An Empire of Memory (17 page)

Church at the turn of each season and intended to thank God for the gifts of nature,

the celebration of the Ember Days had been first regularized by Pope Gregory VII

(1073–85). Pope Urban II, however, moved the summer celebration away from the

second week of June to around the time of Pentecost.69

In the early twentieth century, Léon Levillain offered the more precise date of

c.1080 for the composition of the Descriptio qualiter. In his study of the festival of

Lendit, Levillain concluded that the text was composed in the wake of King Philip

I’s visit to the house of canons at Saint-Corneille of Compiègne in March 1079. At

that time, the king presided over the translation of Saint-Corneille’s relic of the

Holy Shroud to a new reliquary, which had been given to the canons by Queen

Matilda of England.70 Levillain asserts that the Descriptio qualiter was written at

Saint-Denis shortly after this event, as the abbey attempted to bolster its status in

the face of a challenge to its prestige (and its festival) by Saint-Corneille.

Levillain was, I think, quite right in linking the composition of the Descriptio

qualiter to the relic translation at Saint-Corneille in 1079. Founded in 877 by

Charles the Bald and modeled on the palace chapel of St Mary’s at Aachen, the

house of canons at Saint-Corneille remained a significant center for the western

Franks through the late Carolingian era. But Saint-Corneille was a shadow of its

former self by the beginning of Philip I’s reign. Philip I renewed royal interest in

that religious house, probably because the town stood on the frontier of royal

power, a base for incursions into the Vexin and Vermandois early in Philip’s reign

and a bulwark against the Norman dukes.71

For example, in 1092, Philip I, once again intervening in Norman affairs, offered

a diploma to the canons of Saint-Corneille, giving them the right to oppose the

building of any tower or fortification in their territory and also commemorating the

translation of the Holy Shroud thirteen years before. This last part of the diploma is

Sumner McKnight Crosby and Pamela Z. Blum, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from its Beginnings to

the Death of Suger, 475–1151 (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 101. There are, however, outliers to this

consensus. Joseph Bédier dated the text to 1100–20. Rolf Grosse has more recently dated it to 1053–4.

See Joseph Bédier, Légendes épiques: Recherches sur la formation des chansons de geste, 4 vols. (Paris, 1921), iv. 125–7; and Rolf Grosse, ‘Reliques du Christ et foires de Saint-Denis au XIe siècle’, Revue

d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 87 (2001), 357–75. The discussion that follows relies heavily on

Gabriele, ‘Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter’, 93–117.

68 Descriptio qualiter, ed. Rauschen, 120. Lendit comes from l’endit, and ultimately from indictum,

which was generally used to mean ‘public fair’ by the 12th cent. It was, however, the specific name

given in the later Middle Ages to the festival held at Saint-Denis in honor of their christological relics. It took place during the second week of June and was legendarily begun by Charles the Bald to celebrate

the relics of the Passion he gave to Saint-Denis––an attribution that rests entirely on the Descriptio qualiter. L. Levillain, ‘Essai sur les origines du Lendit’, Revue Historique, 155 (1927), 241.

69 See Paris, Histoire poétique, 56; Bédier, Légendes épiques, iv. 126.

70 Levillain, ‘Essai’, 261–2; and May Vieillard-Troïekouroff, ‘La Chapelle du palais de Charles le

Chauve à Compiègne’, Cahiers Archéologiques, 21 (1971), 102. The Queen Matilda in question was the

wife of King William I the Conqueror, daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders (d. 1067), and niece

of King Philip I.

71 Vieillard-Troïekouroff, ‘La Chapelle du palais’, 98–102; and Augustin Fliche, Le Règne de

Philippe I er, roi de France (1060–1108) (Paris, 1912), 154. My thanks to Geoffrey Koziol for

conversations on this topic.

Charlemagne’s Journey to the East

59

the most interesting for us, since it provides an almost certain terminus ante quem

for dating the Descriptio qualiter. In this diploma, Philip noted that the relic had

been given to the canonry by Charles the Bald and established an annual fair to be

held on the fourth Sunday of Lent (Carême––hence, the fair was subsequently

called Le Mi-Karesme).72 In doing all this, Philip was in effect honoring the

Descriptio qualiter, the sole justificatory source for Saint-Corneille’s relic. And yet

the diploma from 1092 seems to be recognizing, not creating, a tradition. The fair

at Saint-Corneille may have been new in 1092 but the tradition that Charles the

Bald gave the house of canons its relic was not. That tradition, and the likely date of

composition of the Descriptio qualiter, can be traced to c.1080, around the time of

the translation of the Holy Shroud in 1079 and shortly after the spectacular

decision made by Count (later Saint) Simon of Crépy (d. 1081) in 1077.

Just two years before Philip’s translation of the Holy Shroud, between March

and May 1077, Simon of Crépy, only 25 years old but holding seven counties,

receiving homage from seven more, and acting as advocate for five major mon-

asteries, dramatically retired to the monastery of Saint-Arnoul. This set off shock-

waves throughout Europe. Other magnates, such as Duke Hugh of Burgundy and

Count Guy of Mâcon, along with two of Guy’s sons, followed Simon’s example,

left the world, and joined monastic houses. Pope Gregory VII personally sum-

moned Simon to Rome, in order for him to serve as a papal advocate. The nobility

of northern Francia carved up what was left of Simon’s lands.73

Both Simon and his father, Ralph IV of Valois (d. 1074), were often present at

Philip’s court and Simon remained close to Philip until his death in 1081. Indeed,

Saint-Corneille’s translation of the Holy Shroud can be dated so precisely to March

1079 because Simon himself was present, sent from his monastery of Saint-Arnoul

by Abbot Hugh of Cluny (d. 1109). Simon then moved on to Normandy in order

to help reconcile Robert Curthose (d. 1134) with his father, William I the

Conqueror (1066–87), later that same year.74 So, it is perhaps no surprise that

Philip I and those close to his court profited immensely from Simon’s retirement.

The bishops of Amiens, frequent visitors to Philip’s court, gained comital rights.75

Count Herbert IV of Vermandois, whose daughter would soon marry Philip’s

72 In 1091–2, Philip was helping Robert Curthose against William Rufus. Fliche, Le Règne de

Philippe I er, 294–8. Every extant diploma Philip issued in 1092 had to do with this Norman adventure.

Three were for Compiègne and two confirmed donations to religious houses by Robert of Bellême (a

powerful Norman lord and ally of Robert Curthose). See Recueil des actes de Philipe I er, ed. Prou, nos.

124–6, 128–9. Analysis of the diploma for Saint-Corneille in Louis Carolus-Barré, ‘Le Mi-Karesme,

foire de Compiègne (1092–1792)’, in Études et documents sur L’Île-de-France et la Picardie au Moyen

Age, 2 vols. (Compiègne, 1994), i. 229–30. The diploma can be found in both Cartulaire de Saint-

Corneille de Compiègne, ed. E.-E. Morel, 3 vols. (Montdidier, 1904), i, no. 22; and Recueil des actes de Philipe I er, ed. Prou, no. 126.

73 The conversion and its aftermath are discussed at length in H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Count Simon of

Crepy’s Monastic Conversion’, in P. Guichard, M.-T. Lorchin, J.-M. Poisson, and M. Rubellin (eds.),

Papauté, Monachisme et Théories politiques: Études d’histoire médiévale offertes à Marcel Pacaut, 2 vols.

(Lyon, 1994), i. 253–66.

74 Vita beati Simoni comitis Crespeiensis, PL 156: 1219.

75 They appear numerous times in Philip’s diplomas. See Recueil des actes de Philipe Ier, ed. Prou,

nos. 18, 19, 21–3, 25, 27, 30, 32, 60, 61, 65, 81, 84, 93, 110, 117, 124, 175.

60

The Franks Remember Empire

brother Hugh, received Valois and Montdidier from Simon. Philip himself

acquired the Vexin, as well as the advocacies for both Corbie and Saint-Denis.76

The Merovingians and Carolingians had patronized Saint-Denis generously.77

But the special relationship between monarchy and abbey waned under the

Capetians, most likely because they were alienated from the monastery, as its

advocacy eventually became the special purview of the counts of the Vexin.

Then, in late 1077, Philip I became the first West Frankish king since the late

Carolingians to claim the advocacy of Saint-Denis.78 At Saint-Corneille in 1079, he

presided over the translation of the Holy Shroud, supposedly given to the house of

canons by Charles the Bald. Sometime around the time of Simon’s retirement and

Saint-Corneille’s translation of its relic would seem to have been an opportune time

to commemorate the Frankish kings’ ‘historical’ connection to, and patronage of,

both of those religious houses. Thus, linking the Descriptio qualiter to Philip’s

acquisition of the advocacy of Saint-Denis and the translation of the Holy Shroud

at Saint-Corneille in 1079 suggests a close connection between the text, Philip I,

Saint-Corneille, and Saint-Denis.

T H E RE L A T I O N S H I P A M O N G T H E S O U R C E S

Due to the similarities in their subjects and the fact that both Charroux’s Historia

and the Descriptio qualiter were most likely composed within roughly a decade of

one another, one must wonder about the connections between the two.79 As Amy

Remensnyder has demonstrated in connection with Charroux, Charlemagne as the

source of the abbey’s powerful christological relics ‘tacitly asserts that the abbey was

a royal foundation; through the gift of relics, the abbey claims the king, who, like

the saint, becomes its patron’.80 Indeed, Charroux’s cartulary reads like a litany of

imperial/royal/papal gifts to the abbey. King Philip I gave two diplomas for

Charroux, one enacted at the abbey itself. In the latter, Abbot Fulcrad seems to

have sought King Philip I out at Compiègne in 1085 in order for him to confirm

76 All of Herbert’s lands went to Hugh upon Herbert’s death in 1080, giving the Capetians an

important foothold in Picardy. Very little has been written on the career of Hugh ‘Magnus’ but see

Marcus Bull, ‘The Capetian Monarchy and the Early Crusade Movement: Hugh of Vermandois and

Louis VII’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 50 (1996), 25–46. On Philip’s gains, see Cowdrey, ‘Simon of

Crepy’, 264–5.

77 Gabrielle Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey (Brookline, Mass., 1978), 11–29.

78 Rolf Grosse, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König: Die Zeit vor Suger (1055–1122) (Stuttgart,

2002), 30–7, 84–5. On the movement of Saint-Denis away from the Carolingians, esp. the contest

over Saint-Denis between Charles the Simple and Robert of Neustria, see Geoffrey Koziol, ‘Charles the

Simple, Robert of Neustria and the Vexilla of Saint-Denis’, Early Medieval Europe, 14 (2006), 371–90.

79 Explicit connection between the sources suggested in Abbé Georges Chapeau, ‘Fondation de

l’Abbaye de Charroux: Étude sur les textes’, Bulletin de La Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 3rd ser. 7

(1926), 484; Schwering-Illert, Abteikirche, 31; and Remensnyder, Remembering, 173–4. Remensnyder

believes that Charroux borrowed certain elements from the Descriptio qualiter but only to augment its own tradition concerning the Holy Virtue. This seems possible if we accept a c.1080 date for the Descriptio qualiter, a 1085 visit to Philip I’s court by monks of Charroux, and a c.1095 date for their Historia.

80 Remensnyder, Remembering, 78.

Charlemagne’s Journey to the East

61

Robert of Péronne’s donation to the monastery.81 In both diplomas, Philip was not

donating land or conceding rights to Charroux, but rather acting as the abbey’s (at

least theoretical) advocate. Philip was acting like a Carolingian, replicating what no

king––and significantly no Capetian king––had done since Charles the Bald. His

sudden interest in Charroux in the late 1070s seems all the more noteworthy then.

Just as with the relic translation at Compiègne in 1079, Philip reinserted himself

into an explicitly Carolingian legacy at a site of Carolingian memory. Abbot

Fulcrad’s attendance at Philip’s court in 1085 and the abbey’s later Historia were

both attempts by Charroux to assert itself as a royal, Frankish monastery.

The Descriptio qualiter’s connection to Philip seems more murky. Scholars are

almost universally agreed that the Descriptio qualiter originated at Saint-Denis.82

Yet, there are significant problems with this conclusion. Perhaps most damning in

this regard is that there is no evidence Saint-Denis knew of the text before the

abbacy of Odo of Deuil (abbot, 1151–62).83 In the later Middle Ages, Saint-Denis

developed a reputation for promoting a special legendary relationship with Charle-

magne but before Odo’s abbacy, its devotion most often fell to Dagobert I (608–

38/9) and Charles the Bald.84 Indeed, even after becoming advocate for the abbey,

81 There are three documents (out of twenty-four) in the Liber de Constitutione authored by people

other than kings/emperors or popes. Even among these three, one is (purportedly) written by Roger of

Limoges and is tied closely to the foundation legends of the monastery, and hence to Charlemagne (so,

2/24 = 8%). Other diplomas from the period covered by the cartulary (c.800–c.1100) did survive,