The Age of Chivalry (37 page)

From the 11th century onward development of feudal practices and of the institution of lordship, which included the exchange of gifts, paralleled another upswing in the popularity of both saints and relics. Vassals who placed themselves under the protection of a local lord by offering him their service could be seen as secular counterparts to the pious, who might seek to gain the protection of saintly souls by bringing gifts to the shrines. Many churches and monasteries had to be rebuilt and extended because of the saints' popularity during the high Middle Ages. The great increase in the number of pilgrims drawn to Saint-Denis near Paris, for example, was one of the reasons why Abbé Suger embarked on a massive redesign of the abbey in the 1130s. The period also saw a steady growth in the numbers of female saints and their relics. From
c
.1050 onward the monks at the Benedictine abbey of Vézelay in Burgundy began to claim possession of Mary Magdalene's relics. Later, the European relic market was flooded following the discovery in 1155 of a mass grave in Cologne alleged to contain the bones of Ursula and her equally legendary 11,000 co-martyrs. New trading contacts with the Middle East made as a result of the crusades, as well as the crusader's sacking and looting of Constantinople in 1204, swelled the number of imported relics. Sainte-Chapelle in Paris was built in the 1240s by Louis IX (1214–70) specifically to house the remains of saints.

Religious Orders could differ quite sharply in their attitudes to veneration of the saints. Cistercian monks followed an ideal of separation from mainstream society and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) led the movement to international recognition. But when the monks of Clairvaux prayed to their sainted founder they asked Bernard specifically not to perform miracles at his tomb in the monastery since they had no wish to deal with large numbers of pilgrims. The Franciscans, an austerely mendicant Order pledged to poverty, did not tend any significant shrines in France, although they did perform that task in Italy—and especially so at Assisi where their great founder Francis (1181/2–1226) was buried.

B
ELOW
This painting by Giovanni de Paolo (1403–83) dated 1455, shows Saint Clare of Assisi miraculously saving a child from being savaged by a wolf
.

This was also a time when many saints acquired a rapid posthumous recognition, as in the cases of Louis IX and Bernard of Clairvaux, who were canonized in 1297 and 1174 respectively. The canonization of Dominic de Guzman (1170–1221), just 13 years after his death, rewarded his insight in establishing the Order of Preachers—a body of intellectual friars whose itinerancy and skills as communicators equipped them to move easily among the new urban centers of Europe. The rapid bestowal of a
cultus
recognized a saint's inspirational general example and ability to intercede. And in the case of these swift promotions the background was rarely one of mass devotion at particular graves and shrines. But the bodies of these near-contemporary saints were nonetheless carefully preserved, and often by members of a religious community. Such was the case with Clare of Assisi, a follower of Francis and founder of the Order that bears her name, who was canonized just two years after her death in 1253.

A new intensity in lay spirituality was evident during the later Middle Ages, a time when shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to Christ increased in numbers and popularity. The doctrines of the Assumption and Ascension taught that the bodies of the Savior and his mother had been removed to heaven in their entirety, and since these shrines could therefore contain no fragments of bones the faithful had to content themselves with other objects. Chartres Cathedral became one of the great Marian centers of devotion since it claimed to possess the Virgin's tunic. Many statues of the Virgin, some of them painted black, were endowed with miraculous properties, and the many paintings recording her Annunciation showed Mary as a devout contemporary aristocrat reading in her bedchamber. Images of Christ's face became increasingly popular and the Eucharist (Christ's body and blood) came to be treated as a particular kind of relic. The Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament may have been an innovation of Francis of Assisi, and this ceremonial adoration of the host (the consecrated bread) was one of late medieval piety's most typical devotions.

A
BOVE
These richly decorated pages come from a book of hours printed in Paris by Phillipe Pigouchet for the French publisher Simon Vostre in 1498. Such works were kept at home for purposes of personal devotion and study
.

The saints now lived on in many forms. Priests could commend them in sermons, and excerpts from hagiographies (collections of saints' biographies written in the vernacular) were read out to the laity. Books of hours—containing information about saints' lives—were consulted at home by the rich and literate. Images of saints were widespread on churches' painted walls, and they were ubiquitous in the Greek empire once the iconoclastic fury had passed. Confraternities (organizations of lay people that promoted special works of Christian piety) were an important part of medieval social life, and the saints adopted as patrons by these groups' members were honored in elaborate ceremonies.

The zeal with which entire communities would approach saints who offered a specialist expertise was as great as ever. The 14th-century figure of Roch (or Rocco) of Montpellier was deemed useful when the plague struck, and Margaret, an Anglo-Saxon princess
who became Queen of Scots (
c
.1045–93), had been emblematic of the devout and philanthropic ruler ever since her canonization in 1250. Catherine of Alexandria, who was condemned in
c
.305 to die on the breaking wheel—a Roman instrument of torture—acquired a huge following in late medieval Europe. Her relics were to be found at the monastery, located on Egypt's Mount Sinai, that bore her name, and the pilgrimage route to her remains was one of the major international trails followed by the devout.

L
EFT
This wooden statue of a black Madonna stands in the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia, Barcelona. It was probably produced in Italy, during the 13th or 14th centuries
.

Heretics held views that contradicted the Church's orthodoxy. Although the Cathars were the most notorious examples there were many other sects who were treated with equal intolerance. The followers of Peter Valdez (
c
.1140–
c
.1218) in southern France
and north Italy started as mainstream Christians who were especially attracted by New Testament injunctions to shun riches and to preach the gospel to the poor. Their zeal in doing so attracted the hostility of Church leaders who thought that preaching was a job for priests rather than for lay enthusiasts. It was their persistence as lay preachers, rather than any doctrinal reasons, that led to the Waldensians' initial condemnation as heretics by the Church in 1184. Having been given the label, they then started to embrace a whole set of genuinely heretical beliefs. By the early 13th century the Waldensians constituted a separate ecclesiastical structure that rejected both the idea of a priesthood and the notion of sacraments. Waldensians, rather like the Cathars, despised the official Church's association with riches and hierarchical power, and the sect stressed that spiritual insight and an ability to communicate with God was a result of individual merit rather than a reflection of the sacraments' efficacy.

A
BOVE
This illustration from
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
(1563) shows the Lollard John Badby being boiled to death in a barrel in 1410
.

Direct access to the Bible translated into vernacular languages was central to the Waldensians' appeal. The same is also true of the Lollards who followed John Wycliff in late 14th-century England and of the Hussites who followed their example in Bohemia a generation later. In all these cases it was the fear of being rejected by an individual conscience informed by its own interpretation of the New Testament that led the Church to anathematize the dissenters as heretics.

Although Francis of Assisi embraced a ministry that preached the corrupting effects of riches, he and his immediate followers in the Order of Friars Minor (“the Franciscans”) were impeccably orthodox in terms of Church doctrine. But when the official Franciscans changed their Order's rules after the death of the founder so that it might own material goods, an alternative grouping called the “Spiritual Franciscans” emerged. These dissidents stated that all Franciscans should adhere to the founder's poverty and mendicancy. Their advocacy of the view that Christ and his disciples had owned nothing, was denounced as heretical by Pope John XXII in 1322. Most of the “Spiritual Franciscans” eventually submitted but the Fraticelli, a disparate mass of splinter groups, continued to preach apostolic poverty in 14th-century Italy. Their denunciations of the established ecclesiastical order showed how the people rejected as “heretics” by popes, bishops and councils of the Church could nonetheless display an enduring spiritual vitality.

The Christian mystics of medieval Europe claimed to have been granted a special revelation: God had revealed himself to them in visions whose effects infused their entire being with the knowledge and love of the divine
.

Most were orthodox in their attachment to the Church's teachings, as in the case of England's Margery Kempe (
c
.1373–
c
.1438) and Dame Juliana of Norwich (
c
.1342–
c
.1416). Hildegard of Bingen (
c
.1098–1179) started to have visions when she was a young child, and this German abbess would have been remarkable in any age with her polymathic gifts as a composer, playwright, poet, expert botanist and highly acclaimed public preacher. She conducted four extensive preaching tours across Germany. Hildegard also enjoyed the support of Bernard of Clairvaux—always something of a litmus test in demonstrating orthodoxy—in calling for further reforms of the Church from within, including the abolition of simony. Others with mystical gifts were more of a problem for the Church authorities.