes to a better understanding of current theological debate.

This conceptual part of the volume is completed by John Joseph Gallagher's contribution, which draws on the rich source of *martyrologies* to connect liturgy with knowledge and learning. These documents often serve as paraliturgical resources outlining the contours of the liturgical year and the biographies of the saints commemorated over the annual liturgical cycle. *The Old English Martyrology*, Europe's first example of a prose martyrology in the vernacular, adapts the genre into a more scholarly and versatile manual which instructs and informs its users on a variety of topics: geography, language, hagiography, time calculations, information management, astronomy, cosmology, meteorology, science and doctrinal learning about the saints and the liturgical year. While the liturgical texts mainly constitute ritual formulas that worshippers should put into practice, the paraliturgical sources provide background information relevant to liturgy, the liturgical year and ecclesiastical life.

### **2. The Politics of Liturgy**

The second group of contributions makes explicit reference to the links between liturgy and politics, from early medieval to early modern times. Eva-Maria Butz focuses on the political dimension of the liturgical prayers of remembrance. These books encompass the list of rulers during the Carolingian period, thus becoming key artefacts in the shaping of the collective memory of their time. The *Libri vitae,* also known as "confraternity books", are a compilation of the names of people deemed worthy of being explicitly remembered in liturgical prayers. Butz works with sources such as the *Salzburg Liber Vitae* (eight century) and the *Reichenau Confraternity Book* (ninth century). These two confraternity books firm up over time into a key source of legitimisation for Carolingian sovereignty, justifying it historically and confirming it liturgically. It is worth pointing out that these two confraternity books, typical of the eighth and ninth centuries, tie up with the genealogies, another means of historiographic legitimisation that would emerge in the twelfth century with the rise of lineages, in an already more secularised context. The genealogical logic that legitimised power underpins these liturgical annotations, arousing the piety and adherence of active attendees of liturgical ceremonies, as well as the unity of the kingdom around its rulers.

The political influence of Carolingian liturgy also made itself felt at the margins of the Empire, in the areas known as the *Marches*. The liturgy that developed in Catalonia is a paradigmatic case, deftly analysed by Cornel-Peter Rodenbusch, who focuses on the framing of trials in tenth- and eleventh-century Catalonia. It is a liminal liturgy, in that it represents a convergence of Carolingian and Visigothic influence. Visigothic law notably affected the form in which trials were organised, while also leaving enough latitude for liturgy and the divine to have a bearing on legal customs. The relationship between the liturgical and the legal, magnificently elaborated by Rodenbusch in his article, emerges as another key area where liturgy as spiritual ritual interacts with power as political action.

More specifically, the post-Carolingian expansion of Catalonia and Castile in Iberia, to the detriment of the Muslims, left a privileged space for new liturgical formulas, as diverse political and cultural structures were established. Marisa Bueno analyses the victory rituals, with clear Roman echoes, that arose from the Castilian expansion into Al-Andalus. The sacred Islamic spaces were transformed into places of Christian worship, with the very same locations being used. The conversion of mosques into churches is described in contemporary chronicles and books of liturgy, where liturgy is revealed as a privileged means of understanding both the appropriation and the sacralisation of the mosque. It was a means of taking these sacred places from Muslim control and restoring Christian faith with the new churches. These rituals are an obvious legacy of Roman law as modified in late antiquity. They are reconstituted, adapted and reused in the new consecration ceremonies to purify the Mohammedan contamination, rendering the space doubly sacred.

In this same historical and historiographical context, Francesc Granell analyses one of the defining liturgical manifestations of Christian expansion in the eastern half of the Iberian Peninsula, spearheaded by the Crown of Aragon: the festive commemorations of the conquests. Liturgy spreads beyond the sacred space of the churches as analysed by Marisa Bueno in the preceding contribution, expanding into the civil and public sphere. The day Valencia was conquered by King James I of Aragon, 9 October 1238, is seen retrospectively as a providential, divine intervention in history, worthy of being commemorated liturgically. A century after the event, the citizens of Valencia decided to hold a commemorative feast every year, a custom that continues to this day. Granell probes the aims and religious manifestations of a supposedly civil celebration, framing it in a broader Mediterranean context. The liturgy resulting from this Valencian feast has many parallels with two other medieval liturgies that likewise commemorated crusading victories against Islam: the "Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem" and the "Feast of the Banner of Majorca".

The world of the Carolingian Catalan Marches, and the Iberian expansion of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, eventually led to the union of the two kingdoms in the joint figure of the Catholic Monarchs at the dawn of the modern era. Álvaro Fernández de Córdova analyses the political significance of Isabella the Catholic's funeral in 1505. Queen Isabella is that figure who best symbolises the total victory of the Christian kingdoms in Iberia, so the study of the liturgical dimensions of her funeral represent a fitting way of rounding off the preceding contributions. The new political and religious context, at the start of the sixteenth century, associate to the formation of the early modern Estate, was favourable to a new concept associated with liturgy: political propaganda. The sources become more universal and plural, as the author of this contribution draws on papal diaries, diplomatic documents and the *sermo funebris* of Ludovico Bruno. This plurality of sources allows for the reconstruction of the liturgical, scenographic and rhetorical display of a ceremony that seduced with its solemnity and elegance, the fruit of a hybridism that combined Castilian and Italian funerary traditions in the Rome of Julius II.

This contribution shows that the new liturgical forms spread from the specifically political into the sphere of international relations, as some ceremonies—such as royal entrances and funerals—became established as a favoured means of expressing power. In the case of the Isabelline funeral, they gave concrete expression to Spanish–French competition, as well as to the incipient tensions between the Habsburg and Aragonese courts for the Castilian succession. The sober late medieval liturgies became modern scenographies, where theatricality prevailed over ceremonial decorum and the rites became more formalised, with a tendency to combine spiritual and secular meanings to a greater extent. Fernández de Córdova's contribution offers an exceptional platform from which to observe the progressive convergence between a politicising liturgy and formalising rituals an evolution analogous to that experienced by the royal self-coronations, as suggested by Jaume Aurell in his monograph on the subject (*Medieval Self-Coronations: The History and Symbolism of a Ritual* (2020).

### **3. The Representations of the Liturgy**

Finally, a third group of contributions focuses on the material aspects of liturgical practice, such as ceremonial vestments and iconographies. Abel Lorenzo-Rodríguez analyses the miracle of the chasuble of St. Ildefonso of Toledo (seventh century) from the angle of punishment miracles. The author draws an interesting comparison with other contemporary accounts such as that of Saint Bonitus of Claremont (also seventh century) and later accounts such as the miracle of Bishop Adaulfus II of Compostela (ninth century), pointing to the possible late antique inspiration for both in the *Libellus Precum* and hagiographies of Gregory of Tours. The accounts involving Ildefonsus and Adaulfus present remarkable similarities in the development of their respective sainthoods and the importance given to liturgical vestments. Both are sanctified as prelates owing to their miraculous possession of external attributes and their worthiness in the face of unjust trials.

Incorporating art history into the already rich disciplinary convergence of this collective volume, Ana-Maria Moubayed contributes on liturgy's ever-decisive iconographic influence, exploring the sculptural programme of the west portal of Saint-Martin-de-Besse (France), which puts the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist at the centre of its polysemic narratives, forming chiastic sequences. Focusing on the eschatological events relating to the fall of humanity and the history of redemption, the Besse portal presents a series of enigmatic figures from the Old and New Testaments, together with an early Christian figure, Saint Eustace. The series of sculpted narrative vignettes that form the west façade of Besse have multiple meanings. Centred on salvation through (re)conversion, where the liturgical sacraments of Penitence and the Eucharist are fundamental, these polysemic narratives form and enact four different chiastic exchanges that suggest the Garden of Eden, where time and space are in constant dialogue.

Altogether, the ten contributions to this volume are set within the common concept of liturgy, examining its different aspects in space, spiritual, politics and the material world. The rich diversity of all these approaches makes clear the need for a multidisciplinary analysis in order to properly understand liturgy. Belonging at first glance to the field of spiritual ceremonies, it is also necessary to link liturgy to ritual studies, given that liturgical ceremonies are something more than pure scenography to be admired. Rather, they represent spiritual rites, the comprehension of which demands an attentive evaluation of both their content and their forms. Those who attend these liturgical events do not behave as mere passive spectators of a theatrical performance, but as active participants in a rite that involves a transformation of reality in one way or another. The political dimension does not emerge as something artificially juxtaposed, but as a clear manifestation of the medieval attachment to rituals and symbols. At the same time, they are enriched by—and enrich—everything that surrounds them, from their material environment to clothing and iconographies. Each one of the articles in this volume focuses on one of these manifestations of liturgy, but they can be read as a unified whole, by emphasising the interaction between all the elements at play in the proper development of the theory and practice of the rich medieval ceremonial.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Gobierno de España. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ref. PID2020–116128GB–100).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### *Article* **Framing Medieval Latin Liturgy through the Marginal**

**Nils Holger Petersen**

Section of Church History, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, DK-2300 Copenhagen, Denmark; nhp@teol.ku.dk

**Abstract:** Whereas medieval liturgy has often been presented as a specialized and complex but welldefined area, gradually and to a high extent bound by tradition, modern scholarship has increasingly shown how difficult it is to define or circumscribe what the notion covers, or what may be the margins of the notion, even in later medieval centuries. In this article, I propose to shed light on the notion of medieval liturgy, framing the notion, as it were, by analyzing ceremonies that by many would be considered to belong to the fringes of liturgy, ceremonies which even—problematically—have been understood as biblical and liturgical theater. I shall focus on two twelfth-century Easter ceremonies, which in their theological contents are traditional and uncontroversial, and hardly were thought of as theater by contemporaries. In their form, however, they show an acute interest in experimenting with (and thus changing) traditional liturgical procedures. These examples underline how, even on one of the holiest of feasts, Easter Day, at least outside the most central and sacrosanct liturgical elements, such as the Eucharist and the overall structure of the mass, liturgy was innovative and flexible. Although innovation was not principally seen as a positive quality at the time, and justification of changes would normally be given by reference to tradition, changes were indeed made, theologically, for instance in the understanding of sacraments, and—as proposed in the article probably at least partly connected to such changes—also in liturgical practices. The broader perspective of the article also concerns methodology, in terms of the importance of interdisciplinarity and intermediality, for future research in medieval liturgy.

**Keywords:** medieval liturgy and drama; poetry in medieval liturgy; sacraments and medieval liturgy; interdisciplinarity

### **1. Introduction**

This article focuses on two particular (parts of) liturgical ceremonies from the twelfth century in order to shed light on the complexity of the broad phenomenon of medieval Latin liturgy. In scholarly work concerning Western Christianity, "the medieval liturgy" is a common term for an assumed totality of public devotional activities during the Middle Ages, as indicated, e.g., in the titles of several volumes on medieval liturgy (Martimort et al. 1986; Heffernan and Matter [2001] 2005; Pfaff 2009).1 There are problems with this terminology, however. Not only was the word liturgy not used during the Middle Ages (Symes 2016, p. 240), but the idea of "the medieval liturgy" presupposes a stable, well-defined phenomenon with clear boundaries, something which is at odds with medieval sources (Flanigan et al. 2005; Petersen 2007a, pp. 332–36; 2007b, pp. 89–90, 103; Symes 2016, pp. 239–41; Norton 2017, pp. 157–66). Medieval authors tended to use the term *officium* (office) in the plural in general discussions of church ceremonies (Petersen 2007b, p. 103; Norton 2017, pp. 157–66), possibly thereby indicating a built-in diversity of the involved phenomena.

It has long been acknowledged that there was no liturgical uniformity during the Middle Ages (Vogel 1986, p. 4). Even so, there seems to be an increased current awareness (during the last decades) about the fluidity, flexibility, and locality in liturgical construction and transmission. At the same time, it is obvious that many local variations regard details and not overall structures, such as for instance the general course of a medieval mass (Dyer 2018, pp. 94–95). Thus, there seems on the one hand to be an experience of a phenomenon

**Citation:** Petersen, Nils Holger. 2022. Framing Medieval Latin Liturgy through the Marginal. *Religions* 13: 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13020095

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 20 December 2021 Accepted: 14 January 2022 Published: 19 January 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

that is broadly the same everywhere over at least a period of more than half a millennium (up to the Council of Trent), in many respects also seamlessly continued in the Roman Catholic Church all the way up to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and on the other hand a realization that, in spite of much continuity and sameness, there is an all-pervading amount of variation, mainly from place to place, even within the same province, but in many regards also over time.

Long-established scholarly constructions of seemingly stable medieval liturgical orders have recently been queried. The early Roman order for a papal Easter Day mass, the socalled Ordo Romanus I (or simply Ordo I), was generally considered an authoritative witness to the papal mass in Rome around 700 despite being preserved only in Carolingian manuscripts copied at least a century later (Andrieu 1948–1961, vol. II, pp. 52–64; Vogel 1986, pp. 136–38, 146). However, Romano (Romano 2007) has recently argued convincingly that Ordo I did not remain unchanged between its original inception around 700 and its Carolingian reception. The construction of a stable, influential pontifical liturgical order in tenth century Mainz (Vogel and Elze 1963) has recently been challenged by Henry Parkes (Parkes 2015, pp. 18–29, 185–223; 2016). Additionally, another widely accepted idea may be challenged: that of a general liturgical order for the northern province of Nidaros (in medieval Norway, also covering Iceland, the North-Atlantic islands, and Greenland) established in the early thirteenth century (Gjerløw 1968). This problematic notion of an overall liturgical order for the Nidaros province was advanced through Gjerløw's edition, although she herself pointed out the factors that speak against such a proposition (Gjerløw 1968, pp. 33–38; Petersen 2007c, pp. 292–96).

One factor that makes it difficult to obtain an overview of medieval liturgical practices has to do with how they were recorded in various types of books. In addition to the books (for various parts of the clergy) for mass and the divine office, individual baptism, weddings, and funerals were recorded in manuals for priests, but many other practices that may be called occasional do not have their own particular books, and how practices were recorded in books also changed over the centuries (see Vogel 1986). Specialized books, such as processionals, give songs for (certain) processions, and *troparia*, which give tropes for mass, often include other occasional songs. One might also mention monastic customaries that are not liturgical books as such, but mostly will contain sections of liturgical practices as well as other ritual practices (for instance in the chapter), which to modern readers do not necessarily count as liturgy. The point in this context is simply to point out that medieval liturgy encompasses different kinds of ceremonies, some of which are far away from what in a modern context would be thought of as liturgy, while others are central to liturgical practices even today, such as baptism, weddings, and funerals. The so-called *mandatum* ceremonies (ceremonies for washing the feet, emulating John 13:1–15) in a monastic context (it was also often carried out in cathedral practices), which often—but not necessarily only—took place on Maundy Thursday, are sometimes discussed in monastic customaries, but sometimes in other books (Petersen 2015). Additionally, some of the special Good Friday ceremonies (including, e.g., the Adoration of the Cross) belong neither to the mass nor to the divine office. For many ceremonies, which one might call occasional, it is not easy to know in what kind of book they should be found. A reasonable proposition is to understand everything that is found in medieval liturgical books, or sections concerned with liturgy in other books, as liturgy. However, this may lead one to have to accept as liturgy a wine-drinking ceremony (on Easter Sunday) after the Easter Vespers procession to the baptismal font in the cathedral. Such a ceremony is described in manuscripts regarded as belonging to the Roman-German pontifical (Vogel and Elze 1963, vol. 2, p. 117; Petersen 2007a, p. 336; compare also Flanigan et al. 2005).

Research in tropes and the uses of poetry in the medieval Latin mass have shown how schematic structures, basic to all students of medieval liturgy, as for instance the structure of the Ordinary of the Mass, would sometimes be complicated by more or less local traditions of inserted tropes (Iversen 2010; Haug 2018). In yet another field, that of liturgy and drama, there can be found no sharp delimitation between sung enactments of biblical (or saintly) narratives during mass, the daily office, or processions, and other parts of the offices of which they formed part (see further below). However, they have often been treated in scholarship as foreign to "the liturgy" (e.g., Young and see further below). The notion "paraliturgical" has often been used to characterize certain ceremonies or parts of ceremonies found in liturgical manuscripts viewed as not really part of "the liturgy," often including so-called dramatic ceremonies. However, this notion rather reflects liturgical sensibilities of later (post-Tridentine) scholars sustaining an anachronistic idea of an "official liturgy" of the medieval church (Flanigan 2014, p. 40; Flanigan et al. 2005, p. 638; Petersen 2007a, pp. 335–48; Norton 2017, pp. 1–11, 170–73).

While scholarship since the mid-twentieth century has turned against the idea of a foreign dramatic impulse in medieval liturgy (Hardison 1965; Flanigan 2014; Norton 2017), it is important to understand how new ideas were able to influence liturgical practices broadly. A keyword in studying medieval liturgical procedures, textually, musically, as well as ceremonially, is "transmission". Texts, melodies, and ceremonial features travelled. Bishops, priests, monks, and others travelled, bringing with them manuscripts and local knowledge to new places or back home. New texts, melodies, or ceremonial features might then be used under different circumstances through appropriation. This would entail attempts to re-contextualize, to ensure that the new element would function and make sense in new surroundings, whether architecturally or in terms of fitting in to current practices and, not least, to the local understanding of what was important for a particular occasion. A new idea, that of enacting, at some point on Easter morning, the biblical story about Christ's grave, where three women received the angelic message of his resurrection, could thus be transmitted all over central Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries, while being diversified in numerous ways. The (unknown) beginning of this phenomenon, usually termed the *visitatio sepulchri* (the visit to the sepulcher), thus led to an unwieldy tradition (preserved in close to 900 more or less similar, more or less different ceremonies, see both Lipphardt 1975–1990 and Evers and Janota 2013). This constituted the early part of an even broader phenomenon that many scholars, beginning in the nineteenth century, saw as the rise of a liturgical theater within medieval Latin liturgical practices. Gradually, it also came to include enactments of many other biblical narratives than those pertaining to the resurrection.

A notion for such ceremonies, "liturgical drama," was coined and became a general scholarly, albeit much-discussed, standard term for all such sacred enactments in the medieval Latin church (Rankin 1990; Norton 2017; also Young 1933; Hardison 1965; Lipphardt 1975–1990; Flanigan 2014 (written ca. 1989); Dronke 1994; Petersen 2007a). As already mentioned, discussions often revolved around the idea that the sacred enactments were the results of an extra-liturgical dramatic impulse, somehow entering into "the liturgy," until O.B. Hardison's new, literary departure in 1965 led to new perspectives in scholarship focusing on understanding the liturgical function of these particular ceremonies embedded in liturgical practices. Other disciplines such as anthropology (ritual studies) were included into the discussions, as well as an altogether stronger interdisciplinary focus (Flanigan 2014; Rankin 1990; Kobialka 1999; Petersen 2007a; Norton 2017). Altogether, interdisciplinarity and intermediality have increasingly become more important for liturgical studies, as for instance seen in collaborations between musicologists and textual scholars of different kinds in the study of tropes and sequences as well as gradually for the so-called dramatic liturgical ceremonies. The involvement of all five senses in liturgical practices has recently been discussed by Éric Palazzo (Palazzo 2014), and an edited interdisciplinary volume dedicated to the five senses in the Middle Ages (Palazzo 2016) also contributes greatly to the study of medieval liturgy. The latter volume contains articles pertinent to medieval liturgy by scholars from a number of different disciplines, including musicology, archeology of architecture, as well as articles dealing with sound, seeing, touch, smell, and taste.

In the twelfth century, new kinds of appropriations of the *visitatio sepulchri* and other liturgical enactments appeared.2 Some of these innovations may be connected to changes in contemporary sacramental thought, as suggested by Kobialka's idea of a connection between Eucharistic discussions (c. 830 to 1215) and the rise of the mentioned *visitatio sepulchri* tradition during that period (Kobialka 1999; Petersen 2009, 2017, 2019a).3 Some *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies were constructed ceremonially to point to the resurrection as the background for the efficacy of the Eucharist (Petersen 2007a, pp. 336–48; 2017, pp. 16–19). Further, during the early to mid-twelfth century, the understanding of the concept of a sacrament was influentially revised, not least by Hugh of St. Victor (Fassler 2011, pp. 228–33; Reibe 2020; Feiss 2020). In the end, this resulted in a rather substantial narrowing of what would count as a sacrament through the seven (now well-known) sacraments of the Roman Church famously defined in Peter Lombard's Sentences (Distinction II. 1, see Padri collegii S. Padri collegii S. Bonaventurae 1916, pp. 52–53; Lombard 2010, p. 9; cf. Reibe 2020, p. 56). Up to and including Hugh of St. Victor's *De sacramentis* (written in the 1130s), liturgical ceremonies would fit the understanding of a sacrament. They were explicitly treated as such by Hugh under his notion of sacraments for the exercise of man ("propter exercitationem," *De sacramentis* I.9.3, see Berndt 2008, p. 211; Hugh of St Victor 2020, pp. 79–80) in an almost lyrical general description of the varieties and virtues of liturgical devotions and singing (Berndt 2008, p. 214; Hugh of St Victor 2020, pp. 82–83). However, in the systematic approach of Peter Lombard's Sentences, there was no longer a place for seeing such liturgical human exercise as sacramental.

At the end of the thirteenth century, Bishop William Durand, in his *Rationale divinorum officiorum*, unsurprisingly, referenced the seven sacraments (he had been present at the Council of Lyons in 1274 where Peter Lombard's list of the seven sacraments was confirmed; Van Roo 1992, p. 61, see also Petersen 2021, p. 88). In Book 4 (chp. 42, Section 26), however, he also mentioned the older, broader way of understanding sacraments, using the traditional Augustinian definition of a sacrament (the one which Hugh of St. Victor revised): "in the broad sense, everything that is a sign of something sacred, whether it is sacred or not, is called a 'sacramental sign'" (Durand 2013, p. 376).<sup>4</sup> Remembering this old, broad sacramental understanding puts an interesting perspective on Durand's valuation of images and material objects used in liturgical ceremonies, as for instance the Gospel books used for readings (Petersen 2021, pp. 83–89).

The historical transformation of the notion of a sacrament can be seen as (part of) a background for how certain liturgical ceremonies, which were not as universal as, for instance, the Eucharist or the overall liturgical course of the mass, came to have a position outside of the main theological (and ecclesiastical) focus. Hence, it became possible for them to develop in a more free way, sometimes including also more entertaining or pedagogical features, as found in some (but far from all) enactments (Petersen 2017, pp. 19–22; for such new elements appearing in the twelfth century, see also Fassler 1992; Petersen 2019b). Similarly, substantial variations could also happen closer to a traditional liturgical context, for instance based on poetical extension, as long as these developments did not confront essential norms of the Church. The delimitation of the sacraments was one major way of defining what was particularly essential; in addition, a general sensibility of decorum also set limits for activities in churches (cf. condemnations of certain particularly problematic "theatrical" practices—including soldiers and weapons—in the twelfth century, see Young 1933, vol. II, pp. 411–16; Petersen 2011, pp. 238–42).

In the twelfth century, ambiguities between traditional notions of sacramentality and the new, gradually evolving understanding may similarly have caused a loss of transparency concerning how to valuate practices either as sacrosanct and untouchable or open to creative transformation, maybe even to discontinuation. What I mean by creative liturgical or devotional freedom at this point in history should be seen by comparison with the Carolingian era. Creativity within the old, broad sacramental understanding had been extremely important for the development of liturgical song (words and vocal sound) during the Carolingian era (Petersen 2004, 2020a, 2020b; Page 2010; Iversen 2010; Haug 2015). Voices were occasionally raised against the new inventions, for instance at the Council of Meaux in 845 (Iversen 2010, pp. 14–15). However, the creative efforts of the ninth to tenth centuries were altogether part of an overall attempt to establish an authoritative and

efficacious worship for the Carolingian realm (McKitterick 2008, esp. chp. 5, *Correctio*, knowledge and power, pp. 292–380; see also Petersen 2020b, pp. 67–70).

By contrast, the theological reforms of the Victorines (and Augustinian canons regular altogether) as well as Peter Lombard a couple of hundred years later must be seen in the context of the ecclesiastical Gregorian movement, thus as part of a strengthening of the institutional papacy (Coolman 2010, pp. 103–4; Fassler 2011, p. 214; Reibe 2020, pp. 23, 51). Liturgical or devotional freedom at this time, correspondingly, was a matter of freedom from an overall institutional centralized control, not a question of piety or faith. In the second half of the century, liturgical matters in general were no longer seen as part of the central means for salvation, and therefore not a focal point for most theologians. At least since the papacy of Gregory VII (1073–1085), there had been a strong focus on the church as the head of medieval society altogether, politically and religiously. Such a focus also led to theological decisions, not least the formal confirmation of the theory of transubstantiation as a solution to the long-standing theological and philosophical debates on the Eucharist, at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. This decision also involved a strong focus on priests, who alone were able to effectuate this transubstantiation according to the first constitution of the council (Tanner 1990, vol. I, pp. 230–31). The new definitions of sacraments, of the very holy, untouchable, the means of salvation of the Church, as well as the focus on priestly spiritual power, made room for pious, devotional creativity outside of this most holy area, as long as it was not felt to challenge the central church institution.5 This also elucidates a brief remark in the above mentioned Durand's *Rationale divinorum officiorum*, which makes clear that Durand knew of *visitatio sepulchri* practices and had a rather relaxed attitude to how they might be carried out (Petersen 2019a, pp. 126–27). Local institutional (in the end episcopal) control was clearly intact, but what fundamentally determined the limits of freedom were the central theologically defended powers of the overall ecclesiastical institution.

In the following section, two twelfth-century appropriations of the evolving traditions for the Easter morning ceremonial will be presented and discussed. Both have been treated earlier by scholars of "liturgical drama," but in my view neither of them should be considered as dramas. I propose that a new discussion of these examples may contribute to an understanding of the balance between what appears as sacrosanct and unalterable on the one hand, and what appears as open to changes on the other.

### **2. Two Twelfth-Century Easter Ceremonies**

### (a) A *Visitatio Sepulchri* at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem

Before presenting the first of the Easter ceremonies, which constitutes the focus of this section, it is important to point to a particular liturgical use of time and place in medieval practices. A great part of the Christian church year is structured by the memory of specific events connected to Christ (Advent to Pentecost). From early times, this regarded the celebrations of Easter and Holy Week, but gradually, over the first Christian centuries, also other feasts evolved, not least, of course, those of the Christmas season. The schedule was complicated by Marian and other saints' feasts, as well as by the weekly and daily cycles of masses and the divine office (see Martimort et al. 1986, pp. 31–150, Jounel's account of the liturgical year).

O.B. Hardison (Hardison 1965, p. 86) saw two principles at work in the medieval church year, one a principle of articulation, marking the phases of the church year, for instance the beginnings of Lent and Easter with their very different moods. The other, which is the more important in the context here, Hardison called the principle of coincidence. These two principles are intimately connected. The principle of coincidence regards the tendency to not only mark but to represent particularly important events from Christ's life liturgically. Such "coincidental" ceremonies have been known since Egeria's account of her pilgrimage in (probably) the late fourth century, which to some extent tells of representational celebrations in Jerusalem at corresponding times and places of events such as Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the crucifixion on Good Friday

(McGowan and Bradshaw 2018). *Visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies altogether, and thus also the *visitatio* ceremony to be discussed in the following, were precisely such coincidental ceremonies. They all articulated as well as represented what happened on the first Easter morning when the biblical women came to the grave, at the exact (as much as possible) same time, choosing in general a place to represent Christ's tomb (Young 1933, vol. I, pp. 507–13, see also Sheingorn 1987, pp. 6–25; Petersen 2014).

In Jerusalem, as will be discussed below, the *visitatio* ceremony took place near the actual grave of Jesus. In general, of course, the actual tomb was not at hand. Inspiration from ritual studies (especially the work of Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner) led Flanigan to a new interpretation of the liturgical meaning of a tenth-century trope for the introit on Easter Day in St. Martial de Limoges (in southern France). Textually and musically, the central sentences of this *quem queritis* trope were identical with the Easter dialogue between the women and the angel at Christ's grave constituting the central part of most *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies. Flanigan saw the meaning of the trope during the entrance procession to Easter Day mass as ritually actualizing the experience of Christ's resurrection for the congregation (Flanigan 1974). Its members were, so to say, spiritually transferred to the place and time of the original event, so that they would become witnesses of the resurrection. Similar interpretations of *visitationes sepulchri* have followed, based on locally varied ceremonies (e.g., Iversen 1987, p. 163; Flanigan 1996, pp. 10–29; Petersen 2007a, pp. 339–40; 2017, pp. 14–15, 20). What Flanigan initiated was an understanding of a ritual technology, which may also be called a sacramental technology (Petersen 2017, pp. 14–15) in contemporary understanding, since the ritual act functions as a sacred efficacious sign providing a congregation access to the holy moment of the first announcement of the resurrection. This seems to be basic to all *visitatio* ceremonies (Flanigan 1996; Petersen 2017), including the one to be discussed in the following.

Records of a *visitatio sepulchri* ceremony from the Latin Church of the Holy Sepulcher after the first crusade are preserved in a few manuscripts from the twelfth century. The earliest of these texts was copied for the Templars of the Holy Sepulcher between 1175 and 1187 (Salvadó 2017, pp. 404–5; Lipphardt 1975–1990 more broadly dates the manuscript to the mid-twelfth century, vol. VI, p. 406). According to Salvadó, this manuscript and another later manuscript giving the exact same version of the *visitatio*, in both cases placed at the end of Matins on Easter Day, reflect the substantial liturgical reforms of Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fulcher of Angoulême (patriarch from 1146 to 1157). Fulcher's liturgical reforms were carried out in connection with the rededication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1149. Explicitly tied to Patriarch Fulcher's name in the manuscripts, the reforms may well have been in place before or shortly after Fulcher's death (Salvadó 2017, pp. 403–6).<sup>6</sup> Martin Biddle, however, has pointed out that the mentioned dedication could not have been a dedication of the entire Crusader Church of the Holy Sepulcher, i.e., including the grand new Eastern part, since it was only finished in the 1160s (Biddle 1999, p. 98).7

Salvadó emphasizes how Fulcher's reform liturgy stressed the resurrection throughout the church year, pointing, e.g., to the persistent use, also outside Easter, of the Easter sequence *Victimae paschali laudes* (Salvadó 2017, pp. 416–18). This sequence explicitly reflects Mary Magdalene's experience of Christ's resurrection (John 20). In many *visitatio* ceremonies on the European continent it was also quoted as part of the dialogue. Summarizing, Salvadó writes:

In reshaping the liturgy, Fulcher and his colleagues constructed a new devotional scheme, which placed the Resurrection at the very heart of the liturgy, not just during Eastertide, but throughout the liturgical year. [. . . ] The new liturgy turned almost every Sunday of the year into a celebration of the Resurrection [. . . ]. (Salvadó 2017, p. 419, cf. also p. 414)

Here follows the *visitatio sepulchri* text from the mentioned Templars' manuscript (an ordinal) from the twelfth century, as excerpted by Walther Lipphardt:

While this is sung, three young clerics should be prepared in the manner of women behind the altar, according to the old use, which we do not do presently [or: in this way] because of the great number of standing pilgrims. In the meantime, certainly, having finished the responsory, preceded by lamps and censers, they each carry a golden or silver vessel containing some ointment; three times they shall sing the antiphon: *O Deus! Quis revoluet* [. . . ] (Oh God! Who will roll the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? [. . . ]). And when they have approached the entrance to the glorious sepulcher, two other clerics in front of or near the entrance to the mentioned sepulcher, holding candles in their hands and with their heads covered, shall sing in response: *Quem queritis* [. . . ] (Whom do you seek in the grave, followers of Christ?). The women shall reply: *Jhesum Nazarenum* [. . . ] (Jesus of Nazareth, heavenly beings). Then the two shall answer: *Non est hic, surrexit* [. . . ] (He is not here, he has risen as he foretold). While they sing, the women enter the sepulcher, and thereupon they shall return after having made a brief prayer; and standing in the middle of the choir they shall announce, singing with a high [or noble] voice: *Alleluia, Resurrexit Dominus* [. . . ] (Hallelujah, the Lord has risen! [. . . ]) When this is finished, the patriarch begins: *Te deum laudamus* [. . . ] (We praise you, Lord [. . . ]). Verse: *In resurrectione tua Christe* [. . . ] (In your resurrection, Christ, [. . . ]) (Lipphardt 1975–1990, vol. II (no. 407), p. 559, see also vols. VI: 406 and VII: 324–25).<sup>8</sup>

The ceremony was mentioned by Salvadó and has been studied especially by (Shagrir 2010) (also referenced in Shagrir 2017). It has been known for a long time and was importantly edited and discussed by Karl Young, the most authoritative editor of what he thought of as drama in medieval liturgy, in the early twentieth century, referencing all three known *visitationes* from Jerusalem (Young 1933, vol. I, pp. 261–63 and 591, a note for p. 262). In his discussion, Young draws attention in particular to the clause "which we do not do presently because of the great number of standing pilgrims." For Young (and others), this indicated that the performance of the *visitatio* was discontinued at some point between its introduction in Jerusalem (from the West, presumably shortly after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099) and the production of the Templars' ordinal. Iris Shagrir, however, argues against Young and others that the ceremony was indeed performed in Jerusalem and not "copied for descriptive purposes only" (Shagrir 2010, p. 71). Young, however, did not claim that it was not performed in Jerusalem, but only that its performance had been discontinued.

As translated above, the clause in the first sentence of the *visitatio* text tells us that "we do not do" something pertaining to the old liturgical use, due to the congestion of pilgrims at the Holy Sepulcher. What exactly was discontinued is not clear from the Latin text. The clause might be read to only regard the mentioned preparations behind the altar. This, on the other hand, would not seem to solve the problem with the congestion of pilgrims very much. Shagrir points to another possible (but, also in her opinion, less likely) translation of the discontinuation clause connecting "non" and "modo": "we follow venerable tradition but not only because there are many pilgrims present" (Shagrir 2010, p. 71, n. 48). As she remarks, this would mean the opposite of the aforementioned understanding, indeed that the practice was continued. If, indeed, that might be the intended meaning, it seems to be an apologetic remark, defending the ceremony liturgically, which would be odd, considering that it was a venerable, traditional ceremony. The lack of musical notation for the *visitatio*, in a manuscript that otherwise contains musical notation, might also indicate that the ceremony had been discontinued at the time of the copying (see n. 8).

As mentioned before, there is another somewhat later manuscript, the so-called Barletta manuscript, which contains the same *visitatio* ceremony (this is the manuscript discussed by Shagrir). It includes the mentioned discontinuation remark and was possibly copied from a source common to both preserved manuscripts mentioned so far. It gives almost the exact same wording (there are only extremely minor and, as it seems, insignificant deviations between the two manuscript versions) and the same placement of the

ceremony. The only possibly interesting difference between them is that while the Templar ordinal gives a verse to be sung after the Te deum, there is no similar mention in the Barletta-manuscript (Lipphardt 1975–1990, vol. II (no. 408), p. 560, see also vols. VI: 221 and VII: 324–25).

A fourteenth-century manuscript, made for a Templar community in Breslau as a copy of the Templars' liturgy in Jerusalem, also transmits what amounts to the same ceremony. This version has a somewhat changed wording, but the exact same liturgical procedures and songs, and the same liturgical placement (Lipphardt 1975–1990, vol. II (no. 409), p. 561, see also vol. VI, p. 237; Young 1933, vol. I, p. 591). One marked change is that the clause about the discontinuation of the ceremony was moved to just before the Te deum, the traditional end of Matins on Easter Day. As in the Templar ordinal, the Te deum is also here followed by the verse *In resurrectione tua, Christe*. The wording of the discontinuation clause is also slightly different: "Sed visitacionem hanc modo non facimus propter astancium multitudinem" (But we do not do this *visitatio* presently (or: in this way) because of the great number [of people] standing). In this position and wording, the sentence makes it completely clear that the *visitatio*, at least as presented in the text, was no longer performed at the time of the originally copied text. Although we are here dealing with a much later manuscript, this strengthens the conclusion that the *visitatio* practice was indeed discontinued at some point around the mid-twelfth century. However, at the same time, this also confirms that the *visitatio* indeed had been performed earlier, that is during the early decades of the twelfth century.

One interesting corollary of this has to do with where the *visitatio* was performed, something that must have been central to its meaning for the participants, as will be discussed further below. Shagrir read the reference in the ceremony to the choir, *in medio choro*, as a reference to the new crusader choir (Shagrir 2010, pp. 69–70). However, based on Biddle's aforementioned dating of the Eastern part of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which has also been confirmed by recent archaeological work, this choir did not yet exist, or was at least unfinished at the time. Thus, the *visitatio* must have been performed closer to the actual sepulcher of Christ than has hitherto been assumed. Mass would, of course, have been held in the building also before the Eastern part of the church was added, but then in the building around the Edicule, the construction around what was believed to be the grave of Christ. This building was established before 1106 at the latest and probably closer to the mid-eleventh century (Biddle 1999, pp. 84–98) and was thus in place at the time we can assume the *visitatio* to have been performed. The ceremony and its processions would thus have started at the altar in the Western chapel (later called the Coptic chapel), which is mentioned already in 1102/3. The performance would altogether have been enacted very close to, indeed at the very place of, Christ's burial and resurrection, the Edicule (see Biddle 1999, p. 84, as well as his Figure 63, p. 67; also Georgopoulos et al. 2017, Figure 14, p. 493).

As all *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies (see above), the Jerusalem *visitatio* can also be understood as a sacred, efficacious sign, spiritually transporting the congregation to the holy moment of the first announcement of the resurrection, as told in the biblical resurrection narratives. Only in Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the congregation was already at the right place at the right time (by calendrical identification over the centuries). One could therefore have imagined that such a representational *visitatio* ceremony would have been experienced as less necessary. However, as it was introduced after the conquest of Jerusalem, this seems not to have been so. The ceremony reflects how the announcement of the resurrection outside the Edicule, right outside the grave of Christ, constitutes its ritual high point, first given by the two clerics representing the angels, whereafter follows the announcement of the women (after having examined the grave), sung with a noble or lofty voice. This made the participants in the ceremony (including the congregation present) witness the very moment they otherwise had only been told about and had celebrated in the offices of Easter Day. Here they witnessed the very moment where the biblical women heard the unbelievable message of the angels, went in to check the grave, and then came out announcing the resurrection to the faithful. Time between the first Easter morning and

Easter Day mornings at the Holy Sepulcher in the early twelfth century thus collapsed into one sacred, transcendent moment. However, this must have changed in the middle of the century.

The earlier mentioned gradually emerging new sacramental understandings in the twelfth century may have contributed to make it more acceptable to discontinue the venerable ceremony at a point where practical difficulties made that advisable. Karl Young's remark, that the mentioned discontinuation clause "enables us to visualize the jostling crowds of worshippers [. . . ] in their desire to see a dramatization of a Christian mystery" (Young 1933, vol. I, p. 263), hardly captures the intentions of pilgrims and other faithful at the Holy Sepulcher on one of the holiest days in the church year. However, it may remind us that what these faithful were not allowed to see anymore at that time (midtwelfth century) may no longer have been considered to be as sacrosanct and untouchable a ritual. To be sure, there is no evidence to connect the particular decision directly to changes in sacramental understanding in twelfth-century Paris. However, the mentioned new understandings, which in the end made sacraments a much smaller, clearly defined class of "things," were based on changing ideas and sensibilities since the beginning of the century, not least in circles of Augustinian canons, and especially the Abbey of St. Victor (Reibe 2020, p. 55). These circles formed an important background also for the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Fulcher (Salvadó 2017, p. 407). Discontinuing a venerable, efficacious liturgical ceremony only for practical reasons does not seem likely; surely one could have found a solution to perform the *visitatio* in a new way, something that would most likely have led to a copying of the new version in reform manuscripts, something that did not happen, at least based on the preserved sources.

### (b) A Catalonian Easter Ceremony

The painstaking work with individual manuscripts and their often very individual problems constitutes partly a precondition and partly a way of controlling our attempts at establishing general knowledge about medieval church celebrations. On the one hand, it is virtually impossible to understand a medieval liturgical manuscript without some overall pre-knowledge of medieval liturgical procedures. On the other hand, in some cases, as already noted, liturgical scholars' pre-knowledge of medieval liturgy has been based on anachronistic assumptions, e.g., drawn from post-Tridentine liturgical traditions. To be sure, to a large extent, post-Tridentine liturgical practices are continuations of, but not necessarily identical with, medieval practices. Additionally, scholars from other disciplines, dealing with medieval liturgical practices, may bring problematic assumptions to bear on such manuscripts. Theater historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies as antecedents to the early modern theater. As mentioned earlier, this led to the (problematic) notion of liturgical drama and, as we shall see in the following, in some cases has led scholars to bring specific theatrical assumptions to bear on liturgical ceremonies (for a specific example, see also Petersen 2009, pp. 164–72).

Indeed, it seems impossible to approach any source material without assumptions from one's own background; however, looking out for possible resistance against such assumptions may helpfully result in revisions of those assumptions through the evidence found in the manuscript. In addition, one must accept that a manuscript only provides us with a glimpse of what may have happened at one particular place at a certain time and also that it may contain errors. We cannot be sure that a ceremony found in only one particular manuscript was ever carried out, only that it had been contemplated for liturgical practice.

This section will deal with a few pages, fols. 58v to 62r from the twelfth-century Catalonian troper from the Cathedral of Vic, Arx. Cap., ms. 105 (CXI), briefly designated as TVic1 in the recent (monochrome) facsimile edition (Gros i Pujol 2010; its text edited and discussed also in Gros i Pujol 1999). The troper (a manuscript primarily containing tropes for mass items, in this case also numerous other poetic texts for liturgical use, but often without clear indication of the liturgical position) was originally copied in the early twelfth century but also contains sections copied later, over approximately the next hundred years. The pages I will be looking at have been dated to the middle or the last part of the 12th century (Gros i Pujol 1999, pp. 44–45, 51–53; Castro Caridad 2019, p. 144).9

These pages contain a purported "liturgical drama," under the Catalan headline of *verses pascales de iii M<aries>* (Easter verses of the three Maries; TVic1: fol. 58v; Dronke 1994, pp. 92–93), probably added by a fifteenth-century hand (Castro Caridad 2019, p. 144), a poetic and complex version of a *quem queritis* or *visitatio sepulchri* (see Figure 1). A rubric on f. 60r (after the indicated Te deum, often marking the end of *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies at Matins) gives a new headline, *Versus de pelegri<no>* (the margin has been cut off; Verses about the Stranger, Dronke 1994, pp. 100–1; see Figure 2). Some authors have understood the combined lines under both headlines as a *ludus paschalis*, a term indicating the inclusion not only of the women at Christ's grave, but also other biblical Easter narratives. Words of this ceremony (or these ceremonies) have been transcribed and discussed by several scholars. This includes Karl Young (Young 1933, vol. I, pp. 678–82), Richard B. Donovan (Donovan 1958, pp. 74–82), and Miquel Gros (Gros i Pujol 1999, pp. 142–50, 216–20). Peter Dronke has given an edition of the Latin text with an English translation (Dronke 1994, pp. 83–105). The manuscript is musically notated, but with a large omission (to be discussed below). The notation for the "liturgical drama" has been transcribed, expanded, and discussed by Higini Anglès (Anglès 1988, pp. 273–81). A textual edition has also been given by Walther Lipphardt, indicating where musical notation is found, but without musical transcription (Lipphardt 1975–1990, vol. V, pp. 1663–68).10

**Figure 1.** TVic1 fol. 58v.

There are numerous problems in understanding these pages of the manuscript, which also do not indicate any specific liturgical placement for either part of the mentioned textual units. The way it was edited by Karl Young and Peter Dronke seems to indicate that there is altogether one connected drama. As mentioned, the rubric with the second headline is placed after the *quem queritis* lines, but before a scene telling the story of Mary Magdalen and the resurrected Jesus as *hortulanus* (gardener; John 20: 11–18). Gros (as well as Young) believes the rubric to be misplaced. He suggests that it properly belongs before the traditional opening song for *Peregrinus* ceremonies, *Qui sunt hii sermones* on fol. 61v (What are these things you are discussing; Gros i Pujol 1999, pp. 149–50, 218, 220; cf. Dronke 1994, pp. 102–3; for Peregrinus ceremonies, based on the Emmaus narrative, Luke 24: 13–35, see also Young 1933, vol. I, pp. 451–83). Donovan and Castro Caridad understand the text as two dramas, an Easter morning drama and a special, innovative *Peregrinus* drama for Easter Monday, the Easter morning drama ending with the Te deum before the second mentioned rubric (Donovan 1958, pp. 85–86; Castro Caridad 2019, p. 147, n. 15). As the Te deum was the traditional end of Sunday Matins (Harper 1991) and generally ended *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies placed at the end of Matins (as also the Jerusalem *visitatio* discussed above), this in itself is a strong argument for such an understanding.

**Figure 2.** TVic1 fol. 60r.

Peter Dronke gives a more ambiguous reading of this situation. As already mentioned, before the second rubric, the *versus de pelegri<no>*, the *visitatio* text concludes with the Te deum after a very traditional *quem queritis* dialogue.11 The *quem queritis* dialogue, however, was preceded by what appears to be a highly original poetic lament by the three women and some anticipatory poetic lines concerning the buying of ointments, including a dialogue with a merchant. The text is unique to Vic (see also Castro Caridad 2019, pp. 144–45). This part of the ceremony will be considered further below. After pointing out the traditional end to an otherwise very original ceremony, Dronke continues: "But for the Vic dramatist this was not, after all, the close" (Dronke 1994, p. 85). He thus seems to think of the text after the new rubric as a part of what he construes as a larger more complex Easter drama. This concerns what he believes to be the earliest known dramatic version of the mentioned *hortulanus* episode. However, in a note to the ms. rubric indicating the mentioned Te deum, Dronke writes: "The *Te deum* [. . . ] serves to demarcate the *Verses pascales* from the *Versus de pelegrino*. [. . . ] we have no evidence from twelfth-century Vic, to my knowledge, about

whether the sequel was performed soon after the *Verses pascales*, or at a later hour the same day, or on Easter Monday" (Dronke 1994, p. 107).

Dronke's point seems to be a literary one: the two ceremonies, possibly or even probably held as distinct events, are part of a unified literary representation of the resurrection event altogether, in which also Jesus as *hortulanus* was seen "as another exemplification of his *peregrinus* rôle" (Dronke 1994, p. 108). It was, as is well-known, not unusual for liturgical ceremonies to represent a narrative continuity, as not least the ceremonies of the burial (or *depositio*) of the host (or cross) and its resurrection, the *elevatio hostiae* (or *crucis*), and the *visitatio sepulchri* show (for the two first mentioned, see Young 1933, vol. I, pp. 112–48). What Dronke postulates is fundamentally a literary unity of what, after all, is also a patchwork of traditional liturgical lines importantly including apparently new lines, poetically rephrasing and expanding traditional biblical material.

I shall now focus on the first part of the ceremony (or the first of the two ceremonies), that is what belongs to the headline *Verses pascales*. Karl Young altogether considered the manuscript "disordered," "crudely written," and "seriously lacerated" (Young 1933, vol. I, p. 678, n. 6). Among other things, he points to what he believed was a wrongly placed rubric on (fol. 58v), the "Dicxit angelus".


Heu, quantus est noster dolor! Alas, how great is our grief! (Dronke 1994, p. 92)

Additionally, Dronke in his edition indicates that all these verses were sung by the Maries, not by an angel, simply leaving out the quoted rubric (Dronke 1994, p. 92). Altogether, in his discussion of the ceremony, he argues from a point of view of dramatic coherence, a point of view much in line with Young. As already stated, the notion of drama in the context of the early *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies is problematic. It seems advisable to try to understand the text with rubrics and music as it stands, at least as much as at all possible. Indeed, no extant rubric can be taken to indicate any action. This does not preclude that such action could have been carried out, but it certainly does not point to it. Otherwise, there are a few attributions of lines to narrative figures, the Maries, Maria (Magdalen), the merchant, and an angel. While the Te deum may be taken as a clear marker of an end to a ceremony called *Verses pascales*, this should probably, rather than as a drama, be thought of as what the rubric states, simply verses, sung lines about the resurrection, sung by various figures. This was apparently also how it was understood in the fifteenth century when the rubric was added.

The strange disappearance of the musical (Aquitanian) notation in the middle of a word (at the end of a line, the word "men-*te*" on fol. 59v) for the remaining page and its return at the beginning of fol. 60r will be considered below (see Figures 2 and 3). In addition, fol. 59v features some very small rubrics among the words without musical notation, consisting simply of the letter "a" in red, put in above the text in four places. Gros believes them to be rubrics abbreviating "angelus," whereas Karl Young indicates that he cannot explain them (Gros i Pujol 1999, p. 217; Young 1933, vol. I, p. 679, n. 7, and 680, n. 1). While Gros does not argue for his reading of the a's, Dronke (again) argues from a point of view of drama, pointing out that it makes sense in a dramatic context to have the angel sing those particular lines. It would, however, also make sense to have the Maries sing them all (see text and translation in Dronke 1994, pp. 94–97). Dronke's use of pronouns in the English translation (as is natural), however, supports his reading more than does the Latin text, as in the following example:

*[Maria:]* [. . . ] Licet, sorores, plangere, Sisters, it is right to mourn, Plangendo Christum querere, mourning to look for Christ, Querendo corpus ungere, looking to anoint his body, *A<ngelus>: Angel: <Maria:> Mary:*

ungendo mente pascere. Anointing to feed on it with the mind. De fletu, viso vulnere, In weeping as you see the wound, dilecto magno federe to the loved one, in a great love-bond, cor mostratur in opere. by your action, your heart is shown. Cordis, sorores, creduli [...] Sisters, let us be of trusting [...]

(Dronke 1994, pp. 94–97)

**Figure 3.** TVic1 fol. 59v.

Dronke's reading of the a-rubrics also implies that the angel will sing the line "nostra, surge, sureccio!" (Dronke 1994, pp. 96–97), by Dronke rendered "arise, our resurrection!" This is a wording not easy to imagine as a line for an angel. Based on Dronke's reading, one also wonders why there are no similar red "m"-rubrics on fol. 59v for the Maries. While it seems difficult to give a sensible explanation for the a's, Dronke's attempt to let these small rubrics support his (anachronistic) understanding of the ceremony as a drama demonstrates the danger in pre-meditated genre interpretations for ceremonies at a time where what is going on rather seems to be creative liturgical experimentation (with no fixed genres involved).

Donovan—as Young—has no explanation for the small a-rubrics. However, he describes in more detail his understanding of the ms. as it resulted from deleting text and inserting new text, pointing out that

the text which originally occupied fol. 59v and the bottom of fol. 59<sup>r</sup> [. . . ], has been erased, and replaced by this later version. This is clearly indicated by the lacerations and thin spots in the folio. It is doubtless no coincidence that the lines which bear mark of erasure [. . . ], constitute an independent unit in the piece: all are rhyming eight-syllable verses. The scribe began writing the music for the newly added verses at the beginning of the folio, but he soon realized he could not fit the entire addition with the music in the remaining space. Accordingly he desisted giving the musical notation and proceeded to bunch and abbreviate his words. On the following folio the musical notation begins once again. (Donovan 1958, p. 80, n. 22)

Due to the state of the manuscript, especially fol. 59v, there are minor divergences between the textual transcriptions of Gros, Dronke, and Donovan (who generally follows Young). This, however, does not affect the point I want to make. The text that Donovan discusses in the quoted passage—mainly crammed into fol. 59v (Figure 3, but beginning at the bottom of fol. 59r)—together with the above cited beginning of the *Verses pascales*, includes a dialogue between the Maries and the merchant, and (possibly) an angel. It constitutes a poetic unit in its own right, dealing with the biblical Maries, their sorrow, and their wish to bring ointments to Jesus in his grave. In the manuscript context, it introduces, but is otherwise not clearly connected to, the brief and much more traditional *Quem queritis* dialogue, which follows (on fol. 60r, see Figure 2) after the mentioned erasure and the mentioned newly inserted poetic verses. The clearly more traditional *Quem queritis* text that begins here opens with the words "Ubi est Christus, meus dominus et filius excelsi? Eamus videre sepulcrum" ("Where is Christ my Lord, the son of the one on high? Let us go to see the sepulchre" (also found on fol. 2r as the beginning of a trope for the introit to the Easter Day mass), and then continues with the dialogue between Maria and the angel, announcing the resurrection, concluding with Maria singing "Alleluia! Ad sepulcrum residens angelus nunciat resurexisse Christum!" ("Alleluja! The Angel sitting at the sepulchre proclaims that Christ has risen" (Dronke 1994, pp. 98–101), also found in the trope on fol. 2r (see also Gros i Pujol 1999, p. 161).

This *Quem queritis* dialogue then seems to be a self-contained unit, not necessitating what amounts to the comparatively much longer poetic introduction. Donovan's discussion of the erasures and insertions of new text is convincing, but also raises the question of whether the new poetic introduction was indeed meant to introduce the *Quem queritis* ceremony that follows, or whether it could be the case that the poetic verses about the Maries and their preparations to go to the grave on Easter morning were thought of as the beginning of a completely new—much more elaborate—poetic rendering of the biblical narrative about the Maries on Easter morning. In any case, it provided an innovative poetic expansion of Mark 16:1–2, possibly the first ever (Dronke 1994, p. 83, unnecessarily, however, claiming it to be drama). As pointed out by Donovan (in the above quoted passage), the lack of musical notation for a large portion of this poetic text was a consequence of using an older manuscript for its insertion. The scribe realized along the way that there would not be room for the musical notation if he were to squeeze in his text. Thus, he discontinued the musical notation to get space enough for the words. However, once he was past the new insertion, the music, of course, was included again (it had not been erased). Thus, one could reasonably speculate that what we have are two more or less independent ceremonies under the headline of *verses pascales*.

However, the graphics on fol. 59v bottom and fol. 60r top seem to indicate that the space in the bottom of fol. 59v and until the new beginning with "Ubi est Christus" on fol. 60r (see again Figures 2 and 3) was not just a blank space. The scribe put in the first words of the beginning of the *Quem queritis* ceremony, "Ubi est Christus meus dominus," the cue for the traditional ceremony on fol. 60r, before the graphics on fol. 59v bottom. He then filled in the remaining space on fol. 59v with graphic scribbles, also including the space before the musically notated "Ubi est Christus" on the first line of fol. 60r, thereby making it clear that the end of the poetic verses expanding Mark 16: 1–2 was indeed supposed to lead straight

into the *Quem queritis* dialogue. Whether this was the intention of whoever composed the poetic verses is impossible to know. However, the graphics rather clearly seem to indicate that this was at least the intention of the scribe who put in the new poetic ceremony.

Since there are no indications telling us when the ceremony was to be performed during Easter, we cannot know. To what extent there may have been action and division of roles between singers is also unknown. Some lines are explicitly and clearly assigned to Maries, Maria (Magdalen), and the Angel, but for the most part even that is not consistently carried through. What we have here, is a partly innovative text for use at some liturgical ceremony at Easter, likely Easter Matins (because of the Te deum). In a literary sense, it may well be connected also to the part with the headline *Versus de pelegrino*, but the clear separation with a new rubric makes it doubtful that these two parts belonged in the same ceremony. What is completely clear, however, is that we have an example of a poetic re-writing of an older ceremony, in which a new composition (text and melody) was supposed to replace an older part, seemingly expanding and radically changing what was there before. This new ceremony was then combined with a more traditional *Quem queritis* ceremony in the manuscript.

Altogether, these manuscript pages bear witness to creative work with biblical material for liturgical use, unconcerned about changing traditional texts, seemingly focusing on creating a vivid and convincing, probably even emotional, impact through the representation of the women coming to the tomb of Jesus. It may well have been part of the previously discussed sacramental technology, meant to let the congregation present at the ceremony be spiritually transferred to an original place and time, to witness the actual biblical women arriving at the grave on Easter morning. However, the overall context of the ceremony is not given in the manuscript, thus here such a thought can only be speculation. It will also be only a speculative but, as it seems, likely scenario that the earlier described flux in the understanding of what was sacramental and what was not in the early twelfth century may have contributed to the involved liturgical freedom, a freedom to change a previous similar kind of ceremony with the same intended function of letting the congregation witness the sacred event of Christ's resurrection.

### **3. Conclusions**

The two case studies in Section 2 of this article were chosen to exemplify the complexities of medieval liturgical practices, as they surface when studying details in a particular local context and time through specific manuscript evidence. Focusing on such very specific and detailed knowledge in particular cases does not give a balanced or general impression of what may be said to constitute medieval liturgy. Clearly, these cases represent a marginal part of the overall liturgical framework, also at their own time and place. The daily masses and the hours of the divine office by far overshadow these specific ceremonies and the changes they underwent. Undeniably, mass liturgy and the hours of the divine office did not generally give occasion to such radical changes as observed in the two cases. However, details of textual readings, the choice of tropes, sequences, and individual chants of the *proprium de tempore* and, in later centuries, not least the musical settings of the mass ordinary and other liturgical elements could often change from place to place and over time. The examples in Section 2 were chosen to point to a less perspicuous side of medieval liturgy, which comes into focus when not looking at the overall, broad picture, dominated by the rather stable mass liturgy. The attempt has been to frame medieval liturgy through the marginal. As pointed out in the introduction to this article, medieval Latin liturgy (and Christian liturgy much more generally) consists in much else than masses and the divine office. The more one leaves the central area of mass and divine office liturgy, the more local features come into view, especially if one dives into manuscript evidence and not least whenever it becomes possible to see how liturgical practices were adapted or appropriated to fit local needs and/or sensibilities.

Among other things, the discussion has underlined how detailed work on liturgical practices may fruitfully be combined with knowledge of local architectural settings, as well as how manuscript analysis may also involve other media than those of the written words and the musical notation, such as the visual appearances of the pages, including (in the present case) in particular the graphic layout. As pointed out already, awareness of the importance of interdisciplinarity and intermediality appears as increasingly important for the study of medieval liturgy. Additionally, the interest in liturgical enactments for historians of drama has brought a great focus on the individuality of, and the level of, local appropriations involved in the vast amount of preserved *visitatio sepulchri* ceremonies. The realization that at least the great majority and certainly all short *visitatio* ceremonies are not theatrical performances (although there is an undeniable continuity to later religious theatre) but simply belong to medieval liturgical practices, makes them shed extremely valuable light on medieval liturgy. Altogether, careful manuscript ana-lyses, along with consideration of page layout, are often able to nuance and question traditional perceptions of liturgical norms.

The two cases in Section 2 provide concrete evidence to the overall description of a liturgical flexibility and to specific local desires for liturgical revision and creativity, which, in each case, of course would have been subject to acceptance by the local church authorities, in practice probably mainly the cantor. Creativity had been a driving force of establishing liturgical celebrations throughout the first centuries after the initial Carolingian reforms (around 800). By contrast, the new creativity and freedom (in such matters) that seem to have come about during the twelfth century, were relative to already established traditions and occurred outside the area of the (theologically defined) ecclesiastical means for salvation. As pointed out in the introduction, for the church institution, details of liturgical matters outside of this area were of less importance than what concerned the dogmas or rules concerning sacraments, not least the Eucharist, priests and the church institution, topics that drew the greater attention of scholarly theology during the following centuries. There were no similar attempts to tighten up rules for how to construct or revise liturgical ceremonies; here it would be up to local sensibilities (often conservative in the main liturgical ceremonies such as, especially, the mass) and whatever freedom was accorded cantors and other clerics (locally—in each diocese) to compose and fashion or re-fashion ceremonies. In a period, often described as a small renaissance, where poetry and music developed strongly and to a high extent was driven by clerics, including young students at cathedral schools, this seems to have given fruitful possibilities for expanding and diversifying liturgical ceremonies. This also included the ever-increasing amount of polyphonic music for services in large churches and monastic houses, especially from this time onward.

The twelfth century, which has given material to the analyses in this article, is a particularly interesting turning point during the Middle Ages, also because of the theological and institutional changes, which have been touched upon. Other medieval periods, of course, have their own problematics, also giving rise to liturgical changes and innovations. The most general conclusion that can be drawn from the discussions in this article remain the complexity of liturgical transmission and change, as well as the methodological insights that can be gained from studying liturgy in relation to its local settings and through detailed and intermedial manuscript study.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I want to express my gratitude to the conservator at the Museu Episcopal de Vic, Marc Sureda i Jubany, and the archivist at the episcopal archives in Vic, Miquel S. Gros i Pujol, for their kind help in obtaining digital images of the pages discussed in this paper.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


### **References**

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Translated and Edited by Peterand Dronke. 1994, *Nine Medieval Latin Plays*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Evers, Ute, and Johannes Janota, eds. 2013. *Die Melodien der Lateinischen Osterfeiern. Editionen und Kommentare*. 2 vols, Berlin: De Gruyter. Fassler, Margot E. 1992. The Feast of Fools and Danielis ludus: Popular Tradition in a Medieval Cathedral Play. In *Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony*. Edited by Thomas Forrest Kelly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 65–99.

Fassler, Margot E. 2011. *Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris*, 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

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Gjerløw, Lilli, ed. 1968. *Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae*. Libri liturgici Provinciae Nidrosiensis medii aevi II. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Gros i Pujol, Miquel S., ed. 1999. *Els Troper Prosers de la Cathedral de Vic: Estudi i Edició*. Barcelona: Institut d'estudis Catalans.


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Page, Christopher. 2010. *The Christian West and its Singers: The First Thousand Years*. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Palazzo, Éric. 2014. *L'invention Chrétienne des cinq sens dans la Liturgie et l'art au Moyen Âge*. Paris: Les éditions du CERF.

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Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton. Farnham and Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 239–67. Tanner, Norman P., ed. 1990. *Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils*. 2 vols, London: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press. Van Roo, William A. 1992. *The Christian Sacrament*. Analecta Gregoriana 262. Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana.

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## *Article Character Indelebilis* **and the Iconic Dimension of Ritual Actions**

**Juan Rego**

Istituto di Liturgia, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, 00186 Rome, Italy; rego@pusc.it

**Abstract:** This paper focuses on one specific theological tool regarding some Christian ritual practices, i.e., the *character indelebilis* or indelible mark. Though the notion existed in some patristic sources, the theologoumenon was reframed in early scholasticism. Theologians of the 12th–13th century used the restricted code of Aristotelian psychology in order to better control theological predication and moved from baptismal theology to the theology of priesthood. Since Thomas Aquinas is the main theological reference in the development of the theologoumenon, special attention will be paid to his proposal. Revisiting the metaphorical nature of some of his statements and the iconic value he assigns to the indelible mark may contribute to a better understanding of the current theological debate.

**Keywords:** ritual practice; sacrament; character; in persona Christi; Aquinas; image; figura

### **1. Introduction**

*Ideengesichte* methodology in cultural and theological studies risks privileging concepts over ritual practices. In Christian theology, sophisticated conceptual tools appeared after centuries of normative strategies regulating a core of ritual practices. Embodied obedience to Christ's ritual commands usually precedes theological reflection. This paper focuses on one specific theological tool regarding some Christian ritual practices, i.e., the *character indelebilis* or indelible mark. Though the notion existed in some patristic sources, esp. Augustine of Hippo, the theologoumenon was reframed in early scholasticism. In the first millennium, some ritual practices were interpreted in the light of symbolic formulas (metaphors), such as *sphragis*, *sigillum*, *lux*, or *signaculum*. The theological avantgarde of the 12th–13th century decided to use the restricted code of Aristotelian psychology in order to better control theological predication: as Thomas Aquinas declares metaphors should be reduced to their precise meaning (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.1 co). Along with this process, the discussion moved from baptismal theology to the theology of priesthood, and it reflected on three main topics, the nature of the *character*, its efficacy, and its representational value. At the same time, liturgical commentaries from Amalarius of Metz (775–850) to Durandus (1230–1296) explained ritual actions not just as containers of sacred images but as ritual images themselves (Schaefer 1982; Meßner 1993). They were supposed to be performed and interpreted as symbolic forms. Since the notion of the indelible mark was able to bring together both ontological claims and representational functions, it became a standard feature in western sacramental imagery. Nevertheless, its reception-history has been controversial, especially after Luther's critical approach (e.g., Weimarer Ausgabe 1888, pp. 408, 567).

The first part of this paper reviews some key points in the historical development of the theologoumenon denominated *character indelebilis*. The aim is to identify those facts which come about in the ritual action and were designated as *character* from Paganus of Corbeil (12th cent.) onwards. The second part of the paper analyzes the proposal of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), considered a turning point in the development of the theologoumenon. Since the interpretation of his thought is controversial in some points, the aim of this article is to revisit his proposal in order to cast some light on this theological

**Citation:** Rego, Juan. 2022. *Character Indelebilis* and the Iconic Dimension of Ritual Actions. *Religions* 13: 86. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020086

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 20 December 2021 Accepted: 13 January 2022 Published: 18 January 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

conundrum. Special attention will be paid to the metaphorical nature of some of his statements and to the iconic value he assigns to the indelible mark.

### **2. Ritual Practices and Theological Interpretation up to Thomas Aquinas**

The reflection on *character* arose from ritual practices and their embedded theological implications. If we take a look at the ritual policies of early Christian worship, it is not difficult to notice that: (a) not everyone can partake in the ritual actions of the community; (b) not all members of the group carry out the same functions; (c) the objective and public character of some ritual policies ensure the transmission of the group's identity beyond the personal circumstances of individuals.

These policies are not an exception in the big picture of religious ritual practices. Strategies of exclusion, divine agency, and objective ritual efficacy are phenomena common to many other religious traditions (Bell 1992, pp. 131–42). Even if the origin of these Christian policies should be understood in the light of their biblical milieu (e.g., circumcision; strategies of the self-representation of God before Israel and before the nations; transmission of divine blessing), the very fact they exist may intrigue us in the same way they have intrigued former generations. Why were catechumens dismissed before the beginning of the anaphora? Why were some members of the community excluded from eucharistic communion but accepted in the public penance process of reconciliation? Why were former Arians not re-baptized when joining the Catholic Church? Since Christian religion presents itself as a religion interested in the Truth itself and not just in the established conventions (*non consuetudo sed veritas*),1 theologians attempted to answer these questions forging the notion of *character*. If it is true that ritual policies came first, it is remarkable to see the confidence in the capacity of human reason to explore and intellectually penetrate ritual practices (Rego 2018, pp. 356–57).

If the theology on *character* grew out of an interpretation of ritual practices and not from the theological exegesis of biblical passages, it is not surprising that the Scriptures do not offer too much information about this theologoumenon. Moreover, the diversity of the ritual practices of the Church explains why patristic and medieval authors distinguished different *dimensions* and *effects* within the variety of ritual practices. In order to name those dimensions and effects, metaphors contained in the Scriptures were first used and then "refined" by academic theology. When theological consensus about the existence of the *character indelebilis* was achieved, the official teaching of the Church confirmed its existence. At that point, *character* was no longer the final moment of a theological process trying to give a name to a complex reality. It became the starting point of unending academic discussion.2

Interestingly, official statements regarding *character* are extremely sober. Innocent III (1161–1216), and the councils of Florence (1431–1449) and Trent (1545–1563), later received by Vatican Council II (Lumen gentium nn. 11.21; Presbiterorum ordinis n. 2), simply define the existence of a reality called *character* that justifies certain liturgical practices. What this reality may be is left to theological debate. The same applies to the philosophical and theological categories with which to reflect on it. For this reason, those magisterial definition refers to *character* as "a certain (*quoddam*) sign distinguishing from one another" (Florence 1439, Denzinger and Hünermann 2012, n. 1313) or "a certain (*quoddam*) spiritual and indelible sign" (Trent 1557, Denzinger and Hünermann 2012, n. 1609; 1563, Denzinger and Hünermann 2012, nn. 1774.1776). The use of indefinite adjectives, such as *quoddam* ("a certain"), helps to understand the metaphoric nature of those statements. Metaphorical language, as understood in this paper, uses analogies in order to convey and explore some real aspects of meta-linguistic reality. These theological metaphors are not a figure of speech or stylistic artifice without any semantic implication. They have cognitive value as far as they are a metaphor of something. This tension *ad rem*, i.e., this constant reference to meta-linguistic reality, reveals their metaphorical nature that should avoid any attempt of either reification or disregard of ontological claims.

Theological metaphors referred to *character* developed from restricted code metaphors to elaborate code metaphors. Restricted code metaphors work better in situations in which speakers share a great deal of common knowledge. Their use of language is economical and rich. Restricted code communication can convey a vast amount of meaning with a few words. Here words are charged with a complex set of connotations and act as indexes, pointing to information that remains unsaid. Restricted code metaphors are characteristic of homiletic contexts and rely mostly on biblical and liturgical imagery. They are very helpful to put *something* before our eyes. They may fall short when a critical mind starts asking what exactly that *something* is. Below is a brief survey of restricted code metaphors used from Augustine up to Alexander of Hales to point to the existence of something called *character* (Finkenzeller 1980, pp. 74–77, 111–18; Galot 1958; Häring 1955, 1956a, 1956b). One may notice that most of them were used to explain Christian initiation practices.


Alternatively, elaborate code metaphors are used in contexts in which everyone is expected to understand *clearly* both the metaphor and the reference. They require thorough explanations and terminological disambiguation. This form of communication is typical of academic works. Since scholastic theologians conceived theology as *sacra scientia*, they privileged elaborate code metaphors in order to better control their theological imagination. Their trust in controlled human language was founded in the Incarnation. Since Christ used human language to convey God's love, their aim was not a rationalization of the Mystery, but rather a purification of human language for a better understanding of divine realities. Just one example of this methodological premise is Aquinas' statement regarding one of the aforementioned baptismal metaphors: "if it is said metaphorically, then it is necessary that the metaphor be reduced to its a precise meaning (*ad proprietatem*)" (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.1 co). At the same time, Aquinas affirmed that human language cannot completely comprehend divine realities. Therefore, theological language remains always symbolic or metaphorical (Aquinatis 1889–1906, I, q. 13). Consistent with this methodological approach Aquinas frequently nuanced his *reductio ad proprietatem* adding

particles such as *quodammodo* or *quaedam*. Unfortunately, the symbolic dimension of his subtle language is not always understood.

The turning point between the first millennium and early scholasticism was the discussion about the nature of that *something* called *character*. In this context, authors such as Paganus of Corbie and Huguccio of Ferrara (†1210) made an important distinction between two ambits of intervention of the Holy Spirit in liturgical actions (Galot 1958, p. 55). The first ambit was related to the action of the Spirit justifying sinners and setting in motion the slow process of assimilating them to the Trinity through ritual and non-ritual practices. This process of deification is called *sanctification* and requires *divine grace* as the base for the meritorious human acts. The second ambit of the action of the Spirit was the one that evolved into the technical notion of *character sacramentalis*. This *character* did not relate directly to the process of deification of the subject. Instead, it had a specific function in Christian life.

The reflection on the function of this gift of the Spirit varies in each author. It appears that the disparity of the proposals stems from the desire to articulate the following facts: (a) Roman tradition considers three ritual actions (Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination) unrepeatable when they are performed according to the ritual form of the faith of the Church. (b) Those three ritual actions have a permanent effect on the subject that, different to grace, cannot be lost; in that sense, sacramental *character* conveys the idea of an irreversible, unending, ineradicable presence of the Spirit always calling Christian sinners from within them back to communion with God in the Church. (c) Christ, or the Trinity in Christ, is said to be the only possible author of the supernatural effect called *character*. Different explanations will be given to clarify how divine and human actions concur in order to produce that supernatural effect. The Holy Trinity actuates that effect *with*, or *through*, or *with occasion of* the human ministry of the Church. Regardless of the value of each proposal, it is important to stress that human mediation stays at the very core of the debate. (d) Despite the minister's lack of moral virtues and/or the bad moral dispositions of the faithful, the permanent effect of these liturgical actions is always accomplished as long as the ritual action is performed according to the intention of the Church (i.e., in freedom, with the same aim or purpose, and following the ritual form determined by the Church).

In trying to keep all these facts together, theologians moved from baptismal theology to the theology of priesthood via the new focus on sacramental mediation. In fact, the term *character* was used by Augustine as a conceptual tool to help determine the external boundaries of the Church, i.e., the ecclesiality of a particular (schismatic) group. When the praxis of re-baptisms and re-ordinations was no longer perceived as an important theological issue, early scholastic scholars re-framed the theological agenda regarding *character* in two directions.

First, the sacramental *character* would no longer be considered the ritual act itself (*sacramentum tantum*) but an invisible effect of it; a particular effect because, as we have seen, it should be clearly distinguished from the ultimate effect called "grace" (*res tantum*). This intermediate position of *character* as an effect of the rite and sign/cause of the grace (*res et sacramentum*) expedited the process that placed the *character* in the section of "effects" of the new theological treatise *De sacramentis in genere*. At the end of this process, the *Summa Theologiæ* of Thomas Aquinas was the first to include *character* in the position that it still usually occupies today, i.e., as the other general effect of sacraments besides grace.

Second, when the ecclesiality of some schismatic groups ceased to be a problem, the theological attention focused on the intra-ecclesial distinction between ordained clergy and non-ordained faithful. The new pastoral challenge became the guarantee of the visible presence of God's action in the Church, especially in the context of an illiterate and unworthy clergy. In this sense, the objectivity offered by the *character* will be related to notions such as *ex opere operato*, *in persona Christi capitis,* and *sacra potestas*.

### **3. Revisiting Thomas Aquinas on Sacramental** *Character*

It is undisputed that the theologian who has had the most enduring influence in the debate on sacramental *character* is Thomas Aquinas. He sets out from the inheritance of the masters of the 12th century and is aware that the doctrine on *character* is rather new on the theological agenda. Interestingly, while Aquinas dedicates entire pages to the *character* in his Commentary on the Sentences (1252–1256), he avoids it completely in his *Summa contra Gentiles* (between 1259 and 1265) and takes it up again in his *Summa* Theologiæ (1265–1274). This fact underlines the freedom with which he employs theological technical language. The point is not to impose certain terminology but to pay attention to facts and to try to express them properly according to the characteristics of the addressee.

In the *Summa Theologiæ*, Aquinas showed a great deal of originality in presenting the new trends of the theology of the sacramental *character* and in putting forward his own synthesis. Not all the details will be taken up in this paper. It will suffice to point out some of his insights and limitations. I am aware that in this presentation, I separate myself from some common interpretations of Aquinas.

### *3.1. Remarks on Methodology*

Aquinas' starting point was twofold. On the one hand, he knew that the new theologoumenon was on the theological agenda and he could not avoid dealing with it. On the other hand, he knew that ritual practices, and not just speculative theories, were at the root of the problem (i.e., Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.4 qc.2 s.c). It is worthwhile stressing that Thomas' position on the liturgy was conservative. According to our current standards, one could also say that his methodology was limited from a historical point of view. One clear example is the statement that the priestly *character* is impressed at the moment of the handing over of the chalice as the central moment of the ordination rite (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.24 q.2 a.3 co.).3 Nevertheless, his trust in the rationality of the rite is surprising. Ritual practices can be thought about because their ritual form is a fruit of the wisdom of the Spirit in the life of the Church (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.83 a.5 s.c.; IIIq.72 a.12 co). Thomas' first big methodological presupposition is that the ritual practices known to him should be conserved. Theologians are called to justify them and think *from* them.

The second assumption in Aquinas' understanding of *character*is "balanced apophatism". As we will see later on, Aquinas was very aware that supernatural realities, such as sacramental *characters* cannot be fully understood with human categories. At the same time, those realities, have an impact on human structures. As far as they enter within the sphere of human experience, they can be partially grasped with concepts and described with words. Therefore, Aquinas studied the supernatural reality of *character* operating an "apophatic reduction". He reduced it to philosophical and theological categories ("*character* is not properly in a genus or species but is reducible (*reducitur*) to the second species of quality" Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.63 a.2 co; Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.1 ad 2) but carefully added balancing particles, such as "quandam" or "quodammodo" ("character conveys a certain (*quandam*) spiritual power" III q.63 a.2 co). The function of these particles is to avoid complete reduction or assimilation of divine gifts to human structures and human understanding.

The third main presupposition is the place assigned to the sections on the sacraments within the structure of the *Summa Theologiæ*. As is well known, Aquinas located the first section in the *II-II pars* in the context of the anabatic dimension of the sacraments (technically speaking, the *usus sacramentorum*). However, he specified that the discussion of the *usus sacramenti* would be in the *III pars* (Aquinatis 1889–1906, II-II q.89 pr). The approach to the sacraments in the *III pars* is quite different from that of the *II-II pars*. In the *III pars*, the main interest focuses on the katabatic movement of sanctification and in the *efficacia sacramentorum*. The deferment of the discussion to the *III pars* was convenient for Aquinas because it allowed him to talk first about Christ and his priesthood, a key element of his sacramental theology. As we will see, he paid a heavy price for this methodological decision.

### *3.2. Sacramental Character, Theandric Actions, and Public Configuration with Christ*

If the nature of *character* is analyzed in the context of the katabatic movement of sanctification, it should not surprise that Aquinas saw the actions transmitting divine gifts as the main function of sacramental *character*. Indeed, for him the most characteristic feature of the *character* (although not the only one) was accomplished in the instrumentality of the minister during the process of sanctification, that is, in those actions through which grace is given. This explains that Aquinas' main reference to *character* from the first millennium turned out to be not Augustine but Pseudo Dionysius ("from whom the first tradition of the *character* has come to us" Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib. 4 d.4 q.1 a.1 co). According to Aquinas, the true theological problem was not whether baptism or holy orders might be repeated. Instead, he was more interested in explaining what Pseudo Dionysius called *theandric action* and Aquinas translated as *divinamvirilem* or *divinamhumanam* (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.19 a.1 ad 1). Thanks to this synergy Christians become, like Christ's humanity, not only receivers of God's deification (divine) but also capable of communicating divine gifts ("divinum et communicantem divinorum" Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib. 4 d.4 q.1 a.1 co; Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q. 22 a.4 co; III q.63 a.2 co). That may also explain why Aquinas moved from the anointing metaphors of John 3:5-6 (and to some extent Paul) to the metaphor of Christ as the *character* of the God the Father according to Hebrews 1,3 (something that we find already in Alexander of Hales, Ott 1969, p. 97). One might wonder whether this shift may also reflect the progressive Christological concentration of western theology of *character*, to the detriment of its pneumatological dimension.

It is important to stress that already in his Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas set *character* in the context of operations, and not in the context of being: "the *character* of Christ configures someone to the actions of Christ (*ad actiones Christi*)" (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.1 ad 3). *Character* is a divine gift that brings with it a new capacity of *acting* ("exercise (*exercere*) spiritual activities" ibid. ad 5), not a new way of *being*. This is one of the reasons that explain his (apparently too complicated) double configuration with Christ, one via *grace*, another via *character*. In Aquinas, the distinction between *grace* and *character* became a structural feature. The grace-configuration with Christ is the most important one because it relates to the way of being (the essence of the soul) reaching the most intimate core of the subject ("grace, considered in itself, perfects the essence of the soul, in so far as it is a certain participated likeness of the divine being (*esse*)" Aquinatis (1889–1906), III q.62 a.2 co). In a different way, configuration through *character* has to do with *some* specific spiritual actions ("actiones spirituales *aliquas*" Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.3 qc.3 ad 1) that ensure the public manifestation of particular operations of Christ's priesthood through which the divine economy of salvation is actuated (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q. 69 a. 9 ad 1).

According to Aquinas, the primary aim of the configuration via *character* was not the personal sanctification of the singular Christian, but rather to guarantee the public and ecclesial dimension of Christ's priesthood on this earth. For this reason, Aquinas affirmed that those who received the baptism of blood were configurated to Christ *realiter* and *expressius* but this type of baptism did not impress any *character* (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.3 a.3 qc.3 co). He also stated that if someone were sanctified in the maternal womb, he or she would have to go through the baptismal rite "in order to be conformed to Christ's other members by receiving the character" (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.68 a.1 ad 3).

Sacramental *characters* follow the logic of the public dimension of the salvific plan of God, i.e., salvation mediated through human structures. According to Aquinas, salvation came from personal contact with God's power (*virtus divina*) mediated through Christ's humanity (*virtus passionis Christi*). This contact or *copulatio* happens through *faith* and the *sacraments of faith*: "the power of Christ's Passion (*virtus passionis Christi*) is united (*copulatur*) to us by faith and the sacraments" (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.62 a.6 co; in III q.62 a.5 co.: quodammodo copulatur). The notion of "sacraments of faith" includes the presence of physical mediations (*exteriores res*) that Christ uses to encounter his Spouse. In fact, "the contact that comes from faith is produced by an act of the soul, whereas the

contact that comes from the sacraments, is produced by making use of exterior things (*per usum exteriorum rerum*)" (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.62 a.6 co).

The distinction between *fides* and *sacramenta fidei* has a soteriological frame. Salvation comes always from God, but it has been *physically* mediated through Christ's humanity only from his incarnation onwards. Those who could never physically meet Christ (or His Body, the Church) can be saved "per fidem". Those who have been given the opportunity to have physical contact with the Body of Christ can be saved *through* that physical contact (*continuatio*) that happens "per usum exteriorum rerum". Aquinas understood Christ's humanity, and its prolongation in the Church, as a noticeable and tangible *instrument* that mediates the "virtus divina". This mediation is the core of Christ's priestly activity. Christians are incorporated into Christ's priestly activity through sacramental *characters*. Therefore, sacramental *characters* have an intrinsic Christological, public, and ecclesial dimension. They are meant to *build* the Church as the structured public body of Christ (Nicolas 1986, p. 465).

### *3.3. The Functional Ontology of Sacramental Characters*

That sacramental *characters* are above all at the service of the public priestly actions of Christ through his Church goes hand in hand with Thomas' belief that there was only one priest, the only mediator, the Man Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2:5). The notion of priesthood and the notion of mediation were for Aquinas two expressions of the same reality. Both refer to visible and physical actions through which the Trinity bestows salvation through Christ's humanity, and to the visible and physical actions through which Christ gives glory and recognition to God the Father with his Body.

Christ's priesthood or mediation depends on his human structures ("Christ was a priest, not as God, but as man" Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.22 a.3 ad 1). For that reason, God's decision to configure the human structures of Christians to Christ's in order to perpetuate the visible exercise of Christ's priesthood on this earth is not unreasonable. Aquinas saw the baptized faithful and ordained ministers as *instrumenta* (or *organa*) *extrinseca* at the service of the public priestly actions of Christ (cf. Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.64 a.3 co). They became priests *in Christ*. As part of their mission, members of the Church receive sacramental *characters*, that is "certain participations of Christ's Priesthood, flowing from Christ Himself" (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.63 a.3 co.) These participations in Christ's priestly actions are actions as well (*character as act* or *actus characteris*) that require a spiritual instrumental potency (character as potency, Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.63 a.2 co, Schillebeeckx [1952] 2004, p. 427).

Aquinas used the theandric actions of Christ as a paradigm for explaining how Christians are configured to Christ's priesthood, i.e., how divine action and human action interplay in Christian rituals. His refusal of concomitant explanations (two actions working separately at the same time) and dispositive ones (the human action as a condition of a subsequent divine action) is well known: those theories reduce the importance of the theandric action because the human element remains *juxtaposed* or *extrinsic* to the divine action (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.62 a.1 co; III q.62 a.4 co). These explanations are not consistent with the radicality with which the divine Word has assumed the human structures of the *flesh* (John 1:14).

According to Aquinas, the best way to approach sacramental theandry was by considering the "*per*" and the "*in*" ("through which" and "in which") that the human structures provide to the divine salvific actions ("the saving power must flow from Christ's Godhead *through* his humanity *into* the sacraments (per eius humanitatem in ipsa sacramenta)" III q.62 a.5 co.) Thanks to the mediation of this human "through and in", the divine salvific action is fully divine and fully human, completely *ex Deo* and *ex homine*. The Trinity manifests its inclusive power by joining human structures, that is, the humanity of the Logos (*instrumentum coniunctum*) and his expanded humanity, i.e., the body and souls of the members of the Church (*instrumentum separatum*) to his salvific action.

In analogy to the relationship between the human and divine natures in Christ, Aquinas saw the sacramental theandric actions as the result of two different forces that

work together while respecting the characteristics of their own dynamism. In fact, after the incarnation salvation does not come only *ex Deo* but also *ex homine*. The *ex homine* element is involved in both directions of Christ's priestly mediation: the descendent communication (*traditio*) of grace from God (katabatic direction); and the acceptance (*susceptio*) of God's gifts and God's *protestatio* or glorification (anabatic direction). Interestingly, as far as it regards the katabatic direction, the *ex homine* element adds nothing to the divine principle of justification and sanctification, the *virtus divina*. It only provides the modality of *contact* with it ("the proper work of the human operation is to enter in contact (*contactus*)" Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.19 a.1 ad 5), that is, the "*per*" and the "*in*" of the human structures.

The active role of Christ's human structures in the process of salvation is key to understanding Aquinas' approach to sacramental *characters*. Sacramental *characters* are divine gifts allowing Christians to join actively Christ's priestly actions. They are the "empowerment" human structures need in order to become divine and communicators of divine things ("divinum atque communicatorum divinorum" Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.1 co; Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q. 63 a.2 co). They are like the "Augmented Reality device" human nature requires so that theandric actions can happen.

In fact, since the distance between God and his creatures is infinite, Aquinas concluded that human structures were radically incapable of theandric actions without some kind of divine empowerment. At the same time, the fact that human salvation passes through Christ's human structures moves Aquinas to discard any understanding of the human mediation of Christ's priesthood as something external or purely passive. Sacramental *characters* are the theological device Aquinas used to solve this difficulty.

Regarding the supernatural dimension of theandric actions, Aquinas presented the *character* as a divine gift that requires faith and cannot be fully grasped by human intellects. The unavailability of the gift prevents any misunderstanding of the *character* as a magic power. The faith required for the reception and exercise of sacramental *characters* is the faith of the Church. As far as the subject's faith matches and expresses the faith of the Church regarding that particular action, sacramental *characters* can come into play. Furthermore, the divine nature of the gift means that it cannot be comprehended by human intellects and expressed with human language. It can only be "reduced" analogically to one of our human structures. For this reason, Aquinas carefully added particles such as "quodam" or "quodammodo" again and again (e.g., "quandam similitudinem" Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.63 a.1 ad 2). The function of these particles was to guarantee the apophatic dimension of God's gifts.

As far as it concerns the human dimension of theandric actions, Aquinas reminded us that for an action to be human, the involvement of the human structures is required. The human subject must "possess" the act in order to for it to be hers or his. Theandric actions are possible only if the human subject has control over the "supernatural capacity" (i.e., *character*) facilitating the theandric actions. The human subject must be able to regulate its use. Aquinas gave the name *usus sacramenti* to the act of putting the theandric capacity into action (e.g., Aquinatis 1980, Super I Cor., cap.11 vs. 25). The *usus sacramenti* has three main forms: the acceptance (*suceptio*) of the divine grace (esp. related to Baptism), the manifestation (*protestatio*) of the personal self-giving to God (esp. related to Confirmation), and the communication (*traditio*) of the divine grace to others (esp. related to Holy Orders). At the same time, Aquinas denied a complete possession of the theandric act (not of the capacity of putting it into action) on the part of Christians. The source of the salvific action cannot be any human structure. Human beings can only be *instrumental* regarding the *virtus divina*. Therefore, the salvific action is something that is *contained in* and *flows through* human structures ("a certain instrumental power transient (*fluens*) and incomplete in its natural being" Aquinatis (1889–1906), III q.62 a.3 co). Sacramental *characters* are those supernatural capacities that Christians enact in order to allow Christ's human and divine actions to flow through them.

Aquinas stressed the *in* and *through* of the human structures because human beings are not passive instruments of divine activity in theandric actions. The *virtutem*

*creatam* or distinctive efficiency of the human acts (e.g., speech acts, gestures) is required (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.78 a.4 co). Otherwise, those actions would not be *ex homine*. According to his Christological model, Aquinas considered that God had extended to other human creatures the gift of uniting their own power of action to the divine salvific action without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.

Since *character* is a new operational potency given to the human subject, *character* is an "accident" (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.3 qc.2 co). According to Aquinas, an accident is not something unnecessary or unimportant, but rather something *inherent-in-another* or *not-existing*-*in-se*. Accidents have no existence of their own (García López 2001, p. 213). They exist and can only exist in and by the substance that sustains them. When Aquinas tried to ascribe these "accidents" (*characters*) to any of the human structures he knew, Aquinas concluded that sacramental *characters* are closer to "qualities" than to any other accidental determination of the human soul. Between the different kinds of qualities that Aristotelian psychology had individuated, the supernatural gift of the *character* is apophatically "reduced" to the notion of *disposition* or *operational principle* (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III, q.63 a.2 co). *Characters* are just principles of theandric actions. They empower human structures to collaborate with certain divine actions (functional ontology).

Paradoxically, sacramental *characters* become *of the human subject* (because they have been given to her or him), but they are not *human accidents* (they cannot come from any human substance). For this reason, scholastic theologians tried to identify the "part" of the soul in which the sacramental *characters* fit in. Aquinas "placed" this supernatural accident in the context of the human intellect (Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.4 q.1 a.3 qc.3). Aquinas wanted to stress that *characters* are faculties at the service of the public faith of the Church and not at the service of the moral development of the individual subject. In other words, the exercise of *characters* does not require the moral perfection of the subject (this depending mostly on a good or bad will), but rather the intention of enacting the faith of the Church.

In conclusion, sacramental *characters* are *certain divine potencies* allowing Christians to use their own spiritual and sensitives faculties as *instruments* of Christ's public exercise of his priesthood. Christians possess those potencies not as a part of their own nature, but rather as gifts coming from outside of their anthropological structures. At the same time, the gifts are really given. Therefore, Christians have sacramental *characters* at their disposal and decide about their use under certain conditions.

### *3.4. The Exercise of Sacramental Characters: Parameters*

Christians can employ and decide about the use of sacramental *characters* according to certain parameters. The exercise of the sacramental *character* has conditions because it is not a magic power wholly at the subject's disposal. The final synergetic (*divinamvirilis*) operation does not depend on human initiative and thus can be said to belong less to the subject than other acts of worship that they carry out with the help of grace.

Aquinas indicated two of the main conditions for the exercise of sacramental *characters*. The first condition is the full humanity of the act (that includes knowledge and free will). The second one stresses the ecclesial dimension of the theandric actions. In other words, singular human beings can become instruments of divine action as far as they align themselves with the divine will. This alignment happens when obedience to the *ecclesial form* of the rite is respected. The intention of doing what the Church does is an essential requirement for the existence of theandric collaboration. As we have seen, *characters* are mainly at the service of the public exercise of Christ's priesthood, rather than for the growth of the individual in holiness. In this ecclesiological context, one can better understand Aquinas' notion of *deputatio.* Sacramental *characters* have an ontological and a "legal" dimension (Schillebeeckx [1952] 2004, p. 416). In the case of Baptism and Confirmation, the *deputatio* is an immediate consequence of the ontological gift of the *character* ("the sacraments of the New Law produce a character, in so far as by them we are appointed (*deputamur*) to the worship of God according to the rite of the Christian religion" Aquinatis (1889–1906), III q.63 a.2 co). That said, Aquinas' refusal of the sacramentality (and *character*!) of the episcopal ordination makes it difficult to evaluate the ontological and "legal" value of the ecclesial *deputatio* in the case of holy orders. The tension between the *potestas ordinis* and the *potestas jurisdictionis* will accompany the catholic debate on the priesthood for many centuries.

In any case, the *intention* of doing what the *faith of the Church* wants to do and its actual *enactment* is necessary and enough. On the other hand, the individual faith of the singular person is required for the individual *fruitfulness* of the theandric actions. That explains why the supernatural effects of sacramental actions can be actuated despite the unworthiness of both the ministers and the participants in the rite.

### *3.5. The Iconic Dimension of the Sacramental Characters in the Ritual Actions*

The last point we would like to review is the iconic dimension of the *ritual actions* of the Christians, both ordained and non-ordained faithful. The iconic dimension of the sacramental *characters* is related to the debate on who operates *in persona Christi*. Modern catholic controversial theology on priesthood has stressed this aspect often quoting Aquinas' texts. As we will see, Aquinas' understanding of this expression is articulated and more complex than its *vulgata* presentation.

Aquinas' starting point was soteriological. He wanted to understand how divine salvation had been dispensed through history, that is, before Christ, in Christ's life, and after Christ's Ascension. As we have already seen, divine salvation comes only from God (*virtus divina*). According to Aquinas, this *divine power* embraces any period of history before or after Christ ("this power is in touch with all places and times by its presence (præsentialiter)" Aquinatis (1889–1906), III, q.56, a.1, ad 3) making salvific virtual contacts (*contactus virtualis*, ibid.) possible. At the same time, Aquinas was very aware of the uniqueness of Christ's mediation. This uniqueness requires that the human act of faith necessary for salvation includes a reference to Christ. How could this happen before the historical moment of the incarnation? Aquinas' response was straightforward. He recalls 1 Cor 10:11 ("these things happened to them by way of the figure (*in figura*, Vulgate)") and concluded that there must have existed *figuræ* of Christ given by God to all those who lived before Christ.

In order to put in contact the human act of faith with the incarnated Logos, those *figuræ*, which Aquinas also called *ræpresentationes* or *assimilationes*, must have a similar formality to Christ's flesh. They must have a likeness (*similitudo*) with the form of Christ's flesh. By *similitudo,* Aquinas meant the relation established by the presence of one same formal aspect (*relatio ex unitate qualitatis*) in the original and its representation (e.g., Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.1 d.2 q.1 a.5 expos). In other words, it is enough for the *figura* to have a similar formality (*qualitas*) to Christ's flesh *in any aspect whatsoever*. In fact, "the truth corresponds to the figure in some respects (quantum ad aliquid)" (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.48 a.3 ad 1). This broad sense explains why Aquinas, following the typological reading of the Scripture, considered very different realities, such as the paschal lamb or the altar, as *figuræ* of the flesh of Christ (e.g., Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q. 46 a. 4 co; III q. 47 a.2 ad 1).

Interestingly, according to Aquinas the representational mechanism of the *figuræ* as such is the same before and after Christ. All of them are *ræpresentationes per similitudo*, that is, *signs* of Christ's flesh. They all require the mechanism of the intentional movement towards the image "as an image" (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q. 25 a.3 co), i.e., the mechanism of an intentional act of the soul that does not stop the movement of the act of faith at the level of the image itself (that would be idolatry), but, passing *through* the mediation of the *figura* or sensible sign ("aliquod signum sensibile" Super Io., cap. 3 l. 1) the intentional act reaches the reality itself, that is, the *virtus divina*.

Two characteristics of the *figuræ* or signs of Christ after the incarnation are that (a) they not only signify the *virtus divina* but also mediate this *virtus* through Christ's flesh; for these reasons, the *figuræ* of this historical period signify more explicitly Christ's flesh than the *figuræ* before the incarnation (Aquinatis 1953, Super Heb., ch. 10 l. 1); and (b) the *figuræ* after the incarnation not only signify Christ's flesh but, also mediate Christ's katabatic and anabatic priestly acts.<sup>4</sup> In this sense, sacramental *characters* will be thought of as the means with which Christ transforms the ritual activity of the members of his Body in *figuræ*, in signs that manifest his priestly acts. Therefore, the public acts of worship that Christians perform are more than the individual's response to God. They become visible *signs*, *icons* of Christ's priestly acts (e.g., "the celebration of this sacrament [the Eucharist] is a certain image representing Christ's Passion, which is the true sacrifice" Aquinatis (1889–1906), III, q.83, ad 1 co).

From this point of view, we turn to Aquinas' use of the expressions *in persona Christi*, *in persona Ecclesiæ,* and similar ones. As an initial remark, we should remember that Thomas did not speak of *configuration*. Instead, he spoke of *quædam configuratio* (a certain kind of configuration).

As far as it regards the ordained ministers of a Christian community, Aquinas saw them as (a) *images* of the *autoritas/potestas Christi*, who rules and vivifies his Body with his grace at particular moments; (b) as *images* that represent the public acts of worship *of the whole Church* (Aquinatis 1889–1906, II-II q. 83 a. 12 co). Consequently, though Aquinas did use the expression *in persona Christi* (or others such as *Christum typum gerere*, or *in nomine Christi*), he preserved the ecclesiological dimension of the priestly *character*. Aquinas reminds us that whenever there is a sacramental contact *through an image*, then an insurmountable "iconic difference" emerges. In the first place, the minister never ceases being himself (the configuration with Christ does not happen at the personal level). In the second place, the ordained minister always acts as a minister of the Church (inquantum est Ecclesiae minister, Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.64 a.6 ad 2); that is, the priest can act *in persona Christi* because he is "representing" the act that the whole Church does ("only [the priest] can perform the act of the whole Church that consecrates the Eucharist" Aquinatis (1947) Super Sent., lib.4 d.24 q.2 a.2 ad 2; see also lib. 4 d. 8 q. 2 a. 1 qc. 4 ad 4; Aquinatis 1889–1906, III, q. 64 a. 5 ad 1; III, q. 64 a. 6 ad 2). Without these two dimensions of the "iconic difference", we would not be dealing with an image but with reality itself ("it would no longer be a likeness (*similitudo*), but the truth itself" III q. 46 a. 4 ad 1). There would be no ecclesial mediation, but a direct encounter with Christ. This immediacy will characterize the heavenly condition or *status gloriæ*. In the present status of the Church, contact with Christ is mediated by images or signs because it is based on the exercise of faith: "the sacraments are proportioned to faith, through which the truth is seen through a glass (*in speculo*) and in a dark manner (*in ænigmate*) "(Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.80 a.2 ad 2). For this reason, Aquinas privileges the point of view of the *sign* in his study of the sacraments ("but here we speak of sacraments in a special sense, as implying their condition of sign, and in this way, a sacrament is a kind of sign" Aquinatis 1889–1906, III, q.60, a.1. co.)

Therefore, Aquinas had no problem in presenting the mediation of the minister who acts *in persona Christi* as a fictional representation: «as if Christ uttered [those words] being present (*præsentialiter*)» (Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.78 a.5 co.; "as if Christ were present" Aquinatis (1951), Super Mt., cap.26 l.3). This fictional dimension (*ac si,* as if. . . ) of the priestly *character* has not been sufficiently received in modern presentations of Aquinas' theology. The person of Christ does not substitute the person of the minister during the ritual act. Christ does not present himself without the mediation of his Church. Instead, Christ uses the human structures of some members of his Body to actuate determined acts of sanctification and glorification of the Father. Just one more example: "if only one priest is present, it is understood that he fulfills this sacrament in the power of the entire Church whose minister he is, and which he represents (*personam gerit*)" (Aquinatis 1961, Contra Gentiles, lib. 4 cap. 73 n. 9, 9).

### **4. Appraisal and Conclusions**

According to Otto Herman Pesch (2010, p. 699), the catholic doctrine on the priestly indelible mark is the greatest stumbling block for Lutheran theology on priesthood. The main critique of catholic doctrine would be that it introduces a qualitative difference between clerics and lay people, especially since clerics are seen as a *medium* for something that only can be asked for and implored, i.e., the gift of the Spirit.

In my opinion, by forgetting Aquinas' ecclesial and fictional dimension of *character* and the distinction between grace-configuration and *character*-configuration, great confusion has been caused. Scheeben's conception of *character* as "dignity" has contributed not a little to such a state of things (Scheeben [1865] 1941, pp. 479–81; Journet [1962] 1998, pp. 201–3). Theological imagination stopped looking at *character* as the way in which Christ's worship and sanctifying actions become visible and public through the actions of the different Church members and it started to be seen as an increase in Christian dignity<sup>5</sup> and one more element in the process of personal sanctification. This misunderstanding was fueled by a certain unilateral interpretation of Christ's priesthood. In the context of a controversial theology against protestants, Catholic theologians stiffened the notions of ministry and priesthood reducing its *public* and *active* dimensions to the ordained priests. Only ordained priests were ontologically configured to Christ. Only ordained priests could act *in persona Christi* and *in nomine Ecclesiæ*. The priesthood of the laity was imperfect, spiritual, and a derivation of the ordained priesthood (Tanquerey 1938, p. 281; Schmaus 1958, p. 527; Schmidt 1960, p. 78). The "ontological" claims of the catholic priesthood were defended against the "functionalistic" understanding of protestant priesthood without noticing that many times this was a false alternative, at least if the problem was studied under the light of Aquinas' "functional ontology" of sacramental *characters*.

At the same time, it is also true that Aquinas himself has a part in this simplification. In the first place, Aquinas qualified baptismal *character* as a *passive* potency, as opposed to the *active* potency of holy orders. Although the reception of the sacraments fits well with the model of passive potency, this does not seem to be the case in the other acts of worship, i.e., the active *protestatio fidei* acts of the baptized, such as vocal prayers and *sacrifices* (Aquinatis 1889–1906, II-II q.81 a.3; Christ's protestatio as a sacrifice in Aquinatis 1889–1906, III q.22 aa.2–3). These acts include ritual actions, such as the divine office or the offering of the *sacrifice* of the Mass. Here Aquinas paid the price of placing the study of the *character* in the *III pars* of the *Summa Theologiæ*. As we saw, this operation stressed the katabatic dimension of Christ's priesthood. From this point of view, the main "activity" of the baptized faithful during the sacramental rites was to receive grace. Further, what happens with the anabatic dimension of Christ's priesthood? This dimension is extremely reduced in the *III pars* because it was partially studied in the *I-II pars* and the *II-II pars* from the point of view of the human structures and human acts. Therefore, it is not clear whether ritual acts, such as common prayer (*officium divinum*), required the active potency of *character* (e.g., "prayer is twofold. One is the private prayer that one offers to God as an individual person; the second is the public prayer that one offers to God in the person of the whole Church, as it is clear in the prayers that are said in the church by the priests "Aquinatis 1980, Super I Cor., cap.11 l.2).

That Aquinas was not clear on this point is well shown in the reception of his ideas by modern theologians. For many of these authors, the passive potency of baptismal *character* does not allow the Christian faithful to celebrate actively the divine office or to *offer* the sacrifice of the Mass with the priest, but only through "his hands" (e.g., Schillebeeckx [1952] 2004, p. 438). This conception had grave consequences for liturgical life. The theological model of passive/active *characters* fitted well with the process of clericalization of the Catholic liturgy according to which only ordained priests could act "actively" *in persona Christi* and *in nomine Ecclesiæ*. For this reason, only priests could "celebrate" the liturgy, while the baptized could only "participate".

This affirmation has been reversed in *Sacrosanctum Concilium* n. 48 (Vatican Council II [1962–1965] 2014) and in the recent official teaching of the Catholic Church (Catechism 2000, nn. 1142–44). For example, *Sacrosanctum Concilium* n. 100 encourages reciting the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually, presupposing that lay people within a group or alone (and without the presence of the priest) pray the Liturgy of the Hours in the name of the whole Church without any other deputation

than their baptismal *character*. Their common priesthood is not seen as a derivation of the priesthood of ordained priests, but as a *different* modality of exercise of Christ's priesthood (Pascher 1966, p. 216; Congar 1971, p. 791). This does not mean that any baptized person can make present any priestly act of Christ at any moment. It just implies that the expression *in persona Christi* can be well understood when it is placed at the ontological level of functional operations. Ordained priests *are not essentially more Christ* than other Christians. It only means that they can put their human activity at the service of determined actions of Christ at a precise moment and always as the "mouth" of the Church. If it is true that non-ordained faithful cannot act *in persona Christi capitis,* it is also true that all the baptized are members of the priestly people of God and, hence, they have proper participation in Christ's priesthood. Because they are members of the priestly Body of Christ, Christ can use their human structures during the rite to render "visible" *some* of his priestly acts. In this case, they do not act *in persona Christi capitis*, they act *in persona Christi corporis*.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I am grateful to Professor Robert Wielockx for his suggestions and the issue editor Professor Jaume Aurell. I thank Salvador Rego and David Howell for the revision of the text and the anonymous reviewers and editorial staff for their commentaries and help.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


### **References**


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Denzinger, Heinrich, and Peter Hünermann. 2012. *Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals = Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, Revised, Enlarged, and, in Collaboration with Helmut Hoping*. Edited by Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash for the English edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

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Galot, Jean. 1958. *La Nature du Caractère Sacramentel. Étude de Théologie Médiévale*, 2nd ed. Paris and Louvain: Desclée de Brouwer. García López, Jesús. 2001. Metafísica tomista. In *Ontología, Gnoseología y Teología Natural*. Pamplona: Eunsa.


Nicolas, Jean-Hervé. 1986. *Synthèse Dogmatique. De la Trinité à la Trinité*. Fribourg and Paris: Éditions Universitaires, Beauchesne. Ott, Ludwig. 1969. *Das Weihesakrament*. Freiburg i. B.: Herder.

Pascher, Joseph. 1966. Das Wesen der Tätigen Teilnahme. Ein Beitrag zur Theologie der Konstitution über die heilige Liturgie. In *Miscellanea Liturgica in Onore di sua Eminenza il Cardinale Giacomo Lercaro, vol. 1*. Roma: Desclée, Editori Pontifici, pp. 211–29.

Pesch, Otto Hermann. 2010. Katholische Dogmatik. In *Aus ökumenischer Erfahrung, vol. 2*. Die Geschichte Gottes mit den Menschen. Ekklesiologie. Sakramentenlehre. Eschatologie. Ostfildern: Matthias Grünewald.

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Schmaus, Michael. 1958. *Katholische Dogmatik, vol. 3/I Die Lehre von der Kirche*, 5th ed. München: Max Hueber.

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### *Article* **Liturgy and Learning: The Encyclopaedic Function of the** *Old English Martyrology*

**John Joseph Gallagher**

School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin, Ireland; john.gallagher@ucd.ie

**Abstract:** This article examines the broad, encyclopaedic ambit of the scholarly information contained in the ninth-century *Old English Martyrology*. Martyrologies generally serve as para-liturgical resources outlining the contours of the liturgical year and the biographies of the saints commemorated throughout its course. However, the *Old English Martyrology*, the earliest European example of a vernacular, prose martyrology, adapts the genre into a more multivalent, scholarly handbook that instructs and informs its users—generally, practitioners of the liturgy—in a variety of topics. Subjects covered in the text include geography, language, hagiography, temporal reckoning, computus, astronomy, cosmology, meteorology, science, liturgy, and learning of a general Christian nature pertaining to the saints and the liturgical year. The present volume considers the impact of liturgy upon various facets of medieval intellectual, cultural, religious, political, and social life. The article at hand considers how the liturgical year is used as the framework around which instruction, edification, and general ecclesiastical learning might be imparted. While liturgical texts generally constitute formulae to be enacted by practitioners, para-liturgical resources provide background information that is germane to the liturgy, the liturgical year, and ecclesiastical life. This article begins with an examination of the development of the kalendar of the saints and the genre and form of the martyrology. It moves on to examine the different types of scholarly learning contained in the *Old English Martyrology*, the purpose of such details for the professional religious user, and what this information tells us about the text's application. Overall, this article considers the *Old English Martyrology* as an interdisciplinary manual dealing with liturgy, the liturgical cycle of the saints, and the subjects it impinges upon.

**Keywords:** liturgy; martyrology; calendars; encyclopaedic writing

### **1. Introduction**

The celebration of the liturgy is a profound meditative and devotional activity in which the divine is encountered in the material world. Through the liturgy, heaven and earth meet in a space emulative of the New Jerusalem, an encounter that is grounded by firm, scholarly principles pertaining to time, the calendar, and the computus. As Jones has remarked:

"As an ideal, sacralizing this world and anticipating the *uita angelica* of the next, the liturgy above all must have demanded instruments for "stabilizing" its signs, placing them "out of the realm of potential arbitrariness."" (Jones 1998, p. 659)

The practice of Christian worship is supported through a plethora of scholarly, paraliturgical textual aides, adjunct resources intended to inform the clergy and to govern the liturgy. Various types of para-liturgical texts were assembled in service of the liturgical year, including *computistica*, kalendars, and martyrologies. Like kalendars, martyrologies provided an inventory of the *sanctorale*, the non-moveable cycle of saints and their feastdays arranged according to the structure of the calendric year. These were composite works that educated and instructed users on the contours of the liturgical year and the saints or events that might be commemorated on a day-to-day basis. Martyrologies differed from saints'

**Citation:** Gallagher, John Joseph. 2022. Liturgy and Learning: The Encyclopaedic Function of the *Old English Martyrology*. *Religions* 13: 236. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030236

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 30 January 2022 Accepted: 18 February 2022 Published: 10 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

kalendars, however, in that they offered a wealth of additional information of a largely hagiographical character (on how martyrologies were used, see de Gaiffier 1961, pp. 40–59). In this way, a martyrology constituted a para-liturgical reference work, an index outlining which saints warranted memorialisation and why their stories matter.

The martyrological genre was adapted in a highly interesting fashion in a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon text known as the *Old English Martyrology*. It is remarkable because of its comprehensive and encyclopaedic character that goes beyond the confines of traditional martyrological texts that focus mainly on hagiography. In addition to its overview of the saints, their feasts, and their hagiographies, the *Old English Martyrology* contains a wealth of learned information pertaining to time, the calendar, and cosmology, as well as knowledge of a technical, scientific, and encyclopaedic nature. Although conventionally referred to as a "martyrology", the work is a more complex and polyvalent resource. This article analyses how the format of the martyrology was adapted in this text, the types of encyclopaedic knowledge that it relates, and how this information fits within a genre primarily concerned with the proper of the saints. Liturgy was at the centre of religious and intellectual life in the early medieval period. As such, para-liturgical resources aimed at outlining aspects of the liturgy or its structural systems frequently engage with other subjects of relevance to its practitioners and students. The *Old English Martyrology* uses the framework of the *sanctorale* of the liturgical year to impart various kinds of learning that were essential to the profile of the professional religious at this time. Overall, this article suggests insights on how liturgy and learning interreacted in a textual genre that falls outside the confines of traditional liturgical texts.

### **2. Origins of Martyrologies**

Christianity adopted the practice of fixed and moveable liturgical celebrations from Judaism. However, the notion of commemorating the saints has its origins in the persecution of Christians in the early Church and late antique period. The formative Church began to honour its believers who had lost their lives for their faith. The example of these individuals warranted reverence and commemoration. Groups of Christians maintained registers of martyrs from their communities and these lists—known as diptychs—were read aloud during the liturgy (on the origins of saints and feasts, refer to Bartlett 2013; Bradshaw and Johnson 2011; Caridi 2016; Rouwhorst 2020, pp. 27–51). Churches were built on the site of a martyr's resting place, and liturgical commemorations were observed there on their day of martyrdom or *dies natalis*, the day of one's spiritual birth into the next life. These figures came to be commemorated beyond the confines of their church or locality, eventually being seen as intercessors and figures of veneration. As the concept of sainthood developed, more figures came to be revered for their example and commemorated liturgically, including biblical figures, confessors, and bishops. While former bishops, the deceased, and the living were also the subject of prayer in the liturgy, the martyrs were honoured in a special way (Caridi 2016, pp. 20–23). Over time, a repeating annual cycle of saints' commemorations was established in addition to the central feasts of Easter (and those that follow it) and events in the lives of Christ and the Virgin. As Christianity developed, the system of feasts and commemorations became more elaborate.

The fossilisation of martyrs' names in the diptychs and their use in the liturgy gave rise to the earliest kalendars of saints' feasts. Two lists of martyred believers and martyred bishops, the *despositio martyrum* and *despositio episcoporum*, are found together in a compilation known as the Chronographie of 354. The compilation of such lists is clearly intended to have a liturgical function (Caridi 2016, p. 23). These lists are not universally comprehensive in their coverage, since the idea of creating an exhaustive list was still in development at this stage; there remains today a great deal of provincial variation in the commemoration of saints. One of the earliest attempts to assemble a catalogue of the martyrs and saints is the pseudonymous *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*, a fifth-century work from Italy, which was later expanded in Gaul. The text is a martyrological kalendar or an enumerative martyrology, in essence a list of martyrs, saints, and their feastdays arranged in order of

the calendric year. This work brings together holy figures from across Christian history in Europe and the Near East from multiple sources. This was one of the earliest attempts to create a database of universal saints' feastdays and to stipulate their liturgical observance. This work is arranged according to the ancient Roman division of the month into kalends (1st of the month), nones (5th or 7th), and ides (13th or 15th), whereby dates are reckoned in reverse from these points. From the fifth century on, kalendars and martyrologies were compiled in various locations with little to no uniformity in the saints that they included. These early kalendars and martyrologies were essentially liturgical (Ó Riain 2006, p. xvii). Evidence for the precise nature of liturgical commemoration in the early and late antique Church is scant. Nevertheless, we know that, by the early medieval period, during the Mass, the deacon read the feastdays for the following week, and from the ninth century onwards, that the martyrology was read at the start of the monastic chapter following the office of Prime (Ó Riain 2006, p. xvii). The Calendar of Willibrord—the Anglo-Saxon apostle of Frisia—is an important early medieval text containing an interesting combination of Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Italian, and Eastern saints (for the text, see Wilson 1918; Hen 1997, pp. 41–62). While wide-ranging in its universalising approach, this work is thought to represent a kalendar for personal reference and observance rather than one aimed at more general use.

The historical martyrology was an important development in the genre whereby the more telescopic format was expanded to include historical and hagiographical details about the saints (on development of the martyrology, see Lifshitz 2001, pp. 169–70; Dubois 1978). Throughout the sixth century and onwards, the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* continued to evolve and expand, while enumerative kalendars and martyrologies continued to be composed regionally, combining idiosyncratic mixes of local and universal saints. Innovation was led by Bede who, through his *Martyrologium* (725x731), enhanced the catalogue format to create the historical, narrative, or anecdotal martyrology (for a translation of the text, see Lifshitz 2001, pp. 179–97). Bede supplemented the names of saints, their feastdays, and place of death with historical and narrative hagiographical detail. The more expansive format spearheaded by Bede contained digested hagiographical notices of greater and lesser lengths with dates counted consecutively from the first of each month, rather than using the older Roman system. Bede's *Martyrologium* was innovative because it combined the structure of the martyrological kalendar with synopsised versions of saints' lives, many of which were at his disposal in the well-provided library of Wearmouth-Jarrow. Indeed, Bede's purpose in this text seems to have been to provide background information on the saints and to synthesise Latin *passiones* for his readers in a useful manner. Through Bede, the martyrological form served the more diverse purpose of educating its users about the background and significance of saints commemorated throughout the liturgical year. Other influential early medieval examples of the martyrology include the work of Florus of Lyon (d. *c*.860), Rabanus Maurus (*c*.780–856), Ado of Vienne (*c*.800–875), Usuard (d. *c*.875), Notker the Stammerer (*c.*840–912), and Óengus of Tallaght (8th–9th century). All Western martyrologies from the early medieval period are descended in some way from the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*, including Bede's *Martyrologium*, which, alongside that of Ado of Vienne and Usuard, had a significant impact on the Continental tradition (Lifshitz 2001, p. 170; McCulloh 1978–1979, pp. 417–61).

Kalendars and martyrologies in all their forms are highly idiosyncratic compositions reflecting the interests of individuals, communities, and regions. Building on the work of Whatley, Rushforth has collated all saints mentioned in Anglo-Saxon kalendars, none of which are identical (Rushforth 2008; see also Lapidge 1991). Pfaff has cautioned that the inclusion of a saint in a kalendar or martyrology does not prove liturgical observance, but rather makes liturgical observance feasible (Pfaff 1993, pp. 225–26). These texts, then, seem to operate as reference works, outlining in detail, with different degrees of selectivity, the feastdays of the saints throughout the liturgical year. A wealth of related non-hagiographical information is also frequently incorporated, as in the calendar in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 63, which contains notices of a seasonal and cosmological

nature. In this way, the intertwined genres of kalendar and martyrology supply information that goes beyond the limits of the *sanctorale*. Whether their purpose is more historical and hagiographical, as with Bede's *Martyrologium*, or more scholarly and encyclopaedic, as we shall see with the *Old English Martyrology*, texts outlining the saints of the liturgical year provide information on para-liturgical subjects that are germane to the liturgical year and the general learning of those who observe it.

### **3. The Old English Martyrology**

The *Old English Martyrology* is the longest and most elaborate martyrological text to survive from Anglo-Saxon England and the only vernacular version of this genre. Overall, the text hybridises the genres of the martyrology, saints' kalendar, and encyclopaedia. Its generic characteristics and the scholarly purposes it serves are the primary concern of the following analysis. All references to the text refer to Rauer's edition and division of the text, which follows Kotzor's numbering of the text's subsections (Rauer 2013a). The most complete surviving manuscript of the *Old English Martyrology* dates from the end of the ninth century, but the text as such might have been composed at the end of the eight century or the first half of the ninth century (Rauer 2013a, pp. 1–4); Rauer concludes that the text was composed *c*.800x*c*.900 (Rauer 2013a, p. 3). The text represents one the most prominent records of prose literary culture from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and was used and copied until the end of the Anglo-Saxon period and beyond (on transmission, see Rauer 2007, pp. 145–46). Several features of the martyrology are of note for the present discussion. It is a prose text written in the vernacular aimed at educating its readers clerical scholars in a monastic setting or educated secular priests without access to the resources of a monastic library—about local and foreign saints, and a range of related subjects (Rauer 2013a, pp. 15–18). It is the earliest surviving example of a vernacular prose martyrology in Europe. It is a narrative and discursive prose text, but its organising framework combines the solar Julian calendar and the *sanctorale*, the fixed liturgical cycle of saints. In sum, the text maps a wealth of saints' names and their feastdays together into a calendric arrangement, providing hagiographical narratives for most days of the liturgical year. The *Old English Martyrology* contains 238 entries of varying lengths for occasions throughout the calendric year. However, the text's utility and application exceed that of liturgical kalendars used in the context of liturgy since it appears also to operate as a fairly comprehensive, though idiosyncratic, overview of the *sanctorale*, and, furthermore, as a repository for learned information pertaining to Christianity and the Christian year. The genre of the *Old English Martyrology*, its encyclopaedic character, and the functions it might have held for its users are questions governing the following discussion.

### **4. Comprehensiveness and Coverage**

The policy that the Martyrologist adopted in collecting, organising, and compiling the text is one of broadness, variety, and inclusivity (Rauer 2013a, pp. 1, 17). The primary preoccupation of the *Old English Martyrology* is with saints, their biographies, and the devotional or spiritual value of these narratives. For the most part, the *Old English Martyrology* is focused on fixed dates for the feasts and obits (*dies natales*) of saints from biblical times to its contemporary age. Interestingly, a number of non-fixed, moveable feasts are also included, such as Easter (the Resurrection), the Ascension, Pentecost, and the Minor Rogations. Individuals commemorated in its kalendar include biblical saints such as Mary Magdalene (§133), early Church martyrs, desert fathers, and regional, national, and local saints from the insular world, Europe, and the Near East. The saint who appears most frequently in the text's kalendar is John the Baptist, given that a number of feasts commemorate different aspects of his life, martyrdom, and post-mortem veneration. Other dates of note in the year are also included, such as the solstice and the beginning of the seasons. Interestingly, like a number of Anglo-Saxon saints' kalendars, the Martyrologist includes Old Testament figures in his overview of the saints. The Machabees of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible are commemorated on 1 August by the Martyrologist (§140). The

inclusion of Old Covenant saints from before Pentecost might seem striking, but many figures such as Job are included in a number of Anglo-Saxon kalendars (see Rushforth 2008). The narratives and figures of the Old Testament loomed large in catechesis, exegesis, and the lections of the divine office. The cultivation of Old Testament feasts was undoubtedly driven by monastic personnel who would have read about Old Testament figures such as Job, on whom Gregory the Great wrote a commentary. It is worth noting that figures such as John the Baptist or Joachim and Anna (not included in the *Old English Martyrology*) are Old Covenant saints, although not Old Testament. The mix of feasts and events commemorated in the Martyrologist's kalendar is, therefore, diverse, intellectual, and eclectic.

An interesting feature of the *Old English Martyrology* is that, despite its length and narrative detail, it is largely ahistorical and does not provide the year of death for the saints it commemorates, a feature that is characteristic of Bede's *Martyrologium* (725x731). Exceptions in the *Old English Martyrology* include the entries for Luke (18 October, §207), which dates the Evangelist's death to the reign of Constantius, and Andrew (30 November, §233), whose death is also dated by reference to this figure. However, such specificity is not the norm in this text. The ahistorical aspect suggests that the Martyrologist was motivated by a universalising principle, collecting and representing saints from different historical periods and regions in the Christian Near East and Europe for his audience. In the absence of a comprehensive ecclesiastically mandated kalendar, this Anglo-Saxon author was prompted to collect, arrange, and present an expansive overview of feasts of the saints alongside a host of related information, providing, in essence, a 'go-to' reference text on calendric matters of a fixed nature. Its focus on hagiographical detail demonstrates that the Martyrologist found spiritual value in these narratives and wished to communicate digested synopses of saintly *exempla* to his readers. The breadth of material assembled in this text is remarkable and indicates the work of a careful and encyclopaedic mind that was able to control an impressive range of materials (Cross 1985, pp. 227–49; Rauer 2003, pp. 89–109; 2007, p. 144; 2013a, pp. 2–4, 15–18; 2017a, p. 552).<sup>1</sup> The Martyrologist is interested in universal saints and saints of national, regional, and local importance. Apostolic, early Church, and late antique saints are the best represented category of saints in the text, a fact that is unsurprising given the breadth of the historical timeframe and geographical range. One of the purposes of the text seems to have been to supplement Anglo-Saxon knowledge of the s*anctorale* and to fill in gaps in the liturgical year with saints from earlier Christian periods, figures of devotion that might not necessarily have been widely known in the contemporary context.

As noted, the text is made up of 238 entries according to the subdivisions used by both Kotzor (1981) and Rauer (2013a). This figure includes a number of entries that consist of more than one notice. These additional notices include the beginning and end of most months (for example, beginning of January: §8a; end of February: §36a), the beginning of summer (9 May: §83a) and winter (7 November: §221a), and the summer solstice (24 June: §111a). Further to this, for 25 March, two notices are telescoped together into a single, reasonably lengthy entry (Annunciation Day, The Crucifixion: §56, §56a). This entry treats these two important feasts together because of the typological link between the date of the Lord's conception and that of His Passion. Similarly, some notices are telescoped together into a single entry, but these are counted by the editors as separate commemorations in the text's kalendar (1 June, Priscus and Nicomedes: §95, §96; and 3 September, Aristion, Paternianus, and Felicianus: §174, §175). In total, there are 25 additional notices of a calendric, seasonal, and combined nature throughout the text. As such, the *Old English Martyrology* is made up of 263 notices in total. The additional notices concerning the months do not explicitly specify dates, but indicate the transitions from one month to the next. Therefore, there is an argument to be made for viewing these notices as subsidiary to the primary hagiographical entries pertaining to the days of the calendric year. However, these notices relating to the calendric and natural divisions of the year are integral to the overall function and structure of the work. When tallying the number of entries in the text, it

is important to remember that the work is lacunose, and entries are missing for part of January, most of February, and many days in December.

The *Old English Martyrology* is not entirely comprehensive in terms of its treatment of the calendric year, and many dates in its calendric cycle remain vacant. A considerable number (almost 18%) of the calendric entries in the *Old English Martyrology* are reduplicated, that is, the Martyrologist provides more than one occasion of commemoration for a single date in the calendric year. This is a feature of the list structure of early martyrologies and kalendars, and is remarkable here because of the length and detail of the entries provided. In total, 44 entries of this kind appear in the text. These entries put forward multiple saints or feasts for the same calendric date or, alternatively, offer information relating to the overall structure of the calendric year, its months and seasons, dates of astronomical importance, and other data. There can be multiple entries given for a single day (for example, 31 December, Pope Silvester I: §7; 31 December, Columba: §8) or multiple commemorations telescoped together into a single entry, such as those discussed above (§56, §56a; §95, §96; and §174, §175). On the dates for which multiple feasts or occasions are indicated, two or three entries at a maximum are offered. As noted, a number of entries do not refer to dates, but to the cycle of the year and its seasons. For example, the feast of Petronilla on the 31 May (§94) is followed by entries indicating the end of May (§94a) and the beginning of June (94b), while dates are given for the beginning of winter (§221a) and the summer solstice (§111a). Calendric signposts indicating the beginning and end of the months are provided for each month except for the end of December, the end of January, and the beginning of February. The absence of some markers is, perhaps, the result of manuscript lacunae, in that much of December and February are missing in all witnesses.

Unlike the expansive *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*, Bede's *Martyrologium* is selective in terms of the saints it includes and does not attempt to cover the year comprehensively (Lifshitz 2001, pp. 172–73). The Metrical Calendar of York, an early and highly influential Anglo-Latin metrical calendar from the second half of the eighth century, is not extensive and comprises 82 hexameters that catalogue a total of 65 feasts (Lapidge 1984, pp. 326–69; Karasawa 2015, p. 18; Wilmart 1934, pp. 41–69). Later martyrological and calendric texts such as the Old Irish *Félire Óengusso* ("Martyrology of Óengus") and the Anglo-Latin Metrical Calendar of Hampson, itself a greatly expanded version of the Metrical Calendar of York, provide entries for 365 days of the Julian solar year. In the Old English Metrical Calendar or *Menologium* from the tenth century, coverage of the calendric year is limited to 29 liturgical feasts and 20 compustistical or calendric notices (Karasawa 2015, pp. 33–44). The Metrical Calendar of Hampson dates from the tenth century while the Félire Óengusso dates from the ninth century (McGurk 1986, pp. 79–125; Gallagher 2017, pp. 151–69; 2020, pp. 464–66). The Anglo-Latin Metrical Calendar of Ramsey is a further adaptation of the York and Hampson calendars from around the year 1000 that is more restrained in its coverage of the year (Lapidge 1984, pp. 326–69). The Pseudo-Hieronymian martyrology, an organic text with a complex history of development, combines various eastern and western sources to create a comprehensive catalogue of the feasts of the saints throughout the year. In his version, Bede spearheaded a more restricted and selective form of the martyrology. That the *Old English Martyrology* does not cover every calendric date could relate to its ninth-century composition before the genre once again tended towards comprehensiveness. However, these examples demonstrate the variety that obtained with regard to coverage of the year in calendars and martyrologies of this period. Scope varied greatly depending on the interests and needs of compilers and users. Multiple entries for a single calendric date, and a number of other entries pertaining to related subjects, mean that out of 238 or 263 entries, approximately 178 days of the liturgical year are covered. Although its calendric coverage is not exhaustive, the *Old English Martyrology* remains comprehensive in other ways.

### **5. Structure and Genre: Kalendars and Martyrologies**

The *Old English Martyrology* differs from enumerative and historical martyrologies, which tend to be less expansive (see Lifshitz 2001; Quentin 1908; Rauer 2003, pp. 89–109). In general, martyrologies and saints' kalendars, many of which accompany manuscript resources for the performance of the liturgy, constitute liturgical 'to do' lists. By contrast, the *Old English Martyrology* provides 'everything you need to know' about the *sanctorale*, as well as detailed synopses of a broad range of saints and attendant calendric, computistical, and encyclopaedic information. In comparison to the *Old English Martyrology*, Bede's *Martyrologium* and the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* are more restricted in their focus and form (Biggs 2016, pp. 241–78). The following represents a prototypical example of an entry in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*: "XIIII KL. IUL. IN AFRICA. Marcie. Emili. Felicis. ROMAE CIUITA. Balbine. UIA ADRIATINA. Marci. Marcelliani. Thomi. Pauli. Cyriaci. RAUENNA. Scoru. Marthari. Felicis. Emili. Crispini. IN ALEXANDRIA. Natale. Sci marini." (De Rossi and Duchesne 1894, p. 79). Bede describes the makeup of his martyrology in his autobiographical postscript to the *Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum*: "A martyrology of festivals of the holy martyrs, in which I have diligently tried to note down all that I could find about them, not only on what day, but also by what sort of combat and under what judge they overcame the world" (Colgrave and Mynors 1969, pp. 570–71; on the Old English Martyrology and Latin martyrologies, see Kotzor 1986, pp. 301–33).2 A typical example of Bede's self-declared method can be seen in the entry for 17 February: "In Babylon, the commemorative festival of Polychronius, bishop of that same city: who, in the presence of the persecutor Decius, his face having been crushed with stones, with his hands outstretched, lifting his eyes to heaven, sent forth his spirit. It is written in the passion of St. Lawrence" (Lifshitz 2001, p. 182). However, entries such as the account of Saint Valentine given for 14 February offer more detailed narrative and historical detail (Lifshitz 2001, p. 181). The entries in Bede's *Martyrologium* largely follow the pattern outlined in Bede's autobiographical statement, balancing the brevity of earlier kalendars and martyrological lists with detailed historical and hagiographical data culled from various resources. As Lifshitz has observed, "the standard martyrological form would ever after adhere to the template created by Bede" (Lifshitz 2001, p. 174). As previously noted, Bede's *Martyrologium* represents an important advance in the tradition of martyrological texts, developing the genre to be more detailed than earlier lists of martyrs and saints that included, at most, lists of names and locations of martyrdom or death arranged in the order of the calendric year. Bede's text moves from an enumerative structure to a more detailed narrative arrangement and—with the genre of *légendier-martyrologe* focused on hagiographical narratives—was undoubtedly one of the main formal influences on the Martyrologist (Rauer 2003, pp. 89– 109; 2007, p. 133; 2013a, pp. 1–4). The *Old English Martyrology* represents yet another leap in the history of this genre and provides distilled 'micro-*passiones*' or 'micro-*vitae*' alongside a wealth of related Christian knowledge and lore. In this way, the text could also be regarded as an accessible form of the legendary (Rauer 2007, p. 133).

The *Old English Martyrology* contains a number of basic, skeletal entries that follow the terser format of the kalendar. For example, "On the twenty-ninth day of the month is the feast of the holy martyrs Saints Sisinnius, Martyrius, and Alexander, who suffered glorious martyrdom for Christ" (29 May, §93). Similarly brief entries are given for 17 June (Blastus: §105) and 3 September (Aristion, Paternianus, Felicianus: §174, 175). Some entries include only a saint's name and obit such as the entry for Calepodius (10 May: §85). Rauer has indicated how such entries might represent unfinished sections that were not or could not be supplemented and expanded with additional sources (Rauer 2013a, p. 15). Concise but complete entries such as that given for Pancras (12 May: §86) provide the saint's name, calendric date of martyrdom, location, oppressor, method of persecution, and final resting place. Entries such as this resemble the digested yet detailed historical format pioneered by Bede in his *Martyrologium*. The Martyrologist's entry for Pancras is paralleled by the bare-bones calendric entries in the Calendar of Willibrord and Bede's *Martyrologium*, and contains details that are possibly drawn from the *Passio S. Pancratii*

and the *Liber pontificalis* (Rauer 2013a, p. 260). In this way, the entry for Saint Pancras betrays the gradual and cumulative composition of the *Old English Martyrology*, which supplements the basic kalendar entries with martyrologies, *passiones*, and related literature. The argument that the text represents a straightforward translation of a Latin exemplar does not convince given the various (complete and incomplete) levels of composition that are evident throughout the text (Lapidge 2005, pp. 29–78; Rauer 2003, pp. 89–109; 2013a, pp. 3–4). An incomplete Latin exemplar is, of course, possible. However, the various entry formats, and the highly idiosyncratic nature of its saints and encyclopaedic information, suggest that the *Old English Martyrology* is a composite work assembled by a vernacular author who synthesised a variety of sources.

### **6. The** *Old English Martyrology* **as Encyclopaedic Writing**

As Rauer has observed, the *Old English Martyrology* "represents one of the most impressive examples of encyclopaedic writing from the European Middle Ages" (Rauer 2013a, p. 1). While the text represents the genres of saints' kalendar and martyrology, the range of learning it presents to its readers indicates a broader purpose. Rauer has commented on the hybrid nature of the text, observing that it is part "martyrology, calendar, legendary, homiliary, and encyclopaedia" (Rauer 2007, p. 144) and shares traits with "*menologia* ... and collections of encyclopaedic material" (Rauer 2013b, p. 17). By comparison, Bede's text provides more historical and narrative detail than previous realisations of the genre. The Martyrologist adopted a similar thoroughness, but on a greatly expanded scale, which also incorporated an array of encyclopaedic learning. In terms of coverage of the saints, the Martyrologist exhibits more breadth than we see in kalendars used to regulate, assist, or inform the enactment of worship in monastic or secular settings. At this point in history, there was no officially mandated ecclesiastical kalendar promulgated by Rome, and the observance of saints in the liturgy remained largely a matter of local interest and taste. Martyrologies helped to supply information about the cycle of saints' feastdays and commemoration. If typical martyrologies help to supply Christian learning of this nature, then the *Old English Martyrology* takes the form a step further, utilising the calendric structure as a repository for an eclectic range of knowledge. Although kalendars like Digby 63 also contain eclectic information, the format does not permit the more thorough relation of information that we get with the *Old English Martyrology*. It is important to note that the *Old English Martyrology* does not represent the liturgical kalendar observed in one particular Anglo-Saxon church context or another, but rather offers a 'go-to' encyclopaedic scholarly reference text on calendric and attendant matters. Several questions now arise: What kind of learning is contained in the *Old English Martyrology*? Why is a text with a para-liturgical function—offering as it does an overview of the *sanctorale*—utilised as a repository for encyclopaedic knowledge? How much of this encyclopaedic detail derives from the Martyrologist's source texts, and why was this information put forward? What does this tell us about the intended purpose and use of the *Old English Martyrology*?

### **7. Geographical Knowledge**

In respect of hagiographical, historical, and geospatial coverage, the text is unparalleled in Anglo-Saxon literature. The Martyrologist compresses an impressive range of Latin *passiones* and related literature into digested narratives that emphasise the deeds and miracles of the saints (Rauer 2013a, pp. 17–18). In addition to presenting saints from across Christian history, the *Old English Martyrology* also introduces its readers to the geographical world of these saints (see Roberts 1997, pp. 155–78). The text contains a wealth of geographical information about the unfamiliar locations from which many of these saints and their hagiographies originated. The Martyrologist guides his readers around the parameters of the known world. The text informs us that Bartholomew (25 August: §162) ministered in India, which is the farthermost corner of the known world—from the Martyrologist's perspective—while James the Greater introduced Christianity to Spain, the westernmost fringe of the world where the sun sets (25 July: §135). Rather usefully, the Martyrologist

outlines the extent of Christendom and the known world for Anglo-Saxon readers. In the entry for Bartholomew, India is located between "the dark land" and the world ocean "Oceanus" or, in Old English, "Garsecg" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 166–67). Such specificity helps the reader to locate distant countries and regions in geospatial and comprehensible terms. The reader is also oriented in terms of British geography, and we are told twice that the abbey of Lastingham is in the north, which is presumably unfamiliar to the readers that the Martyrologist has in mind (2 March, Chad: §37; 26 October, Cedd: §214).

The Martyrologist is always careful to clarify in which country a city or place is located. For example, the reader learns that Valencia is in Spain (22 January, Vincent: §31), Hierapolis is in the region of Phrygia (1 May, Phillip: §74), Tarsus is in the country of Cilicia (15 July, Cyricus and Julitta: §127), Nicea is in Bithynia (2 August: Theodota and her Three Sons: §144), and that Caesarea is in the country of Cappadocia (17 August, Mamas: §157). In an attempt at greater comprehensibility, the vernacular translated place name "æt Triticum" is given for the Latin "Trecassium" (29 July, Lupus: §138). Ethnic or group designations are also sometimes given, such as in the entry for Fursa (16 January: §21), where Ireland is clarified as the "country of the Gaels", a detail that can be traced to either source material or to the Martyrologist himself. In the absence of widespread cartography, textual geography of this kind furnished a gazetteer of the surface, political divisions, and cities of the world for early medieval scholars (see Anlezark 2013, pp. 66–81).

In her analysis of the geography of the *Old English Martyrology*, Roberts has demonstrated the centrality of Rome to the Martyrologist's conception of the world (Roberts 1997, pp. 156–61). Highly specific information is provided about the streets of the city of Rome; throughout, we read about the Via Appia, Via Aurelia, Via Latina, Via Pancras, Via Salaria, Via Tiburtina, and the Ager Veranus. While we might expect *passiones* that take place in Rome to be specific about this location, the inclusion of street-names here provides Anglo-Saxon users with specific knowledge about this important, but otherwise distant and unfamiliar, religious centre of gravity. The Martyrologist imagined that his readers might be interested in the street-names of Rome, indicating how the compilation was intended as a means of expanding worldviews and imparting geographical information. As such, the *Old English Martyrology* functions as a textual geography of the Mediterranean region. Through a calendric catalogue of foreign saints, the text exposes its Anglo-Saxon readers to a host of locations that might otherwise be unknown or seem distant and intangible. Through its register of hagiographical narratives, the text seeks to broaden knowledge of the *sanctorale*, as well as the geographical knowledge of users, in order to render the saints and their places of origin more familiar. If the Martyrology sought to impart knowledge of saintly veneration from other ecclesiastical provinces, understanding these locations was an important facet of this programme.

An appreciation of the background of a saint is important to their veneration. As mentioned, geographical information helps to indicate the origin of saints catalogued by the Martyrologist. The text also offers specific information about the churches dedicated to particular saints and the miracles that occurred there. We learn that all who build a church in honour of Cyricus, a child martyr, or who commemorate his memory liturgically will receive many blessings (15 July, Cyricus and Julitta: §127). The church built upon the remains of the Gallic saint Symphorian is renowned for the miracles that occur there at the saint's intercession (22 August: §160). Similarly, many healing miracles are associated with the church dedicated to the martyred bishop Dionysius and deacons, Rusticus and Eleutherius (8 October: §203). On occasion, the saints are also known to arbitrate on matters of morality and justice at the locations dedicated to their name. One particularly gruesome entry recounts how a dispute over stolen money was brought to the monastery and church built upon the relics of Audomarus in Saint-Omer; the case was settled through the direct intervention of Audomarus, who caused the thief's eye to pop out upon reaching the church (8 September: §181). The occurrence of miracles at sites associated with saints—whether intercessory (*fama signorum*) or punitive like that of Audomarus—is a defining trope of hagiography. However, accounts of these wonders help readers at a far remove from a saint's place of origin to understand the figure's relevance and efficacy as an object of veneration and votive prayer.

Ecclesiastical buildings in the Holy Land and Mediterranean are also a category of interest for the Martyrologist. On three occasions, accounts of churches in the Holy Land, as supposedly described by Arculf in Adomnán's *De locis sanctis*, are included (5 May, the Ascension of Christ: §79; 24 June, Summer Solstice: §111a; and 30 September, Jerome: §200), which are discussed in detail below (q.v. Named Source References). That the dedication and consecration of some churches is worthy of inclusion is also interesting. In the case of St Peter's, Rome, this is the first and most important church consecrated in Rome (18 January: §25), and it remained the central focus of Western Christianity. The discovery of Saint Michael's church, Mount Gregano, Italy (8 May: §82), and the dedication of Saint Michael's church, Thracia (29 September: §199), are presumably included due to their association with this important biblical figure. Other important churches for the Martyrologist include the Santa Balbina, which is the resting place of Pope Mark (8 October: §203). Cumulatively, these details provide a greater understanding of the saints that the Martyrologist includes, but also offer an itinerary of important ecclesiastical buildings and locations associated with the saints. This information can arguably be viewed as an extension of textual geography, a sort of 'pilgrim's guide' at a time when pilgrimage to such distant locations and sites was not feasible. The Martyrologist's decision to include these data further demonstrates the encyclopaedic function of the text, helping users think concretely about place.

### **8. Liturgical Information**

The text offers its readers insight into the regulation and enactment of the liturgy. The liturgical information in the work derives, naturally, from its para-liturgical function as a martyrology and kalendar, and from its encyclopaedic character as a scholarly reference work. However, in some ways, the text itself is liturgical since it might have functioned as a resource for preaching on the saints and frequently relates the value of intercessory prayer to particular saints (Rauer 2012, pp. 563–71). The text opens with 25 December, the Nativity of the Lord (§1) and the start of the liturgical year in the early medieval world.3 Christmas is placed above the other feasts that occur on this date, essentially grading these feastdays in terms of their liturgical importance. The Circumcision and purification of Christ (1 January: §9) is introduced by the Martyrologist as "the Octave of Christ and Saint Mary" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 42–43). The "octave of the Lord" is the title found in most older sacramentaries, but the Circumcision was, nevertheless, a known liturgical feast at this time and is attested in the Gelasian Sacramentary (Wilson 1894). The Martyrologist's entry for this date focuses on the Circumcision and naming of Christ. The octave of Christmas (an octave being a secondary festival that is held one week after a major festival) outranks the relatively new dominical feast of the Circumcision, although the latter is an important event in the life of Christ; the feast of the Circumcision was widely celebrated by the late tenth century, when Ælfric of Eynsham composed a homily for the occasion. The importance of Christmas as one of the primary feasts of the year is reflected in the Martyrologist's treatment of the 1 January, which is introduced first and foremost as an octave, despite apparent knowledge of the Circumcision. The title "the Octave of Christ and Saint Mary" might seem odd to the modern eye. However, 1 January was celebrated as "Natale Sanctae Mariae" from the seventh century in Rome, one of the earliest Marian feasts to be mandated. Although later displaced by other Marian feasts, the Martyrologist harkens to this joint feast celebrating both the birth of Christ and honouring the Virgin, a dual appreciation of some antiquity like the Annunciation, which is both Marian and dominical. The Martyrologist's reference to purification seems to relate to the fact that both the Circumcision of Christ and Purification of the Virgin constituted a joint feast before the latter came to be celebrated on 2 February (Candlemas) as a result of Byzantine influence (Clayton 1984, pp. 209–33, in particular 209–10). In terms of liturgical classification, the birth of the Virgin (8 September: §180) is ranked in order and importance above the feastday of Audomarus on the same date (§181). Although the *Old English Martyrology* was compiled from many different sources, multiple

entries for a single calendric date are graded—or even elided—according to their liturgical importance.

The Major Rogation Day or the *Litania Maior*—a day of fasting, prayer, litanies, and processions (from Latin *rogare* "to ask")—is explained as a Roman festival that is observed throughout all churches (25 April: §69). The Major Rogation has its origins in the pagan festival Robigalia and is aimed at petitioning God for "mild weather and plentiful crops and physical health" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 86–87). As the Martyrologist indicates, the observation began in Rome (it is first attested in the Gregorian Sacramentary), before becoming observed universally. The entry for the Major Rogation, which synthesises a number of sources, introduces the feast and its history, in the manner of a liturgical crib or glossary (Rauer 2013a, p. 257). A second entry is provided for Rogationtide or the Minor Rogations (§78), the Rogation days held on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preceding Ascension Thursday (Bazire and Cross 1982; Hill 2000, pp. 211–46; Lapidge 1991; Sellers 1996). Interestingly, the Martyrologist places the Minor Rogations between the 3 and 5 May, despite the moveable nature of these days of fasting and procession, a fact that is acknowledged in the entry for these days; the Ascension occurred on the fortieth day after the Resurrection and ten days before Pentecost (Acts 1:3, 2:1), therefore making the Minor Rogations moveable. Easter can occur from 22 March to 25 April, making May a fairly appropriate place to include these moveable days of observance in an otherwise fixed liturgical framework. The Minor Rogations are included to complement the fixed observance of the Major Rogation on 25 April, further underscoring the *Old English Martyrology* as a scholarly adjunct to liturgical observance.

The Martyrologist provides a wealth of information pertaining to local and universal feasts and their histories and importance. In a similar fashion to how Old English months are incorporated into the makeup of the *Old English Martyrology*, the Anglo-Saxon observation of Lammas (*hlafmæsse*), a harvest event, is noted in the entry commemorating Eusebius of Vercelli (1 August: §142). This underscores, furthermore, the general and encyclopaedic nature of the text, which seeks to educate its readers about important points in both the local and universal liturgical and seasonal years. Liturgical history is offered in respect of the feast of All Saints (1 November: §218), which was instituted by Pope Boniface, who also decreed that it should be afforded the same primacy as Christmas. The importance, grade, or class of a feast is a key category of information that the Martyrologist sought to relate. We get a glimpse of the importance of a particular feast in terms of historical practice in the entry for Bertinus (5 September: §178). During his life, the saint blessed wine (which possibly refers to the celebration of the Eucharist) and cured the sick, demonstrating holiness and miraculous powers of healing during his life. Following the saint's death, a man who had been stricken with deafness and immobility for failing to observe the sabbath was cured at the ninth lesson "of Christ's gospel" in the church of Bertinus (Rauer 2013a, pp. 176–77). Nine lessons are a distinguishing feature of one of the highest classifications of feasts and, while it might not refer to the feast of Bertinus himself, provide an insight into how different feasts were classified and celebrated.

Aside from providing information on feasts and their observation, the *Old English Martyrology* on occasion points to how liturgical enactments were realised. In the entry for Pope Stephen I (2 August: §143), the Martyrologist informs us that this pontiff was the first to decree that "priests and deacons should use dedicated liturgical vestments on no worldly occasion, but without exception in church only" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 152–53). While relatively little is known about Anglo-Saxon vesture and how it developed in this early period, here we get an indication from the Martyrologist of its significance and, more importantly, that such sacred vestments ought not to be worn outside of the enactment of the liturgies for which they are prescribed. Prescriptiveness can also be seen in the entry for Gordianus (10 May: §84), where it is noted that "his commemoration is to be celebrated with masses in all churches" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 102–3). There are a handful of feasts for which it is mandated that masses or sacraments should be celebrated. Its importance is recognised in the story of Cassius (29 June: §115), who was called home to the Lord on

the feast of Peter and Paul (also 29 June) for his diligent celebration of daily mass. The Martyrologist stresses the celebration of the Mass on certain feasts. A similar emphasis on commemorating saints and the effectiveness of their intercession appears in a number of other entries (23 April, George: §67; 28 April, Christopher: §73; 7 July, Marina: §122; 15 July, Cyricus and Julitta: §127).

At a time when custom varied vastly from region to region, the text betrays some anxieties about when the liturgy is observed in other locations, particularly Rome. The Martyrologist points out that the martyrdom of Zoe is kept in Rome (?4 July: §118; Rauer 2013a, p. 270). Given general Anglo-Saxon *romanitas* and the observance of Roman custom such as the use of the *Psalterium Romanum*, the Martyrologist's suggestion that Roman observances should also be followed in Anglo-Saxon England is not surprising. Similar prescriptions are given for Nicander (17 June: §104), whose commemoration appears "in the older massbooks" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 118–19). Such a designation is likely intended as an appeal to antiquity and authority. The *Old English Martyrology* thus provides a sort of bulletin mapping trends in liturgical practice.

The Octave of Peter and Paul on 6 July (§114) is the only other octave contained in the kalendar of the *Old English Martyrology* aside from the Octave of Christ and Saint Mary, discussed above. As well as indicating the importance of the two primary apostles, their octave further indicates that the *Old English Martyrology* is not intended as a liturgical manual as such, given its omission of other relevant and widely celebrated octaves; the focus on this particular saintly octave is likely due to the Rome-centric sources deployed by the Martyrologist. The Martyrologist relates that the octave of the joint feast should "be celebrated with masses and divine sacraments" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 130–31). As Rauer observes, this information probably derives from a liturgical text and is included here to indicate to users of the text that Peter and Paul, and their octave, are among the primary apostolic feasts in the kalendar (Rauer 2013a, p. 271). The text's manner of liturgical commentary, and the orientation it provides around the kalendar, further suggest that the text might have functioned as an ancillary reference work for a scholar or practitioner of the liturgy.

On numerous occasions, the Martyrologist identifies feasts that are from older massbooks or newer massbooks or sacramentaries, some of which might have included materials brought to Anglo-Saxon England by Archbishop Theodore (Hohler 1995, pp. 222–35). Commemorations in the older massbooks or sacramentaries include Priscus (1 June: §95), Nicander (17 Junes: §104), Magnus (19 August: §159), Rufus (27 August: §165), Priscus (1 September: §172), Quintus (5 September: §177), Sinotus (7 September: §179), and Lupulus (15 October: §206).<sup>4</sup> Saints observed in more recent sacramentaries or massbooks include Nicomedes (1 June: §96), Agapitus (18 August: §158), and Sabina (29 August: §169). For 1 June, two saints are included for commemoration, Priscus and Nicomedes—the first from the old sacramentary or massbook, and the second from the more recent books (Rauer 2013a, pp. 110–11). In these entries, the new work referred to is probably the Gregorian Sacramentary, while the older sacramentary could refer to the Gelasian Sacramentary (Billet 2014, p. 147n; Kotzor 1981, pp. 258–59; Rauer 2013a, p. 263). Whatever the sources of these observances, the Martyrologist is keen to flag up the value and antiquity of older feasts, while also promoting more modern observances; both serve to consolidate Anglo-Saxon liturgical identity with the practices of the wider Church and Rome, and to instruct users of the text in historical and contemporary liturgical practice. For the Martyrologist, the inclusion of a saint in an historical or more recent liturgical compilation provided the *imprimatur* for their broader study and observance throughout the Church. In an entry commemorating Maurice and the Theban Legion, a group of 6000 Diocletian martyrs, the text informs us that while their names are unknown, they are recorded "in heaven in the books of life" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 186–97). For the Martyrologist, commemoration in earthly liturgical books or the heavenly books of life is the honour awarded to martyrdom. On the whole, the *Old English Martyrology* functions as a toolkit or reference work, providing information to its Anglo-Saxon readers of how the liturgy is used elsewhere.

### **9. Computus, Astronomy, Meteorology, Cosmology**

A distinctive feature of the *Old English Martyrology* is its pronounced engagement with cosmology, the divisions of the year, time measurement, astronomical events, natural science, zoology, and topics of a calendric, technical, and non-hagiographical nature (Kotzor 1981, pp. 233–43; Rauer 2007, pp. 125–46; 2013a, pp. 1, 16). While martyrologies are usually narrow in their focus on hagiography, the *Old English Martyrology* communicates an impressive range of knowledge about the liturgical, calendric, and natural or solar year. These data can be regarded as calendric and Christian lore, that is, digested technical learning intended for the general instruction of the reader. The types of knowledge conveyed are fundamental to the educational profile of a clerical or monastic individual at this time. While closely aligned with the genres of martyrology and saints' kalendar, the *Old English Martyrology* goes beyond what is normally included in these texts (Rauer 2013a, p. 16). The technical information that the Martyrologist assembles is not out of step with the text overall, given its general character as an encyclopaedic reference work or toolkit. Knowledge pertaining to the calendar and the overall makeup of time is germane to a programme outlining the diurnal saints and feastdays of the liturgical year. Computistical, chronological, and calendrical texts are commonly transmitted together in liturgical, computistical, and technical compendia (Rushforth 2008, pp. 18–54; numerous compendia of this nature are listed in Gneuss and Lapidge 2014). The *Old English Martyrology* combines aspects of these subjects within a single reference work, making it a versatile and functional composition that services some of the primary educational needs of its day.

While the sequence of saints and feastdays occupies the centre of the text, it is framed by notices indicating the general structure of the calendric year. As Stodnick has observed, the text begins and ends each month with"a calendric observation, which typically makes note of the number of days in each month, its name in both Latin and English, as well as explanations of the name's meaning" (Stodnick 2013, p. 34). These notices also detail the hours of daylight and darkness in a given month. Such astronomical observations instruct users regarding the sun and the seasons, emphasising the essential relationship between the liturgical cycles, the calendar, and the natural, solar year. Presumably such observations held a practical purpose and furnished reminders about the varying lengths of the days in a given time of the year and their learned (Latin) and colloquial (Old English) names. According to Rauer and Kotzor, notes on the hours of daylight have parallels in a number of liturgical calendars (Rauer 2013a, pp. 16, 242; Kotzor 1981, pp. 302–11). The entry for January is particularly interesting as it recasts the start of the month, 1 January, liturgically as the eighth day of Christmas (§8a). The note also explains that January is the first month of the year "for the Romans and for us" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 42–43), although 25 December is the start of the liturgical year. In this way, the Anglo-Saxon year had two starting points: the liturgical year (25 December, Christmas) and the Julian or Roman civil year (1 January). Such notices must have served to illustrate the differences between the ecclesiastical and Roman calendars for users in this context. Notices on the beginning and end of a month help to divide each month into discrete units. These signals also constitute a form of calendric anadiplosis, connecting one month to the next, and conceptually uniting the *sanctorale* with the set structure of the calendric year and the rhythms of the natural year.

Etymologies are provided for "Haligmonað" (Holy Month), the Old English name for September (§171b), which was given "because our ancestors when they were pagans ... practiced their devil-worship in that month" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 172–73), and for "Blotmonaþ" (Sacrifice Month), the vernacular name for November when pagan sacrifices were made (§217b). The treatment of these names of the month is slightly longer than others because their etymology is consonant with so many of the text's hagiographical narratives about pagan worship and conversion. Not only are these details thematically relevant, they further help to tie the story of Anglo-Saxon conversion and Christianity to the history of early Christianity given in the various synopsised accounts of martyrdom.

The calendar by which the Martyrologist arranges the register of saints and feastdays is structured according to the solar or natural year and its defining turning points: the solstices, equinoxes, and seasons. No entry survives for the winter solstice, perhaps due to manuscript lacunae, or for the equinoxes, but the text as it is extant does include an entry for the summer solstice (24 June: §111a). These astronomical events help to divide and structure the liturgical year, rooting the cycle of saints and other feasts in the recurring turning points and rhythms of the natural solar year. As Karasawa has pointed out, the solstices and equinoxes provide an elementary or popular means of dividing the liturgical year (Karasawa 2015, p. 34). The Martyrologist relates how the sun is at its highest elevation ("in the middle of the sky") at midday on the solstice; he uses an account of a column in Jerusalem, "umbilicus terrae" (the naval of the earth), that did not cast a shadow at this point of the day to demonstrate practically how the sun reached its highest elevation. Latin and vernacular terminology is also offered for the solstice (Latin: *solstitium*; Old English: *sungihte*). The Martyrologist relates an arguably scientific explanation of the summer solstice derived from, supposedly, Arculf's account as recorded by Adomnán in *De locis sanctis* (Rauer 2013a, p. 268). The calendar by which the *sanctorale* is arranged depends upon the solar year, which is a fixed and scientifically understood phenomenon; as such, in a text dealing comprehensively with the *sanctorale* and other subjects, largely of an encyclopaedic nature, it is natural for this type of information to be included here. The practice of computus is so commonly associated with the complex lunar calculation of Easter that it is easy to forget how scholars at this time appreciated the straightforward and, indeed, basic—associations between the solar calendar and the fixed liturgical cycle. For the Martyrologist, such associations were, nevertheless, worth drawing attention to as governing principles of the systems at hand.

In the note on the beginning of summer (9 May: §83a), a further technical and scientific explanation relates that "at that time the Seven Stars [i.e., Pleiades] rise at dawn and set in the evening" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 102–3). As the Martyrologist learned from Bede (Rauer 2013a, p. 259; Bede De temporum ratione, 30, 35; Wallis 2004, pp. 87, 101), the Seven Sisters, also known as Vergiliae, rise at dawn and set at dusk from November to April, succinctly and correctly explaining seasonal changes in the night sky. Such details provide practical astronomical knowledge for users of the text, enabling them to determine the seasons and their changes (see Anderson 1997, pp. 231–63). However, the Martyrologist adopted the dates for the seasons from Bede's *De temporum ratione*, which puts forward the Roman dates in addition to the Spanish dates deriving from Isidore. As such, the seasonal dates included by the Martyrologist would not have correlated precisely with the seasons in Anglo-Saxon England. Nonetheless, the point and effect remain the same: the passing of the seasons and the movement of the stars is part of the divinely ordained rhythm of the year; the Church does not only use this system to regulate its liturgical practices, but it is an intrinsic and essential part of the cycle.

Seasons are astronomical and, as a result of the earth's astronomical movement in relation to the sun, they are climatologically and meteorologically different. In addition to the various notices on daylight hours in each month of the year, we occasionally get information on weather at particular points in the year. The Old English name for June, "Ærra Liða" (Earlier Mild (Month)), is explained as referring to the mild air and sea conditions at this time "when people normally travel across the water of the sea" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 110–11). Favourable weather and richer grazing underlie the Old English name for May, "Þrimilice" (1 May: §73b). Notices on pagan practices (including "Haligmonað" and "Blotmonaþ") seem out of place in a work on the Christian year (Rauer 2007, p. 127), but demonstrate the author's enthusiasm for encyclopaedic factoids about the calendar and the year. As noted earlier, references to pagan worship in the Old English names of the months help to tie the story of the Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity to early Christianity. Meteorology and the natural cycle of the year are also at the fore of the Martyrologist's mind when compiling these additional calendric and seasonal entries. Both two-season and four-season systems were used to divide the natural year in Anglo-Saxon

England. The Martyrologist includes the beginning of summer (9 May: §83a) and the beginning of winter (7 November: §221a). The text relates that winter is 90 days long and summer is 92 days long. Since these do not collectively cover the number of days in a year, either the Martyrologist did not complete all notices for the four seasons or wanted to follow a two-season system, but did not emend his materials to reflect the total number of days in the year (Rauer 2013a, pp. 259–60). It is, perhaps, because the Martyrologist's programme of seasonal or calendric notices is incomplete that entries are also not provided for the vernal or autumnal equinoxes.

The notices on the seasons are similar to the entry for the summer solstice and Pleiades, and serve to root the liturgical cycle in the natural year. As Karasawa has summarised:

"The solstices were conceived to be the midpoints of winter and summer, whereas the equinoxes were also conceived to be located in the middle of spring and autumn. According to this way of understanding the year, a year consists of eight parts of roughly equal length, and the liturgical year, beginning with Christmas, which coincides with the (unofficial) winter solstice, can be neatly divided into four at the solstices and the equinoxes, while it can be divided further into eight at the beginnings of the seasons." (Karasawa 2015, p. 37)

As such, it is not some general and abstracted notion of 'the year'—from 25 December, 1 January, or even 25 March until the year's end—which would have governed the Martyrologist's understanding of the calendar; rather, he would have understood the year and the calendar as reflections of the solar year, a natural and familiar cycle with important temporal markers and meteorological turning points throughout that, in turn, punctuate the liturgical cycle, its feasts, and seasons. In this way, the *sanctorale* and fixed cycle of feasts would have been the most familiar and ordinary, while the *temporale*, the moveable feasts, would have seemed different because the lunar year is more complex and less naturally or obviously discernible than the solar year.

These short, helpful notices on the general structure of the calendar, the hours of daylight, and Latin and more popular vernacular names of the month speak to the encyclopaedic and pedagogical function of the *Old English Martyrology* as a calendric handbook, toolkit, or manual. As Stodnick has commented:

"These entries significantly diversify the account—linguistically, intellectually, and culturally—interleaving various notions of temporality alongside the progression of the *sanctorale* and reminding readers that the reckoning of time is a cultural practice interconnected with language history, and agriculture. By integrating English hand Latin chronological nomenclature, these accounts reproduce the effect of the [*Old English Martyrology*]'s saintly catalogue, in which native figures, continental saints, and biblical characters are juxtaposed." (Stodnick 2013, p. 34)

In many respects, the combination of information about weather, the seasons, and astronomical events is of a similar timbre to collections of prognostics, a type of miscellaneous early medieval compendia dealing with medicine, meteorology, computus, and science (Cesario 2012, pp. 391–426; Chardonnes 2006; Liuzza 2010). Indeed, scientific detail such as the Latin medical term and Old English name for gout is given in one account (Latin: *podagra*; Old English: *fotadl*; 6 July, Tranquillinus: §120). The coalescence of calendric, medical, and astronomical detail in this compilation—too often, the *Old English Martyrology* is thought of as a singular or uniform work—may have been partially influenced by prognostic collections, which served a similarly versatile and learned function. The Martyrologist's sections on the names of the months seemingly draw on Bede, *De temporum ratione*, among other possible sources (Karasawa 2015, pp. 182–97, at 184–85; Rauer 2013a, pp. 232, 242). Expertise in the intricacies of computus and time reckoning are not necessary for observance or study of the fixed cycle of the *sanctorale*; however, familiarity with the basic structures of the year is, and the *Old English Martyrology* helpfully excerpts relevant information and arranges it for the reader around the annual sequence of saints.

Perhaps the most remarkable notices in the *Old English Martyrology* are the seven entries dealing with the Hexameron, the biblical days of Creation (18–24 March). To the modern eye, it might seem out of step with the genre of the martyrology and saints' kalendar to include biblical events such as the days of Creation or the birth of Adam within its programme of "feasts". However, Adam is, after all, the first prophet and saint, and the Creation was understood as an historical, biblical event. Regarding Creation, "primus dies saeculi" is named in a substantial number of Anglo-Saxon kalendars, while the birth of Adam, the sixth day of Creation, is mentioned in a number of other texts (Wilmart 1934; Rushforth 2008). The birth of Adam, the days of the Hexameron, and other seasonal, cosmological, and calendric notices appear alongside hagiographical feasts in the calendar in Digby 63, which dates from the ninth century (867x892) (Rauer 2013a, p. 16). The hexameral schema in *Old English Martyrology* and the Anglo-Saxon kalendars surveyed by Wormald and Rushforth follow Bede, who placed the equinox on 21 March and "primus dies saeculi" three days prior on 18 March. Pre-Bedan compustistical traditions located the first day of Creation on the equinox, which was historically observed on 25 March and later on 21 March (Warntjes 2021, pp. 172–74). It made sense to Bede, who observed the equinox on 21 March, that the luminaries should have been created on this astronomically perfect date (Bede De temporum ratione, 6: Wallis 2004, pp. 24–28). These dates became enshrined in the calendric tradition and their significance is fully fleshed out here by the Martyrologist. The hexameral notices correspond closely to the technical and broadly scientific information discussed hitherto and speak in interesting ways to the overall conception and purpose of the *Old English Martyrology*. Rather than constituting feasts for liturgical observance *per se*, these notices are in line with the profile of encyclopaedic learning that characterises the work.

Cross identified the Irish cosmological work, *De ordine creaturarum* by Pseudo-Isidore (*c*.655–75) as the primary sources for these notes; Bede, *De temporum ratione* is probably the source underlying the particular calendric dates presented here, as Rauer has suggested (Cross 1972, pp. 132–40; Rauer 2013a, pp. 245–49; Smyth 2003–2004, pp. 1–39; 2011, pp. 137–222). Arguments regarding how the *Old English Martyrology* uses or departs from its source material will not be covered here. The present discussion seeks to understand the function of these notices in the text's overall structure.

The first day of Creation is incomplete due to manuscript lacunae, but the second day concerns the presence of supercelestial waters (Genesis 1:6–7) and their role in controlling the earth's temperature (18–19 March: §45, §46). The Martyrologist's explanation provides a scientific purpose for the rather curious detail of waters above the firmament, which goes against the Aristotelian theory of elemental weight (Gallagher 2021a, pp. 167–90). This note helps to synthesise biblical cosmology with early medieval scientific understandings of the operation of the natural world. The notion of the cosmological egg, much like the work's textual geography, offers a written physical and cosmological description of the shape of the Earth and the natural world more generally (on which, see McMullen 2020, pp. 23–34).

The notice for the third day of Creation is, perhaps, the most scientifically detailed of all seven. It offers a robust explanation of the hydrological cycle and the '*ledones*' (lesser) and "*malinae*" (greater) tides of the lunar year (20 March: §48). This information seems to be derived from Bede, *De natura rerum*, 39 (for an edition, see Kendall and Wallis 2010, p. 95), although there are 26 *ledones* and *malinae* in the lunar year, rather than 24, as Cross has observed (Cross 1972, p. 135; Hughes 2003, pp. 1–24). This notice incorporates the rhythms of the lunar cycle into an otherwise solar structure and explains the operation of water in the natural world in purely scientific terms. Details provided regarding the solar months, the tides, and astronomy collectively constitute the introductory building blocks of computus, the calendric science that governs the liturgical year.

The fourth day of Creation concerns the creation of the luminaries, which were seven times brighter before the Fall (21 March: §50). The original brightness of the sun and moon will, following the end times, be reinstated just as humanity will be remade. The Martyrologist links the operation of the natural world theologically to the condition of human existence, rooting astronomy in Christian cosmology, theology, and eschatology. An interesting aside is included regarding the waxing and waning of the moon and how these phases are the result of the speed of the moon's course. The Martyrologist emphasises the immutability of these rhythms and their thoroughly scientific nature, grounding the foundation of the fixed and moveable cycles in simple scientific and computistical terms. The brief explanation put forward by the Martyrologist indicates that within the sacred narratives, there are observable scientific processes at play. Interestingly, the reinstatement of the former brightness of the luminaries points users of the text to the complete, inevitable future realisation of the temporal cycle at the Eschaton.

The notice for the fifth day of Creation is similarly scientific in its taxonomy of 153 species of fish and innumerable birds that it presents (22 March: §52). The Martyrologist relates how different species of birds—birds of the land, sea, or fresh water—relate to the environments from which they originated or were created (Cross 1972, pp. 136–37). Here we see how the Genesis Creation narrative could be utilised as a means for commenting on the makeup of the natural world and its creatures. The sixth day of Creation is of less interest from a technical or scientific point of view since it mostly discusses the imperviousness of prelapsarian man to the elements, physical harm, or age (23 March: §53). The notice for the seventh day is brief and echoes the biblical account that God rested from His labours (Genesis 2:2).

The series of cosmological notes is remarkable: firstly, because one might not expect the Hexameron to be treated as a datable historical event within a kalendar or martyrology outlining the feasts of the Christian year; and secondly, since these notices are of a scientific and technical nature. This was an environment in which knowledge about the operation of the natural world was gained and imparted through learned Christian works, and often in works concerning Genesis. In one of the most detailed vernacular calendric works from this context, it is not surprising, then, that accessible scientific and cosmological learning should be housed here or that events from Genesis, a book commonly used as a means of commenting on the natural world, should be incorporated. These notices are indisputably the product of a learned exegetical milieu and serve to impart a basic, scientifically grounded appreciation of cosmology and the natural world. It is easy to suggest where early medieval interpretations of the natural world do not fit with modern scientific understandings, but this does not appreciate the achievement and the relative accuracy of these notices in an intellectual universe to which the biblical worldview was singular.

While the precise calendric dates provided for these events might seem incredulous, they are far from that. The creation of the luminaries on the vernal equinox is significant and roots the entire natural cycle of the sun in terms of scientific understandings of the solar year cycle. Computus is the most expressly scientific genre of this period. However, it does not exclusively deal with contemporary lunar cycles, but frequently engages in cosmological and scientific exegesis; the phase of the moon at Creation and the precise date on which the sun and the moon were created has important implications for later determinations of the calendar. For the Martyrologist and scholars like him, the world operated according to a natural cycle established at Creation. To determine the precise beginning of that natural cycle is to ground the cosmological narratives of Genesis firmly within scientific and computistical principles.

The text offers the historical calendric dates for first occurrences of a number of feasts from the *temporale*, the moveable cycle of feasts contingent upon and including Easter. The entries for the 25 March (the Annunciation and Crucifixion: §56, 56a), the Descent into Hell (26 March: §57), the Resurrection (27 March: §58), the Ascension (5 May: §79), and Pentecost (15 May: §88) are actually related to this batch of cosmological notes, in that they similarly attempt to pinpoint the calendric dates of biblical events in order to show the relatedness of the computus, the natural cycles of the solar and lunar years, and biblical history. Outlining the first occasions of these feasts illustrates for early medieval practitioners of the liturgy that the fluctuations of the *temporale* are in total accord with historical biblical events. The scientific timbre of the hexameral notices clearly demonstrates that the Martyrologist's primary interest for these sections was to offer scientific explanations, not only of the natural world, but of the calendar and the natural but divinely ordained cycles of time. Pinpointing historical dates for biblical events in one way emphasises the cyclical nature of the *temporale*. However, tracing events from the first day of Creation (18 March) to the Incarnation of Christ 5199 years later (25 December: §1) evokes the temporal schema of the six ages of the world, the idea that the material world will endure for 6000 years in line with the six days of Creation. While cycles repeat and fluctuate annually, the inclusion of these dates emphasises to users of the text that history will inevitably end. That the Resurrection follows the six days of Creation on 25 March is typologically significant, suggesting the eternal eighth age of the world to come. Similarly, the Annunciation and Crucifixion appear together in a combined entry, emphasising a typologically perfect theology of time. Viewed in this way, the days of Creation, the Annunciation, and the Resurrection speak in subtle and nuanced ways to temporal theories of eschatology.

How are we to understand this broad constellation of non-hagiographical information in generic terms? Some modern analogues could be helpful in this regard. Rauer has written about the *Old English Martyrology* as an early form of the almanac, a text that imparts a range of encyclopaedic information through a calendric structure (on the *Old English Martyrology* as almanac, see Rauer forthcoming). The encyclopaedic character of the *Old English Martyrology* is similar to the contents in the modern, largely Victorian, genres of the commonplace book, the miscellany, and the book of days.5 Commonplace books were compiled by an individual—and sometimes passed on and adapted, much like medieval manuscripts—and contained a variety of handpicked and excised miscellaneous materials of interest to the compiler or compilers. Miscellanies were, largely, serialised publications and contained a breadth of knowledge that does not have an equivalent in twentieth and twenty-first century literature, given our modern taste for compartmentalising information. The book of days is, perhaps, the most appropriate modern comparison that can be made with the *Old English Martyrology*. Chambers's *Book of Days*, a two-volume work, provides content for each day of the calendric year, including the saints and famous individuals connected with a day, trivia, and history with more detailed articles on selected individuals, in essence "a compendium of information relating to the days, months, and seasons of the year". Early medieval analogues containing brief synopses of calendric or scientific learning in a digested format include collections of prognostics, the *Etymologiae* of Isidore of Seville, and the range of 'miscellaneous' encyclopaedic notes that frequently appear in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (Dekker 2007, pp. 279–315; 2012, pp. 65–95; 2013, pp. 95–130; 2019, pp. 203–24; Estes 2012, pp. 623–51; Gallagher 2021b, pp. 437–55). In the Anglo-Saxon ninth century and beyond, when wide swathes of information were not so readily accessible in textual forms in all places, composite reference works with broad intellectual and conceptual ambits such as the *Old English Martyrology* were not only useful tools, but natural products of the information culture of the day.

### **10. Named Source References**

A further scholarly or encyclopaedic feature of the *Old English Martyrology* is its numerous source references and allusions to scholarly works. Through his numerous publications, Cross has significantly advanced our understanding of the sources deployed by the Martyrologist in the composition of the text (for example, Cross 1985, pp. 107–28; see also Rauer 2003, pp. 89–109). According to Rauer's apparatus criticus, 22 entries draw on passages of the *Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum* by Bede. This is one of the commonly cited sources in the work and is drawn upon by the Martyrologist for 15 entries relating to insular saints and related figures such as Germanus of Auxerre. The *Historia ecclesiastica* provided a valuable resource for native and non-native saints, as well Christian practice more broadly. The *Old English Martyrology* assembles a historical chronicle of hagiography that stretches from the biblical era to its contemporary time. Given that it is drawn upon as a source, Bede's *Historia ecclesiastica* might well have provided a model for the Martyrologist, perhaps even in the form of its Old English translation, with which it shares close Mercian affinities. It is clear that the Martyrologist found the *Historia ecclesiastica* to be a vital resource for his project since he refers to it *nominatim* on eight occasions, all in relation to local or geographically adjacent saints (2 March, 7 May, 26 May, 4 August, 3 October, 11 October, 26 October, and 14 December). The terminology employed is "Angelcynnes bocum" (the books of the English or books about the English) or some orthographic variation thereof. Early medieval authors utilised descriptive titles, rather than fixed ones, and the title used by the Martyrologist engenders a conception of collective identity and belonging for the "Angelcynn". Signposting sources is a common practice in biblical commentary and historical writing, but it is less commonly seen in martyrologies and kalendars. The *Historia ecclesiastica*, while also hagiographical, is an historical and scholarly work, and direct source references of this nature help to root the *Old English Martyrology* in this tradition as well the related tradition of exegesis.

Another source indicated by name includes *"De Uirginitate*" by Alcuin (3 April, Agape, Chionia and Irene: §59). In the entry for Gregory the Great (12 March: §42), the Martyrologist tells us that the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove "breathed into his mouth religious wisdom which he recorded in books". There is the sense that the Martyrologist is flagging up works that he deems important for general Christian education. There are a number of other references to books within the hagiographical narratives that the Martyrologist digests and presents, including references to the Gospels ('Godes bocum', 30 August, Felix of Thibiuca: §170) and the various references to "mæssebocum" (massbooks) discussed in relation to liturgy above (see Gneuss 1985, pp. 91–141). The second most commonly named author in the text is Arculf, a Frankish bishop who is thought to have travelled to the Holy Land before being shipwrecked off the coast of Iona; after his foundering, Arculf dictated an itinerary and gazetteer of the Holy Land to the Donegal saint, Adomnán, which survives as *De locis sanctis*, one of the most important early medieval sources for knowledge of the Near East. The Martyrologist refers to Arculf directly as a source on four occasions (23 April, George: §67; 5 May, the Ascension of Christ: §79; 24 June, Summer Solstice: §111a; and 30 September, Jerome: §200). Aside from the discussion of Saint George in the entry for 23 April (§67), all of these entries refer to Arculf's supposed description of ecclesiastical buildings in the Holy Land. While these descriptions are perhaps best discussed in relation to textual geography, the requirement for this information to be endorsed through source references, compared to other categories of information, is remarkable. In these entries, we see the Martyrologist at work, collecting and arranging geographical detail from various sources. The specificity of the information related, which includes descriptions of churches and their interiors, necessitates a manner of scrupulous citation that we do not see elsewhere in the text. The use of source references lends the work an historical or scholarly character that we do not see in other texts of this nature. Rauer has compared the *Old English Martyrology* to a "crash course in hagiography" (Rauer 2003, p. 98; 2013b, p. 28). I would add to this and suggest that it is a crash course in a range of subjects, an accessible reference tool like SparkNotes, A Very Short Introduction, or Wikipedia, introducing its reader to topics as diverse as geography, history, hagiography, language, liturgy, temporal reckoning, and science. In a similar manner to a reading list, this is a scholarly reference work that is careful to point interested users to further reading. In the entry for Simon Stylites (27 July: §136), the text refers to sacred scriptures as "the treasure of human souls" (Rauer 2013a, pp. 144–45). The purpose of the *Old English Martyrology* is to gather and present some of the treasure of the human soul from works of Christian learning for general consumption.6

### **11. Language, Latin, Etymology**

Commenting on the versatile generic character of the *Old Martyrology*, Rauer has likened the text to a glossary, among other types of writing (Rauer 2013a, p. 17). Despite its lengthy prose format, the text functions in this fashion on a number of levels (on language, see Porck 2021, pp. 359–83; Rauer 2017b, pp. 139–58). In translating and summarising

hagiographical narratives, it offers a vernacular crib to an impressive range of Latin saints' lives and *passiones* (on Latinity, see Cross 1986, pp. 275–99). Further still, through its technical Old English vocabulary and frequent incorporation of Latin terminology, the *Old English Martyrology* educates its users and readers in arcane language or Latin, which some possible users might not have had access to. The following section presents some instances in which the Martyrologist utilises terminology in Latin or other languages and analyses the possible motivations for his doing so.

A number of cases in which the Old English text defers to Latin concern place names. For 1 May (Phillip: §74), Bethsaida, the home of the apostle Phillip and a Hebrew placename, is glossed as "*domus uenatorum*", which is then translated into Old English as "huntena hus" (the house of hunters) (Rauer 2013a, pp. 92–93). Similar vernacular translations are offered for the place names "*Silua Negra*" and "*Silua Candida*" (2 June, Marcellinus and Peter: §98). Both instances serve to make these names understandable to Old English readers; the etymology of "Bethsaida" is fairly well known amongst exegetes familiar with the work of Jerome or Bede, while the place names "*Silua Negra*" and "*Silua Candida*" would not pose particular difficulty to a reader with basic Latin. The purpose of the Martyrologist's onomastic translation, therefore, seems to be driven by a desire to achieve comprehensibility, and may be related to the text's purpose of providing access to Latinate subjects for users who do not possess the necessary linguistic skills. However, it is also worth noting that etymology was a mainstay of early medieval exegesis, for purely scholarly or encyclopaedic purposes. Rusche has outlined how Latin in the text relates to glossaries from Canterbury, as Rauer has noted (Rusche 2005, pp. 437–55; Rauer 2007, pp. 138–39; 2016, pp. 73–92). In this way, the text seems more interested in promoting technical and learned vocabulary, rather than in making things simple for its readers. In the entry for Pope John I (18 May: §89), it is this desire for encyclopaedic and linguistic factoids that seems to underlie the garbled transliteration of "Þeodoricus" to "Ðeodric" (Rauer 2013a, p. 261). Technical terminology like "ztmologesis" (Exomologesis), the Greek term for "Rogation", and "undern" (terce) and "non" (nones) is similarly intended to impart scholarly and temporal vocabulary (Rogation, 25 April: §68; Rogation Days: §78). Glossing the Old English "Wætlingacæster" (St Albans, 22 June: §109) with the Roman-British name "Uerolamium" indicates how the text was intended to impart scholarly and somewhat abstruse information, which is entirely in the character of early medieval exegesis. The meaning of Christ's name ("His name in Hebrew was Jesus, in Greek *Soter*, and in Latin *Saluator*, and in our language 'Healing One' [Hæland]") discloses a scholarly interest in linguistic and exegetical factoids. It is likely that the Martyrologist was a biblical exegete and, like Bede, might not have been primarily taken up with hagiography and calendric studies in his day-to-day scholarly work. The interest in linguistic factoids and etymologisation betrays a mind that was shaped by this exegetical style of learning, if not actively engaged in its practice.

### **12. Conclusions**

Liturgy provided the fundamental structure on which religious and intellectual life in the early medieval Latin West was centred. Given this prominence, the resources delineating its systems reveal the interests and concerns of its practitioners. As noted, the aim of historical martyrologies is to provide a greater level of information about the saints commemorated in the liturgical year compared to traditional kalendars and enumerative martyrologies. The *Old English Martyrology*, while an historical martyrology at its core, goes even further in its inclusion of encyclopaedic, technical, and scientific information. As well as outlining the *sanctorale*, the greatest part of the fixed liturgical year, the text delves into a range of attendant subjects, including computus, cosmology, and calendric science. Additionally, it offers its readers a host of geographic, linguistic, and historical detail. The majority of this information (excluding the more suspect inclusion of pagan details) is in some way germane to the *sanctorale*, inspiring in its users an appreciation of the background of the saints, of the language(s) of ecclesiastical learning, and scholarly factoids pertaining

to the liturgical year and the veneration of the saints. Rauer has convincingly argued that the *Old English Martyrology* might have been composed for use as an aide by individuals who were unable to cope with longer materials or who may not have had access to such resources, a fact that seems more convincing given the "vernacular brevity" of the text (Rauer 2007, p. 142). Indeed, the text's encyclopaedic distillation of a wealth of learned subjects and sources seems consonant with its function as an easy reference text, a 'go-to' resource for professional religious individuals in need of information on the fundamental structure of the liturgical year and its attendant subjects. In this way, the *Old English Martyrology* operates as an encyclopaedic and interdisciplinary manual for clerical and monastic personnel interested in the liturgical year, the saints, the calendric year, computus, and cosmology. Other non-liturgical calendric texts such as the Metrical Calendar of Hampson use the liturgical-calendric year as a means of educating and instructing its readers, in this case in the art of Latin hexameters as well as the contours of the calendric and liturgical year (McGurk 1986, pp. 79–125; Gallagher 2017, pp. 151–69; 2020, pp. 464–66). Martyrologies are not strictly liturgical, however, and the *Old English Martyrology* is a highly atypical example of the genre, operating as it does on many additional levels. Nevertheless, like liturgical kalendars, enumerative and historical martyrologies, and other didactic or pedagogical calendric texts, it deals with the regulation and observance of the liturgical year. There could be no better conduit for instructing clerical and monastic personnel than a text based on the liturgical year, the programme around which religious and intellectual life operated at this time.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Irish Research Council.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


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### *Article* **The Political Dimension of Liturgical Prayers of Remembrance: Lists of Rulers in the Confraternity Books of the Carolingian Period**

**Eva-Maria Butz**

Historisches Institut, FernUniversität in Hagen, 58084 Hagen, Germany; eva-maria.butz@fernuni-hagen.de

**Abstract:** The confraternity books (Libri vitae) of the Early Middle Ages record the names of individuals to be remembered in liturgical prayer. Since the middle of the 20th century, they have come more sharply into focus as historical source material. The records of rulers were of particular interest even then. In order to understand the lists of rulers in the Liber Vitae, the first subject of study is the development of prayers of remembrance for the living and the dead, and the subsequent emergence and shaping of liturgical commemoration of the ruler from late antiquity to the Carolingian period. These diverse developments merge with those of the liturgical Memoria in the confraternity books, indicating that the monasteries, in particular, were important keepers of monarchical Memoria. Taking as examples the Salzburg Liber Vitae (783) and the Reichenau Confraternity Book (824), the steps and methods are followed through and the lists of rulers interpreted in their historical context. The two confraternity books prove to be a source for the legitimisation of Carolingian sovereignty, particularly in terms of substantiating it historically and securing it liturgically. The regional perspective of each monastic community plays a major role here. Complex reference and interpretative systems are exposed in the confraternity books, whose orderliness, structure and prayer also served as a counterbalance to the disorder and crisis prevalent in the world.

**Keywords:** Frankish empire; Carolingians; Libri vitae; commemoration; manuscripts; Salzburg; Reichenau Abbey

### **1. Introduction**

Recollection and memory are two of the central categories of research in cultural studies (A. Assmann 2002). The researchers who have most influenced research into historical memory are Aby Warburg and Maurice Halbwachs, the archaeologist Jan Assmann and the Anglist Aleida Assmann (Kany 1987; Halbwachs and Maus 1991; J. Assmann 1988). Cultural memory, which is collective and timeless, constitutes the innermost relationship of a society. It encompasses everything within a particular culture that is meaningful and that defines the boundaries of its common experience. The substance is conserved in a diversity of media and institutions. They preserve sense and meaning, pass these on to future generations and are, at the same time, both retrospective and prospective (J. Assmann 1992).

In this regard, Christian Memoria also represents a type of cultural-historical practice. It plays a central societal role in the form of prayers of remembrance in the context of the liturgy. In the Eucharist, the words of the anamnesis recall the presence of Jesus and his salvific mission (Büske 2001, p. 158). At the same time, the worshipping community is a constituent of the communal memory (Nußbaum 1983). The community recalls not only the sacrifice of Jesus, but also commemorates the living and the dead before God on the occasion of offering the communal sacrifice at the eucharistic feast, and within the context of the salvific event (Jungmann 1962, pp. 199–213, 295–308). Through commemorative prayer, they become present members of the community, and through the power of the Eucharist, to recall all to the present time, become participants in the sacrificial celebration and in the fruits of sacrifice (Berger 1965, pp. 228–40).

**Citation:** Butz, Eva-Maria. 2022. The Political Dimension of Liturgical Prayers of Remembrance: Lists of Rulers in the Confraternity Books of the Carolingian Period. *Religions* 13: 263. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13030263

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 7 February 2022 Accepted: 10 March 2022 Published: 19 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Despite the saving presence in the consecrated host, an uncertainty of salvation persists in the believer who is presented with the petition "offere pro". The intercessions benefit, on the one hand, the spiritual health of the living and the dead, and on the other, all current external circumstances. These concerns are reflected in a wide range of books and texts, together with ideas and concepts of society. In this way they can reveal the connection between the societal present and commemorative practice (Fassler 2010, pp. 133–48; Hen 2001, p. 10). The perspective of the liturgical Memoria is both retrospective (the act of salvation) and prospective (redemption), while, at the same time, being closely related to the present moment of those praying (Häußling 1997). Their textuality, thus, bears witness to the conscious and unconscious constructs of the present, the past and perceptions of the future. This makes the diverse liturgical tradition of the Middle Ages especially suitable for posing historical questions

The Carolingian Libri memoriales have a particular significance in this group of texts. They record many thousands of names, originally set out in an ordered system which, in the course of prolonged use, was reworked, reinterpreted or totally abandoned (Geuenich 2004). As a rule, these books were filled in over several hundred years, presenting, in their unique way, a section of society in the Middle Ages. A total of seven of these books are still extant on the Continent: The Salzburg Liber Vitae (Forstner 1974), the Liber Amicorum and the more recent Fraternity Book of St. Gallen (Geuenich and Ludwig 2018); the Liber Memorialis from Remiremont (Hlawitschka et al. 1970); the Reichenau Confraternity Book (Autenrieth et al. 1979); the Liber Viventium from Päfers (Bruckner et al. 1973); and the Memorial and Liturgical codex from San Salvatore/Santa Giulia in Brescia (Geuenich and Ludwig 2000).

Intensive academic engagement with this complex of traditions began in the middle of the 20th century under the leadership of Gerd Tellenbach. In what is known as the "Freiburger Arbeitskreis" the transmission of names was at first used for research into the medieval aristocracy (Schmid 1974a). With the discovery that the names were often recorded in groups, the scope of research expanded to these groups and their interrelated fields (Schmid 1965). The connection between the transmission of names and the liturgical Memoria was first intensified in the 1980s as Otto Gerhard Oexle, based on work by Maurice Mauss, perceived the liturgical concept of Memoria as a "totally social phenomenon" which might serve as a central concept for society in the Middle Ages (Oexle 1982; Mauss and Ritter 1990). Since then, an intensive engagement with the central function of recollection and memory in the Middle Ages could be referred to as a "memorial turn" (Hugener 2014, p. 22).

Gadi Algazi (Algazi 2014, p. 26) has cautioned against unifying widely differing phenomena too categorically under the term Memoria (memory). It therefore makes sense to limit the use of the term Memoria to the liturgical commemoration and to differentiate it from other concepts of recollection, even if there are fluid transitions and references between individual and collective recollections and memories on one hand and liturgical Memoria on the other.

These references are also apparent in the Carolingian Libri memoriales. Although these books are so different in their internal form and composition they do all exhibit the same central elements: a monastery listing, a list of bishops, a register of regional and/or interregional office bearers, and a list of Carolingian rulers. These diptychs are located at the centre of the confraternity books and, together with the list of rulers, indicate a political dimension to the liturgical prayers of remembrance. They are the outcome of the prayers of remembrance and prayers for the ruler, which had been evolving since late antiquity.

### **2. The Development of Liturgical Prayers for the Ruler**

Prayer for the emperor and the realm had been part of the Christian cult from the time of the apostles. Paul called for prayer for heathen rulers so that Christians could lead a peaceful and quiet life, as the rulers' power had been given to them by God (Tim 2,1–3; Rom. 13,1–7). Clement I (50–97/101) included this concept in his first letter to the Corinthians (Clem I. 60,4; 61, 1–2). In the context of an intercession, he prayed for health, peace, harmony and longevity for the ruler in order for the realm to remain stable. In the 3rd century AD, the apologist Tertullian († 230) emphasised to Christians the importance of stability within the earthly kingdom. Christians must obey the emperor because his power was a gift from God. The practice of praying *pro salute imperatorem* as part of the intercession, and thus, for an unthreatened realm, is well documented in numerous written sources. In his edict of tolerance of 311 AD, Galerius finally requested that Christians, on their part, pray for him and for the empire. In this way, intercession for the ruling emperor and for the stability of the realm attained its fixed place in the liturgy (Biehl 1937, pp. 30–35).

Diptychs can be found in the Byzantine church from the 4th/5th century onwards. In them, petitioners are listed whose names were read aloud and were included in the prayers of the congregation. Both the living and the dead could be included (Bishop 1909, p. 103; Taft 1991, pp. 30–32; Bishop 1910). From these lists, which were originally intended for a particular purpose, official lists of successions of bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, hierarchically arranged, were created in the 6th century. The emperor was also included in these diptychs, and a distinction was made between diptychs for the living and for the dead (Bishop 1909, pp. 104–7; Taft 1991, p. 182). The object of the diptychs was to bring to God, in prayer, the petitions of those inscribed in the diptych, and to achieve their acceptance into the heavenly Liber Vitae. Remembrance of the living developed in a similar fashion in the Latin church, as the names of the petitioners were spoken aloud (Angenendt 2014). Their names were inscribed on wax tablets for this purpose. Emperors, popes and diocesan bishops were mentioned repeatedly. It is assumed that the names were noted down permanently in diptychs, although there are no contemporary records of this kind. In the western church the commemoration of the dead developed independently of that of the living and was, as a rule, carried out in summary form (Merk 1926, p. 10). According to tradition, in the 7th century the names of petitioners and of the dead were recited (Eizenhöfer 1958, pp. 77, 83, 85, 87).

Certainly, several ivory diptychs have been handed down which, from the 6th century onwards, used consular diptychs as material for permanent records of names (Leclercq 1920; Stegmüller 1957, p. 1143). The most famous of these is the Barberini diptych (Vezin 1971; Thomas 1969; Cutler 1998). It hands down an Austrasian list of rulers and may have originated in a religious institution, which was closely connected to the Austrasian kings. The Barberini diptych constitutes singular evidence of a list of rulers for liturgical use during the Merovingian period. The tradition of lists of rulers compiled specifically for liturgical prayers of remembrance first appears in the Carolingian Libri memoriales. It must be assumed that master copies for these lists existed in the form of diptychs, although this cannot be proven.

The rise of the Carolingians as Frankish kings was associated with a heightened sense of Christian mission and history, which can be found in widely diversified texts (Ewig 1956, p. 52). This is most apparent in the Laudes Regiae, which originated with the accession of Pippin to the Frankish throne in 751 (Kantorowicz 1958). They formed a fixed component of the formulation of the sacralisation which legitimised monarchy in the Carolingian period. The Laudes repeatedly called to mind the legitimisation of the ruler in the Frankish churches and empowered his claim to sovereignty (Drews 2009, p. 169). As early as the Merovingian period, monastic communities prayed for the ruler and the realm (McCormick 1990). Prayers for the ruler were particularly strengthened during attempts by Charlemagne to reform the liturgy. These applied to unity of belief and the correct performance of liturgical actions (Hen 2001, pp. 69–71). In addition to this, prayers for the ruler and the well-being of the realm were intensified. This led to an expansion of the commemoration of the ruler in which all ordines were included (Mordek et al. 2012). A certain unity resulted from these prayers for the king and the realm, inasmuch as every individual was responsible for the well-being of the ruler and the empire. This was intended to achieve a Christian society under Carolingian rule, whose deliverance by God and the eternal salvation of the king would be guaranteed (Butz 2015).

A particular role fell to the monasteries which made a significant contribution to the stability of the Carolingian realm (Le Jan 2006, p. 194). The various forms of prayer obligation resulted in widely diverse written forms, from Laudes Regiae (Krüger 2007); necrologies, such as those at Fulda (Oexle 1978); necrological notes, such as those in Remiremont and Verona (Butz and Zettler 2012); and lists of confraternity monasteries whose members prayed for each other. These traditions were amalgamated, rearranged, and supplemented with additional lists in the Carolingian Libri vitae. The confraternity books had their place on the altar, creating the impression of their being an earthly counterpart to the heavenly Liber Vitae (Koep 1952). The individuals entered in the books were commended to God in order that they might attain entry in the heavenly book of life. It is unclear whether, initially, the names of some of those to be commemorated were read aloud. As the book began to fill up, a summary commemoration was permitted. The particular design of the books and their inner structure indicate, however, that the intended purpose of the Libri vitae was more than the spiritual well-being of the individual. The message of the books is considerably more complex than the long lists of names would, at first glance, suggest (Butz, forthcoming).

### **3. Libri Vitae as an Historical Source**

Fundamental to the understanding of a confraternity book is its basic structure, which can be deduced from the demarcation of its entries and an analysis of their chronological sequencing. As a rule, the compilation of a book systematically followed specific criteria whether compiled by one or several hands. The addenda must be differentiated from this original compilation. These partially follow the prescribed system, however. As a rule, they align themselves to the system for a time before abandoning it completely, instead inserting names, and groups of names, in empty spaces, irrespective of the structure around them. It is nevertheless apparent that spaces for inserting names were selected associatively, as associations between existing names and new entries could be established.

A fundamental problem for the transmission of early medieval tradition is mononymy, which makes it difficult to identify the individual holder of that identity, the actual person. Persons and groups of persons can be successfully identified only if the relevant personal history, handed down and drawn upon for comparison in the form of documents and narrative sources, is as comprehensive and complete as possible. Without such comparisons it would not be possible to categorise the groups of persons within an historical context. In particular, additions to names such as official or professional titles or details of kinship are extremely helpful in identifying persons and groups of persons.

Both the dating and categorisation of liturgical confraternity books within the historical context of the time and place they came into existence is a fundamental key to understanding them. The Libri Vitae were adapted to the individual circumstances of each monastery. These circumstances were defined by the time at which they came into existence, the political structure of that time, the internal structure of the monastery, one's own historical perception, and the perspective of the writer(s). This means that liturgical confraternity books are suited in a very special way as resources for the perception of the present in a monastery, as well as for its historical image (Althoff 1998), as the two following examples from Salzburg and Reichenau are intended to demonstrate.

### *3.1. The Salzburg Liber Vitae*

The Salzburg confraternity book is the oldest Liber Vitae to have been handed down on the Continent (https://manuscripta.at/diglit/AT7290-HsA1/1/thumbs, accessed on 6 February 2022). It was commissioned by Bishop Virgil who died on the 27th November 784, shortly after the book was compiled. His own name was included in the list of the living. A valid terminus ante for the compilation of the Liber Vitae may well be the marriage of

Charlemagne and Fastrada in the autumn of 783, as Fastrada was already listed as Queen in the Salzburg Liber Vitae.

The present form of the early medieval section of Codex A1, stored in the Salzburg monastery archive, is surrounded by later additions. Its twelve leaves, which date from the 8th and 9th centuries, were supplemented in 1004 by an additional layer, referred to as the 'later confraternity book'. The two layers were prefixed by a bifolium, which includes documents from the 11th and 12th centuries pertaining to the Salzburg churches. Finally, in the 15th century, a six-layered comprehensive section (layers 4–9) containing the Salzburg documents was added. (Forstner 2003) The compilation of the oldest section is by one single writer, who leaves no further traces of writing in the Salzburg scriptorium. The conception and structure of the compilation reveal a well-thought-out conception of the form of the confraternity book. With the apparent help of an older original, a strictly structured diptych was created, which is defined by the ordine coordinates "by a vertical chronology and horizontal time sequence" (Forstner 2003, p. 174).

The liturgical prayers of remembrance were extensively embedded in a biblical– historical context, and this manifests itself in a unique way on the first page of names in the Salzburg Liber Vitae. On the left-hand side we find a record of the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, while on the right-hand side, personalities of the New Testament are recorded; these start with John the Baptist and Mary, followed by the Apostles, Evangelists, Popes and Catholic saints (fol. 5). In this way the book points towards the past, uniting itself with the Old and New Testaments and thus with the history of Christianity. The Salzburg book assumes a medial function in the earthly kingdom in terms of the history of salvation and how it has already unfolded and been made manifest in the Old and New Testaments, and is now directed towards the future of the heavenly kingdom. It stands on the threshold between the temporal and the eternal and is intended to ensure the intercession of the saints mentioned at the beginning. The lists of names from the Old and New Testaments serve in theological literature as proof of the succession of the generations and, in the Salzburg Liber Vitae, also illustrate the concept of the divine world order. The Liber Vitae here demonstrates its historical access and can take its place as one of a series of historical texts. The counterpart of the heavenly world order reveals itself in the presentation of the earthly world. The name of those to be commemorated were recorded strictly according to their respective ordo. Each has its appointed place, thus reflecting society. This historic access is apparent in the division of names in a register of the living (fol. 6ff) and one of the dead (fol. 14ff) (Niederkorn-Bruck 2015, pp. 60–61).

The register of the living (Figure 1) includes not only the bishops of Salzburg but also the abbots and monks of Salzburg; the ordines of the Carolingian royal family; and the Bavarian ducal family (fol. 10, Table 1) of priests, bishops and abbots, including their monastic communities. The diptychon of deceased rulers (Figure 2, Table 2) includes a short list of the Carolingians from Charles Martell, a comprehensive list of dukes and a list of bishops and abbots.

**Figure 1.** Salzburg Liber Vitae fol. 10.

**Table 1.** Salzburg Liber Vitae fol. 10 (extract).


### ORDO DUCUM UIUORUM CUM CONIUGIBUS ET LIBERIS


(8) Ansa


**Figure 2.** Salzburg Liber Vitae fol. 20.

**Table 2.** Salzburg Liber Vitae fol. 20 (extract).


The design of the two rulers' diptychs is particularly noteworthy. The names can vary and largely be allocated with little or no difficulty. The sequence of living kings opens with Charlemagne and his fourth wife Fastrada. He is followed by his sons, Pippin, Charles the Younger, Louis the Pious and another Pippin. It is not immediately apparent which of the named Pippins is Pippin the Hunchback and which is Pippin of Italy. As Pippin the Hunchback was Charlemagne's eldest son, it could be assumed that he would be named as the first on the list of Charlemagne's four sons. However, Karlmann/Pippin was the third son, and therefore, older than Louis the Pious. The positioning of one of the Pippins in last place indicates that the list is not categorised by age. Pippin of Italy was baptised in Rome by Pope Hadrian in 781, at which time he was also anointed and crowned as sub-king of Italy (Angenendt 1980). In this context the former name of Karlmann was relinquished. At the same time, Pippin the Hunchback, who was Charlemagne's son from his marriage to Himiltrud, lost his entitlement to share the sovereignty of the Frankish kingdom (Schieffer 2000, p. 81). Although Louis received similar honours from Pope Hadrian to those of his brother, Pippin, and was installed in Aquitaine, he is named in the Salzburg list only in third place, after Charles the Younger. It can, therefore, be assumed that the Pippin named right after Charlemagne must be the young king of Italy. This special emphasis is an indicator of the particular significance of Italy in the Agilolfing– Carolingian relationship, as will be shown later. The Carolingian entry names only the sons of Charlemagne, whereas the daughters born of his union with Hildegard—(† 30.4.783), Rotrud (\*775), Berta (\*779) and Gisela (\* ca. 781)—are missing.

The *ordo regum vivorum* was, however, not restricted to the Carolingian royal family alone. Duke Tassilo was married to Liutberga, the daughter of Desiderius, King of Lombardy. Surprisingly, the writer likewise created an entry for Adelgis and Ansa, the son and the wife of the Lombard deposed by Charlemagne in 774, and entrusted them to the prayers of remembrance of the monks of Salzburg. The Annales regni Francorum record that, in the year 774, Adelgis went into exile in Byzantium following the overthrow of the Lombards, while his parents were taken to Franconia and confined to a monastery (Reichsannalen 1993, ad 774). The entry of two members of the Lombardic royal family among the names of the ruling Carolingians is even more surprising when one considers that the Salzburg confraternity book was created in 783/784, about ten years after Charlemagne's victory in Italy. Researchers interpret the inclusion of Ansa and Adelgis among the living kings as provocatively anti-Carolingian (Schmid 1983, p. 187). The Ordo Ducum, which opens the second column of the sheet, should also be counted as a record of rulers. Tassilo and his wife Liutberga are named in the first line. In the first sub-division of the column, after Tassilo's name, the children of the duke and duchess are listed: Theodo, the son and co-regent, and his two sisters, Cotani and Rotrud.

In contrast to the Carolingian entries, both daughters of the duke are also recorded in the first sub-division, in fact, below the names of their brothers. Within the spatial structure of the entries of the living, the Carolingian monarchy is listed before the duchy of the Agilolfings, although both are at the same level. Their unmistakable classification indicates consent in Bavaria to Carolingian kingship and subordinate Agilolfing dukedom (Jahn 1991).

The record of deceased Carolingians and Agilolfings presents rather differently. The first column was reserved for deceased kings and dukes. The page is, again, opened with the Carolingian family. The list of Bavarian dukes begins towards the bottom half of the second sheet. The remaining three columns of the sheet are reserved for the names of deceased bishops and abbots. As in the register of the living, the columns for kings and dukes are sub-divided, whereby the first sub-division is reserved for male rulers and the second for their wives.

Significantly, the list of Carolingian kings opens with the major domo Charles Martell and his Bavarian-born wife, Swanahild. He is followed by his son, Pippin the Younger, with his wife, Bertrada. Presumably, the *Charlmannus* listed in third place is Pippin's brother († 754). The name *Hiltigart* has been appended in the same line as Karlmann. This can be taken as a reference to the wife of Charlemagne, who died in 783. Another Lombardic name also appears in the necrology: The name of Desiderius, who was deposed by Charlemagne, has been inserted directly below Karlmann. Forstner has rightly suggested that this entry cannot be attributed to the hand of the original compiler, H1.

The list of ducal families is an important source for the genealogy of the Bavarian ducal house from Theodo onwards (Jahn 1991, pp. 25–29; Reindel 1967, pp 189–61) (Figure 3). The entry opens with Theodo († ca. 716) and his wife, Folchaid, who only appears here. His entry is followed by that of his three sons, Thedobert († ca.719), Grimoald († 728) and Theodolt († ca.719). Hugbert, the penultimate name on the list, was Theodo's grandson. Together with his uncle Grimold, he gave himself to an embittered conflict over the dukedom and called on Charles Martell for help. In 725 Charles marched on Bavaria, carried Grimoald and his family to Franconia, and took Grimoald's relative, Swanahilt, as his wife (Reindel 1967, p. 162). Apparently, Grimoald could have fled but was murdered in 728, which left the autocracy open to Hugbert. He married Rattrud, the daughter of Ratchis, king of Lombardy, and died in 736. Tassilo, of whom there is no other record and whose name preceded Hugbert's in the list, was presumably a son or grandson of Theodo. Jarnut assumes, that he was married to Imma, the daughter of the Alemannic duke Gottfried. (Jarnut 1980, p. 18). Following Hugbert's death, the dukedom passed to Odilo of the Alemannic line of the Agilolfings. (Jahn 1991, p. 123) (Figure 4). With his entry, the ducal list closes. His wife Hiltrud, the daughter of Charles Martell, is missing from the ducal family group (Herzberg-Fränkel 1887, p. 77). The Salzburg ducal list is an impressive witness to Bavarian historical awareness.

The lists of both the Carolingians and the Agilolfings document the diverse family connections and political relationships between them: Odilo was married to Hiltrud, a daughter of Charles Martell, and Hildgerad, the wife of Charlemagne, was related to Tassilo. What is particularly striking is the register of deceased Bavarian dukes which, with its seven office bearers, indicates an older tradition of rule, unlike the Carolingian register with three names. In this regard the Salzburg confraternity book demonstrates a determined Bavarian remembrance and interpretation of the past, which fed Tassilo's self-image and claims with regard to the Frankish king.

**Figure 3.** Bavarian Agilolfings (Die Bajuwaren, p. 96).

**Figure 4.** Duke Odilo and the Alemannic dukes (8th century) (Die Bajuwaren, p. 151).

The political relationship between Tassilo and Charlemagne revolved not only around Bavaria's independence, but also around the acknowledgement of Carolingian regality and the sole capability of this branch of the family to rule. Through his mother, Hiltrud, Tassilo was both a grandson of Charles Martell and a cousin of Charlemagne. As a blood relative he was, however, also a potential rival of the Carolingians. Between 748 and 786, the year of Tassilo's disempowerment, the political relationship between the Carolingian kings and Tassilo was extremely unstable. In 748, while still a minor, he was appointed as Dux of Bavaria by Pippin the Younger, and in the years that followed, the young duke became emancipated. A testimony to his growing independence from the Carolingians is his marriage to the daughter of Desiderius, king of Lombardy by the year 765 at the latest (Jahn 1991, p. 374). In 770, Charlemagne also took one of Desiderius' daughters as his wife, separating from her the following year (Codex Carolinus 1892, pp. 566–67). Apparently, there was another rapprochement between Tassilo and his cousin Charlemagne as in 771, Sturmi, the Abbot of Fulda, mediated an *amicitia* between the duke and the king (Jarnut 1991, pp. 18–21). In 771 the king married the Alemannic Agilolfing, Hildegard. This marriage was seen as the culmination of the alliance between Charlemagne and Tassilo. At Pentecost in 772 the Pope, with the assistance of Charlemagne, anointed Theodo, the son of Duke Tassilo, in Rome (Classen 1978, pp. 176–77). This sacralisation legitimised the claim of the Agilolfing dynasty to the Bavarian dukedom and gave papal recognition to Bavaria in its position as *regnum*.

Although in the years 773/774 Tassilo remained inactive while Charlemagne fought against the Lombards, sent Desiderius and Ansa into exile, and crowned himself king of Lombardy, the following years saw a steady decline in Franco–Bavarian relations. The objective of Charlemagne's policy was to limit Bavarian independence and to integrate the dukedom more firmly into the Carolingian kingdom. Internal politics appear also to have made this period increasingly difficult for Tassilo. No further monasteries were founded after 781, which is all the more remarkable since in the preceding years, Tassilo had personally founded several monasteries and sponsored numerous aristocratic foundations (Diepolder 1989, p. 73). There is disagreement among researchers as to whether Tassilo had to deal with an opposition movement from the ranks of the bishops or even with a pro-Frankish faction (Freund 2004, pp. 141–43). It is, however, not disputed that after 781, even in Bavaria, Tassilo's dukedom was considered to be at risk (Diesenberger 2006).

The two ruler diptychs in the Salzburg confraternity book include several interrelated temporal strands. In both lists of the dead, the familial relationships that reached back into the past and the Carolingian connection to Bavaria were made clear. Tassilo's resulting claim to royal dukedom gathers force from the presentation of a deeper past concerning the Bavarian tradition of rule. The present dissent, which was fed by a more recent past and which is clear from the Lombardic lists of rulers, can be balanced out by the orderly juxtaposition of Carolingian kingship and Agilolfing dukedom alongside the most important bishops and abbots. At the same time this strict orderliness expresses the desire for political stability and order in the dukedom and in relationship to Fraconia. This order and stability were re-invoked with every prayer and offered up to the saints whose names open the confraternity book. With their aid and, thus, also with God's help, the sovereignty of Tassilo and his family would be granted stability now and in the future, despite all hostility, and the crisis concerning the Bavarian dukedom would be overcome.

### *3.2. The Reichenau Confraternity Book*

A close connection between crisis and compilation can also be discerned for the Reichenau Confraternity Book (Zettler 2010). The imperial order of Louis the Pious in 817, which was unable to achieve consensus and peace in the realm; the uprising of Bernhard of Italy who was blinded by Louis and died as a result; the admission of Louis' half-brothers Drogo, Hugo and Theoderich into monasteries, which meant exclusion from participation in political life; together with, Louis' "conversion", which climaxed in 821 with his public act of penance, are all key moments of political crisis in the first years of Louis' rule (Patzold 2006, pp. 60–68). There were also natural catastrophes and epidemics, viewed as visible signs for all to see and interpreted as portents of a bleak future (Dutton 1994, p. 87). The annals hand on a record of extraordinary calamities, such as an earthquake in Aachen, extremely cold temperatures and thunderstorms, famine, and a devastating epidemic which was rife in Franconia. In the context of his monastic reform edicts in 819 in the *Notitia de servitio monasteriorum*, the emperor had already emphatically commanded the monasteries to fulfil their commitment to prayer (Kettemann 2000, p. 537). Furthermore, in subsequent years, he repeatedly called for fasting and prayer, as in the *Admonitio ad omnes regni ordines* of 825 (MGH Capit. 1, No. 150), for example. The monastery in Reichenau, under the leadership of Abbot Heito, who was already gravely ill and who had retired in 823, yielded to the pressure and decided to put its accumulated prayer obligations in order. The undertaking was permanently shaken by Wetti's death in 823. His vision, which he was able to hand on before his death, reminded the brothers of the urgency of intercessory prayer (Walahfrid and Hatto 2009).

The confraternity book, which is now in the central library in Zurich, (Ms. Rh. Hist. 27; https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/list/one/zbz/Ms-Rh-hist0027, accessed on 6 February 2022) was bound into a codex together with other items at the end of the 17th/beginning of the 18th century. The present section II forms the core, which contains the actual confraternity book (fol. 1–134). After its compilation, addenda were made to it until the late Middle Ages. It originally consisted of twelve quaternions, which are currently only partially extant. Section III (fol. 135–64) contains, in irregular layers, the list of professions of Reichenau, forms of profession, addenda to the confraternity book, and transcripts of documents. The core was compiled in the 10th century and addenda were made up until the 13th century. Both sections were paginated in the 17th century, at which time the missing parchment pages were replaced with paper leaves. Section I comprises nine paper leaves and preserves, for posterity, confraternity agreements and obits from the 14th to the 16th century (Autenrieth et al. 1979).

The confraternity book of Reichenau Abbey of 823/824, compiled 40 years after the Salzburg confraternity book, was considerably more comprehensive and more nuanced than the Salzburg Liber Vitae, even at the time of its compilation (Geuenich 2015). It has a defined list of contents which reflects the structure of the book in capitula. These list, in the original compilation, the names of 53 monasteries whose communities the monks of Reichenau had an obligation to pray for. The list of monasteries inscribed on pages 4–87/88 reached Reichenau between 762 and 824. The lists of monks in the original compilation document the tradition of prayer fraternity, which had existed for over half a century at Reichenau. Their renewed and orderly transcription bears witness to the chronological depth through which the monks at prayer were part of a timeless monastic community.

The second section of the book was dedicated to the laity. Several pages from fol. 98 onwards were reserved for the benefactors of the monastery, under the heading NOMINA AMICORUM UIUENTIUM (Figure 5a,b). The pages from fol. 114/115 onwards have the names of the deceased patrons and benefactors. Both registers are prefaced by ruler diptychs in the narrowest sense. The attachment layer of the living amici extends to fol. 100, of which the first section includes fol. 98–fol. 99 A and the diptychon. The second

(**a**) (**b**)

section includes a collective entry of 209 names which are inscribed in two sub-divisions per column (Figure 5).

**Figure 5.** (**a**) Reichenau Confraternity book, p. 98; (**b**) Reichenau Confraternity book, p. 98 (first lay out).

The list of living benefactors is in the form of a diptychon, compiled according to the ordines (Table 3). It opens with Emperor Louis the Pious and his family, the second column records eleven bishops, and the third sub-division contains a list of the names of nine abbots, of which two have no abbatial title. The fourth list, with only four clerics, is the shortest, and finally, in the first column on fol. 99, the names of eleven counts are inscribed. It appears that on fol. 98 of the attachment entry, three names might belong, which were not taken note of by Schmid and Autenrieth and which are inscribed in the lower half of the first column, clearly separated from the Carolingian ruling family: *Truago eps–Huc–Theotrich* (Schmid 1974b, pp. 58–59).

At the head of the Carolingian family was Emperor Louis the Pious, followed by his sons Lothar (who also has the added title *imp*.), Pippin and Louis the German (each identified by the title *rex*). The sequence closes with Queen Judith, who was the second wife of the emperor from 819. Between her name and the name Berta, the writer has left a blank line. The identity of Berta is uncertain. It can, however, be assumed that a sister of Louis the Pious is concealed behind the name (Werner 1967, p. 444). The three names Drogo, Hugo and Theoderich in the lower half of the first column refer to Charlemagne's three illegitimate sons, whom Louis tonsured and sent into monasteries in 818 in connection with the insurrection of his nephew, Bernard. Drogo was reconciled with Louis in 822, and in 823 was ordained priest and became Bishop of Metz. He was one of the emperor's closest advisers. In 822/823, Hugo was installed as Abbot of the monastery of St Quentin. It seems that Theoderich was still alive in 824 when the book was compiled. There is no

news of him after 818, which suggests to researchers that he died shortly after 818. A Theoderich does, however, appear in Remiremont in 821/822, who concerned himself intensively with reforming the monastery and the compilation of the local confraternity book. There is reason to suppose that the youngest of Louis' half-brothers might have been in Remiremont (Butz 2010, pp. 105–6). The entry of Louis' three half-brothers is an indicator of the unanimity acquired by the Carolingian family around 823. Drogo, Hugo and Theoderich were not recorded under their respective ordines but were clearly set apart, although recognisable as Carolingians, as their names were inscribed in the first column.


**Table 3.** Reichenau Confraternity Book, pp. 98–99 (first lay-out).

The realm is represented both by the ruler and by the influential persons in the ruling class, particularly by the lists of abbots and earls. The list, which is headed by Hilduin of St Denis, comprises the names of the most important advisers to the court of the emperor, who were also, to the greatest possible extent, supporters of the imperial monastic reforms (Geuenich 1989). The list of counts opens with the names of Hugo of Tours and Matfrid of Orleans, two of the most important secular advisers to the emperor. Hugo was closely connected to the ruling family, not least because of the marriage of his daughter to Lothar I, and this is obvious from the leading position of his name (Vollmer 1957, pp. 163–66). The list of bishops, however, indicates, in particular, the monastery's Italian connection. Only Ratold of Verona, whose name comes first in the list of bishops, is known to have had a close relationship with the imperial court (Hlawitschka 1997, pp. 8–9).

The underlying principles of classification of the ruler diptychon in the Reichenau Confraternity Book are the result of deliberate editing. Its objective was to present the Frankish realm as a consensual entity of all persons directly or indirectly involved with sovereignty under the leadership of the Carolingian dynasty. The ruler diptychon, which had been conceived for the purpose of praying for the ruler, his family and the realm, also represents the objective of monastic prayer efforts: the stability of the realm. The further objective was more than simply achieving political peace, but ensuring the sovereignty of the Carolingian dynasty itself. This future-oriented perspective is expressed in the integration of the ruling family in the diptychon, including the addition, at a slightly later date, of Louis' two children, Gisela and Karl, in the space between Judith and Berta.

The diptychon of the dead serves the same purpose that was evident in the Salzburg Liber Vitae: the creation of a deep past by means of genealogically founded lines of tradition (Figure 6, Table 4).


**Figure 6.** Reichenau Confraternity book, pp. 114–15.



The first section of the list of deceased rulers in fol. 114 presents as a list of rulers. The sequence of names is headed by Charles Martell, followed by his two sons, King Pippin and majordomo Karlmann. The sequence continues with Pippin's sons, Charlemagne and Karlmann. Next come the sons of Charlemagne who were capable of ruling: Charles the Younger († 811) and his brother, Pippin (Karlmann) (†810) of Italy. The list of rulers closes with Bernard, Pippin's son, who was blinded by his uncle Louis after his rebellion and died in 818. In every generation, the brother who was granted the longest term of office and was most successful was in first place.

A list of Carolingian wives was appended to the list of rulers. In the last group, the name of Lantfrid (position 18) is particularly noticeable. This is almost certainly the last Alemannic duke, whose year of death is probably 730. This Agilolfing was related to the Carolingians through the marriage of his brother, Odilo, to Hiltrud, the daughter of Charlesl Martell. Certainly, the name Hiltrud (position 19) follows that of Lantfrid in the Reichenau diptychon of the dead. From the point of view of Reichenau, at the beginning of the 9th century, Duke Lantfrid, the last Alemannic duke, whose death was followed by the incorporation of Alemannia into Franconia, was considered to be the interface between the old Alemannic dukedom and the Frankish empire. With the inclusion of Lantfrid in the list of Carolingian rulers, the integration of Alemannia into Franconia is presented as a causal necessity.

The start of the list of counts also points in the same direction. The following four names are particularly exposed: *Cerolt comis–Odalrich comis–Bertolt comis–Pirihtilo comis* in the fourth sub-division of the page. This presumably refers to Gerold (II), who was incorporated into the prayers of the Reichenau monks in a particular way (Borgolte 1986, p. 124). After Tassilo's overthrow, he was sent by Charlemagne to Bavaria as vice-regent. He was a patron of Reichenau Abbey and was the only lay person to be represented not only positively but as a martyr in the Visio Wettini of Walafrid Strabo (Walahfrid and Hatto 2009, lines 802–26). Udalrich follows him in the list of counts. Notker the Stammler presents him as the brother of Queen Hildegard and, therefore, also of Gerold (II) (Notker Balbulus 1960, cap. 17). Pirchtilo was among the representatives of the hard Alemannic policies pursued by Charles Martell. He was the royal administrator in Rottweil and is documented as being in office until the late 880s. An Earl Bertold can finally be documented up to the beginning of the 9th century in the area of Bertoldsbaar and Alaholfsbaar (Borgolte 1986, pp. 71–75).

The four counts were particularly highlighted in terms of the diptychon of the dead, in that they are all recorded on the same page as the deceased Carolingian family members, and are not named in the context of the remaining lists of counts in fol. 15. For one thing, Gerold and Udalrich were siblings of Charlemagne's wife, and for another, they represented—together with Bertold as descendent of the Frankish imperial aristocracy and Pirchtilo as administrator of the Carolingian monarchy—the integration of Alemannia into the Frankish Empire. As supporters of Frankish rule, they belonged to the post-ducal era. Lastly, the names which follow on fol. 115 point to the time of the Alemannic dukedom, which again, are led by Duke Lantfrid (Butz, forthcoming).

The two ruler diptychs in the Reichenau confraternity book also show, as was already evident in the Salzburg Liber Vitae, various interrelated chronological layers. One aspect of the connection between the various chronological layers is that it creates a deep historical past. The monastery of Reichenau Abbey is part of not only a spatial but also a temporal extensive confraternity network. As well as being a custodian of decades-old lists of names, it also achieves a special validity, which is emphasised with the compilation of the confraternity book (Melville 2000). In this way, the monks demonstrate their ability to permanently fulfil the necessary prayer obligations demanded by the emperor. In compiling the record of the deceased, the Carolingian dynasty also achieves a deep sense of the past, in that the Alemannic kinship references give causal legitimacy to the history of the integration of Alemannia into Franconia. The transformation of the Agilolfings into Carolingians is concentrated in the person of Duke Lantfrid. It is especially clear, at this point, which role corresponds to the positioning of a name within the ordering of the book and, thus, within the world order. This precise location also aids the creation of a meaningful chronology. It also gives the diptychon of deceased benefactors an historiographical character.

The list of living benefactors projects contemporary Franconia as a political entity of all forces across the different ordines. At the head of this realm is Louis the Pious, to whom sovereignty had been handed over by his forebears and who would, in turn, hand over sovereignty to his sons. Although the function of the confraternity book as a threshold in written form between time and eternity is no longer obvious, it transfers the ordered circumstances of Louis' sovereignty to Reichenau as intermediary between humankind and God. The causal-genealogically constructed diptychon of the dead affirms the sacral sovereignty of Louis, which exists in the orderly passage of time and which is practised consensually in the present. The political concept of the unity of the realm under the leadership of the sacral ruler was to be imparted to God with the aid of the prayers of remembrance practised in the monastery, and with God's help, re-created and stabilised (Hen 2001, 2007). The specific goal of prayers of remembrance was not only to assist the salvation of the emperor's soul in God's eternal heavenly realm, but also to give medium-term support in maintaining Carolingian sovereignty. In addition, the focus for the immediate future was the restoration of stability in the crisis-torn realm of Louis the Pious.

### **4. Conclusions**

The liturgical confraternity books of the Carolingian era reveal, in their form, a complex system of reference and interpretation. At the time in which the confraternity books were compiled, the originator conceived a principle of classification which was the result of deliberate editing. By grouping together the Carolingian rulers, their families, ancestors and advisers—as well as regional office bearers, bishops and abbots—the composition of the central ruler diptychs portrays the realm as a whole from the perspective of the particular monastery, and at the point in time that the book itself was compiled. By its inclusion in the liturgy, the unity expressed in the diptychs is, on the one hand, presented to God, and on the other, is a means of asking God to perpetuate this unity now and in eternity.

The Libri Vitae stand on the threshold between the temporal and transcendental realms, between time and eternity. They embody the coalescence of the past, the present and the future. The entries in the confraternity books record these complex temporal structures in the snapshot of the time of their compilation. The unity of *christianitas* should not only be created in the present time, but should also be effective from the past; moreover, the rise of the Carolingians through the integration of independent dukedoms such as Alemannia and Bavaria should present as a conflict-free and consensual process. The old leadership elite become the basis of Carolingian leadership, and this appears in the lists as a seamless progression, documenting the legitimisation of the Carolingians in all parts of the Frankish realm (McKitterick 2004; Schneidmüller 2003). The lists of deceased rulers bear witness to a deep historic past, which verifies the legitimacy of the claim to sovereignty (Ewig 1995). The acceptance of the sons of the ruler who were entitled to rule points, once more, to the future, and supports both the stability of the realm and the security of sovereignty in the hands of the Carolingian dynasty.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **References**

Algazi, Gadi. 2014. Forget Memory: Some Critical Remarks on Memory, Forgetting and History. In *Damnatio in Memoria: Deformation und Gegenkonstruktionen in der Geschichte*. Edited by Sebastian Scholz. Köln and Wien: Böhlau Verlag, pp. 25–34.

Althoff, Gerd. 1998. Geschichtsbewußtsein durch Memorialüberlieferung. In *Hochmittelalterliches Geschichtsbewußtsein im Spiegel Nichthistoriographischer Quellen*. Edited by Hans-Werner Goetz. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, pp. 85–100.

Angenendt, Arnold. 1980. Das geistliche Bündnis der Päpste mit den Karolingern. *Historisches Jahrbuch* 100: 1–94.


Assmann, Jan. 1992. *Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und Politische Identität in Frühen Hochkulturen*. München: Beck.


Hlawitschka, Eduard. 1997. Ratold, Bischof von Verona und Begründer von Radolfzell. *Hegau* 54/55: 5–44.


Walahfrid and Hatto. 2009. *Visio Wettini*, 3rd ed. Edited by Hermann Knittel. Heidelberg: Mattes.


### *Article* **Liturgical Framing of Trials in 10th to 11th Century Catalonia**

**Cornel-Peter Rodenbusch**

Independent Researcher, 08003 Barcelona, Spain; cornelpeterrodenbusch@gmail.com

**Abstract:** This paper focuses on the question of how place, time, ritual, and liturgy were interconnected before, during, and after trials in the tenth and eleventh centuries in what is today Catalonia. It does so by highlighting cases that show that Visigothic law heavily affected the way in which trials were organized, while simultaneously leaving enough space for the liturgy and the divine to impact legal customs. This article aims to showcase these dynamics, which combine space and time with liturgy in a well-articulated framework of legal procedure that formed part of how people experienced the law and its application.

**Keywords:** Catalonia; medieval law; liturgy

### **1. Introduction**

The words 'court' and 'trial automatically evoke a picture of a room in our modern minds: a raised tribunal, judges, an audience, benches and so on, guaranteeing a solemn environment that combines tradition, fixed procedures, and rituals. While this may be true for later centuries, in tenth and eleventh century Catalonia, we are better off banishing this well-embedded image from our heads. While we will certainly recognize many features of the modern legal apparatus, such as judges and a tribunal, the legal assemblies of this period differed in many aspects. The most striking in my opinion, and not surprising for the Middle Ages, is the relationship with the divine.

As part of a quality assessment of these dynamics—as Patrick J. Geary made in his pioneering article for France (Geary 1994)—the sheer quantity of charters preserved from Catalonia allows us to evaluate more general aspects of the region today. Although it is certainly difficult to reconstruct a universally valid legal procedure spanning two centuries, it is nonetheless fruitful to examine the various steps the legal apparatus followed before, during, and after a trial. This includes questions such as which places were the most common for trials and which days were considered appropriate, as well as considering the dynamics and rituals in play during the assemblies themselves. It is important to note that charters tend to highlight the extraordinary and take legal procedure for granted. To take certain features that are mentioned in one case and not in another and use them to determine a universal scheme of what probably happened, but is not explicitly described, is risky, but in many cases does allow for a better understanding of the different stages of a legal conflict. Certain features that are rarely mentioned in the charters must still have happened for a trial to proceed; for instance, the notification of everyone involved is a simple necessity for the event. Other occurrences, such as the inspection of written evidence, likely did not occur if not mentioned, but nevertheless could still have been enquired after by the judges. In the following sections I attempt to proceed through the different stages that trials went through, with the goal of emphasizing the relationship between legal procedure and what we today could label as liturgy or ritual.1

### **2. Trials in 10th and 11th Century Catalonia**

The justice system of this time period has been studied by various authors and its complexity has been emphasized many times. Over the last few decades, several publications have dealt with the matter and give a quick introduction (Bowman 2004; Fernández

**Citation:** Rodenbusch, Cornel-Peter. 2022. Liturgical Framing of Trials in 10th to 11th Century Catalonia. *Religions* 13: 227. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel13030227

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 23 January 2022 Accepted: 1 March 2022 Published: 7 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

i Viladrich 2010; Jarrett 2010; Salrach Marés 2013); however, the study of the disparate source materials regarding the resolution of conflicts from Catalonia has only recently been possible to fully assess (Salrach and Montagut i Estragués 2018).2

People went to court seeking justice, and in complex cases this could even take several sessions. These sessions followed the procedure given by Visigoth law, *Leges Visigothorum* (LV), which, besides some regional customs, was the main legal code used in Catalonia during the tenth and eleventh century,<sup>3</sup> and is frequently cited and referenced in the charters (Rius Serra 1940; Kienast 1968; Zimmermann 1973; Iglesia i Ferreirós 1977; Collins 1985, 1986; Zimmermann 2003, II, esp. pp. 648–68 and pp. 922–49).

We know of these cases through the different types of documents that were produced at different moments during the procedure; that is to say, before, during, and after a trial. Leaving extrajudicial solutions aside, such as agreements (*pactum*, *conventum*, *convenientia* et al.), most sources are clearly distinguishable as one of three charter types by the middle of the tenth century: First, the oath of the witnesses brought forward to testify in the cases (*condiciones sacramentorum*); second, the recognition and evacuation of rights, property, etc. by the defendant or the plaintiff (*recognitio*, *definitio*, *professio*, *evacuatio*); and lastly, the court proceedings or court records (*iudicatum*, *iudicium*, *noticia*). Only rarely are all three types of documents preserved side by side. One such occurrence is from a trial dated to the twenty-first of August 842 (Salrach and Montagut i Estragués 2018, doc. 6–8). This early date shows the long tradition these documents are embedded in, but it is also important to keep in mind that these are not necessarily strictly separated documents, as in later centuries most charters combine different elements of each type or have variations added to by the scribes. The reason for only having one type of document can be found, not only in the state of preservation, but also in how the law-code regulates the production of documents. The predominance of oaths, for example, can be explained in this way: Visigothic law urges the judges to give identical texts of the resolution to both parties in a dispute.4 However, if the *causa* regards goods of lesser importance, only the oath might be handed out, and, thus, court records would not explicitly be created in minor cases.5

The documentation is only concerned with the organization of trials on rare occasions, so from our modern perspective procedure happens only in the background; nevertheless, it is clear that for a trial to happen two things had to be defined or agreed upon. First of all, the location or place where the people would assemble; and second, when this event should happen. The right time and place were crucial in the administration of justice and should not be taken as trivial.

Time allowed the parties to organize evidence, be it written or in the form of testimony, and arrange for travel if need be. Choosing the right place was also important, as both disputes over land and a variety of other issues needed the judges and the *boni homines*, local men that were chosen for these occasions, to be present to have a better picture of what they were about to judge. In accordance, court sessions could be relocated if the judges found it necessary to do so. At the same time the local population was key, to guarantee that the decision was accepted and acknowledged by the community and that the resolution was imprinted into local memory.

Certain places, such as the Count's palace in Barcelona, worked as centers of justice, connecting center and periphery when judges travelled to conduct legal business in situ. The organizational skills required and the common knowledge of where one had to go to attend to legal matters were both interconnected with the divine. To get to grips with these interrelationships, we begin by looking at how court dates were selected, and then proceed to examining the places of justice where assemblies would occur.

### **3. Scheduling Trials**

The motivations to assemble could be manifold (Kosto 2003), so here we will focus on trials. For the timespan this paper is concerned with, these judicial meetings were called *iudicium* or *placitum* in the sources, and could range from small gatherings to massive assemblies, depending on the legal issue at hand and the importance of the parties involved.6 Theoretically it was the judges that chose the dates, but the relationship of power between themselves and the litigants, as well as the ability of litigants to exert influence, must have played a role in the background. Organizing these events and coordinating the different parties must have required constant communication and was also beholden to extenuating circumstances, such as weather conditions.<sup>7</sup> However, when hierarchies, as well as jurisdiction went unhindered, time could be a tool in the hands of the powerful, used to emphasize their position in society, by forcing dates that suited their calendar or leaving enough time for themselves to organize their juridical defense or attack.

Ad hoc courts were rarely held, as court dates were fixed by the judges and a concrete day had to be arranged for every session. Accounts of court cases find the judges decreeing days for judicial assemblies to happen (*ad placitum constitutum; ad diem constitutum*, Salrach and Montagut i Estragués 2018, docs. 318, 505). The word *placitum* could mean court sessions as well as deadlines (*ad placitum constitutum*, Ibid, doc. 107, 108, 110, 134, 160, 181, 189, 194, et al.), which meant a time period leading up to a day, as well as a concrete day itself, so that people waited for debts to be paid after a certain date (*ultra placitum*, Ibid, doc 109), while assemblies, for example, met and constituted another court session between two litigants (*actum est placitum inter*, Ibid, doc. 309). When someone sold, donated, or gave away property that they had received in court, it could be clarified that it *advenit nobis per placitum* (Ibid, doc. 219) and people appealed to the court (*placitare*, Ibid, doc. 296) for what they considered rightfully theirs.

Just as everyday life was governed by the season and the liturgical year, legal business was no exception. The Visigothic law, rather than stating when judicial assemblies should happen, instead forbids them to be celebrated at certain dates, as the chapter 'Concerning feast days and festivals, during which no legal business shall be carried out' regulates.<sup>8</sup> Charters are not always dated on the exact date of an assembly, especially for cases with several sessions, but looking at the documentation as a whole reveals several things with regards to the aforementioned law.

First of all, it becomes clear that no legal business was carried out during the most important dates of the solemnities, meaning Easter9, Christmas, or Pentecost; demonstrating that the holiness of these days was highly respected. If we look at the other religious days listed in the *Lex,* only three documents were issued on any central Christian holy day, concerning the legal resolution of conflicts.<sup>10</sup> However, strictly speaking, none of these examples are trials. These dates were, rather, used to finalize longer-lasting disputes; this included giving certain securities or, for example, the reintegration of the excommunicated back into the Christian community.<sup>11</sup>

Legislation regulated that, theoretically, no legal business should be carried out during the period of Easter. However, this was clearly not the case, as charter dates range from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday12, as well as Holy Wednesday (Salrach and Montagut i Estragués 2018, doc. 359, 376), Maundy Thursday13, Good Friday (Ibid., doc. 115), Holy Saturday (Ibid., doc. 535), and the Octave of Easter, meaning the whole week after Resurrection Sunday14.

As such, we see that legal activity did not cease around Easter and the same goes for other holy days, as charters were issued and conflicts resolved one or two days before or after central dates such as Pentecost15, the Feast of the Ascension of Christ16, Christmas17, and Epiphany.<sup>18</sup>

As a general rule, one can say that only on rare occasions were trials conducted on these feast days in Catalonia, but legal business continued on the surrounding days. However, before looking at some examples, it is worth noting that this does not imply that the liturgical calendar was not important for court dates. This is especially true if we look at deadlines issued by the court or given by contracts. Dates for repayment of debts were usually selected holy days during the year. Any failure to meet agreed payments was, therefore, brought to light after these dates, and, thus, legal activity spiked directly

after these dates or directly before, as people looked to find an agreement and, thus, avoid having to go to court.

This article focuses on the solemnities, but local feast days, such as the day of Saint Eulalia or Saint Cucuphas, were important in their own regard. Other cornerstones of the liturgical calendar were especially central to deadlines, such as the Feast of the Chair of Peter (the twenty-second of February), Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (the twenty-fourth of June), Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (the twenty-ninth of June), the Assumption of Mary (the fifteenth of August), All Saints' Day (the first of November), and the Feast of Saint Andrews (the thirtieth of November). All were prominent and allowed the judges to set deadlines throughout the entire year. The sources also give the impression that Catalan society was concerned with establishing a certain legal peace for the festivities, so legal business was conducted directly beforehand as well.

A good example of how these deadlines worked is given by a charter dated on the twenty-second of July in the year 1032. It states that the sons of Enric, two brothers with the names of Bonfill and Guifard, in the presence of noble men and in front of the judges Vives and Bonfill, filed a complaint against Gombau of Besora, who, according to them, unjustly and unlawfully withheld some property, an allod, stemming from their paternal inheritance.19

In answer to the accusation, Gombau stated that he did not know how it came into his possession.<sup>20</sup> To support his argument that he had a better claim on the property than the brothers, the judges sentenced that Gombau should provide written evidence through legal scriptures or oral evidence through apt testimonies before the 1st of August, the feast day of Saint Felix.21 The judges' decision further clarified that if he should not be able to bring forward said testimony, he would have to relinquish possession of the property. Furthermore, the judges included a guarantee in accordance with Visigothic law code, decreeing that a payment of a hundred solidi would be due if one side failed to appear in court.22 Ten days before the deadline expired (*ante placitum terminatum*), however, the defendant delivered the property into the possession of Bonfill and Guifard. He did so while also delivering a request for more time, specifically until the day of Saint Michaels (twenty-ninth of September); however, in the meantime the judge Vives guaranteed the brothers their rights over the property, according to Visigothic law (*sicut constitutum est in lege gotica*).<sup>23</sup>

As mentioned, the charter is dated on the twenty-second of July, so it either gives the retrospective date of transaction or, more likely, was drafted immediately after the possession was handed over. It is exceptional in its design, fulfilling a double purpose, as it not only works as a reminder for the expiring deadline but also guarantees the possession of the allod to the brothers. Most probably, we are only informed about the chronology of events because the charter served as a perfectly legal document of possession in its own right. Gombau must have felt that his claim was too weak and did not present the testimony on Saint Michaels and, thus, no other charter was needed, while his own admission of not being able to present testimony would be strong enough in the face of any future claims.

Another good example stems from the year 996, when Ramon Borell I, the Count of Barcelona, Girona and Osona, in the company of his brother, Count Ermengol I of Urgell, and the Bishop Aeci of Barcelona, and their respective followers, came to the monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès on what would have been Saturday the twenty-fifth of July, the feast day of the local martyr Saint Cucuphas.<sup>24</sup> Although this occasion did not include a trial, it was nevertheless the perfect environment for a hearing, as a big audience was guaranteed. The 'venerable woman' Sesnanda, recently widowed, made use of the occasion and during the celebration, or possibly shortly after, appeared complaining that the tithes of the properties she had inherited from her late husband Unifred, Son of Salla of Sant Benet, had been usurped by the magnate Bonfill Sendred.25 Three days later, on Tuesday the twenty-eighth of July, four judges inspected the documentation she brought with her, and the charter is thus dated accordingly, as they confirmed her rights.26

For the administration of justice, the organizing of time was a relevant factor for success, and the liturgical year was the ideal frame for helping to schedule trials and dates. People were highly aware of these dates and acted accordingly. Only in exceptional cases did people assemble on feast days to do legal business, but these important dates in people's everyday lives primarily functioned as corner stones of organization, rather than as days of justice. Having a trial on a feast day was, thus, a notably rare event, and was used as a last resort, when parties were at an impasse and divine help was thought to be needed.

### **4. Places of Justice**

The law does not specify where judicial assemblies had to be held, but on the rare occasions when the text mentions someone deciding, such as in the question of scheduling trials, it is once again the judges that are seen to be in charge of selecting the place, something that corresponds with the way events are narrated in the charters.<sup>27</sup>

This article focuses on the periphery, and not the pre-established places of justice, such as the palaces and cathedrals of counts or bishops. In this scope, it is the *villas*, which is the most frequently used term in the sources for smaller settlements, that were the primary administrative centers of the tenth century (Salrach Marés 2021, p. 32), and as such their churches played a crucial role in social life.<sup>28</sup> Besides the point that many of those local churches simply were not big enough for larger crowds, the documentation clearly indicates that the square in front of the church door, inside of what would later be called *sagrera*, was the epicentre of public meetings. This is especially true in cases of judicial assemblies and trials.

The space in front of the church had already been a traditional place of justice before the arrival of the time period we are concerned with. Visigothic law already considered spaces around churches sacred and protected.<sup>29</sup> Gathering for trials in front of the churches was also already a tradition in the tenth century and may have heavily influenced the notion of the *sagreres*, as this custom clearly predates the creation of these spaces.<sup>30</sup> On many occasions, general place names are given in the charters, without specifying the exact spot. However, these mentions give the impression that, if a contemporary individual had read or heard the charter, they would most certainly know exactly where the assembly would have met. We must assume that local places of justice were common knowledge, and as such, needed no further specifications. However, the exact position of these meetings, when given, can be pinpointed even further, as judicial assemblies happened in front of the church portal.

### **5. Doors and Portals**

Catalonia is not the only place in Europe where people congregated in front of church doors to hold legal assemblies (Ackermann 1993), as Barbara Deimling notably showed for Germany (Deimling 1998, 2016) and as also holds true for Italy (Chavarría Arnau 2016). In Italy, in particular, the tradition of holding assemblies can be traced back to 643 for the election of bishops, as these places are confirmed by chroniclers as places for communal meetings in the eleventh century (Coleman 2003). Documentation from Catalonia allows us to date this custom back to the year 879, where witnesses testified that they saw and heard previous documents being read *ante domum* or, as another document related to the same reconstruction of documentation states, *ante ecclesiam Sancti Andree*. 31

Assemblies were, thus, held *preforibus ecclesie,* as is the case of the church Sant Marcel de Saderra.32 People came and gathered *ante foras Sancti Petri*, <sup>33</sup> or simply *ante ostium*<sup>34</sup> or *ante limina* of the churches.35 The word *porticus* referred to the porch of the churches; therefore, assemblies were held *in porticu* or, combining elements of both, to be more specific, such meetings could be held *ante hostia e[cclesie] Sancti Iusti, sub isto porticu*. 36 Isidor of Seville puts it in the following way: a *porticus* is 'a passageway rather than a place where one remains standing'.37 A *porticus*, as well as doors and especially thresholds, was

considered a place of transition. A threshold, like no other part of a building, represented the border between one space and the other.

Therefore, entering or leaving church happened more frequently than one may think, as it indirectly formed part of legal procedure, and, thus, the church portal became a gateway that would surely have impressed upon participants that judgment day would eventually come, and that as good Christians they had better speak the truth to enter through the gates of heaven.

### **6. Oath Taking and the Altars**

Winning a trial meant, in most cases, that one side admitted the others' rights over the discussed matter. Thus, another way to determine where legal proceedings happened is through the preserved charters, where either the witnesses or the losing party are described as having to swear an oath on the altar. That does not mean, however, that the rest of the legal proceedings took place within the church, but rather that only the event of the oath happened inside. For the sake of space, one example must be sufficient, especially as these interconnections of oath and altar have been examined extensively by Adam C. Matthews (Matthews 2020, 2021).

The case in question is detailed in a charter dated in the year 1001, when contentions had risen between a certain Pere and Enric on one side and the inhabitants of Cornellà de Llobregat on the other.38 The subject of the dispute was some rights regarding the *vias publicas* frequented by the citizens.<sup>39</sup> The judge in charge, the well-documented and prestigious judge Oruç (Font Rius 2003, pp. 78–82), decided that the villagers should select three witnesses out of eleven possible candidates, from which ten were laymen and one a priest. The elected representative had to swear that they had been using the roads for more than thirty years.40 They did so in front of the altar of the church of Cornellà, and so Pere and Enric retracted their claims without further opposition. It becomes clear that it was by the order of the judge that the three selected witnesses entered the church (*per ordinatione iudicis* [ ... ] *intraverunt in ecclesia*), and it was at this point that Pere and Enric received, or as we might say, accepted, the testimony given *sub altario*. <sup>41</sup> Therefore, the court session took place outside, it was there that the witnesses were selected, and it was only a reduced number of people who went into the church to witness the oath taking.

In regard to our specified time period, these kinds of dynamics and customs caused churches to become one of the central places of justice, as the necessity of having an altar and relics close by was crucial for judicial procedure.

### **7. The** *Liber Iudicum Popularis* **of Bonsom**

One manuscript represents the intersection of the notions brought forward so far like no other. The *Liber Iudicum popularis,* compiled by one of the most distinguished judges of his time, a man named Bonsom (Mundó 2003a), features certain elements that showcase how a book of judges was trimmed for practicality. It is also one of the few manuscripts that, as part of the highly legalized documentation regarding trials, allows some insight into the mentality of the judges.

Judges needed tools to help them set up dates for trials, and they needed to have a good grasp of times and dates, in order to schedule meetings reasonably. They were aware of when harvest was collected, or when it was the time for harvesting wine so that debts could be paid off afterwards, for example. Therefore, to find a calendar or *Martirorium* amidst the pages of the *Liber* should be of no surprise. (Mundó 2003b). By its introduction, the whole book of judges can easily be dated to the year 1011, which makes the calendar the oldest to be preserved from Catalonia.

Besides some genealogical tables (Mundó and López 2003), which were useful for the judges, as many laws related to kinship, there is another particularly interesting addition. The manuscript holds within its pages the oldest instructions, as far as I am aware, for rituals regarding ordeals from Catalonia (García López 2003b). It is important to keep in mind that in other places in Europe these instructions were not usually found in legislative literature. In the eleventh century the performance of ordeals was a widespread phenomenon throughout Europe.<sup>42</sup> However, elsewhere, liturgical instructions for ordeals are found in pontificals, missals, and sacraments. Usually these rituals were supervised and performed by the bishops.<sup>43</sup> In Catalonia the involvement of the judges in ordering the ordeal under special circumstances, and, thus, their addition to the *Liber*, makes sense as they directed the trials, bringing them from one phase to another.<sup>44</sup> None of the instructions specify where an ordeal had to take place, but the one example where we are actually informed where the boiling cauldron was put up was on the twenty-seventh of April 1100, in front of the door of the church of Santa Eugènia de Berga (Salrach and Montagut i Estragués 2018, doc. 545).

### **8. Conclusions**

The Catalan archives and their rich charter documentation allow for a deeper understanding of legal procedure and the use of the law, particularly because of the region's numerous well-preserved court cases. Sources show that trials were dynamic events that could span several sessions and showcase the organizational skills of both the legal professionals and the authorities. Organized as communal events, taking place at traditional places of justice, they display a society deeply rooted in a culture that connects the written and spoken word in public.

A more detailed view on space and time, with an emphasis on the latter, shows that the liturgical calendar and churches played a crucial role in organizing and administering the law. Judges searched and found truth and established new realities through rituals that always involved aspects of liturgy. This helped to embed the sentences, and, thus, new narratives, into the collective consciousness of the faithful who attended these trials. Solemn acts, such as oaths, ordeals, or even simply admitting someone else's rights, were linked to the physical structures such as the churches' altars and, through the application of the calendar and the chosen dates, with the saints themselves. This starts with the space around the church itself as a place of peace and truce. Meetings took place in front of the church door, which represented the entrance to salvation: open to the faithful, closed to the excommunicated. The saints' relics residing inside also meant that the church belonged to the saint himself. His presence served as a connection to salvation, protected the community and helped to establish truth and justice. Approaching the church in several stages, first perhaps hearing the church bells, then seeing its tower, and finally stepping on holy ground to attend assembly, produced a smooth transition, with its climax being the taking of the oath and the reestablishment of peace and concord. However, this was also practical, as it permitted a larger public audience, as well as the involvement of the people attending. Rarely mentioned in detail, this background environment allowed the judges to feel the reactions of the crowd and stage solemn acts such as ordeals that without these surroundings would have been impossible, or at least far less impactful. The presence of eyewitnesses was also necessary for possible future or successive trials.

The sources, therefore, clearly question the distinctions between secular and sacred, or public and private, commonly found in modern law. Thus, the relationship with the divine in the documentation is omnipresent, not only in the mentality of the tribunal, the judges, or the judged, but also through communal acts and the organization of the event.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


### **References**


## *Article* **Rituals of Victory: The Role of Liturgy in the Consecration of Mosques in the Castilian Expansion over Islam from Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries**

**Marisa Bueno Sánchez**

Department of Medieval History, Faculty of Geography and History, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain; mabusa@ucm.es

**Abstract:** Scholarly work on the conquest of Muslim cities in the so-called Castilian Reconquista has focused largely on political consequences rather than conquest rituals. Against the previous background, this article turns attention toward civil and religious rituals associated with the Christian conquest of Muslim cities as an expression of triumph. Among these rituals, the conversion of the congregational mosques has been discussed in chronicles and liturgical books that reveals the role of liturgy to understand both appropriation and sacralization of the mosque to remove these places from Muslim control, restoring the Christian faith in the new churches. These rituals are an evident legacy of Roman law modified in late antiquity, and this paper's main aim is to highlight the re-use of preexisting Church consecration ceremonies gathered in the Roman Pontifical in order to clean up the "Mohammedan filth" applied to post-Reconquista churches.

**Keywords:** conquest; mosque; liturgy; ritual; cathedral; medieval Iberia

**Citation:** Bueno Sánchez, Marisa. 2022. Rituals of Victory: The Role of Liturgy in the Consecration of Mosques in the Castilian Expansion over Islam from Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries. *Religions* 13: 379. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13050379

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 19 January 2022 Accepted: 4 April 2022 Published: 20 April 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

### **1. Introduction**

The Castilian expansion was a military response to Islam—justified by *Reconquista* ideology—that drove the kings to enlarge their kingdoms, restoring the ancient Visigoth dioceses under the Muslim rule (Lomax 1978, p. 76). It has also been argued that this Reconquista ideology was essentially a political enterprise later transformed into Holy war after the Council of Burgos of 1080, when Alfonso VI established an agreement with the Cluniacs (Catarino 1980, pp. 82–109; Ruiz 1985). Despite this ideology, Christians and Muslims rulers continued to collaborate with each other as diplomatic partners and military allies. However, it appears evident that the potential for Castilian Christians to engage in combat against Islam increased the moment popes supported the Crusades. The account of these victories over Islam were the base of medieval chronicles and the construction of a discourse that was increasingly amplified to emphasize the value and heroism of the conquerors. Likewise, medieval Spanish chroniclers served the Church and the King, building a discourse of victory according to royal propaganda and ornamented their panegyrics with flourished language from Crusade rhetoric. Thus, this ideology of *Reconquista* echoed in medieval narratives was created within the Church. O'Callaghan suggests that the reforming popes reinforced this idea of *Reconquista* using words such as *recuperare, restituere, liberare, reparare, restaurare*, and *pendere*. Such language, although referring to the restoration of churches, strengthened the idea of territorial liberation or Reconquista (O'Callaghan 2004, p. 9). Particularly, Pope Gregory VII supported the fight against Islam, sending the cardinal Hugo Candido to help Count Ebbles of Roucy whose mission was reconquering the lands that had belonged *ad honorem to sancti Petri* since ancient times (Mansilla Reoyo 1955, pp. 10–12, doc. 8; Rucquoi 2010, p. 106; Ayala Martínez 2013, p. 226). Urban II also referred to the liberation of the Church of Toledo, encouraging the King to restore the Churches from Muslim hands. This fact influenced the nature of the war against the Muslims, which later became a genuine Holy war (Ayala Martínez 2013). Regarding Toledo, Pascual II remarked that the Church was freed from the yoke of the Moors and the Moabites. In medieval chronicles also, the word *restoratio* involves the reintegration into the Christian faith of the ancient Visigoth Sees under Muslim law (Martin 2020), whether in Toledo (1085), Cordova (1236) or Seville (1248). In all these places, the city's main (Jami) mosque became the new episcopal See after the conversion into a church. The issue of conversion has a parallel in the churches converting into mosques centuries earlier, although this paradigm has been questioned by some scholars based on archaeological records (Delgado Valero 1987; Calvo Capilla 2007; Arce 2015). With this idea in mind, not all mosques were founded in places where churches already existed, but all churches were always placed over already existing mosques. Good examples of this phenomenon are Jaén and Cuenca, both Muslim foundations.

Although there are numerous publications dedicated to the cultural implications derived from the conversion of mosques into churches (Buresi 2000, pp. 333–50; Ecker 2014), the symbolic meaning of civil and religious rituals has not been explored enough yet. Some scholars focused on the conversion of mosques as symbols of Islam and spaces of the Demon (Harris 1997, pp. 158–72); whereas others highlight the role of conversion as propaganda (Buresi 2000, pp. 333–50). Years later, O'Callaghan introduced the topic of liturgy in his book *Conquest and Crusade* through medieval Iberian chronicles (O'Callaghan 2004, pp. 107–209). Other approaches focus on the evolution from the Mosque-Cathedral to new gothic buildings between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, emphasizing the symbolic meaning (Kroesen 2008). The cultural change of Friday mosque in al-Andalus has been a classic topic for monographic studies: Toledo (Nickson 2015), Cordova (Ecker 2003; Ruggles 2011), Jaén (Jódar Mena 2013), Seville (Almagro Gorbea 2007; Laguna Paúl 1998), among other examples. However, scholars have rarely highlighted the importance of liturgy in the conquest process in Medieval Iberia; Carrero Santa Maria was the only one to make an accurate analysis of the case of Huesca, considering both history and liturgy (Santamaria 2005). Some historians have recognized that Christians often appropriated mosques for their faith, integrating these edifices into the Church with theritual and prayers that exorcised the contamination of Islamic devotion (Remensnyder 2000, p. 194; 2016, p. 125).

With this background in mind, this article deals with the following topics: First, an approach to civil and religious rituals as an expression of triumph developed for the Christian conquerors after the conquest of a Muslim city, derived from written medieval sources with special attention to the ritual applied to the conversion of mosques into churches. The analysis of this liturgy is crucial to understanding both, the sacred status of the new church and the removal of these places from civil jurisdiction, through the ritual of consecration. Regarding this point, there are some questions that should be answered: Is this a new specific ritual; or, on the contrary, is it a well-known practice used to clean the new churches? What were the consequences of these conversions? How were these conversions perceived by the official discourse? Furthermore, this article proves that both civil and religious ceremonies associated with victory and the consecration of places were established from Roman law and later modified in late antiquity. Finally, it seems necessary to highlight the performative meaning of the gestures and words in these rituals in the ideological context of the so-called Spanish Reconquista.

### **2. Old Visions and New Paths through the Study of Liturgical Manuscripts**

Civil rituals are mentioned in particular analyses as part of the ceremonies of power (O'Callaghan 2004, p. 89), but they need further development as rituals of space appropriation that relate to Christian identity. They are approached from Castilian chronicles and official sources such as the Papacy and Royal Chancellery. Twelfth-century chronicles like the *Chronica Nairensis*, (Ubieto Arteta 1985), or the *Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris* (Maya Sánchez 1990) mentioned the conquest of cities without great detail. However, there are three major narratives in the thirteenth century: *Chronica latina regum Castellae* probably written by the royal chancellor, Bishop Juan of Osma (d. 1246); the *Historia de Rebus Hispaniae*, by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo (d. 1247), (Fernández Valverde 1987); and the *Chronicom Mundi* (Falque Rey 2003) by Lucas, Bishop of Tuy (d. 1249). All three works conclude with the fall of Cordova in 1236. Finally, the *Estoria de España*, written in the scriptorium of Alfonso X the Wise at the end of the thirteenth century, provides the most detailed version of the conquest ritual (Menéndez Pidal 1977). Castilian chronicles are compared to Muslim Iberian sources. First, Ibn Bassan's tales, who ¯ witnessed the Conquest of Toledo in 1085, were gathered by Al-Maqqary ¯ (Gayangos 1863). Regarding the conquest of Seville, Ibn Id ¯ ar¯ ¯ı (Huici Miranda 1953–1954, II, p. 286) or Al-H. imyar¯ı (Levy Provençal 1938) provide some details. All this information is put together with documents from the Papal and Royal Castilian Chancellery (Mansilla Reoyo 1955; Quintana Prieto 1987; Gambra 1998, II; González 1986, III).

In this context, mosques were perceived as impure spaces that needed to be purified and consecrated to become worthy spaces for the Eucharist celebration. However, no specific ritual has been found in liturgical books for this purpose. Some scholars considered the *ordo reconciliationis ecclesia* as the ritual applied for conversion (Valor Piechota and Camacho 2018, p. 103), but the reconciliation is only applied in established circumstances by pontifical books and *Siete Partidas*. Sometimes churches could be lost their purity when blood or sperm were spilled inside the church, so they need to be purified again. This problem has been mentioned in the answer of Pope Alexander III to the Bishop of Sagunto in the Third Lateran Council: *Ecclesia insuper quae sanguinis vel seminis sunt effusione pollurae*, civitas *clericis convocavis cum processione and aquae benedictae adspersione* (Mansi 1778, col. 452) and gathered in the Decretals (Friedberg 1959, II, col. 895, 1059), which has inspired the Castilian legal code. The first book of Alfonso's legal code defines the particular circumstances when to apply the reconciliation: when a man wounds another inside the church and blood is spilled; when the place has been profaned by adultery or fornication with a woman (Burns 2001, p. 165). Among these cases, the Muslim occupation does not appear. However, a ritual for consecrating churches with traces of other religions is gathered in the *Siete Partidas*. This ritual could be applied to purify mosques directly inspired by the Roman Pontifical, which arrived in Castile at the end of the eleventh century. Bearing this background in mind, what ritual was applied from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries to purify mosques, the new ordo established in the Pontifical or the old one gathered in the *Liber ordinum*? The council of Burgos, presided by Alfonso VI and Cardinal Ricardo, approved the Roman law in Castile (Ruiz 1985; Rucquoi 2010, p. 110). Although Pope Urban II wrote Alfonso VI to congratulate him for setting up the Reform in his lands, the truth is that the reform found resistance, particularly in Toledo. Mozarabs of Toledo felt displeasure while their liturgy was banished since the ecclesiastical leadership was exercised not by Mozarabs or even by Spaniards, but by French clergymen (Rivera Recio 1976, I, p. 208). This community was allowed to use its own liturgy in churches dedicated to their own use even after the city's siege (Reilly 1988, p. 85), as was established in the Fuero of 1101 by Alfonso VI. In the other churches, the reform was applied from new books. After the reform, all the specific rituals were unified in the new pontifical books, removing the regional particularities. The *ordo conversorum conversunque*, which was used for the consecration of both the church and the altar (Ferotin 1904, pp. 82–85), was removed from the new French liturgical books that arrived to Castile with the Clunicacs. It is probable that Abbot of Sahagun Bernado of Sédirac, and later Archbishop of Toledo, who was Alfonso VI's favorite counselor, following Cardinal Ricardo directives (Rubio Sadía 2004, p. 157) had his own French books following the Gregorian models like the *Sacramentary of Sahagun* written by Frenchmen, which is completely preserved in the BNE (Henriet 2004) or the Pontifical BCT Ms.Res-15 preserved in Toledo. This Pontifical only preserves two pages of the *ordo dedicationis ecclesia* (Janini et al. 1977, p. 269) written with Aquitaine musical notation, similar to the *Sacramentary of Sahagun*. The circumstances of arrival of this book to the library are unknown, maybe it was among the Cathedral original books, thus explaining the absence of information about its origin. The partial ordo preserved in this manuscript is similar to BCT Ms.39-12, an early thirteenth-century copy from the Toledo *scriptorium*. The *scriptorium* and the new books that were copied based on French models, like the

Pontifical 37–27 (López-Mayán 2018), favored the flourishing of the Toledo *scriptorium*. In other circumstances, like the conquest of Cordova, Jaén, or Seville, the bishops were present during the siege, and probably brought their own liturgical books for Sunday mass and other compulsory rituals. Even if those books have not been preserved in the cathedral's archives, bishops would use official roman liturgy books in the thirteenth century.

Considering these limits, the ritual for purifying a church has been reassembled from the *ordo ad dedicandam ecclesiam* as established in both the Pontifical of Gregory VII and Urban II (Andrieu 1938), reflected in the *Siete Partidas* of Alfonse The Wise (Burns 2001, pp. 21, 161–63), but completed with the partial eleventh-century French Pontifical BCT, Ms.Res-15 and compared with the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries Pontifical BCT, Mss.39-12. This last manuscript gathers some important ceremonies: the *ordo ad dedicationis ecclesia* from the Roman-Germanic Pontifical (ff.92r-125v) and some ordines from the Roman Curia pontifical; the *ordo reconciliatio ecclesia violate* (ff.134r-137v), and finally, a blessing that is part of the ritual of the consecration of churches in the Gregorian sacramentary. This was the most common Pontifical used in Castile until Guillaume Durand published his Pontifical, which was copied in fifteenth-century luxury copies like Alonso Carrillo's Pontifical preserved in Madrid (BNE, Vitr/18/9).

### **3. Rituals of Victory and Sacred Space from Roman Law to Early Middle Ages**

Societies have celebrated and proclaimed their military victory over their enemies through public demonstrations. Particularly in antiquity, the procession, the sacrifice, and consecration of spoils on the Capitoline Triumph, is in fact a votive rite that has been interpreted as a tribute to the gods (Beard 2007, p. 66). *Triumphus* was a solemn procession in which a victorious general entered the city in a chariot drawn by four horses, inspired by previous rituals. He was preceded by the captives and spoils taken in war, and was followed by his troops, and after marched along the Via Sacra and ascended the Capitol to make a sacrificial offering at the temple of Jupiter (Versnel 1970, pp. 9–95). This triumph had both civil and religious ceremonies that may have inspired the Spanish chronicles and intellectuals trained in the classical tradition who wrote about the Castilian victory over Islam. The civil rite, the procession, *pompa*, was assembled in the open space of Campus Martius, probably well before dawn. From there, a slow-paced procession, interrupted by several planned stops along the way to the Capitoline temple, took place (Beard 2007). The royal entry is also present in late antiquity, from Constantine's triumph over Maxentius in 312 to Honorius's triumph over Priscus Atalus in 416 (Wienand 2015). Procopio de Cesare in the Byzantine period described the Triumph celebrated in Constantinople over Gelimer, king of the Vandals and Alans (530–534), who was defeated by Belisarius. This procession ended at the Hippodrome with the recitation of a Christian prayer (Beard 2007, pp. 318–21). Castilian chroniclers subverted the meaning of this *tropo* into a Castilian Kings' memorial over Islam and transformed the Roman religious ceremony in the Capitol into the religious rite of consecration to purify the place of worship. Moreover, the Christian conquerors thought the mosques were placed on the site of former churches, so the ancient devil's houses should be dedicated to God through a specific ritual: *et quorum officio domus erepta diabolo "Ecclesia" sancti decicaverunt Deo* (Gambra 1998, II, doc 86, p. 227). This criterion was applied to both former Episcopal Sees and new Islamic cities like Jaén or Madrid. Rather than destroying these mosques, they renovated and appropriated them as a way of establishing dominance over the previous rulers. The Christians Kings created their own religious landscape from already existing topography of Muslim Holy places. This was not the first time that the Church was confronted with the consecration of a pagan temple becoming Christian. The pagan temple was perceived as the devil's house, so it should be purified (Caseau-Chevallier 2001, pp. 57–60). In the second century, Gregory Thaumaturgus purified a pagan temple with a ritual that consisted of the invocation of the name of Christ and engraving the symbol of the cross on the walls to purify the air in which sacrifices had taken place. Moreover, the Saint spent the whole night praying and reciting hymns to transform the house that had been abominable because of the blood on its

altars into a house of prayer (Slusser 1998, p. 56). Other times, the temples were destroyed, like the pagan temple placed at the site of the Holy Sepulcher, destroyed at the emperor's order. This event is described in the Life of Emperor Constantine (324–337) written by Eusebio of Cesarea (Saradi 2008, p. 114). The consecration set the place aside from the material world and dedicated it permanently to the service of God, this process can be traced back to the ancient world. At the time of Moses, the act of consecration involved the erection of an altar and twelve memorial stones including the use of oil for anointing, which has been described in detail in Leviticus. Centuries later the ritual was used in the Roman world applied to the consecration of secular temples and theatres. The concept of *loca sacra* was developed by classical jurists like Gaius and Papinianus and gathered in the *Digestum* (535 d.C). *Loca sacra* were those places that had been publicly enshrined in the law to divinities *ex autoritate populi Romani*, or *ex autoritate principis* (D'Ors 1968, I, p. 70). In all these cases, the temple was consecrated in a public ceremony. This public consecration was always done in the name of the State by a Pontifex who performed a ritual with specific formulas in the presence of official magistrates. These places had a particular status as *res divini iuri* established by Roman law (Thomas 2002, pp. 1433–34). Sacredness of these places was only lost by the ritual of *exauguratio* or when they were taken by the enemies. In this last case, the sacred nature came back when those places were recovered (D'Ors 1972, III, p. 346). Many of the public Roman rituals that set aside places from the material world were adapted to the new requests when Christianity became the state religion. Regarding the Iberian Peninsula, the Visigoth rite of blessing churches has not been exactly defined in a concrete ordo. However, some canons from the Visigoth Councils established that only the bishop could celebrate the consecration on Sunday (Vives 1964, pp. 49, 75, 88, 154). Moreover, Pope Vigilius wrote Protofuturus de Braga (538), explaining some details about the ceremony that should be applied to violated or rebuilt temples. The letter envisages two possible scenarios; temples without relics that have been violated can be restored with a single mass. However, if the relics were placed in the temple, it should be purified by sprinkling water on the walls and placing the relics back into the Church (Migne 1850, 84, col. 829–832). This is the main difference with Roman law, the sacred nature of the temples does not come back if the relics have been profaned. Pope Vigilanus' letter mentions that the temple should be sprinkled without offering further information about the ritual. In the Iberian Peninsula, the bishop should consecrate the churches in the Visigoth era (Vives Castell 1942) but there is not a clear ritual gathered in the Visigothic Councils. Even in the *Liber Ordinum*, used in the Iberian Peninsula between the fifth and eleventh centuries, there is not a specific ritual applied to consecration (Ferotin 1904, p. 506). In fact, we find in this book separate ordos, which combined could be used in the consecration of churches, such as *the exorcismus et benenedictino salis et aqua, benediction signi basilica*, and *the ordo conversorum conversunque* (Ferotin 1904, pp. 7–18, 82–85, 159). These specific benedictions from local traditions were unified in a particular ordo in the tenth century Roman-Germanic Pontifical (Vogel and Eltze 1963). Rare evidence of these Pontifical books has been preserved outside of the Catalonian counties and no one from Castile has been known before the eleventh century. For this reason, to approach the ritual of consecration the chronicle information has been complemented by pontifical books gathered in Toledo Cathedral Archive, since it was the first scriptorium in Castile that copied the first Pontifical, particularly the manuscript BCT Ms.39-12. Although books from the Mozarabic rite can be found in this archive, such as the twelfth-century *Liber Comicus* BCT, Ms.35-2, and the BCT, Ms.35-4, a final twelfth-century *Liber Misticus* from Saint Eulalia Church (Fernández Collado et al. 2018, pp. 16, 22), the blessing used for the consecration of churches does not appear among these records. The books are not complete, so maybe these blessings were lost or not preserved.

### **4. Civil and Religious Rituals of Victory in Castilian Thirteen-Century Narratives**

Most chronicles' descriptions agree on two issues: the royal entry, and the purification of conquered mosques. Roman Victory's legacy (Mac Cormick 1990, pp. 100–1) is present at Christian Victory ceremonies in medieval Chronicles. When a city was conquered, the victors did not immediately enter the city; in fact, a month used to pass between the fall of the city and the royal entry. Surrender treaties used to be signed by the vanquished, granting one month to decide whether to stay under the new law or to leave. The first concrete step taken by the combined kingdom of Leon-Castile was the conquest of Toledo. On May 25, 1085, Alfonso VI took the city from its Muslim rulers and his former ally al-Qadir, and established control over the Muslim population. Regarding the ¯ *Cronicum Nairensis*, the city surrendered once Alfonso VI and the Muslims signed a treaty, after four years of siege (Ubieto Arteta 1985, p. 116). One of the surrenders' clauses was to preserve their congregational mosque in Muslims' hands, while Alfonso had the free disposition of all other mosques with their endowment, al-Qadir's royal palace, and the ¯ fortress of the Realm (Reilly 1988, p. 86). Christian occupation of the city is known through the twelfth and thirteen centuries' chronicles. Jimenez de Rada only provides a contradictory account about the conversion of the main mosque. First, Bernardo of Sédirac ordered to seize the mosque when the King was absent from Toledo. He came into the main mosque by night with some Christian knights. Once he removed the traces of Muhammad's filthiness, he erected an altar for the Christian faithful and placed bells in the minaret to call to prayer (Fernández Valverde 1987, p. 206). According to Ibn Bassan, these previous arrangements were witnessed in Toledo's Friday mosque by the sage Shaik al Mogam¯ı and other Muslims that were praying in the mosque while the Franks entered and cleaned the kibla, but they were not expelled from the building (Gayangos 1863, II, p. 264). When the King came back, he was very upset because this action broke his promise to the Muslims. Jiménez de Rada points out that the King was thinking of killing the Queen and the Archbishop, but he did not as the Muslim inhabitants from a little village called Magan dissuaded him from burning them as they would be the ones accused of the crimes (Fernández Valverde 1987, pp. 206–7). Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada wrote this book one hundred and sixty years after the capture of Toledo, so he did not witness the conversion of the mosque at night. Why would don Rodrigo add to his chronicle this novelistic story about the assault on the mosque, the King's rage, and the intercession of the Muslims? Regarding the first issue, maybe he knew Ibn Bassam's book The Treasury, concerning the merits of the People of Iberia, was one of the most important sources in the field of history, literature, and culture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, so he introduced the reference to the nocturnal entry of the mosque and the previous arrangements witnessed by Ibn Bassan ( ¯ Gayangos 1863, II, p. 264). However, the words "cleaning the filthiness of Muhammad" were his own. Noting Alfonso VI's royal piety, perhaps he decided to use the argument of forgiveness besides other historical events proven in contemporary documents to show that Fernando III, to whom the book was dedicated, was an example of good governance. Jiménez de Rada's description is not a canonical dedication that must be done on Sunday, but a hasty act involving the violation of Alfonso's Treaty echoed in Alfonso X's *Estoria de España* (Menéndez Pidal 1977, II, pp. 540–41). However, this is not a canonical consecration involving the blessings and purification rite and the financial endowment. To remove the mark of supposed Islamic idolatry from mosques, bishops and ecclesiastics performed the ritual gestures and words commonly used to consecrate any church, but for this solemn ritual. Blessing, endowment, and dedication appear in a document from December 1086 issued by Alfonso VI, more than one year after the conquest. Alfonso VI restored Christianity in the ancient mosque that became the Cathedral of Toledo. Moreover, he enlarged the mosque's waqf (endowments) to the new Cathedral and placed the church under Holy Mary, Stephen, Peter, and Paul apostles, and All Saint's patronage. Finally, he recognized in this document the election of Bernardo of Sédirac as Archbishop of Toledo (Hernández 1996, p. 2; Gambra 1998, II, pp. 224–28). From the Muslims' perspective, this was spiritual dispossession, Alfonso VI and his clerics performed their appropriation of the mosque in Mary's name as a complement to the military victory that has ushered Toledo back into Christendom (Remensnyder 2014, p. 28). The lexicon in this document expresses the emergent *Reconquista* ideas, offering Christian knights and Kings the possibility of

believing that their war against al-Andalus was willed by God and popes. The Christians' perception of Muslim rule is expressed *as perfida gens sub malefido duce suo Mahommeth*; this treachery justifies the conquest and the consecration of the church removing buildings from the devil's hands once the bishop was elected, *erepta diabolo ecclesia sacta dedicaretur* Deo (Gambra 1998, II, p. 227). Kings and knights participating in the conquest did not only intend to recover the ancient former places, but to create a Christian landscape.

However, Jiménez the Rada established the consecration on the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Saints Crispin and Cyprian without setting the concrete date. Moreover, he reported Bernardo of Sédirac's journey to Rome to meet Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) that died before his arrival; in consequence, Bernardo met Pope Urban II (1088–1099), taking with him some relics that were placed on the altar on 25 October (Fernández Valverde 1987, p. 205). The dissonance of dates has attracted historians' attention from the seventeenth century to the present day. Francisco de Pisa established an explanatory sequence: firstly, the archbishop election and the forceful blessing of the mosque took place; secondly the solemn consecration of the Cathedral on 25 October without year (Pisa 1605, pp. 156–60). Many years later, Rivera Recio explained the discordance of dates in terms of two different ceremonies: the reconciliation in 1086, and the official consecration of the temple on 25 October 1097, a Sunday during the papacy of Urban II (Rivera Recio 1976, p. 131). The author bases his argument on two ceremonies with a similar function, the reconciliation for violated temples and the consecration of churches once cleaned from the devil's traces. In addition, Reilly considered that the document issued on 23 December 1086 was false (Reilly 1988). In fact, the date of 18 December was carefully chosen to appease Toledo's Mozarabic community, who celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation on this day. Consecration did not change the mosque's structure. Christians seized the mosque placing the altar in the eastern wall (Kroesen 2008, p. 116) and left the Islamic structure architecturally intact until 1222, when the construction of the new Gothic temple began, supervised by Archbishop Jiménez de Rada (Nickson 2015, pp. 59–63).

Years later, in 1146, Alfonso VII and an army of Crusaders conquered Cordova, immediately turning its mosque into a church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. In this case, French and German knights joined the Crusade proclaimed by Pope Eugenio III, participating in the siege of Cordova. A large number of Castilian bishops, exalted by crusader zeal, also joined the royal host towards Cordova, carrying out their duty as vassals of the Crown (Ayala Martínez 2017). *Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris* authors call the mosque Satan's synagogue, *Iohannis Baptiste in loco, ubi prius synagoga Satane costructa fuerat* (Maya Sánchez 1990, p. 106). Jiménez de Rada only mentions how the Archbishop of Toledo, Raimundo, celebrated a solemn function in the mosque according to the Catholic rite (Fernández Valverde 1987, p. 106). However, this conquest is not definitive until 1236, ninety years later, when Muslim rulers surrended after a long siege. Most thirteenthcentury chronicles mention the same sequence: Abul'Casan handed over the keys of the city to King Ferdinand III, some noblemen put banners on the alcazar and the mosque's minaret, the mosque was consecrated, the royal entry and the solemn mass dedication took place. The ritual of purification is described by Lucas de Tuy with the words *eliminata omni spurcicia Machometi*, by sprinkling holy water with salt joined to a mass on the feast of Peter and Paul, placing the church under the patronage of Holy Mary (Falque Rey 2003, p. 341). Once the mosque was transformed into a church, the King and all the army entered the city and participated in the mass of thanksgiving. This triumphal procession is similar to the imperial entries but adapted to Christianity (Mac Cormick 1990, pp. 100–1).

The royal entry is one of the instruments of political propaganda of the Castilian Kingdom reflected in other narratives, such as the *Chronica Latina Regnum Castellae*, which describes the same process: the keys, the banners on the buildings, the consecration of the church, the royal entry (Charlo Brea 1997, p. 170). However, the most detailed description regarding civil and religious ceremonies can be found in the *Estoria de España* (circa 1238), reporting both the siege and the conditions that led to the capture of the city. This text expresses restoration and restitution of the altered order by the Islamic rulers: the idea of

restoration is clearly reiterated. Firstly, the King gave back the Santiago Cathedral's bells that were used as lamps in the Great Mosque. These bells were captured in 997 by Almanzor (Pérez de Tudela 1998). Finally, Christian faith was restored in the ancient mosque through the ritual of consecration described as "cleaning out the filthiness of Muhammad". Many bishops participated in this ceremony: Juan Bishop of Osma, replacing Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada who was in Rome, Don Gonzalo Bishop of Cuenca, Don Domingo, Bishop of Baeza, Don Adán Bishop of Palencia, and Don Sancho Bishop of Coria. This chronicle provides more details than the others: the bishop went around the entire mosque three times, sprinkling holy water onto the different walls, while the others mixed the water with other things that the Holy Church commanded (Menéndez Pidal 1977, p. 734).

After 1212, the Castilian expansion continued over the Almohad territory. *Estoria de España* provides the same sequence for Jaén. First, the Muslims surrendered and delivered to the Christians the alcazar. Later, the royal entry with the clergy as a triumphal procession symbolised the political change. Finally, the bishop purified the mosque and placed the new church under the patronage of Santa Maria and established the cathedral's endowment, transfering the former mosque's properties (Menéndez Pidal 1977, pp. 746–47). Seville was the most important city in Almohad's hands since Cordova surrended. After a long siege, due to a famine, the city capitulated on 23 November 1248. The terms of the treaty specified that the Castillian troops would be allowed to enter the alcázar no later than a month later (Menéndez Pidal 1977, p. 768). Ibn 'Id ¯ ar¯ ¯ı mentions how on 13 January, the Muslims went out of the city (Huici Miranda 1953–1954, II, pp. 187–89). However, al-H. imyar¯ı wrote a different version about the expulsion of the Muslims. He explained that they had only three days to decide their status, and most of them decided to leave (Levy Provençal 1938, pp. 251–57). The Arab sources provide different dates, this discordance has been examined recently (Garcia Sanjuan 2017). On 22 December 1248, Fernando III, King of Castille and Leon, made his formal entrance into the city of Seville, the former Almohad capital and most important city of the Islamic south (Laguna Paúl 1998). King Ferdinand III marched triumphantly over the city followed by the Christian garrison, the bishops, commanded by Gutierre Ruiz de Olea, the Archbishop-elect of Toledo, and the bishop of Cordova. The cathedral had been arranged some days before for the consecration ceremony and it was witnessed by bishops from different dioceses, princes, nobles, and knights. Once more the idea of restoration is repeated in the official discourse (Menéndez Pidal 1977, p. 769). The temple was consecrated but without the endowment that would be established three years later when Prince don Felipe was elected bishop by Pope Innocent IV in 1251. This decree granted indulgences to those who were present at the dedication of the Cathedral (Quintana Prieto 1987, II, doc. 767). However, the Cathedral increased its property with the endowment of the old mosque (González 1986, doc. 839). The building of this mosquecathedral lasted until 1401, when a new cathedral was built to demonstrate the city's wealth (Almagro Gorbea 2007).

### **5. Cleaning the Filthiness of the Prophet the** *Ordo Dedicationnis Ecclesia Applied* **to Conversion of Mosques into Churches**

The chronicles describe the consecration as a way of "cleansing the filthiness of the Prophet". This action, added to the celebration of the Christian service, was a manifestation of the Christian power over Islam (O'Callaghan 2004, p. 204). What chroniclers call the cleansing of Muhammad's impurity is a complicated multi-part ritual named consecration, where each specific movement and word involves changes. This ritual consists of a set of gestures and words that together have the power to change the building's nature. The walls were purified against paganism and impiety and the building was separated from men's justice. The canon law ruled over the church once sacralised with exclusive jurisdiction (Schmitt 2001, p. 64). The first book of *Siete Partidas* provides some details to purify building from other religions:

"First, twelve crosses must be placed around it on the inside of the walls, so high that no one can reach them with their hands: three on the east, three on the west, three on the south, and three on the north. Second, all the bodies and bones of the dead who were excommunicated, or belonged to another religion, must be removed from the church. Third, twelve candles must be lighted, and each placed upon one of the crosses on nails driven in the middle of the latter. Fourth, ashes, salt, water, and wine must be mixed, and, while the bishop repeats prayers, this must be scattered around the church to purify it. Fifth, the bishop must write with his crozier the a, b, c, of the Greeks and the Latins in the ashes scattered over the floor of the church; and this should be done along the length and breadth of the building, so that these letters may be united in the middle in the form of a cross. Sixth, the bishop must anoint the crosses with chrism and with holy oil. Seventh, incense in many parts of the church must be burned". (Burns 2001, p. 162)

The days before the ceremony, the acolytes carried the water, salt, ashes, and all the necessary equipment for the ceremony, such as candles, crosses, etc. (Andrieu 1938, p. 176), and removed the mimbar and all the Muslim elements from the mosque as was the case for Toledo (Gayangos 1863, p. 264). The mosque should be arranged so that both the altar and the bells were installed. The altar was placed at the East of the building to change the axis, and the bells in the minaret to call for prayer. Likewise, the relics for the future altar must be near the temple that must be consecrated. According to the tenth-century Pontifical that inspired the French and Spanish manuscripts, the ritual should begin outside (Vogel and Eltze 1963, pp. 135–36). God is the actor of purification, but he operates through transitive elements that are manipulated by the bishop: water, salt, ashes, wine, oil, balsam, etc. The bishop and the civil community were outside the church while the acolytes prepared the ashes, the wine, and the incense inside. It was a performative ceremony where all the actors had a precise function. Outside the building, the bishop performed the exorcism of the water and the salt with the blessings that would be mixed with wine and ashes. The salt could be used both preserving food and disabling camps and cities of the vanquished; therefore, it was necessary to expel their negative effects. In order to achieve this, the bishop should pronounce the exact words written in the *ordo exorcisms salis* to change the nature of this element. The formula gathered in the *Liber Ordinum* (Ferotin 1904, p. 23) has been the same from the tenth to the fifteenth century. The thirteenth-century manuscript BCT 39-12 (ffº93v-ffº94r) provides the same formula as the ancient ordo. Even Guilaumes's Durand Pontifical copies, such as the pontifical ordered by Alonso de Acuña in the fifteenth century, used the same words (BNE, Vit.19/8, fº141v). Likewise, the bishop had to purify the water by a concrete formula to remove all the power of the enemy and, supplant that enemy with his angels through the power of Jesus Christ. The salt in a water recipient was poured forming a cross; later, the bishop added the ashes that, remembering Leviticus, were required for purification (Leviticus, 19). Once the lustral water was ready, the church should be purified. The bishop, followed by the clergy and those present at the ceremony, walked around the building while sprinkling the lustral water on the walls with the hyssop. This instrument was used in Christ's passion to offer him salt and vinegar. So, like passion is the origin of the church, the hyssop was used as an instrument of renewal according to Psalm 50, 9: *Asperges me Domine, Hissopo et mundabar*, sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean (Mehú 2016, p. 87). The bishop circled the new church three times while singing an antiphon, *fundata est domus Domini super verticem montium et exaltata est super omnes colles et venient ad eam omnes gentes et dicent gloria tibi Domine* (BCT, Mss.39-14, ffº94v). This antiphone is directly inspired in Isaias' song (Isaias, 2, 3) and Psalm 125. Each round the bishop knocked the door asking for permission with the formula: *Tollite portas, principes vestras et elevamini porta aeternales et introibit gloria* (BCT, Ms.39-12, ffº97v) and deacons inside the building answer, *qui is iste rex gloriae* (BCT, Ms.39-12, ffº97v, Andrieu 1938, pp. 177–78). The demons left and the angels' peace entered the temple by Christ's merits (Andrieu 1938, p. 183). After the third round (BCT, Ms.39-12, ffº99 v), the bishop prayed a concrete formula that compares the entry of the bishop in the church with the entry of Christ in Jerusalem (BCT, Mss.Res-15, fº1).

Moreover, he should pray for the protection of those believers that came into the church and chant the antiphon from the Book of Kings, II, 8, 20, *benedic Domine domum istam quam aedificavi nomini tuo*, that remembers the temple founded by Salomon (Ms.39-12, ffº100). This entry is represented in luxury books, such as Guillaume Durand's pontifical copies ordered by the Spanish bishops in the fifteenth century. Before the entry, the deacons spread the ashes across the floor. The ashes were spread on the ground in the shape of a cross, from the left west corner to the right east corner, from the right west corner to the left east corner (Burns 2001, p. 162). While the choir chanted a litany, particularly the antiphon, *quam metuendus est locus iste vere non est hic aliud, nisi domus Dei et porta caeli* (BCT, Mss.39-12, ffº100v), the bishops wrote Latin and Greek alphabets on the ashes from left to right making a cross. Although the alphabetic inscription is not a roman practice, it appeared for the first time in the nineteenth century in the Roman liturgy in the Franco-German context and continued in the Roman practice from the eleventh century. Writing is even more powerful than the word, as through writing, God is incarnated, echoing Saint-Jean evangel's first chapter: the Word became flesh, and the building became a church. Writing on the ashes in Latin and Greek was practiced from the tenth century gathered in the Roman-Germanic Pontifical, (Mehú 2007, p. 88; Vogel and Eltze 1963, pp. 135–36). Proof of this ceremony can be found in the thirteen-century manuscript imported from France in the fifteenth century, preserved in the archive of the Cathedral of Toledo, the manuscript 59–60 imported in the fifteenth century (Janini et al. 1977, p. 120) (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Bishop writing ACT.59-60 fº100v. © Toledo Cathedral Archive.

The double Latin alphabet writing on the floor of the church was used before the reform in Ireland and France, like the ninth-century manuscript 466 from Anger (Barbett-Massin 2011). In the Iberian Peninsula, the double language alphabet was introduced with the reform and included in the early thirteenth-century copies in Castile (BCT, Ms.39-12, ffº101v-102r, Figure 2). This writing was ephemeral in people's eyes but everlasting in God's eyes; the alphabet permeates the edifice, becoming as invisible as Christ himself (Treffort 2007, p. 226). The four angles of the cross are the four angles of the world to disseminate the Christian doctrine. As the inscription is the symbol of the incarnation, the consecration of the altar is the union with Christ (Mehú 2016, p. 92). Once the alphabet was written, the altar had to be anointed with the sacred oils. A particular ordo was necessary for blessing the altar, in the memory of Moyse. Oil, music, and incense created a sensory experience for all the participants (Palazzo 2000, p. 23). The altar was anointed with the chrism making a cross and the incense was burned over the altar before the relics were placed in the niche. The bishop prepared the chrism, and the cement to seal the altar. Salt, water, ashes, oils, and the lustral wine were blessed again for the new ceremony (Ms.39-12, ffº102v-103r). The bishop made a cross in the middle of the altar *Scifecetur hoc altare in nomini patris et filis et spiirti sancti, amen* (BCT, Ms.39-12, ffº105 r) and on all its sides, and sang the Psalm 50:9 around the altar sprinkling the lustral water: *Asperges me Domine, Hissopo et mundabar, sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean* (BCT, Ms.39-12, ffº106 r). However, the dedication was not finished, the bishop should walk around the church sprinkling the walls singing psalms, and blessings particularly: *dominus mea domus orationis vocavitur narabum nomen tuum fatribus meus in medio ecclesiae laudabi* (BCT, Ms.539-12, ffº105v). Then, the altar niche, a small oblong rectangular chamber in the body of the altar, was blessed and, the relics of two martyrs should be placed inside the altar niche (Andrieu 1938, I, p. 190; 1940, p. 240; Palazzo-Bertholon and Palazzo 2001, p. 306). According to the Roman Pontifical, relics served as a physical link between the natural and supernatural. While the relics were introduced in the altar, the people sang the *antiphonam, sub altare dei accepit intercederé per nobis ad deim qui vos elegit* (BCT, 39-12, fol.104 v). Once the relics were on the altar, the bishop should bless and anoint twelfth wooden crosses with sacred oil (chrism) (Burns 2001, p. 163) and place them on the wall under twelfth candles as a symbol of the twelfth Apostles.

**Figure 2.** Double Latin-Greek writing. BCT, Ms.39-12, 101v-102r © Toledo Cathedral Archive.

All these ceremonies were developed inside the building while the people waited outside the future church. The ritual was only finished when the believers came into the church and participated in the Eucharist. A special mass was celebrated to place the church under the protection of a saint, or more often the Holy Mary. She was the warrior's protector and the Church's mother in the Iberian Peninsula. When knights and kings entered the church for the consecration mass, a ceremony of thanksgiving, they knew they were stepping into a building that was itself a monumental victory offering to her and testimony to the Christian triumph (Remensnyder 2014, p. 27). Sometimes, the memory of consecration was materialised in stone. These types of inscriptions are preserved in some churches in the north of Spain, but not in the mosque-cathedrals, since they were transformed and rearranged several times. Only Cordova preserves the former Islamic structure transformed in the sixteenth century with the insertion of an enormous choir and presbytery. Some scholars consider that the church was consecrated under the dome of the Al-Hakam transept where the inscription was preserved until 1920 (Nieto Cumplido 1979, p. 87, doc. 162).

### **6. Conclusions: Old Rituals for New Conquests**

These stories about the conquest of Toledo, Jaén, Cordova, and Seville suggest that the royal entry and the act of dispossessing the Muslim of their former mosques, offering these buildings to the victors, entail a declaration of power expressed in thirteenth-century chronicles through a narrative of victory, based on a vast experience of conquest in the Iberian Peninsula and previous experiences in late antiquity and Roman law. When a town or fortress was taken, the victors often placed their flags on the walls in witness of their triumph. Placing the royal standards in the highest tower of the city and the cross on the minaret were rituals of victory celebration, expressing the power of the King and Christendom over Islam. Likewise, the royal triumphal march symbolises the eternal triumph from antiquity, when the victorious legions arrived at the city and closed the Janus' temple. Moreover, the consecration of mosques involved the restoration of the faith through an established ordo, that guideline the words and gestures of the bishop to expel the devil. In this context, Christian victors staged the ritual consecration of congregational mosques as the central piece of the ritual or victory to proclaim their military triumph. This action has its parallel in ancient Rome in the blessing of the spoils in the Capitolio. Moreover, this ritual has its previous practice in public roman ceremony applied in the dedication of the *loca sacra*, gathered in the *Digestum* and transformed in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages with the new circumstances of Christendom.

The goal of the Iberian kings was to restore the faith in their realms, so the conversion of the mosque and the subsequent mass were the theological triumph that justified the conquest. Liturgy of consecration had a particular role in these rituals of victory; it meant the triumph of Christianity over Islam in medieval perception, changing the nature of the building. This conversion involves more than just a cultural change, but a specific ceremony with different parts and specific ordos from the early Middle Ages unified in the Roman Pontifical. The ritual applied in the Iberian Peninsula between the eleventh and thirteenth century was the *ordo dedications eclessia* that arrived at Toledo from different copies of French pontifical books, which spread throughout Castile. This ceremony consisted of defined separated parts with concrete formulas that entailed the power of expelling the devil from things, water, salt, buildings, and altar, reflected in the *Siete Pertidas*. Likewise, it was a multisensorial ceremony; the incense, the candles, the water, the bishop's gesture that introduced the participants to sacred dimension. This consecration did neither involve destruction nor architectural changes. In fact, the mosques were preserved with minimal transformations: an altar was installed in the east to change the building's axis, the bells were installed on the minaret, and the church was decorated with candles, crosses, and all the necessary things for the Eucharist celebration. Preservation of mosque-cathedrals requires a different language of victory when compared with previous Muslim campaigns in which some churches were destroyed, like the main church of Santiago de Compostela destroyed by Almazor in his raid of 997. Christian conquerors expressed their eternal triumph over Muslims using their own congregational mosque for Christian prayers once the building was consecrated.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Madrid Region, 2017 HUM T1/5650.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I thank Toledo Cathedral Archive for the access and resources.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

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### *Article* **Commemorating a Providential Conquest in Valencia: The 9 October Feast**

**Francesc Granell Sales**

Art History Department, Universitat de Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain; francesc.granell@uv.es

**Abstract:** From 1338 onwards, the inhabitants of late-medieval Valencia celebrated a feast every 9 October commemorating the entrance into the city of King James I's forces on that day in 1238. It has been argued that this was essentially a spiritual display from its establishment in 1338 until the beginning of the fifteenth century. The present study delves deeper into the religious and political aims of the feast from its origins, framing the celebration within a broader Mediterranean context. The first part analyses the 9 October feast in relation to two medieval liturgies that also commemorated crusading victories against Islam: the "Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem" and the "Feast of the Banner of Majorca". The second part focuses on the combination of performance and images during the ceremony, leading to the conclusion that the 9 October procession had similar goals to those in Jerusalem and Majorca. Indeed, the ceremony intended to convey an interpretation of the conquest as the continuation of Biblical history because it visibly and orally aligned the capture of Valencia with divine will and the sacred Scriptures.

**Keywords:** liturgy; 9 October; conquest of Valencia; James I; crusades; Festa de l'Estendard; liturgy of Jerusalem

### **1. Introduction**

From 1338 onwards, the inhabitants of late-medieval Valencia celebrated a feast every 9 October commemorating the entrance into the city of King James I's forces on that day in 1238. Accounts from the Historical Municipal Archive of Valencia (Narbona 1997) and the Cathedral ceremonial book (Martí and Serra 2009) specify that the central act was a procession with the bishop at the head and featuring relics and monarchical symbols. Two institutions were in charge of the organization: the city government and the Church. The former announced the processional route through the streets of Valencia and the latter arranged liturgical functions, keeping vigil in Saint Denis' Chapel in the Cathedral, officiating the morning mass, singing hymns and saying prayers in Saint George's Church.

The 9 October feast was thus a civic commemoration that included certain liturgical ceremonies. Scholars such as Salvador Carreres (1925, pp. 4–5) and Rafael Narbona (1997, pp. 21–34; 2003, pp. 79–80, 175–77) have argued that it was essentially a religious display from its establishment in 1338 until the beginning of the 15th century. Narbona also accepted that the feast was linked to royal entries in symbolic terms: in commemorating the conquest of Valencia by King James I, the city government was signalling its loyalty to the monarchy (Narbona 1997, p. 28; 2011, pp. 449–50). That is why the royal banners were held by a "justícia" or criminal justice official during the procession. However, the 9 October ceremony was quite different from royal *adventus* ceremonies. There were no civic guilds mounting pageants in the streets, nor actors (e.g., angels, prophets, virtues, and vices) celebrating the coming of the king to Valencia as a New Jerusalem (Aliaga et al. 2007; Cárcel and García 2013; Kipling 1998, pp. 6–42). And none of the formal acts suggests that the Church or the city government sought to identify the king—represented by his banner—as Christ.

The present study delves deeper into the religious and political aims of the 9 October feast from its origins until ca. 1500. The liturgy is thus analysed as a religious act that also

**Citation:** Granell Sales, Francesc. 2022. Commemorating a Providential Conquest in Valencia: The 9 October Feast. *Religions* 13: 301. https:// doi.org/10.3390/rel13040301

Academic Editors: Jaume Aurell and John Jillions

Received: 20 December 2021 Accepted: 27 March 2022 Published: 30 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

had mundane and practical consequences, and whose celebration can be framed within a broader Mediterranean context. Specifically, the 9 October feast is compared to the "Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem" (c. 1105–1187 and 1228–1244) and the "Feast of the Banner of Majorca" (c. 1300–1500) in order to define the kind of ceremony that was held in each case. The comparison is based on the processional route.

Each of these processions commemorated a crusading victory, the Christian conquest of a city that had belonged to Muslims. The medieval chroniclers remembered these events as providential: "the Siege of Jerusalem" occurred thanks to miracles and divine assistance (Kohler 1900–1901b; Rubenstein 2014; John 2015, pp. 412–15; Russo 2017; Gaposchkin 2017, pp. 148–56); the battle for Majorca in 1229 took place with King James I's forces invoking the Mother of God and Saint George fighting at the Christians' side (Ferrando and Escartí 2010, pp. 188–89); and the battle of El Puig of 1237, leading up to the capture of Valencia in 1238, was successful due to the intervention of the Virgin and Saint George (Orcástegui 1986, p. 93). The fact that the three feasts commemorated similar events and that posterity perpetuated them as providential crusades does not mean that the entire ceremony was the same in the three cities. They each tailored the standard liturgical procession to the specific history as it played out in their particular urban environment (Mitchell 1999, pp. 88–89).

In Valencia, one of the characteristic traits of the Christian community was that it lived alongside the religion defeated in 1238: Islam. After the Christian conquest, King James I the Conqueror agreed to let Muslims live in that territory. Thenceforth, until the end of the 13th century, the Christian incomers were immersed in a "semipermanent crusade" against the indigenous population (Burns 1967, pp. 12–15; Torró 2006). Throughout the late Middle Ages, intercommunal relations fluctuated. The spirit of the crusade—or, in other words, of "holy war" (Flori 2003, pp. 344, 349)—was reformulated and complemented by other attitudes, ranging from a willingness to co-operate in mutually beneficial relationships (Meyerson 1991; English and Meyerson 2000; Catlos 2015) to unease, bigotry and rejection of the other (Benitez and García 2009). Despite the fact that the monarchy usually sought to protect the Mudejars, they were a constant threat at the border (Ferrer 1988) or as potential allies of the Islamic forces of Granada and north Africa (Díaz 1993, pp. 86–87). The Muslim were not assimilated (Torró 2012) and animosity towards them did not disappear, as proved by the outbreaks of violence against the Muslim quarters aimed at the physical eradication of the *other* (Ruzafa 1990; Ferrer 1988, pp. 25–26, 66). The celebration of the 9 October feast could be influenced by the state of this coexistence. As Narbona (1997, p. 24) notes, the feast dramatized the victory over Islam, recalling the conquest of Valencia as the working of divine providence.

This paper is a recontextualization the 9 October feast, analysing the interplay between civic history and a providential mindset. The sources drawn upon are already published documents, and also some previously uncited ones, with a re-examination of the documentation on the ceremony from between 1338 and 1500, and especially the registers of Manuals de Consells and the "albarans" of Claveria Comuna in the Historical Municipal Archive of Valencia (the Arxiu Històric Municipal de Valencia; henceforth, the AHMV). The first part of the paper analyses the 9 October feast in relation to the "Feast of the Liberation of Jerusalem" and the "Feast of the Banner of Majorca", taking into account the fact that they referred to the Christian refoundation of each city and were remembered as providential events. The article then turns to the feast itself, to show how its various elements –the route it took, the sermon preached and the images seen—commemorated and valorized the conquest of 1238. Lastly, a detail on the inclusion of the royal flag as a political element of the 9 October procession is emphasized.

### **2. Jerusalem, Majorca and Valencia**

Gabriel Llompart wrote brief annotations about the origins of the commemorative ritual of the day of the Christian conquest of Majorca. He argued that the ceremony of the Feast of the Banner—a name by which it is still known today—coincided with the anniversary of the First Crusade; that is to say, with the capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 by the Latins. "The coincidences are too evident to be considered arbitrary", he said (Llompart 1980, p. 11). Indeed, both commemorations consisted of processions that started from the main temple, parading to the area of the city wall where the Christians had broken through. In both cases, the processions stopped at this part of the wall in order to listen to an evocative sermon about the conquest. Finally, they would return to the temple from which they had started. This close correlation pointed out by Father Llompart has not received much attention from historians.

Even if there is no document connecting the two celebrations at the western and eastern ends of the Mediterranean, the similarities between Majorca and Jerusalem can be plainly explained by the ceremonies. The parades moved, as has been said, to the key point of the wall: in Jerusalem, to the breach that the French opened in the northwest wall of the city on 15 July 1099; and in Majorca, to Saint Margaret's gate, through which the Christians entered the city on 31 December 1229.

The chronology of the beginning and end of the commemoration of the conquest of Jerusalem is fairly precise. The 15 July celebration feast started to be solemnised almost immediately, and certainly before 1105, given the notes of the chroniclers of the crusades and the descriptions of the sacramentaries made at the Church of the Saint Sepulchre. It was no longer celebrated from 1187, when the city was conquered by the Mamelukes. However, the liturgy was re-established in 1228, and then quickly abandoned again after 1244 (John 2015, pp. 415–22; Gaposchkin 2017, pp. 139–40, 162–64). The preserved liturgical programme that talks about the feast of the "liberation of the holy city" gives an account of the rooted procession that set off at the Church of the Saint Sepulchre and went lauding and glorifying to the Templum Domini, where a station was made to hold a chanted mass. Then, it moved to the place where the city was taken, the northwest part of the wall. A cross on the top indicated the exact hole through which Godfrey of Bouillon's forces entered. At this point a second station would be made and a sermon describing the First Crusade recited as a miraculous expedition whose outcome was determined by divine will. At the end, the parade went back to the Saint Sepulchre (Kohler 1900–1901a, pp. 427–29; Dondi 2004, pp. 64–66; Salvadó 2011, pp. 630–32; Folda 2012, p. 126; John 2015, pp. 425–28; Gaposchkin 2017, pp. 137–41).

The coincidences in the ritual described above suggest that this commemoration of the First Crusade could have influenced the "Feast of the Banner" in Majorca—either directly or indirectly. It has been argued that the celebration of the day of the conquest of Majorca dates back to the period of James I, though that is not certain because it is based on a report from after the death of the king.<sup>1</sup> Other authors concur that the Majorcan commemoration can be traced back to the end of the 13th century. Nevertheless, the point is that we only have indirect testimony of the origins of the feast.<sup>2</sup> The first documentary reference dates to the beginning of the 14th century (Alomar 1998, pp. 20, 68); however, it was not until 1358 that there were rough descriptions of the liturgy.3 The procession of the "Feast of the Banner" began when two groups, one made up of clergy—bishops, canons, priests, and other religious figures—and the other of horsemen, a standard bearer and foot soldiers, exited the Cathedral, parading through the streets of the city. Each group would follow a different route, before converging at Saint Anthony's gate. They would go beyond the city wall, congregate in a nearby flatland—the Peiró—and there attend the "sermon of the conquest". Besides the sermon, other elements of the ceremony would commemorate the providential intervention in the conquest of Majorca. The parade showed images of the Mother of God, even a Veronica, sang antiphonies in honour of the Virgin, and invoked Saint George at the station in front of Saint Anthony's Church, where the altarpiece of St George of Pere Niçard and Rafel Mòger was preserved (Llompart 1980, p. 23; Alomar 1998, p. 47; Quintana 1998, pp. 49, 59–63). Thus, they commended themselves to the divinities who, according to James I's chronicle, were decisive in the conquest of Majorca.<sup>4</sup> Lastly, when they re-entered the city to go back to the Cathedral, the banner would be raised above Saint Margaret's gate as the people sang a *te deum*; afterwards, the standard would be returned to the carrier's hands.5 As was habitual in the solemnisation of certain festivities, the local council would take into consideration the aural factor and the arrangement of the urban setting. It hired musicians—in the first half of the 15th century numbering more than 40—and demanded that the streets of the procession be cleaned and decorated with branches of wattle and myrtle (Llompart 1980, pp. 18, 29–34).

The similarities between the "Feast of the Banner" and the ritual of the commemoration of the First Crusade in Jerusalem are numerous, as Llompart briefly indicated. The main ones are the points of reference of the procession, the recitation of a sermon about the main remarkable event, and the reiterative echo of the providential character of the recalled conquest.And if the "Feast of the Banner" preceded the celebration of 9 October, which ritual ceremonies were kept in the feast of the Christian conquest of Valencia on Saint Denis' Day?Ramon Muntaner, author of one of the four great chronicles of the dynasty of Aragon, lived in Majorca at the end of the 13th century and later moved to Valencia, where he took part in local politics as an elected "jurat" or city governor in 1322 and 1328.6 It was he who encouraged the king of Aragon and honoured citizens of the city to order the celebration of the conquest of Valencia in a similar way to Majorca. However, he did not propose the solemnisation of 9 October but 28 September, because that was the day the Muslims gave up the city: "Per què suplicaria a mon senyor lo rei d'Aragó que fos de gràcia e de mercè sua que ordonen ab los prohòmens de la ciutat de València, que el dia de Sent Miquel tots anys se feés professó general en València per ànima del dit senyor rei, e Déus cresqués e melloràs tots temps los seus deixendents e els donàs victòria e honor sobre tots llurs enemics per ço con la ciutat fo presa la vespra de Sent Miquel per lo dit senyor rei en Jacme" (Soldevila 1971, p. 691) ["I would beg to my lord the king of Aragon that, for his grace and mercy, with the notable lords of the city of Valencia, command that on Michaelmas a general procession would be made in Valencia every year for the soul of the mentioned king, and may God grow up, raise and improve his offspring, and give them victory and honour above all his enemies since the city was captured by the mentioned King James I the day before Saint Michael."].

Whether Muntaner's suggestion was taken into account or not, the local council agreed on the annual celebration of 9 October in 1338, the year of the first centenary of the conquest. A procession was instituted as a public manifestation of gratitude to the divinity because James I incorporated the city in Christendom: "Highest lord James, of good memory, king of Aragon, captured and took from the infidels' hands and bestowed it to the Christian faithful". The public announcement of the feast included correspondingly ruthless rhetoric against Muslims: "Highest lord James, of good memory, king of Aragon, conquered and took from the following infidels the sect of the abhorrent Muhammad" (Carreres 1925, pp. 4–5; Narbona 1997, p. 23; 2003, p. 79; 2011, p. 447).7

On 9 October 1338, the parade set off from the Cathedral and went to the monastery of Saint Vincent, where a sermon was recited. In order to have access, the procession had to leave the city by Boatella gate, from where Saint Vincent had been dragged after undergoing torments.8 Unlike the Jerusalemite and Majorcan feasts, the procession could not march to the point at which the wall was broken because Valencia had not been assaulted in 1238; there was no final attack in which the forces broke through the medina. The monastery lay outside the city walls. That is why this particular urban setting could scarcely be expected to serve as the reference point for the commemorations of Majorca and Jerusalem.

The designation of the monastery of Saint Vincent as the destination of the first part of the route of the 9 October procession was particularly significative. At the end of his reign, James I recognised that the conquest of Valencia was due to the prayers he had made to Saint Vincent, the deacon of Huesca tormented in the age of Diocletian (Teixidor 1895, vol. 2, p. 272). Saint Vincent was declared patron of both the city and the kingdom, and throughout the 14th century, various processions stopped at the monastery (Hernández 1670, pp. 2–5, 9–10). It was no coincidence that the sanctuary guarding the Paleochristian Saint Vincent sepulchre (later rebuilt and widened) was the architectural proof the land belonged to the old Christians, a reason for keeping the royal banner of the conquest in the

monastery after being held at the tower of Alí Bufat (Cruïlles 1876, pp. 323–29; Serra and Soriano 1993, pp. 47–48, 79; Narbona 1994, p. 237; 2003, p. 178).9

Nonetheless, the route of the festal procession was modified. It is documented below how, in the middle of the 14th century, the 9 October procession did not parade to the monastery of Saint Vincent, but instead went to Saint George's Church, set within the city walls, in the parochial district of Saint Andrew: "la processó tro a Sent Jordi e puys tro a la seu de València" ["the procession up to Saint George and afterwards up to the Cathedral"].10 Figure 1 also proves that this modification of the itinerary was maintained throughout the Middle Ages.11 However, the specific year of this modification of the route cannot be determined because the registers of the Claveria Comuna, in which a record of the first years of the ceremony might have been left, started in 1351, when more than a decade had already passed from the agreement of the local council about the announcement of the first 9 October celebration.

**Figure 1.** Map of Valencia with the 9 October and Saint George route, Tomás Vicente Tosca, 1704, Real Academia de la Historia, C-011-002-30. Palau gate (1), Saint George's Church (2), and Apostles' gate (3). The route is based on AHMV, 22 April 1435, Manuals de Consells A-30, fols. 275v–276r.

In any case, it is worth highlighting that, in 1341, three years after the first 9 October celebration, the Council decided to announce a new solemnisation: Saint George's day. This celebration commemorated the heavenly knight who interceded in the conquest of Valencia. The announcement of the festivity was eloquent: "Ara oiats que·us fan saber los jurats e los prohòmens de la ciutat que per lo senyor bisbe e per ells és estat ordenat que a present e en per tots temps la festa del benaventurat màrtir e cavaller de Déu sent

Jordi sia colta e celebrada a reverència del dit cavaller sant, la qual festa serà dilluns primer vinent. Per què·us fan saber, per la present sol·lempnial crida, que null cristià o cristiana en lo dit dia e festa no gos tenir negun obrador ubert ne tenda parada per tal que la dita festa sia complidament colta e celebrada e que sia mercé e benignitat del Nostre Senyor Déu Jesucrist tot poderós, lo qual és vencedor de les batalles que do victòria a cristians contra los malvats sarrahins seguents la secta del abominable Mahomet" (AHMV, 3-IV-1341, Manuals de Consells A-4 fol. 40v)12 ["The 'justícies' and honoured men of the City let you know that they and the lord bishop have ordered that, henceforth and forever, the feast of the blessed martyr and knight of God Saint George be venerated and celebrated as a reverence of the mentioned holy knight, which will be made next Monday. For this subject let you know that in the mentioned day no Christian has any workshop opened nor shop prepared so that the alluded feast be fully venerated and celebrated, and that be mercy of Our Lord God Jesus Christ almighty, who is the winner in the battles that give victory to the Christians against the evil Saracens of the sect of the abominable Mahomet."].

From what has been said, 9 October 1338 was the first time the feast was celebrated, and, some time between 1339 and 1351, the itinerary of the procession was modified to go by Saint George's Church. This significant change in the route therefore coincided with the first celebration of the feast of the saint who appeared at the conquest. The coincidence between the 9 October and the Saint George feast was not only temporal, as both processions shared the same destination. Moreover, the announcement quoted implies that the two feasts shared a common ritual objective: thanking God for help in battles against the Muslims.

The similarities between the ceremony of 9 October and Saint George were so evident that the Cathedral ceremonial book says of the feast of Saint Denis: "Omnia sicut dictum est de Sancto Georgio" (Martí and Serra 2009, vol. 2, p. 286).13 Indeed, the succession of liturgical functions was identical. The day before the feast, a procession took place within the See and clergy kept vigil at Saint Denis or Saint George's Chapel in the Cathedral. The following day, a morning mass was held and, afterwards, showing the relics of the respective saints (Saint Denis' shinbone or Saint George's arm), the procession paraded through the streets of the city, singing hymns and responsorial chants, before entering Saint George's Church. The assembly offered a thanksgiving prayer there. Lastly, having come back from the Cathedral, a preacher recited a sermon.14

In this situation, common to both feasts, other elements typical of the staging of Valencian religious feasts have to be taken into account—namely, the instrumental music that accompanied the parade, the decoration of the city hall of Valencia, and the streets full of branches where the procession would pass.15 However, there was an element of the feasts of 9 October and Saint George that distinguished them from other public celebrations: the cult of the royal banner. The standard had to be brought out from the city hall since the town council was in charge of guarding it and defraying its costs.<sup>16</sup> In order to make the standard more striking when displayed, it was accompanied by flowers and relics with images of Saint George or other heavenly personages.17 Thus, being singular in appearance and veneration, the standard itself acquired something akin to the character of a sacred relic, mostly because we know that it was blessed in the city Cathedral (Martí and Serra 2009, vol. 2, pp. 240, 286).<sup>18</sup> In the end, the exhibition of the banner entailed the loyalty of the municipality to the Monarchy while symbolising the jurisdiction and political autonomy of the kingdom of Valencia (Narbona 1997, p. 28; 2011, p. 450; 2017, pp. 69–72).

All these similarities between the 9 October and Saint George feasts can be explained by the rooted legend of the involvement of Saint George in the conquest of the kingdom as a historically fictitious element that fostered civic cohesion between Christians (Werner 1970, p. 302; Narbona 1997, p. 29). The legend decisively characterised the conquest of Valencia as a providential fact detrimental to the Muslims. In the development of a ritual that recalled the providential victory against Islam, the solemnisation of the Valencian conquest and Saint George's day thus had the same political objectives as the Jerusalem and Majorcan feasts.

The three feasts recycled memories through a liturgy arranged by the elites and designed to take root in the popular imagination. In the end, they became precious rituals through their annual celebration. In fact, the celebration of 9 October and Saint George was so important for the civic memory that the political institutions falsely argued that the origin of the ritual as an "antich e loable costum" ["old and praiseworthy custom"] dated back to the period of the conquest (Narbona 1996, p. 318, footnote 45; AHMV, October 1436, Manuals de Consells A-31, fols. 132v–133r; AHMV, 22 October 1453, Claveria Comuna J-67, fol. 10v). It was therefore through this pragmatic substitution at an urban scale that a collective consciousness arose above the foundational myth, due to the fact that the parade constituted a visible and concrete message, as opposed to, for example, chants in Latin that would not be understood by many individuals.

Over time, the day of the conquest acquired a key position in the sacred history of the people, and as a corollary, a new Christian geography of the city was proposed and set—considered necessary because of the Islamic architecture still visible: "Car com la ciutat sia encara quasi morisca, per la novitat de sa pressó, per tal vos cové vetlar que es repar en murs, e en valls, e en carreres e en places, en cases e en armes, en guisa que per tot hi apareixca ésser lo crestià regiment e les crestianes maneres" (Hauf 1983, p. 293; Falomir 1991; Serra 1991; García and Furió 2019) ["as the city still is almost Moorish, for the newness of the place you should look out for the reparation of walls, valleys, streets, squares, houses and arms so that everything gives the impression of being a Christian regime with a Christian aspect"].19

### **3. The Ceremony and the Images**

The processional parade was not the only mnemonic element of the ritual of 9 October and Saint George that made the conquest of Valencia a landmark in sacred history. The entire ritual was more complex. The spectators could view certain images integrated into the ceremony. Most of the sculptures and paintings seen on the processional route were not specifically commissioned for contemplation in a public ritual; indeed, the majority were created before the solemnisation of 9 October and Saint George. The images entered the scenic context of the urban festivity in a latent state, waiting to be seen (Palazzo 2000, pp. 152–56; Fassler 1993). In the course of the liturgy, the work of art and its sensory and intellectual experience stressed the purpose of the ritual.

While the processional route of the feast varied throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, it always had the twin fixed reference points of the Cathedral and Saint George's Church (Figure 1).20 The medieval procession of 9 October and Saint George's would set off early in the morning from Palau gate, the eastern entrance to the Cathedral that faced Almoina square (Figure 2). The assemblage of churchmen would show the corresponding relics and all the gathered believers would carry candles in their hands (e.g., AHMV, 11 October 1436, Manuals de Consells A-31, fols. 132v–133r). The light of the day, so long as there was some, facilitated observation of the sculpted images at two heights on the façade of Palau gate that the viewers could see by lifting their heads. At the stop, on the stone of the modillions under the eaves overhanging the façade, there are heads of women and men wearing headdresses or crowns (Teixidor 1895, vol. 1, p. 230; Chabás 1899; Cid 1953). They seem to look laughingly at the passers-by below, who can hardly read the inscribed names that identify them. We do not know who was intended to be portrayed in these modillions created in the first period of the construction of the Cathedral (ca. 1262), even though the commissioners of the See have been considered (Serra 2018, p. 166). Neither do we know how, in the Middle Ages, they could be identified. Following a written tradition of the 15th century, they were recognised as the faces of the repopulating marriages of the city (Tomic 2009, pp. 235–36; Rubio 2012, p. 110). The second level, closer to the human eye, comprises the gate itself; specifically, by the capitals that sustain the archivolts showing scenes from Genesis and Exodus. Roque Chabás (1899) identified the passages of the Old Testament represented by each one of them and Amadeo Serra (2018, p. 148) argued that the selection of the Biblical episodes proposed a parallel between the promised land and

Valencia. That is because the scenes of God promising the land to Abraham, the election of Israelite rulers and Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law (Gen. 15:18–21; Ex. 18:25–26; Ex. 31:18) symbolized the colonists settling the new Christian Kingdom of Valencia under the king's legislation. In this sense, the Valencian inhabitants were defined as the chosen people. When the images were beheld in the first phase of the liturgy, the sculptures evoked the times of the conquest and the initial period of the institutional constitution of the new colonising society and, consequently, coincided with the purpose of the festivity.

**Figure 2.** Palau gate, Valencia Cathedral, ca. 1262: (**a**) Photograph of the whole gate; (**b**) the Sacrifice of Isaac depicted on one of the capitals of the gate.

After Almoina square, the 9 October parade would head outside the city walls towards Saint Vincent's monastery, for the reasons explained above: Saint Vincent became the Valencian martyr of Christendom *par excellence*, so his sanctuary, a cardinal reference for other processions, was highly valued by the monarchy. It should be highlighted that the north gate was the first access to the monastery the procession would reach. Its structural and decorative arrangement is similar to that of Palau gate in the Cathedral. The historiated capitals, placed under the impost decorated with vegetal motives, show the torments of the saint and his death attended by angels (Serra and Soriano 1992). These scenes that underscored the local history of Christendom became, by stylistic analogy, a visual complement to the figures on the façade of Palau gate. Nevertheless, this step was ephemeral because it might have only been incorporated for the first year of the 9 October celebration.

From the middle of the 14th century and during the whole late Middle Ages, Saint Denis and Saint George's processions paraded from Almoina square to Saint George's Church. The common destination commemorated "aquell gran benefici e honor que aquesta insigne república rehibé en lo temps que fon restituhida en poder de cristians migançant lo divinal adiutori intercedint·hi lo gloriós cavaller, strenu e màrtir singular monsenyer sant Jordi" (AHMV, 23 April 1481, Manuals de Consells A-42, fols. 104r–104v) ["that great benefice and honour that this notable community received at the time it was restored to Christian hands through divine help interceding for the glorious knight, strenuous and singular martyr monsignor Saint George"].

There is certainly little information about the medieval architecture of this church. Among historians, there is general confusion about the original project, since some of them wrongly relate it to the Church of the Saviour. If Father Teixidor's conclusions are given credence, the temple was a mosque dedicated to Saint George in 1243, "the one that consumed time, and afterwards was built a major church with the chapel of Our Lady of the Victory, property of the Centenar de la Ploma civic militia" (Teixidor 1895, vol. 2, pp. 96–102).<sup>21</sup> The fact that this executive body showed interest in the project was a sign of the special devotion that the city professed to the sacred knight (Rubio 2008, p. 139; Sáinz de la Maza 1990, pp. 167–80). Decades later, in 1401, the new building was consecrated at the request of the Centenar de la Ploma, a civic militia and brotherhood dedicated to Saint George (Gil 2019, p. 47). That is why the temple was used and managed by part of this brotherhood, although the church came under the jurisdiction of the military order of Saint Mary of Montesa. Indeed, the brotherhood also had the right to display images within the temple (Martínez 2018, p. 599).

The processions would go into this space on 9 October and Saint George's day. The assembly would enter the temple and recite a habitual thanksgiving prayer to God and the Virgin, the two divinities to whom the victory of the conquest of Valencia was attributed (e.g., AHMV, 22 April 1435, Manuals de Consells A-30, fols. 275v–276r). It cannot be confirmed that the image of Our Lady of Victory of Saint Andrew's Parish was in Saint George's Church in the Middle Ages, as Ortí (1740, p. 51) claims.22 In any case, if Ortí i Mayor's assertion was true, the sculptural image of the sitting Mother of God would be used in the framework of the commemorative festivities as an artifact recalling the decisive role of the Mother of God in the conquest of Valencia.

There is more evidence that the Centenar de la Ploma altarpiece of Saint George was intended for the major altar of Saint George's Church (Gómez-Ferrer 2019, p. 162; Montero 2018, pp. 376–78). Having been painted around the same year as the consecration of the temple, the altarpiece stood out for its pictorial quality, scale and iconography (Kauffmann 1970; Serra 2002, pp. 24–33; Miquel 2011; García 2011, pp. 143–90; Aliaga 2013; Molina 2018, pp. 138–39). Moreover, the battle of El Puig aligned the bloody clash between the two armies—accompanied by the rawness of the saint's torments at the lateral tables—with the participation of the countess, King James I, Saint George and a soldier of the Centenar de la Ploma (Figure 3). The latter three figures were reflected in the procession of the feast. Firstly, James I was recreated in the parade through the figure of the "justícia" official, who would carry the royal standard, wear a surcoat and ride a horse (Serra 2018, p. 165). Secondly, Saint George was invoked when the procession stopped at the church and also when the sacred relic of his arm was shown. This was familiar to the spectator (Martí and Serra 2009, vol. 2, pp. 115, 239–40)<sup>23</sup> and could also be beheld in the image of the warrior-saint holding a sword stuck into the face of a Muslim. Lastly, the viewer was impelled to visually relate the altarpiece figure of the soldier of the Centenar de la Ploma with the members of this company who participated in the civic ceremonies from the first third of the 15th century (Narbona 2006, p. 317). Moreover, the members of the Centenar attended a banquet at the church every 23 April, Saint George's day, to strengthen their fraternal bonds (Martínez 2018, p. 598). Hence, the pervasive replication of the altarpiece images in the parade promoted the remembrance of historical events in a theatrical sense.

On the central panel of the altarpiece, the enthroned Mother of God with the child and music-making angels cannot be separated from the gaze that reflects on the images in relation to the thanksgiving prayer (Figure 4). It is an extraordinary Marian image because of its iconographic singularity, showing the traditional Nursing Madonna as a Queen of Heaven enthroned by the coronation of angels, Christ and the Holy Ghost (Perpiñá 2013, p. 39; 2017, pp. 262–63). This complex and original combination of archetypes arose from a profound spirituality. In the same scene, the angels singing from a score, the musicians playing trumpets and recorder, and those making floral offerings with the cherubs under the throne of the Virgin, emphasise the heavenly atmosphere of the epiphany and seem to

lead the spectator to be prepared for the chant that will be sung in the Heavenly Jerusalem at the end times (Perpiñá 2013, p. 40).

**Figure 3.** Centenar de la Ploma altarpiece of St George, ca. 1400: (**a**) Picture of the altarpiece in the V&A Museum; (**b**) Battle of El Puig. ©Institut Valencià de Conservació i Restauració de Béns Culturals.

(**a**) (**b**)

Contemplating this image—the largest of all, and integrated into the central panels viewers could be expected to relate to the sensory effects of the liturgy: first at Saint George's Church and then, during the parade, to responsorial chants, hymns, and prayers sung/recited in honour of God and the Virgin; to the instrumental musicians announcing the feast the day before and taking part in the ceremony, playing at the front; and also to the plants and flowers perfuming and adorning the streets of the city. The scene therefore embodied the religious sentiment of that synaesthesia and especially those chants and prayers thanking the divinity for the conquest of Valencia.<sup>24</sup>

Briefly stated, the magnificent images of Saint George's altarpiece of the Centenar de la Ploma served the ritual. The polysemy of its visual rhetoric would have transformed the altarpiece into the most important artifact of the feasts of 9 October and Saint George. It is still surprising that, in this respect, the coincidences between the Valencian ritual and the Majorcan Feast of the Banner should be considered remarkable. For the commemoration of the day of the conquest in Majorca, there is also an altarpiece of Saint George, that of Pere Niçard i Rafel Mòger, housed in the church where the procession stopped to recite litanies invoking the holy knight (Quintana 1998, pp. 59–63; Alomar 1998, p. 42). The key here is that certain images of that altarpiece were related to the ritual of the Feast. The battle of Bab al-Kofol of the predella was the scene recreated in the commemoration: the Christian assault on the Medina of Mayurga led by James I and Saint George on 31 December 1229. Yet the pictorial detail that alluded more specifically to the commemorative ritual was on the royal banner at Saint Margaret's gate. This raising of the emblem of the kings of Aragon above the site of the last battle of the conquest was a replica of the most remarkable

event of the Feast of the Banner, according to which seamen held the banner aloft using a complex system of ropes (Llompart 1980, pp. 189–91; 2001; 2007, pp. 79–84; Gaita 2010, pp. 38–41). Finally, the central panel of the altarpiece linked Saint George with Majorcan popular devotions through a plausible representation of the landscape of the city; so rooting the saint in the city was both motive and purpose of the Feast of the Banner.

**Figure 4.** Nursing Madonna and Child, Centenar de la Ploma altarpiece of Saint George, ca. 1400, V&A Museum. ©Institut Valencià de Conservació i Restauració de Béns Culturals.

To return to the Valencian ritual: after having entered Saint George's Church, the procession returned to the Cathedral and went in through the west portal of the transept, the gate of the Apostles. This gate was commissioned around the second quarter of the 14th century, possibly by Bishop Ramón Gastó and the Cathedral chapter (Rodrigo 2013). Even though the master builder of the Cathedral, Nicolau d'Ancona, was in the service of the construction and ornamentation of the see (Bérchez and Zaragozá 1996, pp. 10–13; Oñate 2012, p. 17; García 2020, pp. 82–85), it is thought that the creator of the gate was Aloi de Montbrai (Serra 2020, pp. 360–61). As with Palau, this gate was a point of reference for the religious processions; nevertheless, the gate of the Apostles was more pre-eminent within the urban setting because it was oriented towards the new civic centre of Valencia, configured around 1340—when the feasts of 9 October and Saint George were solemnised and dominated by the façade of the see and the bulk of the city hall across the street (Serra 2004; Iborra 2012, pp. 145–55). Moreover, the Apostles' gate was the main access point to the temple during certain ostentatious ceremonies held in the city, such as the Corpus Christi, royal and episcopal entrances, and the oath of royal and local officials (Serra 2020, pp. 362–65; Carrero 2014, pp. 364–65; Escartí and Ribera 2019, pp. 150, 250; Martí 1994, p. 50).

In this eminent setting of the portal, the French sculptures carried important visual significance. Open in the manner of an altarpiece, nothing implies that this was lost during the commemorative ceremony of the conquest. The apostles can be seen next to Saint Vincent, Saint Valery, Saint Lawrence and Pope Saint Sixtus in the alcove of the jambs; angel, saint, martyr, and prophetic figures in the archivolts; music-making angels in the tympanum,25 and David, Solomon, Abraham and Jacob in the gallery.

The set of sculptures is completed by figurative virtues, human allegories of the crafts and 28 heraldic shields—among them, those of the monarchy, the city and Bishop Ramón Gastó—engraved in the intrados of the portal and the pedestals above which the exempt sculptures lie (Rodrigo 2013). Thus, the urban itinerary of the 9 October and Saint George processions ended with a visual representation of Biblical characters announcing the arrival of the Messiah, of Christ's followers witnessing his redemptive project, of local and primitive Christian saints, and of certain individuals and institutions from that Christian society.

This cycle of images helped to reaffirm one of the objectives of the commemorative celebrations mentioned above: the incorporation of the conquest of Valencia into sacred history. The linear story was also cyclical: God's will to grant the Promised Land to the Chosen People was renewed by favouring the conquest of the territory of Valencia with the help of the divine messenger, Saint George: "Restituhida en poder de cristians migançant lo divinal adiutori intercedint·hi lo gloriós cavaller e màrtir singular monsenyer sant Jordi" (AHMV, 21 April 1481, Manuals de Consells A-42, fols. 149r–149v) ["Restored to Christian hands through divine help interceding for the glorious knight and martyr Saint George"].

Finally, the ceremony concluded with the "sermon of the conquest", recited within the Cathedral.26 Today, no medieval sermon survives; indeed, the oldest one preserved dates from 1666 (Blai 1985; Castañeda 1927). Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that those sermons were based primarily on James I's "Llibre dels feits" [The Book of Deeds]—as Pere Antoni Beuter did when the third centenary of the conquest was celebrated (Escartí 2012, p. 131)—or on the manuscripts that narrated the conquest of Valencia. Copies of these two texts were the property of the bishop or the council and were preserved at the Cathedral, the episcopal palace or the city hall.27 In the end, the "sermon of the conquest" was complemented by the display of James I's weapons on one of the pillars of the major chapel of the Cathedral from 1416 (Figure 5) (Sanchis 1909, pp. 141–42).

(**a**) (**b**)

**Figure 5.** (**a**) A late 19th-century photograph of Saint Vincent Ferrer's pulpit at the Cathedral. In the pillar of the main chapel are James I's supposed shield and arms; (**b**) James I's shield and arms at the Museu Històric de la Ciutat. ©Biblioteca Valenciana Nicolau Primitiu; Wikipedia Creative Commons.

### **4. The King's Banner, the Substituting Medium**

The gules sticks in a golden field on James I's shield at the Cathedral were the representation *par excellence* of the monarchy. This insignia recalled, or even stood for, the figure of the monarch of Aragon. The concept of identity in the medieval period was not related to an individual's appearance, but to the social group they belonged to as an element of God's plan (Martindale 1988, p. 19; Bedos-Rezak 2000, p. 1492; Givens 2005, pp. 105–33; Olariu 2009, p. 15; Perkinson 2009, pp. 85–90). Through this heraldic emblem, the monarchs of Aragon could be represented in any visual or artistic medium, and the festivities were no exception. For King Martin I's entrance into Valencia in 1402, for example, the city council decided to include in the parade eight kings on horseback who were characterised with yellow and red trappings and surcoats. They brought bouquets and sceptres (Aliaga et al. 2007, pp. 34, 49, 67). Indeed, it was a generic characterisation that referred to the condition of monarchs. It could well have been an allusion to the Martin I's predecessors or to the dynasty of Aragon, since the number eight is not arbitrary: it coincides with the number of kings that preceded him, from Alphonse the Chaste to Peter the Ceremonious. James I was one of the eight, and it might be supposed that the king would not be dressed in a particular way beyond the aforementioned clothing.

The banner with the gules sticks in a golden field was present for the urban parades of 9 October and Saint George. This flag distinguished the celebrations from other religious feasts celebrated in the city, such as Corpus Christi or Michaelmas. Thus, a receipt dated 24 December 1400, given on the grounds of the 9 October feast, stated: "per drap de lana reyal del qual ha cuberts los tabals e la cornamusa dels ministrers de la dita ciutat de manament e voler nostre" (AHMV, 24 December 1400, Claveria Comuna J-28, fol. 24r) ["for a royal cloth which has covered the drums and the bagpipes of the minstrels of the mentioned city ordered and wished by us"]. That is, the minstrels carried wind and percussion instruments that were decorated with fabrics in the colours of the royal flag. The fabrics on the drums and the bagpipes, as they were at the forefront of the procession or next to the flag, gave a particular visual character to the feast because they were of the same hue as the standard. However, the ornamentation of the instruments, recalling the monarchy, did not have the same symbolic significance as the central element of the ceremony: the royal standard. As an element of the ceremony, this required another interpretation beyond evoking the monarchy.

The royal standard would bring to mind the monarchy because the city council intended to convey loyalty to the institution in charge of the jurisdiction and autonomy of the city and the kingdom (Narbona 1997, p. 28). However, the standard might carry further connotations. From the point of view of medieval symbolic expression, based on Saint Augustine's theory of the image, the symbol represented the king himself; it was a substituting medium of his authority (Boulnois 2008, p. 46).<sup>28</sup> This view is thus reflected in various fragments of Ramon Muntaner's chronicle (ca. 1325–1328), a book that served as open propaganda for the Aragon dynasty (Cingolani 2008, pp. 159–93; Sobré 1978, pp. 121–22). Perhaps the most enlightening example is an episode from Peter the Great's reign, in which the Sicilian soldier Conrad Llança, before having to fight the ships of the king of Morocco, claimed: "Ben podets saber que el senyor rei d'Aragó és present ab nós en estes galees, que veus aquí lo seu estendard qui representa la sua persona. E així, que ell sia ab nós, la gràcia de Déu e d'ell nos aidarà e ens darà victòria" (Soldevila 1971, p. 683) ["You could well know that the Lord King of Aragon is present with us in these galleys, you can see here his standard which represents his person. And thus, as he is with us, God's and his grace will help us and give us victory"].

The extract is unambiguous: the standard is the king himself, who will be decisive for the Christian victory. Another episode set in the context of fighting the Saracens narrates the substitution of the figure of James I by the royal flag: "Ah, Senyor, per què us plau que en aquest punt jo sia així despoderat? Ara tost, pus llevar no em pusc, isca tost la mia senyera e fèts portar mi en una anda entrò siam ab ells, que no em pens, pus que jo sia ab los malvats ne ells vegen l'anda on jo jaga" (Soldevila 1971, p. 689) ["Oh Lord, why do you find pleasure in my powerlessness? As I cannot get up, soon my flag will go there and take me to the place where they are so that may I be next to the villains without them noticing it"]. It was necessary, then, that the enemy saw the second symbolic body of the king rather than the weak and sickly one (Kantorowicz 1985; Marin 1981).

This paradigm of the royal representation prevailed in Valencia. Ramon Muntaner narrates the mourning in the city when James I passed away: "No hi romàs ric-hom, mainader ne cavaller, ciutadans, dones e donzelles, que tui anaven darrera la senyera e l'escut seu, e deu cavalls a qui hom havia tolta la coa" (Soldevila 1971, p. 690) ["there is no one, neither man-at-arms, knight, citizen, woman nor maid who did not follow the flag and the shield and ten horses with their tails cut"]. The expression of public mourning was clearly directed towards the royal regalia.

Might we guess there was a similar kind of cult surrounding James I's standard in the rituals of 9 October and Saint George? There was a key reference in the ceremony. Among the representations seen in the procession, the figure of the "justícia" official who carried the flag must have embodied the king of Aragon and, at the same time, James I in particular. This is not only due to the commemorative nature of the feast, but also to the visual analogy that spectators could establish between the battle of El Puig and Saint George's altarpiece of the Centenar de la Ploma (Serra 2018, p. 165). Otherwise, a flag from 1459 had the new standard crowned by a winged dragon, a messianic symbol of the kings of Aragon that James I set in the altarpiece (Ivars 1926, pp. 66–112; Aurell 1990, pp. 351–53; Aurell 1997, pp. 135–42).<sup>29</sup>

From the same document detailing the payment for the flag, it can be inferred that the standard was a remarkable cult object in the processions of Saints Denis and George because of the high price paid by the city council and the ritual of benediction performed at the Cathedral.<sup>30</sup> It was the central element of the ceremony, as in the Feast of the Banner, the Majorcan equivalent of 9 October, where the figure of the standard bearer similarly recalled and invoked James I. Indeed, during the feast of the conquest of Majorca, the "justícia" who carried the standard rode a horse and wore armour, gauntlets and a helmet with a crest depicting a winged dragon (Alomar 1998, pp. 20–22). This was a similar visual reference to that of Valencia, which elevated the memory of the Conqueror in relation to the capture of the city. Dispelling any doubts about which king was remembered on that day, Muntaner's description thus recalls: "que tots anys, lo jorn de Sent Silvestre e de Santa Coloma, que fou presa Majorca per lo dit senyor rei, se fa professó general en la ciutat ab la senyera del dit senyor rei. En aquell dia preguen tuit per sa ànima, e totes les misses qui es canten en aquell dia per la ciutat e per tota la illa, se canten per ànima del dit senyor rei" (Soldevila 1971, pp. 690–91) ["That every year on Saint Silvester and Saint Coloma, when Majorca was captured by the mentioned lord king, a general procession is made in the city with the flag of the mentioned lord king. On that day, everyone prays for their souls, and all the sung masses over the city and the island are sung for the soul of the mentioned lord king"].

As a whole, then, everything points to the monarchy being recalled through the standard that alluded to James I. In the late Middle Ages, the colours of the standard representing him were related to his royal condition: the four gules sticks in a golden field, red and yellow, without blue (Viciano 2008). It is well established that the crowned blue stripe was introduced to the flag of Valencia in 1376 as a concession to Peter the Ceremonious, who thus rewarded the city's loyalty to the monarchy during the war of the Two Peters (e.g., Fuster 1977, p. 13). Yet, as Pere Maria Orts (1979, pp. 85–110) expounds, even if the city was able to make use of this municipal flag in the 14th and 15th centuries, the one which was always exhibited in the public acts was the flag "of gold and fire".

### **5. The 9 October Feast as a (Re)Presentation of the Conquest**

Jeroni Sòria's diary (1503–1559) describes in detail a part of the pageant that took place the day following the third centenary of the conquest: "On Thursday, 10 October 1538. The day after Saint Denis, they paraded from the Cathedral to Saint Vincent the Martyr's gate, with all the banners of the craftsmen. Among these the carpenters rode a triumphal cart with four Roman pillars above, with a sky of brocade, and a man sitting in a chair dressed up to resemble King James I, of good memory, with many musicians, trumpets and trombones. And in front of him, in the mentioned cart, a white harness of war and many round shields and two donkeys that pulled from the carts and, in front of the mentioned cart, three knights, each one with his horse, had titles that said: one, Sir Guillem Ramon Blasco, the other one, Sir Blascó d'Aragó, and the other one, Monseigneur Bernat d'Entença–the latter carried the royal banner of the king–; with many pages before the knights and many arrested Moors and, then, the members of the Centenar de Sant Jordi de la Ploma and the banner of Valencia of the bat, which was carried by Monseigneur Pelegrí Català, criminal 'justícia' in this year, and the 'justícies' with him, with long tunics of red velvet and the wings lined with purple sateen, who were the following ones: firstly, Monseigneur Tomàs Roig, citizen; Monseigneur Agostí Joan Albert, citizen; Monseigneur Gaspar Antist, knight; Monseigneur Pedro Exarch, knight; Monseigneur Damià Ferrer, citizen; Monseigneur Jeroni Collar, citizen; the official auditor is Joan Garçia, citizen, who has been public notary for five years, and with them, the excellent Duke of Calabria, Sir Ferrando de Aragó, and viceroy of the kingdom of Valencia, and Sir Juan Lorens de Vilarasa, governor of Valencia. And when they arrived at Saint Vincent's gate, before they crossed the gate, the banner was raised above the door and they lowered it on the outer side, and afterwards, the official criminal 'justícia' took it again and ended up going to Saint Vincent with all the mentioned people and, going back to Valencia, they raised the flag again over the gate and lowered it on the inner side, and the 'justícia' took it again and finished the parade at the Cathedral and from there each one went home to have dinner" (Sòria 1960, pp. 189–90).<sup>31</sup>

The pageant the day after 9 October 1538 was different from the medieval procession. King James I, the main nobles who participated in the conquest of the kingdom, and "many arrested Moors" were represented. The Centenar de la Ploma was paraded as the company that represented the military defence of the city. According to the visual narration of the battle of El Puig on the Saint George's altarpiece, the Centenar de la Ploma took part in the remarkable event (Narbona 2006, pp. 317, 320; Lamarca 1838, p. 28).32 Therefore, recalling the conquest developed into a mimetic simulation. James I was re-embodied by a look-alike imitating the features of the king himself. The noblemen were identified by the names written on their backs. The Moors, possibly dressed up Christians, were exhibited as defeated and imprisoned, as indeed they were during the conquest.

It is clear that the visual parameters of the festive representation changed with the arrival of humanism. Moreover, the Habsburgs understood James I's deed as a historic fact in the service of the rise of the Hispanic Empire (Narbona 2011, p. 454). Nevertheless, the pageant of 1538 cannot be explained solely by the actual historical moment. We must take into account its immediate predecessor, the medieval rituals of 9 October and Saint George, because in them, the conquest was also "re-presented". In the Middle Ages, the main characters were not imitative; the recreation was performed, as in Jerusalem and Majorca, through other ceremonial elements. The points of reference of the ritual and the images represented the conquest both symbolically and factually. This is one way in which the allusions to the Promised Land of the Bible, to local Christianity and to the divine intervention of the Virgin and Saint George in the battle of El Puig might be interpreted. This is how the conquest is remembered as a providential crusade, remarkable in the sacred history of a religion that edged out Islam and claimed itself to be the only true faith.

**Funding:** This research was supported by a predoctoral fellowship that was funded by the Generalitat Valenciana and the European Social Fund (grant number ACIF 2018).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


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## *Article* **The Political Funeral of Isabella the Catholic in Rome (1505): Liturgical Hybridity and Succession Tension in a Celebration** *Misere a la Italiana et Ceremoniose a la Spagnola*

**Álvaro Fernández de Córdova**

Department of Biblical Studies and Church History, Faculty of Theology, Edificio de Facultades Eclesiásticas, Universidad de Navarra, 31080 Pamplona, Spain; afdecordova@unav.es

**Abstract:** Based on the interest aroused by royal funerals at the end of the Middle Ages, this paper analyses the obsequies held in the Eternal City on the occasion of the death of Isabella the Catholic (1474–1504)—Queen of Castile and Aragon—in a context of international tension and succession unrest. The papal diaries, diplomatic documentation and Ludovico Bruno's *sermo funebris* allow us to reconstruct the liturgical, scenographic and rhetorical display of a ceremony that seduced with its solemnity and elegance, the fruit of a hybridism that combined Spanish and Italian funerary traditions in the Rome of Julius II. The creativity of the Spanish community is thus evident in its ability to convert the Isabelline funeral ceremony into an expression of dynastic power in the context of Spanish–French competition and incipient tensions between the Habsburg and Fernandine courts over the Castilian succession. Only by starting from this intertwining of the political and the liturgical will we be able to understand the transformations undergone by the funeral ceremonial in its passage—still little explored—from late medieval customs to modern scenographies.

**Keywords:** royal funerals; Renaissance; propaganda; succession crisis; papacy; Julius II; Hispanic monarchy; Isabella and Ferdinand; Habsburgs

### **1. Introduction**

Royal funerals underwent profound transformations in the late Middle Ages due to their capacity to stage monarchical power through the exaltation of the deceased monarch1. In addition to the funeral ceremonies held at the place of death with the attendance of the court, other funerary events were usually organised in the main cities to make the royal memory present in the territory and to consolidate the population's support for the established power. The liturgy deployed on these occasions was enriched with increasingly complex scenographies to convey the different meanings of the transience of the individual person and the continuity of the royal ministry at that particularly delicate moment of the monarchical succession. Seduced by the semantic richness of funerary acts, historiography in recent decades has delved ceaselessly into their political, anthropological, ritual and artistic dimensions, exploring their function within national communities and in the relationship between the prince and his subjects (Gaude-Ferragu 2005; Hengerer et al. 2015; Booth and Tingle 2020; Chatenet et al. 2021).

Although we lack a complete study of royal funerals in the Iberian Peninsula, we do have research on funerary practices that—with certain regional varieties—evolved towards a progressive ritual multiplication, a solemnisation of their expression and a monumentalisation of their spaces in the form of royal pantheons. The debate on the political and propagandistic significance of royal funerals (Menjot 1987; Nieto Soria 1993, pp. 97–118; Guiance 1998, pp. 318–24) has given way to more detailed analyses of the funerary ritual (García and González 1995–1996), its link with the rite of proclamation (Nogales 2019) or its relationship with sepulchral iconography (Pereda 2001; Pérez Monzón 2008, 2011). From these studies emerges the importance of mourning, the funeral procession

**Citation:** Fernández de Córdova, Álvaro. 2022. The Political Funeral of Isabella the Catholic in Rome (1505): Liturgical Hybridity and Succession Tension in a Celebration *Misere a la Italiana et Ceremoniose a la Spagnola*. *Religions* 13: 228. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel13030228

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 13 January 2022 Accepted: 3 March 2022 Published: 8 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

or religious ceremonies in Castile, together with the greater Aragonese attention to the exposition of the corpse, the ceremony of "correr las armas" (running the arms) and the use of effigies or figurative representations of the deceased monarch (Laliena and Iranzo 1991; Sabaté 1994; Español 2007; Pascual 2016).

This rich funerary tradition saw a growing sophistication during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Castile and Aragon (1474–1516), whose court facilitated interaction between Castilian and Aragonese customs and the establishment of certain ritual patterns (Gamero 2017). This is revealed by the account of the funeral rites held in Barcelona and commissioned by the monarch following the death of his father Juan II (1479), or the presence of ever more enriched musical funeral pieces in courtly compilations (Wagstaff 1995; Knighton 2000, pp. 140–41; Knighton 2014). Although it has been suggested that ritual was toned down during the reign in favour of pantheon building (Nieto Soria 1999, p. 55), it seems clear that funerary activity intensified in the 1490s as a result of the deaths in the royal family: Prince Alfonso of Portugal (1490), the Queen Mother Isabella of Portugal (1496), Crown Prince John (1497) and the Infanta Isabella of Portugal (1498), not to mention aristocrats with special ties to the Crown, such as Cardinal Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1495) (García Marco 1993; Cabrera 2001, 2014; Cañas 2017; Zalama and Pascual 2018, pp. 41–68).

In line with the practice of multiplying the ceremony to perpetuate the dynastic memory, the main cathedral centres—Toledo, Seville, Zaragoza or Barcelona—then displayed their liturgical and scenographic potential, erecting increasingly large and refined funerary structures which marked a degree of transition from the traditional *chapelle ardente* to new forms, with inscriptions and possibly allegorical representations (Arbury 1992, p. 125; Schraven 2014, pp. 62–65). In addition to this, phenomena of emulation or mimetic rivalry derived from the Crown's marriage policy have been detected in the Prince of Wales' funeral (1502), held in the Church of San Juan de los Reyes (Toledo) before the Catholic Monarchs and the Archdukes of Burgundy (Domínguez Casas 1990; Knighton 2001).

The greatest ceremonial expression needed to be achieved following deaths that compromised dynastic continuity and succession to the throne, such as those of Prince John (1497) or Isabella the Catholic (1504), with repercussions beyond the peninsular boundaries and major celebrations in Flanders and the Italian peninsula (Ruiz García 2003). As the symbolic centre of Christendom, Rome could not remain on the sidelines of these events determining the future of a monarchy that was increasingly involved in Italian affairs, especially after the war in Naples (Fernández de Córdova and Villanueva Morte 2020). The Isabelline funeral held in the Urbe was an indication of this, its originality noted by Vaquero Piñeiro when he examined the papal diaries (Vaquero Piñeiro 2001). Other authors have since explored the Hispanic inspiration of the *apparati* used for this purpose (Noehles-Doerk 2006), noting its influence on the development of 16th-century Roman funerals, with their exuberant architectural and iconographic elaboration (Schraven 2014).

By focusing on artistic aspects, these works have neglected the context of a celebration that reflected the new international balances defined at Blois (22.IX.1504) and the succession crisis caused by the death of the Catholic Queen (26.XI.1504), a situation which this paper takes as its starting point to interpret the Isabelline funeral, reconstruct its scenographic resources and identify the messages conveyed by the Spanish community. Together with the meticulous analysis of the papal diaries, we contribute new diplomatic and literary sources—including Ludovico Bruno's *sermo funebris*—that will allow us to understand how political and religious concerns were articulated in a celebration that left its mark on the Rome of Julius II.

From a methodological point of view, a contextualist approach is adopted here that will allow us to realistically interpret the celebratory event, without engaging in abstractions or interpretative models detached from the spatio-temporal reality, as some Cambridge School theorists have shown in relation to the political thought of the modern period (Skinner 1978; Pocock 2009). Thanks to this perspective, we will see that the international scenario and the succession challenge of the Hispanic monarchy constitute the essential coordinates for interpreting the novelties and objectives of the Catholic Queen's funeral. Reconstruction of this event has involved a thorough review of the papal diaries and the contribution of new diplomatic and literary sources (Venetian, Spanish, etc.), including the previously unstudied *sermo funebris*, all critically analysed according to the interests of their issuing agents.

In the study of the ritual and iconography of funerals, a comparative approach to the Hispanic and Italian traditions based on Peter Burke's reflections on cultural hybridisation (Burke 1998, 2009) has been adopted, as it is particularly valid for understanding the assumption of new forms in a different cultural sphere that reinterprets them. All this has required moving between a deductive reflection—based on the results of the bibliography and an inductive procedure in the interpretation of the elements of the ceremony. Thanks to the attention paid to the context, the new documentary information and the methodological flexibility described, it is possible to offer an exhaustive analysis of a little-studied event, providing a novel interpretation of the Isabelline funerals that explains their liturgical and artistic innovations in the light of the political and religious concerns of the Spanish community in the Rome of Julius II.

### **2. Fernandine Politics and Curial Reactions to the End of a Queen**

Having presented the state of the question and the objective of this work, it is necessary to reconstruct the political and diplomatic scenario in which the death of the Queen took place, so as to understand the reactions that arose at the court of Ferdinand the Catholic and in the Papal Curia. We will see that the apparent stability conveyed by some sources has disorientated the analysis of the funeral ceremonies, which took place at a time of international tension and uncertainty over the succession. This chapter reconstructs this turbulent context that explains the measures taken by the Aragonese monarch regarding the funeral of his wife, and the negotiations of his agents to make the event an extraordinary happening in the Rome of Julius II.

This analysis does not start from scratch. The anomalous funeral of Isabella the Catholic has given rise to some debate about its political significance and propagandistic scope. By symbolising the death of the monarch and her replacement by her successor, the royal funeral required attitudes of support through the participation of the council or ecclesiastical authorities, the local nobility and the popular sector (Nieto Soria 1993, pp. 111– 12). To the political value, some specialists have added a propagandistic effect, arguing that ceremonial acts could guide the political behaviour of the recipients by transmitting certain values, ideas or emotions, through ritual, iconographic or rhetorical resources (Maire Vigueur and Pietri 1985; Balandier 1994). This propagandistic dimension could be intensified at times of greater political instability or contestation of royal power, resulting in a greater solemnity in the funerary acts.

Although in Nieto Soria's judgement the political stability of the kingdom in 1504 made a resort to propagandistic use unnecessary, he does note a certain incoherence between its bare ceremonial expression—due to the Queen's testamentary dispositions2—and other local celebrations that deployed the ritual customary in cases of royal death (Nieto Soria 1993, pp. 109–11). This imbalance was attributed to the desire to express the ideal of the virtuous king by means of a ceremonial reduction that would end up suffocating the funerary exaltation. Guiance has explored this line in greater depth, recognising in the chronicles a "propagandistic framework" that seeks to emphasise the "good death" of the sovereign—with signs of personal sanctity—as opposed to the archetype of the "bad death" of the impious king, which would also be reflected in some literary testimonies published after the death (Guiance 2002; González 2005; Fernández Terricabras 2005).

However, these analyses should be interpreted in the light of a historical context and on which is far from the messages of stability conveyed from the court. Lucius Marinius Siculus warned of this when he wrote that "the day this queen ended her life, not without cause was there fear, especially among the people who wished to live in peace and tranquillity, who greatly feared that the disturbances and wars (which ceased while the said queen was

alive) would begin again and be worse than they had been before" (Marineo Sículo 1943, pp. 178–79). To this disturbing prognosis, Bernáldez added the seismic "because of the loss that would be felt in her kingdoms, and because of the tribulations that would befall them after her end" (Bernáldez 1962, p. 723). These impressions were not so much due to fear of a power vacuum as to the complex articulation of the Castilian succession, which was beginning to generate tensions between the Catholic King—appointed governor by his wife—and the Flemish court, where the heirs resided: the first-born Juana, who was married to Philip of Habsburg, the son of Maximilian, King of Romans.

As is well known, although Ferdinand ordered the immediate proclamation of his heirs, his wife had arranged for him to exercise his rights to govern if Juana "did not want to, or could not govern", thus blocking any attempt by Philip to rule alone (Carretero Zamora 2005; Val Valdivieso 2018; Ladero Quesada 2019). In this delicate situation, the Aragonese monarch set himself up as the guarantor of his wife's will of succession, acting as a *governor king* in the correspondence sent to the Castilian cities to communicate the death, where he expressed his *spousal piety*—not the *filial piety* required of the heir—in the feelings of grief and in the order to hold the funeral with the restrictive measures set out in the will. A legitimising framework was thus set up in which respect for the funeral rules was to reinforce Ferdinand's power in the heirs' absence.

However, the monarch also wanted to take advantage of the propagandistic possibilities of the obsequies through the gradual easing of restrictions in the different kingdoms of the monarchy. This is demonstrated by the requirements imposed on the cities or the Castilian aristocracy (Galende Díaz 2015), as opposed to the more lax instructions sent to the cities of the Crown of Aragon, which maintained the prohibitions on *jergas*—highly expensive mourning clothes—and left open the possibility of erecting the funerary structures that the Queen had vetoed (Batlle i Prats 1952, pp. 250–52; Miró i Baldrich 1993, p. 140; Guiance 2002, pp. 368–69). This ritual modulation would explain why the funerary restraint in the cities receiving the coffin during its journey to Granada (Simancas 1904; Szmolka Clares 1969) gradually eased in more distant localities such as Murcia (Martínez 2016) until virtually dissipating in the Crown of Aragon, where "they were ordered with the apparatus and pomp that could be celebrated if she were queen and natural lady of these kingdoms", as happened in Zaragoza or Barcelona (Zurita V/LXXXIV; Sans i Travé 1994, pp. 310–11), or as if she were present in the flesh, as was the case in Tarragona (Miró i Baldrich 1993, pp. 140–41).

The Italian sphere was also jeopardised by this event, which raised worrying questions about the future of the Kingdom of Naples, now under Spanish rule following Garellano's victory over the French army (29.XIII.1503); even more so, when the *Regno* once again became a bargaining chip in the Franco-Imperial alliance of Blois (22.IX.1504), isolating the Catholic Monarchs and threatening their Venetian ally (Seneca 1962; Fernández de Córdova 2021, pp. 492–503). Nor did Ferdinand and Isabella's unstable relations with Pope Julius II, who was reluctant to hand over the Neapolitan investiture to them and reproached them for their friendship with Venice, usurper of the papal enclaves in Romagna, help to improve this murky outlook. In this tense context, it is understandable that the death of the Queen was considered in Italy to be an "event of great importance", and gave "much to talk about" in the Eternal City, where the news arrived on 24 December via French couriers sent to the treasurer Francesco Alidosi, Julius II's adviser (Guicciardini 2006, p. 401; Giustinian 1876, pp. 345–46; Burckardi 1942, pp. 465–66). His triumphalist tone explains why Spanish agents reacted with scepticism, and why the viceroy of Naples did not publish the rumour, nor order the mourning "so as not to discourage your servants, nor give hope to the opponents" (Serrano y Pineda 1918, pp. 105–6).

Aware of the disturbances that could arise in Italy, Ferdinand sent his wife's will to his ambassadors, clarifying the order of succession. The Aragonese also sought support in the Curia by re-establishing relations with the only Castilian cardinal, Bernardino López de Carvajal, a former procurator who had had some disagreements with the monarchs. The Catholic King wrote to him in the most cordial terms, asking him to indicate to Julius

II that nothing had changed following the death of his wife, and that he maintained his determination "to do everything that would comply with his Holiness", continuing with "greater force and rigour [ ... ] that of our Kingdom of Naples and the things of our friends", i.e., the pontifical legitimisation of the *Regno*, and the safeguarding of Venetian friendship.<sup>3</sup> Ferdinand was thus retaining Carvajal's services, asking him "that you continually let us know the things there, and write to us your opinion on everything that happens". As a month later Philip of Habsburg adopted a similar approach, the cardinal from Extremadura found himself in a privileged position to mediate in the foreseeable tensions between two monarchs who sought the support of the Apostolic See to legitimise their pretensions.4

Ferdinand's letters took a month to reach their Italian destinations. On Christmas Eve, Francisco de Rojas—the royal ambassador in Rome—communicated the news to the Pope and the Spanish cardinals (Burckardi 1942, p. 465). He had most probably read the Queen's will before the Curia—as Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa did before the Venetian government since the papal secretary Segismundo da Conti records the designation of Juana as universal heiress ("universali herede") and Ferdinand as administrator ("administratore") (De' Conti 1883, p. 341). The Spanish cardinals then wore "cappas violatias" as an expression of mourning, forming an emotional community that defied the curial liturgy, and could be interpreted as a form of political protest. It was a provocation that Ambassador Rojas prevented by ordering the cardinals to abandon their mourning "ad laudem et honorem sedis apostolice" (Burckardi 1942, pp. 465–66).

This did not prevent Carvajal—the Queen's "creature"—from retiring to his palace "molto addolorato", without making an appearance at the Christmas Vigil. He thus circumvented the ban by expressing mourning through seclusion, practised by the Spanish community in Rome as a form of political contestation. In fact, Carvajal's gesture provoked the indignation of other members of the College of Cardinals for this "luctum particulare" that postponed the universal joy of Christ's birth. With this provocation, the cardinal from Extremadura was declaring himself in the Curia as an inevitable interlocutor in the possible confrontation between the Aragonese monarch—ready to unleash his aggression against France—and the young Habsburg, whose Francophilia could hinder his accession to the Castilian throne, as Carvajal revealed to the Venetian ambassador (Giustinian 1876, p. 348).

Julius II also expressed his grief at the death of the Queen, aware that he had lost an important supporter for his recovery of the lands held by Venice (Giustinian 1876, pp. 361– 62). Additionally, there was no shortage of curials close to the Pope to express their affliction with the "nuncius luctuossisimus" that had shaken Italy ("universa Italia"), such as the pontifical preacher Friar Egidio da Viterbo, convinced that with her the light of the sun and the stars was extinguished ("Visa est enim eripi non Regina Hispaniarum, sed solis et siderum universa lux") (Egidio da Viterbo 1990, pp. 257–58), or the secretary Segismundo da Conti, who lamented the disappearance of that "glorious woman, a distinguished ornament of our century and of the Catholic faith" ("magnum seculi nostri et fidei Catholicae decus") (De' Conti 1883, p. 341).

Meanwhile, Ambassador Rojas began to organise the Isabelline funeral with the same flexibility as the King had arranged in Naples and his patrimonial kingdoms, where "the obsequies and sentiments that are customary in such a case" (Serrano y Pineda 1912, pp. 517– 18) were to be held. He therefore urged the cardinals ("solicitante maxime oratore regio") to obtain permission from Julius II to hold the funeral in the papal chapel, as Alexander VI had granted in 1498 in honour of the recently deceased Prince John (Grassis *Tractatus*, f. 215v). However, relations with Pope della Rovere were not as easy as those with Pope Borgia, who—in need of Spanish support—had made the heir of the Catholic Monarchs the first non-ruling prince to receive funeral honours in the Vatican chapel (Vaquero Piñeiro 2001, p. 645). Julius II not only refused to cede his chapel, but vetoed the celebration of the Queen in Rome, claiming that such honours were only paid to sovereigns ("si pro regibus fiunt, pro reginis fieri non debent"). The Spanish prelates replied that both Ferdinand and Isabella had been crowned, and Isabella had ascended the throne even before her husband as Queen Proprietor "in qua est titulus et caput regni". For this reason, if Isabella died

before Ferdinand, she should receive the honour due to her, even if it meant forcing the papal ceremonial.

Faced with this argument, Julius II postponed his decision for more than a month ("quod multo tempore distulit"). Beyond the protocol dispute, this delay must also have been due to the tensions that had arisen between the Flemish and Fernandine courts, which explain the letters the Catholic King sent to the Pope at the end of January, expressing his willingness to cede the throne to his daughter Juana—whom he was expecting with her husband—and his hope of achieving the peace the pontiff longed for (Giustinian 1876, p. 385): happy omens that belied the news of Philip and Juana's imminent journey through France—a power hostile to the Catholic King—to take possession of the Castilian throne. Hence, in early February, Julius II decided to send a nuncio to the Iberian Peninsula to oversee the transfer of the succession (Giustinian 1876, pp. 402–3). All this must have been on Julius II's mind when he communicated his decision to deny the Vatican chapel for the Isabelline obsequies, allowing them to be held instead anywhere in Rome "cum omni solemnitate" and the participation of the whole Curia (Grassis *Diarium*, f. 82v). With Vatican diplomacy, the Ligurian pope avoided committing himself to a celebration that could displease the French or be manipulated in the face of Castilian succession tension.

The controversy over the Queen's funeral is a sign of a papal circumspection that can also be glimpsed in Las quince preguntas que fizo el Papa Julio a Gracia Dei sobre las excelencias de la Reina Doña Isabel, nuestra Señora de Castilla, de León, de Aragón, attributed to Pedro Gracia Dei (c. 1469–1530), the pseudonym of a poet, chronicler and genealogist linked to the court of the Catholic Monarchs (Paz y Melia 1892, pp. 371–78; Perea 2007). The poem, written after Isabella's death, describes the answers to the fifteen questions that Julius II had supposedly posed in order to learn about the personality, power and work of the deceased Queen; no doubt a real or fictitious pretext allows the poet to deploy his panegyric highlighting the harmony between the Queen's moral qualities and her exercise of power. With its clichés and schematisms, the composition can be seen as a "poetic canonisation" of the sovereign, an exemplum regis linking Isabelline memory with the figure of the Roman pontiff. It was not the only propagandistic text on the death of Isabella, as evidenced by the compositions attributed to Crespí de Valldaura, Luis Miquel Trilles, Cayzedo and Jerónimo del Encina, or the two romances that poeticise her succession dispositions from a pro-Fernandine angle (González 2005; Fernández Terricabras 2005; Marías 2017, p. 403).

### **3.** *Diva Elisabeth, Semper Augusta***: Hybrid Scenographies between Spain and Rome**

The reactions to the Queen's death and the funeral negotiations having been described, there now follows an analysis of its liturgical and artistic display, with consideration of its novelty and the messages conveyed. We will thus see to what extent the Spanish elites integrated Italian and Hispanic forms in a hybrid celebration that was to show the Papal Curia the political and religious values embodied by the new Hispanic power installed in Italy and threatened by the Blois coalition.

The funeral for the Catholic Queen was held on 26 February 1505 in the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, located in the Piazza Navona. This temple erected in the mid-15th century had become a soundbox for the victories of the war of Granada (1484–1492) and was the venue for the funeral of Prince John (1498) (Vaquero Piñeiro 2001; Schraven 2014, pp. 37– 42; Gómez Moreno and Jiménez Calvente 2015; Salvador Miguel 2017; Jiménez Calvente 2021). In the late 15th century, it had been embellished and extended in response to the new demands for representation, which culminated under the government of Diego Meléndez Valdés, Bishop of Zamora and collaborator with Francisco de Rojas in his assertion of Neapolitan rights.

The leading role taken by the ambassador shows the Crown's commitment to a celebration that was to have an impact on the Roman audience. Rojas, Carvajal and Meléndez Valdés all had experience in artistic patronage. Rojas had promoted several projects during his embassy in Flanders and was now managing the construction of his funerary chapel (Pascual and Fiz Fuertes 2015; Vázquez 2017). Carvajal collected antiquities and was in charge of the construction of the church-convent of San Pietro in Montorio sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs (Cantatore 2001; Martín-Esperanza 2020), while Valdés promoted works on the Jacobean church and the cathedral of Zamora (Rivera de las Heras 2017).

For the organisation of the exequies, there was the precedent of the recent funeral held in the cathedral of Naples (16.I.1505) with an imposing structure in the form of an illuminated fortress ("castellana grande") that raised the customs of the ancient Aragonese dynasty to their highest expression (Hernando Sánchez 2004, pp. 177–78). With that "officio degnissimo", reproduced in other cities such as Cava or Taranto, the Gran Capitán offered a show of loyalty that earned the *laudatio* of the Sicilian humanist Pietro Gravina. Given the communications that the viceroy maintained with Rojas and Carvajal, it is possible that the Neapolitan example stimulated the emulation and audacity of the Roman agents.

The papal postponement of the Hispanic consultation made it possible to prepare the event almost two months in advance. Julius II ordered the cessation of audiences to facilitate the attendance of the Curia, and the suspension of the weekly market in Piazza Navona—planned for that day—allowed the participation of the urban popular sector (Grassis Diarium, f. 82v). The descriptions of the masters of ceremonies Jacob Burcardo (Burckardi 1942, pp. 465–66) and Paris de Grassis—Carvajal's assistant in the liturgical organisation5—are the fundamental texts for the reconstruction of an event that also left its mark on the courts of Mantua and Urbino.6

One of the aspects that attracted the most attention was the scenography of the interior of the church of Santiago, especially the *castrum doloris* erected in the central nave, which Grassis judged to be more elegant than the papal or cardinal funerary monuments ("non simpliciter, sicut pro pontifice aut cardinalibus sed *maiore elegantia* ne dicam ambitione pro pontifice et cardinalibus solitum") (Grassis *Tractatus*, f. 216r). Unlike what happened in 1498, his admiration is devoid of the indignation aroused by the outsized structure—in the form of a baldachin—erected by the prince, who surpassed the *apparati* of kings or popes with a present body (Visceglia 2013, pp. 99–103), allowing himself to be carried away by the growing gigantism of late-15th-century Iberian funerary furniture, an excess that could be justified in the Rome of Alexander VI—akin to the Catholic Monarchs in their struggle with France—but not in the Curia of Julius II, more suspicious of the Hispanic power installed in Naples (Fernández de Córdova 2008–2009).

At 5.5 m high, 8.5 m long and 6 m wide, the Isabelline *castrum* was little more than half the size of the one erected by the prince—9 m high—with the intention of avoiding scandal and concentrating attention on the new stylistic elements. The architectural structure had a rectangular base with four three-metre columns at each corner giving it a baldachin-like appearance, recalling its 1498 precedent and other Hispanic funerary architecture (Varela 1990, p. 50; Arbury 1992, pp. 41–42; Allo Manero and Esteban Lorente 2004, p. 68; Zalama and Pascual 2018, p. 66). The black velvet that covered the columns was enriched by the Queen's emblematic green (Fernández de Córdova 2005, p. 47), adding the values of youth and hope to the mournful black (Pastoureau 2013). This chromatic note personifying the monument was not out of keeping with Castilian funerary customs, where personal emblems—and not only the coat of arms—were usually adorned with royal sepulchres (Fernández de Córdova 2014a, 2016).

The baldachin had a pyramid-shaped roof covered with candles which—unlike the *castrum* 1498 *castrum*—was embellished with five turrets over two metres high, crowned with pinnacles ("turricellas cum suis propugnaculi") with massive torches ("intorticia"). Four of them were placed at the corners, with the fifth rising from the centre of the roof holding the ensigns with the coat of arms and titles of the sovereign. The traditional *chapelle ardente* was thus transformed into a structure closer to a slender baldachin with a palatial appearance, showing possible similarities to the turreted structure erected in Seville by the Crown Prince (Romero Abao 1991, pp. 59–60).

Between the four columns of the baldachin was the *Thalamus*, or four-sided "constructum aedificium", raised on seven steps in the form of a stepped pyramid, perhaps similar to the "graderías" used in the Catalan territory (Allo Manero and Esteban Lorente 2004, p. 71): three steps covered with black cloth projected out of the columns—raised on the fourth step—and the other three went into the *castrum* and were lined with Isabelline green velvet. On the upper tier, Paris de Grassis described a conical structure—"non sicut nos facere solemus"—which served as the base for the Queen's *cenotaphium* or fictitious coffin.<sup>7</sup> It was a conical dais that can be identified with the Iberian "bed" that acquired sophisticated forms during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, such as the hexagonal catafalque erected in Messina for the Prince's funeral (Bianca 1984), or the star-shaped sepulchre sculpted by Gil de Siloé for the parents of the Catholic Queen in the Cartuja de Miraflores (Burgos) (Pereda 2001). The Roman coffin was covered with a luxurious golden cloth—the gold eschatological, a symbol of divine light and absolute clarity (Pastoureau 1993, p. 104)—and with green brocade, a cross embroidered on the upper part, suggesting the salvation of the soul, like the scriptural inscriptions placed on the catafalque, which we will comment on below. With this sumptuous decoration, the Spanish community was trying to make up for the insignia placed on the coffin, which had no place in the papal city, or the figurative representations used in some cities of the kingdom of Aragon, and perhaps also Castile (Pérez Monzón 2011, p. 237).

An emblematic and epigraphic feature in the form of shields and inscriptions was placed on the *castrum doloris*, which was particularly novel in terms of its quality and size. Unlike the cardinal's funerary coats of arms—drawn on cloth ("telas depicta")—the Elizabethan ones were embroidered on dark velvet with gold and silver thread ("argentoque contexta quasi per modum aurifrigionum") (Grassis *Diarium*, f. 83r), sparkling colours linked to light (gold) and purity (silver). This preciousness could be related to the function of the coats of arms less as an identifier than as a substitute for the deceased in the Hispanic funerary tradition, as shown by the rites of breaking of shields or their inverted placement in funeral processions (Pérez Monzón 2011, p. 239). At the end of the 15th century, funerary scenographies also experienced a heraldic saturation reflected in the stone armorials carved in the chapels of Álvaro de Luna (Toledo Cathedral), the Constables of Castile (Burgos Cathedral), or in the chevet of San Juan de los Reyes, designed by the monarchs as a pantheon (Domínguez Casas 1990; Noehles-Doerk 2006; Pérez Monzón 2011, pp. 238–39).

Visual resources were not limited to emblematic decoration. Epigraphy was also used as a memory strategy to display the identity of the deceased, her qualities, genealogical affiliation and the most important achievements of her life (Ariès 1983, pp. 184–94). On the central turret crowning the baldachin tumulus, there was a luxurious sign with the Queen's titles engraved in golden letters, probably using humanistic capitals: DIVA ELISABETH, DEI GRATIA HISPANIARUM, UTRIUSQUE SICILIE AC HIERUSALEM, REGINA CATHOLICA, POTENTISSIMA, CLEMENTISSIMA, SEMPER AUGUSTA (Burckardi 1942, p. 466; Grassis Diarium, f. 83r). The use of the Latin formula "Diva Elisabeth" emphasised—with its classical resonances—the political power of the sovereign and her religious excellence, in imitation of the princesses of the Julio-Claudian dynasty who, after their death, became part of the list of imperial divinities (Martín-Esperanza n.d.) With a rhythmic cadence, the inscription began with the proclamation of her holiness and the power received from God ("Dei gratia"), and then went on to list her Hispanic dominions and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, including Naples and Jerusalem, underpinning rights to the *Regno* that Julius II had not yet confirmed. For his part, Carvajal had just received the patriarchate of Jerusalem, where the Queen had exercised a protectorate that Ludovico Bruno explains in his *sermo funebris*.

Alongside the territorial domains, the title "regina catholica"—granted by Alexander VI in 1496—was followed by the epithets "potentissima, clementissima, semper augusta", used in ancient Rome on the death of emperors and empresses: an evocation of the imperial past that introduced a new decorative element *all'antica* developed by humanistic epigraphy. The inscription was flanked by the royal arms with the Isabelline motto ("Sub umbra alarum

tuarum protege nos") in the form of a semicircle at the bottom, and at the ends two golden inscriptions announced the salvation of the deceased: "Surrexit" was written on the righthand panel, and *Non est hic* on the left, alluding to the resurrection of Christ (Mk 16:6) in which the sovereign took part.

With this suggestive combination of inscriptions, the idea of royal "immortality" that gave continuity to the monarchical institution was strengthened, as Kantorowitz explained (Kantorowicz 1998, pp. 436–37); Nieto Soria notes—in Castile—the elevation of the deceased king to the celestial plane as protector of the kingdom (Nieto Soria 1993, pp. 114–15). The case of the Catholic Queen was enhanced by the sanctity conveyed by certain testimonies (Guiance 2002, pp. 262–63) and present in some funeral sermons, such as the *oratio* of Bruno, where the incorruptibility of her corpse is affirmed, or the *Sermo de morte regine Helisabete* preached by Fray Martín García at the Zaragoza funeral, which describes the particular judgement of the Queen and her final glorification (Cirac 1956, pp. 115–24).

The walls and columns of the church were covered with dark cloth bearing the arms of the sovereign—Castile and Aragon—and mixed ("simul et mixtim") with the coats of arms of the kingdoms linked to her descendants: Portugal—where Mary of Portugal settled—and Austria–Burgundy, which belonged to Juana and Philip of Habsburg (Grassis Diarium, f. 84r). This type of hanging was common in the Iberian Peninsula, where Latin inscriptions could also be found next to the coats of arms (García and González 1995–1996, p. 133; Cabrera 2001, p. 548; Martínez 2016, pp. 817–18; Nogales 2019, pp. 185–87). Indeed, on the walls near the altar, under the coats of arms, there were two panels with golden letters, which exalted the Queen's lineage, her divine election, and the power bequeathed to her descendants: "Propterea elegit te Deus pre consortibus tuis, patribus tuis; nati sunt tibi filii; constitues eos principes super omnem terram". Taken from the offertory of the feasts of Saints Peter and Paul (Psalm 44:17–18), the texts attributed the universal power of the Church to that of the heirs, as if the eschatological exaltation of the sovereign (upper part of the catafalque) overflowed around the perimeter of the temple dedicated to her descendants. This is a scenographic game which, as we shall see, will have its rhetorical correspondence in the preacher's exaltation of Isabelline marriage policy.

Finally, we should not forget the lighting arrangement, particularly well developed in the Trastámara court, and which in a funerary context acquired theological connotations as an expression of life overcoming death/darkness. At Isabella's funeral, 1350 kilos of wax were used, slightly less than the 1800 used in the prince's funeral, which were concentrated on the roof of the *castrum*. In 1504 a more balanced arrangement was observed: the main light source was still located at the top of the baldachin—with 16 large candles ("intorticia") and 32 candles ("faculae")—but instead of lighting on candelabra, as in 1498, two trestles were placed on either side of the catafalque with 15 large candles each. The aisles of the church were illuminated with 74 large candles, creating a luminous axis that connected the door of the temple—with 12 large candles—and the choir, whose entrance was illuminated by another 12 large candles (Burckardi 1942, p. 466; Grassis Diarium, f. 83v). Grassis also noted the magnanimous distribution of candles to those present, noting the three-pound candles received by prelates and ambassadors—not the two-pound ones given to popes and cardinals—and those distributed among the *cubicularii* with "multa confusio et horror".

The liturgical celebration was significantly better attended than in 1498. Following Roman custom, the pontiff did not appear, but the entire College of Cardinals did: twentyfive cardinals—six of them Spanish—dressed "di morello scuro, che in loro è corotto", more than double the eleven who attended the prince's funeral, and many more than the eighteen who attended the funeral of Charles VIII of France (1499) (Grassis Tractatus, ff. 215v–216r; Luzio and Renier 1893, p. 165; Burckardi 1942, pp. 90–91). The cardinals were joined by four archbishops, nine ambassadors, and a remarkable number of lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries (Giustinian 1876, p. 434; Castiglione 1978, p. 53). All of them were arranged in the choir in two groups separated by the corridor and seated in their respective "scapna"; the prelates, on the other hand, were installed in the nave.

The main seat was reserved for Ambassador Rojas, who was accompanied by twenty servants wrapped in "mantellos longos et caputia super spatullis" of very thick black cloth, probably the *jergas* forbidden by the Queen in her will.8 With him were the two Hispanophile agents of the Roman king, Maximilian of Habsburg—Lucca de Reynaldis and the old orator Ludovico Bruno, in charge of the funeral speech, and the Florentine representatives, allies of France. Several of the Pope's relatives were also present, including Cardinal Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino Guidobaldo da Montefeltro— "cum la gramalia fin a terra"—and the prefect Francesco Maria della Rovere, dressed in black velvet. These two aristocrats and the Prince of Salerno, Roberto II Sanseverino, struck a discordant note at the celebration, refusing to leave the seat they occupied with the cardinals—despite Carvajal's attempts to relocate them elsewhere—"quod fuit male factum sed pro necessitate toleratum". In a city like Rome, where political tension translated into protocol conflicts, this gesture could be interpreted as an attempt by some Francophile aristocrats to tarnish the Spanish obsequies.

Instead of a Spanish ecclesiastic—as was customary in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli— Cardinal Bernardino Carafa, Patriarch of Alexandria and nephew of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, presided over the celebration, showing with his presence the support of an important sector of the Neapolitan elite. Carafa concelebrated with seven chaplains, two more than usual, thus intensifying the solemnity of the ceremony. It was a sung Mass, and at the end the officiant and the four archbishops present went to the *castrum doloris* to give absolution to the sovereign by singular pontifical privilege, "as cardinals do at the funeral of the pope or other cardinals". According to Grassis, Julius II granted this intolerable novelty "cum maxima difficultate et aegre", at the request of the Valencian Cardinal Juan de Vera and with the approval of the College of Cardinals, astutely achieved by the "cardinales Hispani" (Grassis *Diarium*, f. 84r).

Such manoeuvres reveal the interest of the Spanish elites in offering a spectacle out of the ordinary thanks to a liturgical and artistic display that was combined with innovative details that did not go unnoticed. The overall judgements are particularly expressive. Paris de Grassis praised the liturgical solemnity and the admirable mournful scenography ("apparatus fuit pro maestitia satis spectabilis, et missa satis solemnis") (Grassis *Diarium*, f. 82v), and Baldassare Castiglione noted the template of that funeral celebrated "very solemnly according to the custom of Spain" (Castiglione 1978, p. 53). However, not everything was Hispanic in those exequies, which Emilia Pío acutely described as "misere a la italiana et ceremoniose a la spagnola" (Luzio and Renier 1893, p. 166), evidencing a hybridism that combined Italian penitential intensity—pathos, perhaps—with Hispanic magnificence, typical of a solemnity understood as a mark of power and a sign of the *maiestas regia*.

This can be regarded as the embodiment of what Burke has called creative reception, whereby a group would take new or different ideas from another cultural sphere, adapting and moulding them according to ceremonial requirements, establishing cultural patterns and local styles (Burke 1998, p. 13; Knighton 2001, p. 130). In this case, the Spanish community settled in Rome would have undertaken a process of accommodation, assimilation or syncretism, adapting Hispanic ceremonial to Roman forms, with the idea of projecting an image of prestige, elegance and solidity understandable to the Roman audience. Its success can be seen in the drawing of the *castrum doloris* that Burcardo reproduced "in alia carta" (Burckardi 1942, p. 466), and the detailed description that Grassis incorporated into his *Tractatus de Funeribus et Exequiis in Romana Curia*, turning the Isabelline celebration into a model that surely inspired the exuberant Roman exequial exuberance of the 16th century (Schraven 2014).

### **4. Isabelline Virtues for Political Concord: The** *Sermo* **of Ludovico Bruno**

Along with the liturgical and artistic aspects of the celebration, we must pay attention to its homiletic dimension, especially relevant in a city like Rome, where humanist rhetoric had reached high levels of development (O'Malley 1979). This last section will analyse the *oratio* composed for funerals, which has gone unnoticed by scholars of the Catholic Queen. Its text not only shows the image of the sovereign projected to the international community, but also makes it possible to see the connection of the homiletic discourse with the ritual and iconographic resources used, facilitating a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the 1505 funeral service.

An important singularity of the Isabelline exequies was the absence of the preaching that had been entrusted to Ludovico Bruno (c. 1445–1508), bishop of Acqui, humanist, poet laureate, "Flemish secretary", and Maximilian's adviser and ambassador to Julius II (Rill 1972; Flood 2006, pp. 248–49). In 1498 he was chosen as Archduke Philip of Habsburg's procurator to be sent to the court of the Catholic Monarchs. Gómez de Fuensalida described him then as a "sane and discreet man and always [ ... ] desires to serve VVAA [Isabella and Ferdinand]"; he knew Castilian well and, as an ecclesiastic, "may be brought by the ear in the interest of some benefit" (Gómez de Fuensalida 1907, p. 64). Although the legation did not materialise, he was later able to collaborate with the Spanish agents in the surrender of Forlì (1504), as he had been commissioned by the King of Romans to obtain the return to the Pope of the Romagna territories seized by Venice (Seneca 1962, pp. 53, 59, 66). He settled in Rome in October and remained there as Maximilian's ambassador until April 1505.

Rojas or Carvajal must have entrusted him with the *sermo funebris* because of his Hispanic attunement (Giustinian 1876, p. 486). However, Bruno did not deliver his *oratio*, citing a certain indisposition considered feigned (Burckardi 1942, p. 472), or attributed to a loss of nerves (Grassis *Diarium*, f. 84r), perhaps as a result of political tension. This frustration allows us to conjecture—in line with Pocock's theory—a break in the transition from the speaker's intention to the execution of his speech, which finally found other channels to become public. Although the absence of preaching tarnished the ceremony, the *sermo* must have been published that year by the workshops of Johann Besicken, connected with the Spanish elites in Rome (Blasio 1988). This is suggested by its title *De obitu Serenissime et Catholice d[omin]e Helisabeth Hispaniarum et vtriusq[ue] Sicilie ac Hierusalem Regine Oratio*, which bears the date 22 February 1505, four days before the funeral celebration.9

As *caput mundi*, Rome constituted a privileged place for issuing this type of eulogy addressed to a wide audience linked to the Papal Curia (McManamon 1976, 1989; Camporeale 1980). By then, the humanistic *oratio* developed in the Italian peninsula had become detached from the *artes praedicandi* and had approached the epideictic genre (*genus demonstrativum*) developed not so much to teach as to move. If dedicated to a deceased prince, the sermon tended to follow the model of the classical *laudatio*, oscillating between reflection on the ephemeral nature of power and exaltation of the moral qualities of the deceased, held up as an example of action and virtue (D'Avray 1994).

The Spanish agents had taken advantage of the propagandistic value of these interventions in the obsequies for Prince John (1498) by requesting the services of the humanist Tommaso Fedra Inghirami, whose *oratio* was published with a dedication to the ambassador Garcilaso de la Vega. Seven years later, the imperial procurator was chosen to convey the Queen's legacy in the new succession context in favour of the Habsburgs. Additionally, although it is not possible to know the sources of Bruno's speech, much of his information could have been provided by Rojas or the Cardinal from Extremadura, convinced of "la qualità della donna (delle virtù e laude della quale feze un longo parlare)" before the Venetian representative (Giustinian 1876, p. 348).

The 1505 speech comprises the three classic moments of the funeral discourse: the *exordium*, the biography and the *peroratio*, the second being the most extensive part. After a brief exhortation on the Christian meaning of death (1 Te, 4), the preacher describes Isabella's *genos*, recalling her parents—John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal—her birth on the feast of St George, and her accession to the throne "iure optimo" after the death of her brother without issue, as prescribed by the law of the Goths ("lege gothorum"). Bruno thus appeals to the Queen's Gothic blood ("nobilitatis antiquitas"), developing the neo-Gothic ideal by exalting the power achieved by this people in Hispania, Africa and Gaul, and the determination of their successors to fight the Muslim invaders (Bruni 1505, f. 1v). Isabella is the last link in a list of Christian monarchs to receive significant epithets from the Apostolic See, such as the "christianissimum" Recaredo, the "religiosissimum" Sisebuto, and the "catholicus" Alfonso I, a title recently bestowed on the "sanctissima Regina" and her "gloriosissimo viro Ferdinando".

Within the framework of this glorious past, Bruno begins the moral portrait of Isabella, describing her as a "santa femina" adorned with the splendid necklace of virtues ("tam preciossissimo monili virtutum omnium ornata") (Bruni 1505, f. 2r). As a sovereign, the preacher begins with her prudence in the domestic ("prudentia familiae") and public ("prudentia politica") spheres, which he illustrates with the Biblical couple of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, model of the "sapientia-gubernatio" and archetype of the Ferdinand and Isabella tandem. He highlights the order of her court ("domus regie") as mother and wife, and her attention to the "regal ceremonies" or "divine ceremonies", referring to her custom of praying with her ladies in a remote palace oratory, and of attending the solemn recitation of vespers in the royal chapel.

With a poet's wit, Bruno describes the marriage policy deployed by Isabella as an "industrious bee" capable of uniting the greater part of Europe through her children ("uti apis argumentosa maiorem Europe partem affinitate sibi devinxit") (Bruni 1505, f. 2v), emblematically represented on the walls of the Jacobean church. The double marriage of Jean-Marguerite and Jeanne-Philippe, which was to unite their lineage with the House of Austria–Burgundy, receives special mention. In this context, Bruno assumes Carvajal's integrating perspective (González Rolán and Saquero Suárez-Somonte 1999), announcing the confirmation of this union when Juana—first-born and "as exalted as her mother"—and her husband inherit the Crown of Spain ("Hispanie Corone"). He then mentions Mary's accession to the throne of Portugal and the Anglo–Hispanic annexation through the Infanta Catherine. Thus, it can be said that, with her modest offspring, the Catholic Queen has grafted the branches of the Christian orb onto the same stem.

In the field of political prudence, he recalls her fortitude and constancy from the beginning of her reign—as though she had been born "ad imperandam"—in subduing her Portuguese adversaries and eradicating vice, robbery, homicide and blasphemy from her dominions, eliminating them "in repentina mutatio", as if a splendid sun had dispelled the preceding darkness. This was followed by the restoration of the public purse, the enrichment of the royal patrimony, and the legislative policy to restore the "fraternitatem hispanicam" (Bruni 1505, f. 3rv).

Bruno then turns to certain virtues considered by classical authors, such as intelligence, memory, docility, guile ("solertia"), prudence, discretion ("circunspectio") and caution (Bruni 1505, f. 4r). In each of them, information—sometimes novel, sometimes familiar about the personality of the Castilian queen is provided (Ladero Quesada 2006). Her "perspicax ingeniun" is highlighted, which made her a very subtle reader and listener, capturing the depths of the mind and synthesising what others fail to grasp even after lengthy expositions. On top of her ability to retain names, Isabella added "docilitas" in the study of the Latin language with her daughters ("latina litteris"), later going deeper with her own teachers to learn the Holy Scriptures, and—in a wink at Bruno's audience—to understand the papal letters. After her accession to the throne, she became familiar with French and Italian, having always spoken and written her in Spanish mother tongue "elegantissime". Bruno was thus not merely valuing Isabelle's linguistic skills, but her involvement in government, where she sought the right counsel to better discern judgement.

Following Aristotle, he opens the chapter on the cardinal virtues with prudence and justice, which the deceased practised by granting civil offices to worthy persons—as had not been done before—and ecclesiastical dignities to spiritual and learned men who deserved them, a statement that possibly concealed a subtle criticism of Ferdinand's first episcopal promotion—shortly after his wife's death—favouring his natural son Alfonso of Aragon (Giustinian 1876, p. 385). In the field of temperance, it is noted that not the slightest dishonest word left her mouth, that she abstained from wine and practised a "heroicae castitatis", sleeping with her ladies if her husband was absent. She combined modesty with "gravis et regia maiestas" and showed her fortitude by meeting the death of her children—John and Isabella—with serenity and union with the divine will. She endured the hardships of the war in Granada, building the city of Santa Fe after the burning of the royal tents in the siege of Granada and, after the death of his first-born son, suffered illness and weakness without complaint, including the final fever which she endured by consoling others and praising God (Bruni 1505, f. 6r).

The theological virtues allow the preacher to highlight the religious motives that guided her foreign ventures, such as the conquest of Granada, recovered for the Christian religion after seven hundred years of Muslim domination. In this "bello mirabile", Isabella exercised charity by building hospitals for the sick and wounded, clothing the freed captives, and supplying the troops (Bruni 1505, f. 7rv).

Less well known than these well-trodden paths of Hispanic propaganda is the reference to the evangelisation of the Indies, in those years when the papal concession of ecclesiastical patronage was being negotiated (Fita 1892). The ambassador refers specifically to the incorporation into the Christian faith ("lucro fidei adiecit") of the seven Canary Islands (*Fortunatas Insulas*)—with their 50,000 inhabitants who knew nothing of Christ—and the very distant *Insulas Atlanticas* ("versus Indos"), "which they now call *Hispanienses*", i.e., Hispaniola (Greater Antilles). According to Bruno, this "studiosa Christi femina" had founded nine cathedral-churches, which does not tally with the three dioceses erected "apud insulas indicas", as cited below (Bruni 1505, f. 7v). However, he provides an interesting reference to the creation of the first Antillean dioceses—a metropolitan see and two suffragans—which the Crown had just proposed in Rome through Rojas and Cardinal Juan Vera, and which Julius II granted in the bull *Illius fulciti* (15.XI.1504) without ceding the patronal rights (Metzler 1991, pp. 91–94). To this ecclesiastical establishment, we can add the two cathedral-churches erected in the Canary Islands and the four in the kingdom of Granada, where the Queen had founded and endowed other minor churches and monasteries.

Referring to Mediterranean expansion, Bruno mentions the occupation of Melilla (1497)—"munitissimum oppidum" in the kingdom of Tagaste—and the island of Cephalonia (1500)—"apud grecos olim Ulixis"—which he liberated from Turkish rule, restoring it to the Venetians. Both references were timely in view of the recent papal renewal of permits to collect the crusading tithe to be used in the African campaign, despite the cardinals' protests at the extension of the tax to the Neapolitan kingdom (Fernández de Córdova 2021, pp. 415–17). Nor did the preacher forget the Queen's support for the Apostolic See, returning the fortress of Ostia thanks to the courage of her troops, preventing the alienation of Benevento from the patrimony of the Church, and restoring the cities of Imola and Forlì to Julius II (Bruni 1505, ff. 7v–8r).

Bruno placed her policy of extirpating heresy, infidelity, apostasy and blasphemy from her kingdoms within the framework of the exaltation of the faith and the Apostolic See. To put an end to crypto-Judaism—spread among converted Jews by the preaching of St Vincent Ferrer—she extinguished more than 50,000 heretics with the severe penalties of fire, deportation or imprisonment; a rather steep figure compared with Fernando del Pulgar's numbers for the first decade of the Inquisition tribunal (Kamen 2011, p. 62). Referring to the Queen's will that only Christ should be worshipped in her dominions, he recalls the expulsion of 600,000 Jews—losing the money they paid in taxes—and her opposition to the continued practice of the Islamic religion in Granada, proposing conversion or expulsion, and achieving the baptism of 200,000 people through the preaching of priests, as in the times of Constantine and Saint Helena (Azcona 2004, 2015). Finally, Bruno mentions the toughening of penalties for crimes of apostasy or blasphemy, and Isabella's determination to eradicate magic.

After faith and hope, Bruno dwells on charity, describing the Queen's beneficence, her donations to the nobility, the cession of the third part of the royal patrimony in the kingdoms of Granada and Naples, and the public and private alms, which can be traced in the documentation (Andrés Díaz 2010; Nogales 2009). However, the amounts destined

for the restoration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin (most likely the one in the Kidron Valley) are particularly noteworthy. Like a new St Helena, the Castilian queen wrote to the Sultan of Egypt and the tyrant of Syria so that they would not hinder the work undertaken, and she herself donated golden curtains ("cortinas aureas magni pretii") for the chapel of the Sepulchre of Christ, and four very fine sheets ("sindones lineas quattuor preciossissimas")—which she wove herself while pregnant—to cover the slab that held the body of Our Lord, not forgetting the thousand gold ducats sent annually from 1489 to the Franciscans given custody of the site (Bruni 1505, f. 9r; Lama de la Cruz 2015, p. 233).

Having described the Queen's virtuous necklace, Bruno devotes the last part of the *narratio* to her death. Weakened for four months by the "febris quartane", she died at the age of fifty-six on the feast of Saint Catherine—to whom she was devoted—after providing for the succession of the kingdom, and having ruled for thirty-five years with Ferdinand, accumulating twenty royal crowns. Her death in Medina del Campo with her servants and a group of prelates is described, "with incredible mourning of all Spain and the whole world" ("incredibili totius Hispanie luctu immo et orbis universi") (Bruni 1505, f. 9v). Linking herself to other models of royal sanctity, Isabella ordered her remains to rest in Granada as St Ferdinand chose Seville, and wished to be buried in a humble sepulchre in the habit of St Francis, imitating St Louis King of France—equally devoted to the saint of Assisi—as had other Castilian sovereigns not cited by the preacher (Graña Cid 2021). This Franciscan ideology would connect with what has been called the *Beata stirps* (Vauchez 1977; Boesch-Gajano 2020, pp. 27–28), into which the Castilian queen seems to fit, as her incorrupt body ("integritas cadaveris") was shown after thirty days of the exhausting funeral route.

In explaining the feelings aroused by her disappearance, a new example from the saints' calendar is mentioned, describing the coexistence of sadness and joy at the death of St Martin of Tours. However, Bruno goes further, suggesting the Queen's transit to heaven is because of her good reputation and the order in which she had left her kingdoms, alluding to the widespread wish that her children and nephews—Juana, Philip and Charles—should succeed her, "her most powerful and undefeated husband being the preserver and director of all her dispositions" ("potentissimo ac invictissimo viro suo *conservatore et directore* omnium dispositionum suarum") (Bruni 1505, f. 9v). In an effort to reconcile wills, the imperial ambassador affirmed both the Habsburg succession and Fernandine guardianship, sparing the King no praise as a co-participant in his wife's exploits, consolidating his own propagandistic trajectory (Jiménez Calvente 2017; Fernández de Córdova 2014b, 2017). Additionally, to ensure the peaceful transfer of power, the attendance of the sovereign is suggested, as friar Juan de Ampudia in Valladolid was able to propose, saying in a speech "ansy del tiempo pasado como de lo presente e de lo por venir, diciendo en todo ello aplicándolo todo a las obras y vida de la gloriosa rreyna de España" (Pascual 2013, p. 40). This is a wish that reappears in the final *peroratio*, when imploring the salvation of the deceased and the happiness of her heirs—from whom such fruits are expected—and offering the audience the example of this woman ("tante femine exemplo") in order to achieve eternal life and enduring fame (Bruni 1505, f. 10r).

However, the ambassador's happy omens were being belied by news from Rome of Philip of Habsburg's persistent Francophilia, intolerable to Ferdinand and rebutted by Maximilian through his ambassadors in Rome (Giustinian 1876, pp. 404–6). This was probably what made Bruno hesitate on 26 February, to the point of refusing to deliver his speech in that political context. This fact is fundamental for interpreting his *oratio*, as Skinner's contextualist theory advocates, especially in view of the author's intentionality and the scope of political discourse according to the circumstances of the time. It is no coincidence that months later, that tension ended up dividing the Curia between a Habsburg and a Fernandine faction. In spite of it all, the desire for concord that must have driven the publication of the *sermo* was not extinguished, along with the idea of transmitting—through the printed word—that model of a sovereign capable of uniting Europe and expanding the Christian faith in a succession situation doomed to political fragmentation, personal ambition and manipulation of information.

### **5. Conclusions**

Study of the funeral exequies held on the occasion of the death of Isabella the Catholic reveals the involvement of political power in ceremonial displays that were to contribute to the succession in the terms envisaged by the Queen. Thus, whereas in Castile the Catholic King demanded the ceremonial restraint that highlighted his status as governor, in other dominions he allowed a gradual solemnity depending on the political needs of each territory. These measures show that the different modulation of the funerary acts obeyed the same political objective: to reinforce Ferdinand's authority and ensure monarchical stability at a time of uncertainty over the succession. This shows the importance of context in interpreting ceremonial acts, especially in terms of the place where they were held, and the links of the deceased prince with the territory and the interests of his successors.

With the Kingdom of Naples under Spanish control, the Italian peninsula could not remain on the sidelines of this event, which compromised the stability of the monarchy, internationally threatened by the Franco–Imperial Blois entente. This situation of anxiety explains why Spanish agents in Rome wanted to turn the Isabelline mourning into an expression of prestige and power before the Curia of Julius II, which had not yet normalised its relations with the Catholic Monarchs. Ambassador Francisco de Rojas and the Spanish cardinals undertook a complex negotiation—based on concessions and considerations—to obtain privileges from the Apostolic See, which the Pope ended up granting in a limited way, probably so as not to compromise his neutrality in the Spanish–French conflict and with the incipient tension between the Habsburg and Fernandine courts.

The political and religious planes did not cease to interact in the conversations, as although the Hispanic agents justified the request for the papal chapel on the grounds that she was a proprietary queen, the fifteen questions attributed to the pontiff emphasised her religious exemplarity. Julius II probably also made an effort to distinguish between the two spheres in his Solomonic decision to deny her chapel—to avoid interference in this symbolic space of the papacy and to exalt Isabelline memory by allowing the solemn celebration of her funeral rites before the Roman Curia.

In 1505, the Spanish elites designed a commemorative strategy—with liturgical, scenographic, rhetorical and editorial resources—that highlighted the contested propagandistic dimension of royal funerals in the time of the Catholic Monarchs, especially in that context of a succession crisis and international competition. As had happened during the Granada war and in the face of the dynastic events at the end of the reign, the Spanish community in Rome acted as an amplifier of Hispanic power in that "square of the world" which the Eternal City was for Ferdinand. The "propagandistic framework" intuited by Guiance is thus expanded to an extraordinary extent through being projected onto an international stage that is increasingly influential in the internal vicissitudes of the monarchy.

Inspired by the princely obsequies of 1498, the celebration of 1505 polished its ostentatious forms to transform the scandal of the time into admiration. In this exercise of liturgical seduction, a hybrid scenography was developed that combined elements of the Hispanic funerary tradition (palatial baldachin, conical dais, emblematic saturation) with Roman practices (inscriptions *all'antica*, humanist rhetoric). The result was a tumular architecture that was surprising for its elegance, expressed in its baldachin crowned with turrets, decorative sumptuousness, enveloping lighting and a colour palette that ranged from the peripheral black to the Isabelline green that lined the interior of the catafalque to the gilded coffin. Judging by the documented impressions, a ceremonial style was being created that married two artistic traditions to identify the new imperially minded monarchy that had just settled on the Italian peninsula. An interesting conclusion can be drawn from all this: the funerary ritual—usually considered a mere expression of inherited traditions—reveals a suggestive capacity to adapt to the more global and Roman nature of the Hispanic power that was taking shape at the beginning of the 16th century. This

flexibility undoubtedly made it easier for its messages of unity and conciliation to influence a papacy bent on easing the tension between the great powers and avoiding a rupture between Ferdinand the Catholic and Philip of Habsburg.

Beyond the legitimising messages that the obsequies may have projected onto the dominion of Naples or the American ecclesiastical patronage, their main objective was to respond to succession concerns in an adverse international context. Hence, their rhetorical and visual programme linked the memory of Isabella to the European power of her descendants—represented in the emblematic decoration—while the *laudatio* of Ludovico Bruno offered the Roman Curia a model of moral exemplarity that extended its influence over a peaceful transfer of power which was ultimately belied by events.

With its propagandistic virtues and liturgical anomalies, the Isabelline funeral is the result of the process of cultural osmosis experienced by the Spanish community in Rome, and its ability to translate it into an act celebrating the new monarchy that emerged from the dynastic change. In this new situation, Hispanic agents used Isabelline memory to defuse succession disputes and delegitimise any aggression against the heirs of a queen who had ruled virtuously, unified Europe and expanded Christianity beyond her kingdoms. A model of sanctity—with political implications—was thus configured, which had to have an impact on the Curia thanks to its funerary staging. Only on the basis of this overlap between the political and the liturgical in this type of ceremony will we be in a position to understand the transformations undergone by funerary ceremonies in their transition—as yet little explored—from late medieval customs to modern scenographies, as they developed at the centre of Christendom.

**Funding:** This research is part of the project *The Charisma in Medieval Spain: Rulers, Ceremonies, Objects*, funded by Gobierno de España. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ref. PID2020–116128GB–100).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


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## *Article* **Revenging Vestments: On the Chasubles of the Bishops Ildefonsus and Adaulfus (Toledo and Compostela, Tenth–Twelfth Centuries)**

**Abel Lorenzo-Rodríguez**

History Department, Faculty of Geography and History, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15704 Santiago de Compostela, Spain; abel.lorenzo.rodriguez@usc.es

**Abstract:** This article will analyze the miracle of St. Ildefonsus' chasuble (606–667) from the point of view of miracles of punishment. In comparison to previous studies, on this occasion, the Toledan story will be reconsidered not only together with that of St. Bonitus of Clermont (620–700), but also in light of the similarities with the miracle of the bishop Adaulfus II of Compostela (ninth century), and the possible late antique inspiration of both from the *Libellus Precum* and from Gregory of Tours´ hagiographies. The stories that involve Ildefonsus and Adaulfus have strong similarities in the development of their sainthoods and in the importance that is given to liturgical vestments. Both are sanctified as prelates, which is due to their miraculous possession of external attributes because of their merits when facing unfair trials.

**Keywords:** Ildefonsus of Toledo; Adaulfus of Compostela; miracle of punishment; successor; church; cathedral; chair (*cathedra*); chasuble

### **1. Introduction**

"with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not exist."

Thomas Carlyle, *Sartor Resartus*, 1833 (quoted in Flanagan 1991, p. 101)

The goal of this study is to make a contribution to solving the origins and inspiration of a miracle with related versions in a common early medieval culture, and thus, it is more than a description of direct literary sources. The aim is to portray the value of these accounts in light of the difficult transition between prelates of the same see, the intra-ecclesiastical competition, and conflict through liturgy (Larson-Miller 1997). The significance that is given to the attributes of episcopal investiture (*cathedra* and especially the chasuble) is related to this legitimacy of the government of the diocese, such as the *regalia* in the case of the royal and imperial ceremony. It is precisely these symbols of power, and especially dressing, that are the protagonists in the stories where these objects even become the executors of divine wrath, suffocating the successor of Ildefonsus in the see of Toledo, or trapping the perjurers in the case of Adaulfus in Galicia. In the nowadays world, a chasuble miracle would be reasonably judged as weird, but at the time it was an effective and astonishing story about the consequences of transgressing rules and authority. In the end, the liturgy is the public and ceremonial evidence of this confrontation, which was also a moral and successful miracle throughout the Middle Ages, judging by its diffusion among manuscripts and copies.

Following the *Vita*, which is attributed to Pseudo-Cixila (tenth century?), Ildefonsus of Toledo was honored with a miraculous dress that was given by the Virgin after the theological defense of her bodily integrity as the mother of God. The divine dress had a rule, which was, it could only be worn by Ildefonsus on certain special days. His successor

**Citation:** Lorenzo-Rodríguez, Abel. 2022. Revenging Vestments: On the Chasubles of the Bishops Ildefonsus and Adaulfus (Toledo and Compostela, Tenth–Twelfth Centuries). *Religions* 13: 338. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13040338

Academic Editor: Jaume Aurell

Received: 9 March 2022 Accepted: 5 April 2022 Published: 9 April 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

in the see of Toledo, Sisbertus or Syagrius (according to the account) dared to contravene the rule and therefore he was either exiled or was subtly killed for his transgression (Figure 1). In the case of Adaulfus, the bishop of Iria-Compostela had been charged with a nefarious crime (treason or sodomy) and, as a consequence, he was put on trial before the king in Oviedo. During the process, the king ordered the release of a wild bull against him after the mass, but when the animal encountered the bishop, it stopped miraculously and softly left its horns on his hands. Thus, an execution attempt became an ordeal. According to the second version in the *Historia Compostellana* (ca. 1120–1150), the chasuble that was used during the trial would have marvelous qualities such as the ability of judge those accused of false testimony: if they lied, they would never be to take off the chasuble. Both the version of the death/exile of Ildefonsus' successor and the addition about the properties of Adaulfus's chasuble, do not appear until the twelfth century, which indicates not only a refashioning of the stories by the Gregorian and Cluniac reformers, but likely also an earlier inspiration that was taken from the *Libellus Precum* (Book of Prayers) as well as from Gregory of Tours and his *Vitae Patrum* (Life of the Fathers).

**Figure 1.** *Como Santa Maria deu a alva/a Sant'Alifonso et Como Siágrio se vestiu/a alva, e morreu porém* ("How St. Mary gave the chasuble to St. Ildefonsus and how Siagrio put on and as a result, he died"). Alfonso X de Castilla (el Sabio), *Cantigas de Santa María*, Códice Rico Ms. T-I-1, f. 7r (1280–1284), Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, © Patrimonio Nacional.

The accounts of Ildefonsus, Bonitus, and Adaulfus (Table 1) are just the emerging stories of the unprecedented powers establishing their authority. Miracles of punishment are the large and supernatural authority that ecclesiastical writing communities tried to transmit throughout the centuries on bishops as saints. They are not just liturgical or hagiographical moralized tales; they are even more raised, with terrible divine powers that were transmitted to the land seignorial agency in the Early Middle Ages: the holy man (Brown 1971, pp. 80–101). The protection of them is based not only on the security of the people and vassals, but also on the recognition of their equality. The main element of the holiness in this article will be analyzed through clothes as a symbolic meaning in concrete social contexts (Pastoreau 1989; Dimitrova and Goehring 2014). Vestments and other regalia are not a superstitious element but are the significative portrait of power. The investments, coronations, and *adoubement* of lords, knights, kings, popes, archbishops, dukes or counts and many other authorities, make them identifiable and, thus they are reliable symbols of legitimate power (Carile 2019). However, this article focuses on clergy investments (Hayward 1971; Gordon 2001, pp. 59–95, 95–137; Piccolo Paci 2008; Miller 2014; Boesch Gajano and Sbardella 2021). Garments have been the most affordable way of making clergymen identifiable throughout the centuries (Reynolds 1983, p. 33), even

with weird parody film-scenes from pop culture, as Federico Fellini tested in *Roma* (1972) (Inglis and Thorpe 2019). In early Christian homiletics, dressing and clothes were symbols that preached to a wide audience about religious dogma. Bishop Potamius of Lisbon (ca. 350–390) wrote several homilies about some symbols, and one of them, *Epistula de substantia* (Epistle on substance), has a wide explanation about the Passion of Christ that is based on female sewing works: balls of wool are dogmas; balance is justice; weaving frame or the tunic represent the cross, white wool is pureness, and color represents the heresies. Potamius not only explained dressing in a theological sense, but also in terms of the social behavior of dressing in comparison to the latest trendy Roman attitudes; that is, the mystification and allegory on humility (Conti 1998; Yarza Urkiola 2000, pp. 274–81).


**Table 1.** Main references from the first accounts of Ildefonsus, Adaulfus, Florencius and Bonitus on miracles about chasubles and chairs as the bishop's symbolic authority.

Table 1. An anthology of some references quoted in the text.

### **2. Obscure Objects of Desire? Relics, Clothes, and Authority in the Roman and Post-Roman Era (Fourth–Eighth Centuries)**

Liturgical garments were the strongest and most endurable connection to the Roman imperial (consular and senatorial) tradition, the fancy inheritance of Rome by those in the Church who wanted to make themselves different and distinguish from lay people, especially, after the Gregorian reform (Miller 2014, pp. 177–206). In fact, the use of the *pallium* in Late Antiquity was a symbol of difference from the pagan Romans, and, during the Early Middle Ages, and later, it became a desirable garment (a narrow wool band) that was given by the Pope. Meanwhile, the tunic and the *paenula/poenula* became a "standard clerical vestment", which was associated with the idea of the Roman consul and male authority in society (Harlow 2004, p. 67). If not a chasuble, the *paenula* is a likely antecessor the chasuble as the most resemblant of the identification of the high churchmen (Piccolo Paci 2008, pp. 306–20; Pazos-López 2019, pp. 257–58). However, miracles of punishments through clothes or vestments do not belong only to Catholic or Christian culture. There was a strong classical background, with well-known references, that early medieval writers would copy, transmit, and adapt in their scripts. Maybe one of the most famous legends was the one about Heracles and his *Athlon*. In fact, more than *Athlone* it is about his dead when he was poisoned with the tunic of Nessus, as Ovidius transmitted: "he overturned/those hallowed altars, then in frenzied haste/he strove to pull the tunic from his back./The

poisoned garment, cleaving to him, ripped/his skin, heat-shriveled, from his burning flesh" (Ov. Met. 9.98 in More 1922). More than a poisoned tunic, the first full contact of Christian writers with dangerous clothes was through the use of them as martyrdom tools: the *picea tunica*, also known as *tunica molesta*, "uncomfortable tunic" or the "Shirt of Flame", which was a way of burning alive the condemned (in the words of Juvenal "to fry in the shirt of pitch" Juvenal, *Satiriae* VIII, 235 (Green 1998), and also satirized by the Hispanic poet, Martial, and his *Epigrammata*, or *Epigrams*). Very soon, this cloth became one of the most fatal symbols of suffering from Roman penal imagination, and it crossed over into the polemic Christian patristic writers, such as Tertullian in his *Ad martyres* (An Address to the Martyrs), which denounces the exhibitionism of the gladiators facing this macabre play, walking along with a burning tunic: "to run over a certain space of ground in a burning shirt" (Mateo Donet 2017; Cantarella 1991, p. 224). Many centuries later Christian copiers from the eleventh or twelfth centuries continued to describe the old-fashioned and non-practiced punishment in their maledictions and sanctions at the end of official and diplomatic documents as a very reliable way of making illiterate audiences tremble, and of even harming, in the same way, royals such as Queen Teresa of Portugal (1176–1250) in her daily life habits in Hell, which followed St. Isidore's miracles in León (Pérez Llamazares 1924, p. 101). The miracle is likely inspired in *formulae*; for example, *picea tunica* or *picea tunica circumtectus*, "covered with a burning tunic" (Montero Díaz 1935, doc. 21; Andrade Cernadas 1995, doc. 5; Ruiz Asencio 1990, doc. 1226; Herrero de la Fuente 1988, doc. 1022).

Following these Roman precedents, as a hagiographical narrative product, Ildefonsus's chasuble miracle had a predictable background that was based on common places. Attending to the Hispanic traditions, it could be the *Libellus Precum* the main and one of the oldest sources on how to transmit, with fearful miracles, a situation of bishopric competition. In the first stage, the chasuble was not as relevant as episcopal chair (*cathedra*), which was the real symbol of status. This is the way to connect the late fourth–century *Libellus Precum* with later traditions, considering that the regalia and the symbolism of power changed over time. The *Libellus* is exceptionally well-known because of early Christian conflicts, especially between the Arianism and Nicene creeds. One of the chapters about the *lapsi* bishops (apostates who renounced their faith to save their lives) describes Florencio of Mérida (320–360), who suffered a miracle of revenge. When the heretic bishop of Merida tried to sit down on his chair, a strange power pulled him out again and again until he died, deterred by this event. *Libellus* denounces the heresy of Florencio and, partly, it justifies the event as a fair punishment in the eyes of his imperial claimants and denouncers (Canellis 2006, pp. 148–51; Fernández Ubiña 1997). An early and contemporary representation of bishops using chair (*cathedra*) as the status of power is in the mosaics from Centelles (Constantí, Catalonia, Spain), which is a late antique roman *uilla*, following the Javier Arce and Amancio Isla interpretation. Both academics link the palace and the mosaics with the self-representation of the bishops from Tarragona (Tarraco), dressed in liturgical garments (Isla 2002, pp. 37–51); however just as in Florencio's dead, the *cathedrae* show the status and relevance of episcopal power.

For all that, sacred garments became a way of social distinction and sacred power, and they were not only luxury items. Overall, chasubles were the most representative liturgical garments that were, many times, used as luxurious possessions too. In fact, a few references show that the chasubles were desirable objects among Hispanic churchmen since an early time. In the collection of Visigoth epistles, the Agapius correspondence is relevant because of his information about high-class lay people (Gil 1972, pp. 37–44). In one of them the epistle is addressed to an unknown bishop who begged for a promised chasuble that was given as a gift that was never delivered. However, not all churchmen saw the luxurious garments in the same way. The Visigoth émigré and reformer, Benedict of Aniane (747–821) (Noble and Head 1995, pp. 222–23), refused completely any silken chasuble and, even more, any special vestment attending divine vigils, and, instead, he dressed himself in humble blankets, following Ardo's *Vita* which is a very rare exception of extreme poverty because priests mainly desired to wear their own garments in very

personal and possessing ways. The Mozarabic priest and writer, Paul Albar of Cordoba (800–861), denounced fiercely in an epistle how Saulus gave his own chasuble to Salomon who was anathemized, which was unacceptable behavior towards personal belongings, and which had tragic consequences (Gil 1973, pp. 37–40).

The event, which is characterized by Ildefonsu's successor, and his chasuble, is an example among many others. Some clothes became main characters in sacred happenings when their owners were in danger or, at least, when they were in a struggle to maintain their authority. Liturgical vestments, such as tunics, chasubles, and stoles were desirable objects to rulers and kings, who were eager to obtain their miraculous properties of collective protection, which were used in the most holy moments by the most holy men (Tausiet 2015). Vestments are only empty signifiers that contain the idea of priesthood and rite (Haulotte 1966). The idea of luxury fits with the idea of authority to create the resemblance of a priest, who is not too elegant or too much poor in his clothes. The extreme and penitential poverty of some monks could be trouble if they were not aware of the social big picture. In the *Vitas Sanctorum Patrum Emeretensium* (Lives of the Holy Fathers of Merida) (seventh century) the appearance of abbot Nanctus's extreme penance finished with his murder because people did not want to work for such a poor man. He does not deserve to be the master in accordance with his look: "Let us go and see what this master we have been given is like. When they went and had seen him in his wretched clothes and with his hair uncut, they despised him ( ... ) It would be better for us to die than serve such a master" (Fear 1997, p. 57). In contrast, Bishop Masona of Merida (in the same *Lives*) promoted a luxurious and fashionable liturgical Easter performance, dressing a group of boys with silky clothes to pay him due homage, "as if they were in attendance on a King, and wearing this apparel, something that in those days no one had been able or presume to do" (Fear 1997, p. 76).

Representative not only of luxury, and social distinction, but also marvelous protection in judicial court, vestments were worn by the saints who were facing false charges and violence as critical ordeals. Following Gregory of Tours, Saint Brice, his predecessor in the same episcopal see in Gallia, decided to put embers in his own vestments to show that they were not harmful, despite the predictable burning effect, in order to obtain innocence after he was charged with sexual misconduct. In this way, he could avoid public execution by an enraged mob. Decades after, this account would be readapted by the same Ildefonsus in the hagiography of Montano, archbishop of Toledo (523–531). The miracle was copied with the same purpose in order to underline the powers of bishop garments (Brehaut 1916, pp. 21–22; Codoñer Merino 1972, pp. 112–13, 120–21). However, reactions such as these are not always welcomed, and particularly when they trespass on the honorable uses that are linked to the cloth and the holy man. The devotion of Saint Aemilian (473–574) in Iberia, even during his life, provoked tumultuous attempts to obtain something from his belongings. Following the hagiography that is attributed to Braulius of Zaragoza (585–651), a group of poor people robbed the clothes of Saint Aemilian, and one of them tried to wear them. In the end, they struggled with how to share the valuable new goods, and they hit those who wanted to dress in the saint vestments with presumptuous manners. The risk, attitude, and punishment are enormously relevant considering later information about the clothes of Ildefonsus and Adaulfus, and the final purpose of the miracle of punishment. Only the holy man could wear the sacred vestments; a sacred elite could enjoy divine signs far away from any poor or malicious people (Fear 1997, p. 34).

This works more clearly for relics. The use of non-corporeal relics, but of related objects with a saint or a martyr, is well known in Hispanic accounts during the Visigoth period. Two relevant cities, Zaragoza and Merida, looked forward to special protection with the clothes of their saints' patronages, Saint Vincent Levite and Saint Eulalia, respectively. Gregory of Tours (*Historiae* or History of the Franks) made and approximated a portrait of this situation after the siege of Zaragoza by the king Childebertus, during the Merovingian wars in Hispania. Although the pious account hides a hard Merovingian defeat, the episode shed light on how the people of Zaragoza protected the city walls with a procession of Saint Vincent's tunic and a penance performance (Brehaut 1916, p. 67), such as the Biblical

Nineveh. In Merida, Saint Eulalia was the most important martyr in Iberia during the Early Middle Ages. The wide and fast spread of her devotion also shared a shakable miracle, even against the royals. Leovigildus (died 586), the Arian King, claimed for the saint girl a tunic against the Catholic bishop of Merida. The Bishop, Masona refused to hand over the cloth and, immediately, he was exiled as punishment. However, just as in Aemilian's precedent episode, the martyr, Eulalia, appeared in a vision to Leovigildus, deterred him from taking her tunic, and ordained not to own it ever. Of course, her speech was adorned with a warning of hard blows of lashes on the king's back (Fear 1997, p. 85). The situation of religious beliefs in Hispania was more difficult than in Gallia if the critical situation between Arianism and Catholicism inside society is considered. On the contrary, the use of all these sacred vestments could be use in a different manner: to denounce demons treats in advance of heavenly vestments sent by miracle. Sulpicius Severus (363–425) wrote the first life of Saint Martin of Tours (316–397), and he included, in one of the chapters, the forgery of a sacred vestment. In the miracle, Anatolius was a monk (but only in appearance) who tried to convince the rest of his companions in the monastery that a marvelous garment had been sent to him from Heaven. It was depicted as a "white robe out of heaven" with "glittering purple" (similar to some high-class and imperial Roman clothes) and he showed it as the main evidence of the miracle. However, the prodigious vestment suddenly disappeared when some suspicious men like Clarus decided to send the garment to Saint Martin. The garment was not a heaven robe but a demonic work (Noble and Head 1995, p. 25).

### **3. Reused Vestments, Memory, and Symbolism (Ninth-Thirteenth Centuries)**

The real and factual provenance of these textiles had a human origin which was not even purely Christian. Despite the rare material survival of vestments from the early medieval period, there are great examples that are preserved as relics (Pazos-López 2019, pp. 274–75) or in museums (Miller 2014, pp. 153–76), and especially from Late-Antique Near East and Egypt (Gervers 1983, pp. 279–316). During Early and High Middle Ages, the most tantalizing textiles in West Latin Europe came from Eastern Asia and the Muslim dominions and, in detail, via Al-Andalus. The combination of exquisite handcraftsmanship, deep colors, geometrical patterns, and even Kufic scripts linked these precious objects to the relevant twelfth-century hagiographies of bishops across Europe such as St. Aldhelm, St. Thomas Beckett, or Edmund, not only through hagiographical creations, but also through very-well-preserved garments as relics in the Fermo Cathedral (Italy) and in Saint-Quiriace Church in Provins (Île-de-France, France). With regard to St. Aldhelm one of his first hagiographers, William of Malmesbury (ca. 1080–1143), describes in the *Gesta Pontificum Anglorum* (Deeds of the English Bishops), the precious chasuble designs and how the monks carefully preserved it:

"Now this vestment, which may have accompanied Aldhelm from England, or may have been lent to him in Rome for the occasion, is still kept in our monastery. An item of apparel that played a part in such a miracle is preserved with all care; the sacristans do everything to ensure that it will go on feeding the eyes of the passing generations unimpaired. It is of the most slender thread, that has drunk its purple hue from the juices of shellfish; and on it black roundels contain within them pictured peacocks. It is long as well as beautiful, which tells us that the saint was a tall man." (Winterbottom 2019, p. 551)

Perhaps, one of the most relevant by his huge size that is the chasuble attributed to St. Thomas Beckett, which is preserved in Fermo Cathedral, and which has an Andalusian origin, according to the most recent iconographic analysis and market exchanges from Iberia to southern Italy (Shalem 2017). The chasuble shows the same origin and a similar design to the relic-chasuble of St. Edmund of Canterbury in Saint-Quiriace (after Edmund´s exile from England), with an Iberian connection as John Williams argues (Williams 1993, p. 107). The route and origin of these vestments from distant countries is also described in the first hagiography of Martinus of León (d. 1203), who was a prestigious Hispanic theologian. After his pilgrimage to Constantinople, Martinus decided to buy a magnificent

silky chasuble (*pallium* or *planetae*) as a gift to his monastery in León, San Marcelo. However, in Beziers (*civitate Veterensi*) the pilgrim Martinus was put in prison because the judge of the city thought that he had robbed the sacred clothes from another place (*Vita Sancti Martini*, 7 written by Bishop Lucas of Tuy) (Viñayo González 1948, p. 230). The punishment is a perfect topic, and it shows the relevance of luxury garments as a social distinction, as well as the exotic origins of some of these clothes in Western Europe from the Byzantine or Muslim dominions.

Now that the origin and precedents have been partially explained, it is time to ask about ecclesiastical symbolism. The relevance of hagiography and of the miracles of chasubles is linked to rich symbolism. The reading of the chasuble´s liturgical meaning was provided in early medieval Iberia by a particular writer: the Mozarabic priest, Leovigildus of Cordoba (ca. 800–850). His writing, *De habitu clericorum* (On priesthood clothes), was the first on the topic in Iberia since Isidore of Seville attributed to Ossius of Cordoba (†360) a lost work on the interpretation of sacred vestments following the Old Testament (Haulotte 1966; Codoñer Merino 1964, p. 39). Even the same Isidore in his widespread compendium of *Liber Etimologiarum* (Etymologies), wrote about the chasuble as a little house where men remain: "The *casula* is a hooded garment, named as a diminutive of 'hut' (*casa*), because it covers the whole person, like a small hut. Whence also the 'hood' (*cuculla*), as if it were a smaller chamber (*cella*)" (Barney 2006, p. 387). As the *casula* covers the man, it becomes a little house for him (see example in Figure 2). Isidore's antique interpretation could be quite innocent if it is compared with the ninth-century writings of Leovigildus. The chasuble symbolism of Leovigildus is macabre and obscure, and it relates the vestment to a shroud that covers the body, and even the head, as the last cloth inside the coffin. A few decades before, the monk, Beatus of Liébana (730–798), following garment symbolism, defended the use of it as a clerical discipline cloth for penance, linking the Tunic and Christ, and Christ and the Church, in his book, the *Apologeticus* (liber II, 45–49 in Löfstedt 1984), which was written against the archbishop, Elipandus of Toledo (715–802). Despite the very recognized authority of Isidore and his famous patristic background, Leovigildus did not build his writing on Isidore´s knowledge, and, instead he credits St. Torcuatus as the founder of the monastic use of the cloth (*pelliza*) which later became a secular clergy garments (*casulla*) (Gil 1973, pp. 667–84). Even more, and this is relevant for further information, the chasuble makes the difference: it individualizes bishops and distinguishes them from the rest of the priests. When, in Ildefonsus's miracle, Siagrio is dead after his unrespectable attitude, at first, the chasuble is only a vestment, but it suddenly became, according to Leovigildus´s understanding, a shroud. The symbolism of clothes, and miracle´s purpose are connected in order to terrify the audience's hearts, and cause them to remember through the chasuble, the shortness of life, which deterred them (*uisum eorum terrificet*) (Schmitz-Esser 2020). Leovigildus' symbolism is linked with a famous precedent passage in the same *Vita* of Ildefonsus, when St. Leocadia, the martyr, rises miraculously from the dead, giving a piece of her own shroud to the bishop as a relic. In a purer liturgical sense, the stole is symbolized as a strong garment against the original Sin (*preuaricatione primi parentis*) and the chasuble as the simile with Christ's yoke (*iugum meum suabe est*), following the blessings of church the garments in the *Liber Ordinum sacerdotal*, which was the more important liturgical book in Iberia before the Roman reform at the end of eleventh century (Janini 1981, pp. 91–92). The transition of the Gregorian reform relinquished some old-fashioned theological readings in favor of a new scholastic point of view (Pazos-López 2015, pp. 12–13). However, in general, the chasuble became more and more important as a restricted and privileged cloth for archbishops (Braun 1907, pp. 149–83).

**Figure 2.** A pope wearing a chasuble (in a Isidorian meaning of *casulla*) or an alb. *Siricius papa*. Detail from Codex Albeldensis (976), Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de el Escorial, cod. d-I-2 (2º), f. 254r. ©Patrimonio Nacional.

### **4. Copying Gregory? Gregory of Tour's Accounts and the Bonitus Connection**

The precedents and symbolism were not only an Iberian issue, but, in fact they were strongly connected to early French hagiographies, which created a common inspiration in Iberian late narratives. Gregory of Tours, when he wrote the life of his own uncle, Nicetius, bishop of Lyon (513–573), he decided to describe the most relevant events after his dead in order to revenge attitudes of his successors. In this way, the miracles after Nicetius's dead followed the same pattern of competitiveness inside the diocese, against his successor, the bishop, Priscus, who humiliated and dishonored the inheritance of Nicetius by using his sacred vestments as daily clothes. The public display was a very fine show that provoked the saint's wrath when Priscus cut the huge hood to make a pair of socks with it. Nicetius's miracle stretched Priscus´s feet in extreme pain, until the successor realized his fault and begged pardon (James 2007, p. 56). Local traditions about Nicetius are also strongly connected to the bishop of Lyon, Saint Bonitus, as Nicetius´s successor and with chasuble prodigies. Some versions of his life were widespread after his death until the thirteenth century, but the oldest life of this bishop was written earlier, in the eighth century.

The tradition of Bonitus´s hagiography appears in later references, and it obtained specific details throughout the centuries, which has been mostly linked since the early times with Ildefonsus in the great High and Late medieval Marian compilations (Mussafia 1887– 1898; Kjellman 1922; Lozinski 1938), and, in fact, starting seventeenth-century, Catholic and erudite scholars like Tomás Tamayo de Vargas (1588–1641), put on the scene of this relationship between both (Lozinski 1938, p. 15). In the first *Vita* of the saint, there are no references about miracles that are linked with his chasuble, and the list of relics in Clermont Cathedral (tenth century) did not include the chasuble in the treasure (Lozinski 1938, p. 8). The first evidence appears in a hymn that is attributed to Herbert de Losinga, the first bishop of Norwich (†1119), in which Saint Bonitus receives the chasuble from the Virgin, as did Ildefonsus. The successor of Bonitus, a drunk man, dishonored the church and as a consequence, he was miraculously expelled from the sacred building, by way of a little exile. As a result, the comparison between Ildefonsus and Bonitus has a similar hagiographic tradition that seeks to maintain their authority against the dishonor of sacred objects. The importance of these objects, as vestments, could be linked with the translation of Nicetius relic from Lyon to Clermont, which inspired Bonitus´s life from

before the Nicetius accounts of Gregory of Tours. French writers from the eleventh and twelfth centuries were aware of Gregory´s heritage in Auvergne (*Arvernus*), and precisely along the cultural border between the Goths and the Gauls in the lands of Bonitus´s diocese (*Gothorum et Gallorum limes*) (Lozinski 1938, p. 111; Kjellman 1922, p. 158). In latter versions from the thirteenth-century (in Vincent de Beauvais and Gautier de Coincy), the topic of Bonitus´s chasuble and chair appears again, which underline Herbert´s old references on the dignity of garments, and on the punishment of drunk misconduct in the church of his successors:

*Venit igitur procax, præsumptuosus intrauit illam officinam sobrietatis, cibo & potu ingurgitatus. Et quia laborabat ebrietate, subito sepultus est graui sopore. Et tamen in his omnibus non est conuersus in sacrilegum furor Domini, sed flagitiosum sine flagello dimittens, miraculose eum a sanctificationis suæ domo longe fecit* (So he came, impudent and presumptuous, and entered in this school of sobriety full of food and drink. Being drunk, he suddenly fell into a deep sleep. Yet, despite all this, the Lord did not unleash His fury on the sacrilegious one: He sent the scandalously behaved individual away without lashing him and miraculously removed him from the dwelling where He was being sanctified). (Société des Bollandistes 1965, Acta Sanctorum, p. 1076)

Despite some theories on the Cluniac origins of the Ildefonsus miracle, it is likely that Bonitus´s hagiography was built on Hispanic references because very early Ildefonsus devotion in the north of the Pyrenees was linked with to his relics and specially the famous chasuble (Lozinski 1938, p. 21; Rucquoi 1998, p. 120). In this way, when the Cluniac Bernard de Sedirac (French clergyman, archbishop of Toledo, died 1128), arrived in Toledo, there was a huge background on Ildefonsus's work, devotion, and relics.

### **5. Why Exile and Death? Adaulfus and Ildefonsus in Judicial and Political Contexts**

Once this Hispanic and Gallic hagiographical tradition is clear, it is easier to understand in context Adaulfus and his traditions. The first reference appears in the *Historia Compostellana* (The History from Compostela, or more properly, the Deeds of archbishop Diego Gelmírez, from the second part of twelfth century), but not in the older short chronicle that is known as *Cronicon Iriense* (Chronicon from Iria Flavia, near Santiago and the original place of the see), (García Álvarez 1963, p. 111). The reference is as follows:

*Cuius equidem infula, cum qua ipse in die prefati examines Missam celebrauit, tante uirtutis diuinitus extitit, quod, si quis alicui sacramentum daturus illam indueret et forte periurus existeret, ea profecto exui nullatenus ualeret* (Falque Rey 1988, p. 10) (By divine miracle the chasuble with which he celebrated mass on the day of judgment was of such great virtue that, if anyone wear it making an oath to another and by chance were a perjurer, he could by no means take it off.)

Despite the triumph of Adaulfus against the king, the bishop was exiled and died in Asturias, far away from his diocese. Then, in the Adaulfus tradition, his chasuble was used as an ordeal instrument, as a practical relic, and as a wonderful garment not only against his successors, but also any perjurer judged in the dioceses in the future, who could also be trapped by the *infula*. Regarding the reverence, another episode in the same *Historia Compostellana* shows how the robberies and attacks against the archbishop, Diego Gelmírez, focused on his valuable possessions, and especially on the chasuble. A group of rebel knights raided the chapel and cut off the vestments in order to adorn their own lay robes (Falque Rey 1988, p. 93; Martínez Sopena 2013, p. 273). Even more, the vestment is called in the Adaulfus and Gelmírez episodes, as *infula* which establishes a connection between both. In the Adaulfus story, the references fit very well with the cauldron, or hot iron trials, and with the relevance of garments to the sacralization of the process until 1215. If, in many writings, rituals appear as interesting references to unclothe the accused from their secular wearing, in just a few Hispanic mentions, the ritual explains how to proceed carefully when dressing them with clerical vestments. This fact, which was quoted in nineteenth-century by the historian Villaamil y Castro shed light on the different rituals that were linked with the cauldron and cold water in the Codex of Cardona and Ripoll, from eastern Iberia, and that were, at the same time, strongly connected with Judge Bonhomo of Barcelona starting eleventh century (Villaamil y Castro 1881, pp. 34–36). In both the Cardona and Ripoll ritual books, dressing in sacred clothes is related to the ordeal of the exorcism ritual, and precisely to an exorcist or deacon, who were members of the minor ecclesiastical orders. However, not all the mentions of rituals from Iberia show this interest in undressing and dressing the blamed people; in fact, the ritual from Tortosa Cathedral (Villanueva 1803–1806, p. 24) mentions that they must be nude (*exuat illos vestimentis eorum*), but it does not mention how to dress them again or with what. The only comparative writing was found in Bamberg, Germany, in which the ritual explains that the accused must wear sacred vestments, but not the chasuble (Zeumer 1886, pp. 613–14, 650). Furthermore, clothes are used to completely protect the innocent, not only just as conducted by churchmen, but also the clothing itself. However, these are, in fact, exceptions; Iberian ritual does not fit with the main references, as Dominique Barthèlemy defends: "Elle ne se prête pas ou peu au trucage—l'homme ou la femme sont nus-" (Barthelèmy 1988, p. 17). The mention of judging the chasuble as it relates to this is very well known, specially, in Iberian ordeal rituals and, in this way, Adaulfus´s chasuble does not seem to be a weird reference against perjurers. Adaulfus miracle is not only an Iberian issue. In fact, it is probable that Girald of Beauvais, one of the *Compostellana's* three main writers, was responsible for modifying and expanding the first reference from the *Cronicon Iriensis* and for the information about bishops before Gelmírez, following a previous Nuño Afonsus work in the same chronicle (Falque Rey 1988, pp. XV–XVI). The reference on Girald´s discourse fits very well with the precedent tradition of not only Nicetius and Bonitus, but also Ildefonsus on the supernatural powers of chasubles and garments.

The medieval ordeal rituals were entangled with the liturgy of purification, (as a part of the exorcism), and it was used also to confess in judicial courts. One of the best miracles about the power of liturgical clothes against demonic possessions is the *Narratio de reliquis* (History of the relics of Oviedo, ca. 1180) (also known, as *Translatio reliquiarum Ovetum* (Translation of the relics to Oviedo), which is a short miracle story about the most valuable relics of Oviedo Cathedral and how they arrived there. In the last part of the story, the *Narratio* tells of the birth and struggle against the demon of Oria, who is a young girl who had been possessed by the demon since she was born. Oria's mother was pregnant after a rape; therefore, she was cursed, even before her birth. The exorcism was performed in the church of Oviedo and the priests put the stoles and liturgical garments on Oria healing her from demonic influence. The first step was the burning of the polluted clothes of the young girl, which the *Narratio* describes as smelling like burned bones and the eggs of dragons, with the same stink, which is unelidable proof of demonic possession (Martín-Iglesias 2020, p. 104). Just as in the ritual of monks who relinquished their lay clothes to dress in monastic robes, the performance of the exorcism and ordeal is to argue over who is the owner of Oria, the demon or the Church. The monks faced with the ownership of the soul, and they burnt the clothes to favor the battle against the demon. Nevertheless, exorcism became assimilated with property litigation. The priests of Oviedo, who put on their stoles in a tour de force, of course, successfully solved the problem in favor of the cathedral, strangling with the stole the neck of the possessed girl until the demon gave up: *Iniecta igitur stola collo eius, cepit gemendo dicere: «Tu me strangulas» Archidiaconus dixit: «Exi!»* (Martín-Iglesias 2020) ("Putting the stole on her neck, fighting with it, and shouting: *You strangled me!* The archdeacon said: *Go out!*") In the *Narratio*, also, appears also the first evidence of the death by suffocation of Siagrius-Sisbertus, after the offense against Ildefonsus, and it is not casual. There is a strong connection between the same punishments that resembles the ecclesiastical authority over dominions, people, and the hierarchy. The tradition of this miracle´s uses, and the healing results, have grown up since the early references of passionaries, the sacred dialogues, and the lives of the saints (Yarza Urkiola 2020, p. 521). Moreover, from the thirteenth-century book of miracles of

Saint Aemilian (*Liber Miraculorum Beatissimi Emiliani*), in Castile, a possessed Galician knight was healed after being protected with the presbyter's chasuble, which repelled demon influence: *aufugit et se inter sacerdotem qui celebravat intromisit et de casula presbiteri et de aulea altaris* (he went out and between the priest and the presbyter's chasuble and the place of the altar) (Button 1967, p. 43). Moreover, the superstitious and excessive beliefs on the use of garments on corpses were punished with strong penances in the *Silense* Penitential (tenth century) which banned the use of them on the body as a protection in the afterlife (Bezler 1994, p. 234).

The *Narratio* is a marvelous work, and it is the product of an exquisite and high-culture hagiographical expertise, with binding precedents; however very similar stories could be found in real life through documents (with judicial, not historical intentions). In some cases, reality is extraordinary linked with these facts. Starting in the thirteenth century, the canon of the Cathedral of León, Pedro Lambert, charged a priest with murder. The priest, Iohannis, was accused of the murder of a woman after (or during) her exorcism. Witnesses explained how, just as Oria before, the possessed woman was tied with a stole around her neck while the priest took her nose, and immediately after, the woman was found dead in her own house (*ipse teneret stolam ad gulam eius et faceret ei exorcismum*). Ten years later, a group of neighbors told, in court, how the demoniac woman was found dead and of the suspicious behavior of Iohannis, who flew rashly to Rome and desisted from celebrating mass in the following years. Two of the witnesses, Petrus Fecuz and his wife Maria, told how the priest hold the nose of the woman while she was dressed in the stole (*misit stolam ad gulam cuiusdam mulieris demoniace*). The trial shows the reality of this very violent process of superstitions about demoniac possessions, and what is interesting here, of the miraculous and dangerous power that is attributed to garments (Fernández Catón 1991, doc. 1912, doc. 404–405).

It seems clear that all this cultural and social background affected the transformation of the stories and their transmission. The first reference to Ildefonsus's miracle is in the *Vita*, which was written by, or is attributed to, Ps-Cixila. This first hagiography has two different chronological frames: one defends the Mozarabic origin in the tenth century, and the other links the *Life* with a Gregorian French writer after the Toledo defeat by Christians (Gil 1973; Yarza Urkiola 2006). Juan Gil and Valeriano Yarza defend opposite theories, but over-all, a relevant aspect here is how the story changed throughout the decades, from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries with new and very violent details. In this early version (Cixila's), the successor of Ildefonsus is called Sisbertus (not *Siagrius*), and he is not dead, but he was exiled after sitting on his predecessor's chair. Halfway between the early and later versions, the *Narratio de reliquis*, from Cambrai manuscript (a. 1180), inserts a version with new facts. The successor of Ildefonsus is now called Siagrio (*Insiagrio*) and the consequences of his irresponsibility are worse because he is not exiled, but dead. As soon as Siagrio puts the chasuble on him and sits him on the chair, he immediately falls onto the ground, fulminated (Martín-Iglesias 2020). This last version would be the most successful over time, especially in thirteenth-century Marianism legends and poems such as the *Vitae Sanctorum* (Lives of the Saints) of Rodrigo Cerrato; the *Cantigas de Santa María* (Songs of Saint Mary, see Figure 1); *De rebus Hispaniae* (On Hispania's deeds) by Jimenez de Rada; the *Miracles de Notre Dame* (Miracles of Our Lady) by Gautier de Coincy; or Juan Gil de Zamora and his *De liber Mariae* (Book of Saint Mary). For example, one of these earlier canon collections of Marian miracles describes the miracle of punishment: *Illo sacro uestimento induit. Sed statim, ulciscente Deo presumpcionem eius, intactus, eodem uestimento arcius constrictus, mortuus cecidit* (He put on that sacred vestment. But God punished his arrogance, because, untouched, he fell dead, suffocated by his own garment) (Carrera de la Red and Carrera de la Red 2000, pp. 170–211).

What could be the reason for charging one of the Ildefonsu's successors with this punishment? After 711, the situation of the Toledan diocese became harder and harder. The end of the Visigoth Kingdom and the Islamic conquest implied a new order, where bishops were not as relevant as before; however Islamic invasions were not the reason to exile a bishop. The problems went farther than religious beliefs. Sisbertus is likely identified as the archbishop, Sisbertus (690–693), who was a well-known high officer in the Toledan court who was charged with conspiring and plotting against King Egica (690–693). After that, the king imprisoned him, putting an end to his rule. Even during many decades, some scholars have identified the bishop as the author of *Lamentum poenitentiae* (Penitential lament), and of *Oratio pro correptione uitae* (Prayer to Life Amendment); however, nowadays the latest research proves that the former archbishop was not the writer (Cancela Cilleruelo 2021). Sisbertus was the symbol of a treacherous courtesan in the last days of the Visigoth kingdom, and it was an excellent model to oppose Ildefonsus's canonical and wonderful deeds in the bishopric. Even more, after the Islamic conquest, other bishops in Toledo fled in order to avoid of the cruelest consequences of power struggle not only between Muslim and Christians but also between Berbers and Arabs. Sisbertus was the reference name, but during the thirteenth-century new protagonists were added to the last versions, even in different episodes. In the *Vita Ildefonsi* of Pseudo-Cixila, in the *Vita* of the twelfth century from Sahagún monastery, in the version of Jimenez de Rada and Juan Gil de Zamora, and in the king of Castile, Alfonso the Wise´s *Estoria de Espanna* (History of Spain), Sisbertus is exiled after the miracle, with no more consequences. However, the tradition starting the *Narratio de reliquis*, the *Vitae Sanctorum* by Rodrigo Cerrato, the Marian miracles of Gautier de Coincy, Caesarius of Heisterbach, and Juan Gil de Zamora, and the *Cantigas de Santa María* describe the punishment and death of Siagrius because of his sinful attitude. Two characters and two versions at the end of 1200, mixed in the same story to fit the argument that more than a bishop suffered divine anger and was exiled or murdered by the divine wrath.

### **6. Conclusions: The Bishop's Authority and Sacred Deterrence via Objects**

The city of Toledo was during all of the first part of the Middle Ages, a melting and conflictive pot throughout the centuries of Arianism vs. Catholicism, Christians vs. Jews, Christians vs. Muslims, Mozarabic Christians vs. Gregorian reformers, and even of French, Castilians, and Galician people racing to establish their own and recognized spaces of power and influence. In this atmosphere it is easy to know how hard being an archbishop, with wide responsibility over this situation, could be. Since the first steps of the city, as the main political center of the Visigoth era, the same Ildefonsus painfully recorded and grieved the accounts of his predecessors. For example, Iustus of Toledo (†633) was murdered by his own servants after after insulting the archbishop, Eladius (Codoñer Merino 1972, pp. 112–13). Hagiography seeks a strong contrast between sanctity and sin, good and bad and there is the same dark contrast among the predecessors of archbishop of the Archbishop Gelmírez in the diocese, who were looking not only for the perfect bishops, such as Adaulfus and his chasuble, but also for cruelest attitudes in many others.

After the very famous miracle tales about revenging chasubles, healing garments, and textile relics, there existed the significance, from a very deep sense, of ecclesiastical authority in Iberia that was performed through the liturgy. Clothes prevented the evil consequences of demons, healing garments protected against diseases and revenging chasubles executed the divine wrath. How can we reconcile the idea of these very miracle-effective garments with the social reality? Primarily, because the idea of sanctuary immunity is not only based on places but also on clergymen and their clothes. Liturgy, in this sense, is more concerned with social problems than with only performativity and religious esthetics (Flanagan 1991, pp. 99–103). Touching only one of these textile fibers could represent the difference between death and life in the seizure of criminals. In the end, churchmen were, in some way, sanctuaries in motion with double privileges: one for the criminal and the absolution, the other for the priest himself, in his distinction from the rest of society. In stark contrast to fantasy models, there is a reality that is very fond inside to a society that faces unfair punishments and, overall, flight from imprisonments, executions, and blood feuds. However, these garments could be a relief or, in contrast, the fatal punishment cloth. Finishing the eleventh century in Aragón, King Sancho Ramírez of Aragón sanctioned

the privileges of Alquézar clergymen and defended the reverence of their garments in pardoning criminal offences. A murderer could be safe from his enemies if he touched clergy clothes when the priests were in travel. In this way, the result of touching clothes was identical to being inside the church as a sanctuary, and it stopped any future executions or corporal revenge against criminals, if their enemies did not want to face a stiff monetary penalty (Barrios Martínez 2010, p. 12).

The miracle's narratives show dynamic and conflictive social relations. The more the story is spread, the more the coincidence with the social concerns are founded. Stories are based on common places, but this does not imply only unreal accounts. In this case, the use of oaths and ordeals during trials, and the reverence towards body and clothes relics, builds up the image of the bishop as a holy man with deterrent powers. The Cluny reform, and the stronger power of dioceses, reinforced a new sense of bishops and their struggle with monks and the regular clergy dominion on ecclesiastical issues before the twelfth century. The violent echoes from the past in the old stories of Montano's murder were re-enacted in High Middle Ages with the same troubles, were repeated once and again and were adapted with harder punishments against those who crossed the Church's social authority. The most relevant miracles that are related with judicial proofs show a strong relation with the ordeal rituals that were assimilated with the liturgy until the first decades of the thirteenth century. Particularly, ritual was processed via garments in order to change status from lay to religious as a way of protection. If miracles were, in this sense, an imaginative answer, ordeals and proofs represented a factual dimension. Nevertheless, miracles had the purpose of spreading the power to judge, and that is the key to the success of these narratives.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

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## *Article* **A Polysemic Interpretation of the West Façade of Saint-Martin-de-Besse: Time, Space, and Chiasmus Carved in Stone**

**Anna-Maria Moubayed**

Religion and Civil Society Research Group, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra, 31009 Pamplona, Spain; amoubayed@external.unav.es

**Abstract:** This article explores the sculptural programme of the west portal of Saint-Martin-de-Besse, which places Penance and the Eucharist sacraments at the centre of its polysemic narratives, forming chiastic sequences. Concerned with the fall of humankind and the history of redemption, the portal of Besse presents a series of enigmatic figures from the Old and New Testaments, along with an early Christian figure, Saint Eustace. In this article, I first present a brief historical overview of the church and its surroundings and then proceed with an iconographical survey of its portal. I argue that the series of sculpted narrative vignettes forming the west façade of Besse are polysemic as they carry multiple meanings. Focusing on salvation through (re)conversion, where the liturgical sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist are fundamental, these polysemic narratives form and perform four distinct chiasmus interchanges involving the Garden of Eden, where time and space are in constant dialogue.

**Keywords:** Eve; Romanesque sculpture; time; space; liturgy; original sin; iconography; Genesis; semiotic; sacred drama

We are separated from God on both sides: The Tree of Knowledge separates us from Him, and the Tree of Life separates Him from us.1

(Kafka 1953)

### **1. Introduction**

Situated in a charming village in the Périgord, the French Romanesque church of Saint-Martin-de-Besse presents a fascinating west façade, a rarity in the region (Figures 1 and 2). The west façade of Besse includes a portal composed of a variety of isolated narratives from the Old and New Testaments, along with a scene from the story of an Early Christian figure, Saint Eustace. Saint-Martin-de-Besse has received little scholarly attention to date, with five publications mentioning its architectural and sculptural programme and the iconographical meaning of its portal (Brugière 1882, pp. 3–8; Secret 1968, pp. 227–32; Dubourg-Noves 1982; Saxon 2006, pp. 79–86 and Palazzo 2017). Archival materials on its architecture are rather modest as the rural church's documents and archives, its surrounding monuments, and other associated buildings have not survived the test of time, numerous wars over the centuries, nor the French Revolution.<sup>2</sup> As a result, retracing the building's history is challenging, and proposing an exact date for its construction is difficult.

**Citation:** Moubayed, Anna-Maria. 2022. A Polysemic Interpretation of the West Façade of Saint-Martinde-Besse: Time, Space, and Chiasmus Carved in Stone. *Religions* 13: 152. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13020152

Academic Editor: Marina Montesano

Received: 24 December 2021 Accepted: 21 January 2022 Published: 10 February 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

**Figure 1.** *Saint-Martin Church*, west façade, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

The earliest account of the church is found in a hand-written document from 1882 by Chanoine Hippolyte Brugière (Brugière 1882, pp. 3–8). It relates an unconfirmed history of Saint-Martin-de-Besse and the geography and complex history of its region. Published in 1968 as a book chapter in the *Zodiaque* series, Jean Secret offers the first overview of Besse, with a concise interpretation of its portal (Secret 1968, pp. 227–32). In 1979, Pierre Dubourg-Noves provided the most complete study with an overview of the church as an ensemble (Dubourg-Noves 1982, pp. 245–54). His article includes details of Saint-Martin's interior and exterior decorations, together with a concise introduction to its history. In 2006, Elizabeth Saxon proposed a brief discussion of the penitential-Eucharistic iconographical programme of Besse, in a chapter devoted to similarly themed portals in Romanesque France from *The Eucharist in Romanesque France: Iconography and Theology* (Saxon 2006, pp. 79–86). Most recently, in 2014, Eric Palazzo suggested a compelling interpretation of the historiated, sculptural programme of Besse, focused on a well-articulated study of the sensorial references of its narratives, mostly orbiting around the Apocalypse and the Eucharistic sacrament (Palazzo 2017, pp. 127–49). These five publications serve as a starting point for this comprehensive study of the iconographical programme of the west façade of Saint-Martin-de-Besse.

Adding to previous scholarship, I propose a new approach to the reading of its west façade that considers polysemy, a term used in philology to designate a word that encapsulates multiple meanings, making it lexically ambiguous. Applying polysemy to the iconographical vocabulary of Besse, I argue that its various narratives carry multiple meanings.3 Treated as unstable texts carved in stone, and with a focus on time and space—both

the terrestrial and the liturgical—I also argue that the narrative vignettes of Besse offer a more global and stable narrative plot, made possible through a series of overarching chiastic interchanges. Often used in the Bible, these literary devices allow different narratives to mirror each other to focus on a central idea. I propose that the central idea of the chiastic narratives of Besse is concerned with salvation through (re)conversion, where the liturgical sacrament of the Eucharist is fundamental.

**Figure 2.** Saint-Martin Church, colour-coded chart. ©Author.

In this article, I first survey the historical and iconographical context of Besse, as well as the narratives forming its west façade. Then, I present an iconographical analysis of its narratives carved in stone, with a particular emphasis on their polysemic interpretations and correspondence with Penance and the liturgy of the Eucharist. This analysis is particularly concerned with two representations of Eve and Adam from the story of their Temptation and Fall, and their connection to apocryphal texts and sacred drama. It also addresses the church's inner archivolt, *opus reticulatum* (reticulated work), corbels, and historiated capitals.<sup>4</sup> The third section of this article offers a discussion of the issues of space, narratives, and time, with a focus on the Garden of Eden as a stage, chiastic narratives, and time according to Saint Augustine and Paul Ricœur.

### **2. The Church, its Context, and its Portal**

Saint-Martin-de-Besse is a palimpsest of different building phases (Higounet-Nadal 1983, p. 49 and Comte de Clermont de Touchebœuf 1878).<sup>5</sup> The church was most likely dedicated in the fifth century, as its name reflects the dedication trend of the region and of that period. Most of the Périgord churches were named after Saint Martin, Saint Étienne, or Saint Pierre/Saint Peter the Exorcist (Saint Pierre-ès-Liens) (Higounet-Nadal 1983, p. 58).<sup>6</sup> As it stands today, Saint-Martin was built on the foundations of an earlier Benedictine building (Secret 1968, p. 227).7 The Benedictine monks left Besse sometime in the thirteenth century and were succeeded by a regular Augustinian clerical order (Secret 1968, p. 227).8 With the absence of documents providing firm or approximate dates, dating the church's west façade is, to some degree, arbitrary and must focus on its stylistic and regional qualities. Secret dates the construction of the church's portal to the end of the eleventh century, while Dubourg-Noves and Palazzo believe that it was built no earlier than the mid-twelfth century (Secret 1968, p. 227; Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 248 and Palazzo 2017, p. 141).9 The latter's hypothesis is the most credible on stylistic grounds.10 I argue that the portal was conceived at some point in the mid-twelfth century, thus placing the construction of the church in its Benedictine period. The presence of Benedictine monks at Saint-Martin may justify the integration of decorative elements on the church's archivolt as a monastic product. Its proximity to Saint-Pierre-de-Moissac Abbey, Tarn-et-Garonne (1115–1130), and Saint-Marie-de-Souillac Abbey, Lot (1075–1150), two prominent Benedictine abbey churches, may be regarded as a plausible influence on the portal of Besse.

Like many, if not all, of the surviving Romanesque churches in the Périgord region, Besse lacks a tympanum, and sculptural ornament consists of a red-ochre limestone tripartite archivolt, corbels, and capitals. The outer archivolt is decorated with two braided patterns, each starting at both of its extremities (Figure 3). The braids meet at the middle, where two carved angels lift a man seated on a cushion, enacting an apotheosis scene (Figure 2(A) and Figure 4). Two representations of the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve are carved below the apotheosis scene on the archivolt's outer fold (Figure 2(B, 3, 4) and Figure 5). Surrounding Adam and Eve, from left to right, are images of the prophet Isaiah, Saint Eustace, an adult holding a smaller figure wrapped in a shroud, and Saint Michael the Archangel fighting a dragon (Figure 2(1, 7, 8, 9) and Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 9). The outer archivolt's lower edge features a rope motif linking the narrative vignettes together (Figure 8).<sup>11</sup> A series of geometric pretzel-knot ropes are also carved on the outer archivolt's inner fold, with a seated man lifted by an angel from the wrist on the bottom left corner, adjacent to Isaiah on the outer fold (Figure 2(1, 15), Figures 3 and 6).

**Figure 3.** Archivolt, detail of west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 4.** Braided patterns and apotheosis, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 5.** Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 6.** Prophet Isaiah and seraph, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 7.** Saint-Eustace and the stag, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 8.** Virgin and Child or Abraham and Lazarus, and rope pattern detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 9.** Saint Michael the Archangel defeating the dragon, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

The inner archivolt is also rich in foliate imagery, depicting a series of palm tree fronds arranged into two ribbons. They represent *varietas* (variation and variegation), as every frond is unique (Figure 2(10) and Figure 10) (Carruthers 2009). The two palmtree ribbons meet in the centre, flanking an Agnus Dei (also known as the Lamb of the Apocalypse) carved directly below the clothed Adam and Eve under the dome (Figure 2(C) and Figure 11). Two sets of fighting lions are carved at the extremities of the inner archivolts (Figure 2(14), Figures 12 and 13). The surface under the inner archivolt and around the door is left uncarved, except for a continuous chain of x-crossings decorating its lower edge (Figure 10).

**Figure 10.** Palm-tree ribbons and door frame, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 11.** Apotheosis, Adam and Eve, and Agnus Dei, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

Two pairs of engaged colonettes flank the church's entrance (Figure 3). They are separated from the archivolt by a frieze, on which are carved foliage and battles between men and animals (Figure 2(14), Figures 12 and 13). From left to right, the capitals on the left-hand side depict foliage and two lions fighting (Figure 2(14) and Figure 12). The capital closest to the church's entrance, on the right-hand side, is adorned with grapes and vines (Figure 2(13) and Figure 14). The adjacent column presents an enigmatic scene on each of its two faces: a demon holding a kneeling figure by its hair and a larger man standing with an outsized circular medallion as a necklace, holding the hand of a smaller child-like figure; and a woman carrying a bag on her head, holding a wreath-like object above a child-like figure's head (Figure 2(12) and Figure 14). Six corbels are carved above the archivolts to support the triangular opus reticulatum representing the Trinity (Figure 2(E, 11) and Figure 15). The corbels represent, from left to right, a smiling animal head, a man and an ape eating, a musician, an acrobat, two figures embracing, and a tambourine player (Figure 2(11) and Figure 16, Figure 17, Figure 18). Two engaged colonettes with capitals, depicting foliage and humans fighting animals, support the opus reticulatum (Figures 15, 16 and 18).

**Figure 12.** Lions, foliage, capitals, and psychomachia frieze, detail of left-hand side, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 13.** Lions, foliage, and frieze, detail of right-hand side, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 14.** Vines and historiated capital, detail of right-hand side, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 15.** *Saint-Martin Church*, west façade, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 16.** Corbels, detail, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 17.** Corbels, detail, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 18.** Corbels, detail, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

### **3. Iconographical Analysis**

Considering the Romanesque portal as a performative text, Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras González discusses two issues related to its ontology. Relying on Meyer Schapiro's work, he identifies the first as the Romanesque portal being the "speaking face of the Church" (Castiñeiras González 2015). The second issue is concerned with the portal acting as a stage or backdrop to both liturgical and daily life. "The Romanesque portal", he writes, "together with the sermon and the liturgical drama, was a genre that could be developed by the reformed Church to attract the attention of the public, and thereby make the Christian faith more attractive" (Castiñeiras González 2015, p. 4; and Moralejo 1985, pp. 61–70). Additionally, in a postscript note following his "Introduction to an 'Iconography of Medieval Architecture'", Richard Krautheimer puts forward the concept of *multi-think*, thus promoting a more flexible approach to the study of forms, symbols, and meaning in medieval architecture (Krautheimer 1969, p. 122). Relying on the ninth-century neoplatonic philosopher Johannes Scotus Erigena's discourse on the symbolism of the number eight and its many simultaneous connotations that resound in him whenever he thinks of the number, Krautheimer argues that the meaning connected to medieval patterns, sculptures, and architectural forms was not always fixed; instead, the meaning was unstable and permitted a multi-layered interpretation.12 From a semiotic approach, Krautheimer's *multi-think* concept is the outcome of a polysemic sculptural programme, wherein a single ambiguous iconographical sequence is associated with two or several related senses, in a similar manner to exegesis.13 Addressing the sculptural programme of Besse as a text comprising a series of sub-texts formed by narrative vignettes, I argue that polysemy is inherently part of the church's visual vocabulary, involving the concept of *multi-think*, thus offering a more comprehensive and nuanced study of its historiated portal. Relying on Castiñeiras González and Krautheimer's semiotic contributions to the understanding of Romanesque sculptures, I argue that the sculpted narrative vignettes forming the portal of Besse not only need to be read and understood as polysemic narratives, allowing fluidity in meaning which results in a *multi-think* interpretation, but they are also connected to each other in complex ways to form stable chiastic interchanges.

The portal of Saint-Martin-de-Besse is an excellent example of Krautheimer's *multithink* concept, which speaks about the Church's Truth, while demanding public attention by engaging its churchgoers in fluid polysemic narratives that keep revealing new facets. The ambiguity of its visual programme lies in the connection of its multi-layered narratives with the story of Eve and Adam: the triggering moment of the history of humanity, defined by their fall from grace because of the Original Sin and their redemption through the Son of God's sacrifice. As I will explore in the following paragraphs, the visual motifs, and narratives of the portal of Besse may have been selected as a deliberate artistic choice to allow a dynamic polysemic reading of its west portal, which message stabilizes in a series of four chiastic sequences concerned with salvation through (re)conversion via the Eucharistic sacrament, which is at the heart of the liturgy.

### *3.1. Figure in Apotheosis*

Situated in the middle of the outer archivolt, directly above the central image of Eve, two angels lift a seated figure by the wrists in an apotheosis (Figure 2(A, B), Figures 4 and 11). The angels have holes carved in their wings and clothes, which were possibly holding (semi-)precious stones or to create varietas if pigments were applied. Given the presence of the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve and the Agnus Dei vignettes on the axis, the central figure in apotheosis, carved on the archivolt's keystone, benefits from a *multi-think* approach by which to understand its meaning (Figure 2(A, B, C) and Figure 11). Promoting a more flexible interpretation, I propose that the figure in apotheosis supports a polysemic iconographical interpretation; it could fluidly represent the ascended Christ, *Maiestas Domini* (Christ in Majesty), and/or Saint Peter the Exorcist and/or Saint Peter the Apostle, Christ's representative on earth, upon whom he has built his Church.14

The figure in apotheosis could represent the ascended Christ when, as described in Luke 24:50–53 and Acts 1:9–11, Christ physically departs from Earth by rising up to Heaven, forty days after His resurrection (Palazzo 2017, p. 144).15 Although, in these examples, the angels do not lift Christ by his wrist, there are a few instances in Romanesque sculpture where Christ is carved in ascension, lifted by two angels (Hearn 1981, pp. 119–38; Vergnolle 2008, pp. 179–99; Poilpré 2005; Mathews 1999; Réau 1955 and van der Meer 1938).<sup>16</sup> Additionally, as Secret suggests, the seated male figure could represent a Maiestas Domini—Christ seated on a throne as the ruler of the world, from the Book of Revelation—an interpretation shared by Palazzo, who connects the scene to Isaiah's vision from Isaiah 6:1–7 (Secret 1967, p. 20 and Palazzo 2017, p. 144).17 Not only could the polysemic apotheosis figure from Besse be interpreted as the ascended Christ, but it is also depicting a variation of the standardized Christ in Majesty iconography, frequently found on tympana and frescoes adorning numerous Romanesque portals and apses.<sup>18</sup> Moreover, in his study of the portal, while retaining the hypothesis that the figure in apotheosis is indeed Christ in Majesty, Secret mentions that it is accompanied by the words PETRUS and ten other illegible letters (Secret 1968, p. 229). Dubourg-Noves is later able to decipher other parts of the missing gloss [A]NGELUS DOMIN[I] ... AN ... S..N..EL ... PETRUS O ... E (Figures 19 and 20).19 Dubourg-Noves concludes that the figure does not portray Christ in Majesty, as was previously suggested by Secret; instead, he maintains that the figure represents Saint Peter the Exorcist (also known as Saint Peter in chains/Saint Pierre-ès-Liens), a thirdcentury martyr (Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 250).<sup>20</sup> Dubourg-Noves suggests that the braided pattern carved around the outer archivolt, which frames the figure in apotheosis and the angels, creates a stylized reference to Saint Peter the Exorcist's double-chains (Figure 2(A, 6) and Figure 4) (Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 250).

**Figure 19.** [A]NGELUS DOMIN[I], detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

**Figure 20.** AN ... S..N..EL ... PETRUS O ... E, detail archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

While Dubourg-Noves's suggestion of Saint Peter the Exorcist is compelling, it does not accurately reflect the original narrative because Saint Marcellinus is missing from the scene. Additionally, besides his cult being popular in the region, neither the church's dedication nor its sculpted narratives seem to be connected to Saint Peter the Exorcist. Instead, I propose the possibility that the artist(s) or patron(s) of Besse made a conscious decision to include the gloss, linking the sculpted narrative not to Saint-Peter the Exorcist, as suggested by Dubourg-Noves, but instead to Christ in Ascension, Christ in Majesty and Saint Peter the Apostle. The latter identification is made possible through the gloss's connection to a passage from the New Testament.21 Although fragmentary, the Latin inscription—principally the words PETRUS and [A]NGELUS DOMIN[I] in the middle of the outer archivolt—could refer to Acts 12:1–24, which narrates Saint Peter the Apostle's miraculous escape from prison.<sup>22</sup> Excerpts from this passage are listed below, with the church's Latin gloss included between brackets, next to the corresponding words.

Et Petrus (PETRUS) quidem servabatur in carcere oratio (O..) autem fiebat sine intermissione ab ecclesia ad Deum pro eo (..E) Cum autem producturus eum esset Herodes in ipsa nocte (N..E) erat Petrus dormiens inter duos milites vinctus catenis duabus et custodes ante ostium custodiebant carcerem . . .

Et ecce angelus Domini ([A]NGELUS DOMIN[I]) adstitit et lumen (L ... ) refulsit in habitaculo percussoque latere Petri suscitavit eum dicens surge velociter et ceciderunt catenae de manibus (.. AN . . . S) eius.<sup>23</sup>

Following Jesus's death, King Herod arrested Saint Peter (Petrus) and put him in prison. While awaiting trial, Saint Peter was bound with two chains and the Church prayed (oratio) to God for him (pro eo). The night (nocte) before his trial, an angel of the Lord (angelus domini) came to him, and a light (lumen) shone in his cell. Peter woke up and his chains fell off his hands (manibus). The angel led Peter out of the prison, so he could join the other disciples hiding in the house of Mary, the mother of God.

The outer archivolt's keystone, representing the man in apotheosis, plays a significant role in the liturgical character of the portal of Besse through its polysemic meaning, as it invites its viewers to decode and discover its multi-layered narrative through time and space. The figure in apotheosis is a liturgical synthesis that narrates the (hi)story of the Church. Simultaneously, it could also refer to the ascended Christ returning to Heaven, an event that occurred in the past; Christ in Majesty, as ruler of the world from the Last Judgment narrative in the Book of Revelation, in which Saint John describes as an event in the future; and Saint Peter the Apostle, the rock upon whom Christ built his Church, the universal congregation to which the churchgoers of Besse belong in the Church's present. Similarly, the apotheosis keystone creates a vertical liturgical dialogue with the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve on the outer archivolt carved directly under it, which necessitates God's Incarnation, whereby he takes away the sins of the world through his sacrifice, symbolized by the Agnus Dei—the Lamb of the Apocalypse—carved on the axis on the inner archivolt (Figure 14). This sacrifice is re-enacted within the church building in the apse situated on the opposite side of the portal, beyond which, through the liturgy of the Eucharistic sacrament, the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ, which are then consumed by the worshippers, the faithful community forming the Church.

### *3.2. Isaiah and the Man Seated on a Throne*

The Latin gloss surrounding the figure in apotheosis is also linked to the narrative sequence formed by an angel lifting by the wrists a male figure seated on a throne, which is carved on the outer archivolt's inner left-hand side fold, adjacent to the figure of Isaiah (Figure 2(15) and Figure 19, Figure 20, Figure 21).<sup>24</sup> While Dubourg-Noves once again associated the figure with Saint Peter the Exorcist, who, he argues, is seated on a bed, I propose instead that this sculpted narrative is polysemic and allows a *multi-think* interpretation (Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 250). If read alongside the gloss on the outer archivolt, it would represent Saint Peter the Apostle's escape from prison, after the chains fell from his wrists (Acts 12:7–11):

Then the angel said to him, "Put on your clothes and sandals". And Peter did so. "Wrap your cloak around you and follow me", the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, "Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen."

**Figure 21.** Angel lifting a seated man, detail of the inner fold of the archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

This biblical excerpt portrays Saint Peter passing two guards and an iron gate leading to the city of Jerusalem. Then, after walking the length of a street, the excerpt culminates in his recognition of God as his saviour. Read alongside the portal of Besse, this passage creates a contrast between vision and reality when it comes to Saint Peter's presence on the portal. The apostle's movement in time and space involves two guards (exegetically referring to the Old and New Testaments), the iron gate allowing him entrance to Jerusalem, and a walk on a street culminating in his experience of God's salvatory nature. As Christians, the churchgoers of Besse must also pass through a gate, the portal of Besse, to gain access to the house of God, the terrestrial Holy Jerusalem. Then, as they walk the length of the nave to receive the Eucharistic sacrament, they will know God through transubstantiation, which takes place on the church's high altar.<sup>25</sup>

Moreover, the escape scene emphasizes Peter's wrists, which also associates the narrative with the carved chains forming the Gallo-Roman decorative pattern that frames the outer archivolt; in turn, the carved chains visually lead the viewer's gaze toward the central apotheosis scene (Figure 2(A) and Figure 4). On the narrative vignette carved next to Isaiah, the figure—Saint Peter the Apostle—could be seated on a cathedra (the bishop's throne or seat) instead of a bed, as previously argued by Dubourg-Noves, thus foreshadowing his apostolic role as the first Bishop of Rome.<sup>26</sup>

On the left-hand side of the archivolt's outer face, next to the seated man, the prophet Isaiah is shown as being about to receive the touch of a burning coal to his lips; the scene is situated below a seraph with six wings and opened palms facing inward (Figure 2(1) and Figure 6) (Secret 1968, pp. 271–72).27 Isaiah gazes upward, toward the archivolt's apex, at the figure in apotheosis. This narrative sequence refers to Isaiah 6:6–7:

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

This passage from the Old Testament foreshadows the institution of the Eucharist at Christ's Last Supper, and the sacrament of Penance, which is accomplished liturgically by the absolution of the faithful from the sins committed after baptism, as described by Jesus to his Apostles in John 20:22–23.28

Resembling a censer, the coal is held using tongs by a hand in the clouds (Figures 6 and 22). Looking toward Isaiah, a head, presumably belonging to the seraph holding the tongs, also breaks out from the cloud. The prophet is haloed and holds in his right hand an open codex, which was most likely used to quote, in paint, an original passage linking his figure to the rest of the portal's sculptural programme. Isaiah also holds in his left hand a partially visible object that shows signs of damage (Figure 22). Resembling the tip of a branch, the fragmented object is most likely connected to the Tree of Jesse described in the Book of Isaiah, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit" (Isaiah 11:1).29 This Old Testament passage—which could have been written in paint on the figure of Isaiah's codex—promises a messianic king who would be born from King David's line. Recounting a future hopeful and fruitful event, it foreshadows the incarnation of Christ—the New Testament—where the New Adam reopens the doors of Paradise, closed to Eve and Adam when they were banished.30

The presence of Isaiah in the sculptural narrative of Besse sheds light on the polysemic identity of the seated man carved next to him, not only through his physical proximity to the prophet but also through his iconography, which echoes Isaiah's Commission (Isaiah 6). In his Commission, the prophet writes: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying" (Isaiah 6:1–2).

**Figure 22.** The prophet Isaiah and a seraph, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

With this passage and Krautheimer's *multi-think* concept in mind, I propose a polysemic interpretation of the seated figure on Isaiah's left; not only does it represent Saint Paul the Apostle being rescued from prison by an angel, as I have previously stated, but it could also illustrate God in terms of the above-cited passage, with the fully rendered seraph positioned above him.<sup>31</sup> As Saint Peter forms the basis of the apostolic succession, the head of the Church of Earth, with God being its heavenly head, the seated figure next to Isaiah could concurrently benefit from a *multi-think* interpretation referring to both Saint Peter and God.<sup>32</sup> With the figure of Isaiah receiving the burning coal—which will burn his

tongue, thus foreshadowing the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist—this polysemic figure of Saint Peter/God visually connects the narrative to the liturgy of the Mass. The latter is the most sacred of dramas, performed within the walls of Besse by the priests, who, like the Apostles of Christ—including Saint Peter—are the representatives of Christ on Earth.

### *3.3. Eve and Adam*

The Fall of Adam and Eve is carved twice on the outer archivolt of the portal of Besse, with no obvious attempt at respecting the chronology of the biblical story (Figure 2(B, 3, 4) and Figure 5). In the first scene, the first man and woman are carved in the middle of the archivolt, on an axis with the figure in apotheosis and the Agnus Dei (Figure 2(C) and Figure 11). They are dressed in garments contemporary to the construction of the west portal of Besse. They stand under a dome on either side of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil planted between them, framed by two angels outside the dome who point at them (Figure 2(B, 5) and Figure 23). A snake wraps around the tree and a few round fruits hang from its branches. In this rather unusual scene, Adam and Eve's clothed state is indicative of their expulsion from Eden, for they are only described as wearing clothes in their life on earth (Genesis 3:21–23):

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever". So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

**Figure 23.** The Temptation and Fall of (clothed) Adam and Eve under the dome, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

Dubourg-Noves has identified Eve as the figure wearing the hood, but this is unlikely given the specific gestures associated with her and Adam (Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 250). Therefore, I propose that Adam is carved on the *sinister* (left) of the tree and Eve on its *dexter* (right).33 Picking the fruit from the tree with her left hand, Eve also touches the serpent's head, while she holds another fruit close to her mouth in her right hand. Eve's head is uncovered, and her face is turned towards one of the two angels flanking the dome. Wearing a hooded tunic, Adam places his left hand on his Adam's apple as his right hand points toward Eve, blaming her for the Fall. Adam's back is turned to the angel behind him, who also points at him and Eve.

Adam and Eve are once more represented to the left of the dome; however, this time they are carved in an episode from the Fall and Accusation, which portrays them naked in the Garden of Eden (Figure 2(3–5) and Figure 24). They stand on either side of a tree, with God carved to Adam's left. Eve's hair is unbound and falls over her shoulders. Her legs and head are rendered in profile, while her chest, breasts, and hands are front-facing, visually confronting the viewer. Attempting to conceal her nakedness, Eve's right hand holds foliage over her genitals, while her left hand rests with her palm turned inward toward her body, right under her breast and over her belly. Not only does this gesture emphasise her nakedness but it also highlights her painful fate, doomed to suffer in childbirth as punishment for the Original Sin, as explained in Genesis 3:16:

To the woman He said, "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you".

**Figure 24.** The Fall and Accusation of Adam and Eve (naked), detail from archivolt, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

Eve's legs are depicted walking toward Adam and God. She gazes up to the tip of the tree, which is illustrated in an unusual, intricate pattern mimicking braided ropes. I suggest that this highly stylised tree is the Tree of Life, mentioned in the Book of Genesis as being in the middle of the Garden of Eden, where the Fall took place:

The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.34

As argued by Christopher Heard, although the Tree of Life appears only briefly in Genesis, it "casts a long shadow from Genesis" to the New Testament, creating fascination and confusion (Heard 2020, p. 74). To my knowledge, the intricate form of the Tree of Life of Besse is rare in Romanesque sculptures, at least in French examples.35 As argued by Pippa Salonius in her study of the Tree of Life in medieval iconography, medieval artists represented the tree in a variety of forms and species, or as a combination of many species (Salonius 2020, p. 315).36 The Tree of Life on the portal of Besse seems to represent such a combination. Resembling the vine's intricated branches, its design was most likely influenced by refined medieval gardening techniques that were practiced by Benedictine monks, perhaps in an attempt to mimic the harmony of divine creation through symmetry, sophistication, and daily manual labour.<sup>37</sup>

Presented in profile on the *sinister* side of the Tree of Life, Adam wears his hair short and makes eye contact with God, while holding his Adam's apple and covering his genitals with a leaf. Wearing a heavy robe, God is illustrated as the Christ-Logos: God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. He stands at Adam's left, with a halo around His head. With His right arm, He points toward Adam and Eve in an accusatory way. Furthermore, the figure holds a codex, the Bible, which was a common way to depict Christ-Logos during this period.38

Carved between the tree, Adam, and Christ-Logos, is an inscription that states, ADA[M] VBI ES (Adam, where are you?), God's first words after the Original Sin (Figure 24). To this, Adam answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid" (Genesis 3:9-10). Adam's response is made visible through his gesture. One of his feet does not touch the ground, accentuating his surprise and fright after hearing God's voice. The letters XI RIN[I]US are carved between God and the angel pointing at Eve within the dome (Figure 25). Secret identifies this fragmented gloss as Quirinius, governor of Syria, to which Judea was added during the census ordered by Caesar Augustus when Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Secret 1968, p. 229).39

**Figure 25.** XI RIN[I]US and God as Christ-Logos, detail of archivolt, west façade, 12th c., *Saint-Martin Church*, Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

Covering her genitals with a leaf, a natural element from the harmonious Garden of Eden, Eve hides her body in shame, for it distorts the unity that exists between her soul and God. Eve's flesh grounds her body and soul; since her conscience failed her, all she has left is her flesh, through which she will experience pain in childbirth; this is underlined visually by her placement of one hand under her breasts and the other over her genitals (Figure 24). Aware and ashamed of his nakedness, Adam too covers his genitals with one hand and his throat with the other. As he faces God's accusations, his gesture signals the forbidden fruit stuck in his throat, a physiological feature that he passes on to his male descendants. His gesture may also denote that he is keeping silent because his mouth was the means by which he transgressed (Flood 2011, p. 96). On the church's outer archivolt, Eve is also shown as being about to walk past the sophisticated Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Seduced by empty words and the idea of power through knowledge, Eve encouraged Adam to follow in her footsteps. In the Temptation and Fall of Eve, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil "manifests itself as the Tree of Death" (Dercks 2014, p. 144 and Goetz 1965, pp. 20–21). Together, Adam and Eve left the Tree of Life, which God planted to give them eternal life through Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and Order.

This leads to the problem of the Temptation and Fall of the clothed Adam and Eve in the centre of the inner archivolt of Besse (Figure 2(B) and Figure 23). I propose that this scene highlights their fallen state through their relapse on earth in a similar manner to that in the apocryphal text *Vita Adae et Evae* (Life of Adam and Eve) (9th to 12th c.), and the sacred dramas of the *Ordo representacionis Adae* (commonly known as *The Play of Adam, Jeu d'Adam, and le mystère d'Adam*) (mid-12th c.), or *The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan* (also called the *Book of Adam and Eve*) (5th–7th c.), to mirror the churchgoers' inherited fallen state.<sup>40</sup> Filling in a few gaps and addressing questions related to the Book of Genesis, apocryphal texts and sacred plays, liturgical and vernacular dramas concerned with Genesis are important for the understanding of medieval depictions of the Original Sin, along with the female gender construct through Eve's figure. As Vita Daphna Arbel points out, they too were "shaped by everyday life situations and by fluid communication between living people who ... express[ed] and negotiate[ed] diverse theological and ideological notions" (Arbel 2012, p. 9). In that sense, although it is not certain how often apocryphal texts were employed in the creation of Romanesque art, they can be studied in parallel to Eve's and Adam's sculptural bodies, which, as text carved in stone, were shaped within the same medieval sociological context.

The *Vita Adae et Evae* describes a repentance scene followed by a second temptation, where Eve falls again, and Adam remains in penitence. This apocryphal account highlights Eve's permanent sinful nature by presenting her as the main and primeval protagonist of several falls.<sup>41</sup> In a similar manner to apocryphal texts such as the *Vita Adae et Evae*, sacred plays, liturgical and vernacular dramas performed as part of medieval public worship and liturgy, also accounted for gaps in the Genesis narrative. *The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan*, a sacred drama, sheds light on the earthly dome under which are carved the clothed Adam and Eve on the portal of Besse. Concerned with the life of Adam and Eve from the day they left Eden to Adam's sorrow and death, Book I describes the first humans' dwelling in the Cave of Treasures, their trials and temptations, Satan's apparitions before them, and Christ-Logos coming to comfort and bring them hope. Situated on the side of a mountain below Eden, and containing gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to the *Cave of Treasures,* an apocryphal text inspired by *The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan,* this cave was where Adam and Eve would live their earthly life.42.

[Exiting the Garden of Eden] ... they went gently down into the Cave of Treasures. And as they came to it, Adam wept over himself and said to Eve, "Look at this cave that is to be our prison in this world, and a place of punishment! What is it compared with the garden? What is its narrowness compared with the space of the other? What is this rock, by the side of those groves? What is the gloom of this cavern, compared with the light of the garden?" (The Book of Adam and Eve, p. 5).

Although, to my knowledge, there is neither written nor visual evidence to support my claim that *The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan* was a direct influence for the artist of Besse to sculpt Adam and Eve under a dome, the latter is indeed indicative of a location and could have been influenced by similar artistic strategies.43 For instance, in a panel devoted to scenes from the infancy of Christ, the lower right-hand side of the tympanum forming the south doorway of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine Abbey, Vézelay (ca. 1120–1150) includes the Nativity narrative carved under a dome (Figure 26). There, Mary lies on a bed with Joseph by her side, displaying a gesture that refers to his sleeping state. Wrapped in swaddling clothes, the baby Jesus sleeps behind Joseph; he is attended by a female figure, probably also Mary. The dome here refers to the Christian tradition that identifies a cave around Bethlehem as the birth site of Christ.44 In this example from Vézelay, the dome separates the synthesized narrative of the Nativity from the rest of the tympanum. Not only does it create a visual vignette but it is also indicative of the spatial plane of the narrative, within which are displayed various temporal contexts.45

**Figure 26.** Incarnation and Nativity of Christ, detail of tympanum, right narthex portal, ca. 1140–1150., *Abbey Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine*, Vézelay, Yonne, Bourgogne, France. ©Author.

Similarly to the dome at Vézelay referring to the tradition of the Nativity cave, it is plausible that the dome from Besse could represent the Cave of Treasures, which physically separates Adam and Eve from Eden and the light of God. In some ways, this narrative under the dome becomes a metaphor for the earthly existence of the churchgoers of Besse: separated physically from God by original sin, until the Apocalypse. The church building allows the worshippers direct access to God in their earthly lives, not only because the church is the House of God—the Holy Jerusalem—but also because it is within its walls that the Transubstantiation takes place within the liturgy of the Eucharist, where they may experience the real presence of God (his body and blood).

Just as Adam and Eve under the dome were kept in darkness after their expulsion from Paradise and then committed further transgressions, the churchgoers also succumb to the tempting, deceitful Devil, the symbol of power and knowledge. The figures of Adam and Eve function as a warning by mirroring the conscience of the churchgoers who walk through the portal of Besse. In turn, under God's omnipotent gaze, worshippers constantly re-enact what occurred in Eden, as the Adam and Eve figures of Besse constantly remind them of their fallen state and daily sins, which require constant penance and (re)conversion.

### *3.4. The Hunting Scene*

Along with the themes of penance and conversion, an energetic hunting scene of a man riding a horse while wearing a helmet and a flowing cape is carved on the right-hand side of the Fall of Adam and Eve, under the apotheosis figure (Figure 2(7) and Figure 7). A running stag stares back at the hunter, while he holds his bow at the ready. A small, haloed figure dressed in a loose robe is illustrated floating between the animal's antlers (Figure 27). This narrative vignette recounts the story of Saint Eustace (Eusthathius) (who died ca. 118 CE).<sup>46</sup> According to a widespread medieval legend later recounted in Jacobus de Voragine's *Golden Legend* (1275), Eustace, a Roman soldier in Trajan's army who was formerly named Placidus, was hunting a stag when he saw Christ on a crucifix between the animal's antlers. Christ spoke to him:

I am Jesus Christ that formed heaven and earth, which made the light to increase, and divided it from darkness, and established time, days, and hours. Which formed men of the slime of the earth, which appeared on earth in flesh for the health of the lineage human, which was crucified, dead, buried, and arose the third day (de Voragine 1914, p. 40).

**Figure 27.** Christ between the stag's antlers, Saint Eustace and the stag, detail of archivolt, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

Eustace converted to Christianity upon hearing these words.47 An exemplar of conversion to Christianity through repentance from past sins, Saint Eustace's presence on the portal of Besse is a clear reference to the sacrament of Penance, which requires the faithful to perform a constant (re)conversion to Christ when they commit an offense against God and break the communion with him and the Church through sin. This narrative could also be understood in terms of the deer as a metaphor for thirst and agility, in light of a few Old Testament passages. In one of his psalmodies, King David writes, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God" (Psalms 42:1). The deer here is a metaphor for the thirst of the human soul, longing for God; a thirst that could be sated through the liturgy of the Eucharist. King David's song in Psalm 18—which is also mentioned in 2 Samuel 22 as "David's Song of Praise"—vividly describes the soul's love for God and the strength it obtains from and through him. "It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he causes me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze" (Psalms 18:33–34; 2 Samuel 22:34–35). Isolated from the hunter, the deer on the portal of Besse could be read as both the soul's thirst for God, who is depicted as a haloed Christ floating between the animal's antlers, and the soul's strength and agility when it moves closer to God. The hunter could also find a polysemic meaning as being both Saint Eustace and the soul that has enough strength and agility, acquired through its love and proximity

to God, that it can bend a bow of bronze.48 In both cases, the soul is healed through the Eucharist and Penance; in other words, by one's presence close to God.

### *3.5. The Framed Narrative*

Adjacent to Saint Eustace, toward the bottom right extremity of the outer archivolt, a figure is carved holding a smaller one tightly wrapped in fabric (Figure 2(8) and Figure 8). Both figures are haloed, making them saints or of biblical origin.49 This narrative sequence is the only one on the archivolt to be entirely framed by the braided rope pattern, which leads me to question its marginalized position on the portal and its significance within the narrative of the west portal of Besse. I wish to argue that the framed duo carries a polysemic meaning; it could be read as the Virgin and Child, Abraham and Lazarus, or Christ and Lazarus.50 Secret, followed by Dubourg-Noves, have identified the figures as the Virgin and Child, the new Eve and Adam (Secret 1968, p. 273 and Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 251). Highlighted through its frame, and with an iconography echoing a mother and a child, I somewhat agree with Secret and Dubourg-Noves's interpretation; however, to my knowledge, this iconography is unprecedented in Romanesque sculpture as, usually, the Romanesque virgin and child are represented in a sedes sapientiae (throne of wisdom) composition. I propose a nuanced interpretation, where, perhaps, the framed narrative refers to the iconography of the birth of Christ as depicted in Romanesque illuminations, mosaics, and frescoes.<sup>51</sup>

Furthermore, Dubourg-Noves mentions later that the taller figure is bearded, which leads him to propose another hypothesis by suggesting that the figure could represent Abraham rather than the Virgin, and the child, Lazarus instead of Christ (Dubourg-Noves 1982, p. 252). He then connects the scene to the parable of Dives and Lazarus. His interpretation is plausible as, in this biblical story, Abraham is represented in Heaven, with Lazarus by his side (Luke 16: 22–23).

The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.

This passage is part of the sculptural programme of Saint-Pierre-de-Moissac Abbey, where Abraham holds Lazarus wrapped in a shroud, a sculpted narrative that shares similarities with the framed narrative on the portal of Besse (Figure 28). Moreover, Palazzo proposes that, instead, the narrative vignette refers to the Raising of Lazarus, with Christ standing and his friend Lazarus wrapped in a shroud, as a prefiguration of Christ's Resurrection (Palazzo 2017, p. 145). If this were indeed Lazarus, the shrouded figure would present a typology of Christ, who is also depicted as the Agnus Dei and the figure in apotheosis as Christ in Majesty on the portal of Besse.

From a polysemic perspective, revolving around the theme of salvation through Christ, it is plausible that the two framed figures of the portal of Besse form a *multi-think* narrative, interpreted as the Virgin and Child, and/or Abraham and Lazarus, as well as the Raising of Lazarus. Nevertheless, I remain careful with my polysemic interpretation as the ambiguous framed narrative shows signs of damage and, upon close in situ examination, it is difficult to perceive any facial hair on the larger figure, as previously observed by Dubourg-Noves.

**Figure 28.** Abraham and Lazarus, detail of west wall, south portal, *Saint-Pierre-de-Moissac Abbey*, 1115–1130, Moissac, Tarn-et-Garonne, Occitanie, France. ©Author.

### *3.6. Saint Michael the Archangel*

Concluding the outer archivolt's narrative sequence, Saint Michael the Archangel is portrayed holding a shield and throwing his lance in the serpent/dragon's mouth (Figure 2(9) and Figure 9). His presence adds apocalyptic overtones to the sculptural programme of the portal of Besse, which leads back to the fundamental triggering event of the Apocalypse: the Fall of Adam and Eve. Representing a scene from the Book of Revelation, Saint Michael is the commander of God's army in the war between good and evil (Revelation 12:7–9):

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.52

The Archangel reminds worshippers to repent, seek holiness and a sinless life through (re)conversion, while he remains the defender of the Church against all evil, personified by the serpent/dragon.<sup>53</sup> Offering physical and spiritual safety for the faithful, he will lead the virtuous souls back to Adam and Eve's lost Paradise at the end of time, while sinful souls will be condemned indefinitely to Hell.<sup>54</sup> Ultimately, Saint Michael is concerned with the life of humans, their character and connectedness to their community, in their terrestrial past and present, as well as future in the heavenly Kingdom of God. Operating on temporal and spatial planes, Saint Michael is the bridge between humankind's history and "the future promise of God's eternity" (Johnson 2005, p. 10). He also serves as the intermediary between the terrestrial and the transcendent, heavenly realms.

### *3.7. Inner Archivolt, Opus Reticulatum, and Colonette Capitals*

Displaying varietas, the inner archivolt is decorated with an ornate palm tree motif, which starts from its lower extremities, and includes two sets of fighting lions (Figure 2(10, 14), Figures 10, 12 and 13). Its diverse palm leaves meet in the middle where the Agnus Dei is carved (Figure 2(C) and Figure 11). Framing the portal's entrance, a plain arch may have originally been painted with additional narratives or geometric patterns, which would have

further contributed to the reading of the façade (Figure 10).<sup>55</sup> The archivolt is crowned with a triangular structure unusual for a Romanesque church, vaguely resembling a pediment, which is perhaps a reference to the Holy Trinity (Figure 2(E)). Made of white limestone and plaster, this opus reticulatum is supported by two engaged colonnettes with historiated capitals (Figure 15).

The left-hand side capitals are decorated with intricate foliage on the left and a psychomachia (contest of the soul) on the right, with two lions fighting, topped by a frieze depicting a series of battles and physical and spiritual distortions between men (Figure 2(14) and Figure 12).<sup>56</sup> These misshapen bodies could also refer to the monastic understanding of bodies that bend—like those of jongleurs and acrobats—as sinful, much like Eve from Saint-Lazare Cathedral, Autun (1120) (Figure 29) (Camille 1992, pp. 57–60). The right-hand side colonette capital displays grapes and vines, a reference to the liturgy of the Eucharist performed at Mass within the church, with the grapes and vines being associated with the Blood of Christ (Figure 2(13) and Figure 14). The left-hand side capital depicts a demon holding a kneeling figure by his/her hair, and a larger standing man wearing a necklace with an outsized circular medallion, holding the hand of a smaller child-like figure with a wreath-like object held above his/her head by a woman carrying a rectangular bag on her head, supported with her left hand (Figure 2(12), Figures 14 and 30). Identifying this scene poses quite a challenge, but when comparing it to those on other churches in the area, especially the larger ones such as Saint-Pierre-de-Moissac Abbey, I am able to propose a plausible polysemic interpretation involving the story of Dives and Lazarus and/or Rachel and the Massacre of the Innocents (Luke 16:19–31); (Matthew 2:16–18); and (Jeremiah 31:15).

**Figure 29.** Gislbertus(?), *Lintel Fragment of Eve*, ca. 1120, Musée Rolin (originally from Saint-Lazare Cathedral), Autun, Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France. ©Author.

**Figure 30.** Historiated capital, detail of right-hand side, west façade, *Saint-Martin Church*, 12th c., Besse, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. ©Author.

As seen on the upper right-hand side frieze of the south portal of Moissac, the sculpted narrative of Dives and Lazarus is composed of a large male figure, Dives, wearing a smaller medallion similar to the one worn by the figure on the left-hand side colonette capital of Besse (Figure 28). Eating at a table brimming with food, Dives is seated to the right of his wife, whom Ilene H. Forsyth has described as greedy (Forsyth 2002, p. 78). The panel below depicts the rich man's soul and the heavy bag of money that he carries around his neck, as it is being pulled away from him by demon figures (Figure 31). Additionally, diagonal to the frieze segment representing Dives at Moissac, a figure of Avarice is portrayed with a medallion-like bag of money carried around its neck, another attribute associated with Dives's extreme greed for wealth (Figure 32). This iconography of greed, proper to Dives's character, is echoed in the narrative carved on the enigmatic capital of Besse, with both the figure with its hair pulled by a demon and the larger figure wearing a medallion, a bag of money, around its neck (Figure 2(12), Figures 14 and 30). The woman carrying a bag on her head and the figure being wreathed remain challenging to identify. Its iconographical Roman precedent is linked to victory and triumph; it was adapted in early Christian art in representations of Christ's resurrection and is often associated with martyrs.57 Perhaps the sculptor of Besse was inspired by the syncretized wreath to depict either an unidentified martyr or the resurrection of Lazarus?

**Figure 31.** Dives, detail of west wall, south portal, Saint-Pierre-de-Moissac Abbey, 1115–1130, Moissac, Tarn-et-Garonne, Occitanie, France. ©Author.

Another possible interpretation for this enigmatic female figure could be related to the iconography of Rachel and the Massacre of the Innocents, the smaller figure representing an Innocent, and the male figure with the medallion equating to Herod, as described in Matthew 2:16–18:

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."

This New Testament passage makes direct reference to a prophecy from the Book of Jeremiah, "This is what the Lord says: 'A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more'" (Jeremiah 31:15). Rachel and the Innocents also appear in sacred plays, including the *Ordo Rachelis* (Play of Rachel, also known as the Fleury playbook) (ca. late 12th c.).<sup>58</sup> The play opens with a lamb holding a cross, the Agnus Dei, followed by an angel appearing to Saint Joseph advising him to flee to Egypt with the Virgin and Child, and Herod's slaughter of the Innocents, the first-born baby boys (Young 1933, p. 113). After the massacre, Rachel enters the scene and sings a succession of four laments, the *Lamentatio Rachelis*, over the young martyrs' lifeless bodies (Young 1933, p. 114). Frequently appearing in Romanesque representations of the massacre of the Innocents, Rachel, an Old Testament figure, is associated with the slaughter of the Innocents, a New Testament account, as she

represents the mothers, who like her, have lost their children.59 This polysemic capital permits a *multi-think* interpretation that revolves around sacrifice and salvation in both Lazarus and Rachel, which also takes part in a complex, interconnected network of different spatial and temporal contexts, echoing one and another, forming chiastic narratives.

**Figure 32.** Avarice and Luxury, detail of west wall, south portal, Saint-Pierre-de-Moissac Abbey, 1115–1130, Moissac, Tarn-et-Garonne, Occitanie, France. ©Author.

### **4. Space, Narrative, and Time**

Now that I have provided an iconographical overview composed of a series of polysemic narratives forming the west façade of Besse, I am left with one question: how are all these narratives connected? One cannot be certain of the true iconographical logic and interconnectivity, if any, behind its sculpted façade, for the creator(s), archival materials, and the church's original context have been lost. Regardless of these analytical challenges, relying on previous scholarship, I propose plausible new avenues of interpretation that focus on stable chiastic readings of the portal based on its series of fluid polysemic narratives, staged on/in spatiotemporal planes, which highlight a liturgical agenda.

The historiated portal of Besse can be divided into four biblical temporal sections (Figures 2 and 33). The first, in yellow, belongs to the eternal/timeless realm—the sacred touching the terrestrial.60 To borrow Margot Fassler's words, this section acts as a "static backdrop of an assumed eternity" (Fassler 2010, p. 151). The second, in green, includes narratives from the Old Testament. The third segment in purple depicts scenes related to the New Testament. The last section, in blue, belongs to Christianity or the Church, and secular narratives. Similar to the trumeau at Sainte-Marie-de-Souillac Abbey (ca. 1120–1135), the portal of Saint-Martin-de-Besse illustrates an apparent ordered and harmonious pattern of God's creation (Figures 3 and 34). However, when examined carefully, Souillac's trumeau exhibits chaos, conflict, and death, while the portal of Besse displays various seemingly disconnected narratives, with a few secular elements. In a study of the trumeau, Michael Camille focuses on its multiple, polysemic meanings and the purpose of its naked subject matter, while acknowledging its audience, which was composed of literate Benedictine monks and semi-literate and illiterate locals and pilgrims. "One of the most powerful aspects of sculpture," he writes, "is its three-dimensionality: it enacts the substantiality of flesh, which, on one hand, is enhanced by being formed from clay, by God as the first artist, but, on the other, is corrupted by the sin of the fall" (Camille 1990, p. 49).



**Figure 33.** Saint-Martin Church, timeline and chiastic narratives. ©Author.

**Figure 34.** Trumeau, inner west wall, *Sainte-Marie-de-Souillac Abbey*, ca. 1120–1135, Souillac, Lot, Occitanie, France. ©Author.

Camille also suggests that the trumeau mirrors the monk's everyday mental and physical struggles; like Eve's fallen body, Dives's greed, evil in the form of a dragon, Herod's murdering innocent children, or the psychomachia on the portal of Besse, the trumeau becomes the flesh to be avoided (Camille 1990, p. 53).

Perhaps the iconographical and stylistic motifs of the portal of Besse intentionally reflect the Fall of humanity and its lack of perfection, which was initiated by Eve and Adam's Temptation and Fall, while simultaneously promoting redemption through the liturgical power of the Eucharist. This interpretation further develops in the foliage and vegetation symbolism, revolving around Eden and its two most important trees. Addressing the archivolt's narrative as being prophetic in nature—in the style of the Book of Isaiah—I wish to argue that the latter mixes analogies to articulate the history of humankind, its fall and its redemption, as staged in and around the Garden of Eden. The overarching narrative focuses on the internal battle of vice and virtue, on an ascending timeline, with polysemic sub-narratives situated in different temporal spaces that cross-reference each other in a series of chiasmi. The portal's complex semiotic structure is counterbalanced by the sacred drama of the liturgy of the Eucharist, performed within the church building, the stage of God's heavenly Jerusalem on earth, involving a series of interconnected spatial and temporal planes.

### *4.1. The Garden of Eden as a Stage*

As understood in Abrahamic thought, the first dichotomist relationships—Adam–Eve, man–woman, humanity–deity, and humanity–nature—are staged in the Garden (Morris and Sawyer 1992, p. 21). Through the Genesis narrative, the concept of perfection and imperfection have been defined, understood, explained, and tested. In a study of the role of gardens in medieval romance literature, Helen Phillips argues that the garden is an image of transformation (Phillips 1992, p. 205). The Garden of Eden was lost through original sin and this loss was inherited by all who now succeed in living in the Garden of the Fall, Earth. This earthly garden, where the creations of God's fallen state are now living, could be transformed once more with the coming of the Word made Flesh (Christ, the second Adam). The second Adam restores God's order, as it is described in Revelation 2:7:

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

I wish to argue that the west portal of Besse was meant to be read as the depiction of these initial series of relationships, unfolding in chronological order in real time and space.

As people attempt to organise and tame nature, on a theological level, gardens become a ready symbol for the divine order (Phillips 1992, p. 205). If the west portal of Besse was regarded as an orchestrated sculptural spectacle set in a garden, the divine order could be articulated through the sacred drama of the liturgy taking place within the church building. The lush, varied palm-tree motif, foliage, trees, as well as the geometrical and woven designs forming the sculptural programme of Besse, express an almost perfect harmonious order that celebrates the work of the Creator (Figure 3). It is perfect-like because the hand of the artist who produced it alters the rendering of its motifs. Although the decorative natural elements represent Eden and the divine order, they are imagined and depicted by a fallen creature of God. Nature's harmony is highlighted but it is also made defective, perhaps purposely, to reflect Eve's Original Sin, followed by Adam's and that of their descendants. The imperfect harmony reflected in the natural elements of the west façade of Besse mirrors Eve's beauty and body, which were also made defective.

Both the Temptation and Fall vignettes from the façade of Besse reference manual labour: one, through the intricate design of the Tree of Life, echoing monastic gardening, and the other through the inclusion of clothes, a result of manual labour and the fallen body. Both sculptural narratives suggest the suffering state that Eve's body would endure when in labour.61 Given the likelihood that Saint-Martin-de-Besse was a Benedictine product, the emphasis of labour on its west façade is even more meaningful. Due to a lack of evidence, I cannot be certain that Benedictine monks were responsible for the Romanesque construction and establishment of Saint-Martin-de-Besse. Nevertheless, given the complexity of its west

portal programme, it was surely shaped by a local, intellectual culture that was heavily influenced by the Benedictines, if not the Benedictines themselves. The following argument relies on the church's proximity to prominent Benedictine monasteries, whereby their ideologies may have influenced the church's visual programme.<sup>62</sup>

A central component of the Benedictine religious way of life, the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict consists of seventy-three chapters that describe and organize the monastic life. Setting Christ as the model and prototype of monks, the Rule transmits a biblical spirituality that is closely connected to the Beatitudes (Holzherr 2010, p. 30). The Rule refers to Christ as the Labourer—"May the Lord be pleased to manifest all this by His Holy Spirit in His labourer now cleansed from vice and sin"—and encourages monks to perform manual labour in the image of Christ as a way to get closer to God (Saint Benedict 1931, p. 8). Devoted to the necessity of daily manual labour, the Rule's Chapter XLVIII states:

Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labour at certain times, at others, in devout reading ... If, however, the needs of the place, or poverty should require that they do the work of gathering the harvest themselves, let them not be downcast, for then are they monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands, as did also our forefathers and the Apostles ... But if anyone should be so careless and slothful that he will not or cannot meditate or read, let some work be given him to do, that he may not be idle (Saint Benedict 1931, pp. 22–23).63

As Saint-Martin-de-Besse is not a monastery, perhaps the artist(s) or patron(s), presumably Benedictine monks, designed the portal with a polysemic historiated sculptural programme and gloss to be read and meditated upon. The portal, thus, offered different possibilities of interpretation to both a literate (most likely Benedictine), semi-literate and illiterate group of worshippers, in a similar way to that of the trumeau at Souillac. Like Saint Michael the Archangel, guarding the Church against Evil, the monks and lay faithful who gazed upon the church's sculptural narrative would fight the desires of the flesh, especially Eve's temptingly naked body. Their souls—like Saint Eustace hunting the stag—are in a constant search for God, whom they will find in the Eucharist.

This form of meditation mimics the same devotional practice performed by the Benedictine monks who would walk around the cloister and its *hortus conclusus* (enclosed garden) in the middle of the cloister that symbolises Paradise or the lost Eden. There, as Adam, whom God put in the Garden of Eden to work and take care of it, the monks performed their manual labour, often while meditating, committing themselves to the "path of life" with humility (Hindsley 1998, p. 8).

The first degree of humility, then, is that a man always has the fear of God before his eyes, shunning all forgetfulness and that he be ever mindful of all that God has commanded, that he always considered in his mind how those who despise God will burn in hell for their sins, and that life everlasting is prepared for those who fear God. And whilst he guarded himself evermore against sin and vices of thought, word, deed, and self-will, let him also hasten to cut off the desires of the flesh (Saint Benedict 1931, p. 8.).

Through their daily manual labour and reading of the portal of Besse, the monk and the lay faithful would, perhaps, learn from Eve's mistakes and protect their souls against idleness, remaining "mindful of all that God has commended" (Saint Benedict 1931, p. 8). In this perspective, the narrative of the portal would create the time and space whereby its audience could get closer to God.

### *4.2. Time and Chiastic Narratives*

Although the various narrative vignettes of the portal of Besse may appear random and ambiguous if addressed individually, when examined closely and considered in relation to their textual references, they form chiastic narratives. They are rhetorical, mnemonic devices that help readers to focus their attention on a central idea (Assis 2002). Their diverse

typological messages display both opposition and symmetry, as articulated through analogies between the Old and the New Testaments. Once unlocked, their chiastic narrative, composed of polysemic sub-narratives, outlines the history of (Christian) humankind, starting from the Fall in the middle of the archivolt, diffused through a message of conversion and redemption where, in a comparable manner to medieval world maps, time and space, as we conceive them, are approximated. They also take part in a cosmic liturgical sequence, providing a prelude to the liturgy of the Eucharist taking place within the church.

As an ensemble, the west façade of Besse exemplifies complex chiasmi concerned with salvation through conversion, formed by and relying upon interconnected polysemic sub-narratives (Figures 2 and 33). Frequently appearing in the Bible, a chiasmus takes the form of an "X" (Bailey and Broek 1992, p. 178). Sharing a symbolic meaning with the cross, the term itself derives from the Greek letter χ (chi), a letter used by the early Christians to designate Christ.64 As a single verse, a chiasmus is easy to recognise, such as this passage from (Mark 2:27):

The *Sabbath* (A) was made for *humankind* (B),

and not *humankind* (B) for the *Sabbath* (A).

Although the connections between the different narrative scenes of the sculptural programme of Besse at first seem arbitrary, they were most likely carefully and strategically planned to reveal a theological, liturgical agenda. The archivolt's viewers would read the skillful composition in the hopes of understanding its interconnected narrative vignettes, thus, unlocking a more global meaning or narrative plot. With its storylines situated on two axes (right-centre-left and central top-bottom), the archivolt articulates temporality: it is both of the past and of the future, while existing in the present with an eternal backdrop.<sup>65</sup> In other words, the archivolt's narrative represents the eternal today, as Saint Augustine articulates in Book XI of his *Confessions* (Saint Augustine of Hippo 1992, pp. 13, 14, 20),

In eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present (totum esse praesens). Time, on the other hand, is never all present at once ... What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone that asks, I do not know ... It is now plain and evident that neither future nor past things exist. Nor can we properly say, "there are three times: past, present, and future". Instead, we might properly say: "there are three times: a present-of-things-past, a present-of-things-present, and a present-of-things-future."

The archivolt simultaneously re-enacts and narrates the history of humanity as created by God, where time, as Saint Augustine explains, has neither understandable boundaries nor measure. Eternal time belongs to God's Knowledge, which was lost by Eve and her descendants when she ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The three times—past (memory/memoria), present (observation/contuitus), future (expectation/expectatio)—are defined by the presence of things in an eternal setting, where the past, present, and future alone do not exist, yet their presence does (Saint Augustine of Hippo 1992, pp. 20, 26).

French philosopher Paul Ricœur presents an extensive study of the relationship between temporality and narrativity to explain Saint Augustine's understanding of time and his complicated attempt to effectively explain its nature. Ricœur's analysis of Augustine's Book XI focuses on the pairing between distentio animi, which is the distention of the soul by time: the soul's passive subjectivity of time, and intentio or the intention: the soul's ability to act freely in time, with which Saint Augustine struggles to measure time

(Ricœur 1984, p. 7; Saint Augustine of Hippo 1992, pp. 28, 38). The philosopher's main argument is that time and narrative are interdependent.

Ultimately at stake in the case of the structural identity of the narrative function as well as in that of the truth claim of every narrative work, is the temporal character of human experience. The world unfolded by every narrative is always a temporal world ... between the activity of narrating a story and the temporal character of human experience there exists a correlation that is not merely accidental but that presents a transcultural form of necessity (Ricœur 1984, p. 152).

Ricœur also states that "time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence" (Ricœur 1984, p. 52). Time, as we perceive it, is thus measured in terms of the memory and expectations and memory of the past things and the future (Ricœur 1984, p. 21). The history of humanity and its three temporal intentions—past, present, future—as well as God's eternal time, are commemorated on the façade of Besse through four chiastic narratives to serve the memory and expectations of medieval Christians, who understood the measurement of time as a human construct (Wilcox 1987, p. 137).

The first chiastic narrative starts with the unifying presence of Isaiah's figure on the left-hand side of the outer archivolt. It takes its source from the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve and culminates in the sacrificial lamb and Christ in Majesty (Figure 2). Writing about Isaiah, Saint Jerome states,

He was more an evangelist than a prophet, because he described all of the mysteries of the Church of Christ so vividly that you would assume he was not prophesying about the future, but rather was composing a history of past events.<sup>66</sup>

To borrow Saint Augustine's words, Isaiah discusses the present of things in the past (memory), present (observation), and future (expectation). As he receives a coal to his lips on the archivolt of Besse, Isaiah foreshadows Christ's Last Supper, which is commemorated with the liturgy of the Eucharistic, as the transubstantiation takes place at the main altar (in the apse, at the opposite side of the church's west portal) (Figure 26). The coal, which is about to purify Isaiah by burning his sinful tongue, acts as a dichotomic symbol of the forbidden fruit that harmed Eve and her descendants. Here, we experience a chiastic sacred drama, involving a fusion of time and space, where the New Testament (Christ's Passion), prophesized by Isaiah in the Old Testament and made possible through Eve and Adam's Original Sin, is re-enacted in the present by the worshipper receiving the Eucharistic sacrament (Figure 33).67

Isaiah *eats* the burning coal (A), foreshadowing *Christ*'s Last Supper (B);

In this light, the second chiastic narrative takes roots in the trees—the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the palm tree, and the Tree of Jesse—taking part, both directly and indirectly, in the iconographical discourse of the portal of Besse bridging different temporal and spatial locations, through a continuous, prophetic narrative. The artist(s) or patron(s)'s choice of iconographical references becomes more clearly united when examined alongside Isaiah's prophecies, especially the prophet's poem, entitled "Suffering Servant", which starts in Book LII and continues through Book LIII. Written

around 700 BCE, Isaiah's poem is an analogy to Christ's own Passion, for it describes a hero, a man of sorrows, who bears the sins of many:

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a *root* out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted (Isaiah 53: 2–4).

The literary reference is not only to an Old Testament description of Christ's Passion that is yet to come but also to the root that is possibly held by the figure of Isaiah, and that is exegetically referring to the iconography of the stylized Tree of Life on the portal of Besse (Figure 2(4) and Figure 5). In fact, the plot of the history of salvation and its central events of losing (the Temptation and Fall), and winning (God made man, his Sacrifice, and Resurrection, which takes away the sins of the world) are articulated around the Tree of Life in Eden and the Cross on Golgotha. The wood that once gave life is now—because of Eve and Adam's curiosity, vanity, and disobedience—the site of the most violent of deaths, symbolized in the Agnus Dei at the centre of the inner archivolt.

The palm tree motif supporting the narratives on the outer archivolt represents Christ's Passion, which begins with his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and ends with his ultimate sacrifice, articulated through the Agnus Dei. The sacrificial lamb erases the Original Sin, a consequence of Eve and Adam eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Prophesized by Isaiah as a shoot growing out from the Tree of Jesse, Christ is symbolized through the root held by Isaiah and the Agnus Dei, carved on the portal of Besse. Through his sacrifice on the Holy Cross—the True Life foreshadowed by the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden from a typological perspective—Christ reopens the doors of Paradise. He erases the sins of the world; not only those of the fallen Eve and Adam carved upwards on the outer archivolt but also those of their descendants passing below the portal of Besse. Accessing the church through the portal, the churchgoers experience Holy Jerusalem through the liturgy of the Mass, and God through the Eucharistic sacrament (Figure 33). The vertical, central axis of the church's portal not only links the different temporal narratives together but also connects them spatially through an arboreal theme.

The Tree of Life in Eden gives *life* (A) while the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil brings *death* (B);

the palm tree initiates the Passion of Christ who will *die* on the Cross on Golgotha (A) as Christ is the True *Life*, the shoot growing from the Tree of Jesse, bringing eternal life through his Resurrection (B).

The third chiastic narrative is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge. Before receiving the burning coal, Isaiah experienced an epiphany, a moment of sudden revelation, wherein he received divine knowledge (Isaiah 6:5):

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

Forming a chiasmus, Isaiah's divine experience, resulting in his conversion, is mirrored on the outer archivolt of Besse with the figure of Saint Eustace. The third-century saint experienced the Son of God as a vision between a stag's antlers, a deer like the one that King David used as a symbol of the soul's longing for God: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God" (Psalm 42:1). For the worshippers of Besse, Isaiah's divine experience was illustrated in a post-New Testament narrative, taking place in a present full of things in the present history of the Church, making it more accessible to the contemporary congregation. In turn, at every liturgy of the Eucharistic sacrament, the faithful would also experience the very same divine presence as did their predecessors, Adam and Eve—the first humans to know God—Abraham, Isaiah, Lazarus, Saint Peter, Saint Peter the Exorcist, the Virgin Mary, Saint Michael, Rachel, and Saint Eustace. This cross-spatial-temporal chiastic narrative inevitably results in their (re)conversion, through their recognition of sin and ultimate atonement, which would secure them entrance into the Kingdom of God at the end of time.

Isaiah experienced an epiphany, a moment of sudden *revelation*, (A), which made him *know* God (B);

the faithful and their predecessors experience a conversion; they *know* God (B), after God *reveals* himself to them (A).

The fourth chiastic narrative is concerned with the theme of (re)conversion through the liturgy of the Eucharist and the Mystical Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16–17; 12:12–31; Romans 12:4–8). In this narrative, the figures of Isaiah, Adam and Eve, and Saint Michael the Archangel blur time and space (Figure 33). While, in Genesis, the actions of Eve, followed by Adam, trigger the Incarnation, Isaiah's prophecies foreshadow the coming of Christ and the New Testament as he is the first to announce his coming: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). Isaiah's figure and his prophetic words—which were most likely painted on the book he is holding—are connected to his prophecy becoming reality through the framed Virgin and Child sculpted on the right-hand side of the archivolt and the letters XI RIN[I]US carved next to God's head on the outer archivolt of Besse, referring to the temporal and spatial setting of God's Incarnation through the birth of Christ (Secret 1968, p. 229).

In addition, the Apocalypse (or Paradise regained)—the last chapter of humanity on Earth (future/expectation)—is not only premeditated in Eden, which is the stage of humanity's first chapter (past/memory), but also starts in Eden with Eve's temptation, followed by Adam's Original Sin (Paradise lost, present/observation).68 Acting as the antithesis of the tempting devil who brought evil upon the world through the weakness of Eve, Saint Michael the Archangel fighting the dragon is the messenger of God and protector of the Church. In Saint John's apocalyptic revelation, at the end of time, Saint Michael defeats Satan, the serpent that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden (Revelation 12:7–9). Saint Michael is also the archangel who escorts the souls of the redeemed faithful back to their lost heaven at the end of time. As the coal burning the sinful tongue of Isaiah (present of things past), the Holy Host and the Consecrated Wine—the Body and Blood of Christ—consumed by the faithful in remembrance of Christ's sacrifice (present of things present), Saint Michael ensures the protection of the Church, guiding the faithful at the hour of their death and at the end of time (present of things future).

Moreover, this chiastic sequence involves the sacrament of the Eucharist, which demands constant reconversion through its transubstantial nature as the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, as well as through the Church members partaking in the Eucharist, which makes them united to Christ, the head of the Church. This mystical union between the Church and Christ is a reality referred to as the Mystical Body of Christ. Understood as a sacred liturgical drama, taking place during Mass within the church building, the Eucharist is foreshadowed on the portal of Besse by the figure of Isaiah receiving a coal that burns his tongue. This union is also made possible through the embodiment of the Church; built upon its rock, Saint Peter, the Church is awaiting Christ's Second Coming at the Last Judgement (the Apocalypse), illustrated on the Besse portal by Saint Michael the Archangel slaying the dragon and the Agnus Dei as the lamb of the Apocalypse. The fallen Adam and Eve and their descendants, including Saint Eustace and the churchgoers of Besse, have the chance of redemption through their (re)conversion through Christ's sacrifice and the Holy Sacraments, which create a mystical union between themselves and Christ (Figure 33).

The mystical union between *Christ* (A) and his *Church* (B)

is *humankind's (re)conversion* (A) through *Christ*'s (B) sacrifice and the Holy Sacraments.

### **5. Conclusions**

Finally, as experienced by humankind, time is measured in terms of memory and expectations; while memories are rooted in the past, expectations are imagined representations of the future. The present remains the only time that could be enacted. Experienced in the present, the portal of Besse is a memory of the early events of humanity that write its end, its expectations, and hope of redemption. Taking as its root the Original Sin, it is this clear, and yet complex, idea that is skilfully articulated on the portal of Besse. Eve's acquisition of power through knowledge, her display of flesh, and the emphasis it places on sexuality generated a domino effect, leading Adam to sin, which culminated in their loss of the Garden of Eden. Our human condition, from the perspective of the Western tradition, has been portrayed in terms of our understanding of Eden. The idea of Eden, or Paradise, fuels our imagination and creativity, as it did for the churchgoers who gazed upon the portal of Besse in their quest for perfection or sanctity. It is from this primeval story, featuring a mysterious tree and the talking snake that once made Eve and then Adam drift away toward sorrow, pain, and the flesh's earthliness, that our human condition is constructed. Within this story, the garden is the space where our morality, sexuality, status, and gender roles, as well as our artistic and literary traditions, are defined. In that light, through the poetic technique of a series of chiasmi that spatially and temporally interweave successions of polysemic narratives, the sculptural programme of Saint-Martin-de-Besse reflects human identity, (re)conversion, and the quest for perfection through Messianic redemption. Like the cyclicity of liturgy, encompassing rites, gestures, texts, sacraments, and temporal successions, the performative sculptural program of Besse involves memory, the experience of the present, and the hope of a redemptive future in which its viewers become active protagonists in the history, time, and space of the Church.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, Société et Culture (FRQSC).

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to express my gratitude to Jaume Aurell, Pierre Du Prey, Malcolm Thurlby and Daniel Chamberlain for their precious input and support. A special thank you goes to my colleague Adriana Gordejuela, for her insightful assistance regarding the polysemic discussion presented in this article. I would also like to thank Meaghan E. Whitehead for her generous advice, time, and editorial contributions since the very beginning of this research project.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Notes**


Revelation 2:7, 22:2, 22:14, 22:19; as an image in Proverbs 3:18, 11:30, 13:12, 15:4; as an allusion in Ezekiel 47:7, 42:12 and in Proverbs. (Estes 2020, p. 184).


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