An Empire of Memory (23 page)

Balard (ed.), Autour de la Première Croisade: Actes du colloque de la Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Clermont-Ferrand, 22–25 juin 1995) (Paris, 1996), 119–26.

26 Stroumsa, ‘Mystical’, 352–5. Ann Meyer has argued that every medieval church intentionally

evoked Jerusalem, at least in its celestial form. This is likely the case but paints the phenomenon of Jerusalem translatio with such a broad brush so as to make it virtually meaningless. It would seem

reasonable to suggest that certain religious foundations were ‘more’ closely tied to the Holy City than others, through a combination of the relics they possessed, the provenance of those relics, and the

dedication of the structure itself. For example, Ademar of Chabannes’ early 11th-cent. sermon on the

dedication of the church of St Peter in Limoges tied that event and that church to Jerusalem but that

church specifically boasted (according to Ademar) a relic of the True Cross given by Charlemagne and

coming directly from Jerusalem. See Ann R. Meyer, Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New

Jerusalem (Woodbridge, 2003). On Ademar, see Daniel F. Callahan, ‘The Cross, the Jews, and the

Destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Writings of Ademar of Chabannes’, in

Michael Frassetto (ed.), Christian Attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook (New York, 2007), 17–19.

27 Richard Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, in Studies in

Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (New York, 1969), 121, 127–8.

28 On Saint-Riquier, see Heitz, Recherches, 109–13. On the other sites, see Stroumsa, ‘Mystical’,

353; Robert Ousterhout, ‘Loca Sancta and the Architectural Response to Pilgrimage’, in Robert

Ousterhout (ed.), The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Chicago, 1990), 110; Richard Plant, ‘Architectural

Developments in the Empire North of the Alps: The Patronage of the Imperial Court’, in Nigel

Hiscock (ed.), The White Mantle of Churches: Architecture, Liturgy, and Art around the Millennium

(Turnhout, 2003), 50.

New Jerusalems and Pilgrimage to the East before 1100

81

its hills and valleys, and permitting a short escapade into the mythical Holy Land

without the vagaries of the voyage.’29

These few examples cannot compare to the veritable explosion of churches

evoking Jerusalem during the eleventh century. The churches erected for Henry

II’s (1002–24) new ‘capital’ at Bamberg may not have been structurally similar to

the Holy Sepulcher but Richard Plant has demonstrated that their layout and many

of their architectural features were intentionally reminiscent of the holy city.

Around 1008, Bishop Notker of Liège more explicitly emulated the Anastasis

with a new circular chapel in that city, as did the Aquitanian abbey of Charroux,

which incorporated a rotunda at the crossing of its new church begun in 1017/18.

Bishop Meinwerk of Paderborn sent the abbot of Helmershausen to Jerusalem just

before 1036 in order to retrieve measurements of the Holy Sepulcher for his new

chapel, while another version of the Holy Sepulcher was constructed between

1063–4 at Cambrai with measurements taken from Jerusalem.30 The cruciform

church at Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre was dedicated in the middle of the eleventh

century and so was the monastery at Villeneuve d’Aveyron, which was built in

honor of the Holy Sepulcher after its founder had returned from pilgrimage to

Jerusalem. A rotunda at Lanleff (near Caen) modeled on the Anastasis was built

shortly afterwards. Count Lancelin of Beaugency founded a church dedicated to the

Holy Sepulcher and gave it to the monastery of Saint-Trinité of Vendôme in

1081.31 This is, of course, only a partial list and one that focuses exclusively on

physical constructions. Stone, however, was not the only medium to make the holy

city manifest in the West.

Changes to the liturgy in the tenth and eleventh centuries only served to enhance

this renewed focus on the terrestrial Jerusalem, especially during Easter Week. The

destruction of Jerusalem, with readings taken from Lamentations, Flavius Josephus,

and Pseudo-Hegisippus, was commemorated at Matins during Maundy Thursday,

Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And after Gregory the Great, the ninth Sunday of

Pentecost was dedicated to remembering the same event.32 Cluniac liturgy from

Abbot Maiolus (d. 994) onward was filled with praise of the heavenly city and, in

attempting to recreate an image of it here on earth, Maiolus and his successors

thought that the monks (through their lifestyle) came closest to living as the angels

and saints in heaven. Cluny was ‘a place where the dwellers on high would tread,

29 Stroumsa, ‘Mystical’, 355–6.

30 On Liège, see Plant, ‘Architectural’, 49–50; on Charroux, see Ch. 2 above; on Paderborn and

Cambrai, Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, 117, 124, respectively.

31 Ousterhout, ‘Loca sancta’, 111; J. Bousquet, ‘La Fondation De Villeneuve D’aveyron’, Annales

du Midi, 75 (1963), 538–9; and Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, 118; Cartulaire de l’Abbaye Cardinale de

la Trinité de Vendome, ed. Ch. Métais, 2 vols. (Paris, 1894), ii, no. 301; respectively. Morris, Sepulchre of Christ, 153–7, lists, with commentary, even more constructions.

32 Liturgical objects themselves could also evoke the terrestrial Jerusalem. See Andrew Hughes,

Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to their Organization and Terminology (Toronto,

1982), 245–71; and Victor H. Elbern, ‘Das Heilige Grab in der bildlichen und liturgischen Kunst’, in

Kaspar Elm and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca (eds.), Militia Sancti Sepulchri: Idea e Istituzioni (Vatican

City, 1998), 161–77. On liturgical commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem, see Linder, ‘Jews

and Judaism’, 115–17.

82

Jerusalem

if it could be believed that human abiding-places of this sort were pleasing to

them’.33 Devotion to the Cross dominated the liturgy, both at Cluny and else-

where, with explicit linkages made directly to the terrestrial Jerusalem. Rachel

Fulton observed that ‘in the liturgy for Good Friday, the [church’s monumental]

Cross . . . would become the ritual focus for the Adoration of the Cross, the artistic

image no longer simply an object of commemorative meditation but rather a

physical substitute for the Cross upon which Christ had actually died’––Golgotha

symbolically transported to the West for the purposes of monastic devotion.34

The tenth-century Monastic Agreement of the English Nation described a service

in which monks symbolically re-enacted the resurrection. On Good Friday, the

monks ‘buried’ a monumental cross, wrapped in linen, in a faux sepulcher next to

the altar. On Easter Sunday, three monks searched the sepulcher, while the other,

dressed in an alb and holding a palm, waited inside to re-emerge.35 These services

were derived from Cluniac and Lotharingian sources (specifically Fleury and

Ghent) and other evidence suggesting a liturgical emulation of the visitatio sepulchri

can be found at both St Gall and Limoges from around the same time, suggesting a

wide diffusion of the practice on the continent. The practice became even more

common in the West during the eleventh century.36 The hymn ‘Urbs beata

Ierusalem’ (traditionally sung at the dedication of a church) is essentially a paean

to the heavenly Jerusalem, drawing heavily on imagery from Revelation and earlier

Christian exegesis. Jerusalem was lauded as a spiritual city refounded by Christ, as

well as (metaphorically) the new church at which the dedicatory hymn was sung.

By the end of the eleventh century, the hymn became much more literally accurate.

That century’s incessant focus on the architecture and relics of the holy city, as well

as its particular brand of christological devotion transformed the new church into

an earthly representation of the heavenly Jerusalem. The church was Jacob’s ladder,

the gate of heaven, and a meeting place between heaven and earth.37 At these loci

sancti (cloister, chapel, church, etc.), ‘the relic, the crucifix, the sepulchre, the

33 Robert G. Heath, Crux Imperatorum Philosophia: Imperial Horizons of the Cluniac Confraternitas,

964–1109 (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1976), particularly 144–53; and Renna, Jerusalem, 159–60. Cluny became

even more appealing to the heavenly host after 1180, when the cluster of fifteen towers on the abbey

church made the structure extremely similar to contemporary representations of the Heavenly

Jerusalem. Kenneth John Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800 to 1200

(Baltimore, 1959), 115.

34 Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200

(New York, 2002), 80; Heath, Crux Imperatorum Philosophia, 126–7; and Susan Boynton, Shaping a

Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (New York, 2006),

esp. 98–105 and 156–7. For specific examples from Cluny for the feasts of Palm Sunday and the

Exaltation of the Cross, see Consuetudines Cluniacensium antiquiores cum redactionibus derivatis, ed.

Kassius Hallinger, CCM (Siegburg, 1983), 7/2: 62–8, 127–33, respectively.

35 The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation, tr. Dom Thomas Symons

(London, 1953), 44, 49–50.

36 Ibid., pp. xlvi–xlix. Also, Stroumsa, ‘Mystical’, 356; and Elizabeth C. Parker, ‘Architecture as

Liturgical Setting’, in Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (eds.), The Liturgy of the Medieval

Church (Kalamazoo, Mich., 2001), 291–2.

37 Nichols, Romanesque, 24–5; and Meyer, Allegory, 84–5. The hymn’s origins date to sometime

between the 6th and 8th cents. Reprinted in Early Latin Hymns, ed. A. S. Walpole (Cambridge, 1922),

378–80.

New Jerusalems and Pilgrimage to the East before 1100

83

procession could make Jerusalem real in the imagination, even to those many

people who had no prospect of making the demanding journey for themselves’.38

Even at the time of the First Crusade, Anselm of Canterbury and Geoffrey of

Vendôme forbade their monks from making the journey to the terrestrial Jerusa-

lem, instead emphasizing the spiritual Jerusalem to which the cloister provided a

path.39 Reality gave way to perception. The city no longer mattered for what it was

but for what it represented. As exemplified by Ralph Glaber’s Orléans, Jerusalem

came west to stay.

Another factor––particular to this period––that played an instrumental role in

this renewed focus on Jerusalem was relics, specifically a remarkable surge in the

veneration and proliferation of relics of the Passion in the West during the late

tenth and eleventh centuries.40 Praying over these relics of the Passion would

inevitably remind one of the city where Christ suffered and was crucified, and

would conjure up a complex series of associations––its donor, provenance, selected

miracles, etc.––that we saw in action in Chapters 1 and 2. In the eleventh century,

most of these relics came from Jerusalem. For example, during his pilgrimage to the

Holy Land in 1026, Abbot Richard of Saint-Vannes (of Verdun) received pieces of

the True Cross from the patriarch of Jerusalem that he brought back to Saint-

Vannes. Holy Blood arrived at Mantua from the East in 1048.41 Religious houses

could also create new, legendary provenances for their relics, often, as we know,

involving Charlemagne. In the first quarter of the eleventh century, Charroux

developed a legend about its relic of the True Cross, said to have been passed on

to the abbey by Charlemagne, who in turn had received it from a pilgrim recently

returned from Jerusalem.42 The contemporary sermon by Ademar of Chabannes

on the dedication of St Peter in Limoges referenced a relic of the True Cross,

supposedly coming to them from Jerusalem, via Charlemagne.43 Charlemagne, in

the c.1080 Descriptio qualiter, took christological relics from the Byzantine Emper-

or back to Francia ‘since some of our people are not able to come to Jerusalem to

wipe away their sins, that they should have something visible in our regions, which

might soften their hearts at the mention of the Lord’s Passion and recall them in

38 Morris, ‘Memories’, 109.

39 Giles Constable, ‘Monachisme et pèlerinage au Moyen Âge’, Revue Historique, 258 (1977), 19;

John France, ‘Le Rôle de Jérusalem dans la piété du XIe siècle’, in Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier

(eds.), Le Partage du monde: Échanges et colonisation dans la Méditerranée médiévale (Paris, 1998), 156; Renna, Jerusalem, 153–6, 201; and now esp. William J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land

and Iberia, C.1095–C.1187 (Rochester, NY, 2008), who points out that Bernard of Clairvaux was

another staunch advocate of the necessary stabilitas of the monastic vocation.

40 See esp. Frolow, La Relique de la Vraie Croix. Also France, ‘Le Rôle de Jérusalem’, 157; Bredero,

‘Jérusalem’, 263; Colin Morris, ‘Memories of the Holy Places and Blessings from the East: Devotion to

Jerusalem before the Crusades’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian

History (Woodbridge, 2000), 95.

41 Vita Richardi Abbatis s. Vitoni Virdunensis, MGH SS 11: 288; and on Mantua, Morris,

‘Memories’, 95.

42 Ademar of Chabannes, Chronicon, ed. R. Landes and G. Pon, CCCM (Turnhout, 1999), 129:

144; seconded by the contemporary Miracula sancti Genulphi episcopi, AASS 2 Jan.: 463. Later in the