The Art of Healing: Painting for the Sick and the Sinner in a Medieval Town

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the art of healing

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m a r c i a

k u p f e r

the

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ART

of healing painting for the sick and the sinner i n a m e d i ev a l t ow n

the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania

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Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kupfer, Marcia A. (Marcia Ann) The art of healing : painting for the sick and the sinner in a medieval town / Marcia Kupfer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN --- (cloth : alk. paper) . Medicine and art—France—St. Aignan. . Healing in art. . Miracles in art. . Aegidius, Saint, Abbot—Art. . Mural painting and decoration, Romanesque— France—St. Aignan. . Mural painting and decoration, French—France—St. Aignan. . Christian art and symbolism—Medieval, ‒—France—St. Aignan. . Collâegiale de St. Aignan (St. Aignan, France). . Medicine, Medieval— France—St. Aignan. . St. Aignan (France)—Social life and customs. I. Title. N .K  '.'—dc



Copyright ©  The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA - It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z.–.

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f o r my c h i l d r e n ,

IRA a n d GABRIELLE

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contents

list of illustrations ix acknowledgments xv list of abbreviations xvii introduction: “ confess your sins”

1

part i the medieval site 1

from castle to town

11

Inside the Painted Crypt Oppidum and Parish Lord and Borough

2

chapels, hospitals, and healing cults

27

Chapels The Leprosery The Maison-Dieu The Porticus of Noyers

3

from spatialized body to painted crypt

47

Saint Silvanus’s Fire Local Cults: An Epidemiological Basis? Local Cults: A System of Representation Images and the Recapture of Therapeutic Powers

part ii the collegiate church 4

the architectural framework: spatial disjunction, social displacement 67 Architectural Design and Building Chronology The Crypt Redefined Pilgrimage as Penance

vii

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the paintings: the saints in the crypt

85

The Apsidal Theophany and the Altar of Saint James The South Chapel: The Life of Saint Giles The Axial Chapel: Lazarus, Mary Magdalen, and Martha From Micro- to Macrocosm Pictorial Resonance, Programmatic Texture

6

image and audience: infirmity, charity, and penance in the community 113 Exchange and Mediation Gender Roles, Body Politics Infirmity as Social Boundary

conclusion: the art of healing 149 epilogue: the late medieval paintings notes 159 bibliography 183 index 197 illustrations 203

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CONTENTS

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illustrations

Unless otherwise indicated, the photographs pertain to the church of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher.

 



Map of the region indicating sites relevant to the study.



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher (Loir-etCher), aerial view (photo: R. Malnoury, © Inventaire général, adagp).



crutches (photo: author).





Upper church, interior view of nave toward apse (photo: author).





Upper church, plan, J.-B. Lassus, c.  (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).

Detail of coin offered by pilgrim (photo: author). View into south apsidiole: life of Saint Giles (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



South apsidiole, base of conch

Crypt, plan, J.-B. Lassus, c.  (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).

vault: Saint Giles clothes and heals

Crypt, apse, central portion of hemicycle wall and semidome, Christ enthroned between Saints Peter and James with supplicants, c.  (photo: author).

(photo: author).



Saint James and kneeling petitioner (photo: author).



Saint Peter receives keys from Christ and blesses pilgrim who offers a coin (photo: author).



Kneeling petitioner (photo: author).





Detail of figure crawling with crutches (photo: author).

Collegiate church and castle (postmedieval structure) from the north (photo: author).



Pilgrim and figure crawling with

Detail of Saint Peter, inscription petrus (photo: author).

a beggar; he drives out venom from a man bitten by a serpent



South apsidiole, hemicycle wall: Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, or the Pardon of Charlemagne (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Miraculous Mass, sketch.



View into the axial apsidiole: Raising of Lazarus (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).

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

Axial apsidiole, conch vault: Supper at Bethany with Mary Magdalen anointing Christ’s feet; Raising of Lazarus (photo: author).



Apse, base of semidome, right side: pietà between John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen; angel presents donors (photo: author).



Eroded outline of Mary Magdalen at Christ’s feet in the Supper at Bethany (photo: author).



Choir, vault summit: detail of the Last Judgment, Christ, fifteenth century (photo: author).



Supper at Bethany, sketch.





Axial apsidiole, hemicycle wall: fragmentary scene showing Christ and Mary Magdalen with foliage between them, or the Noli me tangere (photo: author).

Choir, vault spandrels: resurrection of the dead. West wall: Crucifixion between saints and donors rising from their tombs, fifteenth century (photo: author).



Noli me tangere, sketch.





Axial apsidiole, hemicycle wall: Christ holds a book and looks over his shoulder at a woman, or Christ healing the woman (Martha) with the issue of blood (photo: author).

Castle, postmedieval structure and medieval tower from the north (photo: author).



Castle, medieval donjon from the south (photo: author).



Crypt, south apsidiole, base of conch vault: Saint Giles drives out venom from a man bitten by a serpent (photo: author).



Saint Giles prays for a storm-tossed ship (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



South apsidiole, hemicycle wall: king and hunter pursue a hind divinely entrusted with nourishing Saint Giles in the wilderness (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Pursuit of the hind, sketch.



Saint Giles, hidden by foliage, is wounded by the hunter’s arrow (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Saint Giles hidden by foliage, sketch.





Axial apsidiole, hemicycle wall: standing figures of Mary and Martha in orans pose (photo: author). Healing of the woman (Martha) with the issue of blood; Mary and Martha, sketch.



Apse, semidome, central theophany of c.  surrounded by the fifteenth-century paintings (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Apse, base of semidome, left side: donors (Marie of Parthenay, her son Louis II of Chalon, his wife) in the company of an angel with Saint John the Baptist; Saint Anne presenting crown to the Virgin and Child (photo: author).

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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

Excavation of  carried out in the crypt: fenestella wall and tombs (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Map of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher and neighboring parishes indicating parish churches, chapels, and hospital institutions.



Nave capital, figures destroyed, scene of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, inscribed caput iohannis herodias (photo: author).





Town portrait of Saint-Aignan-surCher, detail of a painting dated  in the church of Notre-Dame des Ardilliers, Saumur (photo: author).

Mareuil-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher), chapel of Saint-André, engraving published in Touchard-Lafosse, La Loire historique,  vols. (Paris, ), : (photo: courtesy of the Library of Congress).



Noyers-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher), chapel of Saint-Lazare (photo: author).



Levroux (Indre), collegiate church and porticus based on the cadastral plan of .



Tours, Musée du cloître de la Psalette, pilgrim, detached fresco from church of Beaumont-Village, fourteenth century (photo: courtesy Andrée Willens).



Carved seal of the leprosery of Saint-Lazare, Paris, : Christ raises Lazarus in the presence of Mary and Martha; below, a boat (photo: Archives nationales).



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, map of c. , Blois, Archives départementales du Loir-et-Cher (photo: J.-C. Jacques, © Inventaire général, adagp).



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, cadastre of  (photo: Blois, Archives départementales du Loir-et-Cher).



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, simplified plan of the medieval borough based on one by Annie Cosperec for the Inventaire général, Centre.



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, tanneries, engraving reproduced on a postcard (photo: R. Malnoury, © Inventaire général, adagp).



Carved seal of the leprosery of Saint-Lazare, Corbeil, : leper (Lazarus) climbing out of his tomb (photo: Archives nationales).



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, pinion,  rue de la Pêcherie (photo: author).





Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, façade, east pinion,  rue Rouget de Lisle (photo: author).

Section drawing, J.-B. Lassus, c.  (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Crypt, ambulatory (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Upper church, fourth nave bay, broken arch against the round arch of the crossing (photo: author).



Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, façade, – rue de la Raquette (photo: R. Malnoury, © Inventaire général, adagp).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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

Nave vaults, third and fourth bays (photo: author).



Nave, reverse of west façade wall with bay into tribune gallery (photo: author).



Nave, north arm of nonprojecting transept, looking west into the side aisle (photo: author).



Modern stairwell into the crypt from the north transept arm, view toward medieval steps worn from use (photo: author).



Crypt, suppression of lateral stairs on the south side (photo: author).



Apse, semidome, left border of the central theophany, intonaco of the Romanesque painting overlapping the plaster finish of the masonry on which the fifteenth-century paintings were directly executed (photo: author).



Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (Loir-etCher), Saint-Jacques, apse, hemicycle wall: Christ in Majesty with Saint James enthroned at Christ’s left (photo: author).



Nave, fourth bay, looking north into the side aisle (photo: author).



Tribune gallery, rib statue, Saint Peter (photo: author).



Tribune gallery, rib statue, Saint Paul (photo: author).



Tribune gallery, rib statue, Mary Magdalen (photo: author).



Tribune gallery, rib statue, unidentified saint, possibly Saint Giles (photo: author).



North flank, drawing, J.-B. Lassus, c.  (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).

Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets, detail of Christ handing Saint James a branch (photo: author).



Les Roches-l’Évêque (Loir-etCher), rupestral chapel of Saint Gervais, destroyed painting: Saint James enthroned and supplicated by pilgrims, watercolor copy, S. Trocmé,  (photo: courtesy of the Musée de Vendôme).



South apsidiole, summit of conch vault, angels presenting clipeus of the agnus dei (photo: author).



South apsidiole: in the upper register, Saint Giles prays for a stormtossed ship and meets Saint Caesarius of Arles; in the lower register, Miraculous Mass (photo: author).



Saint Giles before Saint Caesarius of Arles (photo: author).



Saint Giles before Saint Caesarius of Arles, reconstruction drawing.





North porch, entrance into the crypt, from west (photo: author).



North porch, entrance into the crypt, from north (photo: author).



Crypt, north portal, from the interior (photo: author).



Orléans, Saint-Aignan, crypt, plan (photo: R. Malnoury, © Inventaire général, adagp).



xii

Proposed stairwell into the crypt, from Paris, Archives de la Commission des monuments historiques (F ii, no. ): the section indicates the position of the original stairs and the thickened pier that obstructed them (photo: Jean-Loup Charmet).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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

Les Roches-l’Évêque (Loir-etCher), rupestral chapel of Saint Gervais, destroyed painting, Pursuit of the Hind, watercolor copy, S. Trocmé,  (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Civray (Vienne), Saint Nicolas, south transept: badly damaged paintings, scenes from the life of Saint Giles: Pardon of Charlemagne, Pursuit of the Hind (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Montoire (Loir-et-Cher), SaintGilles, north transept, hemicycle wall: lost Gothic painting, Pursuit of the Hind, watercolor copy, A. Breton,  (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Civray, Pardon of Charlemagne, detail (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Civray, Pursuit of the Hind (Arch. Phot. © Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris).



Thoiré-sur-Dinan (Sarthe), NotreDame, north nave wall: Pursuit of the Hind, king on horseback sounding hunting horn and accompanied by dog at left, hunter with bow and arrow at right aiming at doe (photo: author).



Chartres cathedral, south transept, porch, archivolts, scenes from the life of Saint Giles: from left to right, Giles heals beggar, Pursuit of the Hind (with king on horseback), saint with doe and hunter (photo: author).



Thoiré-sur-Dinan, Pursuit of the Hind, continued: hunter shoots at the hind; his arrow flies past the animal to wound the saint in the leg; a timber beam cuts off the figure of Saint Giles, whose hand reaches for the hind (photo: author).



Chartres cathedral, south transept, porch, archivolts, Miraculous Mass: from left to right, angel bearing scroll, Giles at altar, kneeling King Charlemagne and horse with attendant (photo: author).





Le Loroux-Bottereau (LoireAtlantique), Saint-Laurent (formerly Saint-Gilles), scenes from the life of Saint Giles: upper register, Pursuit of the Hind, king (FLOVENTUS) on white horse accompanied by hunter and dog; lower register, the Pardon of Charlemagne, at left Charlemagne’s sister and her husband, Milo, accompanied by two servants, departing on pilgrimage; at right Charlemagne kneeling before the saint (photo: D. Pillet, © Inventaire général, spadem).

Montoire (Loir-et-Cher), SaintGilles, south transept, hemicycle wall: fragmentary scene from the Romanesque ensemble, Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, angel under arch at right, saint at left (photo: author).



Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (Loir-etCher), nave wall: vestige of the Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, figure inscribed karolus (photo: author).



Chartres cathedral, crypt, chapel of Saint Clement: standing saints under arcade (photo: author).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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

Chartres cathedral, crypt, detail of painting in the chapel of Saint Clement, Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles: angel hands inscribed scroll to Giles (egidius) behind altar; Charles (karolus) kneels (photo: author).



Apse, base of semidome, left side: Louis II of Chalon and his wife presented by an angel; his mother, marie of Parthenay, at prie-dieu before John the Baptist (photo: author).



Faverolles (Loir-et-Cher), ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, portal (photo: author).



Apse, base of semidome, right side: angel with donors (photo: author).



Apse, base of semidome, left side: Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (photo: author).



Apse, base of semidome, right side: dead Christ on the lap of the Virgin between Saint John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen (photo: author).



Apse, semidome: late medieval paintings above the Romanesque Christ, detail, angels bearing coat of arms (photo: author).



Detail of late medieval paintings above the Romanesque Christ, lower right, angel bearing coat of arms (photo: author).



Detail of late medieval paintings above the Romanesque Christ, lower left, angel bearing coat of arms (photo: author).



Intrados of apsidal arch, foliate ornament and coats of arms, early fifteenth century (photo: author).



West choir wall, Christ on the Cross (photo: author).



West choir wall, saint and female donor (photo: author).



West choir wall, saint and male donor (photo: author).



Faverolles, ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, archivolt, carved voussoirs, detail: Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, angel emerges from clouds and presents the scedula to Giles, kneeling and wearing a monk’s habit (photo: author).



Faverolles, ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, embrasure of window, mural painting, Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles (photo: author).



Faverolles, ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, mural painting, detail: Saint Giles stands at left presenting scedula to Charlemagne, crowned and seated at right, behind whom stands his sister (photo: author).





Axial apsidiole, conch vault: clipeate Lamb with symbols of the Evangelists John and Matthew on one side and narrative scenes on the other (photo: author). Axial apsidiole, conch vault, detail: symbol of the Evangelist Matthew (photo: author).



Axial apsidiole, conch vault, detail of the Supper at Bethany: Simon, name inscribed (photo: author).



Axial apsidiole, conch vault, detail of the Raising of Lazarus: heads of Christ and disciples (photo: author).

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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acknowledgments

Behind every lone author stand the people who are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the text. Behind the arguments I have crafted out of words lie the assistance of archivists and librarians who facilitated research, the good will of colleagues who supported the project, and the indulgence of friends and family who shared the road to Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher. This study owes its gestation to two successive summers of fieldwork made possible by grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Robert H. Smith Fellowship of the National Gallery of Art. Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Scholar Program allowed me to develop my newfound material into a book. As a Fulbright senior scholar and subsequently as a professeur invité, I was privileged to attend the seminars of Jean-Claude Schmitt and Jean-Claude Bonne at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. There I discovered an inspiring arena in which to test hypotheses and present work in progress. During the academic year in which I occupied the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Chair of Excellence in Art History at the University of Memphis, the Art Department saw to the production of most of the photographs published here. I thank the Medieval Academy of America for permission to incorporate into the current work a revised and updated version of an article previously published in Speculum (, no.  []). Many individuals contributed in exceptional ways to various aspects of my project. Jacques Greslier generously shared his unpublished doctoral thesis, an edition and historical analysis of the Cartulary of Levroux (Châteauroux, Archives départementales de l’Indre, G). When gaps in my notes required transatlantic sleuthing, Marc du Pouget, director of the Archives départementales de l’Indre at Châteauroux, kindly answered query-filled letters, as did Nicole Patureau, director of the Archives départementales du Loir-et-Cher at Blois. When my photographs of the church of Saint-Aignan turned out to be inadequate for publication, René Pecherat of Châteauroux reshot crucial views at my behest. Christian Sapin took the time to tour the crypt and upper church of Saint-Aignan with me, and Dominique Poulain accompanied me

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on a photography circuit of the many painted churches along the Loir River. The anonymous readers for Penn State Press rendered a truly valuable service through their thoughtful critique of my initial manuscript. I am especially indebted to Gloria Kury, Art and Humanities Editor, for taking my work under her wing and shepherding it into print. Growing up in the shadow of a book is not easy. My children, Ira and Gabrielle, deserve my immeasurable gratitude for bearing this burden. With his characteristic wit and humor, my husband, Armand Makowski, patiently mothered my determination. Cold stone and brittle documents—the landscape of the dead proves a barren retreat. Only the love and laughter that, at the end of the day, enfolded me into the world of the living sustained my scholarly mission. August 2002

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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abbreviations

aass ab acmh ad

an bhl bhl, suppl. bn ccl dtc is

mgh pl

Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur . . . , ed. J. Carnandet et al.,  vols., Paris, ‒ Archives des Beauvillier, Château de Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, private collection of M. de la Roche-Aymon Archives de la Commission des monuments historiques, Paris Archives départementales du Cher, Bourges de l’Indre, Châteauroux du Loir-et-Cher, Blois Archives nationales, Paris Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae Aetatis, ed. Société des Bollandistes,  vols., Brussels, ‒ Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae Aetatis, ed. Société des Bollandistes, Supplementi, Brussels,  Bibliothèque nationale, Paris Corpus Christianorum: Series latina, multivolume series, Turnhout, – Dictionnaire de théologie catholique,  vols., Paris, ‒ Inventaire sommaire des Archives départementales antérieurs à 1790: Cher, Archives ecclésiastiques, clergé séculier, série G, vol. 1, Archevêché de Bourges, ed. Alfred Gandilhon Bourges,  Indre, Archives ecclésiastiques, clergé régulier, série H, ed. Théodore Hubert. Paris,  Loir-et-Cher, Archives ecclésiastiques, clergé séculier, série G, vol. , ed. Fernand Bournon, Ernest Roussel, and Alfred Bourgeois, Blois,  Loir-et-Cher, Archives ecclésiastiques, clergé séculier, série G, vol. , ed. Jacques Soyer, Alfred Bourgeois, and Guy Trouillard, Blois,  Monumenta Germaniae Historica, multipart, multivolume series, Hannover, – Patrologia cursus completus: Series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne,  vols., Paris, ‒

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INTRODUCTION “confess your sins”

To see works of medieval art solely with the naked eye is to remain blind. It is the central premise of this book that, for medieval audiences, looking at pictorial images engaged the entire person. The sense of sight to which art appealed was but one aspect of a fuller, bodily experience that stimulated the emotional and mental receptivity needed for understanding.1 A choreographed physical encounter with images, whether in handling objects or moving through architectural space, facilitated comprehension, a taking possession of the seen for the purpose of creating meaning.2 Images gathered in with the eyes, visually ingested, so to speak, demanded to be spiritually consumed and digested.3 Vision meant incorporation and eventual self-transformation, a dynamic of special relevance to the practices of ritual healing with which the following study is concerned. Because seeing in such a manner implicated the psychosomatic unity of the person, images could serve as potent adjuncts to therapeutic regimes. My position on what viewing entailed for medieval users of images builds on recent discussion of the unabashed physicality accorded thought processes and, conversely, the body’s instrumentality in achieving higher consciousness. Complementary lines of inquiry by Mary Carruthers

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into the bodily nature of mental activity and by Caroline Walker Bynum into the body as the locus of spiritual struggle have tapped a wealth of sources pertinent to the monastic and religious life.4 Meditation, for example, required the mastication of sacred texts: the oral/aural repetition of syllables through which one learned to read Latin laid the foundation for the intellectual stages of silent rumination and cogitation. Prayer similarly began with a piercing or wounding of the heart, the literal meaning of compunction: intense grief over one’s own sins, recollected so as to be excreted, prepared the soul for communion with God.5 The exercise of memory involved a consciously directed journey, a displacement of the self, along associative routes through networks of emotions, sensory perceptions, and ideas. But that self could not be imag(in)ed apart from the body in which psychic activity transpired as a function of human physiology.6 Commonplace corporeal metaphors for cognitive practices and affective states were thus ultimately grounded in an ontology of the embodied self. To be sure, the self was more than the mortal body—since possessed of, informed by, a soul, which survived death. Yet the self was also not an amorphous spiritual entity—since utterly identified with the particular sentient body that the soul inhabited on earth. Although irreducible to the body, the self was nevertheless inextricable from it. Flesh, subject both to desire and will, had to collaborate in the soul’s spiritual advancement. When the body rose at the Resurrection on the Last Day, it would be rescued from corruption to partake eternally of the soul’s blessedness in heaven or torment in hell. Salvation rewarded, damnation punished, soul and body jointly. Both were equally constitutive of the person. I explore the role of medieval wall painting in articulating the body/soul relationship for a lay public, a relationship that the decorated church not only placed at the territorial nucleus of the parish but also made the defining element of Christian community. Already during earthly existence, infirmity and healing brought into play the interdependence of matter and spirit, body and soul. The root causes of disease, disability, deformity, and psychic distress belonged to an invisible, supernatural order, affliction and cure, the province of higher powers. Saints, of course, intervened in nature. By miraculously provoking or eliminating malady, they not only reflectively manifested God’s glory in the present but also offered a foretaste of future justice. Priests, too, dispensed divine medicine. Their sacramental treatment of the soul benefited the ailing person whether or not it restored the sick body to wholeness. In fact, physical suffering, when patiently endured, would aid the soul in its search for deliverance, just as pursuing worldly satisfaction and carnal pleasure without care for the soul would inevitably bring everlasting pain. Spiritual

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health achieved in this world determined the well-being of the self in the hereafter. To heal and be healed was to enter into an economy of redemption in which the exchange of gifts and services, suffrage and sacrifice, crossed the boundary between material and spiritual planes. The problem I investigate is how the built environment, architectural space, and pictorial representation combined to structure viewers’ approaches to the sacred so that the very act of looking at images opened a way into the circulation of grace. How, I also ask, did the decorated church organize a complex, multiparty cycle of gift exchange so as to guarantee the health of the social body?7 The second premise of this book, corollary to the first, is that if we are to understand the cultural work performed by medieval art, we cannot rely merely on what we now see. Buildings and artifacts, sundered from their proper settings in the vanished communities that interacted with them, are deposited across our world like so much inert geological sediment. Visible surfaces and current surroundings are altogether misleading. Excavating and reconstructing the historical conditions of meaning production are necessary prerequisites to our vision. The monument on which I focus below reveals its therapeutic functions only when restored to the twelfth- and thirteenthcentury landscape that it dominated and to the populace living within its ken. Go today to Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher), a small town in central France some forty kilometers south of Blois (figs. , ). Visit the Romanesque church there (figs. –). But it would be impossible to guess that the building was once the principal sanctuary around which clustered several hospitals and small chapels devoted to healing cults. The only clue that healing was ever a major preoccupation at the site is to be found in the vast crypt, painted c.  (fig. ). The most telling image appears in the center of the apse vault above the main altar (fig. ). Across a visionary scene of God’s Majesty unfurls the key phrase “Confess your sins” (James :). The enthroned Christ hands down to Saint James, at his left, a scroll on which was written an abbreviated excerpt of the scriptural verse, “Confitemini [ergo] alterutrum peccata [vestra],” now so rubbed as to be unintelligible (fig. ).8 To Saint Peter, at his right, Christ issues the keys to heaven (figs. , ). This theophany of divine traditio is at the same time a scene of ritual propitiation in which healing comes through God’s forgiveness of sin. Three small paupers, crutches at hand, humbly petition for grace (figs. –).9 Offering votive gifts (fig. ) and prayers at the feet of Christ and the apostles, the supplicants receive blessings in turn. They bear the attributes of the infirm and the pilgrim but represent, in the fullest sense of the term,10 the faithful to whom (Christ through) James addresses the passage that culminates with the inscribed words. “Is there any one among you sick? Let him bring in the

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presbyters of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be saved” (James :–). The image holds out the prospect of a return to physical health in this world—the supplicant kneeling before James has given up his crutch (fig. )—even as it envisions, in the paupers’ apotheosis into the realm of God and the saints, the passage of a fallen humanity through sickness and death to eternal life. The New Testament exhortation to confession reverberates in radial chapels, where paintings extant from the same date dilate upon the relationship between penance and healing. Saint Giles, whose life is recounted in the south chapel, not only performs miraculous cures (figs. , ) but also miraculously obtains divine proof that repentance wins God’s pardon (figs. , ). The east chapel combines the Raising of Lazarus (fig. ), prototype of spiritual rebirth and triumph over death, with gospel episodes featuring his saintly sisters (figs. –). Mary of Bethany, widely believed in the Middle Ages to be none other than the Magdalen, is represented, as one might expect, in the role of penitent par excellence as she anoints Christ’s feet (figs. –); she is also shown conversing with Christ in the garden after his resurrection (figs. , ). Quite surprisingly, by contrast, Martha is identified here as the woman healed of her issue of blood at the moment she touched Christ’s garment (figs. , ). Resurrection and redemption, subtexts of the Romanesque program, were much later explicitly depicted in a second ensemble of medieval frescoes introduced into the quasi-subterranean space. Fifteenth-century murals encompass the Majesty in the semidome of the apse, making it the centerpiece of a new program, and extend westward into the choir (figs. –). Emerging from open tombs, the dead go forth to greet Christ returned as Judge. Noble donors in the company of patron saints take their place on the base of the apsidal concha to either side of the old image of pauperes christi received by God. At first glance, the Saint-Aignan paintings may seem an odd choice for close examination. The Romanesque ensemble is only partially preserved and, from a strictly technical viewpoint, is of uneven quality. Nor does any as-yet-unacclaimed masterpiece of the fifteenth century here await discovery. Although not unknown to specialists, the murals in question hardly rank among the “great works” of medieval art.11 Indeed, their modesty poses a challenge to art historians. Scholarship in the medieval field has traditionally concentrated on powerful abbeys and cathedrals, renowned patrons and

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theologians, sumptuously illuminated manuscripts and precious ornaments. Our disciplinary narratives, revolving around a canon created by learned elites, take little notice of la culture moyenne. What story can be extracted from the Saint-Aignan paintings, and what larger implications might it have for our understanding of the Middle Ages? The artistic record of parishes, passed over in silence by contemporaries and down to us in degraded condition, is caught in a double bind. Previous generations of art historians routinely judged the sanctuaries of smaller corporate bodies, village churches, and rural chapels to be second-rate, and thus unworthy of serious study. When considered at all, the extant material was typically granted limited reflective value, acquiring visibility insofar as it fleshed out developments at major centers or bore on prestigious monuments. Consequently, little in the way of basic documentation, let alone more probing discussion, is available to historians who today seek to understand how ordinary people of the past dealt with everyday issues. Yet we cannot tease out what artistic activity at the parish level may reveal about medieval society without first inventorying dispersed archaeological remains—not an especially rewarding project in our postpositivist era. Once regarded as the province of antiquarians and now left to conservators in charge of national patrimonies, the medieval parish eludes the historian’s gaze. I hope to show, however, that this arena of cultural production merits another look. A serendipitous finding precipitated my interest in Saint-Aignan. The Romanesque paintings in the crypt of the church can be correlated with the contemporary operation of several hospitals surrounding the town. Highly unusual to say the least, this remarkable connection is puzzling indeed. Why would the decorative scheme inside the church be linked to outlying charitable institutions? Just what might be at stake in the spatial organization of the medieval parish that the concomitant organization of pictorial images in architectural space addressed? Pondering these questions led me to investigate the painted crypt in relation to the urban development of the site, the proliferation of institutions for assistance to the sick poor, and the local topography of healing and burial. My attempt to retrieve a dimension of medieval culture from a singular evidentiary trace draws inspiration from the goals and techniques of “microhistory.” Perhaps the genre’s best-known examples are the now classic studies by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie on the Occitan village of Montaillou, Carlo Ginzburg on the cosmogony of a Friulian miller, and Jean-Claude Schmitt on the cult of a dog-saint in the Dombes.12 The recovery of peasant mentalities for which these books are justly celebrated is not the defining feature of microhistory, however. Certainly my project, which centers on church

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decoration in the context of official ecclesiastical patronage, in no way pretends to bring the worldview of twelfth-century peasants to life. Rather, the above-named studies, among others, have carved out a distinctive historiographical niche by training attention, methodically, in craftsmanly fashion, on localized formations and anomalous instances. Underpinning the work at hand is a similar value placed on the reduced scale of observation, which permits insight into tensions and possibilities, tactics and accommodations, that belie normative accounts of social, and artistic, order. Whereas Le Roy Ladurie, Ginzburg, and Schmitt took isolated texts as their starting points, I instead decipher spatial practices from a nexus of uniquely interconnected buildings and images. This configuration, of which only scattered, discontinuous fragments survive, must be painstakingly reconstituted through intensive analysis of archaeological, iconographic, archival, and ethnographic materials. Only when the painted crypt and the world outside the church are brought together within a mutually explanatory framework, each term the hermeneutic of the other, does the case study yield new insight into space “as a cultural system” (to borrow a phrase from the titles of several articles by Clifford Geertz).13 The restricted scope of my inquiry means that the exemplary status of its results remains uncertain. All the same, the experiment suggests that “lesser” works formerly thought to lack visual and intellectual interest may indeed generate stories worth telling. The book moves cinematically, as it were, from a global view of medieval Saint-Aignan (Part i) into the collegiate and parish church (Part ii). The first chapter unravels the intertwined strands in the joint history of castle town and church. The second pieces together the “medical” landscape from the built environment. My concern here is to place the secular canons of Saint-Aignan and their church at the crux of relations between the local lord, a flourishing burgher population, and pilgrims to the crypt as well as to sites of healing in the marshy lowlands outside borough walls. Chapter  mobilizes seemingly inconsequential, banal details gleaned thus far as clues to meaningful patterns articulated in and through space. One set of coordinates maps relations between corps and terroir; another, giving priority to spiritual health, returns the ailing body to the church and its paintings. Both systems, I propose, participated in the representation, inchoate and unverbalized, of competing therapeutic regimes. Each deployed images, symbolic in one case, pictorial in the other, within contrasting protocols designed to alleviate pain and suffering. The second half of the monograph scrutinizes the central monument of ecclesiastical power. Chapter  considers how the architectural fabric of the church, significantly altered in the course of construction, orchestrated the transition from an exterior terrain marked by disease and death to an interior

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in which pictorial images prescribed a remedy for body and soul. Chapter  reconstitutes the iconography of the Romanesque ensemble in order to explicate its programmatic richness. Crucially, however, what the paintings show does not exhaust what they do. I argue in Chapter  that the work recruited a diverse audience within an economy of salvation by exploiting differences in social status and gender roles. Visual images insinuated sexed and stigmatized bodies into spiritual transactions negotiated in the invisible realm of the soul. Having earlier clarified the crypt’s multiple functions as consecrated space, I now reflect on the inverse problem: how was the sacred spatialized? By what means, in other words, was the sacred converted into institutional structures that inscribed populations in geographical space?14 The crypt’s painted decoration cooperated in ecclesiastical strategies for consolidating the territorial integrity of the parish. Membership in Christian community, dependent on penance and critical especially at death, bound souls and bodies to the land. Acts of appropriation thread their way into the story of the crypt’s use over time. Built in the late eleventh century, the crypt initially served to commemorate and perpetuate seigneurial domination of the plateau overlooking the Cher River. The painting campaign, which followed the spatial transformation of the lower church in the late twelfth century, reflects the expanding scope of the chapter’s patronage beyond the borough to the plat pays. What had originated as a reliquary chamber and mausoleum for the lordly “founders” of the parish became by the late thirteenth century the prized venue for the memorial endowments of burghers. The fifteenth-century reception of the Romanesque Majesty, treated in the epilogue, brings us full circle. The family now inhabiting the adjacent castle reasserted a noble presence through its commission of paintings in the crypt’s central space, where previously the town innkeeper and toll collector had installed his chantry foundation. Expendable wealth may have changed hands through the centuries, but above the main altar the pictorial representation of the sick poor petitioning Christ and the saints continued to serve a useful purpose.

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FROM CASTLE TO TOWN

Were I a filmmaker, this chapter would dissolve into opening footage designed to set the stage for my unfolding story. Kaleidoscopic cinematography would artfully evoke “life” around  in the thriving town of Saint-Aignan, perched on a rocky promontory above the Cher. Sweeping across the heel-shaped plateau, an aerial pan would descend past the castle keep at the western summit to the Romanesque church midway down the slope and finally arrive at the borough south and east around the base. A quickly paced sequence of introductory vignettes would follow. The camera would penetrate the private apartments of the donjon to spy on the lord and his family, observe devotions at church, tag along behind a funeral cortege, and tour the market, near the prison and pillory, at the hub of narrow winding streets crowded with ateliers and houses. Out of a preliminary collage of myriad disconnected tableaus, the protagonists would come into focus and the plot gradually take shape. Of course, I am not writing a scenario for a film in the vein of Martin Guerre.1 I recount no intrigue, ponder no tragic predicament. I neither re-create intimate relationships nor overhear conversations of the sort that sparked confessors’ probing inquisitions: readers should not expect to meet characters resembling the colorful villagers of

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Montaillou or the sympathetic Menocchio, the miller from the region of Pordenone who believed the world began in rotten cheese and worms. The people I discuss remain sadly obscure, though I count myself lucky to be able to name some of them. Instead of conjuring lives and personalities, I imagine a landscape in which space itself plays the starring role. Monuments perform. Articulating the twelfth-century terrain at key junctures, the church in concert with subsidiary shrines and outlying hospitals imposes a sacred order that governs ritual transactions between various social groups. The powerful and the weak, the able-bodied and the sick, the living and the dead, townsfolk and wayfarers, clergy and laity, figure as codependents in a single temporal economy with a view to eternity. The story I have to tell is, in a very real sense, about place. Retracing here the configuration of the medieval site will allow me to say more later about how the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan represented itself through pictorial images as the privileged engine of social exchange. If my purpose were simply to locate things, I could substitute my verbal sketch with a map. But the topography of the town and vicinity presents difficulties on two accounts. First of all, its imbricated geographical, political, and institutional dimensions require explication. Second, its constituent elements are hardly obvious to the eye: detective work is needed to pick apart and sift through successive layers of medieval and postmedieval development. To see into the past is clearly impossible; for a scholar to paint a seamless portrait of a vanished world is irresponsible. As I describe the closely linked foundation of castle and church at Saint-Aignan and the urban growth of the borough, I will acknowledge the gaps in my documentation and leave them exposed. My task is therefore just the opposite of the filmmaker’s, whose illusory picture window onto “life” invents a cohesive, saturated whole beyond my range of vision.2

inside the painted crypt

The Romanesque church of Saint-Aignan (fig. ), subordinated to the donjon (figs. , ) and dominating the borough (fig. ), is the most significant material fragment of the medieval site. I will return in subsequent chapters to treat the specifics of its architecture and painted decoration. Suffice it to remark for now that the oldest and least restored part of the building, the crypt, dates from the late eleventh century (fig. ).3 By the time construction began, the radial plan adopted for the east end had become fairly common. Still, a crypt in which the apse is encased in a spacious ambulatory giving onto three

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apsidioles harks back to a disposition traditionally associated with the presentation of saints’ relics. Work on the building proceeded in stages over the course of the next hundred years, and at the end of the twelfth century, the lower church was embellished with murals. The core scene of God’s Majesty in the semidome of the apse, the crypt’s main chapel, features the apostles Peter and James with diminutive figures, weak, lame, or crippled, at their feet (figs. –). The trio of sibling saints, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, appear in the axial chapel, each the beneficiary of Christ medicus: he stops Martha’s flow of blood as she touches the fringe of his robe (figs. , ), purifies Mary of her demons (figs. –), brings Lazarus back to life (figs. , ). Together the episodes form a prelude to Christ’s own resurrection (figs. , ), by which he vanquishes death and redeems fallen humanity of its original sin. The miracle-working Saint Giles, whose epic legend spanned Gaul’s late antique and Carolingian past, presides in the south chapel (fig. ). He excises poisonous venom from a man bitten by a snake (fig. ) and saves a ship from wreckage at sea (fig. ). But of the many deeds he performs, two in particular demonstrate his imitatio christi: Giles heals a beggar through his garment (fig. ) and obtains God’s pardon of Charlemagne’s unspeakable offense (figs. , ). Although he cures others, he accepts the martyrdom of permanent disability so that through suffering he can increase his virtue (figs. –). The north apsidiole, too, received a hagiographic cycle similar in format to its counterparts at east and south, but the material is entirely effaced except for the palest vestiges of colored plaster. A preliminary survey of the painted crypt would thus make it entirely appropriate to posit as a working hypothesis that relics were housed there and attracted pilgrims in search of healing. No wonder, then, that images portray contemporary suppliants begging pardon for sins as well as miraculous cures. But this scenario, for which I will provide compelling, if circumstantial, evidence, is quite incomplete, failing to take into account the multiple functions of the space. Missing from the purview of on-site inspection is the richly textured fabric of patronage and clientele that only deeper investigation into the historical record can begin to delineate. Saints were not the only dead honored in the crypt, nor pilgrims the sole visitors there. The cult activities sustained by the lower church grew out of its interconnections with the castle, town, and nearby charitable houses. Unless the local nobility, secular canons, and burghers are factored into the balance sheet, we are left with a shallow impression of how the shrine complex actually worked. Relics, fundamental though their sacred power may be, were but one agent in a dynamic of healing that involved communities and, as my last chapter will

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clarify, exploited asymmetries between rich and poor, men and women. Before I can show how images triggered this dynamic, elements of the socially differentiated, gender-bound world to which the church specifically belonged must be pieced together from “the ground up.” At this point, to use an analogy from any number of classic detective films, I phase away from the immediate scene that is my focal point (the monument) and turn my attention to what lay behind it: background now moves into the foreground.

oppidum and parish

Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher finds itself at the conjunction of three regions (fig. ). To the north lies the marshy district of the Sologne.4 Heath alleviated by clumps of trees, ponds, and meadows crisscross the vast sandy plains between the Cher and the Loire. To the south and east, a mix of wood- and pastureland (bocage) covers the hills of that part of the Berry called the Boischaut. The Cher valley at the level of Saint-Aignan, however, already presents the limestone plateaux characteristic of the area around Tours, sixty kilometers to the west.5 Geographically an extension of the Touraine but politically a satellite of Blois, the town was identified throughout the Middle Ages in relation to the Berry because it belonged, as parish, to the diocese of Bourges.6 Its urban development was shaped by the double role its strategic location conferred. Carved out of the valley by the sinuous course of the river, the promontory lent itself to fortification. From the late tenth century a walled, garrisoned enclave (oppidum, castrum) commanded the naturally defended site, gateway to the Touraine, along the embattled frontier between the domains of Blois and Anjou.7 But what began as a military outpost also provided a connecting link between vital arteries of the surrounding agrarian world. Saint-Aignan-surCher was both buffer and bridge, critical position in a chain of defense and point of passage along a well-traveled corridor. The earliest narrative text to relate the origins of the medieval settlement is a dynastic history of the lords of Amboise, vassals of the count of Anjou. The mid-twelfth-century Deeds of the Lords of Amboise (Gesta ambaziensium dominorum) devotes a few lines to the garrison’s creation while chronicling the struggle between the Angevin Fulk Nerra (–) and Odo ii, count of Blois (–), for domination of the Touraine. In brief, Odo’s father, Odo i (–), fortified a place above the Cher where a church of Saint Anianus had formerly been inhabited by hermits (“ubi erat sancti Aniani ecclesia ab heremitis olim habitata”). Odo ii gave the oppidum to his closest

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associate, the most loyal warrior in his entourage, Geoffrey the Young (of Donzy). Having been made lord of Saint-Aignan, Geoffrey courageously fought Odo’s enemies, but fell prisoner to Fulk and died (c. ) while incarcerated at Loches. His men brought his body back to Saint-Aignan and, significantly, buried him in the eastern part of the church of Saint John (“cujus corpus homines sui Sancti Aniano deferentes, in latere ecclesie sancti Johannis ab orientali parte sepelierunt”).8 We can infer from the Gesta that the stronghold took its name from the dedication of a preexisting church to Saint Anianus. The seventeenth-century historian of Blois, Jean Bernier, associated the primitive sanctuary with Robert the Strong (d. ) on account of the count’s special devotion to this Gallo-Roman bishop of Orléans.9 In the nineteenth century local antiquarians greatly embellished the purported Carolingian foundation of the “hermits’” church.10 One writer presumed that it acquired the relics of Anianus during Robert’s rule, another that it was a simulacrum of the saint’s tomb at Orléans.11 Unverifiable suppositions notwithstanding, the archaeology of the Romanesque church (reviewed at greater length in Chapter ) does confirm the cult of relics. During a summary excavation conducted in , the crypt’s original western retaining wall, now occluded by the later choir wall bearing fifteenth-century paintings (fig. ), was discovered to be equipped with two tiny round-arched openings (fig. ).12 The pair of little windows (fenestellae) could have had only one possible function—to allow the perception from the upper church of relics deposited in the crypt below. Although there is no way to ascertain whose relics were conserved, Saint Anianus—venerated at this site since at least the tenth century—would seem to be the candidate of choice.13 The reference in the Gesta to a church of Saint John, burial place of the first lord of Saint-Aignan, is therefore perplexing. Does the place-name SaintAignan pertain to the oppidum, or castrum as it is called in eleventh-century charters, but the dedication Saint John to its church? Were Anianus and John titular saints of two cult centers within the enclave, or, alternatively, did two patrons accrue over time to a single sanctuary?14 Archival and archaeological evidence indicates that a succession of structures built on the same terrain resulted in a single church with a double dedication. Whereas the castrum was always called Saint-Aignan, the church might be designated by either dedication. The early-eleventh-century church of Saint John where Geoffrey of Donzy was interred c.  very likely corresponds to one so named in a charter of , issued “at the castrum of Saint-Aignan next to the church of Saint John” (apud castrum sancti aniani iuxta ecclesiam sancti iohannis).15

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This topographic locution also fits the relationship visible today between the fortified height of the plateau and the church below. Yet at the date the document was drawn up, construction of the church now standing would only just have been getting under way. As is discussed in Chapter , the building’s structural idiosyncrasies presuppose some earlier edifice around which it took shape and which it supplanted during the course of construction. The lateeleventh- and twelfth-century church, Maylis Baylé contends, is a rebuilding; it was not erected on virgin soil.16 She advances her argument with an observation concerning four tombs brought to light at the time of the  excavation of the crypt. Three burial cavities with rubblework walls were found in the choir, as was a trapezoidal stone sarcophagus on axis further east at the entrance to the apse (fig. ). On the basis of a drawing, the only known record of the find, Baylé suggests that the oldest of the four tombs predates the crypt itself.17 To whom the tombs belonged remains unknown. There can be no doubt, however, that inhumation in the crypt sanctified by the relics of saints would have been reserved for the “founders” and patrons of the church—either high-ranking clergy, for example, priors of the chapter, or, on the ecclesiastical model, the lord of Saint-Aignan and close members of his family.18 Given the precedent of Geoffrey of Donzy’s distinguished burial latere ecclesie sancti iohannis ab orientale parte, the crypt of the new church could well have served, originally at least, as a seigneurial mausoleum. Lay burial in the crypt at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher would by no means be atypical. It compares especially well in this respect with the crypt of the collegiate/castle church of Notre-Dame, Gargilesse (Indre), built in the second third of the twelfth century.19 The lower church there functioned as the private sepulchral chapel of the lords of Gargilesse, the Naillac, a Limousin family that originated in the tenth century (the Donzy, too, were from outside the region). The oldest documented burial at Gargilesse dates from , but the crypt may have been used for this purpose from the beginning.20 Although the Gesta and charter of  refer to a church of Saint John, other, later-eleventh- and twelfth-century acts on behalf of the church of Saint-Aignan tout court corroborate the existence of a single sanctuary at the locality. An act contemporary with the  donation recorded the ritualized self-enserfment of a free man to the church of Saint-Aignan in Berry.21 Papal bulls of  and  confirmed the patronage of the archbishops of Bourges over the church of Saint-Aignan,22 which was indeed placed under the invocation of Saint Anianus, as a charter of c.  attests.23 The two titular saints mentioned sporadically throughout the history of the church of Saint-Aignan must have pertained to different ecclesiastical entities,

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parish and chapter, which functioned within a single building. Until the French Revolution, the church now in existence belonged to a chapter of secular canons.24 Its ecclesiastical status is first documented in the papal bull, just mentioned, of , which lists the possessions of the archbishop of Bourges: Saint-Aignan is grouped with other collegiate churches in the diocese. The collegiate church also housed the parish of Saint-Aignan, listed in a thirteenth-century inventory (pouillé) of all parish churches in the diocese of Bourges.25 According to eighteenth-century registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials, the parish was dedicated to Saint John; the altar of the parish, newly made in , received a statue of Saint John the Baptist.26 An iconographic element from the twelfth-century church makes this postmedieval information all the more pertinent. With one exception, the extant original capitals in the nave are carved either with ornamental motifs or Christological scenes (the nineteenth-century “restorations” also fall into these two categories). The single hagiographic subject to have appeared in the part of the church occupied by the parish is the Beheading of Saint John. The figures have been destroyed, but the preserved portion of the inscription (caput iohannis herodias) clearly identifies the scene (fig. ). The dual status of the church at Saint-Aignan can be related to widespread tendencies in eleventh-century France. As Jean Hubert has pointed out, the nobility generally preferred to establish collegiate churches close to their castles. Canons living in their own private quarters did not require a monastic complex to support conventual life. The single necessary structure, the church itself, was therefore more easily adapted to the sloping terrains of plateaus favored for fortification. Collegiate churches performed functions that the lord desired—they housed relics and provided sepulchral ground—without compromising his defensive capabilities.27 Not all fortified installations became seats of parishes, however. Other factors came into play, for instance their location with respect to earlier settlements already equipped with an ecclesia matrix. The relationship between castrum and parish may evolve in any number of ways, and it goes without saying that each site must be evaluated on a case-bycase basis.28 Often, the parish appears as a secondary creation closely linked not merely to the territory of the castrum but to seigneurial initiative, for it served as the principal means by which the lord consolidated his domination of the land.29 The castrum of Saint-Aignan did achieve parochial status. A study covering the Anjou has shown that for the first half of the eleventh century the constitution of new parishes coinciding with castra was the exclusive prerogative of the count and his highest-ranking vassals.30 Saint-Aignan was likewise a comital foundation, which Odo II of Blois entrusted to one of his intimates.

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In sum, the account in the mid-twelfth-century Gesta condenses two temporal layers that can be distinguished according to known historical patterns. A sanctuary consecrated to Saint Anianus preceded the incorporation of the site into the seigneurial regime in force throughout the region by the late tenth century. Presumably the first lord, Geoffrey of Donzy, had a new structure built, that in which he was later buried, to serve as the church for the castrum. Consecrated to Saint John, it must also have retained the saintly patronage of the earlier sanctuary, for both dedications were ultimately carried over to the present church. Was it the presence of relics, translated from building to building, that assured the ongoing veneration of Saint Anianus at the site? The original architectural disposition of the crypt, with its fenestella wall, would seem to point in this direction. The Romanesque church now standing effaced the physical trace of preceding cult buildings but not the spiritual and institutional structures with which they had framed religious life. Between the initial seigneurial appropriation of the site and the later architectural aggrandizement of the church, multiple functions were integrated in successive buildings that sheltered shrine, sepulchral ground, parish, and a chapter of secular canons who discharged custodial responsibilities over the whole. The concentration of resources and spiritual investment in a single sanctuary did not go unchallenged, however. During the twelfth century, a network of dependent chapels and hospitals began to evolve in and around the borough, supporting and supplementing, if not also competing with, the attraction of the principal church. It is, in fact, the archives of local hospitals that record the flux of pilgrims to the site, thereby complementing conclusions drawn from the archeology of the crypt regarding relics once housed there. I take up these paraparochial entities in Chapter , which continues to flesh out the sacred and institutional topography of the site. First, though, let me introduce the secular society responsible for establishing and maintaining local charitable houses devoted to the care of the sick.

lord and borough

Saint-Aignan belonged to the sires of Donzy through the first quarter of the thirteenth century.31 By the second half of the twelfth century, the castrum lay roughly at the center of the Donzy patrimony, at once vast and diffuse. From their ancestral domain midway between Auxerre and Nevers, the Donzy had expanded not only east into the Nivernais to possess Châtel-Censoir but also northwest along the Loire to Cosne and Gien, and eventually into the Perche.32

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They augmented their seigneury at Saint-Aignan by accumulating others in the region, Selles-sur-Cher, Romorantin, and Vatan, which they held from the counts of Blois-Champagne.33 The dispersion of their domains exposes the logic of their activity. On the one hand, the lords of Donzy exerted pressure on their traditional rival, the count of Nevers; on the other, through their cluster of domains in the Cher valley, they protected the southern flanks of Blois-Champagne. The Donzy reached the apogee of their power under Herveus III (lord, –) and his third son, Herveus IV (–).34 The latter, lord of Donzy following the deaths of two elder brothers, Guillaume and Philippe, set his sights on Nevers. In  Herveus IV captured Pierre de Courtenay, count of Nevers, in battle. To gain his release, Pierre was forced to concede in marriage his sole heir, Mathilde, and with her the title to the county, which Herveus assumed c. .35 Of all his residences, Herveus preferred SaintAignan, where he came to a sudden (some say violent) death.36 Two decades before, the crypt was painted with the legend of Saint Giles, who had gained a reputation for nullifying the spiritual dangers of death too sudden for last rites. Coincidence or not, the Donzy count of Nevers becomes important to my story for other reasons. We will meet him again in connection with the local propagation of a healing cult whose customary ritual practice—the ceremonial gifting of the cured to saint and church—he was sworn to uphold. From the late eleventh through the early thirteenth century, the Donzy acted in their capacity as lords of Saint-Aignan on behalf of many ecclesiastical institutions. They made grants to nearby monastic houses, especially Cornilly, Chezal-Benoit, Pontlevoy, and Barzelle, or confirmed donations accorded by their ancestors or vassals.37 Herveus III conceded rights within the castellany to the Hospitallers and the Templars, headquartered at Villefranche-sur-Cher and Valençay respectively.38 The collegiate church of Saint-Aignan was not forgotten. In , the second son of Herveus III, Philippe (d. ), nearly quadrupled a gift of revenues from the toll of Saint-Aignan that his father had donated to the chapter on his death ().39 Herveus IV renewed the assignment of monies from the toll in .40 On the eve of their departure for the Crusades in , he and Mathilde de Courtenay drew up a testament listing numerous beneficiaries, among which “the church of St.-Aignan at our castrum in Berry” (ecclesia S. Aniani de castro nostro in Bituria) was to receive one of the seigneurial mills.41 It seems reasonable to assume that the collegiate church at Saint-Aignan was substantially endowed all along by the Donzy and that local charitable institutions here (as elsewhere) benefited from their gifts.42 What did the lords receive in return? A charter issued by the

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chapter in  acknowledged the foundation of an annual Mass by the predecessors of Herveus iv.43 Surely such an anniversary Mass commemorated his forebears. Might it have taken place in the painted crypt in the presence of ancestral tombs? Relics that had there attracted the dead also brought pilgrims. The relevance of the crypt paintings to the itinerant sick is not difficult to imagine, though precisely how images served their needs requires further commentary. The collegiate church, however, was also home to other, resident constituencies. Without getting ahead of myself, I might here anticipate my argument in Chapter  by saying that the pictorial program targeted nobles and inhabitants no less than it did pilgrims, who were actually depicted in the guise of pauperes christi. Similarly, painted figures of women were limited to the penitential and servitor saints Mary and Martha, and yet, or rather precisely for this reason, images assigned women spectators a special task. Males of the noble class typically relied on surviving female kin for their postmortem spiritual well-being, and the seigneurial family of Saint-Aignan was no exception. At the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the female head of the household by marriage, the heiress Mathilde de Courtenay, bore the burden of her father’s memory. Herveus IV, too, like his late father-in-law, could look only to his own wife, Mathilde, and their daughter for suffrages on behalf of his soul. The entire Donzy patrimony devolved to his sole heir, Agnès (d. ), herself a widow first of Philippe of France (eldest son of Louis viii, d. ), and then of Guy de Châtillon (d. ).44 After three more generations of heiresses, Saint-Aignan passed in the s into the possession of the counts of Châlon, Auxerre, and Tonnerre.45 Matrons and widows frequenting the painted crypt there were aplenty; they drop out of my discussion for a while, but (to borrow another narrative convention from the cinema) it is with them that I shall conclude. By the time the paintings in the lower church were commissioned, a borough had spread out around the slopes of the promontory below the collegiate church. The town first emerged as a juridical entity in its own right between  and , when, according to credible local tradition, Agnès de Donzy and her second husband, Guy de Châtillon, issued a charter of franchise.46 The charter does not survive, but is obliquely implied in one dated  in favor of Contres, a nearby town in the Sologne Blesois.47 An affranchisement of – would certainly conform to the well-known historical profile of the communal movement as broadly understood (i.e., including the ville franche along with the commune per se), which reaches its peak during the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first half of the

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next.48 Similar seigneurial concessions had already been made to many other localities within the political horizon of the Donzy: to cite but a few examples, Nevers received a charter in ,49 Blois and Romorantin in ,50 Donzy and Cosne in ,51 and Selles-sur-Cher in .52 Within the context of this study, the franchise of – is a significant marker because it presupposes a nascent urban milieu—and, concomitantly, the production of bourgeois capital—on which a new legal status was conferred after the fact. To gauge the relative importance of this phenomenon, note that in the Berry only about sixty communities, or well under one-tenth of all the parishes enumerated in an early-fourteenth-century diocesan source, obtained charters of liberty or confirmations of such between  and .53 Although its specific provisions remain unknown, the charter of liberty for Saint-Aignan was most likely based on the famous and widely adapted coutumes issued by Louis VI and Louis VII to the small town of Lorris in the Gâtinais.54 In  Herveus IV of Donzy in fact signed an act at Lorris recognizing the application of the coutumes ratified by prince Louis (the future Louis VIII) in lands with which Agnès had been dowered on the occasion of her marriage to Philippe of France.55 Charters of liberty conceded to Berrichon towns by allies and relatives of the French kings adhere as a rule to the Lorris model; that for Selles-sur-Cher, for example, includes nearly all the articles found in the royal precedent.56 Historians have long observed that the “free town” in central France functioned within the seigneurial regime of which it remained an integral part.57 The lord clarified, if not also relaxed, his customary exactions because he profited from the resulting stimulus to the local economy. While granting the right to freedom of movement, the franchise effectively ensured the stability of local populations by forestalling inducements to resettlement outside the seigneury. The lord conceded the town no political, and only minimal administrative, privileges. Through his bailiff and provost he remained the final arbiter of justice and the sole governing authority. In the Berry, charters adhering to the Lorris model neither provided for nor recognized municipal officials, whether elected or even appointed under the lord’s auspices;58 échevins do not appear until the fifteenth century.59 At Blois and Romorantin, each charter of  called for a council of boni viri chiefly to oversee payment of an annual household tax (festage) by the poor, but true procurators of the bourgeoisie appear in the former town only at the end of thirteenth century.60 This absence, or at least delayed emergence, of properly communal venues in the region around Saint-Aignan (and presumably at Saint-Aignan) should be borne in mind when, in the next chapter, I sort out

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questions concerning the foundation and early administration of local hospital institutions. Affranchisement at Saint-Aignan, as elsewhere in central France, strengthened the relationship between built environment and social fabric that distinguished the town from the plat pays surrounding it. When Herveus IV of Donzy bestowed a charter on Cosne, he at once reaffirmed his possession of the castle’s walls and fosses (which the inhabitants of the burg were obligated to maintain) and his domination of the population, sworn to fidelity.61 The Contres charter pertained to the town and its immediate outskirts, a precisely defined area where privileges governing persons and property were withheld from those of servile condition, men and women de corps, who belonged outside.62 The boundaries of the “free town”—rigorously drawn in words and visually symbolized by walls that may not have entirely contained the franchised territory—drove home the social charge inscribed in the physical organization of the rural landscape. Yet town and open fields beyond, interwoven in a single agrarian economy, were mutually interpenetrating spaces in which the defining features of the one to some extent qualified the other.63 Pictorial, cartographic, and archival materials capture the physical layout of Saint-Aignan at the end phase of its medieval development. An architectural portrait, painted in  as an ex-voto following an epidemic of plague (fig. ), epitomizes the town by individuating a few salient elements: the castle, the collegiate church, the ramparts with their fortified gates, and the bridge.64 By contrast, the interior organization of urban space is highly schematized: blocks of houses are conventionalized, the thoroughfares straightened, enlarged, and rationalized. The topographic view conveyed by the painting can be corrected and supplemented by further consulting a detailed description of the town in an inventory, dated , of the feudal rights of François de Beauvillier, count of Saint-Aignan;65 a plan of Saint-Aignan made c.  as part of a larger map of regional roads, which records the irregular course of the town’s streets (fig. );66 and the nineteenth-century cadastre, which reflects the transition of the site to its current state (fig. ).67 A belt of ramparts pressed the urban amphitheater against the river (fig. ).68 Six gates defined the principal arteries of circulation crisscrossing the town in a pattern at once concentric and radial. Following the contours of the promontory, the main road through the town paralleled the river bank and then cut south ninety degrees. The thoroughfare virtually bisected the walled enclave, separating the castle with its fosses and the church from quarters devoted to food production (the banal monopolies, for example, oven, presses, butcher, fisheries), the market, the administration of justice

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and penal exhibition (pillory, prison), and tanneries (fig. ). Outside the southwest gate (Porte Saint-François, so named in honor of de Beauvillier’s patron saint) lay the principal cemetery (suppressed in ),69 an offshoot of a much smaller burial ground that originally abutted the church. The bridge off the main gate (Porte Notre-Dame-du-Pont) is documented in , when a wealthy burgher, Colin Tavernier (or Péageur), innkeeper and toll collector, bequeathed funds for its upkeep from his estate.70 Its existence, however, probably dates from the twelfth century, as does the toll imposed by the Donzy. A continuation of a north-south artery from Blois through the Sologne, the bridge at Saint-Aignan tied into a network of minor roads traversing the Berry below the Cher. It thereby joined these byroads to the major eastwest route, in use from Gallo-Roman times, along the right bank of the river.71 Scant archaeological evidence confirms that the urban topography recorded in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources conserves at least in part the traces of a much older configuration. The extant vestiges of the ramparts, like those of the donjon, date from the fourteenth century.72 What remains of the donjon, however, is clearly a reconstruction, and the same may be the case for the surviving parts of the town walls. Surviving civil architecture of medieval date suggests spurts in the evolution of the urban fabric following the conclusion of the Hundred Years War and again at the turn of the sixteenth century, after a period of economic expansion. Yet by the fifteenth century space in the center of town was too severely limited to permit much construction on virgin soil. Indeed, scattered elements mainly from thirteenthand fourteenth-century buildings—pinions (fig. ), façades (figs. , ), and especially the many vaulted cellars that would have supported impressive bourgeois townhouses—indicate that late medieval/early modern growth overlaid, and supplanted, a preexisting medieval core.73 The distribution of architectural fragments coincides with the tiny fractioning of the urban terrain (petite parcellaire), still visible on the nineteenth-century cadastre, verifying the medieval origins of the borough’s principal arteries of circulation and commercial nucleus. Gleaning the written record for any data that might bear on the medieval town and its banlieue before the fourteenth or fifteenth century does not yield much. The meager findings are nevertheless consistent with a developmental picture that emerges from architectural remains. Houses and their owners first appear in different types of transactions beginning in the late twelfth century. One Arraud Venator, for example, left for Jerusalem in , at which time he bequeathed his house on the road to Saint-Aignan to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Sauveur of Villeloin (near Montrésor).74 Thirteenth-century

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documents reveal the formation of a more distinctly urban space. In , Villeloin exchanged for other revenue houses it had earlier acquired at SaintAignan from three burghers, Herbert Chaufier, Païen Hoduin, and Ysembert “le cordouanier.”75 The  charter of liberty granted to Contres mentions the prison at Saint-Aignan, which would have to serve the newly franchised town in the Sologne until one there could be built.76 In , the lord’s court approved the sale of a house on the “pont Piccois” and the “rue de la Regraterie” to Colin, the innkeeper and toll collector mentioned above.77 Might the toll collector’s tavern be identified with the old “Lion d’Or,” found today, as in , on the “rue du Pont” (now rue Paul Boncour) right before the bridge?78 The structure rises above a vaulted cellar dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century and comprises a rear pinion of the same date.79 More than any other textual source, Colin’s lengthy testament of  offers an illuminating glimpse of how the painted crypt of the collegiate church tied into the town’s institutional topography and sacred economy. The testament’s leading entry favored the crypt with the innkeeper’s most significant bequest, which went to endow a chantry chapel at the altar of Saint James.80 The apsidal painting in which Christ through James proclaims the remission of sins locates the altar that Colin later selected for his chantry foundation. Evidently he and other burghers visited the crypt, doubly consecrated by the relics of saints and the prayers of Christ’s poor, the penitents, infirm, and beggars who thronged regional shrines or journeyed to distant centers of pilgrimage (recall the local example of Arraud Venator, bound for Jerusalem). Once the sepulchral ground for the ancestors of lords, the lower church now hosted the innkeeper’s choice investment in the afterlife. He must have known the ensemble of frescoes that had by then adorned the crypt for more or less a hundred years. Colin’s testament went on to name as beneficiaries various chapels and charities situated in and around the borough. Many of these paraparochial institutions, the subject of my next chapter, can be traced back to the previous century. The earthly wealth that Colin left behind would thus be spent on caring for the sick in local hospitals, whose titular saints the paintings made visually present in the crypt. Just as he would feed and clothe the suffering bodies of the poor from beyond the grave,81 so too their intercessory prayers would nourish and relieve his pained soul from the temporal world. Such an exchange of terrestrial for celestial gifts, or rather the transformation of the one into the other, was nothing new.82 It demonstrates merely the socially downward expansion of the old spiritual transactions that the religious had long customarily brokered on behalf of the nobility. The memorial services

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that Colin sought to purchase from the canons of Saint-Aignan had a century before been the prerogative of (Donzy) lords. The pictorial program in the lower church, however it addressed the seigneurial family, also belonged at the head of a movement to solicit and redeem burgher capital.83

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CHAPELS, HOSPITALS, AND HEALING CULTS

Thanks to regional geopolitics, Saint-Aignan developed during the twelfth century into a local hub for river as well as overland commerce. But the small market town also proved a way station of another sort. Even as relics drew pilgrims to the heart of the urban enclave, subsidiary cult sites nested into major routes less than two kilometers from the principal sanctuary. To complete the topographic survey that I began in the preceding chapter, I now look beyond the castrum, collegiate church, and borough to an outlying ring of consecrated places in the marshy lowlands around the plateau (fig. ). Sanctified ground took varying institutional forms: simple chapels or oratories; two hospitals equipped with chapels; a third hospital annexed to the parish church of an adjacent village. Saints venerated at two sites in particular, one an extramural chapel, the other a hospital, were the foci of especially active healing cults that seem to have become locally and regionally interlinked. The canons of Saint-Aignan could not afford to let an increasing number of peripheral altars and shrines escape their control. Potentially lucrative dependencies flourished in tension with the collegiate church. Their patron saints could be found incorporated into the paintings extant in two of the crypt’s three radiating apsidioles, correspondingly subsidiary spaces, that is.

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In correlating paraparochial entities with the collegiate church and its decoration, I will examine how charitable institutions negotiated the ecclesiastical and lay sponsorship necessary to their survival. This task requires interrogating the local archival record in light of general principles distilled from comparanda. The installation of charities devoted to diverse categories of the sick poor reflects an emerging social formation to which the nobility, inhabitants, and chapter of Saint-Aignan contributed in different ways and on different terms. By the time Colin Tavernier/Péageur set aside monies for hospitals in his testament of , a leprosery (domus sancti lazari), maison-dieu (domus dei de sancto aniano), and an establishment known as the porch of Noyers (porticus de noeriis) had long been in operation.1 Precise dates of foundation may remain a matter of conjecture, but architectural remains and indirect evidence ferreted out from written sources confirm that the eleemosynary system at Saint-Aignan evolved along lines well attested throughout twelfthcentury France.2 Indeed, the pictorial program commissioned for the crypt of the canons’ church at the end of the twelfth or turn of the thirteenth century presupposes an already functioning network of poor relief. It is the murals’ evidentiary value as the earliest trace of extrapictorial realities that concerns me here, a value the work acquires when integrated into a larger body of historical documentation. At once extremely diverse and highly individuated, arrangements governing relations between charitable institutions, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, seigneurial authority, and municipal oversight must be analyzed case by case. Each of the houses I discuss below exemplifies a particular type of establishment characterized by a distinctive statutory personality and mission. Together they were products of parallel trends to which scholars have devoted considerable attention in recent decades. These can only be very broadly sketched out here. Between the twelfth and mid-thirteenth centuries, organized hospitality proliferated well beyond traditional episcopal, capitular, and monastic venues at a remarkable rate. Pockets of intense urban growth have typically constituted the privileged framework in which to study poor relief,3 but charities also became a standard feature of smaller agglomerations during this period.4 A dynamic economy everywhere spawned local networks of care, which attained greater density, not surprisingly, in more populous regions. But surplus production is only part of the equation. What encouraged the conversion of wealth into alms? The ever more concrete formulation of purgatory and shifts in penitential policy together created a powerful stimulus in this direction. The promise that one could accrue spiritual merit in the hereafter through suffrages provoked a demand for intercessory services among a broader segment of lay society with capital to invest in them. Confession,

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increasingly emphasized and promoted, deepened the individual’s consciousness of sin, which could be assuaged through gift-giving of various kinds, including testamentary restitution.5 Of course, medieval approaches to poor relief took shape in a culture that valued collective structures of identity. The surge in the creation of different forms of hospitality testifies to the vitality and flexibility of corporate models of self-definition.6 Hospital operations (intake, management, daily routines) both drew on traditional means of building religious communities and fostered new modes of sociability.7 At the same time, the foundation of hospitals, leproseries, and almshouses—with their full complement of chapels or altars, cemeteries, and pastoral obligations to the poor—was bound up in efforts to make the parish the irreducible unit of Christian community.8 The need of charitable institutions for limited autonomy had to be balanced against the competing interests of parties vested in the spiritual primacy of the parish church. From , when the Fourth Lateran Council mandated universal annual confession to one’s parish priest, this primacy rested on the sacrament of penance.9 The very tool used to enforce attachment to the ecclesia matrix, or “mother church,” thus encouraged gift-giving to subsidiary organs of charity. These, however, could not be allowed to divert revenues from the parish altar.

chapels

The canons of Saint-Aignan dominated local religious life not only through the collegiate church, seat of the parish, but also through several chapels to which they appointed vicars. The only oratory intra muros, Saint-Laurent, was built before  on the main street (rue du Pont, now rue Paul Boncour) near the bridge.10 Chapter archives indicate that the chapel was held in benefice by a member of a subordinate corporation of vicars and bachelors. The dependent status of the chapel, evident from a transaction of ,11 remained unchanged through the eighteenth century, when Saint-Laurent was acknowledged among the vicariates in a register of capitular deliberations dated .12 Two Marian chapels, Notre-Dame-du-Pont and Saint Mary of the Cemetery (called Notre-Dame-de-Pitié from the fourteenth century), could be found at opposite ends of the town, above the main gate and in the large burial ground outside the southwest gate (Porte Saint-François) respectively.13 The chapel of Saint-André was located about one and one-half kilometers outside the northwest gate (Porte de Novilliers), on a road along the south bank of the Cher.14 An engraving, published in , before the chapel’s

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destruction, shows a twelfth-century structure (fig. ).15 Although Saint-André cannot be corroborated as a dependency of the collegiate church before the eighteenth century, it could well have depended on the chapter from the beginning: the other vicariates enumerated along with Saint-André in the  register all have much earlier origins.16 The chapter’s liturgical procession during the May Rogation Days encompassed the chapel of Saint-André.17 One last chapel extra muros, and a tiny neighborhood named after its titular saint, contributed to the local toponymy. This oratory was dedicated to Saint Guinefort, whose extraordinary cult Jean-Claude Schmitt has studied in depth. It was located outside the eastern gate (Porte du Réau), very near the maison-dieu but on the other side of the brook Traînefeuille, within the adjacent parish, Seigy.18 The latter was centered on a church about two kilometers further east toward Selles-sur-Cher; Seigy’s parish church, Saint-Martin, was a possession of the abbey of Pontlevoy.19 The chapel and lieu-dit Saint-Guyneffon, Sainct-Guinefon, Sanctus Ginnefortus, Saint-Génefort, appear sporadically as points de repère in property transactions archived by the chapter of Saint-Aignan from .20 However, the chapel’s status is unclear. It is not included among the numerous vicariates controlled by the chapter and for which documentation exists from the late thirteenth through mid-eighteenth centuries; nor does it appear in archives pertaining to Pontlevoy. Might the chapel at the confines of two parishes have functioned autonomously? The Berry presents one of the oldest and most vital theaters in France for the diffusion of Guinefort’s cult. Traveling beneath the surface of a single name with multiple regional variations, confused and composite identities gave rise to different hagiographic constructions. Guinefort the “greyhound” (Dombes, diocese of Lyon) is only the most peculiar, and consequently the most well-known. In contrast, Guinefort the “abbot,” venerated at Bourges, can be distinguished as a product of learned hagiography, his cult promoted via official ecclesiastical channels.21 The saint’s remains, enshrined in the collegiate church of Saint-Ursin, are first attested between  and , and again in the mid-seventeenth century. A breviary of the usage of Bourges, dated  (Châteauroux, Bib. mun., ms ), includes Guinefort’s name in its litanies.22 Transcending individuated hagiographic constructions, the cult’s folkloric dimension (Schmitt’s terminology) also became entrenched in the diocese.23 Here, as elsewhere, Guinefort was called on to determine the fate of the sickly whose condition left them languishing painfully between life and death.24 The saint’s invocation, frequently undertaken outside the confines of normative ecclesiastical structures or clerical supervision, might be accompanied by rites of contact or immersion through which the patient’s life or death would be

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revealed (decided). Even where attached to a chapel, the cult might be practiced throughout the year rather than celebrated on a particular date (in Berry, February , , or ), although pilgrimage could be more intense at that time. The profile of the site at Saint-Aignan/Seigy—a rural chapel close to a brook and a hospital—conforms typologically to an intermediate strain of the cult between its official and folkloric extremes.25 In the diocese of Bourges, sites reporting Guinefort’s cult are clustered notably eastward in the modern departments of the Cher and Allier. Saint Guinefort was invoked, however, in the western half of the diocese at Levroux for the healing of a mysterious disease called “Saint Silvanus’s fire.”26 The existence of Guinefort’s cult at Saint-Aignan/Seigy may well be linked to the nearby veneration of Silvanus of Levroux. Silvanus was titular saint of the parish church of Noyers, a village on the opposite bank of the Cher. The river divided the castellany of Saint-Aignan between the dioceses of Bourges and Orléans (ecclesiastical province of Sens), to which Noyers belonged.27 Official manifestations of both cults, relics in the case of Saint Silvanus and a chapel in that of Saint Guinefort, cannot be documented locally before the mid-fifteenth century. But individuals cured of Saint Silvanus’s fire had settled in the castellany of Saint-Aignan by c. , and a porticus, the name also for the shrine hospital at Levroux, existed as an appendage to the church of Noyers before .

the leprosery

Saint-Lazare occupied a kind of frontier zone between two centers of habitation. On the outskirts of Noyers, one and a half kilometers northeast of Saint-Aignan, the leper house stood no farther from the town’s bridge gate (Porte Notre-Dame-du-Pont) than the more or less contemporary chapel of Saint-André from its northwestern gate (Porte de Novilliers). A reasonable terminus a quo for the foundation of the leprosery can be inferred from its Romanesque chapel, the south door of which opened onto the old GalloRoman road between Tours and Bourges (fig. ).28 The structure, built in the mid-twelfth century, might conceivably postdate the installation of a leper community, which could have had its origins in a clustering of cabanas.29 The chapel, however, marks the formalization of the leprosery as an institution. Lepers, of course, were enjoined to a special symbolic state of separation from the world (as were monks), but it would be a mistake to exaggerate their physical or economic isolation. Leproseries reorganized tracts of land in the interstices between town and village into productive domains and so participated

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in the domestication of suburban space; inserted into major regional systems of communication and exchange along river and overland routes, they helped tie desolate outlying areas to centers of population never more than two or three kilometers away in any case.30 The proliferation of leproseries in the twelfth century created a fixed space for those whose visible mark of sin— disease—initiated a life commitment to penance that in many ways emulated the monastic profession. Paradoxically, it may seem, the houses of what constituted a lay penitential order became a conspicuous feature of the developing paysage d’agglomération during a period in which the private, individual act of confession began to take priority over public, collective rituals of expiation and reconciliation.31 But in fact the two phenomena are mutually reinforcing: a heightened awareness of personal guilt produced a new class of penitents required for the health of the social body. Under what circumstances and by whom the endowment of Saint-Lazare was constituted remain a matter of speculation, but seigneurial patronage here, as in the context of rural parishes elsewhere, most likely played a crucial role. As Françoise Bériac has aptly remarked regarding the Haut-Poitou, where the majority of the oldest leproseries were created at the seats of castellanies: “How not to suppose that the castellan was at least an influential benefactor, indeed guardian, of the leprosery and responsible for the separation of lepers, as holder of the ban [power of command]?”32 Studies of leproseries in the Artois, Flanders, the Hainaut, the Laonnais, and parts of Normandy have also consistently emphasized the benefaction of local lords wherever their prerogatives remained intact or were not yet eclipsed by grants of privileges to communities of inhabitants.33 Moreover, the leprosery of Saint-Aignan/Noyers belongs chronologically to a second regional wave of foundations, beginning around /, which François-Olivier Touati has attributed specifically to seigneurial ambition.34 An architectural jewel, the chapel is decorated with ornamental carving of high quality. The fineness of its construction strongly supports a hypothesis of seigneurial intervention in establishing the temporal base of Saint-Lazare. Permission to create a chapel for the lepers’ use, however, ultimately reverted to ecclesiastical, that is, episcopal, authority. The practice of granting relative spiritual autonomy to leper communities—widespread yet still resisted— received official sanction at the Third Lateran Council of . The language of canon  (Cum dicat apostolus) defined the institutional nature of the leprosery and its subordinate place within the structure of the parish: Wherever so many [lepers] are gathered together under a common way of life [ubicumque tot simul sub communi vita fuerint congregati]

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that they are able to establish a church for themselves with a cemetery and rejoice in their own priest, they should be allowed to have them without contradiction. Let them take care, however, not to harm in any way the parochial rights of established churches. For we do not wish that what is granted them on the score of piety should result in harm to others.35 The legislation further relieved leper communities of tithes on their gardens and the pasture of their animals. The leprosery, home to a permanent community of lay residents, was partly conceived in relation to monastic norms of regularity. Equipped with church, cemetery, and its own priest, the leprosery also mirrored the parish, whose primacy nevertheless remained inviolable. The decretal codified fundamental principles. The specific modalities of its application varied from house to house depending on the particular terms of foundation. Because ecclesiastical patrons took care to safeguard the integrity of their dependent parishes, they monitored the leproseries under the jurisdiction of their possessions. Burial in the cemetery was customarily restricted to the sick; access to the chapel might likewise be strictly regulated or the ringing of bells forbidden so as not to prejudice the attraction of the ecclesia matrix.36 By and large, clergy installed in leproseries were subject to the tutelage of the particular monastic or capitular body that also possessed the parish.37 The lepers’ chaplain, like the parish priest, swore an oath of fidelity to the ecclesiastical patron. Just as the patron nominated the parish priest and presented him to the bishop for canonical investiture with the cura animarum, so also the patron (whether recruiting directly or assenting to the candidate recruited by the leper community) controlled the appointment of the capellanus. Entrusted with the lepers’ spiritual ministry, the chaplain did not govern the house or administer its patrimony. Rather, a master assured day-to-day operations. His designation and accountability might be determined in any number of ways. He might be appointed directly by the head of an ecclesiastical institution that had assumed the superior direction of the leprosery from its foundation. Or, if a self-governing community participated in the master’s election, his appointment might be subject to the approval of an external authority, such as a religious house or civic body, that supervised the temporal affairs of the leprosery. Just who constituted the “community” of the leprosery changed over time. Early on, this juridical entity not atypically comprised lepers together with healthy persons who joined their congregation to assist them. But in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as leproseries increasingly emulated maisons-dieu, lepers became mere internees subject to ever

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harsher standards of confinement; house personnel, usually under obedience to a rule, supplanted the sick—whom they now often outnumbered—as the communal body.38 What had been communities of lepers organized according to conventual models thus became leper hospitals.39 In conformity with the genre of ordinances adopted for maisons-dieu, the master or superior of a leprosery might act as both temporal administrator and spiritual head of the house and, like his counterpart in other charitable institutions, receive canonical investiture from the bishop.40 As ecclesiastical patron of the parish of Noyers,41 the chapter of SaintAignan clearly would have enjoyed certain prerogatives vis-à-vis the chapel, cemetery, and chaplaincy of Saint-Lazare. Whether the leprosery otherwise functioned independently, at least originally, remains an open question. Fairly late in its history the house did become the object of a dispute between chapter and town, a matter adjudicated by the Parliament of Paris in .42 Against the town’s claim as cofounder to have rights in the appointment of a lay master, the chapter successfully “proved” Saint-Lazare (leprosaria sancti aniani Birturicensis diocesis) to be an outright dependency that it was entitled to dispose of as a simple benefice. Parliamentary litigation involving hospital institutions from this region was so rare in the period – that recourse to the court presupposes the two parties’ willingness to stake their resources on the legitimacy of their respective positions.43 Because the representations made by each side bear on the earlier status of the leprosery, the suit is briefly reviewed here. The plaintiff Guido Floris, a priest and canon from Paris, contended that the leprosery had “from time out of mind” been an ecclesiastical benefice conferred only on clergy and not transferred to laypersons, because of the chapel and cemetery attached to it. Whoever was appointed master or governor of the house was also the chaplain. On the vacancy of the office, the nomination of the new master belonged exclusively to the prior and chapter of SaintAignan. Guido further asserted that, following customary practice, he had been elected by the prior and chapter and presented by them to the archdeacon of the Sologne in the diocese of Orléans, who duly invested him in the benefice. The same procedure, by the way, would have governed appointment to the curate of the parish of Noyers in the diocese of Orléans. The lay defendant, Willequinus de Trabe, argued instead that the leprosery had been founded “of old by the prior, chapter, burghers, and inhabitants” (ab antiquo per priorem, capitulum, burgenses et habitatores) of Saint-Aignan. The right to appoint and dismiss masters and governors of the house therefore belonged to all the aforesaid parties. The prior, chapter, and burghers had always installed the masters, annually reviewed their accounts, and dismissed

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them whenever it had seemed expedient. Refuting Guido’s assertion that the leprosery was an ecclesiastical benefice (“non erat beneficium ecclesiasticum sed communnis fuerat”), Willequinus maintained that it was customary for the administration of the house to be conferred on laymen as well as clerics. The masters whom prior, chapter, and burghers had appointed without confirmation by any other intervening authority had peacefully governed the leprosery from “time out of mind.” Willequinus professed to have been properly installed by the chapter and burghers in the administration of the house, and in turn accused Guido of introducing documents (“certae litterae”) to bring false suit against him. The court case mostly reflects the degradation to which leproseries, caught between absorption into the prebendal system of the church and municipal appropriation, had succumbed by the fourteenth century.44 Nevertheless, the respective allegations put forward by Guido/the chapter and Willequinus/the town could have had roots in much earlier practice. According to the latter, the administrative post of magister was entirely divorced from the spiritual office of capellanus. The master served exclusively at the discretion of the chapter and burghers and could be removed if found incompetent; by contrast, the lepers’ chaplain, like a parish priest, would have been permanently installed in his ministry, from which he derived a lifetime income. The division of responsibility implicit in Willequinus’s representation indeed corresponds to the institutional organization of many leproseries in the twelfth century, when Saint-Lazare came into being. But the collapse of duties into a single individual, equivalent to the rector of a maison-dieu, is known already from the same period.45 Guido’s description of Saint-Lazare as an ecclesiastical benefice from “time immemorial” is therefore not altogether untenable. His focus on the sacred functions that followed from the presence of a chapel and cemetery speaks to an understanding of leproseries that informed canon law from the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.46 Still, Saint-Lazare may have been gradually transformed into a benefice as secular clergy appointed by the chapter came over time to dominate the administration of the house. Over the thirteenth century the custom of conferring hospitals and leproseries as benefices had led to widespread abuse, and was prohibited by canon  (Quia contingit) enacted at the Council of Vienne in .47 Two exceptions were written into the decretal, however, which greatly weakened its effect. Secular clergy could receive the administration of a hospital in beneficium if such an arrangement was stipulated at the establishment’s foundation or if they were elected by the hospital community (of which presumably they were members). Hence, it would seem, Guido’s concern to stress the antiquity of the combined office of master/chaplain. Might

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the certae litterae that Guido introduced in court to the defendant’s dismay have related to a purported act of foundation? Although Guido’s position might be suspect, Willequinus’s account of the origins of Saint-Lazare is not necessarily more authentic. The leprosery’s cofoundation in the middle to third-quarter of the twelfth century by the chapter and the inhabitants of Saint-Aignan, albeit possible, is not very likely. The lay authority that probably needs to be factored into the equation is the lord. Failing seigneurial initiative, the establishment of a leprosery at this particular locale during this period is difficult to imagine. The putative role attributed to the burghers in  calls to mind the sort of late self-interested reinterpretations of local institutional history to which civic authorities were prone elsewhere.48 Perhaps, as the count of Meulan had done at Pont-Audemer in , the lord of Saint-Aignan involved inhabitants as witness to his creation of the leprosery and made intake from the borough contingent on ongoing collective participation in the support of the house through payment of special dues or customs.49 As at Pont-Audemer, some such reciprocal compact between the lord and townsfolk may ultimately have led to the function of Saint-Lazare as a municipal institution after the borough’s affranchisement in .50 Whether or not the burghers of Saint-Aignan actually shared in the foundation of Saint-Lazare, the perception that the leprosery belonged to the municipality (at least as much as to the chapter) may have derived from a long-established tradition of regular alms collection on its behalf, well documented at other sites.51 The Parliament, after weighing the arguments of each party, decided in favor of Guido and confirmed his right to sole possession of the house. Willequinus, who had all along acknowledged the chapter’s supervisory role, was not only compelled to restore to the leprosery all of its goods or pay restitution but also held liable for Guido’s legal expenses. The court, in other words, upheld the subordination of Saint-Lazare to the chapter and rejected the principle of lay intervention in its administration.52 A century later, chapter archives designate the chapel as a vicariate.53 A lease drawn up in , long after lepers had ceased to be interned there, qualified the dean of the chapter as administrator of the maladrerie; the tenant was held responsible for maintenance of the buildings and annual provision of a meal on the Monday of Rogations, when the chapter processed to Saint-Lazare.54 Impossible as it is to ascertain from late medieval documentation the part played by the chapter in the foundation and early institutional life of the leprosery, the crypt paintings suggest the canons’ interest in the house already by the close of the twelfth century. The decoration of the east apsidiole honors the titular saint of the leprosery. The series of images, unfortunately badly

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damaged, culminates in an expanded scene of the Raising of Lazarus (figs. , ). The arrangement of episodes, discussed more fully in Chapter , gives special dignity and weight to the resurrection of Lazarus as pendant to the conversion of the Magdalen (figs. –), after whom the axial chapel was named.55 She, like Lazarus, figured prominently in the spirituality of leproseries, which were frequently dedicated to her.56 Martha, too, appears in the narrative cycle, not merely as the sister who pleads for her brother’s return to life and serves at table, but as the hemorrhaging woman of Matthew :– and Mark :– (figs. , ). Her impurity, conditioned by her bleeding, can also be seen to parallel the leper’s social status. What lends credence to the idea that the mural decoration pictorially references the leprosery through the image of Lazarus is the analogous relationship between the hagiographic matter painted in the south apsidiole and the patron saint of the maison-dieu.

the masion-dieu

Unlike the leprosery, the domus dei of Saint-Aignan left no imprint on the landscape. Salient aspects of the hospital, however, emerge from leases, litigation, accounts, and inventories of the late thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries.57 The earliest extant document to mention the maison-dieu is Colin’s testament. Comparatively abundant documentation after  places the establishment between the Cher and the brook Traînefeuille at a site very close to, if not exactly at, that of the new hôtel-Dieu built by the Beauvillier family between  and  (figs. , ).58 The medieval hospital still existed in July , when officials from the orders of Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare de Jérusalem inspected the grounds; they noted its location on the road from Saint-Aignan to Valençay.59 The report prepared in  on behalf of Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare further specified that the chapel of the maison-dieu was placed under the double invocation of Leu, or Loup (Lupus), and Giles (Egidius), the patron saints also recorded in an administrator’s account of .60 Although an altar dedicated to Saint Giles does not appear among those found inside the collegiate church itself, images in the south apsidiole of the crypt relate his life (figs. –, –). This duplication of saintly patronage verifies the tie between the maison-dieu, which must therefore have existed by the time the paintings were executed, and the chapter, whose prerogatives with respect to the hospital are taken for granted in much later archival material. As Michel Mollat has observed: “Certain signs permit recognition of canonical influence on hospital institutions: for example, identical patronage in numerous places

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of certain specialized saints, Christopher, Giles, James, John, Julian, Mary Magdalen, Nicholas.”61 Both the maison-dieu and the leprosery of Saint-Aignan conform to wellknown patterns governing the siting of medieval hospitals at the confines of towns or villages.62 Outside the gates, the two houses were strategically positioned in ways that appropriated the ambivalent power of the infirm and poor on behalf of the community from which they were socially displaced. To paraphrase Roberta Gilchrist, the display of stigmatized bodies defined and guarded parish boundaries while prime roadside property on main thoroughfares enabled donors and travelers, aggressively hounded for alms when they passed, to exhibit charity. Fear of pollution demarcated and protected; pious gifts redeemed.63 The equivocal location of hospitals—removed to the periphery yet close enough to remain an integral part of everyday life—cultivated as much as it reflected the ambiguous status of their inmates. The maison-dieu just outside the eastern gate at Saint-Aignan provided pilgrims a means of transition into town as much as it may have accorded itinerants a place at the fringes of the community.64 According to an inventory drawn up in , the medieval maison-dieu comprised a chapel; a “sick room” (chambre de malades) then occupied primarily by elderly persons, often widowed, from the town; and a separate “room for lodging poor wayfarers” (salle où logent les pauvres passants).65 Care for two categories of persons, the sick from the town and itinerants, is emphasized already in , on the occasion of a lawsuit against local merchants whom the rector accused of pilfering hospital revenues: the hospital then stated as its purpose to undertake “compassionate and charitable works” (oeuvres pitéables et de charité) and to receive “pilgrims who flock here in great numbers” (pellerins qui y affluent en grande habondance).66 When representatives of the municipality unsuccessfully protested the annexation of the hospital to Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare, they based their arguments on the clearly defined scope of its mission: the maison-dieu had never ceased to perform its original functions, namely to serve both “sick poor from the town” (pauvres malades de la ville) and pauvres passants; it therefore should not fall within the purview of an edict pertaining to leproseries.67 These scant references to the function of the maison-dieu, though late in date, bring into view a picture entirely consistent with that which can be derived from medieval sources elsewhere.68 This type of establishment catered both to the poor and to the sick, two groups that might easily, though not necessarily, overlap. Inmates were qualified as “poor” (a generic term) in view of a moral/physical condition through which they could be assimilated to the suffering Christ, whose image they embodied. Thus the maison-dieu sheltered

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not merely the destitute but also the wayfarer and stranger, transeuntes whose journeys had uprooted them from family and community; pilgrims, in a state of voluntary exile, were identified as pauperes christi par excellence. Besides the pauvre passant, typically admitted only for brief stays (often only overnight), the maison-dieu housed the sick and socially bereft (the elderly in the case of Saint-Aignan) for whom longer-term residence was reserved. In contrast to the itinerant who preserved their mobility, the sick were characterized as weak or prostrate (egrotantes, languentes, jacentes), that is, by their inability to move about rather than by their symptoms or maladies. While criteria defining the poor of Christ brought together the itinerant and the sick in a single structure, the need to maximize delivery of service could nonetheless lead to the separation of the ambulant and the bedridden. In the small hospital of Saint-Aignan, the two groups occupied different rooms; in the large twelfth-century hôtelDieu of Laon, a major cathedral hospital, they were each assigned to different floors.69 Not all categories of the infirm would have been admitted. As a rule, limited resources were expended strictly on those who could benefit from care. The chronically ill, permanently invalid and handicapped, would be turned away, as would be victims of epidemics who might otherwise flood the establishment. Not only lepers but also amputees (demembrati), the paralyzed or crippled (contracti), the blind, and those suffering probably from what is today known as ergotism (ardentes) had to find other venues of relief. The maison-dieu frequently also excluded undesirable elements or groups whom the house was ill equipped to maintain, for example branded thieves and foundlings.70 Providing material assistance went hand in hand with creating a communal structure that inscribed the body of the hospitalized within ritual practices of spiritual purification.71 Confession, followed by Communion, was obligatory on admission; long-term residents were encouraged to repeat the sacrament of penance frequently. Inmates participated as much as physically possible in cycles of prayer and liturgical celebration that paralleled the activity of the parish church from which they were temporarily severed.72 Incorporated into an institutional framework built around the daily rhythm of Christian worship,73 the hospital’s charges regained a place in the social order. During the course of the twelfth century, men and women who staffed maisons-dieu in service to the poor tended to accept the rule of Saint Augustine.74 Thus the maison-dieu often took on the appearance of a hybrid institution: on the one hand, it resembled a priory inhabited by a regular community of brothers and/or sisters under obedience to a superior; on the other, it replicated some of the pastoral functions of the parish church, since its clergy undertook the cura animarum of lay wards.75 At Saint-Aignan, no trace of a regular community

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of hospital personnel appears in the archival record before the Beauvillier foundation. Priests from the collegiate church, however, performed Mass on Sundays and feast days as well as administered sacraments to hospital residents. The nature of the relationship between the maison-dieu, the chapter, and the town can be inferred only from late medieval documentation.76 In the midfifteenth century, the rector’s agreement to lease hospital properties had to be confirmed by the chapter of Saint-Aignan.77 Indeed, through the end of the century, the post of rector appears to have been held almost always by a canon. An assembly of the town’s inhabitants apparently took part in the nomination, electing a canon for the last time in , after which the post went to laymen.78 Annually on Pentecost the chapter processed to the maison-dieu, where the canons enjoyed a banquet paid by hospital funds.79 In , the lord of SaintAignan initiated and lost litigation against the hospital administrator (his illegitimate son) over the right to control the standard of weights and measures in the town.80 This originally seigneurial privilege had evidently devolved at some point to the office of the rector, whose authority over great weights (more than twenty-five livres) was reconfirmed in the suit brought in  by another administrator against two merchants of Saint-Aignan.81 The rector in the  case had asserted that collation of the maison-dieu and all its “rights, profits, and emoluments” (droiz, proffiz et esmolumens) belonged to the “gens d’église, manans et habitans” of Saint-Aignan.82 The chapter’s supervision of the hospital’s patrimony and the appointment of canons as rectors recall classic components of the administrative system under which capitular foundations typically operated, whether attached to cathedrals or collegiate churches.83 Recommended already by the “rule” enacted at Aix () to elevate the standard of the secular clergy, capitular management of charitable institutions greatly expanded in the eleventh and especially twelfth centuries as newly reformed canons revitalized their commitment to the contemporary ideal of the apostolic life. Integrated into the fabric of urban life and recruited from the bourgeoisie, canons spearheaded the renewal of ecclesiastical venues of hospitality.84 While chapters would maintain control over the direction of their hospitals, they normally entrusted routine administration to a rector, who assumed responsibility for both the temporal welfare and spiritual government of these houses. Whether the chapter of Saint-Aignan in fact founded the maison-dieu in the technical sense of the term is impossible to say, but it evidently enjoyed broad rights of tutelage until c. , when it abandoned its temporal rights in exchange for an annual rent in grain.85 The chapter acted as guardian of the hospital’s material assets as well as exercised authority over its altar. The adjudication of countless cases elsewhere had normalized the subordination

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of hospital chapels to the ecclesia matrix.86 Whatever the exact configuration of its prerogatives vis-à-vis the maison-dieu, the chapter did not wield total authority. By the fifteenth century, if not before, the inhabitants of Saint-Aignan shared in the disposition of the establishment’s “droiz, proffiz et esmolumens” and in the designation of the rector. A survey of the development of hospitals in the diocese of Bourges notes that communities of inhabitants and ecclesiastical patrons occasionally collaborated in the operation of individual houses.87 A central phenomenon in the history of medieval poor relief, municipal intervention in and appropriation of hospital institutions, occurred at different rates in different regions. Where a flourishing bourgeoisie had developed strong prudhommal organs of representation early on and played a significant role in the foundation of local charities—for example in Flanders and the Midi—civic authorities began to assert temporal control over hospital institutions already from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.88 Communities of inhabitants in less urbanized areas, however, took charge of local hospitals increasingly over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.89 Sometimes nobility who founded charities in their domains set up mechanisms for limited communal participation; as seigneurial involvement waned, that of local notables expanded to fill the gap.90 Given the comparatively delayed emergence of urban magistracies in the free towns of central France, as observed in the previous chapter, any supervisory capacity enjoyed by an assembly of inhabitants at Saint-Aignan would seem most logically to have evolved over the course of the later Middle Ages. Even if communal participation were acknowledged at the time of the maison-dieu’s foundation, significant civic intervention seems unlikely before the town gained its franchise in .91

the porticus of noyers

The porticus de noeriis is the most obscure of the three local hospitals. After , the year of the earliest reference to it in the extant archival record, the porticus crops up in a testament of  in which several local institutions are designated for bequests from the estate of a bourgeois of Saint-Aignan.92 At the turn of the eighteenth century, the Porche de Noyers was characterized as an almonry.93 Its hospital function, however, emerges from a tradition conveyed at the end of the nineteenth century by the parish priest, Father Naudet, who related that the “porche Saint-Antoine” had sheltered pilgrims to the church of Saint-Silvain of Noyers.94 The site of the porticus cannot today be ascertained, but in contrast to Saint-Lazare or the maison-dieu, this appendage of the parish church stood at the nucleus of the village.

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Silvanus, a legendary saint of obscure origins, had his primary sanctuary in the Berry at Levroux (Indre), goal of pilgrimage for those stricken with a disease, or “fire,” named after him.95 A porticus at Levroux had served as hospital since at least the late eleventh century, when Raoul, lord of Déols, recognized the thaumaturgic attraction of the church and granted its chapter of secular canons possession not only of all the afflicted from his domains who remained in the porticus but also of any offspring whom they might have thereafter.96 This privilege, granted between  and , was reconfirmed in , at which time the lord, Guillaume de Chauvigny, added clauses specifically requiring the canons to diagnose the disease accurately. The prior and canons had to swear that they would receive in the porticus only those whom they believed in good faith to be stricken with the “infirmitas beati silvani”; should it later turn out that individuals whom the canons had received did not indeed have this particular disease, and that the church had been deceived, the lord would regain dominium over his former dependents.97 The porticus of Levroux was so crucial to the chapter’s institutional identity, not to mention its temporal well-being, that the canons preserved the original architectural fabric like a sacred relic. Not to be confused with any part of the actual church, rebuilt at the turn of the thirteenth century, the porticus survived into the nineteenth as a separate structure abutting the Gothic edifice at its southwest flank (fig. ). The canons’ decision to preserve the eleventh-century porticus constrained the ground plan of the new church and resulted in the marked asymmetry of the western narthex.98 Considering the advantages the canons of Levroux acquired from their hospital services, their jealous monopolizing of their saint’s disease comes as no surprise. In , the chapter forbade one laywoman, the wife of a certain André de Breuil, under threat of heavy fine, from continuing to treat anyone suffering from the “infirmitas b. silvani.”99 The cartulary of Levroux contains the records of  individuals admitted into the porticus between  and . The (unsystematic) practice of registration furnishes a wealth of demographic information but almost no medical commentary.100 A staff of sisters (sorores porticus) under a domina and assisted by female servants (ancillae, puellae), attended to the physical needs of the sick, while male personnel took charge of spiritual matters and of the impressive temporal assets amassed by the institution.101 After variable lengths of stay in the porticus, those cured of the disease became dependents of the chapter (homines and feminae capituli), their new ties symbolically sealed through a ceremonial payment of chevage (a head tax).102 The cured most often returned to their parishes in the seigneury of Déols, where, having escaped the lord’s jurisdiction, they were henceforth obligated to the chapter for various customary dues.103

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An unknown number of such homines capituli, however, had also settled in the castellany of Saint-Aignan by the early thirteenth century, for Herveus IV of Donzy, local lord as well as count of Nevers, pledged himself to Levroux on their account.104 The count of Nevers (i.e., Herveus of Donzy) is also said to have participated around the same time in the second translation of Saint Silvanus’s relics, carried out at Levroux by Saint William, archbishop of Bourges (–).105 Might the porticus at Noyers be linked to the presence in the castellany of dependents of Levroux or to the lord’s devotion to Saint Silvanus’s cult? Such a connection might help establish a relative dating for the porticus sometime between the foundation of Saint-Lazare and the appearance by the mid-thirteenth century of another regional shrine and hospital complex dedicated to Saint Silvanus at Genouilly (Cher, fig. ).106 If the porticus at Noyers assisted victims afflicted with the “holy/hell fire” of Saint Silvanus, then perhaps it received those called ardentes, a category excluded from admission to some contemporary hôtels-Dieu like those at Angers and Troyes.107 Thus, while it is premature to speak of medical specialization, it appears that at least complementary functions had been distributed among the three hospitals around Saint-Aignan. As a subsidiary of the parish church of Noyers, dependent on the chapter of Saint-Aignan, the porticus would ultimately have fallen under the tutelage of the canons. The ties between the churches of Saint-Aignan, Noyers, and Levroux emerge more clearly in the later Middle Ages. Guillaume Vaquelin, a canon of Saint-Aignan, received permission in  to remove a bone from the reliquary chest of Saint Silvanus at Levroux in order to carry it round the province for veneration.108 As it turned out, the parish church of Noyers happened subsequently to acquire one of the saint’s bones, enshrined in a silver reliquary statue, last seen in the eighteenth century in the chapel of the hôtelDieu of Saint-Aignan.109 The church of Saint-Silvain at Noyers attracted pilgrimage from nearby villages in the Sologne. Annual processions were organized on the feast of Saint Silvanus (September ), as documented in .110 At the end of the nineteenth century, however, pilgrimage on the Sunday in the octave of Ascension constituted the principal public manifestation of the saint’s cult at this site.111 The May event has older origins, for a fair that coincided with it had acquired local importance by the seventeenth century.112 Outside collective forms of devotion on appointed feasts, the patron saint of Noyers also drew individual pilgrims throughout the year. According to Father Naudet, people appealed to him for assistance against all sorts of diseases, but especially “for a burning/ blackening/carbonizing (charcoal-like) ailment, a sort of erysipelas called the sickness of Saint-Silvain or the sickness of Noyers” (pour une affection

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charbonneuse, une sorte d’érysipèle qu’on appelle le mal de St.-Silvain ou le mal de Noyers).113 Of the many conceivable pilgrimage circuits through Saint-Aignan during the Middle Ages, one between Noyers and Levroux would have encompassed all three local hospitals as well as the chapels of Saint-Laurent and SaintGénefort. From the porticus at Noyers, pilgrims seeking the aid of Saint Silvanus at his principal shrine would have made their way past Saint-Lazare, crossed the bridge into Saint-Aignan, proceeded down the rue du Pont past Saint-Laurent, and accessed the street leading to the eastern gate (Porte du Réau). Beyond the maison-dieu and chapel of Saint-Génefort they would have found the road to Valençay, whence on to Levroux (altogether about forty-five kilometers). Faint traces of painting in the north apsidiole of the crypt of the collegiate church indicate a hagiographic cycle contemporary with and similar in format to those in the south and axial chapels. Unfortunately, without either sufficient pictorial evidence to allow for iconographic reconstruction or archival records revealing the chapel dedication, the identity of the saint in question remains a matter of speculation. Yet I wonder. Might images pertaining to Saint Silvanus—and therefore to the porticus at Noyers—have appeared here, just as did images of the titular saints of the maison-dieu and leprosery in the other two radial chapels? Although the extant iconographic tradition pertaining to Silvanus of Levroux is quite limited, the composition ad hoc of a pictorial narrative of the saint’s life lies within the realm of possibility. The choir of the church of Beaumont-Village (Indre-et-Loire), a rural parish in the Touraine, was painted in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century with figures from the vita of Saint Silvanus.114 Prior to the demolition of the church in , some of the paintings were detached from the wall, transferred to a canvas support, and sent to the Musée du cloître de la Psalette, Tours. The embrasures of the choir windows displayed the following characters from the saint’s legend: () Saint Silvanus, identified as the gospel character Zaccheus the Publican, whom Saint Peter sent to help evangelize Gaul; () Saint Silvester, whom Silvanus resurrected with a staff he had received from Peter; () Saint Courroux, the converted suitor of Silvanus’s chaste disciple Saint Rodène (scenes recounting her story appeared on the flat wall below the windows);115 () Saint Martin, who journeyed to the shrine of his apostolic forerunner to venerate Silvanus’s relics; and () a pilgrim suffering presumably from the saint’s fiery disease (fig. ), covered as he is head to foot with regularly spaced, densely packed flecks of reddish hue. Surely the Beaumont paintings can have been neither the earliest pictorial nor the only monumental cycle to treat the fabulous lore of Levroux’s patron saint. In the

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early sixteenth century, the legend of Silvanus and his saintly companions Silvester and Rodéne were carved in relief for a sarcophagus housed in a chapel at La Celle-Bruère, not far from Bourges, to which Silvanus’s bones (except the cranium) were eventually translated.116 The chapter of Saint-Aignan occupied a key position at the nexus of relations between two parish churches and paraparochial institutions. Custodians of the sanctuary for castrum and borough, the canons also exercised authority over satellite chapels and organs of charity in which they installed vicars, chaplains, and administrators. When the lower church was painted around , images were introduced that reminded the lord and burghers as well as pilgrims of capitular possessions through which the canons fulfilled their pastoral ministry to the wayfarer and sick poor. The collegiate church, the nucleus around which the borough evolved, thus tapped into the proliferation of chapels, cults, and hospitals, recuperating and refocusing the spiritual energy and charitable impulses these diverted. Admittedly, my argument for the controlled and controlling sponsorship of dependencies through images does not rest on prior case histories; I know of no medieval precedent or parallel for iconographic correspondences between the mother church and outlying hospitals such as I have proposed for Saint-Aignan. Where recourse to images as a strategy of ecclesiastical patronage does appear, however, and, moreover, precisely in the face of proliferating healing cults, is in the ethnographic archive to which I now turn.

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FROM SPATIALIZED BODY TO PAINTED CRYPT

Thus far, I have been tacking back and forth between the collegiate church and the two poles, castle and borough, toward which its institutional life gravitated over the course of its history. The crypt was erected with its fenestella wall in the late eleventh century on the site of an earlier shrine/ burial complex “founded” by the lord’s ancestors; but by c. , when its murals were painted, the canons had also to deal with a nascent urban milieu. The pressures of ecclesiastical patronage over new satellite charities informed the decoration that the mother church commissioned for the radiating chapels of its own crypt, ancient locus of relics, tombs, and pilgrimage. The care of Christ’s poor, whether the transients to whom the maison-dieu and the porticus catered or the lepers of Saint-Lazare, gave the canons a vital role in transforming seigneurial endowments and burgher capital into spiritual goods. There remains still one more thread to pick up from the painted crypt and follow out into the world beyond it before I can tie all the strands together in the second half of the book. This is the issue of sickness and healing itself. Why does the central image, through its terse reference to James : –, address viewers in terms of their infirmity? The opening question that the scriptural text asks, “Is there any one among you sick,” the image affirmatively answers

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for each and all by cutting to the chase, “Confess your sins.” Identifying everyone who comes before it with the sick, the visionary scene of God’s Majesty commands, “Bring in the presbyters of the Church.” We know in advance what medicine the image, speaking on behalf of its ecclesiastical patron, has in mind: no less than the enthroned Christ prescribes penance through which God forgives sin. The historical problem is to find out why the canons of Saint-Aignan invoked therapeutic powers that flowed uniquely from their priestly office as the driving force in the local economy of salvation. I want in this chapter to approach the canons’ engagement with healing from two complementary angles that shine light on the landscape itself as both harbinger of disease and therapeutic system. Behind the crypt’s pictorial focus on sickness and healing, might there lie an episode in medical history to which the implantation of saints’ cults around Saint-Aignan specifically responded? Possibly, yes. The patron saints invoked at subsidiary chapels and hospitals exercised power over numerous ailments that, for all their diversity, fall into well-defined symptomatological fields. The striking redundancy and convergence of symptoms may perhaps intimate a correlation between proliferating healing cults and a particular disease known actually to have been endemic in the surrounding region. Although this hypothesis can only be formulated with much qualification, the evidence in its favor is suggestive enough to warrant presentation. In taking me back to cult sites around the town, however, my investigation of the maladies controlled by saints leads to a second hypothesis equally deserving of consideration. Whether or not an identifiable epidemiologic profile may have supported the veneration of certain saints, the constellation of hospital and chapel dedications is noteworthy on an altogether different level. A topographic survey of cult sites, when undertaken in conjunction with an analysis of the ills for which local saints were propitiated, yields insight into modes of symbolizing relations between corps and terroir in medieval France.1 Cult practices treated infirmity by projecting individual ailments onto the land. The organization of the built environment around altars and shrines incorporated an image of the body confronted by morbidity and death. It was this representation of the suffering body dispersed across space, and often evading clerical scrutiny, that the crypt paintings gathered into the mother church for sacramental medicine—penance (confession, absolution, the imposition of penitence) and Communion—which priests alone could administer. In contrast to the externalized image of the sick body projected onto the land, pictorial images commissioned by clergy internalized in the soul the spiritual models required for bodily healing.

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saint silvanus’s fire

The infirmity/fire named after Saint Silvanus constitutes the centerpiece of my inquiry here, for its multiple dimensions extrapolated from a range of sources help establish a link connecting medieval cults, folkloric traditions, and modern medicine. In thinking about the infirmitas/ignis b. silvani several problems come into play.2 The “mal à saint,” a medieval tradition that survived well into the modern period, designates symptoms only and is therefore fundamentally incommensurate with the concept of disease with which we now operate. Yet it may occasionally be possible to identify the “mal à saint” with a specific disease, an exercise in the translation from one discursive practice into another.3 A saint’s medical specialization may be derived from his or her legend, shaped by circumstances surrounding the patronage of the cult, or suggested by his or her name: for example, Saint Aignan is associated with le teignon, or la teigne (ringworm); Saint Marcoul, punning on “mal à cou,” with écrouelles, or scrofula (cervical lymph-node tuberculosis). As Marc Bloch put it, “The process that makes a healer in general into a specialized healer will always be hard to follow in detail, because it happens as the result of many, many little things, of diverse nature, whose accumulation only is what matters.”4 At the same time, however, consideration of this process must also take into account the contrary tendency toward the multiplication of cults and the diversification of their therapeutic virtues. Many saints might be propitiated for the same condition, just as a single saint might exercise a range of curative powers. By far the most salient feature of Saint Silvanus’s fire as documented at Levroux was its power to change juridical status: affected individuals treated in the porticus no longer belonged to the secular lord but to the chapter. Would not the canons and the afflicted alike have profited from as comprehensive a definition of the infirmity as possible? Might the lord of Déols, Guillaume de Chauvigny, have suspected the canons of stretching or loosely applying their diagnosis when, on renewing the chapter’s privilege in , he demanded that they swear to make a good-faith effort to distinguish “that infirmity” (illam infirmitatem) as grounds for intake into the porticus? Or might his revocation of the privilege in cases where the canons had been deceived reflect anxiety instead about the feigning of illness? Not so mysteriously, the incidence of this mysterious disease decreased (or rather the attraction of the porticus declined) at the same time as enfranchisements of the local rural population increased.5 Clearly, the statutory ramifications of Saint Silvanus’s fire for the collegiate church of Levroux complicate its interpretation as a medical phenomenon, which fragmentary evidence renders difficult enough.

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While the expression “St. Silvanus’s infirmity” (infirmitas b. silvani) predominates in the chapter’s thirteenth-century cartulary, the less neutral, if equally conventional, phrases “Saint Silvanus’s fire” (ignis sancti silvani), “hell fire” (ignis gehennalis), and “holy fire” (ignis sacer) appear sporadically in the same source as equivalent terms. The prologue and prior’s oath, which reiterate Guillaume de Chauvigny’s proviso for hospital admission, explicitly note their interchangeability.6 Similarly referring to the “morbo qui Gehennalis ignis dicitur,” a papal bull by Alexander IV () grants indulgences to those who give alms to the “domus porticus.”7 From the mid-tenth century, the word “fire,” coupled from the late eleventh century with the adjectives “infernal” or “holy,” was commonly applied to what is now known as ergotism.8 This disease is caused by the ingestion of grain contaminated with the highly toxic fungus Claviceps purpurea (ergot). Rye is especially susceptible to the parasite, but wheat, barley, and wild grasses that grow with rye can also become ergotized. Rye cultivated in the Indre valley not far from Levroux was historically prone to infestation: epidemic outbreaks were recorded, for example, at Saint-Genou de l’Estrée in the s,9 and contamination of the grain grown from Châteauroux to La Châtre (around Chassignoles, Montipouret, Ardentes, and Clavière) was observed in the eighteenth century.10 Employing the term “ignis s. silvani,” the original charter of privilege issued to Levroux between  and  coincided with a virulent ergot crisis. During this twenty-year period, recurrent waves of mass intoxication struck one province after another, including the Limousin, Flanders, Lorraine, Champagne, Burgundy, Aquitaine, and the Dauphiné.11 Numerous saints in different regions were invoked against the “mal des ardents,” and many had their names applied to the disease.12 Saint Anthony, first identified with this internal fire in , became the patron of a hospital order founded five years later to care for victims. His widely disseminated cult eventually overshadowed others, so that even today “Saint Anthony’s fire” not only remains synonymous with ergotism but also popularly conjures up the historical experience of the disease.13 Saint Silvanus of Levroux, I propose, functioned as the local analog of Saint Anthony, whose double evolution as “specialist” in ergotism and as patron of nosographically homologous conditions (e.g., skin diseases) he also appears to have paralleled. In order to make this case, which depends on descriptions of Saint Silvanus’s disease in cult materials emanating from his shrines at Levroux and Noyers, I need to give at least a synopsis of the exceedingly complex, polymorphous character of ergotism. The severity of the poisoning and likely also its differentiated effects appear contingent on the amount of ergot consumed, rates of ingestion (daily dosage over time), and body weight.14 Premonitory signs, or

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prodromes, common to both convulsive and gangrenous forms of ergotism— giddiness, dizziness, confusion, psychic disturbance (hallucinations), fatigue, muscular spasms, chest pain, and gastrointestinal distress—characterize the early stages of intoxication. As the disease progresses, the contrary sensations of fierce internal burning and frigidity in the extremities can be experienced almost simultaneously; shivering from intense chills alternates with profuse, strongly rancid sweating. Rashes can appear.15 The convulsive aspect of the disease involves symptoms that range from formication (tingling sensation of insects crawling under or over the skin) and twitching to powerful muscular contractions and, in extreme cases, epileptiform seizures.16 If, however, gangrene occurs, it usually begins in the toes, but occasionally in the fingers, and then appears literally to consume the extremities. The flesh, sometimes at first covered with red or violet vesicles, eventually blackens like charcoal, and bloodless limbs shrivel up, detaching from the body. Putrefaction (moist gangrene) can occur.17 In epidemic outbreaks, either the convulsive or the gangrenous aspect could predominate, but the two manifestations also could and did occur concurrently.18 Although ergotism can certainly have a lethal outcome, mortality is hardly inevitable, and recovery (with disability) common. The spectacular symptoms of mummified and amputated limbs are held to account for exaggerated death rates in some medieval and modern accounts of collective outbreaks in France.19 The scant medical observation that crept into the cartulary of Levroux has led its most recent editor, Jacques Greslier, to doubt whether the ignis/infirmitas of Saint Silvanus corresponds to ergot poisoning.20 From the list of  individuals admitted into the porticus between  and , only thirteen records include minimal notes pertaining to the presentation of Saint Silvanus’s disease. The foot, leg, hand, and forearm, the extremities most commonly implicated in the gangrenous form of ergotism, are specified as affected sites. But so are other parts of the body not usually indicative of the poisoning. The infirmitas is said to appear on the side, neck, lips, forehead, entire face, and in the eye.21 Greslier further argues that the available demographic data does not necessarily point to ergotism. A disproportionately high number of cases come from the “Champagne” Berrichon, a sector of the province less dependent on the cultivation of rye than others.22 The substantial increase in numbers of cases annually in July and August could be connected either with the agricultural cycle (the harvest) or summer epidemics.23 For these reasons, he interprets the infirmitas b. silvani as a generic term embracing almost any dermatosis accompanied by a deep burning sensation. Without excluding the isolated incidence of ergotism, he proposes, among other possibilities, impetigo, erysipelas in the modern sense (streptococcus infection), small pox, scarlet fever, other

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exanthematous fevers, herpes zoster, and eczema; but given the importance of sheep herding in the area, he favors anthrax. However attractive such a broad, undifferentiated conception of Saint Silvanus’s infirmity may be, it is not altogether compelling. Another medieval source produced at Levroux, heretofore overlooked in considering the medical aspects of the disease, suggests that the primary identification of the infirmitas b. silvani with ergot poisoning and the canons’ ability to recognize it should not be so readily dismissed. An early-thirteenth-century manuscript preserves a collection of seven miracle tales pertaining to Saint Silvanus of Levroux; three exalt his curative powers.24 If the graphic description of diseased individuals found here can be used to supplement the laconic registry of the sick contained in the cartulary, then a link between his fire/infirmity and ergotism becomes more apparent. All the afflicted in these episodes exhibit nervous disorders typical of the convulsive form of ergotism. One woman, “lying for many days in the porticus of this church” (per dies multos jacens in porticu hujus ecclesiae), suffered from contractions of her legs and arms. A man “with all his limbs shaking” (omnibus membris ejus trementibus) was unable to raise his hand to his head. The spasms of a another woman were so severe that her heels touched her buttocks (“femina . . . quae contracta, calcaneis posterioribus adhaesis”), a contortion characteristic of convulsive ergotism.25 Her left hand (described as “perdita” and “arida”) had also withered, implying either anaesthesia and paralysis (symptoms associated with convulsive ergotism) or the shrinkage, loss of sensation, and drying out (mummification) indicative of gangrene. With her miraculous cure, the nervous contraction ended, so that she was able to extend her knees and stand erect. Her hand is said to have revived, literally warmed up (“incaluit”). The use of the verb incaluere to describe the recovery of the hand suggests that the member had become very cold: a sign of gangrene? Could we possibly have here an example of the unusual, but by no means unknown, coincidence of convulsive and gangrenous ergotism in a single individual? A physician treating patients near Lille during an epidemic outbreak in  found that the disease sometimes progressed from spasmodic contractions of the limbs to gangrene: “The contractions of flexors were so violent in some subjects that they made the heels almost touch the buttocks,” and then gangrene set in.26 In view of these examples, the odd medical notes contained in the cartulary might be reexamined. Implication of the face or eye, instead of eliminating ergotism, could conceivably tie in with it. Cataracts and other ophthalmic disorders are a familiar complication of convulsive ergotism, as are spasms of the facial muscles.27 The face (chin, lips, nose) may indeed fall prey to gangrene, as

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Hugh Farsit and Anselm of Gembloux reported during an outbreak of ergotism in –, a finding French physicians confirmed again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.28 Granted, the term infirmitas b. silvani never comes up in the miracle tales. Yet when both the cartulary and the miracula are considered together, a more complete picture of the nosographical fields controlled by Saint Silvanus emerges. The tormenting “fire,” cutaneous eruption, and neurological disorders with which he is associated conform to the variant symptomatology of ergotism. Attention should be paid to the convergence of Silvanus’s cult, his “mal,” and the “porche Saint-Antoine” at Noyers. This parish is located at the southwestern tip of the Sologne, a region so dominated in the Middle Ages by the cultivation of rye that it derived its name from the grain. Secale in classical Latin, deformed to sigalis, produced the Latin toponym La Sigalonia and the old French Salloigne, Seilloigne, and Sauloigne.29 Epidemic outbreaks of ergot poisoning periodically swept the Sologne from the eleventh and twelfth centuries through the Ancien Régime.30 Ergotism became so identified with the region that in the eighteenth century the disease went by the labels “gangrène des Solognots” and “convulsio Solonienses.”31 Long before, Solognot peasants had coined the word “ergot” to refer to spurred rye.32 Why did the Sologne, Gâtinais (around Montargis), and Berry constitute a privileged breeding ground for the disease? The eighteenth-century researcher A. H. Tessier concluded that environmental and social factors conspired to promote the constant recrudescence of ergot poisoning among the poorest of the rural population.33 The very impediments to agricultural diversification— the sandy soil of the marshes, the clayey subsoil that trapped excess rainfall, the cold, damp winters and hot summers—favored the near perennial growth of the Claviceps fungus. Depending on the amount of precipitation, in some years the infestation would be greater, even extreme (in  the ergot content of the rye crop was reportedly  percent), in some years less. For lack of proper sieves or out of dire want, peasants did not winnow their grain. Shortages, the high price of grain, and full-blown famine exacerbated a chronic problem, so that in some years intoxication could reach epidemic proportions.34 Massive collective outbreaks should not therefore obscure the persistence of the poisoning in between.35 Tessier found that all those he had interviewed knew of a family member who suffered from the effects of ergotized grain.36 The presence of chronic ergotism in the environs of Saint-Aignan during the medieval period, though it cannot be confirmed, may be inferred from later evidence. True, the southwestern tip of the Sologne, bordering the Touraine, and thus Saint-Aignan across the Cher, tended to be more fertile and agriculturally diversified than the rest of the province. Still, the neighboring parishes

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of Noyers, Seigy, and Couffy encompassed marshy tracts, noes or noues, inscribed in the local toponymy by the fourteenth century.37 For Father Naudet, the priest who wrote on the cult of Saint Silvanus at the “porche Saint Antoine” in the nineteenth century, the place-name Noyers signified “le pays des noues.”38 The Claviceps parasite thrives in such an environment. An échevin of SaintAignan, Alexandre de la Borde, who kept a diary between  and , described ergotized grain and the bad bread produced from it.39 If rye cultivated around Saint-Aignan was subject to ergot infestation in the eighteenth century, it was probably likewise regularly contaminated also in much earlier periods. Of course the degree to which late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century evidence of frequent crop failure, desperate hunger, and intoxication in the region may be valid for the Middle Ages is tricky to assess. The Sologne is thought to have fared reasonably well in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.40 Once the region recovered from the Hundred Years War, the population was better off in the late Middle Ages than in the seventeenth and especially eighteenth centuries, when the rural economy and, with it, the habitat greatly deteriorated.41 The population thinned out, and marshes, with their still waters, were allowed to proliferate. Toward the end of the Ancien Régime and through much of the nineteenth century, endemic malaria posed the dominant threat.42 Tessier, who studied the “gangrène des solognots” but died of malaria, was struck by the typically yellow (malarial) complexion of the inhabitants and the intermittent fevers of entire households at a time.43 Paradoxically, despite the endemicity of ergotism in the Sologne, neither the “mal des ardents” per se nor its symptoms seem to have been singled out regionally as the particular specialty of any one saint. Several compounded factors may account for the gap between the well-documented prevalence of ergotism and its low resonance in Solognot cult folklore. By the time the corpus of traditional medical practices began to enter the ethnographic record in the nineteenth (not to say twentieth) century, the “mal des ardents” had just about disappeared. The disease regressed during the first half of the nineteenth century (with an outbreak, however, in ), finally to disappear after –, the last known scare.44 By , when Naudet described the “mal de St.-Silvain” that had traditionally attracted people to his church, ergotism had become a distant memory kept alive in village folklore attached to the names of saints. The diminishing threat of intoxication may well have triggered mutations in the traditions revolving around local saints, for their cults functioned as an integral part of a larger psychotherapeutic technology readily adapted to immediate needs. Cults once promoted to combat the “fièvres de la Sologne,” typically malaria, similarly went into decline or were redirected and transformed as the use of quinine gained ground.45

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Equally important, the perception of sickness in general entailed the dissociation of disease characteristics or disease states for which relief was sought from many saints. During epidemics, whether among humans or livestock, one appealed to the Virgin and Saint Roch. For the fate of those suspended between life and death, one had recourse not only to Saint Guinefort, special patron of the very young, but also to several other figures.46 Some cults, in particular that of Saint Viâtre at Tremblevif but also that of Saint Silvanus at Mur, were especially effective against “fevers” (la tremblotte)—malaria to be sure, but ergotism too involved feverish-like states of shivering and sweating, not to mention tremorlike spasms.47 Saint Anthony covered the gamut of dermatopathology. But he never became as popular in the Sologne as he did elsewhere. Besides the “porche Saint-Antoine” at Noyers, only two other parishes (Sennely and Souesmes) claimed Anthony among their “bons saints.” Nearly twice as many parishes placed themselves under the protection of the more obscure Berrichon Saint Silvanus (Noyers, Fontaines-en-Sologne, Mur, Vernou, Vouzeron). Genouilly, on the outskirts of the Sologne like SaintAignan, attracted intense pilgrimage from north of the Cher.48 Silvanus seems to have been most associated in modern Solognot folklore with the violet or purplish discoloration of the skin from vesicles to varicose veins, and with “maux des jambes.”49 Might not the focus on the lower extremities and change in the appearance of the skin distantly recall some of the characteristic effects of ergot intoxication on the body? Naudet’s description of “le mal de St.-Silvain ou le mal de Noyers” as “une affection charbonneuse, une sorte d’érysipèle” emphasizes the burning or carbonization of the flesh. The introduction of the term “erysipelas” in this context recalls medieval medical definitions of gangrenous ergotism. Add to this the observation by an anonymous writer in  that Saint Silvanus at Noyers was invoked against “des maladies convulsives,”50 and the conjunction of disparate ailments controlled by the saint rejoins that with which he was connected at Levroux in medieval times.

local cults: an epidemiological basis?

All the peripheral cults encircling the borough of Saint-Aignan resonate with the veneration of Saint Silvanus, or their medical profiles duplicate the nosographical fields subsumed by the infirmity named after him. Guinefort, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, was invoked at Levroux for the healing of Saint Silvanus’s fire. Two of the saints most prominently linked with the “holy/hell” fire of ergotism, Saint Lawrence and Saint Andrew, had chapels

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dedicated to them near the bridge on the main street in the borough and outside the northwest gate respectively. Saint Lawrence lent his name to the fiery affliction presumably because of his martyrdom on the grill: according to the fourteenth-century surgeon Henri de Mondeville, the disease was called “feu St.-Laurent” in Normandy.51 The deacon saint was invoked against the “mal des ardents” in the Poitou and the Charentes, his cult either still practiced or revived at the end of the nineteenth century, when the term was applied to different dermatoses. Henri Chaumartin did not hesitate to interpret this modern usage as a relic of the collective ergotism that had ravaged populations in medieval times.52 Chaumartin’s insight could well pertain to the contemporary cult of Saint Silvanus at Noyers as described by Naudet in , and more generally to Silvanus’s cult in the Sologne. Whereas Saint Lawrence was sometimes affiliated with the symptoms of gangrenous ergotism, Saint Andrew, patron of contractés, was widely associated with neuropathology indicative of the convulsive aspect of the intoxication (infirmitas beati Andrae). The Domus Contractoria of Lyons, founded between  and  and donated to the Antonite order in , was dedicated to Saint Andrew.53 A third figure tied in the Middle Ages to outbreaks of ergotism, Saint Martial, had an altar inside the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan.54 The mutilating fires of Anthony and Lawrence shared with leprosy—represented by Lazarus—the putrefaction of the flesh and amputation of members. Saint Silvanus’s fire was not confused or conflated in the Middle Ages with leprosy. But this did not prevent the patron of Levroux from attacking the disease. The very place where Silvanus’s cult took root in the late eighth century was called Leprosus already in the fourth. Sulpicius Severus relates that Saint Martin of Tours destroyed a pagan temple there.55 One of the miracle tales later invented at Levroux to enhance the shrine’s reputation explains the link between Silvanus’s cult and the toponym Leprosus by inverting the titular saint’s chronological relationship to the more famous bishop of Tours: it was while visiting Silvanus’s tomb, and therefore through his agency, that Saint Martin healed a leper, on account of which the site was called Leprosus.56 The image of an afflicted pilgrim (fig. ) from the murals of BeaumontVillage supplies the narrative link between Silvanus and Martin. Does he suffer from Saint Silvanus’s fire? Or, given the presence of Saint Martin among the depicted figures, does the pilgrim’s affliction signify the leprosy, healed by the bishop, from which the toponym Leprosus supposedly derived? The marks recall the blemish spots that became the pictorial convention for leprosy, while their screenlike pattern evokes a rain of fire consuming the body. Grossly enlarged feet, of which the left appears deformed, connote the action of disease on the extremities, while they also focus attention on the members that

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epitomize the figure’s identity as pilgrim and wayfarer. Obviously the image cannot be pressed into evidence as a medical illustration. Rather, it functions as a cipher through which the infirmity crucial to the identity of Saint Silvanus and his tomb site is symbolized. Giles, abbot of the famous southern French abbey named after him, and Loup (or Leu), archbishop of Sens, were coupled as patron saints of the maisondieu at Saint-Aignan, a common double dedication inspired by their shared feast day (September ).57 Neither saint, so far as I am aware, was linked to “mal des ardents.” However, the range of afflictions for which they were each most frequently invoked can be realigned with the nosography that characterizes the two forms of ergotism. At issue once again is the convergence of spectacular pathological changes in the appearance of the flesh, the loss or disability of the lower extremities, and neurological disorders. From the late eleventh century the cult of Saint Giles had been channeled, at least in part, through foundations for the care of the sick poor. His patronage of beggars, the lame, and lepers has been especially well documented in England; out of twenty-four or twenty-five medieval hospitals dedicated to Giles, ten were reserved for lepers.58 Leproseries in Normandy seem commonly to have been placed under the invocation of Saint Giles.59 In Anjou, the confraternity SaintGilles of La Flèche (active ) may have been responsible for placing a chapel near the castle at the service of lepers.60 Although Giles’s cult in northeastern France is less strongly related to hospital institutions, the saint nevertheless appears as patron of lepers in the diocese of Langres, notably at the leproseries of Tonnerre () and Saint-Gilles de la Maladière ().61 Invoked against fevers, Giles found a welcome reception in marshy lands.62 The cult took root at several sites in the Sologne (Blois, Monthou-sur-Cher, Montérieux-en-Gault, Montrieux-en-Sologne, Mur) and along its borders (Faverolles, Saint-Aignan).63 A recent study correlates the cult’s dissemination in the diocese of Bourges with parishes occupying densely wooded, marshy, or unhealthy lands.64 Whereas the crippled and leprous invoked Saint Giles, epileptics and those suffering from convulsions or seizures appealed to Saint Loup (Lupus, in Latin).65 Here, the insidious long-term ramifications of convulsive ergotism need to be appreciated. Not only can intoxication provoke convulsive episodes that are indistinguishable from epilepsy, but it may also cause permanent seizure disorder. A population in which chronic ergotism is endemic could actually experience a higher-than-normal incidence of epilepsy. On the other hand, “lupus”—for Henri de Mondeville synonymous with “cancer”—was one of a string of equivalent terms, along with “herpes” and “corrosive” or “ulcerous erysipelas,” that the surgeon applied to describe the nature of SaintAnthony’s (or Saint Lawrence’s) fire.66

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Saint Loup received special veneration on behalf of sick children, as did Guinefort, to whom the chapel at Seigy very near the maison-dieu was dedicated. The cult of Saint Loup specifically addressed the “mal de peur,” terror or fright believed to provoke convulsions or seizures in young children.67 By far the most popular saint in the Sologne, a sheep-raising region of heaths and woods where wolves abounded, Loup at once personified and exorcized the dread inspired by the homonymous predator or its mythic avatar (“le loup-garou”).68 The cliché “to tremble with fear” sums up the root connection between the psychic cause and somatic effects of the “mal” that Saint Loup alleviated.69 The “mal de peur” is usually taken by historians of folk medicine to refer to children’s nightmares.70 The nebulous character of the term makes it applicable to this type of distress, but the syndrome also involves psychoneural disturbance. Night terrors do not, as a rule, cause children to go into seizure. Very high fever, to which young children are prone, does induce delirium and convulsions. Conceivably the “mal de peur” might encompass as well the sinister hallucinations and accompanying seizures that constitute the classic reaction to ergot intoxication.71 Wherever statistical data is available for outbreaks of ergotism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it shows the devastating effect of comparatively low doses of the poison on children, their particular susceptibility to the convulsive form of the disease, and, up to the age of ten, a mortality rate hovering around  percent.72 During the last outbreak of collective ergotism in modern times, at Pont-Saint-Esprit (Provence) in , horrified parents witnessed their young children screaming in terror from hallucinations of wild animals while in the throes of a convulsive episode (body shaking, extremities jerking in massive spasms, fingers clenched, and toes rigidly bent).73 Might not such a phenomenon have once been aptly described under the rubric “mal de peur”? Saint Loup thus held sway over a category of psychogenetic distress through which the “fièvres malignes accompagnées d’assoupissemens & de réveries” observed by a seventeenth-century physician visiting the Sologne could be registered and interpreted.74 Other adverse effects of ergot intoxication directly concern infants. The ingestion of contaminated grain by nursing mothers causes lactation to cease. An exceptionally high rate of premature births in the Sologne during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has further been attributed to the endemicity of the disease.75 This said, ergot poisoning obviously constituted only one of many life-threatening dangers to young children, who, before modern medicine, easily succumbed to any number of pathogens. Of sixtysix different “bon saints” to whom Solognots appealed, more than forty “specialized” in pediatric diseases.

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local cults: a system of representation

That ergotism could have inspired the dedications of hospital institutions and chapels at Saint-Aignan remains a tantalizing hypothesis. Yet even if the connection were plausible, it would nonetheless be a mistake to exaggerate the implications of one disease phenomenon when the trajectories of so many others intersected, coincided with, or were superimposed on it. As de la Borde’s chronicle of rural life around Saint-Aignan makes abundantly clear, the population in the eighteenth century, and surely in the Middle Ages, suffered repeated waves of all kinds of illness mixed in with natural disaster. He mentions smallpox, dysentery, fevers, diseased flocks (one year all the sheep in the area died), flood, extreme cold causing frostbite and even amputation of limbs, and attacks by wolves. More important than the relationship between local cults and any specific disease is the image of the body latent within the constellation of hospital and chapel dedications. Together the saints governed internal affliction and its external manifestations under the three broad fields of cutaneous eruptions, impairment of motor functions, and convulsions or seizures (Table ). Flesh, mobility, and psyche—to wit, a dispersed representation of the human organism—was thus externalized and, through the cult of saints, situated in the habitat. This tripartite representational scheme articulates the body at a maximum level of generality in order to reconfigure it locally. Insight into this kind of symbolic system and its topographic projection may be obtained from Alban Bensa’s ethnographic study of healing cults in the region of Perche-Gouët (between the Beauce and Normandy).76 Combining archival sources, published documentation, and informants’ testimony, Bensa analyzed the ritual appropriation of the landscape in rural society during the period –, when the spatial order it had produced was being gradually effaced. Through traditional cult practices such as divination, seasonal pilgrimages, and accompanying quasi-magical rites of immersion and contact, saints’ cults referred particular afflictions to specific sites and thus localized therapeutic powers. Mapping “each organ, member, ailment,” onto the land and traversing space to recover the fragmented, sick body functioned as reciprocal processes.77 Bensa catalogued several coexisting patterns according to which cult sites across an entire region were incorporated into a comprehensive therapeutic system. Saints’ cults, in other words, constituted a langue through which different mapping strategies, like so many paroles, could be actualized. Applied to the microtopography surrounding Saint-Aignan, this concept allows local cults also to be read as a set of relations that, working together, governed the body’s

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Table of Saints and Associated Symptoms Representational Fields Saint

Associated Symptoms/Ailments for which invoked

Andrew

his “infirmity,” muscle spasms, contractions, ergotism (convulsive) his “fire,” dermatoses, ergotism (gangrenous) patron of lepers and lame at Levroux, Saint Silvanus’s fire his “fire,” dermatoses, ergotism (gangrenous) leprosy, dermatoses “fright,” convulsive disorders, seizures saint’s “fire” or “infirmity” Levroux, cartulary, dermatological thirteenth century eruption Noyers, priest,  “affection charbonneuse, sorte d’érisipèle” Sologne, ethnographic purplish discoloration archive of skin, “maux des jambes” Levroux, miracula, tremors, contractions, before  violent muscle spasms Noyers, anonymous “maladies convulsives” source, 

Anthony Giles Guinefort Lawrence Lazarus Loup Silvanus

Flesh

Motor Function Psyche x

x x x x x

x

x x

x

x

struggle with disease and death. Thaumaturgic saints, like Silvanus, were petitioned to heal particular infirmities. In contrast, Lazarus provided a model for lepers forced to grapple with the permanent liminality of an incurable disease that divided them from the living. The person whom Christ raised from the dead at Bethany had become the archetypal leper through conflation with his homonym, the beggar covered with sores in the gospel parable of Lazarus and the evil rich man.78 As seals carved for French lazar houses so eloquently express (figs. , ), the patronage of this composite character validated the ambiguous condition of the leper, who, sealed unto the grave, redefined continued existence as an opportunity for perpetual penance.79 The leper died to this world but found new life in a lay penitential community. Whereas Lazarus personified the passage from death to rebirth, Guinefort was invoked to decide the fate of those suspended between life and death. Saint Giles, famous for his ability to absolve unconfessed sins, protected against the dangers of sudden death, that is, death without benefit of last rites. Whether they localized curative powers or created spaces for negotiating disease and death, saints’ cults here interlinked to form a coherent defense around the community and, what is more, to inscribe it on the land. Ritual veneration in the paraparochial structures encircling the town and often

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positioned in relation to its orifices, that is, the gates, activated an invisible, supernatural wall separating the rocky plateau from the marshy lowlands of the plat pays. At the same time, thaumaturgic cults at Noyers (Saint Silvanus) and Seigy (Saint Guinefort) established an itinerary through Saint-Aignan. Buffer and bridge, the network of saints refigured on another plane the idea of the town itself.

images and the recapture of therapeutic powers

The proliferation of peripheral cult sites nevertheless provided the nodal points for a symbolic cartography, multivalent and unstable, whereby the splayed body could be tactically diffused across space beyond ecclesiastical control. In dialogic opposition, the ensemble of Romanesque murals inside the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan recapitulated the topography of healing and, at the same time, transposed its purposes. Paintings featuring hospital and allied saints “remapped” the local network of charitable institutions into the radial chapels of the crypt. The pictorial program thereby reclaimed the mortal body for the secular canons and submitted it to their priestly authority. Identifying the collegiate/parish church at the heart of the walled borough with extramural sites of relief, the artistic commission of c.  implemented a politics of ecclesiastical patronage comparable to that which Bensa encountered in the Perche-Gouët for the much later period of his study. Effigies of healing saints venerated in outlying hamlets were displayed in the naves of parish churches; the “clocher du village” thus recalled its priority.80 By introducing visual references to local hospitals within the space of the principal sanctuary, the chapter of Saint-Aignan similarly asserted its primacy over affiliated, or competing, cults and, in effect, recouped their scattered therapeutic functions. The converse of annual liturgical processions through which the canons literally circumscribed their satellite possessions, the paintings virtually inscribed dependencies within the collegiate church. This artistic recuperation marked the chapter’s domination of the parish. At Saint-Aignan, however, the ensemble of murals had an added dimension. It not only recontained the hospital network within the crypt of collegiate church but also positioned the canons at the center of the healing process. While images in the radial chapels “advertised” ecclesiastically sanctioned, clerically supervised institutions, the apsidal theophany showed healing to be contingent on penance and therefore on sacerdotal mediation. The enthroned Christ’s heavenly injunction to confession appoints priests, who dispense the medicine of penance, physicians of the soul.81 Through prayer and unction,

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absolution and reconciliation, they prepare the body to receive divine grace, or, alternatively, the soul for its passage to the next world.82 The incarnate Christ who heals the woman with the issue of blood, as depicted in the axial chapel “behind” (east of) the apse, is the gospel prototype of the priest who, in hearing confession, purges the defilement of sin. Saints could effect miraculous cures should they be so disposed toward worthy pilgrims, but confession to one’s “own priest” was the spiritual remedy for all those who would one day be interred in the consecrated ground of the parish cemetery, there to await the Resurrection.83 At the same time that images served the cause of ecclesiastical patronage and priestly authority, they assisted the healing process more directly. Insofar as painted figures of saints and penitent supplicants became the objects of an ardent gaze through which they were visually consumed and spiritually internalized, they literally impressed the soul so as to affect the body. As Robert Nelson, Carolyn Walker Bynum, and Dyan Elliott have each discussed in different contexts, medieval theories of vision ascribed profound physical ramifications to the sense of sight and its inward, intellectual continuum, the imagination.84 In Byzantium, the viewing of icons could bring healing. According to one testimonial, a woman suffering from a hemorrhage believed that if only she could see an icon of Saint Symeon the Younger, her bleeding would cease. Thus it came to pass, after the manner of her gospel counterpart who had touched the fringe of Christ’s robe. So too, Gerhoh of Reichsberg maintained that looking on “a citizen of Jerusalem” could refresh and heal; Hugh of SaintVictor recommended that his diagram of Noah’s ark be inscribed on the heart, whence it would be erected as God’s house within the person. Belief in the corporeal impact of seeing and mental imaging lay behind somatic miracles on the one hand and monstrous births on the other. Just as a saint whose soul bore the imprint of the crucified Christ would receive stigmata on the body (a phenomenon that began with Francis, a contemporary of the work under discussion), so conversely a pregnant woman who imbibed inappropriate images (whether in the form of pictorial representations or of living beings) would harm her fetus. From this perspective, the crypt paintings, themselves brimming with curative properties, were no less than relics and the Eucharist, an extension of the sacramental powers vested in the collegiate church and its clergy.85 The priesthood’s claim to be the exclusive purveyor of divine medicine left the matter of efficacy squarely in the supplicant’s camp. The recipient of grace, like wax made ready to take the impression of a seal, needed first to be softened up through compunction and contrition. Before images could mold viewers in accordance with holy exemplars, they provided devotional stimuli

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to bring the subject into the right relationship with God. It would be tedious here to rehearse the long tradition, investigated by many others and expertly summarized by Eric Palazzo, of using images as inducements to devotion. A wide array of medieval texts beginning in the Carolingian period suggest that viewers approached sacred images on bended knees or fully prostrate on the ground and with an outpouring of tears; indeed tituli (verse inscriptions) written to accompany mural paintings so counseled.86 Interestingly, Palazzo’s rapid overview of sources suggests that crypts may perhaps have been a preferred locus of devotional prayer. Prudentius of Troyes (d. ) sermonized on how Sainte Maure daily spent long hours prostrate before each of three paintings (Virgin and Child; Crucifixion; Christ in Majesty), her gaze insatiable, in the crypt of Troyes Cathedral. When abbot Gauzlin (d. ) felt himself close to death while on a journey away from his monastery of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, he asked to be carried into the crypt of the church at Châtillon; there, lying extended on the ground, he prayed and confessed before the apsidal painting of Christ’s Ascension and the wooden statue of the Virgin on the altar. Proximity to relics, participation in the celebration of the Mass, “caressing images with the gaze and with prayers,”87 were equivalent modes of intimacy with the divine. If one’s inner disposition expressed itself through physical postures and emotional responses, then it followed that the model stamped upon the receptive soul would radiate through the body to re-form, re-create—heal— the person. The canons of Saint-Aignan combined the care of sick with the cure of souls. Their pastoral vocation entailed soliciting alms on behalf of dependencies, while checking the rise of peripheral cults that might supersede the therapies offered under their aegis. As custodian of the principal sanctuary and its reliquary crypt, as patron overseeing the disbursement of material assistance to the poor and spiritual recompense to the charitable, the chapter mediated ritual transactions between saints and suppliants, donors and recipients of alms, the living and the dead. The time has come at last to reenter the collegiate church and see how its architecture and painted decoration launched a divinely sanctioned economy in which diverse parties—castellans, townsfolk, and itinerants—had a stake. Images made sure that the conversion, by some, of their earthly wealth and, by others, of their physical infirmity into personal heavenly capital went hand in hand with redefining Christian community around penance.

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THE ARCHITECTURAL FRAMEWORK spatial disjunction, social displacement

Begun in the late eleventh century, the rebuilding of the collegiate and parish church of Saint-Aignan was brought to completion only at the turn of the thirteenth. Successive campaigns over the course of the intervening century more than grafted new stylistic elements onto a preestablished structural grid. As work progressed, previous decisions were revised, initial formulations rejected. Arguably the most significant departure, given its ramifications for how the building functioned within the borough, involved a series of modifications that transformed the relationship between the crypt and upper church. The original configuration permitted visual linkage and physical circulation between upper church and crypt. This traditional arrangement was eventually abandoned in favor of an unusually radical disjunction between the two formerly interconnected levels. The reconception of the crypt as a wholly autonomous space, sealed off from the upper church and accessible only from the exterior, culminated in the introduction of frescoes that at once programmatically depended on and validated the altered disposition. A comprehensive decorative scheme, which appears to have encompassed the entire church, accentuated the difference between the building’s two constituent parts. The architectural isolation of the crypt structured the terms of participation in the

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economy of salvation that images now made visible. The archaeology of the church is therefore critical to an assessment of the building’s performative role in negotiating the different needs as well as mutual interests of diverse visitors to the crypt. The most substantive examination of the church to date remains that published by Maylis Baylé in .1 Her comprehensive treatment of the building’s construction history, sculptural decoration, and disfiguring nineteenth-century restoration forms the basis of this chapter. In reviewing her technical observations, I shall consider more closely those structural idiosyncrasies that bear on changing modes of communication between the crypt, upper church, and outside world and on their concomitant orchestration of social hierarchies.

architectural design and building chronology

To compensate for the eastward slope of the terrain on which the church was erected, a spacious crypt that would act as the foundation for the chevet was a logical choice. The radial plan adopted for the sanctuary above was first implemented in the crypt, which is coextensive with the structure that it supports (figs. , , ). Each level comprises a hemicycle apse preceded by a choir of one bay; an ambulatory, continuous with straight bays flanking the choir, opens onto three radiating apsidioles. In contrast to the upper level, however, the crypt also included, west of the square choir, a narrow rectangular bay (fig. ), now blocked from view by a wall erected and painted in the fifteenth century (fig. ). As for the elevation of the lower church, the apse communicates with the ambulatory through three large openings in the thickness of the hemicycle wall (fig. ). The conch vaults over apse and apsidioles give way in the choir and ambulatory (fig. ) to groin vaults between transverse arches; the short, westernmost bay of the crypt is barrel-vaulted. Direct lighting from windows in the apsidioles (three per chapel) and ambulatory (between chapels) tempers the darkness, deepest in the central apse and progressively modulated toward the perimeter. Pairs of colonnettes en délit crowned with double capitals articulate the springings of the transverse arches around the ambulatory and at the entrance to the apsidioles, thereby relieving the planarity of otherwise denuded mural surfaces. The concatenation of full volumes, molded by curving walls and vaults in the lower church, is differently expressed in the sanctuary above. A richly articulated elevation sets off the hemicycle (fig. ). A heightened arcade of columns bearing large historiated capitals (nineteenth-century replacements)

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is surmounted by a plastically layered middle storey comprising small but deep bays that alternate with triplets of blind arches. The three windows of the clerestory, likewise separated by blind arches, reverse the pattern of light and dark across the upper wall. The high conch vault rests against a transverse arch, as does the barrel vault over the choir. The ambulatory encircling the rondpoint presents a groin-vaulted continuum free of segmentation by transverse arches, which demarcate only the entrances to the apsidioles and the bays flanking the choir. Along the ambulatory wall, engaged colonnettes with carved capitals receive the charge of the groins and transverse arches. The variegated series of bases and capitals found in the chevet provide secure diagnostic markers for a date of construction not much before the last decade of the eleventh century; the crypt is only slightly older. Crypt and chevet constitute a single unit to which also belongs the nonprojecting transept. The arms, one bay each, are continuous with the nave side aisles, a design that responds, like the crypt, to the exigencies of the terrain. This solution, however, also conforms to that frequently preferred by secular canons who lived in private houses near a collegiate church rather than in conventual quarters around a cloister abutting one arm of a projecting transept.2 The crossing is framed by high transverse arches, the profiles of which match those of the choir and apse; above reposes a cupola on squinches and a tower. The types of bases and capitals used for the transept, interior and exterior, are related to those found in the chevet, but the forms are more advanced, suggesting a prolongation of the first campaign. In contrast to the homogeneity of the chevet and transept, the four bays of the nave and western tower porch show not only glaring disparities indicative of successive campaigns but also more subtle evidence of a profound remodeling. Well before the imposition c.  of a broken arch flush against the round western arch of the crossing (fig. ), work had already begun on a nave conceived quite differently from that now in existence, one more in line with the architectural style of the choir and transept.3 The piers of the nave arcade originally followed a simpler scheme; moreover some of the engaged columns in the nave and side aisles bear capitals that belong stylistically to the transept campaign. It would thus appear that the prolonged late-eleventhcentury campaign included at least the lower storey of a nave arcade with round arches and supports probably intended for a barrel vault borne on transverse arches; some portion of the outer, or lateral, walls of the side aisles was also built. Work on the nave was not carried forward as originally laid out, however. The interjection of a new parti, itself realized discontinuously in several campaigns, accounts for the lack of coherence visible in the western body of the

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church. Because the link between upper church and crypt was finally severed in the course of completing the nave, it may be helpful here to block out the complex chronology of the central vessel. i. During a first phase, whatever structure already existed was entirely recast. The supports of the nave arcade were adapted to accommodate ribbed groin vaulting, completed over the fourth bay (i.e., that closest to the crossing, figs. , ); groin vaulting between transverse arches was raised over the side aisles. Architectural details (capitals, profiles of bases and of the first set of ogives) suggest a date for the campaign in the s. The west wall of the nave and its portal (fig. ) as well as the north and south portals in the side aisles of the third nave bay belong to this period. Construction then seems to have come to a halt.4 ii. Activity resumed on the clerestory and superstructure of the central vessel sometime in the late s or, more likely, the s, a date indicated by the profile of the ribs in the third and second bays (fig. ) and by the accompanying series of capitals. The two middle bays were completed, and at the same time, the side aisles of the fourth bay were also reconstructed. The reworking of these two collateral bays, distinguished from the others by their pointed transverse arches, is especially visible from the western wall of the transept (fig. ) and on the north side of the nave arcade (fig. ). iii. The final twelfth-century campaign comprised the vaulting of the first nave bay and the addition of a two-storey tower porch, not quite on axis with the central vessel. The domical vaulting (fig. ) and sculptural decoration (crocket and siren capitals, statues-nervures, figs. –) in the tribune of the tower porch situate the campaign between  and .5 At this time, flying buttresses were applied to the nave bays (fig. ); they spring from abutment piers that reinforce the wall buttresses of the side aisles. A two-storey porch (figs. –) was likewise adjoined to the eastern end of the north flank of the church during the latter part of the twelfth century, either when the middle nave bays were vaulted and fourth-bay side aisles redone (campaign ii, s) or when the western tower porch was completed (campaign iii, after ). The lower storey sheltered an exterior entrance into the crypt (figs. , ); the upper level (fig. ), serving as sacristy, communicated with the side aisle of the choir. In plan (fig. ), the porch presents two unequal bays that mirror the spatial configuration of the west end of the crypt, although the end wall of the exterior apparatus is only approximately aligned with the end wall of the crypt. Late medieval additions abut the south flank of the church.6 The protocols governing movement into and around the church can be deduced from the relationship between the various portals, the interior

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organization of space, and the exterior configuration of the site. The principal entry through the western tower porch was more or less aligned with the castle, whereas the doors in the third bay of the side aisles were positioned with respect to the borough. Thus the lord and his entourage descended into the church; the burghers ascended. Ramped paths (eventually stairs) off the main thoroughfare, which angled around the promontory, led up to the lateral portals. As appears in the town portrait of  (fig. ), one path communicated between the north door (“porte de la Sologne”) and the east-west road paralleling the river, the other between the south door (“porte de la ville”) and the perpendicular artery through the town. At one time, people entering the nave could have proceeded to the crypt via stairs that descended from the fourth collateral bays. While the laity could circulate between the two levels of the church and around the ambulatory, the canons reserved the inner core of the sanctuary, that is, from the apse to the western piers of the crossing, for the main altar and their choir. Eventually a jubé, mentioned in the eighteenthcentury diary of the échevin Alexandre de la Borde, partitioned the interior of the church.7 For the sake of clarity, the foregoing sketch of the church has bypassed extensive modern interventions. The church suffered greatly during the era of the Revolution, when it was officially converted into a temple of Reason and the town took the name of Carismont. In , the jubé and high altar were dismantled. Capitals of the choir and nave were damaged; colossal statues of Saints James and Christopher that embellished the ground floor of the western porch were destroyed; the chapels of the crypt were made into stables, cattle stalls, and cellars for storing wine. The town repurchased the church in , and three years later the Catholic cult was reintroduced, but the threat of ruination went unchecked until the building’s classification by the Commission des monuments historiques in . Having studied the church between  and , J.-B.-A. Lassus supervised its restoration, begun the following year, until his death in .8 He replaced pockets of masonry and reconstructed most of the flying buttresses, the south portal (including its sculptural decoration), and the north supports of the western tower. Structures cluttered around the chevet and menacing its foundation were removed. Lassus produced a set of plans, sections, and drawings documenting the medieval fabric. He also observed: The entire nave as we have just sketched it was covered with paintings. Large figures with long, straight draperies, probably from the same period as those of the crypt, which we will describe later, adorned the vault. Phylacteries unfurled around these representations of Christian

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virtues and angelic intelligences. All these paintings disappeared, close to forty years ago [i.e., in the early nineteenth century], under a layer of whitewash; it is nevertheless thought possible to bring them out.9 Unfortunately, the disastrous restoration practices of the succeeding architect assured that the nave paintings to which Lassus referred would never be recovered. Over a period of twenty-seven years (–), J.-E. Pottier de La Morandière virtually rebuilt parts of the church:10 the north porch (consequently impossible to date with precision); a segment of the north exterior flank (transept arm, fourth bay); portions of the chevet walls; vaults over the choir and transept. His heavy “hand” can be felt in parts of the nave not documented in the preserved records of the restoration. Whatever pictorial embellishment from the twelfth century happened to survive in the upper church succumbed to La Morandière’s predilection for the clean and new, judged excessive even by contemporary standards. In addition, he removed the polychromy from carved capitals that remained in situ and installed copies of capitals from Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire to replace those that had been lost.11 Finally, a high tower was raised over the tribune of the western porch, a pure nineteenth-century invention, as can be seen from the town portrait of  and a view drawn by Lassus.

the crypt redefined

Just because the crypt provided a foundation for the chevet does not mean that the lower church served “merely” a structural purpose, thus rendering it superfluous to cult practices. Physical support, aesthetic values, and ritual purpose cannot be regarded as mutually exclusive goals in the realization of a particular architectural design. As discussed in Chapter , a limited excavation carried out in  substantiates the crypt’s reliquary and related sepulchral functions. Through a fenestella wall terminating the crypt at west (fig. ) relics were visible to the laity gathered in the central vessel of the upper church. The old ranking of Saint-Aignan in the category of “cryptes vides,” supposedly motivated solely by the declivity of the terrain, can be definitively set aside.12 The fenestella wall, a disposition found also at Saint-Benoitsur-Loire and a host of other eleventh-century structures,13 suggests that the ample size and radial design of the crypt were meant to encourage pilgrimage to the church.

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It is worth noting in this regard that the crypt of the collegiate church at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher echoes on a smaller scale the crypt with five radial chapels built earlier in the eleventh century for the primary sanctuary of Saint Anianus at Orléans (fig. ). In fact, the two crypts have in common not only a radial plan but also the distinctive feature of a tunnel-vaulted bay west of the choir. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, John Crook has recently argued that the small western chamber in the Orléans crypt could not have been the primitive confessio housing the saint’s tomb. Analysis of the structural fabric has led him to conclude that, rather than predating the gros-oeuvre of the crypt (outer and hemicycle walls, ambulatory vault) undertaken before , the chamber was inserted c.  after the fact; during this second phase of construction the central space further east was given new supports and vaulting.14 Leaving open the intended function of the chamber at Orléans (Crook finds attractive, albeit unverifiable, Jean Hubert’s idea that it was a strong room or treasury), its existence there conceivably inspired the creation of an analogous space in the crypt of the collegiate church dedicated to the saint on the Cher. Begun in the s (at the earliest) the latter appears to have been erected around preexisting tombs, and therefore to have preserved the locus of an earlier sanctuary. The presence of the fenestellae raises questions about the structure that logically existed to the west of the crypt. At only . meters from the crypt floor, the fenestellae could not possibly have related to the transept and nave actually built. With the original bases of the nave piers still in place, it is clear that the ground level of the central vessel has not significantly changed since the twelfth century. Frédéric Lesueur thus proposed that the level of the nave was initially planned to be much lower, then raised during construction.15 Baylé, however, has since established that the late-eleventh-century campaign continued westward beyond the nonprojecting transept.16 The height envisioned for the central vessel must then already have been determined by the quite elevated round arches of the crossing. That the floor of this vessel could have been more than two meters below the actual level seems most unlikely. Baylé recommends dissociating the hypothetical first state of the nave from the fenestella wall, and suggests that the latter was instead conceived in relation to a preexisting edifice. Here the archaeology of the church and the history of the site nicely converge. Might the fenestellae have looked onto the nave of the early-eleventh-century church of Saint John in which Geoffroy of Donzy was buried c. ?17 This church, mentioned again in , when the current crypt could only just have been begun, would have been dismantled gradually as new construction advanced. If the late-eleventh-century chevet were joined

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to an older, lower western structure for which the crypt fenestellae were appropriately placed, then by the same token the transept and the projected nave already rendered these little openings obsolete. The nave that was laid out and partially realized before the twelfth-century remodeling (campaign i) dispensed with the view into the crypt. Fenestellae did not constitute the only linkage between upper church and lower church, however. Originally, stairways led into the crypt from the side aisles of the fourth nave bay. Descent began just west of the piers between the side aisles and transept arms. The location of the north stairs was discovered in , when plans were drawn up for the installation of the present stairway into the crypt from the north arm of the transept (fig. );18 the edges of the medieval steps, worn from use, can still be seen from the landing between the two flights of modern stairs into the crypt (fig. ). In sum, the late-eleventhcentury architect at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher implemented conventional modes of circulation between upper church and crypt. More unusual is the feature of an exterior entrance to the lower church. This portal, on the north flank of the church, is contemporary not with the monumental porch framing it, a twelfth-century addition, but rather with the late-eleventh-century campaign (fig. ). The regularity and continuity of the masonry beds along the north lateral wall indicate that the portal formed an integral part of the original structure. The crypt of Notre-Dame, Gargilesse, which, as noted in Chapter , sheltered the tombs of seigneurial family, also possessed an exterior entrance. There, collateral stairs led from the side aisles of the nave into the crypt, while a doorway in the south apsidiole communicated directly with castle grounds to the east. Might the exterior entrance at SaintAignan, as at Gargilesse, have originally been motivated by the attraction of the crypt as a mortuary chapel for the lord? Be that as it may, the north portal tied the crypt’s sepulchral function to the topography of the site, for a small burial ground extended from the west façade around the north exterior flank of the church. Graves on the west were razed in , but the portion of the cemetery lodged between the church and the north slope of the promontory became the object of capitular deliberations in , when alarm over the increasing instability of the north porch discouraged further use.19 To enter and exit the crypt through its north portal, it was necessary to traverse the adjacent burial ground. The crypt, privileged resting place for a few special patrons, must therefore also be seen as an integral part of a larger necropolis with which it directly communicated. Gathered together around the collegiate/parish church and its relics at the heart of the settlement lay the inhabitants’“ancestors.” A second cemetery, its chapel mentioned in the testament of Colin Tavernier (), once existed outside the

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borough’s southwest gate; presumably of more recent date, its creation would appear to reflect urban expansion and demographic growth. Use of the crypt as a mausoleum for individuals of high status by no means foreclosed public access to the cult space. Several instances of medieval graffiti, discernible with raking light amid the profusion of masons’ marks and modern graffiti, testify to public circulation in the crypt. The words hic veni, incised into an ashlar block, are visible on the western face of the south pier separating the apse from the ambulatory. The outline of a large dragon- or griffonlike chimera, drawn in profile and incorporating a suggestively shaped mason’s mark for its rear claw, was deeply gouged across two stone blocks on the inner ambulatory wall across from the south apsidiole. Someone left the trace of his or her passage even in the apse itself: the silhouette of a bust (neck, head, cap of hair), lightly scratched into the stone, can barely be made out at right above the piscine that serviced the altar. The location of the cemetery against the flank of the church at Saint-Aignan may in fact have contributed to the visitation of the crypt. The reliance of the living on the dead meant that graveyards, centers of activity, were full of life. The dead constituted not merely the physical, but more importantly the moral, nucleus of medieval communities of which, as “ancestors,” they remained vital members. Amid graves by and large unmarked, undifferentiated, and periodically turned, the living would gather to invoke ancestral authority and thereby reconcile present actions with past custom.20 In the burial ground with which the crypt communicated, members of the seigneurial family, burghers and other inhabitants of the parish, and pilgrims would have crossed paths. Colin’s foundation of a chaplaincy at the altari beati Iacobi in crotis surely presupposes a ready audience for the liturgy. The crypt’s dual function as mortuary chapel and pilgrimage shrine comes together in the dedication of its principal altar, that in the apse, to Saint James. His cult benefited from the processes of slippage and conflation that made for a fluid relationship between the two homonymous apostles distinguished as Major and Minor; the one easily evoked the other. Churches dedicated to the Minor frequently venerated the Major as a secondary patron, and sometimes acquired relics from Santiago de Compostela.21 Conversely, the Galician sanctuary enhanced its prestige by exploiting the widespread confusion between the two Jameses, which resulted in the (mis)attribution of the so-called Catholic Epistle to the Major.22 Given the appropriation of the persona of one on behalf of the other, their common association with death is not surprising. Arduous and risky, pilgrimage to distant sanctuaries like Compostela entailed a symbolic dying—mortification of the flesh and separation from worldly concerns (family, work, property)—and, indeed, could result in actual death.

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These spiritual and physical aspects of pilgrimage perhaps lie behind the frequent choice of James, pilgrim saint par excellence, as patron of funerary and cemetery chapels.23 At least of equal relevance, however, is the importance that the Epistle of James had assumed within the Christian ritual preparation for death. The passage on anointing and confession, to which the apsidal painting makes direct reference, had historically been, and in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries could still be, applied to the sick in the hope of healing the body; but it had also long informed the tradition of last rites, supporting the reconciliation and unction in extremis that accompanied communion of the viaticum.24 At some point presumably after  (the date of Colin’s testament) but before , the dedication of the apsidal altar and vicariate was expanded to include Saint Christopher,25 commonly paired with James Major on account of their shared feast day (July ). Invoking the Christ-bearer who helped convey travelers across a river enriched the symbolic meaning of pilgrimage at Saint-Aignan, a bridge town on the Cher. The conjunction of James and Christopher in the crypt, which gave onto the cemetery, fortified the petition for safe passage to the next world. The crypt’s link to the outside world was greatly enhanced as interior communication between the building’s upper and lower levels was scaled back over time and finally eliminated. The twelfth-century reformulation of the nave ended up appreciably thickening both sets of piers between the last collateral bays and the transept arms, thereby reducing the width formerly allotted to the stairs by about half. The passage cut for the installation of the modern stairs at north has exposed the extension below the nave of the lateral pier between side aisle and transept, thus making it possible to verify its obstruction of the medieval steps (figs. , ).26 The collateral stairs established in the initial design of the nave appear to have been made so difficult to use on account of the remodeling (campaign i, s) that they were suppressed altogether (fig. ) during the subsequent campaign (ii, probably the s), when the middle bays of the central vessel were vaulted and the fourth collateral bays redone. Henceforth access to the crypt was possible only from the exterior. I know of no comparable example of such an arrangement from this period. To be sure, other crypts are now entered solely from the exterior—for example, Saint-Aignan at Orléans, Levroux, Anzy-le-Duc— but as the result of postmedieval alterations.27 The crypt of Notre-Dame at Gargilesse, though equipped with an exterior entrance, also retained the traditional means of communication with the upper church. The two-storey porch eventually applied to the north flank, whether constructed at the time the stairs were occluded (campaign ii) or when the western tower porch was

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completed, at the end of the century (campaign iii), provided a monumental frame for the preexisting entrance into the crypt. That some type of framing structure had always monumentalized the north exterior entrance is not out of the question. A certain awkwardness about the porch leads Baylé to wonder whether an earlier structure may have been used as a guide.28 With the suppression of the lateral stairs, the disengagement of the crypt from the upper church—commencing already with the obsolescence of the fenestellae—was complete. Perhaps the decision to sacrifice the interior access was nothing more than an ad hoc solution to a planning error, an accident of the construction process. Perhaps resorting exclusively to the more commodious exterior entrance was necessary to facilitate access to the crypt or, as Baylé suggests, to permit processions.29 Alternatively, the abolition of the interior access might have been a calculated step toward controlling or restricting circulation between the two levels of the church, in other words a policy decision. I am concerned, however, not with the motivations behind the sealing off of the crypt, but rather with the ramifications that such closure entails. The issue at stake in my argument is neither causality nor intentionality, but rather the production of effects. The obviation first of the fenestellae and eventually also of the lateral stairs conferred total autonomy on the crypt. Severed from the nave and equipped with its own porch, the crypt became a virtually independent lower church. No longer perceptible or available from the upper church, the crypt was potentially freed from association with the principal sanctuary to become a paraparochial oratory like those that encircled the borough. This conversion of the crypt is, moreover, roughly contemporary with the earliest record of ancillary chapels and hospitals in and around the town: Saint-Laurent, on the rue du Pont, is first documented c. ; Saint-André, outside the northwest gate, and Saint-Lazare, across the river, can likewise be dated to the middle of the century. Whether the transformation of the crypt and the proliferation of cult sites are independent phenomena or in some way interrelated, the newly self-contained, quasi-subterranean space within the collegiate and parish church came to resemble the auxiliary chapels subordinate to the chapter. When painted decoration was finally introduced, visual references to the titular saints of nearby hospitals underwrote the priority of the mother church and elevated the status of the crypt above that of other cult sites in the local pilgrimage circuit. The disjunction between upper church and lower church meant that, premeditated or not, patterns of circulation would have changed. The major attraction for pilgrims was now spatially detached from the main body of the

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collegiate church, even if physically contained within its fabric. By virtue of the altered arrangement, the infirm seeking contact with relics in the crypt would have been diverted from the upper church without necessarily being formally excluded. Isolation of the crypt therefore had the effect of displacing the sick poor to the lower church. The resulting vertical hierarchy reversed the more familiar pattern, in which pilgrims were channeled into the upper church, their access to the crypt curtailed.30 Although, at Saint-Aignan, beggars were admitted to the divine presence in the image of Christ in Majesty (fig. ), they were nevertheless discouraged from circulating within the upper church. The two-tiered division of the building, like the ambivalent emplacement of contemporary hospitals of which it was a permutation, thus gave concrete expression to the ambiguous position of the sick poor in Christian society. By the same token, visitors to the crypt from the castle or the borough would have had no choice but to traverse the burial ground and cross the same threshold along with pilgrims. Displaced as well, the nobility and the burghers would have been obliged to join ranks, if only momentarily, with pauperes christi whose prayers might unleash the grace of the saints on their behalf.

pilgrimage as penance

Far from being directed toward a single end, the crypt of the collegiate church at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher thus integrated multiple functions over time. It provided architectural support, shelter for a saint’s (or saints’) remains, sepulchral dignity presumably for the seigneurial family or canons of high rank, ample room for the flow of visitors, more chapels with more altars for collective liturgical action and private prayer. What I have tried to suggest is not so much an absolute break in these purposes of the lower church as a subtle shift in focus. Architectural modifications in the latter part of the twelfth century shifted the orientation of the crypt away from the upper church and toward the external world. By creating a separate oratory entered and exited through the north flank of the church, the new disposition extended original overlapping functions quite literally in a direction that made more salient the penitential dimension of the space. Access to the crypt now occurred exclusively on the side of the church to which the symbolism of the cardinal directions assigned a negative charge. The north “pointed” toward cold and darkness, hell and the devil, and, by extension, the state of sin,31 just as the west “pointed” toward night, death, and the secular world.32 The available terrain on the north and west sides of

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the church at Saint-Aignan contained the resting place of the dead. Of course, the built arrangement conforms to the configuration of the terrain, but is not thereby devoid of meaning. The exploitation of the site manifested mortality as a consequence of sin, all the more so since it naturalized the connection by assimilating it to the parameters of the topography. The sinister connotations of the left flank of the church building assumed positive force in allegories of religious architecture. The north could here signify aversion from evil, conversion to God, the work of repentance, and ultimately the possibility of divine forgiveness. Commenting on Ezekiel’s vision of the Jewish Temple, Gregory the Great allegorized the north door as the threshold through which the penitent sinner returns to God: “A door should be open towards the north so that those who, after the beginning of warmth and light, have fallen back into the cold and darkness of their sins, should return to forgiveness through the compunction of penance, and should come to know the true joy of inner retribution.”33 Hugh of SaintVictor equated the north with sin when he created his cosmological diagram of Noah’s ark, a figure of the church imbricated in the temporal and spatial order of salvation history. Through the north door of the ark, the Hebrews were carried off into the Babylonian captivity; through the south, they entered from Egypt into the promised land.34 Innocent iii, deliberately evoking the Last Judgment, correlated the left/north–right/south duality of the church with sinners and the just respectively. But to reconcile this topographical scheme with the contradictory practice of reading the Gospel on the left and the Epistle on the right, he resorted to the penitential and ultimately redemptive aspect of the symbolism: Christ came into the world not to call the just, but sinners to penance.35 The standard moralization of the ideal church could be applied after the fact to the architectural design of actual buildings. A Latin verse life of Saint Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, written –, uses the metaphorical opposition between north and south to gloss the disposition of the rose windows in the transept façades of Lincoln cathedral.36 The greater light on the south, the zone of the Holy Ghost, stands for the bishop, who gazes with a beckoning eye; the lesser one on the north, the zone of the devil, stands for the dean, who looks so that he may turn away “lest he perish.” The roses are heavenly oculi with which the church regards, rejects, and repulses the forces of hell. As in the passage from Gregory’s homily, the pejorative valuation of the north side of the church nevertheless plays a positive role in the overall allegorical strategy, for aversion from evil is the first step in the conversion to God. Sometimes images assimilated or activated the latent symbolic charge of the north side of the church. Wheels of Fortune on the north façades of

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Saint-Étienne, Beauvais, Basel, and Trento cathedrals may have coordinated this emblem of worldly life and its vicissitudes with the negativity inherent in the direction toward which the image faced.37 Not so far from Saint-Aignan, the north door of the church of Saint-Lazare at Autun exhibited sculpture that, as Otto-Karl Werckmeister’s often-cited study has shown, drew explicitly on the rite of public penance for the representation of the Fall. He was careful to note that while the images evoke the liturgy for the expulsion of penitents on Ash Wednesday (and perhaps their reconciliation on Maundy Thursday), the portal must have been used throughout the year. Rather than limit the function of the portal to the performance of a particular liturgy, the pictorial program instead concretizes “the penitential idea” that, Werckmeister observed, “in some way . . . must have been programmatic in this church.”38 More recently, Hélène-Sylvie Setlak-Garrison and William Travis have explored how the positive and negative valence attached to the dexter and sinister sides of the west portal’s Judging Christ extends into the church interior to inform the disposition of the nave and choir capitals.39 The way in which the liturgical performance of the rite of public penance shaped both the formal and iconographic conception of Autun’s north portal sculpture has no known equivalent. However, the link between the development of a penitential theme and its specific deployment in the church building may perhaps be brought to bear on the north portal of La Madeleine, Châteaudun. The collegiate church, founded in the ninth century under the patronage of the Virgin, was constructed at its actual site and rededicated to the Magdalen in the eleventh. Its twelfth-century rebuilding began shortly after , when regular canons took the place of their secular counterparts.40 One of most imposing edifices in the diocese of Chartres, the church has an asymmetrical nave—flanked by two aisles on the north and one on the south—and no western entrance. Lateral portals originally opened onto the nave side aisles. The north and principal façade was fitted c. – with sculpture; destroyed in , the carvings are fortunately documented through earlier graphic materials and a verbal description. The ensemble comprised historiated archivolts (heaven on the right, hell on the left)41 and reliefs distributed in registers across the four bays of the north exterior flank. The latter series included single figures (unidentified kings, queens, bishops, etc.) and two narrative scenes. The Supper at Bethany, in which the Magdalen epitomizes the repentant sinner, appeared in a bay flanking the door. The titular saint, the privileging of the north façade, and the location there of the Supper at Bethany form a nexus of mutually reinforcing elements. Typically understood to conflate all four Gospel accounts of Christ’s unction (Matt. :–; Mark :–; Luke :–; John :–), the episode at

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Bethany demonstrated the selfless love of true charity, on account of which Christ proclaimed the Magdalen’s sins forgiven. The Anointing was depicted in an unusually abbreviated composition of three figures: Christ seated frontally, Simon standing almost in profile, and the Magdalen anointing Christ’s right foot with her hand. Below, traces of a frontally enthroned figure and damaged blocks of stone to either side possibly indicate the depiction of the Adoration of Magi. If so, the parallel gestures of Mary’s anointing Christ’s feet and the kings’ bearing gifts at the feet of the infant Christ may have served typologically to characterize the gifts offered by the faithful as a form of charity/almsgiving through which sin can be expiated. As we will see, a similar combination of pictorial ideas is developed in the crypt at Saint-Aignan. Unlike Autun or Châteaudun, the threshold of the north portal into the crypt at Saint-Aignan was not itself marked by images. Instead, the reiteration in each chapel of explicit pictorial references to contrition, confession, and satisfaction, on the one hand, and to divine forgiveness, on the other, elaborated a multifaceted penitential program throughout the lower church. Visitation and use of the crypt now came to be filtered through a penitential optic. The transformation of the crypt into an autonomous oratory penetrated on the north, together with an iconographic emphasis on penance, may permit a functional analogy to a somewhat later monument, the chapel of San Pellegrino at Bominaco (Abruzzi) painted in . Located on the northeast flank of the abbey church of Santa Maria Assunta, the chapel is oriented so that the principal public entry faces north.42 The reverse wall of the façade next to the door displays the Entry into Jerusalem above the Washing of the Feet, an episode traditionally interpreted as prefiguring the purification of sins through baptism and penance (a repetition of baptismal ablution). Jérôme Baschet, in his recent study of the murals, points out that the pair of scenes applies to the faithful who, spiritually purified, enter the kingdom of heaven. Drawing on Werckmeister’s insight into the north portal at Autun, he postulates that the chapel—given its peculiar siting and the placement of the Footwashing at the threshold—may have been used, among other things, for penitential practices (emphasized to an intense degree by the Flagellant movement of ) or confession.43 Again, Baschet does not insist on a single exclusive function for the chapel, and certainly does not claim a one-to-one correspondence between the pictorial valorization of the portal and any specific ritual. His argument nevertheless leads to the conclusion that “the penitential idea” may have been an integral part of how the chapel was used or experienced. I would go further to suggest that the paintings at Bominaco equate the concept of exile intrinsic to pilgrimage, summed up in the titular saint’s very name (Pellegrino), with penance.44

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Might the lower church of Saint-Aignan have become a privileged location for confession? In any case, the elimination of all entrances to the lower church but the north portal emphasized pilgrimage as a means of deliverance through penance, the only salve that could assuage death’s sting. Whatever personal or devotional motives underlay the journey to saints’ shrines, which could also be levied as punishment for infractions of canon law,45 the building recast the exercise into a petition for the remission of sin. Following the last phase of reconstruction at the close of the twelfth century, an extensive decorative campaign aligned the building’s lateral symbolism with the vertical progression from the crypt, cavernous and somber, to the towering and luminous space above.46 Whereas the lower church, accessible only through the north portal, was dedicated to the exposition of a penitential theme, the nave vault received great scroll-bearing figures that, for Lassus, evoked “Christian virtues” and “angelic intelligences.” Despite the lack of more specific iconographic information, the general import of the lost material nevertheless remains clear: spiritual beings identified the nave vault with the celestial realm. Monumental painting thus translated the disjunction between upper church and lower church into spiritual terms. The concordance between pictorial decoration and spatial hierarchies orchestrated an itinerary from sin to redemption. Visual references in the lower church to sites of relief not only recapitulated the local therapeutic infrastructure but also integrated it within a larger project to reorient the goal of pilgrimage from the healing of the body to the salvation of the soul. The crypt’s north portal, perhaps originally conceived to facilitate funerary or memorial rites for the seigneurial family, now defined every visitor to the lower church as a penitent. Because the single point of passage leveled a diverse public to a common state of sin, the clergy entertained a means of authority over all the laity—including the powerful. The better to appeal to elites, the canons installed pauperes christi in the redemptive circuit (alms— expiation—salvation) conducted via ecclesiastical institutions. Of course the pictorial elevation of the poor to a place of honor above the central altar inverts the order of worldly domination. But such inversion has meaning precisely on account of the social hierarchy for which the apsidal theophany compensates. Beyond the one threshold that all bodies crossed, images reasserted a discourse of social and spiritual difference.

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THE PAINTINGS the saints in the crypt

Two painters working in disparate stylistic idioms produced the series of late Romanesque frescoes now extant in the lower church. The decoration of two radial chapels and of the apsidal concha survives in varying states of preservation. The artist responsible for the Giles cycle in the south apsidiole also painted the theophany in the center of the apse vault. Another hand contributed the cycle in the axial apsidiole. Only pale traces of polychromy can be observed on the vault of the north apsidiole; barely visible silhouettes suggest another hagiographic cycle from the same period, but individual elements can no longer be deciphered. The participation of yet a third painter is thus anybody’s guess. The unmistakable division of labor apparent in the extant portions of the ensemble rests on distinctive methods of constructing figures and draperies. One painter rigorously articulated the body into multiple internal cells and garments into hard, platelike folds; the other built up the clothed body from soft, fluid masses of color with minimal contouring. Although the classic Wölfflinean distinction between the linear and the painterly may aptly characterize the visual effects achieved by each painter, the evolutionary progression these categories supposedly imply are not relevant here. The approaches of both painters are rooted in variant formal traditions long practiced concurrently

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throughout the region and pursued respectively to mannered end phases.1 Salient stylistic difference does not therefore necessarily presuppose a chronological gap between the artists’ interventions. Nevertheless, the possibility of two dissociated, independent campaigns cannot be ruled out, for the schemes belonging to each are confined within discrete spaces. Because the ensemble is distributed over noncontiguous surfaces, there is no way to ascertain the sequence of painting based on the superposition of plaster joins. Whether the two painters collaborated as a team on a single project or were individually retained for separate but roughly contemporary commissions must remain an open question. A global dating for the entire series close to the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries will have to suffice. The gap between the crypt’s construction at the end of the eleventh century and the introduction of paintings a century later poses the problem of a prior decorative campaign. Several scholars, attempting to reconcile iconographic anomalies with the eroded pictorial surface, have suggested interference from an earlier layer of painting.2 Might the extant program have included elements of a preexisting scheme, just as in its turn an ensemble of fifteenth-century murals spanning choir and apse incorporated the Romanesque composition on the semidome? Whereas previous authors proposed to identify the limited “reuse” of particular motifs, Colette Di Matteo, former inspector of the Monuments historiques, has gone so far as to reconstruct an “original” program.3 She states that fragments of heads and architectural motifs from a first set of paintings are “irrefutably” visible in both the axial and south chapels around the rim of the conch vaults; the early decoration in both chapels, she therefore concludes, presented a frieze of single figures within an arcade beneath a glory. To paint over this program, perhaps already damaged by humidity, the later artists used the same intonaco, which they merely redampened (thus there would be no superposition of plaster layers). If Di Matteo’s analysis of the mural surface could be confirmed, the prior existence of an iconographic program fundamentally different from the one later adopted could serve to strengthen my argument that the function of the crypt changed with its dissociation from the upper church. But her assertions cannot be substantiated. Supporting documentation (conservators’ notes, drawings, photographs, etc.) that might clarify her claims cannot be located, nor does repeated examination with raking light reveal any trace of motifs that could possibly suggest the prior depiction of figures under an arcade. On the contrary, heads and arches that she construes as fragments of such a frieze can be shown to belong ab origine to the narrative scheme of the late Romanesque paintings. Technical examination of the mural surface may assist iconographic

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study; by the same token, an inadequate grasp of the subjects depicted can lead to a misunderstanding of the physical data. Behind previous descriptions of the iconography of the Saint-Aignan frescoes lies the flawed assumption that painting would have naturally or inevitably followed the building of the crypt in the late eleventh century. It may well be that pictorial decoration was postponed until the rebuilding of the upper church was nearly complete. As noted in the last chapter, the midnineteenth-century report by J.-B. Lassus suggests that the crypt frescoes may have been but one component of a larger decorative campaign. The juxtaposition on the apsidal concha of painting from two different epochs sheds light on medieval approaches to the treatment of the walls in this church. The early-fifteenth-century program surrounds the Romanesque composition in the central portion of the vault and continues onto the groin vault and end wall of the choir. The late medieval material is painted, without intonaco, directly on the original thin coat of plaster used to finish off the masonry construction of the vault (enduit de parement). The edges of the intonaco supporting the twelfth-century composition thus overlap the surface on which the fifteenthcentury work was executed (fig. ). There neither is, nor ever was, any layer of painting beneath the late medieval one.4 The twelfth-century theophany thus remained isolated in the middle of the apse semidome, otherwise left bare, for over two hundred years. If figural imagery filled the vault around the late Romanesque theophany only in the early fifteenth century, might not a century-long gap between the construction of the crypt and the introduction of a pictorial program also have been tolerated? This chapter undertakes a close reading of the Romanesque frescoes in each of the three chapels, reconstituting where possible now illegible or lost material. The work of iconographic recovery combined with attention to the visual means of presentation invites analysis, in a final section, of the interplay between discrete sets of images. Despite the disparity between artistic styles and the possibility of some slight chronological discontinuity in the decoration of individual chapels, the crypt paintings form a coherent ensemble. Common principles of formal organization guide the deployment of constituent elements throughout the architectural framework, thus facilitating associative modes of reading and the perception or invention of global thematic patterns. Paintings in all three chapels, moreover, reiterate shared concerns: to reveal the intercessory power uniquely vested in the saints while advocating their exemplary status; to privilege the health of the soul over physical well-being without diminishing the potential for the miraculous restoration of the body.

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the apsidal theophany and the altar of saint james

Painted in earth tones (ochers, green, and a pale gray of bluish hue) on a white ground, the Romanesque scheme occupies a semielliptical field outlined by thin red and yellow bands (fig. ). Six figures take their places within a pyramidal structure according to formal principles that, in governing stature and posture, define their spiritual nature. The design of the composition mirrors the cosmic order: from its source in (one) God, divine power devolves gradually to the many, flowing down through (two) saints who confer its effects upon (three) pauperes christi. Geometric compartmentalization and ornament reinforce the figural hierarchy by coordinating it with spatial values. A gigantic figure of Christ in Majesty dominates the central vertical axis. With the help of raking light, the letters alpha and omega can be made out on either side of his head. Frontally posed, he sits on a disk edged with a string of tiny circles, a gem-encrusted border. The disk-throne both intersects and fuses with the mandorla surrounding him. A colored (dark green) backdrop at the apex of the elliptical field offsets the radiance of supernal light, evoked by the wave pattern of the mandorla. A star-studded ground within the mandorla further distinguishes the realm of the deity from the unadorned space inhabited by the other figures. In the lateral fields beyond the mandorla, asymmetry and, concomitantly, motion proliferate. A more subtle play of difference operates within the divine center. Whereas Christ’s lower body is immobilized by its symmetrical disposition, the right and left halves of the torso are slightly disjointed, so that his outstretched arms are not quite level and the mantle slopes unevenly. Insofar as the departure from symmetry, however minimal, disturbs the code of static majesty, it amplifies the force of Christ’s gesture.5 He triggers a dynamic chain of giving and receiving that links together the entire group of figures. Flanking the enthroned Christ, two superelongated figures stand erect in a stately three-quarter pose. Inscriptions barely visible above their haloes (raking light is necessary) identify them as Saints Peter (petrus) and James ([i]aco[bus]), to Christ’s right and left respectively. The one is given keys (figs. , ), the other a long scroll (fig. ) on which is inscribed half a verse from the Epistle of James the Less, bishop of Jerusalem, also called “brother of the Lord”: “Confitemini [“ergo” elided] alterutrum peccata [“vestra” elided]” (:). James Minor here substitutes for Paul in a compositional formula typically associated with the traditio legis, an early Christian theme revived in the twelfth century.6 The mandate to confession thereby acquires the status of divine law. The apsidal theophany shows Christ himself to legislate the sacrament of penance as the mechanism through which the apostolic Church

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mediates God’s remission of sins. The keys that Saint Peter receives from God (and that priests duly inherit) bestow the power to bind and loose. The appearance of the Maiestas Domini in the semidome of the apse obeys ancient tradition, of course. But the relation between this theophany and its place behind the crypt’s principal altar goes beyond convention. The depiction of James as Peter’s counterpart in a compositional variant of the traditio legis, the inscription of James :, and thus the recapitulation of its context in the “Catholic” Epistle suggest that the saint’s cult received special attention. The prominence accorded the figure of James in the apsidal theophany must be correlated with numerous references in chapter archives to an “altare beati Jacobi in crotis” and to the vicariate of Saint-Jacques-des-Grottes. Colin Tavernier’s testament of  is the earliest extant written source to mention the altar placed under James’s patronage; the painting documents the existence of the altar dedication already a century earlier. It was in the central chapel of the lower church that the wealthy innkeeper and toll collector founded the vicariate, for which he provided a huge endowment laid out in detail at the beginning of his will. Not far from Saint-Aignan, at Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (Loir-et-Cher), murals painted c.  also comprise an image of the Maiestas Domini in which James participates (figs. , ). The ensemble, on the hemicycle wall of the apse, exemplifies the tendency to assimilate James Major and Minor while, at the same time, acknowledging each. Although diocesan records point to the Minor as the patron of this Augustinian priory, annual fairs here took place on both his feast (May ) and on that of the Major (July ).7 The only element of the saint’s figure (inscribed s. iaco) to survive is the head, framed by a trilobed arch that supports an architectural perspective. A yellow ray emanating from Christ’s left hand toward James nevertheless makes clear that the apostle receives a divine gift. The ocher line has been variously identified as the branch with which Christ once appeared to Saint James (Major), its bark removed to symbolize the purification of sins, or as a beam of light alluding to his presence at the Transfiguration, by virtue of which he (along with Peter and John) gained in spiritual power and rank over the other apostles. Yet in view of the excerpt from the “Catholic” Epistle in the theophany at Saint-Aignan, the gift transmitted to James may pertain to the remission of sins granted repentant pilgrims.8 The ambiguity surrounding the person of James in the Maiestas Domini at Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets was further cultivated by the addition during a second painting campaign (c. ) of a martyrdom scene, the Decapitation of Saint James Major, on the south side of the hemicycle wall, and by the eventual display, also in the apse, of two statues of the Major.9

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To what extent the two Jameses were distinguished at Saint-Aignan, if at all, cannot be ascertained from the documentary record. Nevertheless the Minor’s legend is not entirely irrelevant to the iconography of the painting in which he appears. During his ministry, James suffered in his legs on account of the kneeling posture he assumed during long hours in prayer.10 All three supplicants depicted in the apsidal composition are similarly shown afflicted in their legs. Impairment of the lower extremities is a recurring motif that also informs the depiction of the life of Saint Giles in the south chapel. As Saints Peter and James receive from on high, they simultaneously bestow blessings on three much smaller figures engaged in ritual self-offering and supplication. One man, equipped with the signa peregrinationis—a walking stick on which he leans and a pouch slung over the shoulder—deposits a coin at Peter’s feet (figs. , ). A second drags his legless body along the ground with the help of walking irons, prosthetic devices frequently used by amputees (fig. ). A third man genuflects before James; on his knees and about to bow with lowered head, he gazes at the saint’s feet, toward which he extends folded hands (figs. , ).11 Given the inscription on the scroll above, the supplicant would appear to be making his confession to the saint, from whom he receives absolution.12 In contrast to the heavenly bodies of the saints, glorious in their perfect rectitude, the bent and broken bodies of the pilgrims manifest the moral condition of fallen humanity, debased by sin and consequently by morbidity and death. Hunched, crawling, and kneeling postures, however, do not identify the sick poor only in negative terms as sinners and penitents; characteristic attitudes of humility, the suppliant poses also portray the pauperes christi “positively,” in the act of begging forgiveness and favor, which calls forth the Lord’s mercy.13 The downward transmission of gifts that structures the figural hierarchy diagrams in no uncertain terms the nature of the relationship between God, the saints, and the faithful. Whereas Christ remains isolated within his mandorla, the saints and their petitioners occupy the same plane and engage in reciprocal communication. God filters his grace through saints, who—if properly beseeched and remunerated—respond to the needs of the faithful. The saints’ intercessory role could not be made clearer. At the same time, the legless cripple creeping toward the center of the composition balances the centrifugal force of divine action with the centripetal movement of his return to God. In closing the gestural circle, he establishes that Christ, “alpha” of all grace, is simultaneously “omega” of all prayers. The physical subjection (not to mention diminutive size) of the three supplicants serves to magnify the majesty of the Lord, whose greatness the saints reflect. This concern to make visible Christ’s place in glory at the beginning and end of a three-tiered order of emanation and supplication distinguishes the Saint-Aignan painting from more

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or less contemporary murals that depict pilgrims supplicating Saint James alone (e.g., in the chapel of Saint-Gervais at Les Roches-l’Évêque [Loir-et-Cher], fig. ; in the church of San Juan at Uncastillo [Aragon]).14 The figure petitioning James is the only one of the three supplicants not to rely on his crutch, which balances “miraculously” between him and the saint as if to suggest that he has been cured. An explicit connection between infirmity and sin, confession and healing, is established by the verses of James’s Epistle, to which the inscribed phrase provides the conclusion: “Is there any one among you sick? Let him bring in the presbyters of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be saved” (James :–). By the same token, a cure for the legless cripple, who still uses his irons, would seem to have been withheld. He has certainly not been denied divine grace, however, for this most abased and incapacitated of the three paupers most closely approaches the enthroned Christ. Indeed, the treatment protocol prescribed by James :–—unction with consecrated oil, prayer, and absolution—did not have to result in physical recovery to be successful. What mattered most was the benefit accrued to the soul. The body’s return to health was not ruled out, but emphasis had come to be placed on the specifically spiritual effects of priestly intervention, namely the forgiveness of sins and the salvation of the departed soul. This therapeutic regimen looked beyond recovery, a secondary and in any case transitory effect, to resurrection. Playing on the tension between the desire for outer restoration and the necessity of inner purification, between the visible and invisible rewards of grace, the image at Saint-Aignan accommodates both the temporal and eschatological implications of James :–. The inscription on James’s phylactery focuses on confession, while, at the same time, his petitioner, having released his crutch, is presumably healed. On the other hand, the maimed figure crawling toward Christ suggests that the greatest reward, spiritual health, may yet be postponed, for the apostle’s promise of God’s mercy holds even in death (“the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him”). The preeminence of Colin’s testamentary gift to the “altari beati Jacobi in crotis” expresses the hope that this promise will be honored at his own final hour. Where, in what space, does the apsidal image situate the depicted interaction between supplicants and saints? In the consecrated but nonetheless earthly space of the lower church, where pilgrims venerated relics? In the heavenly realm of the hereafter, which awaited the dead interred in the crypt and outside its door? Both arenas

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coexist within the one image to produce effects that will be explored in the next chapter.

the south chapel: the life of saint giles

The unified diagrammatic composition of the apsidal theophany, dematerialized by the white ground on which it is painted, gives way in the south apsidiole to a multiepisodic narrative in which deeply saturated colors of jewel-like intensity predominate (fig. ). Bold geometric friezes cover the intrados and extrados of the transverse arch at the opening of the apsidiole. Beyond, colored bands create a rich ground for figures modeled in ocher-olive tones of middle value and for draperies of scintillating color (slate gray, slightly purplish brown, salmon, or forest green), often hemmed with gold or red. Crowning two registers of narrative scenes, a divine glory fills the summit of the conch, where two flying angels display a medallion of the cross-nimbed agnus dei (fig. ). The angelic presentation comprises two concentric rings, each of which radiates a wave-patterned border identical to that of the mandorla surrounding the enthroned Majesty in the apse. A white ground further offsets the heavenly manifestation of the immolated lamb from the earthly events recounted below. It is under the apocalyptic emblem of Christ’s selfsacrifice for the redemption of a fallen humanity that the life of Saint Giles of Provence unfolds.15 The amorphous spatiotemporal frame of the legend exalts the saint on a stage of near universal scope. Just as Giles moves between Greece, Provence, the Ile-de-France, and Rome, so also his activities extend over several centuries (he is a contemporary of Caesarius of Arles and Charlemagne). The epic story, told in eight scenes, takes up the base of the conch vault and the hemicycle wall. Only the first two episodes and part of the third are well preserved. Subsequent scenes, barely legible today, can be identified on the basis of fragmentary elements visible with raking light or in old photographs; the concluding image, however, has been entirely effaced. Ironically, the most extensive illustration of the saint’s life now extant is the least well known.16 A review of Giles’s legend and its diffusion in both textual and pictorial forms provides a necessary counterpoint to an analysis of the cycle. The particular choice and arrangement of episodes at Saint-Aignan visually coordinates Giles’s healing powers with the efficacy of divine medicine available through the Church. Composed at Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in the late tenth century, the Vita Sancti Aegidii set out to relate the divine foundation of the southern French abbey,

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and thereby sanctify its claims to institutional autonomy. The privileges at the root of monastic liberty—immunity from lay domination as well as exemption from diocesan control—had their source in the miraculous nature of the community’s initial endowment and the divinely inspired act of traditio by which it became a papal dependency, all guaranteed by Giles’s stature as thaumaturge and intercessor.17 A much amplified version of the saint’s gestae, replete with additional narrative detail and a running didactic commentary on the episodes, followed in the eleventh century.18 Saint Giles did not fail to provide his community with a collection of posthumous miracles, first compiled by the librarian of the abbey between  and  and later expanded in the second half of the century.19 The powers that the monks ascribed to their patron and the renown of their flourishing abbey, profitably located on roads to Rome and Compostela, assured the dissemination of his cult from England to Hungary and Poland.20 The saint’s popularity in turn fueled a literary production of extraordinary magnitude.21 Drawing on the older version of the Vita Sancti Aegidii, Fulbert of Chartres composed an office in honor of the saint before .22 Hymns sung on the saint’s feast (September ) typically included verses that condensed the key episodes of Giles’s life to a series of cues.23 The legend circulated early on in the vernacular, in prose as well as verse.24 An Anglo-Saxon text of the eleventh or twelfth century may reflect, according to its recent editor, a lost Latin redaction predating the extant vita.25 Latin metric lives make their appearance in the first half of the twelfth century.26 An account in the form of a list of episodes, each stripped down to the action accomplished by the saint, appears in the Pilgrim’s Guide, the last book of the Liber sancti iacobi (c. ).27 Richer narrative adaptations are not lacking. Guillaume de Berneville, a Norman canon of English extraction, retold the story in Anglo-Norman verse around  or .28 The vita was translated into French prose at the beginning of the thirteenth century;29 another prose version in French, composed c. , is attributed to Jean Beleth.30 With the success of the Golden Legend in the second half of the thirteenth century, Jacopo de Voragine’s abridged rendition superseded older versions of the vita as the principal source for further literary transposition.31 The particular version of the legend, if any, that the Saint-Aignan painter might have followed cannot be determined, for the episodes selected are common to the Latin vita and its many adaptations. In the opening scene, the young Giles (egidius), scion of an aristocratic family, bestows a richly embroidered tunic on a beggar who supports himself with a tau-shaped crutch; by donning the saint’s apparel, the lame pauper is healed (fig. ). For Giles, the garment freely given up betokens the virtue of charity. For the beggar, the magnificent

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robe in which he will be (re)dressed symbolizes spiritual rebirth and physical renewal. The pauper, turning from sin, sheds his defective body along with his old rags. He must “put on Christ” (Gal. :), the saint’s robe, in order to be restored to wholeness.32 Dependent on inner conversion, healing is here compared to a change of clothes: the tatters of poverty are exchanged for the noble’s finery. The next scene again evinces the impact of the saint’s prayer on the sick body as Giles, now holding a book, drives out venom from a man bitten (in the leg?) by a serpent (fig. ). What could better follow this double demonstration of curative powers than a display of total mastery over the forces of nature? Thus the saint’s prayer from a rocky beach calms storm-tossed seas to rescue a crowded ship (fig. ).33 Having departed from his native land with the grateful mariners, Giles eventually arrives at Arles, where, in the much-damaged fourth scene, he kneels before the nimbed and mitered bishop Saint Caesarius (figs. –). Episcopal recognition of the holy man (though, n.b., not by the ordinary of Nîmes, who historically sought to subordinate the Provençal abbey) confirms Giles’s induction into the ecclesiastical hierarchy. As if to suggest that a divine force guided their meeting, the curtain draped around the framing column billows like the wind-filled sail of the boat in the previous scene. Thus far, the sequence of scenes in the upper register establishes Giles, at left in each composition, as the subject of miraculous action, his interlocutor(s) at right its direct object and beneficiary. The story continues left to right in the lower register, divided by windows into four discrete fields. Significantly, however, the narrative syntax changes. Two men on horseback occupy the first field (figs. , ); Giles (identifiable on account of his aureole) appears only in the second, where he is shrouded by foliage (figs. , ).34 These two scenes reverse subject-object positions to portray the antithesis of the saint’s compassion for the weak and helpless: now Giles becomes the defenseless victim of the powerful. From Arles, Giles ventured ever more deeply into the wilderness, where he survived through the aid of a doe sent by God to nourish him with her milk. One day, the magnificence of the animal drew the attention of hunters in the retinue of Flavius, king of the Goths. They pursued their quarry in flight, but Giles’s prayer for the doe’s preservation confounded the hunters’ dogs. The king was informed. His suspicions aroused, Flavius, accompanied by the bishop of Nîmes, led another expedition to investigate the mystery of the elusive prey. Again the doe fled to the same place and disappeared. A huntsman’s arrow meant to force her from the brush accidentally wounded Giles instead. Once the holy man was discovered, king and bishop (n.b., the ordinary hostile to the abbey) prostrated themselves before him. Giles welcomed this infliction of

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pain as an opportunity to “increase” (i.e., manifest) his sanctity. Not only did he refuse the king’s offer of medical assistance; he also prayed never to recover his former well-being, because virtue is perfected in infirmity. Flavius granted the saint a tract of land for a monastery, which Giles supplied with two churches, one dedicated to Saint Peter and the apostles, the other to the martyr Saint Priscus (or, in some manuscripts, Privat).35 The poor condition of the mural surface makes it difficult to ascertain narrative details regularly fleshed out in pictorial representations of the Pursuit of the Hind. The foreground rider, however, did wear a crown, the triangular silhouette of which is still visible in old photographs. The cycle thus portrays the episode at the stage when, after prior attempts at pursuit had failed, the king leads the hunt and the saint is wounded. Scenes of the Pursuit featuring the king and his hunter(s) were painted in the rupestral chapel of Saint-Gervais at Les Roches-l’Évêque (late twelfth or early thirteenth century, fig. )36 and in the apse off the north transept at Saint-Gilles, Montoire (thirteenth century, fig. );37 both monuments are located in the northwestern sector of the Loiret-Cher. Somewhat further afield, similar depictions occur in frescoes in the parish church of Notre-Dame at Thoiré-sur-Dinan (Sarthe, third quarter of the twelfth century, figs. , ),38 the chapel of Saint-Laurent at Le LorouxBottereau (Loire-Atlantique, late twelfth century, fig. ),39 and the church of Saint-Nicolas at Civray (Vienne, figs. –),40 as well as in portal sculpture at Chartres cathedral (south transept façade, right portal, bottom set of voussoirs, –, figs. , ).41 The Vita Sancti Aegidii does not say what part of the saint’s body took the hunters’ arrow, but visual images, unlike verbal narratives, had to show where the arrow struck. Admittedly, the iconographic formulation of the scene at Saint-Aignan cannot be recovered. Yet an image of Giles wounded in the leg—and thus resonant with figures of the lame in the register above and in the great theophany above the crypt’s main altar—is a tantalizing possibility. Although depictions are known of the arrow piercing Giles’s hand or chest, or even the doe, the saint’s leg was selected as the affected site in thirteenthcentury wall painting and monumental sculpture in this region as well as more widely in France (Montoire, Thoiré, Civray, Chartres). Contemporary texts, in line with iconographic developments, also incorporated accounts of the laming of Saint Giles.42 The process of translating the vita into pictorial form seems therefore to have collaborated with, if it did not inspire, the invention of the lame Giles and the cult’s association with the crippled.43 Loss of detail aside, the vertical alignment of episodes (fig. ) juxtaposes Giles’s power to heal, which he exercises on behalf of others, with the inverse aspect of sainthood, namely his willingness to bear pain as an act of

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martyrdom.44 The visual relation serves a dual purpose. While encouraging appeals to the saint for miraculous cures, the cycle at the same time gives positive meaning to chronic bodily affliction and thus explains (allows for) the failure to recover. Outer suffering, if properly and patiently endured now, increases inner wealth (virtue) on which to capitalize later. Whereas the apsidal theophany acknowledges the therapeutic effects of penance, the Giles cycle conversely underscores the valuable opportunity that infirmity presents for penance. The mortal body can indeed be healed through divine intervention, but in the last analysis it remains subject to death. Of eternal consequence is the well-being of the soul, which casts off the corruption of flesh and blood like a garment in order to “put on” at the Resurrection a body that is “changed,” incorruptible and immortal ( Cor. :–). As his reputation for sanctity increased, Giles became known to “Charles, king of France.” Giles agreed to an audience with the king, and proceeded to Orléans, where he cured a demoniac in the basilica of Sainte-Croix. The saint then set out to meet with the king. During his visit with Giles, Charles disclosed that he had committed a sin so shameful that he could not confess it to anyone. The following Sunday, while Giles celebrated Mass, an angel descended from heaven at the moment of the canon to convey a parchment on which God had written the king’s offense and the promise of his absolution. The Vita Sancti Aegidii itself does not more specifically identify the Carolingian ruler, but there can be no doubt that the allusion pertains to Charlemagne. The narrative tradition of the emperor’s sin and pardon was well developed in the north of France by the time the text was redacted.45 In later renditions of the legend that do specify Charles by sobriquet, for example Guillaume de Berneville’s, the king is none other than Charlemagne.46 Epic traditions feeding into the medieval Charlemagne cycle therefore provided a venue for the diffusion of the Giles legend. The episode of the emperor’s pardon recurs as a regular feature in Charlemagne narratives, and the relevant portion of the Vita Sancti Aegidii was adapted for the liturgy in honor of Charlemagne, whose canonization Frederic Barbarossa obtained in .47 Whereas the Vita Sancti Aegidii never divulges the nature of Charles’s unspeakable sin (except to the saint), some Charlemagne narratives go further to state his offense: incestuous relations with his sister, of which Roland is the fruit.48 In the Karlamagnus Saga, a Norwegian compilation redacted in the first half of the thirteenth century, the charter that Saint Giles receives during Mass not only reveals the charge and promises absolution but also instructs the emperor to marry his pregnant sister to Milo of Angers so that the child’s real paternity may remain concealed.49 The episode of the pardon here occurs before Roland’s birth.

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The Chanson de Roland makes Giles the divine source of the account of the battle at Roncevaux, from which no participant remained alive. The Oxford Roland, in addition, alludes to the charter of pardon miraculously deposited on the altar during Giles’s Mass (vv. –) and subtly weaves the secret of Roland’s paternity into the tragic course of events.50 Guillaume de Berneville’s life of Saint Giles, like the tenth- or eleventh-century vita that was its principal source, does not reveal the nature of Charlemagne’s sin. The Anglo-Norman poem does refer to the Chanson de Roland, however. When the saint tries to persuade the emperor to confess, he recalls as a sign of God’s love the solar prodigy that allowed Charlemagne to pursue the Saracens after the annihilation of the Frankish troops at Roncevaux.51 The episode of the pardon in the Anglo-Norman poem occurs after Roland’s death. Examples of Giles’s Miraculous Mass and the Pardon of Charlemagne are not uncommon in the late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century art of central and western France. The episode is found in wall painting at Montoire (fig. ), Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (fig. ), Civray (fig. ), and the crypt of Chartres cathedral (figs. , ), as well as in sculpture (the portal of the ruined abbey of Aiguevive at Faverolles, figs. , ; Chartres cathedral, south portal, fig. ).52 The Saint-Aignan painter, however, interpreted the story in a novel manner (figs. , ). In the third field of the hemicycle wall, an elderly Giles appears rapt in trance while celebrating Mass. On top of an altar at left sits a cloth-covered chalice, a disk that may be identified as a paten, and an open book. Suspended above the chalice, the tail end of an unfurled scroll can be made out. The crowned, mustachioed, and bearded figure of Charlemagne holds his fist to his chest as if beating his breast, a gesture of self-accusation and remorse.53 Between the royal personage and the right edge of the composition, a partial figure of a youth is crowded into the scene. Does he represent some anonymous member of the king’s retinue? Or, as I would argue, Roland?54 The anachronistic interpolation of Roland into the scene would relate the Saint-Aignan painting to a sizable group of roughly contemporary images that allude to the young hero’s incestuous conception.55 Among the most well known are the silver-gilt reliefs on the roof of the Charlemagne reliquary shrine at Aachen (beginning of the thirteenth century) and the stained-glass panels of the Charlemagne window in the ambulatory of Chartres cathedral.56 Even cursory analysis of the comparanda, however, underscores the extent to which visual images varied in the way they engaged the tradition of Charlemagne’s sin and pardon. Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon maintain that the Charlemagne cycle of the Aachen reliquary shrine goes to special lengths to refute the allegation of incest.57 In the fourth panel, one of the knights marked for martyrdom by the

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prodigy of the flowering lances is singled out by his state of wakefulness and gesture of astonishment. Lejeune and Stiennon identify him as Duke Milo of Angers, who plays an important role in the account of this episode in the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, where he is qualified unequivocally as Roland’s genitor. This insistence on Milo as Roland’s true father is repeated in the Vita Sancti Karoli, written c.  to justify the emperor’s canonization. Between the flowering of the lances and the departure of knights for battle, Charlemagne speaks with Milo and Roland in his tent. The insertion of Charlemagne into the miracle of the flowering lances allows for interaction among the three men, a narrative detail unique to the Aachen plaque and not predicated on any known literary source. When, after battle (plaque ), Charles’s audience with Giles and the Miraculous Mass finally take place (plaque ), the prior appearance of father, son, and uncle would presumably serve to emphasize that the mortal sin in question could not have pertained to Roland’s paternity. Of course, such an attempt at denial merely admits the charge, and even reinforces its tenacity. In contrast to the Aachen reliquary, which embeds the scene of the Miraculous Mass and pardon in an argument against Roland’s incestuous conception, the Chartres window acknowledges the terrible sin by weaving it into the narrative logic of the cycle. At Aachen, the charge of incest is written out of the emperor’s life; the Chartres glass, on the contrary, makes it crucial to the dénouement of the story. In its current position at the summit of the lancet, the scene of the pardon functions as the consummation of the outcome at Roncevaux.58 According to this reading, the death of Roland is the necessary precondition of redemption, the Mass of Saint Giles the sign that redemption has been achieved. If, however, the scene originally appeared, as some have argued, beneath and therefore before the tragic events of Roncevaux, then the allusion to Roland’s incestuous conception would be causally related to the hero’s doom.59 Whether the Mass of Saint Giles provided closure or set up the tragic outcome, Charlemagne’s sin bears the burden for the resolution of the lancet cycle. Tropes on the link between the debacle at Roncevaux, Giles’s Mass, and the pardon of Charlemagne can be found in the Oxford Roland (the hero’s incestuous origins determine his fate) and in Guillaume de Berneville’s verse life of Saint Giles (the saint reminds the emperor of the solar miracle). Similarly, a carved capital of c.  from the church of San Gil at Luna, near Zaragoza, associates the pardon of Charlemagne with the embalmment of the dead heroes of Roncevaux.60 The sin of incest, a latent theme in the Chartres lancet, receives overt attention elsewhere. At Le Loroux-Bottereau, a repentant Charlemagne kneels before Saint Giles beneath an elaborate architectural perspective; the figural group at

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left depicts the ruler’s pregnant sister and her husband, Milo of Angers, departing on pilgrimage to Rome, during the course of which Roland was born (fig. ). The Pardon scene here incorporates material related to the version of the Miraculous Mass preserved in the Karlomagnus Saga, according to which the charter directs the emperor to marry his sister to Milo. A thirteenth-century mural in the ruined abbey church of Aiguevive some seventeen kilometers west of Saint-Aignan (commune of Faverolles) portrays Saint Giles bringing the charter to Charlemagne and his sister, both of whom gesture in response (figs. , ). This work, like a miniature in the mid-thirteenth-century Flemish psalter of Lambert le Bègue (Liège, Bibl. de l’Université, ms , fol. v), makes her actually present at the Pardon.61 What distinguishes the interpretation of the Miraculous Mass at Saint-Aignan from other works that address the emperor’s sin is not merely the appearance of Roland in the scene but the nature of his presence. The pictorial solutions discussed thus far either allusively juxtapose the Pardon and the Roncevaux disaster (the Luna capital, the Chartres window), spell out the story of Roland’s birth (Le Loroux-Bottereau), or make the sister a participant in the event (Aiguevive, the psalter miniature). The partial figure of the youth inserted into the scene of the Mass at Saint-Aignan produces a rather different narrative effect. Roland here appears not “in the flesh” but rather as an agonizing memory, a kind of flashback device that enables an already familiar story to be retold in the mind of the viewer.62 Together the emperor’s mental image and breast-beating gesture give visual form to his psychological state of contrition. The recollection of sexual transgression and the inner distress suffered as a result prove a crucial point, without which Giles’s profile as healer would not be complete. The saint’s remedies, administered specifically in his capacity as priest, go beyond the cure of the body to erase sins that cripple the soul. When considered in tandem with the image of Giles and the repentant Charlemagne, scenes in the upper register can be understood as allegories of spiritual medicine. The same images that recount the saint’s legend in narrative terms also recall and rephrase conventional metaphors for penance. Confession, miraculously accomplished in Charlemagne’s case, delivers the soul from the shipwreck of sin after baptism (fig. ).63 Confession is the antidote administered by priests against the poison of sin,64 here injected by the serpent, humanity’s primeval enemy. Just as sin entered the world through a bite, so must it be purged through words spoken by the mouth. The garment of which Giles divests himself stands both for the renewed body of the pauper and the infusion of God’s grace that spiritually transforms the recipient. Purificatory rites, like baptism and the preparation for mandatory confession on admission to hospital, required that the initiate/inmate put on a clean, new

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robe after immersion or bathing.65 Ritual “redress” instantiates in the body the ablution of the soul; through confession one regains the raiment of baptismal purity. As to the eighth and final episode represented in the field adjacent to the Miraculous Mass, we can only speculate. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the closing scene treated material from the last part of the saint’s legend. Charlemagne’s salvation assured, Giles returned to Provence, where he resuscitated the deceased son of the ruler of Nîmes. A prophetic vision that his abbey would one day be destroyed led him to Rome to place his monastery under the protection of the pope. Along with the papal privilege he received further proof of the bond between the Holy See and his abbey—a set of cypress doors carved with images of the apostles. Giles threw the doors into the Tiber, and they floated safely all the way to the abbey to arrive when he did. His mission accomplished, the saint died; witnesses heard the praises of angels transporting his soul to heaven. For Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, of course, the ties that Giles established with the papacy were essential. At Saint-Aignan, the miraculous revival of the dead prince or, alternatively, the saint’s own death and the translation of his soul would seem to be more consonant with the funerary and eschatological overtones of the commission as a whole. Either episode would find a thematic correlate in the Raising of Lazarus and Christ’s Resurrection painted in the axial chapel. Viewers unfamiliar with the specifics of the Vita Sancti Aegidii, albeit widely diffused, would have been able to follow the unfolding story and grasp the priority accorded to spiritual health. The painter ensured the legibility of his work by coupling clarity of composition with a high degree of iconographic elaboration. He isolated moments of encounter and exchange or used gesture to help convey the action at the core of each scene. Such economy of narrative representation recalls mnemonic, or cuing, techniques found in liturgical compositions or the paratactic sequence of captionlike phrases in the Pilgrim’s Guide. At the same time, landscape elements like the rocky shore, agitated sea, and wild vegetation not only serve to stage the storm and hunt scenes but also position the saint in relation to the forces of nature, which he dominates. Conversely, the interior settings in which Giles meets Saint Caesarius and celebrates Mass for Charlemagne underscore the saint’s authority within ecclesiastical and secular realms. Both the legend and its pictorial illustration, moreover, conform typologically to a recognizable hagiographic pattern.66 By the late twelfth century, the life of a “confessor saint” consisted of particular topoi for which iconographic formulas had been devised: acts of charity (the bestowal of a garment); healings; control over nature (e.g., quelling tempests at sea); entry into the ecclesiastical hierarchy; self-mortification as a substitute for, or form

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of, martyrdom; power of divine invocation through the liturgy (the Miraculous Mass); and so on.67 The paintings in the crypt at Saint-Aignan constitute the earliest pictorial manifestation of the cult of Saint Giles in the diocese of Bourges.68 Investigating how the saint’s legend overlapped cult traditions elsewhere may provide insight into the artistic commission and its relation to local seigneurial and ecclesiastical patronage. I have already discussed the saint’s wounding and, in Chapter , his popularity as a hospital saint; it is conceivable that versions of the legend in which Giles is lamed may have been especially relevant in a region where chronic ergotism deprived its victims first and foremost of their lower extremities. The choice of Giles as titular saint of the maison-dieu may have to do, as well, with the promotion of his cult at Orléans by members of the French royal family and Donzy politics at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Vehicle of Charlemagne’s redemption, the Miraculous Mass celebrated by Saint Giles made possible the emperor’s spiritual rehabilitation as model king. The saint’s intercessory powers transformed the single act that tarnished Charlemagne’s glory into an occasion for the operation of divine grace. The charter delivered at Giles’s prayer confirmed that God had indeed elected the triumphant champion of Christianity for heavenly apotheosis. How to approach the Miraculous Mass became, not surprisingly, a key problem in the construction of Charlemagne mythology at Aachen and Chartres, where competing attempts to establish the genealogy of the German imperial line and the Capetian monarchy were played out. The importance of the episode, however, had already been recognized by the inner circle of the French royal family earlier in the twelfth century. Philippe of France (d. ), son of Louis VI, founded a chapel of Saint Giles in the cathedral of Sainte-Croix, which evidently functioned as a princely institution: its original endowment was expanded by Alphonse of Poitiers (d. ), son of Louis VIII, and this subsidy was later renewed in the fourteenth century by Charles V.69 The chapel’s location at Sainte-Croix depends on a version of the saint’s legend, reflected also in Guillaume de Berneville’s poem, that made the cathedral of Orléans the site of Charlemagne’s Pardon. The development of this tradition overrides the Latin Vita Sancti Aegidii, which recounts Giles’s journey to Orléans and also places him at Sainte-Croix for the healing of a demoniac but then goes on to suggest that the encounter with Charles occurred elsewhere.70 The staging of Giles’s Miraculous Mass at Sainte-Croix has been attributed to the cathedral clergy, who, in order to substantiate the ever so subtle revision, produced the miraculous charter of pardon itself. The relic was preserved in the cathedral until .71

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By the early thirteenth century, the seigneurial family of Saint-Aignan had become closely allied with Capetian interests. Herveus IV of Donzy arranged with Philippe Auguste that his daughter and sole heir, Agnès, would marry the king’s grandson Philippe (d. ), eldest son of the future Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile. Giles’s stature as royal confessor perhaps appealed to the lord (or the canons hoped that it would), making the hospital saint all the more appropriate as patron of the town’s maison-dieu and as a focus of devotion in the lower church, where the lord’s ancestors were buried. The attraction here of a cult tradition associated in particular with Orléans should not be surprising, given that Anianus, titular saint of the castrum and collegiate church, figured among the fathers of the Capetian capital on the Loire.

the axial chapel: lazarus, mary magdalen, and martha

The decoration of the axial apsidiole (figs. –), although the work of a second painter, largely accords in the manner of its arrangement with that of the south chapel. At the opening of the apsidiole, the surfaces of the transverse arch provide an ornamental frame (geometric pattern on the extrados, leafy vine scroll on the intrados) for the narrative cycle within. The clipeate Lamb, here at the center of a cross borne aloft by Evangelist symbols, again occupies the summit of the concha (fig. ). Likewise two tiers of scenes encircle the base of the vault and the hemicycle wall. Rather than a multiepisodic frieze, as in the south chapel, the upper register around the rim of the concha comprises a pair of pendant scenes (fig. ); below, the mural surface presents four rectangular fields. In contrast to the south chapel, a colored ground does not distinguish the zone of narrative action from that of theophanic glory; all figures are painted in pale ocher and gray tones on a white ground. The simplified color scheme in the axial apsidiole, then, repeats further to the east the treatment of the pictorial field in the apsidal chapel. Previous observers have challenged, wrongly in my view, the archaeological coherence of the decoration by attributing the Lamb in Glory at the crown of the vault and the narrative registers below to discrete campaigns. Two Evangelist symbols, the eagle of John and the man of Matthew (fig. ), flank the upper vertical arm of the cross that projects from the clipeus. What about the second pair? Clémence-Paul Duprat concluded in  that the symbols for Luke and Mark must once have been symmetrically disposed around the lower vertical arm of the cross and were eventually covered over by the large scene of the Raising of Lazarus that fills the right half of the concha.72 Duprat’s theory has since been repeated in the literature, most recently by Di Matteo.73

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Unable to find two superposed plaster layers, however, Di Matteo maintains that after humidity ruined the ox and lion, the intonaco was redampened and repainted with the Raising of Lazarus. Di Matteo and her predecessors vary slightly in their dating of the two campaigns: the Lamb and tetramorph are assigned to the first half or middle of the twelfth century, the Lazarus scene to the end of the twelfth or turn of the thirteenth. Ascribing the frescoes in the axial apsidiole to two campaigns is problematic on several counts. Where one would expect a clear stylistic disjunction between twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century compositions, none perceptible to me exists. On comparing the symbol of Matthew to figures in the Lazarus scene (figs. , ), the treatment of facial features and draperies seems so close as to suggest the same hand!74 Painterly approach and color scheme are unified throughout the vault. Furthermore, letter forms in the inscription labeling the eagle of John, iohes (fig. ), exactly match those in the name simo[n] inscribed in the much damaged scene in the left half of the concha (fig. ). A plaster seam is visible in the left half of the Lazarus scene, but this should not be taken to indicate a concealed layer of painting. The join coincides with the hairline of the apostles and horizontal crossbar of Christ’s cruciform nimbus; the haloes of the apostles and head of Christ were completed on the plastered surface above it (fig. ). Granted, the line of apostles behind Christ runs inexplicably into the lower vertical bar of the cross (fig. ). But why should this apparent compositional error be any more “acceptable” from a latetwelfth- or early-thirteenth-century painter reworking a preexisting composition—hence proof of a secondary intervention—than from an earlier painter? Beyond such considerations of the physical surface, the hypothetical replacement of the ox and lion with the Lazarus scene merely begs questions of iconographic “propriety.” Why would a late-twelfth- or early-thirteenthcentury commission have allowed two of the Evangelist symbols to be painted out (or over) any more than an earlier campaign would have dispensed with them? Why would the blatant asymmetry permitted in a second Romanesque campaign have been intolerable originally? Rather than assume that the missing ox and lion once occupied the lower part of the concha, might they not have been displaced to the intrados of the axial window? In the concha of the church at Chalivoy-Milon (Cher), the apocalyptic theophany of the Maiestas Domini displays the Evangelist symbols of John and Matthew at the crown of the vault near the apsidal arch, that is, in the same position as at Saint-Aignan. The symbols of Mark and Luke, which I once believed were absent from the composition, did turn up after a recent cleaning—as much smaller figures painted well below the semidome, in the spandrels of the axial window.75 If the possibility of a similar asymmetrical arrangement can be admitted for

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Saint-Aignan, then the necessity of attributing the Lazarus scene to a hypothetical later campaign vanishes. However the location of the missing Evangelist symbols is resolved, the vault composition as it existed at the turn of the thirteenth century constitutes the point of departure for the ensuing analysis. Of the narrative cycle only the Raising of Lazarus survives intact. The episode, depicted in two continuous phases, fills the right half of the conch vault (fig. ). Responding to Christ’s command, Lazarus sits up in his sarcophagus; above him a two-line inscription beginning with [laz]are can no longer be reconstituted. Then, freed of his winding cloth and standing in orans pose, Lazarus again appears, with two women, his sisters Mary and Martha, in the front row of a crowd. The pendant scene (fig. ), which fills the left half of the conch vault, has never been properly identified, on account of its extremely damaged state. Close attention to the mural surface, however, reveals that the episode, framed under a pair of arches, occurs within the context of a meal. Traces are visible of the figures of Christ (cross-nimbed), a disciple (nimbed male), and Simon (name inscribed, fig. ) seated behind a table spread with a diamond-patterned cloth and vessels. Martha (female figure wearing a veil), accompanied by a male servant, waits at table. With raking light it is possible to detect the silhouette of a figure prostrate below the table, no doubt the Magdalen in the act of anointing Christ’s feet (figs. , ). Evidently, the fragmentary outline of arches and the silhouettes of torsos gave rise to Di Matteo’s mistaken impression that a row of apostles beneath an arcade constituted part of a hypothetical first program along with the clipeate Lamb and tetramorph.76 The image represents the Supper at Bethany, linked specifically to the Raising of Lazarus by cross-references in John :– and :–. Along with Christ, the same family of disciples recurs in both the scenes painted on the conch vault. According to John, Mary anointed the Lord’s feet with perfume and wiped them dry with her hair, while Martha served; Lazarus (presumably the nimbed figure next to Christ) was among those reclining at table. The image, like its scriptural referent, implicitly evokes Luke :–, where Christ, with Mary at his feet and Martha “busy about much serving,” distinguishes between the sisters’ roles.77 At the same time, the presence of Simon makes explicit the scene’s conflation with accounts in Matthew :– and Mark :–, which specify that the Supper at Bethany took place at the house of Simon the Leper. John, Matthew, and Mark have Christ explain the anointing in terms of his impending death and burial, and thus answer those who rebuke Mary for wastefulness (the ointment could have been sold to provide for the poor). True, John describes Mary’s unction of Christ’s feet, whereas Matthew and Mark relate that the woman anointed his head. But

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Saint Augustine and later commentators reconciled the apparent disparity by qualifying the unction of head and feet as successive gestures performed on the same occasion.78 Although the scriptural distinction between head and feet was susceptible to allegorical gloss, the ritual perfuming of Christ’s body at Bethany, above all a funerary figure, placed the episode within the context of the Passion, which the Raising of Lazarus initiated.79 A composite, or harmonized, illustration of the Supper at Bethany, the scene nonetheless strongly resonates with Luke’s account of the unction of Christ’s feet at the house of Simon the Pharisee (:–).80 This passage was understood to refer to a prior anointment, early in Christ’s ministry and chronologically dissociated from the events of Passion week, that occurred not at Bethany near Jerusalem but in Galilee.81 The Magdalen, to whom the actions of the anonymous sinner of Luke were referred, bathed Christ’s feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment. Simon silently reproached his guest for allowing himself to be touched by such a woman. Christ defended her gesture, however, as the expression of great love, on account of which her sins were forgiven. Mary Magdalen, then, twice performed the same act, first at the moment of her conversion and again (reversing the order of her gestures, anointing and then wiping) as a chaste devotee of Christ. The first unction accomplished the remission of her sins; the second foreshadowed Christ’s approaching sacrificial death. In the painting, the inscription of the name Simon, without any additional epithet, and the prostrate figure of Mary create meaningful ambiguity. The absence of all but one of the disciples, and in particular of Judas, reinforces the reading that it is Simon alone with whom Christ converses. The iconographic tension between the two unctions—the scene could depict either, or rather the one always recalls its double—enhances the function of the episode. The image thereby bridges the two antithetical dimensions of the Magdalen’s persona, the sinner of Luke and the saintly Mary of Bethany. Through penance, she was transformed, or, as Augustine put it, resurrected.82 Beyond their internal narrative connection, the pendant scenes on the concha equate (Mary’s) spiritual transformation through contrition and penance with (Lazarus’s) awakening from death to life. Of the four images displayed on the hemicycle wall, three may be iconographically reconstituted. The rectangular panel at the far left contains only fragments: Christ’s head (identified by his cruciform nimbus) and the head of a single female disciple (wearing a veil) are positioned to either side of leafy plant forms (figs. , ). Set in a garden, the scene could only be the Noli me tangere. The scene to the right is entirely effaced. Next, in the field between the axial and south windows, the cross-nimbed Christ holding a book looks over his shoulder at a woman standing behind him (figs. , ). This scene

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surely corresponds to the episode of the woman with the issue of blood who was healed when she touched the fringe of Christ’s garment:83 “Now a woman who for twelve years had been suffering from hemorrhage came up behind him and touched the tassel of his cloak, saying to herself, ‘If I touch but his cloak I shall be saved.’ But Jesus, turning and seeing her, said, ‘Take courage, daughter; thy faith has saved thee.’ And the woman was restored to health from that moment” (Matt. :–; cf. Mark :–). Although Gospel accounts do not name the woman, some authors identified her as Martha of Bethany.84 In the rectangular panel at the far right are depicted two standing women slightly turned toward each other (figs. , ); the sisters Mary and Martha, who recur in the pair of scenes on the vault, here appear in the orans pose. Just as the central theophany marks the apsidal altar as that which was dedicated to Saint James, so the paintings of the axial chapel identify the altar named in chapter archives as serving the vicariate of Marie-Madeleine-desGrottes, or Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in criptis. Unfortunately, the foundation of this vicariate cannot be pinned down as can that of Saint-Jacques by Colin Tavernier in ; the oldest document mentioning a vicar “de la Madeleine” dates from .85 With scenes of the Raising of Lazarus, the Supper at Bethany/Anointing of Christ, and the Noli me tangere, the cycle weaves together scriptural passages conventionally accepted in the Latin West as pertaining to the Magdalen and read as pericopes on her feast day (July ).86 Indeed, the pictorial narrative unfolds under the sign of the Gospels as if thereby authorized to assimilate their multiple witnesses: Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, is visually identified here as the anonymous sinner of Luke who anointed Christ’s feet and as Mary of Magdala, from whom Christ cast out devils and to whom he appeared in the guise of a gardener after his resurrection. Although the chapel was dedicated to the Magdalen, privileged on account of her great love to be the first to see the risen Christ, the spiritual recuperation of Martha as model for those busy about the world (vita activa) would have been compelling for the secular canons who occupied the collegiate church.87 Did not their liturgical functions, performing the sacrifice of the altar for the faithful and offering Masses for the dead, liken them to Martha, who had served at the Lord’s table and supplicated Christ on behalf of Lazarus? In the specific context at hand, however, Martha’s appearance as an example of healing through faith supplements, if not supersedes, her commonplace invocation as type of the active life of the clergy. The Evangelist Mark insists on the failure of profane medicine to cure the hemorrhaging woman; in fact, her recourse to ordinary physicians proved detrimental: “And there was a woman who for twelve years had had a hemorrhage, and had suffered much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and found no benefit, but

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rather grew worse (Mark :–).” Her faith alone brought salvation and healing together at the same moment, thereby instantiating the unity of body and soul. Martha’s faith in Christ combines with the Magdalen’s love to epitomize perfect devotion, which led in the one case to the remission of disease and in the other to the remission of sins. The two sisters in effect shared different manifestations of a single calamity, Martha’s flux of blood (tantamount to menstruation, Lev. :) as defiling as the Magdalen’s sexual promiscuity.88 I will return in the next chapter to the feminizing of both sin and penance, as well as to the appropriation by a male priesthood of the sisters’ privileged access to Christ’s body. Here, however, I wish to make a more limited point. The sisters’ redemption through Christ, and more specifically through their physical contact with him, applies no less than the Raising of Lazarus to lepers, likewise agents of pollution whom Christ did not hesitate to touch and for whom, at Saint-Lazare, the chapter of Saint-Aignan ensured pastoral care. Lepers, like Martha, could find no relief from profane medicine. But through penance on the model of the Magdalen and contact with Christ’s body in the Eucharist, even lepers would at last be raised up into eternal life.

from micro- to macrocosm

The images pertaining to the trio of saintly siblings in the axial chapel and the Giles cycle in the south apsidiole exceed their reference to the nearby leprosery and maison-dieu. Although I have thus far emphasized the local manifestations of the cults of saints depicted in the crypt, their transnational dimension cannot have escaped readers’ notice. The hagiographic collection in the crypt of the collegiate church at Saint-Aignan recapitulates major stations on three of the great pilgrimage routes to Compostela: Orléans, through the dedication to Saint Anianus and the image of Saint Giles’s Miraculous Mass, said to have taken place at Sainte-Croix; the Burgundian shrines of the Magdalen at Vézelay and of Lazarus at Autun; the Provençal sanctuary of Saint-Gilles-duGard; finally, Santiago de Compostela itself, in the figure of James above the apsidal altar. The pendant figure of Saint Peter conjures Rome, to which Saint Giles’s primary cult site also led. At the same time that the mural decoration of the lower church gathers into one place the chapter’s outlying dependencies, it also figures forth the spatial order of Latin Christendom writ large. The concordance of pictorial references to local hospital saints and distant shrines establishes a ritual consonance, or homology, between microcosm (parish) and macrocosm (universal Church).

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Such a configuration, I would argue, testifies to the successful articulation and dissemination during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries of a new ecclesiological concept of space, a subject much studied by Dominique Iogna-Prat and Alain Guerreau.89 As they have discussed with respect to Cluny, the relics and altar dedications of Christendom’s maior ecclesia not only commemorated crucial junctures in salvation history but also incorporated the salient loci of sacred geography from the Holy Land to Compostela via Rome and Gaul.90 The “cartographic” resumé of Christianity at Cluny differed only in its order of magnitude (its comprehensive scope and density), not in principle, from the nesting (emboîtement) of the sacred at every ecclesia matrix, each one a mystical replica of the Church’s faraway spiritual heart (Jerusalem). The structure of the parish encapsulates in parva and refracts at innumerable points the peculiar inverted logic of center and periphery governing, on a vast scale, the entire orbis christianus. Let us not forget that the holiest site at the spiritual core of Christendom, the Lord’s sepulcher at Jerusalem, was geographically at the farthest reaches (when not outside the reach) of the Latin Church. The space between Jerusalem, center of the world, and the most distant parish at the outer rim—all the oikumene, in other words—was the realm subject (in theory) to the tutelage of the papal see. By indexing major pilgrimage sanctuaries beyond its ken, the crypt of the collegiate church at Saint-Aignan distinguished itself, the primary cult site within its own sphere, from the minor, subsidiary chapels marking the territorial fringes of the chapter’s ecclesiastical authority. Entering into the crypt of the collegiate church was equated with pilgrimage outside the confines of the immediate environs to a great shrine farther away, hence higher up in the hierarchy of consecrated places.91 True, the lower church had come to be sealed off from the sanctuary above, which made it a spatially discrete oratory analogous to those in and around the borough; but through images and altar dedications, the saints in the crypt nevertheless appointed the quasi-subterranean space the top rung in the ritual ladder. Just as the pilgrim’s ritual iter to a saint’s distant tomb paradoxically coincided with a return to the interior self, so movement to a symbolic exterior simultaneously acknowledged and emphasized the seat of patronage as a spiritual nucleus.

pictorial resonance, programmatic texture

The three sets of frescoes, whether painted as a single project or as multiple commissions, create a tightly woven pictorial and conceptual fabric. Images confined within separate cells of space enter into a visual dialogue—repeating,

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modulating, and thereby amplifying the same arguments in different terms. The theophany in the apse vault at once explicates the narratives, distributed between radial chapels, and recapitulates their lessons. Christ’s healing of Martha, raising of Lazarus, and forgiveness of the Magdalen are proof of James’s words: “the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him.” Healing and salvation represent two continuous and complementary actions implied by the one verb, salvere. The Gospel episodes in the axial chapel not only quite literally “lie behind” the scene on the apse vault but also inform the miracles that Giles is shown to perform in the south apsidiole. The disparagement of profane medicine in Mark’s account of the hemorrhaging woman has as its logical conclusion the wounded saint’s refusal of medical assistance in order through suffering to increase his virtue. The woman’s cure at the moment she touches Christ’s garment has as its parallel the pauper’s cure through Giles’s robe. Christ’s forgiveness of the penitent Magdalen, a notorious sinner consumed by seven demons (i.e., the totality of vices), establishes a biblical precedent for the divine pardon of Charlemagne, burdened by a sin so terrible that he could not bear to confess it. Scripture and hagiography converge to valorize contrition through which God remits sins. Nevertheless, the Majesty proclaims the necessity of confession, for which the Raising of Lazarus is the allegorical prefiguration. Christ rescued Lazarus from death but ordered his disciples to free the body from the winding cloth in which it had been wrapped; salvation likewise derives from God alone but calls for priestly absolution to loose the bonds of sin.92 The interior movement of the soul in which true contrition consists must be accompanied by an external act of expiation, the verbal admission of guilt through which the sinner, reddened with shame, burns with compunction. Only after fully disclosing and therefore renouncing the offense does the sinner merit reconciliation. Confession to one’s “own priest” purges the bleeding soul: the sinner, after the manner of the hemorrhaging woman, thereby touches the fringe of Christ’s robe and is healed/saved. Penance, when authentic and complete, integrates the models of Mary Magdalen, Martha, and Lazarus. The suppliant paupers of the apsidal theophany echo the prostrate figure of the Magdalen, peccatrix redeemed, just as the coin offered at Peter’s feet parallels her unction of Christ’s. At the moment of her conversion, the Magdalen embodies both perfect penance (total submission) and perfect charity (the anointing). Her sublime gesture synthesizes the attitudes of the pilgrims, and, conversely, they each reiterate an aspect of hers.93 The penitent before James renounces sin through confession, while his counterparts, the crawling figure

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and the coin-giver, anoint the Lord with prayers and the apostolic Church (in the person of Saint Peter) with offerings. The visual resonance between the two scenes, axially aligned on oriented vaults, equates gifts to the saints/the Church with alms, for which unguent was a conventional metaphor.94 While the anointing of Christ and the Church identifies the spiritual bodies that are the genuine focus of caritative zeal, the opening scene of the Giles cycle in the south radial chapel shows that the Magdalen’s gesture is properly displaced and reenacted in works of mercy toward the poor. Backed by Gospel exempla of contrition and confession, the inscribed excerpt from the “Catholic” Epistle revises the Vita Sancti Aegidii. The tenth- or eleventhcentury vita not only has Giles obtain a pardon for Charlemagne’s unconfessed sin but also asserts that God would absolve the sin of anyone who invoked Saint Giles (provided only the fault not be repeated). By the end of the twelfth century, however, the suggestion that saintly intercession could supersede confession and priestly absolution had become problematic. Some theologians therefore glossed the version of the Miraculous Mass codified in the vita by explaining that Giles’s prayers impelled Charlemagne’s change of heart and so enabled the emperor to confess (when confronted with the charter) and receive absolution.95 At Saint-Aignan, pictorial devices papered over the discrepancy between the claims made for Saint Giles in the vita and contemporary penitential practice. The paradigmatic relationship between the phylactery in the apsidal theophany and the charter in scene of the Miraculous Mass—both divinely inscribed and transmitted instruments—brings the Charlemagne episode into line with the image of Saint James absolving the confessing penitent. The injunction to confession issued by Christ in Majesty establishes the “ground rules,” as it were, for the emperor’s pardon and so updates the legend. Redefining the nature of Giles’s intervention so that it serves to elicit, rather than supplant, confession would not detract from the saint’s critical role in securing Charlemagne’s redemption. As written in the same chapter of James’s Epistle that furnished the verse on confession: “My brethren, if any one of you strays from the truth and someone brings him back, he ought to know that he who causes a sinner to be brought back from his misguided way, will save his soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins” (James :–). Far from diminishing the priestconfessor’s role in the economy of salvation, the scene of the Miraculous Mass aggrandizes it. The ensemble of paintings presents contrition, confession, and satisfaction (assuaging others’ suffering through alms, accepting affliction in the spirit of self-mortification) as complementary and continuous phases of a single expiatory process. The purification of the soul, the perfection of virtue—in short,

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spiritual health—transcends the mortality of the body, which may nevertheless yield to miracles worked by the saints. Pilgrims, defined as sinners by their very penetration of the lower church, would have met at every turn with images that assimilate charity and infirmity to forms of penance. An overarching homily on conversion and repentance, compared in the axial chapel with resurrection, subsumes the program’s recurrent mortuary emphasis. Mary’s anointing of Christ, its funerary connotations made explicit during the Supper at Bethany, offers a Gospel prototype for the institution of extreme unction in James’s Epistle. Physical demise is not the end. The Raising of Lazarus, adumbrating Christ’s own Resurrection (the Noli me tangere), translates the apostle’s words on divine forgiveness to mean victory over death. For the dead laid to rest in the crypt and the burial ground outside its door—and most especially for the living bound to share the same fate—the paintings guaranteed the efficacy of penance through which to beg God’s pardon and win eternal life. Saints venerated in the crypt also appeared in the upper church. Colossal statues of James and Christopher, destroyed in , once framed the west portal; the lack of any verbal description or visual record of these works precludes speculation about their date.96 What remains of architectural sculpture at the tribune level of the western tower porch suggests that effigies of saints depicted in the crypt again addressed spectators—specifically, the lord of Saint-Aignan and his intimates, for whom the luminous second-storey chapel would have been reserved. Four statues nervures project from the ribs at the springing of the domical groin vault over the corners of the rectangular bay. Their doughy forms and awkward facture has raised doubts about their complete authenticity: the stone seems to have been substantially reworked and some of the heads replaced.97 Iconographically, however, the figures may well reflect the original sculptural decoration integral to the late twelfth-century superstructure. Peter holds keys and book, and Mary Magdalen’s pyx are readily identifiable (figs. , ). Saint Paul displays a (now blank) phylactery unfurled diagonally across his chest (fig. ); this figure echoes the painted image of James, who, coupled with Peter, towers above the apsidal altar in the crypt. The fourth statue (fig. ), head hooded (or cowled) and holding a rod or staff in the left hand and a small squarish object in the right, may perhaps represent Saint Giles. The invocation of particular saints in diametrically opposed zones of the church (subterranean east, upper-storey west) redoubled the penitential framework within which laity and clergy assumed specific roles.

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IMAGE AND AUDIENCE infirmity, charity, and penance in the community

Having sketched the penitential and funerary dimensions of the crypt and its paintings, I will now push beyond programmatic content to explore the work’s multiple effects in the social world. Iconographic exemplification of saints’ virtues and suppliants’ contrite disposition may have had didactic, devotional, and, more interestingly, therapeutic value but in no way delimits the work’s signifying potential. Images promoted the priority of the collegiate church over its dependencies, and healing under the aegis of the priesthood, because they proactively enlisted the diverse constituencies of the faithful who circulated in the lower church. By what visual means and in accordance with what operative principles shaping contemporary society did this promotion succeed? This chapter considers the dynamics of reception along three axes. First, I propose that polysemous images organized a multiparty system of exchange and mediation in which viewers participated through the very act of looking whereby they consumed the work. Pictorial structures reproduced class divisions on which the economy of salvation was predicated, an economy actualized in ritual practices to which the images referred. Analysis of the mediating function of images leads along a second trajectory to expose gender hierarchies at play in viewers’ interaction with the work and in the ecclesiastical patron’s

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construction of clerical privilege. From yet a third perspective, the work can be shown to redraw lines of difference according to a new definition of Christian community then in the throes of articulation.

exchange and mediation

As we have seen, the theophany painted in the center of the apse vault positions the saints between God, whose will they execute, and the faithful, on behalf of whom they intervene. Removed to a transcendent plane beyond reach of ordinary humans, the enthroned Majesty entrusts Peter and James, his servants, with the task of aiding theirs. Of course, intercession as envisioned here rests on a calculus of patronage. Prayer and offerings (the coin) on the part of the faithful motivate and compensate action (remission of sin and disease) on the part of the saints. Relics housed in the crypt create a sanctified theater for miraculous healing, yes. But the release of divine grace remains contingent on personal ties, which, secured through reciprocal gift-giving, obligate saints and supplicants to discharge their respective duties.1 No contemporary image I know better grounds the curative powers of the saints in the economy of gift exchange. The single coin held out to Saint Peter epitomizes the offerings with which pilgrims both supplicated the saints and, following a miracle, expressed gratitude for their intervention. The oblatio and ex-voto entered at different moments into the process of ritual propitiation but were fashioned out of the same diverse materials, from wax to precious metals, and could take the same array of forms: candles, agricultural produce, land, serfs, one’s own labor, valuables, trinkets, significant sums of money, or a few coins, and so on.2 The cured might leave behind representations of body parts or the paraphernalia that had formerly been the attributes of their infirmity, and freed prisoners, their shackles. The crutch of the penitent kneeling before James, like the coin that is its pendant, recalls articles that littered the shrines of saints. If one or two coins might entice the saint to perform, remuneration after a miracle reflected the resources at the beneficiary’s disposal.3 The wealthy, expected to give generously, enhanced their prestige by doing so. Pilgrims without other means of repaying their spiritual debt might enter into the service of the saint, that is, the corporate body acting as the saint’s earthly representative—an offering of self usually sealed with the deposit of one to four coins on the saint’s tomb, on the altar containing his or her relics, or in a coffer kept nearby.4 More specifically, then, the figure before Saint Peter performs the rite of the sainteur, for whom the coin(s) betokened personal service

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owed the saint. Given the coin’s prominent display in the apsidal painting, might there have been a small chest next to the altar beneath it? Compensatory offerings in coin or in kind did little to evoke or publicize the nature of the miracles that saints worked for their petitioners. The votive tender of the sainteur, however, had profound symbolic value, for the rite strongly resonated with—indeed constituted an extension of—chevage.5 Through the ritual payment of tribute in the form of a head tax (virtually recalling a life ransomed from execution or captivity), a lord’s dependents acknowledged their servile status.6 Pierre-André Sigal believes that the sainteurs most often mentioned in miracle tales (as opposed to juridical texts) were free men and women who recognized their dependence on the saint, typically via a chevage in coin, but did not thereby necessarily alienate their liberty. Rather, they committed to repeat their pilgrimage annually on the saint’s feast, at which time they would offer token remittance: not an especially constraining or humiliating charge and, for those outside the “saint’s” own domains, difficult to enforce.7 In Dominique Barthélemy’s view, however, all chevage, including that of the altar, confirmed the principle of servitude.8 The Saint-Aignan theophany projects this principle into an eschatological arena. The pyramidal composition establishes a symmetrical and complementary relation between the actions depicted at its base angles; it thereby visually equates entrance into the saint’s service with absolution. Ritual self-offering is isomorphic with redemption from bondage to sin, on account of which the suffering and dying body enslaves humanity. Just as the penitent at Christ’s left confesses in exchange for salvation (and finds his body healed as well), so the pilgrim at Christ’s right becomes Saint Peter’s servant in exchange for the blessing of heaven’s gatekeeper. “What a good deal to alienate one’s temporal status for a passport to eternity,” to quote Barthélemy, who further emphasizes the formal similarity, ritually imposed, between captivity to disease on the one hand and to sin on the other: “Votive rites are close to those of penitence. In addition, a penitent is someone who declares himself vanquished, who surrenders, by adopting one of the paradigmatic postures of servitude.”9 Submission and expiation are two sides of the same metaphorical coin. In hagiographic material, a miraculously enlarged coin can reveal a delinquent serf, forcing him to return to his saint’s service;10 in other literary contexts, it symbolizes the satisfactory dimension of penance.11 The prescriptive charge of the apsidal painting is clear: tribute paid to the Church ransoms a life from the clutches of damnation. In forging the associative triad of disease, sin, and servitude, the Church encouraged not only gifts that subjects made of themselves but also gifts of subjects made by others. Curative miracles could inspire, or pressure, lords to

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transfer ownership of their dependents to ecclesiastical communities. Thus in the late eleventh century Raoul of Déols granted the chapter of Saint Silvanus at Levroux lordship over all those from his lands who were healed in the porticus of the collegiate church and over their future offspring.12 On remission of the “fire” named after Silvanus, the lord of Déols renounced his dominium over the afflicted, whom he released into the saint’s custody. Silvanus, for his part, had vanquished the infirmity and claimed possession of the cured via chevage in coin. Raoul’s heirs reconfirmed the original grant through the twelfth century; only when the seigneury devolved through marriage to a male outside the ancestral line did the new lord attach qualifying provisions to its renewal (). By then, persons belonging to Saint Silvanus had settled in the castellany of Saint-Aignan, whose lord, Herveus iv of Donzy, acknowledged their dependency on Levroux, and where, in the village of Noyers, a porticus received pilgrims to the parish church of Saint-Silvain. A model of the spiritual contract between saint and supplicant, the apsidal theophany addressed all the laity in terms of local cult practices that consolidated ecclesiastical patronage. The promise of a blessed hereafter, certified by the Church in the person of Peter, obtained for the most noble avoué who renewed previous commitments to a saint’s church as it did for the lowliest sainteur who pronounced or fulfilled a vow of personal service. The apsidal theophany, in accordance with the iconographic code of revelation, presents itself as the mirror of an invisible cosmic reality. It is because the image claims such a status that it insinuates viewers in mutual relations of dependency and utility. Even as the pictorial scheme denies the possibility of direct contact with the deity, isolated in his glory, the image nevertheless opens a conduit for spectators into the circulation of gifts and grace. The painted figure of God, frontal and compelling, addresses not the pilgrims represented outside the mandorla but rather the viewing subject before him. Contemplation of the image thereby becomes a venue for the petition of the divine. The three diminutive supplicants are key to the production of this visual effect, for the figures “cut” two ways. Surrogates for actual pilgrims on the one hand, they connect their live counterparts to the depicted spiritual world. The handicapped and the itinerant, recognizing themselves in the ciphers to which they have been reduced, might thus position themselves as penitents at the feet of Christ and the saints, whom they beseech for aid. But even as the figures of the paupers elicit identification, they also permit objectification. They add one more link to the depicted chain of gift exchange through which more fortunate viewers—who might also have knelt or prostrated themselves at the altar beneath the painting—make their appeal. Instrumental to the redemption of the powerful and the rich, the weak and the poor return

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the investment of those whose wealth they convert into alms. Thus the same image that exhorts the infirm to confession simultaneously invites the well-off to achieve the health (salvation) of the soul through charity. The composition recruits the most abject of the three figures, the legless cripple who crawls toward the all-seeing Majesty, to deliver prayers for others. Pauperes christi, reified pictorially in an order of intercession, ameliorate God’s view of their benefactors. What better way to petition wealthy spectators than to place them, as here, under divine scrutiny? At least one thirteenth-century burgher, who must have known the painting, responded to its strategies. Colin, innkeeper and toll collector, began his testament of  with instructions for founding a chaplaincy here at this very altar and then proceeded to list bequests to local charities. The proffering of the coin, a gesture as multivalent as the paupers themselves, enters into the stratification of subject positions from which viewers approached God. The Supper at Bethany painted in the chapel east of the apsidal theophany creates a typological frame for the motif of the coin— votive offering and pledge of service—that transposes it into another symbolic register. Echoing the gesture of the Magdalen who anoints Christ’s feet, the gift of the coin at Peter’s concretizes the metaphorical assimilation of unguent and alms.13 Peter Comestor, for example, notes that the pope imitates the Magdalen when he distributes alms on Palm Sunday, the feast that commemorates her unction of Christ.14 Just as the Magdalen anointed Christ’s human body, so, says Peter of Poitiers, those who demonstrate compassion toward the poor anoint his mystical body, the Church.15 The apsidal theophany substitutes the Church, personified by the prince of the apostles, for the poor as the object of ardor caritatis. The exchange between Peter and the coin-giver shows that saints accept the service of the poor, but it also assures the less poor and the powerful that the Church turns their material resources into spiritual capital. The figure of the enthroned Christ presiding over the transfer of the coin further incorporates charity into the traditional eschatological context for the display of divine justice.16 God’s Judgment is inevitable, but can be assuaged. Alms, like pilgrimage, may compensate sin; without satisfaction, absolution granted on confession cannot bear fruit.17 Justice requires that the renunciation of the coin at Christ’s right accompany, indeed complete, the petition for forgiveness at his left. Almsgiving was considered an act of justice not only when undertaken as a form of penitence but also because, more fundamentally, it fulfilled a debitum owed another.18 To designate surplus resources for the relief of those in distress was to render the poor their just due. Divine law, handed down by Christ, dictates the necessity of confession; the distribution of superfluous wealth in the form of alms is no less obligatory. By exalting

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charity and, what is more, by legislating it as the proper expression of power, the chapter could more easily solicit the seigneurial family as well as burghers and passers-by on behalf of local hospitals dependent on its patronage. The virtue of charity, at the heart of the coin-giver’s unction of Saint Peter, is exemplified in the form of another donation, painted in the south apsidiole. Giles’s first miracle turns on an ornate tunic displayed in its entirety between saint and pauper. The importance accorded the splendorous garment makes it a locus of meaning—almost another protagonist—in the scene. Its joint presentation by the benefactor and the beneficiary, each of whom holds up one side, emphasizes the double nature of the charitable transaction. Both inmates and donors to the maison-dieu at Saint-Aignan would have ritually reenacted this episode in the life of the hospital’s patron saint. On admission, the sick poor would first have been bathed and clothed in a clean garment (typically a white shirt) as preparation for mandatory confession.19 Those who sustained the hospital through grants, alms, and bequests became, like Saint Giles, instruments of divine grace. The robe’s intense color and decorative elaboration—the antithesis of the beggar’s rags (and of actual hospital garb)—map the miraculous onto the social: noble dress signifies the integral recovery (spiritual and physical) of the impoverished self. It is the sacrificial act of gift-giving that converts an attribute of earthly wealth, secular power, and physical beauty, “negatives” on the balance sheet of redemption, into a positively charged sign. This revalorization of the gift parallels the conversion of material object into spiritual good that is at stake in the exchange between the pilgrim and Saint Peter on the apse vault. The difference between the Giles scene and the coin-giving is equally revealing, however. The pilgrim and Saint Peter each convey that which pertains properly to him (coin and grace respectively); the two parties entertain a reciprocal relation, although human offering and divine reward are, sui generis, incommensurate. By contrast, the Giles episode captures the tunic in the process of changing ownership while also freezing it in a state of suspension between giver and receiver. The garment pertains, on the one hand, symbolically to both the saint (renunciation) and the pauper (renewal) and, on the other, to neither (no longer worn by the former, it is not yet put on by the latter). This ambiguous treatment renders the ambivalent sign undecidable. Thanks to a logic unique to visual images, the painting crystallizes the tension surrounding the value of earthly goods in medieval society.20 The worldly, fraught with danger and ultimately bound by death, could nevertheless be redeemed through sacrifice. Michel Lauwers describes how in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Church came to govern a complex cycle of ritualized exchange. The powerful, their dead, and the poor entered

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into relations that transformed material possessions into offerings consecrated to God’s service—for the salvation of the donors.21 Wealth removed from temporal use produced treasure in heaven. Because the actions of the living could help to purify the souls of the deceased, gift-giving yielded its highest returns in the context of commemorative practices.22 Lands and rights entrusted to monasteries and chapters of canons regular or secular guaranteed the continuity of liturgical celebration in memory of lay patrons and their ancestors. Nobles repaid a debt to their forebears, to whom they owed their inheritance, by setting aside patrimony as alms for monks and canons, experts in prayer. Just such memorial concerns informed grants made by the lords of Saint-Aignan to the collegiate church.23 When the last two Donzy, Philippe in  and Herveus iv in , augmented and reconfirmed a gift of toll revenues to the chapter, they were perpetuating a family custom as their father Herveus iii (d. ) had done before them. The chapter, equally cognizant of tradition, reaffirmed to Herveus iv in  its obligation to celebrate Mass on behalf of his ancestors. Like the religious, Christ’s true poor, the needy played their part in suffrages for the dead. To cite a particularly apt example from Iogna-Prat’s study of Peter the Venerable’s writings, a nobleman who had given up his fur so that a pauper would be protected against the cold was, through this pious gesture, himself refreshed postmortem just as he was about to be plunged into the burning flames of hell.24 The material needs of the one prefigured the spiritual deficits of the other. Far from passive recipients of the dole, the needy not merely repaid their patrons’ largesse but converted it into a different currency. Ecclesiastical communities typically reserved for distributions to the poor a portion of the gifts they received in the name of deceased patrons during funeral services and regularly thereafter on anniversaries and specific feasts. The poor, doubles of God’s servants (the clergy), therefore also doubled as the dead, on whose account they were fed and clothed.25 Symbolic investment in the poor eventually spread to emergent urban elites. Colin’s testament of  reflects profound changes in strategies of preparing for death, in the social status of those who adopted them, in the beneficiaries of choice, and in the modalities and terms of exchange.26 During the thirteenth century, the Church vigorously promoted a model of relations between the living and the dead rooted in the logic of purgatory as a middle place between heaven and hell.27 The deceased no longer awaited the Last Judgment, a distant and collective event, for sentencing, but rather faced judgment at the moment of his or her own passing. Long before confronting a final, eternal fate at the resurrection of all, the soul of each and every departed went for the interim to its deserved place. In purgatory, destination of most, one suffered punishment

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proportionate to sins committed while alive.28 Sharpening concern for the personal lot of the self in the hereafter required an institutional framework here below to structure and sustain it. The bourgeoisie—merchants, artisans, and community notables—pressed to acquire burial and memorial privileges formerly reserved for members of the nobility. The testament, a legal instrument subject to revocation and emendation at will, allowed individuals greater flexibility in disposing of their property, over which they retained control until death and, through their appointed executors, even afterward. Seigneurial patrons had concentrated their wealth, in the form of outright gifts, on selected religious foundations, which they favored in order to advance dynastic interests. In contrast, the moneyed classes apportioned more modest estates into smaller bequests for disbursal among many institutions and communities. This fragmentation of limited assets multiplied the number of intercessors whose services, procured according to market price, were stipulated in detail. Like wealthy burghers elsewhere, the innkeeper and toll-collector of SaintAignan emulated the old example of nobility by providing for his own remembrance. In accordance with this model, he could choose no better site for his chantry foundation than the main altar in the crypt of the parish and collegiate church, presumably the very core of the seigneurial mausoleum. Although Colin gave priority to his foundation, he nonetheless made sure to leave something to satellite chapels, all the local hospitals, and numerous religious houses throughout the region; and he provided for regular distributions of food and clothing. The poor, who had previously performed a role in the collective commemoration of ancestors, now assumed meaning with respect to the destiny of each person individually. Surely images of the sick poor at the feet of Christ and in conversation with the saints picture the supernatural exchange that pilgrims to Saint-Aignan sought to replicate as they mirrored through their own gestures the supplication of their painted counterparts. But the recurrent figures of pauperes christi are also appropriated by the combined mortuary functions of the crypt and the funerary thread of the program to become representatives of the dead for whom the living were duty-bound to perform suffrages. Shown in a prime position to intercede before God on behalf of the departed, figures of the humble, weak, and disabled petition those still in this world to discharge through charity (alms to ecclesiastical institutions, works of mercy) the penance that will purify and liberate souls handicapped by sin. The painted figures of the paupers thus mobilized their embodied doubles in service to the community of Saint-Aignan. Attracted to funerary repasts and memorial distributions, and of course to the sacred relics around which

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castrum and parish were founded long ago, pilgrims and the poor acted as envoys between inhabitants living and dead. Itinerants who crossed the burial ground to enter and exit the quasi-subterranean space—wherein reposed the saintly and (presumably) lordly patrons of the parish—brought the alms of inhabitants to bear on the relief of their dead. Together, the lower church and graveyard created a place not merely of encounter but of exchange between pilgrims and parishioners. In the context of the memorial system elaborated in the eleventh century and cultivated through the twelfth, spiritual transactions between residents and itinerants would have benefited the ensemble of “ancestors” interred in the cemetery and the crypt. Funerary rites, subsequent liturgical action, and the periodic manipulation of remains (turning the earth in cemeteries, translations, creation of ossuaries) transformed the dead into an amalgamated, collective body of authority invested with the guardianship of custom. This is to not to deny either the production of a hierarchy among “ancestors” or the concomitant stratification of the dead within the burial complex: saints and patrons lay inside church walls, anonymous others outside. But, as Lauwers shows, common values and rituals applied to the cult of the dead as a whole, notwithstanding three different levels of commemoration due saints, the ordinary faithful, and, from around the turn of the millennium, founders and patrons of churches/founders of lineages.29 The crypt paintings supported the communal possession of the dead even as the work, executed c. , helped to undermine the old memorial system in which it was rooted. As an integral aspect of a seigneurial mausoleum, the murals may have had their source in Donzy wealth or initiative. But the commission also belonged to an era of economic growth that culminated in the franchise of the borough (before ). Visual references to local hospitals, emphasis on charity as a form of penance, and the privileged intercessory role assigned to the poor could only encourage a nascent burgher class to invest in suffrage and remembrance, for which it was willing and able to pay. The exchange of dynastic memorialization for nobles’ gifts had already begun to erode the cohesion of the ancestral body. Once new elites could adapt almsgiving to their interest in personal salvation, the cult of the dead became fully commodified. In this sense, then, the crypt paintings bridged two conflicting modes of structuring the interdependence between the living and the dead: originating in and an agent of the customary world sanctioned by ancestors, the work helped to usher in the market-based afterlife of the bourgeoisie. To summarize, the pictorial ensemble orchestrated a dense network of multiparty exchange by providing for recourse to numerous and varied strategies of mediation. Saints pleaded the cause of their servants before the divine

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judge. The better-off, not to mention the rich and powerful, could afford the additional advocacy of the weak and humble, whom the paintings insinuated within the expiatory process according to their status in the economy of gift exchange. At the crux of this system, indeed ensuring its very operation, was the ecclesiastical patron. Proxies for the saints, shrine clergy collected pilgrims’ offerings and monitored their vows. The canons exercised the power of Peter’s keys on behalf of the Church: priests tended the wounded, bleeding souls of sinners when, on hearing confession, they granted absolution and imposed satisfaction, or when they reconciled the dying to God. Proxies for the dead, they released the living from their debt to their ancestors by funneling donations and bequests to the poor.

gender roles, body politics

The crypt paintings presuppose a hierarchy of “masculine” and “feminine” roles so deeply ingrained, so pervasive, that we take little or no notice of how it structures the work. Images define in gendered terms the spiritual positions that individuals properly assume in relation to the divine. The soul’s posture before God can neither be entirely divorced from nor altogether reduced to the body’s sex. The alignment of soul and body, the spiritual and the physical, differs for men and women, however. Pictorial representation at Saint-Aignan not merely reflects this asymmetry but engages viewers’ subjectivity in ways that acknowledge and exploit sexual difference. Analysis of gendered representation and vision in the painted crypt creates a useful context, I suggest, within which to reconsider aspects of women’s funerary piety and medical practice at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For when it came to healing and the dead, the principal rivals of parish priests were women. The more the Church sought to extend its authority over the laity within the framework of the parish, the more the clergy curtailed and recast women’s activities in the two domains to which the decorative program addressed itself. Apart from Mary Magdalen and Martha, the figures depicted as beneficiaries of divine intervention are male: the sick whom Giles cures, the mariners he saves, Charlemagne, Lazarus, and the three paupers in the apsidal theophany, these last significantly the only personages not from the mythological past of scripture and hagiography but from the medieval viewers’ own time. The latter supplicants each bear a cane or crutches indicative of chronic physical disability, as does the lame beggar in the Giles cycle; their weakness amounts to a loss of mobility. By contrast, the females personify sexual impurity (lust, flux of blood), a condition attributed to a superabundance of humors. How might these

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iconographic formulas have created a “mirror effect?” To the extent that depicted figures index the real, where might viewers “see” themselves reflected in the work? To whom does the work make its appeal, and how does it position its viewers? We can begin to explore these questions by considering the demographics of pilgrimage and shrine cures, which Pierre-André Sigal and others have derived from hagiographic texts of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. Typically, sanctuaries had a predominantly male clientele. Women’s participation in the cult of relics, however, seems to have been related to distance of travel. Higher numbers of women are reported in the following cases: () at sanctuaries just beginning to build their reputations and therefore before news of miracles had spread very far; () at shrines that remained venues for strictly local cults; () at ritual processions in which the relics themselves were carried. A significantly greater proportion of women than of men confined themselves to pilgrimages at the local or regional scale (i.e., under sixty kilometers).30 Thus women who might have visited the crypt at Saint-Aignan most likely came from nearby. Women, more so than men, solicited saints’ curative powers, but rarely (according to “official” hagiographic records) for matters pertaining to fertility or childbirth.31 By far, the principal infirmities for which individuals of either sex journeyed to shrines involved neurological disorders: various types of paralysis and impairments to motor function.32 Yet such disabilities were disproportionately high among women supplicants of the saints. Sigal further notes that infirmities afflicting the highest percentage of women were those which most concerned the lower classes. The particular impediments to travel and medical problems that distinguished pilgrims of the poorer classes from those of higher rank were accentuated with respect to women.33 The diminutive supplicants and miraculés depicted at Saint-Aignan perhaps addressed a largely male audience, yes; but the figuration of class (the sick poor) and physical handicap (deprivation of mobility), not to mention the evocation of (genital) bleeding, would also have appealed to a female viewership—so, too, the message, conveyed by the episode of Saint Giles’s wounding, that the patient endurance of infirmity would bear spiritual fruit, a theme characteristic of female spirituality.34 Another, counterintuitive reading is also possible. The crypt paintings may have claimed a female audience because they distanced women from the male recipients of divine grace pictured in the apse. For in their capacity as representatives of the dead before the enthroned Christ, the pauperes christi stand in for deceased husbands (or fathers) dependent especially on surviving wives (or adult daughters) to carry out suffrages for their souls’ purgation. The beggar

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who puts on Giles’s robe, the man from whom the saint drives out the serpent’s poison, the boatload of souls spared the tempest’s wrath, Charlemagne absolved of incest, and Lazarus raised from the dead—scene after scene, the narrative episodes double as so many types of purification from the bondage of sin, a process that continued after death and that the living could expedite. Mary and Martha were the only female likenesses available to women viewers, women’s only direct point of access into the world of the work. On behalf of dead husbands and fathers awaiting entry into heaven, the paintings may have reminded widows and daughters to fulfill their familial obligations by giving alms to the poor/the Church in imitation of the Magdalen’s unction of Christ and Martha’s service. Women, like the poor, were instrumental to the redemption of others. At this point, it is worth recalling the matrons of the local seigneurial family, the Donzy, mentioned in Chapter : Mathilde of Courtenay, sole surviving heir in  of her late father, from whom her husband Herveus IV inherited title to the county of Nevers, and widow in ; Agnès, only child of Herveus IV and twice widowed before her own death in . That women traditionally bore primary responsibility for the commemoration, indeed for the salvation, of their deceased menfolk is well known. But, as Patrick Geary has argued, women’s guardianship of memoria, their custody of “men’s life and soul,” by no means went unchallenged. In the eleventh century, reformed monks sought to replace women as bridges (to borrow Geary’s term) between the living and the dead.35 Michel Lauwers takes further account of ecclesiastical efforts to limit women’s intimate involvement with the dead.36 By the end of the twelfth century, providers of intercessory services had proliferated well beyond the reformed monastic tradition, a trend that gathered momentum in the course of the thirteenth. Only a priest could celebrate Mass, but religious and semireligious women could and did undertake all other pious interventions on behalf of the dead. Sharply distinguishing the Mass as the highest form of suffrage succeeded in guaranteeing the lion’s share of memorial revenues for parish churches and male communities. Of course, the Church extolled, even sanctified, women’s funerary piety as expressed through tears, prayers, fasting, and self-mortification; formalizing and institutionalizing affective devotional practices helped to bring new and suspect forms of female spirituality under ecclesiastical control. Religious and semireligious women aside, though, the Church fully appreciated the importance of widows in the exchange and circulation of wealth occasioned by death. Clergy endlessly encouraged (admonished) widows to give alms in the name of the deceased and to make restitution of goods that their husbands had improperly acquired.

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Mary Magdalen and Martha were promoted as models for men as well as for women.37 In the context of the Saint-Aignan paintings, they feminized both sexual pollution and its spiritual remedy, penance and faith in God’s mercy. All involuntary effluvia suffered by both sexes, including nocturnal emissions, were equated with menstrual bleeding.38 The superfluity of generative humors was a problem for the celibate, widows no less than the religious or the secular clergy.39 Of course, for priests required to celebrate Mass and therefore handle the Eucharist, feminine impurity posed a special problem. The clergy’s exposure to this kind of defilement, however, was dispatched with old theological arguments that during sleep the will was suspended and could not therefore collaborate in the wet dream.40 As Dyan Elliott explains, “Both the male who was polluted in a dream and the menstruating woman, though by no means considered sinful in themselves, were construed as representative of humanity’s fallen state.”41 Where the soul did incur liability for sin was in the exercise of the libido, a domain in which women, more highly sexed than men and therefore inherently predisposed to erotic desire, were definitely the weaker sex. For a woman (Mary Magdalen) to represent, indeed embody, the state of penance was natural. Mary’s unction of Christ’s feet in the Supper at Bethany, the gesture through which she won divine forgiveness of her sins, literally “stands behind” the depicted paupers’ combined reenaction of her perfect abasement, repentance, and charity in the apsidal theophany. Martha’s brush with the fringe of Christ’s garment, through which she was healed (purged), similarly likens their humble self-offering to her gesture of confiding body and soul to God. Insofar as the crypt paintings visually anchor male figures to female referents, the work genders their demeanor before God. The submission of the penitent, the surrender implicit in faith, is a feminine posture, which men may assume because, unlike women, their souls are not bound to the dictates of their body’s sex.42 To paraphrase Lauwers’s insightful comment on the clerical construction of female spirituality, women identify with the penitent Magdalen by nature—the profusion of tears concords with the excessive humidity innate to the female body, which, as Martha’s, overflows with fluids; men, however, do so by choice.43 The difference between male and female emulation of the Magdalen, and the superior value accorded the former, rejoins the discourse on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary poverty. Merely being poor by birth or circumstance is hardly meritorious in itself. Virtue lies rather in the deliberate renunciation of earthly wealth (i.e., entrance into the religious life). By the same token, the male’s adoption of feminine submissiveness and meekness in approaching God is commendable, since it entails the renunciation of masculine advantage and thus relates to other reversals fundamental to Christianity.

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The female’s embrace of the Magdalen’s example is no reversal and so wins her no particular distinction.44 To put this another way, men have the luxury of expressing the feminine “side” of the anima; in women, anima has no other side. Between the axial and apsidal chapels, the inner attitude of penitence and outward act of supplication establish a continuum of feminine and masculine roles. The theophany recruits the diminutive paupers to beg God’s mercy for souls in whose name they receive alms; accordingly, figures in the position of intermediary between human and divine are male. Pictorial insertion into a chain of divine transmission from Christ and the saints to the viewing subject determined the figures’ sex. Mediation between divinity and humanity so as to convey spiritual effects, the very essence of priestly office, is reserved to males.45 Whereas men can spiritually assume the subject position of a female penitent, women cannot assume the communicative functions reserved to men.46 The barrier to women’s converse with divinity, the anthropologist Françoise Héritier has pointed out, lies in ancient and widespread ideas about human physiology: Jesus, sexed, did not make use of his masculine sexuality, did not emit his seed but transmuted it into the divine Word. Only the male can accomplish this transformation; Aristotle said so, and many populations quite far from Greece had the same model of explanation: the greater heat of the male body completely cooks the blood, which results in the fabrication of semen as pneuma and not matter. Pneuma is also the Word. Masculine chastity and preaching go together.47 The male body, rather than an impediment to the soul, is a prerequisite for spiritual distinction (nocturnal emissions notwithstanding). Woman cannot be God’s mouthpiece. In the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the absolute and unbridgeable gulf between women and the divine was summed up in the words “Noli me tangere.”48 The woman who anointed the Lord’s human body, performing in advance the mortuary ritual appropriate to a corpse, was forbidden to touch his spiritual body. True, Martha touched the edge of his robe while he was alive, but the risen Christ’s command to the Magdalen, represented in the axial chapel below the Supper at Bethany, justified ecclesiastical restrictions on women’s access to the holy. Not only were women barred from celebrating the Eucharist or administering any sacrament, but activities that might approach, or even appear to approach, the exercise of sacerdotal prerogatives were proscribed. Between the Decretals of Gratian (c. ) and the Decretals of Gregory IX (), the Church hierarchy reiterated and amplified old prohibitions, especially in view

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of growing numbers of semireligious women who made public their intimacy with Christ: women were not to preach, or touch sacred vessels or vestments of the church, or carry the consecrated host to the sick, or enter the church choir, or read the Gospel in public, or hear confession.49 Women’s pious interventions on behalf of the sick and the dead, in consonance with their sexually fettered spirituality, had to be confined to the narrow space between the Magdalen’s ardor caritatis in the Supper at Bethany and her restraint in the Noli me tangere. During the same period in which the Church hierarchy excluded women from any and all physical contact with the altar, it took steps more firmly than ever before to legislate and enforce clerical celibacy. Wet dreams, which did not involve the will and did not bear on the soul, could be excused. Clerical concubinage, perennially rife in rural parishes despite canon law, could not. Decrees promulgated at Lateran ii in  and Lateran iv in  consummated the Gregorian attack on relations with women as the pedestal on which to elevate a purified clergy above a laity engrossed in sexual reproduction.50 By the thirteenth century, however, the Church fell victim to the success of its own reformist rhetoric. In the face of spreading dualist, anticlerical heresies, particularly Catharism, increasing lay anxiety about priests’ ritual purity threatened to undermine ecclesiastical authority. Steps had to be taken to bolster confidence in the efficacy of the sacraments and the inviolability of the grace they conferred, irrespective of any individual priest’s personal merits or demerits. The apsidal theophany, which showed Christ himself instituting the sacrament of penance and investing Saint Peter with the keys, provided cover for priests whose private behaviors may have left their capacity as physicians of the soul open to doubt. In their liturgical service to Christ and the faithful, in their bodies’ unruly, womanly discharges, the secular canons of Saint-Aignan could take comfort in Martha. At the same time, the exclusively male preserve of ordination not only secured their masculinity, it also transmitted the power to bind and loose and—despite the fallen state that priests shared with all humanity, including women—authorized their imitation of Christ medicus in purging the hemorrhage of sin. Healing was another area of tension between rural clergy and women. The former profited from the cult of saints and controlled access to local shrines; the latter provided therapeutic services, mostly within the family, as empirics. Women’s social role to assure reproduction subsumed responsibility for fertility, childbirth, and the preservation of offspring in the face of high early childhood mortality. Daily life therefore required some knowledge of healing techniques transmitted from mothers to daughters.51 The allied realms of domestic health care and folk medicine entailed familiarity with the curative properties of plants, the concoction of unguents and potions, and magic.52

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Monica Green has shown, however, that women ministered to the sick in various capacities.53 She adduces evidence for the diversity of women’s therapeutic practices that effectively demolishes the simplistic assumption of a “sexual division of medical labor.” Women did not limit themselves to midwifery, gynecology, and pediatrics any more than men, conversely, renounced vested interests in these fields. Green calls into question the notion of a “natural” sphere in which women providers operated freely and posed no threat of competition to men. Rather, she argues, women’s independent practice was eventually proscribed precisely because it was implicated in social and economic conflicts dividing the larger web of providers. The ritual program of pilgrimage and prayer, penance and priestly unction, over which the Church held sway, coexisted with various profane medicines offered by a wide range of formally trained professionals (physicians, surgeons, barbers, apothecaries) and untrained practitioners (empirics, enchanters).54 A shared model of illness informed the divergent approaches of clergy, physicians trained within the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition of official medicine, and lay healers, who may or may not have resorted to magic. Symbolic representations of nature constituted the horizon within which disease could be explained, experienced, and treated. The sick body manifested a disruption in the created order (sin, humoral imbalance) and ultimately the intentionality of supernatural beings (God, saints, demons) or their malevolent human agents (sorcerers, witches).55 This common interpretive paradigm could only have exacerbated the rivalry between competing readings of the physical world. The sick might pursue any number of strategies over the course of illness. Following a hierarchy of resort, therapeutic itineraries could encompass the local wisewoman and the expensive professional before leading to the saints or, in the case of those afflicted with scrofula, the king.56 Green’s doubts about an uncontested feminine domain of medical practice pertain as well to the marginalized therapeutic culture most relevant to a rural context. Whereas licensure and guild regulation curtailed the practice of women professionals, including midwives, in an urban environment, clerical suspicion, surveillance, and censure targeted matrons and wisewomen in the rural parish. At stake were questions of authority and power. Who should be allowed to mediate between the body and external antagonistic forces, between micro- and macrocosm: the Church (through its relics, parish priests, and hospital institutions subject to the ecclesia matrix), or laywomen? On the legitimacy of women’s practice hinged ecclesiastical control of the rustici and adherence to beliefs branded by the Church as superstitious. Lauwers notes that women’s relationship to the dead made them privileged agents for the Christianization of the cult of the dead.57 I would argue that women’s traditional

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involvement in health care similarly made them a vector for penetrating the body of the laity. For insight into the kinds of challenges that women’s therapeutic culture posed to ecclesiastical patronage in the rural parish, we may turn to Alain Guerreau’s study of local pilgrimages in the Mâconnais.58 He analyzes several series of ritual perambulations. Two contrast so sharply as to reveal a bipolarity: (agricultural) production was the central concern of one pattern, (human) reproduction of another. Although the ethnographic evidence at Guerreau’s disposal dates from the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth centuries, he traces the evolution and consolidation of the underlying bipolar structure to the period between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. Pilgrimages on behalf of animals and crops were both collective undertakings and public events. They took place on the feast days of the particular saints invoked, centered on parish churches or otherwise articulated the institution of the parish, and were directed by priests. Quite the contrary applied for problems involving conception, childbirth, and sick children. Women trekked to cult sites located in isolated, deserted zones on the periphery of several parishes. The catalogue of saints invoked for women’s purposes included well-known thaumaturges, local versions of widely venerated saints, and many of dubious authenticity. In any event, women’s pilgrimages were divorced from the liturgical calendar and took place on an individual, ad hoc basis. Thus the personal and private nature of these ritual events corresponded to the unmarked, undifferentiated time of the everyday. Old women served as the counterpart to priests. Variously referred to in the ethnographic archive as priestesses (e.g., “la prêtresse du culte de SaintEtique”), healers (guérisseuses) and sorceresses (sorcières), they divined which cults were appropriate for which problems and, at the cult sites, recited prayers and accepted offerings. A complementarity of functions enabled the coexistence of two ritual poles. A third category of pilgrimages, undertaken for chronic adult infirmities of various sorts, was unevenly distributed within the bipolar structure. Pilgrimages undertaken for adult infirmities were split between attraction to parish churches on the one hand and absorption into the opposing pattern of women’s cults on the other. Slightly more than half of perambulations for adult infirmities shared the spatiotemporal characteristics discerned for women’s cults: that is, the journeys were not made on fixed dates according to a liturgical schedule, and the itineraries led to sites at the confines of parishes. In these pilgrimages also, old women recognized for their divinatory expertise and healing powers played a significant role. Women’s healing rites clearly exerted pressure on the parish church and the ecclesiastical hierarchy for which it

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stood. Reproductive and pediatric problems aside, women’s therapeutic culture successfully competed for the wider attention of the sick. Women’s healing practices not only diverted clientele from shrines in which the local clergy had a vested interest, but also undermined ecclesiastical control over the cult of saints, which they were portrayed as contaminating. An astonishing story told by the Dominican preacher Etienne de Bourbon (ca. –) affords insight into the clerical repression of folk culture through women’s healing rituals.59 As one of the first inquisitors, he had traveled through the region of the Rhône-Alpes, where he preached on sorcery and heard confession. Because an examination of conscience in search of superstition was an integral part of the confessor’s project, he discovered that peasants of several parishes in the Dombes (some forty kilometers north of Lyons) had come to venerate a greyhound, unjustly killed by its master, as a saint whom they called Guinefort. In particular, the dog’s remains were the focus of a cult on behalf of young children languishing between life and death. Women brought their sickly children to its grave, isolated in the wood. There, guided by a vetula, the mothers performed a complex, multistage ritual through which they hoped to exchange the sick babies, whom they saw as demonic changelings substituted by evil spirits, for their formerly healthy children. If a child survived the extremely harsh ordeal, the supernatural transaction was considered successful. The inquisitor had the grave site publicly destroyed, but the cult in fact survived into the early twentieth century. Etienne’s account takes the form of an exemplum illustrating superstitio as a sin of pride and appears in a discourse on the seven vices, a subsection of his unfinished treatise on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the introduction to his exemplum, he not only condemned the idolatry of women who sought health from elder trees and anthills, to which they brought their sick children, he also expressly set their therapeutic practices against divine medicine, namely the Church and the relics of saints. Ecclesiastical authority had long negated under the rubric superstitio many of the healing practices performed in the home or by empirics and vetulae.60 Suffice it here to recall that didactic literature, from the sermons of Caesarius of Arles to those ad status, and disciplinary tools, from penitentials to confessors’ manuals, singled out women as especially susceptible to the offenses of sorcery and divination.61 The topos suggests that the opposition between religio and superstitio can be correlated with other gendered dualities, such as ratio/sensualitas, through which sexual difference was articulated.62 The crypt paintings in the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan demarcated the canons’ territory within the medical landscape of the surrounding rural world. The apsidal theophany and the Giles cycle, replete with infirm and

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handicapped figures, appealed to an important group of pilgrims—the chronically ill or disabled—who, as Guerreau’s study suggests, might be lured by treatment options offered by women’s healing rituals. Having entered the reliquary space of the lower church to petition saints for miraculous cures, pilgrims met with images emphasizing the healing properties of confession, mandated by Christ and demonstrated by the figure of the penitent before Saint James. The Giles cycle, too, moves from the saint’s curative miracles to his miraculous invocation of God’s pardon, delivered during Mass. The glissement from thaumaturgy to penance, which requires sacerdotal mediation, securely locates therapeutic agency in the all-male reserve of the priesthood. Moreover, the clerical recuperation of divine medicine is accompanied by a symbolic appropriation of women’s therapeutic culture. Unguent and unction, contiguous with the salves, ointments, poultices, and potions that were the stock and trade of domestic health care as well as empirical practice,63 substitute for them in the healing rite proper to priests. The Magdalen anointed Christ for his burial, but James’s Epistle authorizes the priest’s unction of the sick and dying. Whereas the negative imperative “Noli me tangere” excluded women from the arena of divine medicine, the sacrament of penance came to be represented in terms associated with women’s therapeutic activities. If confession likened the contrite sinner to a woman in labor, then the priest who purged “the serpent of sin from the penitent’s heart” performed the role of the midwife.64 To be sure, charitable institutions supported by the Church frequently relied on women to attend the physical needs of the sick poor. But this only reaffirms ecclesiastical constraints on the role of women as healers, for the hospital setting characteristically reduced female personnel to a subservient, if not menial, status. Indeed, it was in the medieval hospital that a sexual division of medical practice did take shape—not according to fields of specialization, the avenue of inquiry pursued by Green—but rather along the gendered axis of body (relegated to women) and soul (reserved for priests). The logic that consigned to women the function of nursing the sick and, at the same time, prohibited them from independent medical practice comes into view at Levroux. Endowed with its own patrimony, the porticus of the collegiate church there was operated as a quasi-autonomous institution under the chapter’s supervision and control, much like other maisons-dieu. Male personnel under a magister or rector looked after the temporal assets of the house, while the secular canons oversaw, if they did not personally assume, its spiritual direction. A domina or magistrissa supervised the sorores porticus, who, with the help of servant girls (filia, ancilla, puella), cared for the afflicted.65 Healing was attributed to the relics of Saint Silvanus in the chapter’s custody; the sisters were left with the residual task of tending to physical needs. The

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body was merely a remaindered demonstration of the saint’s powers; it became the chapter’s property. The lord’s grant of the cured to the church meant that the canons had a vested interest in protecting their porticus as the stage for the diagnosis and cure of Saint Silvanus’s fire. On November , , the chapter moved to suppress the activity of a woman charged with treating its proprietary disease outside the ecclesiastical framework. The wife of André de Breuil came before the prior and all the canons convened in the sacristy and swore “spontaneously” that she would no longer interfere in the cure of any sick person, for it was said that she did so in the case of some persons languishing with the infirmitas b. silvani against the chapter’s privilege. The canons conceded, however, that if the lord called her for himself or for “his own” she might go a single time and see the sick person; she might not interfere beyond this either for him or for another, or perform any work, or offer any aid, but would say that she did not know how. For each healing henceforth, the chapter imposed a stiff fine.66 Of the specific techniques employed by matron de Breuil nothing is known. Simply to assume, in the absence of documentation, that she relied on magic or divination would be to reproduce the gendered terms of the ideological opposition between religio (the realm of the church) and superstitio (the natural proclivity of women). The supernatural, it is worth emphasizing, played no role in the proceedings. The canons did not refer to the wife of André de Breuil as any sort of enchantress, nor did they invoke the threat of punishment by the saint. Rather, the chapter’s restrictions and penalties implicitly acknowledged the efficacy of her practice even as they registered anxiety over her success. The cartulary’s fluctuating records of intake into the porticus dropped off midcentury, only to pick up again around .67 Mere coincidence? Might the practice of matron de Breuil have detracted from the shrine hospital? Or, alternatively, might she have proved a convenient scapegoat on which to blame a dwindling clientele? The reference to the lord in the chapter’s proceedings against de Breuil’s wife may provide a key to understanding her activity. Since the canons thought that the lord might send for her, he must then have been aware of her practice. This raises the intriguing possibility that her interference in the cure of the saint’s disease, “against the privilege of the prior and chapter” (contra privilegium prioris et capituli), if not expressly mandated or authorized by the lord, at least enjoyed his tacit support. After all, a local alternative to the porticus would have worked to his advantage. But if the rival interests of seigneurial power created an opportunity for women’s practice, the chapter guarded against the erosion of its privilege by tightening its claims on the sick body.

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Because matron de Breuil’s intervention threatened the canons’ mediating role in the circulation of divine medicine from the saint to the laity, her practice was severely circumscribed. She was prohibited from further treating any sick person regardless, it would seem, of the disease involved.68 She could visit the lord’s household once only and even then could do no more than look upon the patient; admitting lack of knowledge or skill, she must excuse herself from offering treatment. To the sorores porticus, who had no part in the spiritual/supernatural loop of the healing process, the canons abandoned the mundane aspects of the body’s care: its feeding, nursing, and washing. Conversely, de Breuil’s wife, whom the chapter judged to have usurped its rightful place, was denied physical contact with the body. The canons insisted, in effect, that she adhere to the principle “Noli me tangere,” whereby she would be reduced to a passive spectator. The actors at Levroux performed the roles previously scripted in pictorial terms at Saint-Aignan. Having made penance the precondition for healing, the paintings insinuated the clergy into the flow of divine medicine. Works of mercy as satisfaction for sin were the only means that the Church left open to women in whose hands families and communities had entrusted their welfare.

infirmity as social boundary

The sacerdotal agenda put forward by the crypt paintings brings into focus a pivotal moment in medieval definitions of Christian community. The work’s funerary orientation presupposes that rites for the dying and the dead had long displaced baptism as the primary means by which the Church sought to inscribe the faithful, spiritually and territorially, within the administrativegeographic structure of the parish. To lay claim to the dead through control over their resting place was to consolidate jurisdiction over the inhabitants of a given district, for the living congregated around the ancestral corps into which they would one day be absorbed. Images making priestly unction and reconciliation a final sign of God’s forgiveness complemented the clergy’s critical interest in protecting the burial rights of parish churches, the most visible prerogative of ecclesiastical patronage. At the same time, the pictorial assimilation of confession to a therapeutic regimen foreshadowed new concerns, articulated at the Fourth Lateran Council, about the organic constitution of Christian community.69 Two edicts promulgated in  attacked the unseen causes of physical infirmity, that is, sin, with spiritual weapons and, conversely, framed the spiritual welfare of the faithful in medical terms. Canon  required that doctors

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refer the sick in the first instance to priests. Guiding the soul away from sin and toward God was to be the primary line of the body’s defense against illness. As sickness of the body may sometimes be the result of sin—as the Lord said to the sick man whom he had cured, Go and sin no more, lest something worse befall you—so we by this present decree order and strictly command physicians of the body, when they are called to the sick, to warn and persuade them first of all to call in physicians of the soul so that after their spiritual health has been seen to they may respond better to medicine for their bodies; for when the cause ceases so does the effect.70 Canon , famous for its imposition of mandatory universal confession, enjoined every Christian to undergo an annual spiritual examination. Public integration into local society during one’s life (Easter Communion, entry into the church building) and after death (Christian burial) depended on compliance. All of the faithful of either sex, after they have reached the age of discernment, should individually confess all their sins in a faithful manner to their own priest at least once a year, and let them take care to do what they can to perform the penance imposed on them. Let them reverently receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least at Easter. . . . Otherwise they shall be barred from entering a church during their lifetime and they shall be denied a Christian burial at death. . . . If any persons wish, for good reasons, to confess their sins to another priest let them first ask and obtain the permission of their own priest; for otherwise the other priest will not have the power to absolve or to bind them. The priest shall be discerning and prudent, so that like a skilled doctor he may pour wine and oil over the wounds of the injured one. Let him carefully inquire about the circumstances of both the sinner and the sin, so that he may prudently discern what sort of advice he ought to give and what remedy to apply, using various means to heal the sick person.71 In prescribing that all the faithful (canon ) regularly receive treatment due the sick (canon ), Lateran iv effectively declared the Christian community a chronic patient. The annual confession of each and every individual amounted to a collective remedy, a purgative that would restore the social group by tending to the cohesion of its members. The council not merely made repeated penance compulsory but obliged the faithful to confess to the parish priest or another

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with his consent.72 Ongoing priestly care now preempted both (infant) baptism and burial, the termini bracketing the life cycle, as the ritual criterion that determined the place of the self in Christian society. The health of souls took precedence over the location of the deceased in the effort of the thirteenthcentury Church to bind communities to landed districts for the purpose of their ecclesiastical supervision. At the sacred hub of Saint-Aignan, the lower church, with its altered point of entry and thematic emphasis on expiation, renegotiated public access to the site of mediation between the living and the dead. The call to penance on behalf of one’s own soul and the souls of ancestors and spouses here paved the way for an entrenched correlation, pursuant to Lateran iv, between spiritual membership in the Christian community and adherence to a territorial unit, the parish, where interred bodies awaited resurrection. Canons  and  adroitly used conventional, even clichéd, metaphors of healing to give physical substance to sin expunged through confession. The resonance between the apsidal theophany and the scene of Christ healing/ purging Martha’s hemorrhage makes an analogous point. Confession ensures the ritual purity of the faithful who will partake of Christ’s body and blood materially present in the Eucharist at the moment the priest pronounces the words of the consecration. The transubstantiation of bread and wine (as declared in the preamble to the legislation of Lateran iv) parallels the transformations that divine medicine effects in the infirm even as it announces the restoration of the body and its integral redemption with the soul at the Last Day. The miracle of the altar, which regularly occurred in the crypt before the image on the apsidal vault, underwrites the miracles performed by saints present in their relics. Through it, the overflowing of grace nullifies the superabundance of sin that stains fallen humanity. Yet, as a pair, canons  and  of Lateran iv signal a shift in the object of the cathartic model from the cleansing of personal sins to the expulsion of (unrepentant) persons. Over the course of the thirteenth century, this insinuation of medical discourse into the realm of social policy found a “natural” target in lepers, unclean by scriptural definition and therefore a malignant, noxious entity to be excised or spewed forth from the collective body of the “whole.” The more concrete the equation between sin and disease, and, at the same time, the more generalized its application, the more sharply leprosy functioned as the proverbial line in the sand dividing the common lot of the entire community from the singular destiny reserved for an unfortunate minority. Once every Christian had to submit to penitential therapy befitting the sick, once infection or injury characterized the spiritual state of all, then conditions were ripe for subjecting the leprous few to increasingly radical

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isolation. What qualified the faithful universally, namely an inward pathology blighting the soul, could be turned against victims of a particular physical affliction. While no one could escape disease and death, the wages of sin, lepers were reduced by their symbolically charged infirmity to being nothing but the living embodiment of the continuity between moral corruption and carnal degeneration. Metaphors matter. This proposition feeds into conclusions that François-Olivier Touati has drawn from his analysis of leprosy as a social phenomenon in France between the fourth and mid-fourteenth centuries. His monumental studies cover a vast region between the Marne and Loire coextensive with the ecclesiastical province of Sens (comprising, under Sens, the suffragan dioceses of Meaux, Paris, Chartres, Orléans, Nevers, Auxerre, and Troyes).73 Refuting modern popular misconceptions, Touati demonstrates that medieval representations of the disease and its sufferers were neither monolithic nor static. Rather, conflicting attitudes, shaped by ambivalent biblical paradigms and their diverse application, responded over time to broader social movements and economic pressures. Contrary to received opinion, medieval lepers were not uniformly abhorred, nor approaches to their condition invariantly coercive. Multiple factors in play at certain historical moments allowed tensions within the discourse on leprosy and lepers to take different turns. Touati discerns a spiritualization of the disease in the late eleventh century and the first part of the twelfth on account of which the afflicted gained in dignity. He distinguishes the treatment usual during this phase from the harsh rhetoric and repressive measures aimed at lepers by the middle of the thirteenth century. The transition away from a more compassionate regard began to set in around Lateran iii (), which produced legislation governing the establishment of leproseries, and quickened toward rejection and revilement after Lateran iv ().74 Ostracism and excoriation culminated in , when widely circulated rumors of a plot by lepers to poison wells throughout the kingdom of France led to retaliatory massacres.75 Although Touati’s research corroborates some aspects of the picture that Robert Ian Moore sketched in his well-known  book, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, it corrects or nuances many others. On the whole, though, Touati’s work complements, rather than invalidates, Moore’s theses. Touati’s comprehensive investigation of a single stigmatized minority leads to a refined, differentiated chronology of the changing status of its constituency. For Moore, lepers were the particular object of “a comprehensive apparatus of persecution . . . codified” by Lateran iii.76 Accordingly, he interprets twelfth-century foundations of leproseries in the context of a general move to banish the diseased, who, not surprisingly, preferred confinement to a far more precarious

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subsistence in the wilderness.77 Touati, however, refuses to read back into the goals of twelfth-century institutions a finality that, devolving from an ensemble of mutations, was realized only much later in the thirteenth.78 Moore’s assertion to the contrary, Canon  of Lateran iii (quoted above, Chapter ) by no means dictated the segregation or sequestration of lepers.79 Cum dicat apostolus may be said to have set the stage for erosion of their plight not because it universally imposed a specific course of action on the sick (it did not) but because, far more subtly, it presumed a religious model of communal life ultimately used against lepers. I will return to Touati’s argument later. Here it suffices to say that, in his view, Lateran iii announces the “prodromes” of lepers’ untenable predicament rather than the end game of their degradation.80 This chronology in fact brings the deteriorating status of lepers into line with that which Moore outlines for heretics and Jews: “a comprehensive apparatus of persecution was worked out towards the end of the twelfth century, codified by the Fourth Lateran Council of  . . . , and perfected by the middle of the thirteenth century or soon after.” The Saint-Aignan paintings of c.  belong to a period of transition during which the sick poor, particularly lepers, began to evolve from brother to other. Considering the painted crypt in relation to the local leprosery may offer insight into the nature of the interaction between the hospital and the surrounding society from which its residents presumably came. How might the work have played into modulations in the contemporary discourse on leprosy and lepers? To explore this question is to trace cultural construction of the leper along a dynamic continuum. Images of the leper, ambiguous and contradictory, were open to reformulation: divinely elected to a quasi-religious vocation, reduced to providing the “clean” an opportunity for redemption, outcast. Only in light of a gradual process of degradation do the violent attacks against lepers in  and the mock funerary rites invented long thereafter to seal their exclusion throw into relief the profound transformation of late medieval society.81 The modern scientific appellation of the bacillus responsible for leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, discovered by Armauer Hansen in –, consummated the legacy of a misnomer more than two thousand years old.82 The term lepra, as first used in the Hippocratic Corpus of the fifth century b.c., had originally referred to many diverse, relatively benign dermatoses; no single verbal formula in the lexicon of classical Greek medicine covered the cluster of symptoms properly associated with Hansen’s disease. The mutilating effects of Mycobacterium leprae, however, had already been observed since the second millennium before Christ in some parts of the ancient world (India, later China, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Phoenicia) and eventually did come to the attention

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of the Greeks. In the third century b.c., Alexandrian physicians accurately described the most spectacular form of Hansen’s disease, lepromatous leprosy. Their appellation, elephantiasis, and its Latin equivalents, elephas morbus and elephantia, recur in Greco-Roman sources from the first century b.c. through the second century a.d. (notably Lucretius, Pliny the Elder, Celsus, Plutarch, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, and Galen, among others). By then, the disease had spread from the Nile Delta into Italy and, with the Roman legions, penetrated the European territories of the empire, where it became endemic in the early Middle Ages. Archaeological evidence, however spotty, confirms that lepromatous leprosy was indeed present in medieval Europe. Thanks meanwhile to the expansion of Christianity in late antiquity, lepra came into usage as a familiar synonym for elephantiasis, which it ultimately replaced. The more ancient medical term gained ground for the simple reason that it had entered the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible prepared in Alexandria in the third and second centuries b.c. Ironically, during the very period when the city’s Greek physicians had just begun to register Hansen’s disease under a new name, the rabbis adopted lepra for the Hebrew word tsara’ath, the dreaded affliction and state of ritual impurity described in Leviticus.83 Lepra then became part of the vocabulary of the New Testament. With the dissemination in the Latin West of the Vulgate edition of the scriptures, produced by Saint Jerome (c. –), common reference to lepra freed elephantiasis for application to another malady altogether. The microbial etiology of leprosy could not, of course, have been known in the medieval world, yet this does not mean that clinical appreciation of its most virulent, lepromatous, form was deficient. The operative medical tradition, inherited from late antiquity, permitted accurate identification of the principal, unequivocal signs of Hansen’s disease.84 Although cutaneous manifestations were critical to its diagnosis, the generalized nature of the assault on the entire body was never in doubt. Equally well understood was the fact that the slow irremediable progression of symptoms—nodules (lepromas) or reddish macular lesions, anesthetized zones, tumefaction of members, depilation, facies leonina—did not hasten death but, worse, made the leper’s life a hideous spectacle. Leprosy was not confused with or indiscriminately applied to exanthematous diseases, not a catch-all rubric for dermatosis, not some umbrella concept of the grotesque. Were individuals wrongly diagnosed with leprosy? In all probability (just as low-grade infections resulting in tuberculoid and borderline leprosy quite likely went undetected). But on what scale? Moore raises a valid question when he wonders whether “the suspicion of leprosy” might not have fallen on socially vulnerable targets. Less clear, or at least open to dispute, is the charge that reliance on “equivocal” behavioral symptoms

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(e.g., “short temper”) made “the diagnosis of leprosy . . . capable of providing a far-reaching principle upon which almost anybody might be excluded from the community on the basis of a minimal consensus that they ought to be.”85 Yet even were the point to be conceded, it begs the issue of chronology. When might leprosy have been thus exploited? Encouraged by what configuration of circumstances might denunciation, false accusation, and spurious prosecution of persons branded as lepers have become potent instruments of persecution?86 Doubts about the medieval detection of leprosy have long been fueled by the vexed assumption that the remarkable proliferation of leproseries in the period c. – reflects a rapidly growing population of lepers. Either a gross inflation of putative cases or a dramatic rise in the actual incidence of the disease, almost to epidemic proportions, is supposed. The first inference is problematic given textual witnesses both to competency in the recognition of Hansen’s disease and to a serious process of examination by experienced persons (not necessarily academically trained physicians). The second inference, however, can be ruled out. The skepticism with which Moore evaluates the theory of an expanding rate of infection across Europe during this period is borne out by Touati’s extrapolation and circumspect review of statistical data from materials concerning the ecclesiastical province of Sens. After taking into account the distribution of  leproseries and their variable capacity for care relative to disparate population densities in the eight constituent dioceses, Touati estimates the maximum incidence of infection across the entire province (, parishes), its total population around . million: he puts the upper bound at five to eight cases per thousand, significantly less than in areas of the world where leprosy is now most prevalent. The statistic extrapolated for the region between the Marne and the Loire is comparable to other parts of France and Flanders for which data is available.87 If leprosy cannot be dismissed as a figment of the medieval imagination, neither should its prevalence be exaggerated. In any event, Touati reasons, conditions more favorable to the propagation of Hansen’s disease existed before, rather than after, the eleventh century, when the quality of life began to improve.88 Just as the bumper crop of leproseries founded in the twelfth century cannot be interpreted as an objective response to an intensified threat of leprosy, real or perceived, so the slide from degrees of sympathy to outright intolerance cannot be attributed to the increasing visibility of lepers. Explanations for the foundation and support of leper communities, on the one hand, and for the deteriorating status of lepers as a group, on the other, have to be sought instead in the larger historical and cultural matrix. Two complementary trends visible in the ecclesiastical province of Sens put the twelfth-century “explosion” of leproseries into perspective. First, three waves

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of foundations (before , beginning around /, after –) were integral to the installation of a larger hospital infrastructure during the same period. Overall, the number of leproseries roughly equaled that of maisonsdieu. Along the well-settled Loire, no locality equipped with the former lacked the latter; some fifteen couplings, for example, appeared within a distance of a hundred kilometers. In “metropolitan” pockets like Paris and Orléans, more localities supported only one type of hospital institution, since services were easily shared between closely knit, neighboring communities. The farther from urban centers, where hospitals were more numerous, the greater the tendency for a burg or village to organize the full gamut of relief in establishments of more ample capacity. By far the majority of leproseries were of quite modest size, as were also maisons-dieu; very few hospitals in the province housed as many as twenty or thirty occupants, resident staff, and sick combined. The leper population seems to have been nearly evenly split between higher concentration in a handful of important establishments outside the larger towns and extreme dispersion in scattered small houses (in some instances one leper per site).89 Second, what distinguished leproseries from maisons-dieu—a permanent group of resident “patients”—related them to small religious communities proliferating at a comparable rate. No less than the network of hospitals, growing numbers of monasteries and rural priories were indicative of the twelfth century’s boom economy. Expanded exploitation of the land and unprecedented development of the built environment went hand in hand.90 Hospital and conventual foundations were the measure neither of the sickness of the population nor of the spirituality of the age, but of surplus resources funneled into the cycle of gift exchange, already discussed, between donors and the religious/the poor/the dead. The reform movements that took off in the late eleventh century and flourished in the first half of the twelfth created a missionary context within which leprosy acquired a “positive,” or productive, function. Patristic exegesis of scripture had made leprosy a theophany in a double sense: its appearance and miraculous remission represented the fullness of God’s power to strike down and grant amnesty at will, while, as a terminal state of being, it also epitomized the depth to which Christ suffered, quasi leprosum (Isa. :), in coming into and redeeming the world.91 The very repulsiveness of the leper’s body made it a vital sign of the sacred, now flashing forth the Lord’s terrible wrath, now the boundless compassion of the Man of Sorrows. What could be more awesome than the total collapse of two polar absolutes, the eternal Glory of the deity and the utter abjection of festering, putrid flesh? Heightened awareness of leprosy as a paradox encapsulating the central mysteries of the Incarnation and Passion emanated from a circle of reformers that included

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Anselm of Laon and Hugh of Saint-Victor, Yves of Chartres and Bernard of Clairvaux, Robert of Arbrissel and Norbert of Prémontré. Leprosy, like every catastrophe, demonstrated the inscrutable ways of God. Yet no infirmity, no earthly condition, was more completely identified with Christ, at once fully God and fully human. Between preaching conversion and practicing evangelical ideals of poverty in austere communal settings, theologians and “activists” situated lepers within a logic of spiritual purification. Divine chastisement of the body worked to the advantage of the soul. Better to endure a tough penance during one’s life than the fires of purgation after death. If the path of comtemptus mundi and contemptus corporis led to heaven, a most expeditious route opened up to lepers whose flesh God himself had chosen to mortify.92 Leprosy was a rod driving the stricken beyond earthly attachments into the bosom of the Father. To turn affliction into salvation, to realize the special grace bestowed on them, could lepers do better than follow the lead of the new orders that everywhere reinvented the apostolic life? Founded before , the first leproseries in the province studied by Touati (at Blois, Chartres, Châteaudun, Dreux, Étampes, Melun, Orléans, Paris, Pontoise, Sens, Troyes) translated the revival of monastic asceticism into a lay sphere.93 Their purpose—to formalize the gathering of ordinary men and women, humbled by divine reproof, into one penitent body. But what type of religious profession suited individuals unprepared for a vocation suddenly thrust on them by disease? Congregations of lepers did not owe obedience to a monastic rule. Nevertheless they emulated discipline consistent with regular principles: renunciation of the saeculum, communal possession of goods, adherence to routines of manual labor and prayer and to chastity. How to insert leproseries into an evolving ecclesiastical framework remained vague, yet it was precisely their ad hoc character that contributed to their appeal. The earliest communities of lepers attracted endowments, grants, and privileges from kings and the highest nobility (e.g., Louis VI, Henry I, Thibaud IV and Thibaud V of Blois-Champagne). Their material success encouraged a second and even a third wave of local seigneurial foundations, which, however, never attained the same degree of importance. Saint-Lazare of Noyers, its exquisite chapel of c.  still extant on the north bank of the Cher across from Saint-Aignan, was one of twenty-six leproseries in the diocese of Orléans ( parishes); as many as seventeen were created in the twelfth century alone (i.e., are documented already by ), another three appear in the archival record by , six more by .94 The experimentation that had stimulated the initial formation of leper communities was short-lived.95 Within two or three generations, the indeterminate nature of their mission began to grate against an increasingly rigid definition

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of the religious life. Canon  of Lateran iii implied that communities of lepers should conform to submonastic standards even as it left intact their subparochial status. Leproseries proved vulnerable on both counts, falling victim over time to the invasive politics of ecclesiastical or municipal patronage and to their own hybrid structure. In leper houses everywhere, healthy brethren who joined the hospital community to share in God’s blessings (and find some measure of temporal security) greatly outnumbered the sick. Well before lepers faced systematic persecution, they were marginalized within the very establishments meant to provide for their refuge. As in maisons-dieu, the professed religious came to constitute “the community,” easing lepers out of any role in the day-to-day administration of the house. A liturgically trained staff accomplished the intercessory services with which, after , leproseries came to be burdened in response to the burgeoning demand for postmortem suffrage. Where individuals afflicted with leprosy may once have attempted to internalize the call to conversion divinely written on their bodies, they became inmates sentenced to perpetual penance for the salvation of others. Where viable communities of lepers were once tied into local agrarian and market economies, their houses became occasional stations in penitential processions, seemingly as remote from the bustle of city life as old monasteries were from the new mendicant convents. Lepers who had not joined communities or who had received permission from (healthy) superiors to solicit alms on behalf of their houses swelled the ranks of an urban underclass of beggars and itinerants. By the late thirteenth century, the medicalized stereotype of the irascible leper, derelict, foul, and lascivious, drowned out the competing paradigm of the poor Lazarus, whose sores preachers and doctors of the Church licked with the word of God. The collegiate church at Saint-Aignan was the shared destination of many. Might not its painted crypt also have been a point of departure for processions to Saint-Lazare of Noyers? The monumental two-storey porch framing the crypt’s sole entrance was aligned with a sloping path down to the main thoroughfare and bridge over the Cher (figs. , ). The architectural reorganization of the north flank of the church made the site conducive to a type of ritual use that, according to late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century sources, was current elsewhere. With their insistence on conversion and spiritual renewal, penance and forgiveness, the images painted in the lower church promoted the goals to which two distinct sorts of processions to leproseries were geared. The ceremonial reception of lepers admitted to quasi-religious houses may have commenced with a farewell procession. In  an accord between the leprosery of Montgeron, south of Paris, and the abbey of Saint-Victor, its ecclesiastical patron, stipulated how revenues should be divided between the

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lepers and the parish priest. The latter was to receive a fixed sum from the offerings collected at processions to the lepers’ chapel when a prospective member sought entry into the fraternity of the sick; the priest was not so entitled on the occasion of other processions to the chapel.96 A literary text from roughly the same period, Amis et Amiles, also attests to the practice of accompanying the leper (in this case, the epic hero Amis) to his new dwelling.97 Public escorts of the sick who quit local secular society for the nearby leprosery appear to have been as informal and improvised as they were sporadic. Gestures subsequently performed at the leprosery itself—oath, revestment in a habit, prayer or Mass—imitated initiation into the religious professions.98 In  Odo of Sully, bishop of Paris, approved the performance of Mass at the leprosery of Tournan-en-Brie whenever a frater or soror joined the community.99 The welcome celebrated the group’s incorporation of another member and the newcomer’s belonging to the group; the ritual focus was inclusion and reaggregation. The procession and reception of lepers acknowledged departure and arrival as two continuous phases in the passage from a worldly to a spiritual life; leaving one community was the necessary first step in adhering to another. Through death, rebirth. Indeed, the funerary resonance generic to rites of claustration was much less pronounced for lepers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than for females entering seclusion. The ceremonial enclosure of the anchoress, not the congés of the leper, entailed a Requiem Mass, after which she received extreme unction, lay in a grave dug in her cell, and felt the handful of earth strewn over her by the bishop.100 Similarly, virgins taking the veil donned their shroud as well as their bridal garment. Far from an extraordinary display of rejection directed specifically at lepers, the sepulchral dimension of initiation into the spiritual life was the dominant symbolic convention for rupture with one’s former worldly state; its brutality was par for the course of God’s provident design. Leprosy, like the cloister or the anchorage, cleaved individuals from society so that souls might cleave unto a path of return to God. Who was the isolated, or separated, party? Descriptions of entry into the leprosery sometimes blurred or inverted the roles of the afflicted and the healthy. The cartulary of the Grand Beaulieu reports, not without poignance, the sad parting of a husband and wife at the door of the Chartrain leprosery in : when, infected with leprosy, Bartholomew took the habit and entered the religious house, Maria was “segregated” (“segregata fuisset,” i.e., put aside), and abandoned (“a dicto Bartholomeo, marito suo, sic relicta”).101 Paintings in the lower church of Saint-Aignan potentially spoke to both sides of the cleave. The scene of the Raising of Lazarus on the vault of the axial chapel does not end with Christ’s

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beckoning Lazarus to come forth from the tomb, but shows the resurrected Lazarus reinserted into a company of witnesses. An individual about to depart for the local leprosery together with loved ones who would there bid farewell may have sought in the pictorial image a way beyond the pain of separation to a resigned acceptance of new beginnings. An image of the Raising of Lazarus once displayed at the entrance to the leprosery of Brie-le-Comte may have served the same purpose.102 For the leper and his or her entourage taking the route from Saint-Aignan to Noyers, the path through the cemetery outside the crypt portal led quite literally beyond the grave to Saint-Lazare. Such a procession would have reenacted the emergence of Lazarus from the tomb and would have made the leper a living image of the Gospel prototype, reborn into the religious life until finally succumbing to a second death. In stark contrast, the latter-day liturgies for the separation of lepers, found only in printed rituals of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, retain none of the ambiguity of an initiation ceremony. Their macabre staging of a Requiem Mass and symbolic burial, followed by the recitation of prohibitions barring the leprous from contact with society, focuses exclusively on social death. Instead of reincorporation into a quasireligious order, the leper confronts only the bleakness of solitary exile. Not surprisingly, highly formalized rites of separatio came into being at a time when endemic leprosy, curtailed by the spread of tuberculosis, had all but vanished from most of the European continent.103 Within a fossilized ritual canon, the only model available to the lone figure of the leper was the most extreme reclusion. Late-twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources attest to a second class of processions orchestrated by the clergy for the benefit of the healthy. These exercises turned leproseries into prime destinations for collective penitential prayer. Chapters of canons and parishes processed annually to local leproseries at the start or conclusion of Easter week (Palm Sunday for Saint-Cloud, Easter Monday for Tournan), during Rogations (Rogations Monday for Saint-Lazare, Paris), or on the feast days of patron saints. The leprosery of Closebarbe (Provins) received the chapter of Saint Quiriace on the feast of Saint Mark (April ), the day also of its fair; the Parisian leprosery of Le Roule similarly celebrated the feast of Saints James and Philip (May ), and Pontoise, one of the feasts of the Holy Cross (May , September ). Processions are also known to have occurred at Montgeron from . In , the archbishop of Sens instituted an annual procession, for all parishioners of the diocese, to the leprosery of the Popelin on the Sunday before the feast of Saint John the Baptist. Saint-Lazare at Blois hosted annual processions on three feasts (Lazarus, Saint John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalen), and by the end of the thirteenth

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century, the number had multiplied to include the octaves as well.104 The chapter of Saint-Aignan conceivably organized similar events, although there is no direct evidence for the Middle Ages. Early-seventeenth-century documentation mentions that the canons indeed had a “long tradition” of processing to Saint-Lazare of Noyers annually on Rogations Monday; the chapter processed to the chapel of Saint-André during the May Rogation days and, according to a sixteenth-century source, to the maison-dieu on Pentecost. Perhaps the patronal feasts of Lazarus (leprosery) and Giles/Loup (maison-dieu), which coincided on September , provided an occasion for a circuit that departed from the north porch of the lower church and encompassed both institutions.105 By granting indulgences to the participating faithful, the ecclesiastical hierarchy recognized leproseries as privileged sites of intercession.106 Liturgically well-organized perambulations to leproseries inverted the logic of divine intervention in pilgrimage. Typically, the sick journeyed to the shrines of saints, peacefully asleep in their tombs, in order to solicit miraculous cures for infirm bodies. At leper houses, however, the well sought remission of sins—spiritual health—through the intermediary of the afflicted, in whom the suffering Christ was present. Catherine Peyroux traces an analogous inversion in hagiography: whereas the holy thaumaturge of the early Middle Ages heals the leper and thereby demonstrates divine power, the leprous body of high medieval accounts heals the soul of the saint by enabling union with Christ.107 As I have argued above, the paintings in the lower church at Saint-Aignan visualized in no uncertain terms the role of the sick poor in transmitting divine grace. Most wretched and miserable of all was the leper, for whom the common term of reference, misellus (mesel), meant just that. Insofar as the pictorial program engaged the suffering of pauperes christi for the spiritual repair of the community at large, it helped create a special caste of intercessors whose wounded flesh did for the healthy what the mortal remains of saints did for the sick. In the early twelfth century, an era of monastic reform, leprosy could serve a spiritually useful purpose if it led the diseased person to shed bodily cares and set out on the road to conversion and redemption. A century later, purgatory had unleashed a flourishing new economy of postmortem suffrage within which lepers fulfilled a productive function: so long as they remained institutionally ensconced in religious communities, they opened local conduits of intercession anchored to the land and available for activation on designated occasions. Again, the hagiographic lore studied by Peyroux is revealing, for once the leper sanctifies the saint, he vanishes (miraculously) from the narrative scene. Persecution, Moore contends, was bred of systemic developments in the exercise of power through specialized institutions and their professional bureaucracies: “It served to stimulate and assist the development of the claims

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and techniques of government in church and state, as well as the cohesiveness and confidence of those who operated it.”108 Lepers, heretics, and Jews bore the brunt of strategies that stabilized a political and social order around central authority and religious conformity. Yet, as Paul Freedman reminds us, it is only by breaking down “othering discourses” into their specific historical profiles that fault lines in medieval constructions of Christian community can properly be exposed.109 Lepers constituted a nonnegligible minority as familiar in Europe as Jews and heretics—but critically distinguished from these proximate “others” in one terrifying respect. Whereas Jews were born into difference and heretics chose theirs, no Christian could complacently claim immunity from the invasive ravages of disease. Behind every leprous face was a former neighbor, a family member, oneself. Members of the majority faith, even those seemingly in good standing, were not necessarily spared. Lepers were more dreaded than Jews and heretics precisely because they proved that an unseen blade cut across the usual social boundaries of birth, class, and religious affiliation. Leprosy was a branding all the more painful because it was personal. To exorcize this public specter of private sin—by favoring moralizing explanations for leprosy and by policing the diseased—became a priority for a society that increasingly sought protection in well-defined categories of group identity.

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CONCLUSION the art of healing

Investigating the Saint-Aignan paintings at the intersection of healing and spatial practices restores the decorated church to the social dynamics in which it was imbricated. Images embellishing the apse and radial chapels of the crypt, its relics a magnet for the dead and infirm, were harbingers of divine medicine. Their potential therapeutic function depended on the viewer’s active participation in the prescribed spiritual regimen. Depicted interactions provided models of prayer, submission, and penance to which supplicants might conform their external behavior in order to awaken the proper interior disposition toward God and the saints. If embraced with the eyes of perfect faith, holy figures impressed themselves directly onto the devoted soul and through the receptive body. The abundance of grace could well lead to physical recovery in this world, but, more important, salvation would return the soul to a glorified body for eternity. Either way, a wounded heart was the prerequisite for the self made whole. Saints left behind their relics as sacred conduits of a saving/healing power with which the crypt’s painted images induced supplicants to cooperate. The pictorial program of c.  nevertheless insisted on the exclusive role of priests in administering sacramental remedies. Through unction, confession, and communion, the sick and dying touched

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Christ medicus. Through alms disbursed by the chapter for local poor relief, the faithful anointed Christ’s feet. Remission of sin, which God granted the contrite, repentant soul, took effect upon absolution and reconciliation performed by priests. Works of mercy imposed by the clergy as satisfaction for sin shortened the penitent’s term of purgation in the afterlife. The interdependence of body and soul in the healing process had as its corollary the interdependence of the living and the dead in the economy of salvation. Images that solicited conversion and expiation from pilgrims hoping to be cured also identified the care of paupers with the fate of the deceased. The earthly poverty of the one foreshadowed the spiritual distress of the other. To feed and clothe the needy meant relief for pained souls. In the hereafter, the powerful traded places with the weak; now the beggar was in a position to offer a prayer for the benefactor’s comfort. The purgative value of charity undertaken in the name of departed kin had long been factored into the cycle of gift exchange that fueled nobles’ dynastic concerns. The paintings carried a message appropriate for the lord of Saint-Aignan and his family to inhabitants of the increasingly prosperous borough growing around the slopes of the plateau: burghers, too, would do well to invest in suffrage. At the same time, the programmatic emphasis of the ensemble on penance helped to shift the basis of membership in Christian community from burial amid ancestors in the parish cemetery to mandatory confession. Even as the origins of the crypt lay in the relationship between seigneurial privilege and ecclesiastical patronage, the decorative commission both encouraged bourgeois interest in personal remembrance and promoted clerical supervision of a more urbanized milieu. It shaped the transition from the twelfth-century culture of customary authority to thirteenth-century realities of new capital and ecclesiastical surveillance. Modalities of visual engagement with the work reinforced class- and sexbased asymmetries inherent in the spiritual transactions that crossed the boundary between this world and the next. To be sure, the single north portal serving castellan, townsfolk, and wayfarers underscored the penitential status of all who penetrated the reliquary and funerary space, regardless of their worldly rank. No doubt, too, that the central composition on the vault above the main altar elevated paupers, surrogates for the dead, into the presence of the Majesty. Or that male figures of crippled beggars and the wounded Giles steadfast in his affliction would have appealed to women pilgrims suffering from the disorders that plagued the lower classes. Or that images of Christ’s venerated female disciples, Mary Magdalen and hemorrhaging Martha, counseled men in the virtues of penance and faith, charity and surrender. Still, pictorial representation that objectified the sick poor as instruments for the redemption of others also circumscribed women’s relationship to the

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sacred. When male supplicants begged God’s forgiveness and bathed Christ’s feet with their tears, their voluntary assumption of a feminine subject position adhered to the Christian paradigm of reversal. Similarly, the involuntary nocturnal emissions of male clergy, equivalent to menstruation, did not constitute sin. Men profited from feminine abjection before God, but feminine pollution did not detract from their necessary monopoly of the sacraments. By contrast, women’s biology was determinative of their spirituality; their tears of repentance—as natural, given the excess moisture of female bodies, as their promiscuity—earned no special credit. Widows and daughters properly assuaged the souls of deceased husbands and fathers through almsgiving and prayer, leaving the highest form of suffrage, the Mass, to priests. Women caretakers in hospital institutions tended to the ailing bodies of the living, but healing flowed from grace mediated by saints and priests. Vision was one component of the therapeutic protocol formulated by the painted crypt, movement through space another. The sick body, its ills dispersed onto the land through peripheral cult sites at staging distance from the collegiate and parish church, recovered its wholeness through pilgrimage to the principal sanctuary. There, the titular saints of outlying dependencies were gathered together in the crypt’s radial chapels. Thus asserting its priority over subsidiary charitable institutions, the ecclesia matrix subsumed the hagiographic collection into a spatial paradigm that referenced the distant shrines of major saints, Giles, Lazarus, Mary Magdalen, James, Peter. The collegiate and parish church reclaimed its local centrality by realizing within itself a microcosm of the orbis christianus. Exploiting the architectural communication between crypt and burial ground, which visitors had to traverse in order to enter the lower church, the ensemble represented death as the consequence of sin, penance as the means to life everlasting. Conversely, processions from the crypt’s monumental porch to nearby hospitals under the chapter’s tutelage sharpened healthy participants’ consciousness of their own mortality—before they approached the sick poor for prayers on behalf of their souls. Lepers, who may have processed from the crypt to Saint-Lazare as part of a ritualized farewell, would have relived the Raising of Lazarus painted in the axial chapel: their path through the cemetery culminated in rebirth into a lay penitential community. Yet, just as the work cultivated burghers’ desire for suffrage, just as it “looked forward” to universal confession as a precondition for Christian burial, so too it fed into the deteriorating status of lepers. For once the sacrament of penance transformed Christian community into a chronic patient, the diseased who publicly personified/personalized sin found themselves purged from the social body.

CONCLUSION

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EPILOGUE the late medieval paintings

The apsidal composition of Christ in Majesty flanked by saints and supplicants formed the nucleus of a second decorative campaign undertaken in the first quarter of the fifteenth century (fig. ). The later murals sharing the large semidome with the Romanesque theophany were executed directly on the thin, rough coat of plaster that had been laid centuries before to cover the masonry (enduit de parement). Contrary, therefore, to the suture pattern one would normally expect to find, the plaster layer containing the earlier work overlaps the surface on which the more recent painting was executed, as visible at the juncture between the two (fig. ). For some two hundred years the Romanesque composition had been left to “float” against the blank surface of the vault until, finally, it was anchored into another penitential program! Grafted onto the old image of humble petition and divine grace, the new commission made its own plea for God’s forgiveness. The patron, a noble widow and mother, responded to the Majesty’s exhortation, “Confess your sins,” by completing the original work with a prayer—on behalf of her family. The late medieval ensemble not only preserved the Romanesque painting but also built on its calculus of suffrage and intercession. The new commission depended on the ancient sepulchral

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and penitential functions of the lower church and, in turn, made these connotations of the space more explicit. Although no extant document to my knowledge records the name of the donor, the murals themselves are eloquent on this score. Marie de Parthenay (d. ) appears kneeling at the prie-dieu in the center of each rectangular strip that converges left and right along the rim of the vault toward the Romanesque composition (figs. , ).1 The skirt of her dress (figs. , ) is emblazoned with the arms of her late husband impaled with that of her father.2 Widow of Louis I of Châlon (count of Tonnerre, lord of SaintAignan-, Selles-sur-Cher, and Valençay, d. ), she had arranged with their children in  to hold in usufruct the domains and castle of Saint-Aignan where she resided for the duration of her life.3 Marie’s eldest son and heir to the county of Tonnerre, Louis II of Châlon (d. ), retained the title to his father’s lordships in Berry. He too is depicted, in both horizontal fields, kneeling behind his mother (figs. , ). An angel standing between mother and son puts his arm around Louis’s shoulder so as to take the count under protective custody. A woman kneels beside Louis. Who is she? Her skirt, like that of Louis’s mother, is emblazoned on its dexter side with the arms of Châlon; the sinister side, painted a uniform ocher color, is uncharged. Her shadowy identity is probably deliberate, for Louis’s failed marriage and adulterous union proved to be the beginning of his downfall. Louis II of Châlon had married Marie de la Trémoille in , only to repudiate her.4 In the winter of –, he forcibly abducted his lover, Juana de Perellos, an Aragonese lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Bavaria, duchess of Burgundy, from the ducal court at Douai. The couple’s enduring relationship produced two illegitimate sons, of whom only one survived. While John the Fearless punished his recalcitrant vassal by confiscating the count’s possessions in Burgundy, Louis petitioned the papal court for the annulment of his marriage to Marie de la Trémoille on the grounds of consanguinity. In May , desirous of a rapprochement with the duke of Burgundy and especially eager to recover his lands, Louis agreed to submit to an ecclesiastical court that would decide which of the two women he must accept as his legitimate wife (“qu’il prendroit à femme laquelle des deux, ou de Marie de la Trémoille ou de la dicte Jehanne, comme seroit dict par la sentence du juge d’église”).5 The outcome of the case is not clear. It is assumed that Louis obtained the annulment, because he never reconciled with la Trémoille. On the other hand, his surviving son by Juana seems not to have been legitimized. At any rate, within a few months of seeking to appease John the Fearless, Louis II found himself accused of treason with the Armagnacs, and by the end of , the duke

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had once again seized the county of Tonnerre. Perhaps the verdict of the ecclesiastical court, if issued, was mooted by these events. Louis managed to retake Tonnerre only briefly in the summer of ; in July , the crown permanently transferred the county to the duke of Burgundy. In the paintings at Saint-Aignan, Louis’s mother pleads the cause of the couple behind her. Marie de Parthenay “speaks” the verses inscribed on the banderoles unfurled above her head. The phylactery at left reads: Vierge [qui es en compagnie] De ta mère et de ton fys, Octroye que par compagnie Soient couronez devant ton fys.6 (Virgin, in the company of your mother and your son, grant that by this company [they] are crowned before your son.) The words on the speech-scroll address the lactating Virgin depicted in the next scene (fig. ). The image, however, takes the added precaution of entreating the Virgin and Child through Saint Anne, widely venerated for her intercessory powers on behalf of mothers.7 Seated with her daughter on the canopied bench, it is Saint Anne who presents to the suckling Jesus a diadem, that is, the crown that Marie asks to be bestowed on the accompanying members of her family. John the Baptist, patron saint of the parish church, attends the holy mothers and the infant Christ. Marie’s prayer may well be specifically aimed at accruing spiritual benefits for her eldest son, who alone enjoys the angel’s protective embrace. Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn have pointed out that prayers to Saint Anne in late-fifteenth-century French manuscripts invoke her help for “a good death.”8 Has Louis passed away? Is the angel conducting him before God in the realm of the hereafter? Does the crown represent Marie’s hope for his salvation? The prayer on the speech-scroll above the effigy of Marie at right begs divine pardon: Très dousse dame de pitié, A nous amis octroye le don, Je te requiers et convie, Qu’ils einst [sic, for “eussent”] de leur pécher pardon.9 (Gentle lady of mercy, to us, friends, grant the gift, I beg of you, and concede that they obtain pardon for their sin.)

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With these words Marie addresses the mourning Virgin of the pietà group upon which she gazes (fig. ). John the Evangelist cradles the head of the dead Christ; Mary Magdalen kisses his right foot. It is hard not to interpret “leur pécher” as referring to the liaison of Louis II and Juana de Perellos. Marie’s crested initial, a majuscule “M” adorned by a crown, is strewn over the chalky field in the upper portion of the vault (fig. ), where it alternates with flaming suns. At the apex, above the Romanesque figure of Christ in Majesty, a pair of angels hovering in clouds present an escutcheon with the arms of Châlon. A shield bearing Marie’s coat of arms (husband’s impaled with father’s) is displayed by two of the four confronted angels symmetrically disposed to either side of the Romanesque composition in the median zone of the vault (fig. ); the shield pendant to Marie’s matches the dress worn by the woman beside Louis (fig. ): dexter, Châlon; sinister, uncharged (uniformly painted a yellow ocher).10 The shields are ensconced in wreaths of braided branches around which radiate vines no less spindly for their leaves and blossoms. All three garlanded escutcheons recur in the heraldic decor painted on the intrados of the transverse arch between choir and apse. The arms of Marie de Parthenay, however, are positioned at the keystone (fig. ). The widowed mother makes her appeal to the Virgin Mother in anticipation of the Second Coming and resurrection of the dead depicted in the choir bay. The groin vault is reserved for the Christ of Judgment (fig. ), who, with bleeding wounds exposed, appears on a rainbow-throne surrounded by a heavenly host. Angels bear the instruments of the Passion, while the Virgin and Saint John kneel, ready to intercede for the dead. Heeding the sound of trumpets, souls rise up from their tombs on the squinches supporting the vault. Among the multitude of the dead, a woman and man are singled out for special blessings, for the resurrection finds them at the scene of the Crucifixion on the west wall of the choir (figs. , –). The speech-scrolls included in the image are too rubbed to reconstitute the utterances inscribed thereon, and the couple, portrayed without coats of arms, cannot be identified with certainty. Do the effigies again represent Louis ii and his consort? Or Louis i and his widow, the patron, Marie de Parthenay, here anticipating her own passing? She died eight years after her son and was entombed with him in the church.11 The murals in the crypt, both the late medieval and the Romanesque ensembles, set viewers’ sights on the inevitability of future judgment by focusing their consciousness on repentance for past sins. How might the paintings in the lower church of Saint-Aignan enter into fuller accounts of the medieval parish yet to be written? I cannot say. Site-based case

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THE ART OF HEALING

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studies may, or may not, yield a coherent picture of a culture in which approaches to sickness and death fashioned the built environment. Pictorial imagery and ritual practice elsewhere may, or may not, have left recoverable traces of their engagement in articulating landed communities through which the Church laid claim to bodies and souls. Perhaps isolated fragments should not be made to speak for a whole that is lost. Yet unless we look again at material abandoned for the great works to which our disciplinary narratives are wedded, the richness and variety of medieval solutions to mortality cannot illuminate the mechanisms that once governed social life.

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notes

introduction . Nelson, a, outlines the principles underlying the physical quality of medieval visuality. . I am thinking of material as different as the itinerary maps of Matthew Paris, analyzed by Daniel Connolly, , esp. , , , ; the church of Saint-Lazare, Autun, analyzed by Linda Seidel, , esp. –, , , –, ; and the cloister sculpture of Saint-Michelde-Cuxa, analyzed by Thomas Dale, , –. I regret that I am unable here to give due consideration to the new book by Cynthia Hahn, , which, though relevant to questions explored in this study, appeared after its completion. . Camille, , –; on this trope with respect to reading texts, see Bynum, , , and Carruthers, , –, , –, and id., , –, . . In particular, Carruthers, , esp. , –, –, , , , and Bynum, , esp. –, . . Carruthers, , –, , . . Carruthers, , –. . Iogna-Prat, , –; Lauwers, , –, –. . Deshoulières, b, , first reconstructed the inscription. Today, only a portion of the last two words is legible: [alt]erutrum pec[c] a[ta]; the last two letters are elided because the end of the phylactery is represented as folding over itself. . For recent overviews, with bibliography, of medieval concepts of poverty and the poor, see Brodman, , –, and Freedman, , esp. –. . I quote a definition from Nelson, , , : “In modern usage, the word representation has two principal meanings. By the first, the more common in literature and the visual arts, representation means to re–present, to make present something that is absent. In the second, the more pertinent to politics, to represent is to make something present in a certain intensified or politically

legitimate manner. . . . In the Middle Ages, political representation was understood less by or for a group and more to or before a higher authority, either secular or religious.” . The Saint-Aignan paintings are mentioned in Focillon, , ; Duprat, , –; Anthony, , ; Deschamps and Thibout, , –; Michel, , ; Deschamps and Thibout, , –; Renoux and Surchamp, , –; Lesueur, , –; Demus, , ; Berland, , –. Several of these descriptions call attention to the linked themes of healing and the remission of sins. . Ladurie, ; Ginzburg, a; Schmitt,  (throughout this book, however, I prefer to cite from the French edition of ). For critical reflections on microhistory as a historiographical practice, see, in particular, Ginzburg, b, and Levi, . . Geertz, a, b, . The interpretive move I am proposing here will, I hope, undermine the text/context duality that the resort to “context” in art-historical studies often sets up; see Bryson, , –, for a trenchant critique. . This is the ongoing project of a series of workshops entitled “La spatialisation du sacré dans l’Occident latin (ive–xiiie siècles),” organized by Dominique Iogna-Prat at the Centre d’études médiévales, Auxerre. I am most grateful to M. Iogna-Prat for informing me of this project and for inviting me to attend the workshop held in May .

chapter 1 . Le retour de Martin Guerre, written by Jean-Claude Carrière and directed by Daniel Vigne, . . A point made by Natalie Zemon Davis, , viii–ix, in commenting on the film, Le retour de Martin Guerre, for which she served as consultant.

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. Baylé, , –, –; Berland, , –, –; Lesueur, , –; Deshoulières, b, –. . Guérin, b, –; Edeine, , :–; Poitou, , –. . Devailly, , –. The geography of the canton of Saint-Aignan is described in greater detail in Touchard-Lafosse, , :. . The suffix in bituria or in biturico, often appended to the toponym, recalls a defunct administrative district, the Carolingian pagus, or county, of Bituricus, coextensive with the diocese; see Gandilhon, , . The ecclesiastical circumscription survived the disintegration of the pagus, fractured into numerous competing lordships in the tenth century; the province of Berry regained its ancient unity in the thirteenth century when incorporated into the Capetian state (Devailly, , esp. –, , –). . On the difference in usage of the term oppidum by modern archaeologists and medieval writers, see Poteur, , . On the semantic range of the word castrum, see Verbruggen, . . “Aliud etiam oppidum idem pater Odonis super Carum fluvium, ubi erat sancti Aniani ecclesia ab heremitis olim habitata, composuit; quod oppidum cuidam viro probissimo sibique familiarissimo, Gaufredo juveni, Odo donavit. Gaufridus, Sancti Aniani dominus constitutus, omnes Odoni resistentes viriliter impugnabat. Enimvero Crachaicum, Vilentrastum, Busenchaicum ceteraque loca munita, juxta Endriam sita, Fulconi favebant. Sed istum Goffridum, Sancti Aniani dominum, quidam proditor, Arraudus Brustulii, homo tamen suus, Fulconi consuli tradidit; qui Lochas incarceratus obiit; cujus corpus homines sui Sancti Aniano deferentes, in latere ecclesie sancti Johannis ab orientali parte sepelierunt” (Halphen and Poupardin, , ). The Gesta consulum andegavorum mentions Geoffrey as lord of Saint-Aignan (ibid., ) and notes only that he was strangled in prison during Fulk’s absence (). On the installation of the lords of Saint-Aignan by the counts of Blois, see also Devailly, , , –, . . Bernier, , . . Now it was asserted that the hermits came from Saint-Martin of Tours, which had received neighboring lands from Robert’s predecessor Odo (d. ), and that their oratory was initially placed under the patronage of the Virgin. Delorme, [] , , , is to my knowledge the first author to propose such a detailed account, even assigning a date of c.  to the supposed donation by Odo and his wife of nearby lands to Saint-Martin of Tours. No known charter exists that might support any connection between the

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hermits’ church mentioned in the Gesta and SaintMartin of Tours. Raynal, , :, goes further to suppose that the Marian chapel would have been devastated in Norman raids; Lassus, n.d., , and Bosseboeuf, , , that it would have been reconsecrated to Anianus during Robert’s rule. . Bosseboeuf, , ; Delorme, [] , . . acmh, Loir-et-Cher, Saint-Aignan-surCher, église, carton , dossier , –: a memo from Maurice Lotte dated September ,  (summarized in a memo of September , ), recommends sondages in the center of the crypt at the request and expense of the comte de la Roche-Aymon, who wants to know whether the tombs of his ancestors, the lords of SaintAignan, are intact. The excavation was carried out by P. Robert-Houdin. To my knowledge, the findings are recorded only in a set of four drawings on a single leaf, acmh, F ii, (). . As Baylé, , , aptly remarks, the archaic detail of the fenestellae “suggère toute l’importance accordée, dans l’édification de l’église, au culte des reliques de Saint Aignan vraisemblablement gardées dans l’église souterraine.” . This question was asked and answered by Baylé, , . I here flesh out her solution with additional archival and iconographic material. Deshoulières, b, , preferred to see in this instance a reference to two different churches. . Porcher, , doc. no. ii, –; Guyonnet, –, :. The act of  was a donation of lands and revenues to Cornilly, a dependency of Chezal-Benoit near Pontlevoy; it clearly disproves the suggestion of Bosseboeuf, , , that the sancti iohannis in the text of the Gesta ambaziensium dominorum is somehow a mistranscription of sancti aniani. . Baylé, , , , –. . In two cases (the sarcophagus and the tomb to the north), pairs of terra-cotta pots containing charcoal had been placed next to the bodies; for bibliography on this practice, see Baylé, ,  n. . For a general discussion of the way in which the dead attracted new buildings or rebuildings, see Lauwers, , –. . For a discussion, with examples, of noble burial inside churches, see Lauwers, , –. . Schumacher, , esp. , on dating, and Schumacher-Rinderer, . Both Saint-Aignan and Notre-Dame of Gargilesse functioned as castle churches, though with notable differences. NotreDame was tightly linked to the castle in whose perimeter it was enclosed, whereas the church of Saint-Aignan was not contiguous with, but rather situated somewhat below, the domicilium of the lord. Notre-Dame, occupied by regular canons,

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did not enjoy parochial status, as did the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan, served by secular canons. The parish church, Saint-Laurent, had been erected below the castle on the left bank of the Gargilesse; a possession of the abbey of Déols, it was also a priory. . Schumacher-Rinderer, , –, –. On collegiate churches as privileged sites for seigneurial burial, see Hubert, b, –. . Unfortunately the original document cannot be located. The unpublished charter is summarized in Minier, , : “Une charte de Saint-Aignan en Berry, en , représente un homme libre se donnant dévotement, la corde au cou, avec toutes ses possessions.” The terms of Minier’s description, however, closely conform to similar acts of the same period, as exemplified by numerous texts contained in Le livre des serfs de Marmoutier, ed. A. Salmon (Tours, ). Following Salmon, Guyonnet, –, :–, incorrectly attributes Marmoutier charters nos. xiii and l to Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher; these concern rather SaintAignan of Orléans; see Devailly, ,  n. . The charter to which Minier referred, however, would seem to contradict the assertion by Devailly, , that ritualized practices of self–enserfment were unknown in the diocese of Bourges except at four possessions of Marmoutier’s (Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher is not one). Baylé, , , accepts the charter cited by Minier as dating from a period when construction of the church at Saint-Aignansur-Cher had possibly already begun. . ad, Cher, G , nos.  (original bull of ) and  (notarized figured  copy of the  bull); is, Cher, cols. – and –. . The lord Herveus of Donzy confirmed a donation to the Templars of Valençay, stipulating the annual gift that they were to make in return to the church of the blessed Anianus (ecclesiae beati aniani): ad, Indre, H . Guyonnet, –, :; facsimile of the document, . . There are no grounds for suspecting that any but secular canons had ever administered the church. Certainly no monastic presence can be documented at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher.The “monasteries” that Guyonnet, –, :–, :, mistakenly locates at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher can be identified as follows: the familia sancti aniani ortus that appears twice in Le livre des serfs de Marmoutier has to do with the community of the same name at Orléans; the Saint-Aignan mentioned as a priory of Chezal-Benoit in the rotolum mortuorum for André of Vallombreuse is to be identified with Saint-Aignan in the Gâtinais (ecclesiastical province of Sens). . Pouillés de la province de Bourges, –, text volume, –, esp. ; tables, xix, xx. The

pouillé is entitled “omnes ecclesiae parrochiales Bituricensis diocesis.” . Guyonnet, –, :, –. The registers mentioning the parish of Saint John date from  and –. In parish registers dating between  (ad, Loir-et-Cher,  E ) and , the appellation Saint-Jean is not used; reference instead is to the church of Saint-Aignan. I thank Nicole Patureau for this information. . Hubert, b, –, . . Salch and Fèvre, ; Poteur, ; Chenon, . . Salch and Fèvre, , –; Poteur, , . . Zadora-Rio, . . On the house of Donzy, see Delorme, [] , –; Lespinasse, –, :–, :–; Nozet, ; Bierre, ; Guyonnet, –, vol. . . Lespinasse, , . . Devailly, , –, esp.  n.  for the dependency of Selles, Romorantin, and Vatan on the lord of Saint-Aignan. . Lespinasse, , –; id., –, :– ; Bierre, , –; and, in great detail (if unreliable), Guyonnet, –, :–. For the sake of simplicity, I here follow the conventional genealogy of the house of Donzy provided by Bierre and Lespinasse. . Prou, , . . Lespinasse, –, :–. . Cornilly and Chezal-Benoit: for the text of the charters, see Porcher, , no. , –, no. , –, no. , –, no. , –, and no. , –; for their analysis, however, see Martin-Demézil, , –. Pontlevoy: Porcher, , no. , cols. –, no. , cols. –, and no. , cols. –; Guyonnet, –, :, . Barzelle: Guyonnet, :–, and ad, Indre, H , no. . . For the Hospitallers: ad, Indre, H , dated ; Guyonnet, –, :. This act may pertain specifically to the hospital at Liniére, toponym in the commune of Mareuil-sur-Cher close to the western boundary of the commune of Saint-Aignan. A ruined chapel, now inaccessible, occupies the site (see Institut géographique national, carte, sér. blue :, no.  est, , and Lesueur, , ). The cadastre of  (ad, Loiret-Cher,  P , section D, nos. –) refers to a plot of land and pasture as pertaining to “la commanderie.” This commanderie is mentioned in archival sources from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , dated : see is, Loir-et-Cher, :; G , from : see ibid., ; G , from : see ibid., ). On the main commanderie at Villefranche, see Guérin,

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b, , and Toulgöet-Tréanna, , –. For the Templars: ad, Indre, H , dated c. ; Guyonnet, :. . Guyonnet, –, :. The act of donation no longer exists. Its contents, however, are summarized in an inventory, dated , of the titles, or diplomas, of the Beauvillier family, which had inherited Saint-Aignan in  (Guyonnet, :): ab, liasse  (Inventaire de ), fols. r–v. Philippe increased the amount of revenue obtained from the toll from  to  sols. . ab, liasse  (Inventaire de ), fol. v.The sum of the revenues given from the toll was now put at  livres. Guyonnet, –, :–. . Lespinasse, –, :– n. . . See Lespinasse, –, :, concerning the bequest in  of Mahaut de Courtenay to charitable institutions at Donzy and in the county of Nevers; Nozet, , –, concerning the bequest, also in , by one of the descendants of Herveus iv and Mahaut de Courtenay to the leprosery of Donzy, among other charitable institutions. . ab, liasse  (Inventaire de ), fols. v–r; Guyonnet, –, :–. . Devailly, , , . . Guyonnet, –, :–, –. . Thaumas de la Thaumassière, –, :; Gandilhon, , ; Devailly, , . . Suillot, , –, esp. : “volons e otroions que tint cils et totes celes qui vinderont e resteront des ors en avant en la dite ville de Contres e dans les leux dessus diz, un an e un jour sans contredit e sans ce qu’ils soient requis ni demandés ou esplaciés de lors seignors remaignent à toz jorz mès, eux e lors biens, paisiblement e sans contredit en la dite franchise, exceptés nos homes e nos femes de nos franches villes de Celles et de SaintAygnien, lesquels nos ne volons pas ne otroions que ils usent de la dite franchise, e exceptés nos homes e nos femes de cours (= corps), qui sont e seront fors de la ville e des leux en devant diz, lesquels nos ne franchissons pas, se ils venaient ester e demeurer en la dite ville de Contres ou dans les leux devant diz.” . Gandilhon, , –; Boulet-Sautel, ; Devailly, , –; Chédeville, Le Goff, and Rossiaud, , . . Lespinasse, –, :; Bierre, , –. . Denis, , ; Soyer, , . . Nozet, , –. . Gandilhon, , –. . Michaud-Fréjaville, , ; it should be noted, however, that Devailly, , , , arrives at a somewhat different conclusion based on other statistics.

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. Prou, , –, –; Chédeville, Le Goff, and Rossiaud, , –. . Lespinasse, , , ; Guyonnet, –, :–. The act pertained specifically to Donzy possessions in the Perche: Montmirail, Alluyes, Brou, Authon, la Bazoche, and Froisey. . Prou, , –,  no. ; Des Méloizes, , –, , –; Gandilhon, , –. For a reexamination of local arrangements (coutumes of Berry), as opposed to those inspired by Lorris, see Michaud-Fréjaville, . . Hilton, , –, –, –; Schneider, ; Boulet-Sautel, , –. . Michaud-Fréjaville, , . . Gandilhon, , . . Soyer, Trouillard, and de Croy, –,  no. ; Poulain de Bossay, , ; Soyer, , –; Boulet-Sautel, ,  and n. . . Nozet, , : “Et sont audit seigneur tuit li mur de la forteresse et tuit li foussez et sont tuit cilz de la ville si juré.” . See note  above. . Hilton, , –, –; Chédeville, Le Goff, and Rossiaud, , –, –. . Signed by a painter named Pileur from Tours, the work now hangs in the church of Notre-Dame des Ardilliers at Saumur along with its pendant, a votive painting of the town of Sellessur-Cher. The cartouche is inscribed: Sanct. Anianenses. tibi voto et mene dicatotos [sic] Condidit in Cives Pictor in oppidulo. Hoc tibi servandum Sancti retulere Patroni, Accipias, Nato des–que, Maria, tuo. On the devotion of cities to Notre-Dame des Ardilliers, see the brief article by F. M. Rudge in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1 (New York, ), . In , an architect of Saint-Aignan, Paul Rouet, made an engraved reproduction of the painting’s central element, the walled town and its faubourgs; trees and foliage replace the saints and their attributes, a simple caption replaces the heavenly host. . ab, Terrier Sommier of  August ; Guyonnet, –, :–. Saint-Aignan was elevated into a county in  (Guyonnet, :) and into a duché-pairie in  (Guyonnet, :). . ad, Loir-et-Cher, , no. , “Route de Blois du Blanc en Berry, e partie, de Saint-Aignan à la fin de la généralité [d’Orléans].” . ad, Loir-et-Cher,  P/A, section A, ville (plan en feuille, ; matrices et état de sections, ) . The walls and fosses were gradually relinquished beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century. The development of the quai and the paving of the fosses (now rue Maurice Bertaux)

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followed over the course of the next hundred years. The principal thoroughfares were widened and aligned in the mid-nineteenth century, a process complemented by the removal of small squares and fountains. Cosperec, . . Delorme, [] , . . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G ; as transcribed in is, Loir-et-Cher, :: “item lego triginta libras ad emendos redditus ad opus pontis Sancti Aniani.” On the twelfth-century documentation of the toll, see note  above and, for comparative purposes, Bienvenu, . Late medieval sources compiled by Guérin, a, esp. , make clear that tolls applied both to river and overland traffic; they were still enforced in the seventeenth century (Guyonnet, –, :). . Medieval roads through the Sologne are discussed by Guérin, a. On the GalloRoman road from Tours to Bourges through Vierzon, see Chenon, , esp. –, and Soyer, , –, –. Medieval roads linking SaintAignan to points in the Berry, for example, Valençay and Le Blanc, can be deduced to some extent from Charles Estienne’s Guide des chemins de France of ; see Estienne, , :–, , ; on this source, see Hubert, a, esp. –, –. . Cosperec, ; Boudon, , . . Cosperec, . For an annotated bibliography on the medieval townhouse, see Esquieu, , –. . Guyonnet, –, :. Unfortunately I have not been able to locate Guyonnet’s source in this particular case. . Denis, , charter no. xxx, –; Guyonnet, –, :–. . Suillot, , . . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , vidimus dated  of the act of . I have not been able to find the toponyms “pont Piccois” and “rue de la Regraterie” in any other source and so have no means of verifying their location. . Guyonnet, –, :. . According to Delorme, [] , , the “Lion d’Or” was originally the site of a Templar convent dependent on the commandery of Bourré near Montrichard. He reports: “[D]es fouilles faites en cet endroit il y a peu d’années, ont fourni beaucoup d’ossements. On y a découvert aussi une cave, soutenue par des piliers d’une architecture rappelant un peu l’architecture de l’église. Là, sans doute, était le lieu où s’accomplissaient les mystères du Temple. On voit encore à la voûte les crochets qui soutenaient les lampes, et cette même voûte est restée noircie à certains endroits par la fumée qui en provenait.” No other evidence confirms the existence at Saint-Aignan

of such an institution, which I strongly suspect is an invention of Delorme’s. . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , largely transcribed in is, Loir-et-Cher, :–. Colin wills that quaedam vicaria fiat et de novo construatur in ecclesia Sancti Aniani, in altari beati Jacobi in crotis, ad cujus vicariae lego omnes hereditates meas et omnia conquesta mea immobilia et de cetero conquerenda ubicumque fuerint et quaecunque in domibus, vineis, terris, pratis et insulis et in aliis immobilibus quibuscumque; item . . . centum libras ad emendos redditus quindecim librarum ad ornamenta altaris dicate vicariae emenda; item . . . quatuor bonos lectos garnitos et dolia ad reponendum sexaginta summas vini, sexdecim toailhas tam magnas quam parvas, tres potos cupreos, chauderiam et patellam, duas mensas et quatuor formas; item volo quod Matheus Clericus, canonicus Sancti Aniani dictam vicariam conferat prima vice et ex tunc in antea prior et capitulum Sancti Aniani conferant eandem; item volo quod dictus vicarius, qui pro tempore erit, reddat et persolvat de bonis dictae vicariae ecclesiae Sancti Aniani annis singulis quadraginta solidos pro anniversariis meis, quater in anno in dicta ecclesia faciendis, in quibus volo quod vicarii et bachelarii habeant duos solidos in qulibet anniversario; item volo quod dictus vicarius solvat annuatim anniversariis parentum meorum, fratres mei et sororis mei prout ego solvere consuevi; item lego pro processione mea canonicis Sancti Aniani quadraginta solidos, bachelariis decem solidos; item lego cuilibet pauperi advenienti die sepulturae meae tres denarios; item quilibet presbiter deferens crucem habeat duos solidos, ita quod teneatur celebrari missam pro anima mea. . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G ; is, Loir-et-Cher, :–: “item volo quod in primo festo Pentecostes, post obitum meum dentur quatuor modii bladi pauperibus in karitate; item lego sezaginta libras pro vestibus et calciamentis pauperum de castellania Sancti Aniani usque ad tres annos videlicet quolibet anno vigenti libras per manus exequutorum meorum.” . Iogna-Prat, , –. . Bird, , esp. –, –.

chapter  . Guyonnet, , , adduces a testament of  according to which one Pétronille, wife of Henri Séjourne, from the parish of Valençay, bequeaths a gift to the maison-dieu and chapter of Saint-Aignan. In attempting to verify this source, I have determined that Pétronille and Henri Séjourne of Valençay do not in fact appear in

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archival sources until  and  respectively (Hubert, , no. , –, and no. , –); moreover, the charters known to me in no way bear on the maison-dieu of Saint-Aignan. No similar document for  exists either in the archival collection Guyonnet specifically claims to have consulted (ad, Indre, fonds de Barzelle) or in other regional collections he seems to have used. The secondary source to which Guyonnet also refers, a “catalogue des actes relatifs à l’histoire monastique de l’Indre antérieurs à ” by Eugène Hubert, cannot be identified among the archivist’s published or unpublished works. . The literature on poor relief and hospitality in medieval France is vast. For an up-to-date bibliography that also includes the classic studies, see Touati, , –, –. For a general, introductory survey of medieval hospitality in France, see the first four chapters, written by Michel Mollat, in Imbert, , –. To flesh out Mollat’s survey, the following can be consulted: Bienvenu, –; Candille,  and ; Patzelt, ; Études sur l’histoire de pauvreté, , vol. ; Goglin, ; Mollat, ; Vauchez, ; Geremek, ; Saunier, ; and the articles in Cahiers de Fanjeaux  () and Santé, médecine et assistance au Moyen Âge (). For an overview of the situation in England, see Orme and Webster, ; and in Catalonia, Brodman, . . See the remarks of Rubin, , –, and the overview by Mollat, . Selected basic studies include Mundy,  and , on Toulouse; Caille, , on Narbonne; Giordanengo, , on Arles; Pourrière, , and Coulet, , on Aix-en-Provence; Saint-Denis, , on Laon; De Spiegeler, , on Liège; Rubin, , on Cambridge. . See, e.g., Gramain, ; Chiffoleau, le Blevec, and Zerner, , esp. –; and, for the diocese of Bourges, Collette and Méa, . . Mundy, , –. . Michaud-Quantin, ; Bériac, , ; more broadly, Bynum, , –. . Saunier, , esp. –, , ; Orme and Webster, , –. . Avril, , , and ; Imbert, . . Avril, . . One Junius “ecclesiae beati laurentii capellanus” is named along with other witnesses to a compact of c.  between Herveus iii and the Templars of Valençay (ad, Indre, H ). This church must correspond to the chapel of SaintLaurent (capella beati laurentii) designated for a bequest in Colin’s elaborate testament of  (ad, Blois, G , no. ; is, Loir-et-Cher, :–). The chapel’s location on the rue du Pont is noted in  (ad, Blois, G , no. ; is, Loir-et-Cher,

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:) and in several eighteenth-century sources; it was destroyed in  (Delorme, [] , ). . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G ; is, Loir-et-Cher, :. . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , p. ; is, Loir-etCher, :. Most of the vicariates listed in the register applied to chapels and altars inside the collegiate church. Local antiquarian tradition ascribes a vaguely ecclesiastical function to one other medieval structure intra muros. The building situated on an impasse off the street leading to the eastern gate ( rue Rouget de Lisle) was called the “vieille sacristie” in the nineteenth century (Delorme, [] , ). Its original purpose cannot be identified from the archival record, however. The edifice largely retains a fourteenthcentury shell (fig. ); of its two pignon walls, the front presents a pair of Gothic tracery windows similar to those found in examples of domestic architecture elsewhere in the town (e.g., at  rue de la Pêcherie, fig. ). No saint’s name was incorporated into the old toponymy of the street as was customary wherever chapels once stood. Rather than a chapel or oratory, the “old sacristy” was more likely one of several houses along the street, such as the dean’s, which were owned by the chapter. On the property of the chapter, see ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , Terrier Sommier from ; is, Loir-et-Cher, : esp. . Guyonnet, –, :–, conjectures that the building might be a church dedicated to Saint Priscus, one of the two patron saints in the  painting of Saint-Aignan. This is improbable in my view. . The Capella Beatae Mariae de Cimiterio is listed in Colin’s  testament: ad, Loiret-Cher, G , no.  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :–); G – (ibid., –); and G , p.  (ibid., ). . Delorme, [] ,  . Touchard-Lafosse, , :.The chapel left its trace only in the form of a lieu-dit. . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , pp. –; is, Loiret-Cher, :. . About Saint-André, Delorme, [] , , reported that “on allait processionnellement tous les ans au moi de mai, faire des prières pour la prospérité des biens de la terre.” . Schmitt, , does not specifically mention this site. . Lesueur, , . . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , rents,  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :); G , lease, , and sale,  (ibid, ); G , rent,  (ibid, ); G , rent,  (ibid., ); G , deeds, – (ibid., ); G , rent,  (ibid, ); Edeine, , :. . Schmitt, , esp. –.

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. Schmitt, ,  n. . Leroquais, , :–, esp. . See also Laugardière, , . . See the definition in Schmitt, , . . Catherinot, , no. , . . Schmitt, , , , –. . Schmitt, , ; see also the map and accompanying table, –. . Seigy lies across the river from Noyers at the edge of the Sologne, a geographic region divided between the diocese of Orléans in the ecclesiastical province of Sens and the diocese of Bourges. Guinefort was also venerated at one other site in the Sologne, Chaon (Loir-et-Cher, canton Lamotte-Beuvron), where in the nineteenth century he was popularly called “Saint Jeune fort” and conflated with Saint Fort; see Edeine, , :–, . According to Schmitt, , –, , the cult of Saint Guinefort spread from the Berry to Sens as indicated by the exhumation in  of the bodies of Guinefort the “confessor” and his two siblings, Saint Fort and Sainte Aveline, in the church of Saint-Mauricede-Sens. In the process of the cult’s transmission to Sens, the hagiographic construction of Guinefort was modified, but local veneration of the saint there on February  coincides with Berrichon practice. . Deshoulières, a, –; Chauvallon, , , –; Lesueur, , ; Berland, , ; Touati, , – and passim; id., , , –. On the Gallo-Roman road from Tours to Bourges throughVierzon, see Chenon, , –, and Soyer, , –, –. . For examples of groups of lepers preexisting the formal institution of the leprosery, see Bériac, , –; De Spiegeler, , –; and id., , –. . Touati, , –; id., , –, –. Bourgeois, , , likewise observes that the distance of leproseries from centers of population ranges from six hundred to two or three thousand meters. . For new insights into the history of penance, especially with respect to the survival of public forms of penance into the thirteenth century and beyond, see Mansfield, . Other recent contributions, however, have looked at the growing emphasis on “interior” penance in the late twelfth century, prior to the imposition of universal auricular confession in : Murray, , esp. – (: omnis utriusque sexus “confirmed an existing momentum”); Biller, , –; Baldwin, , esp. –. On the history of confession in the early Middle Ages, see now Meens, . . Bériac, , : “Comment ne pas supposer que le châtelain était au moins un bienfaiteur

influent, voire le tuteur de la léproserie et le responsable de la mise à l’écart des lépreux, comme détenteur du ban.” . Bourgeois, , –, , –, , –, ; De Keyser, , –; Hannecart, ; Dumas, , –, esp. ; Grandin, , –; Mesmin, . . Touati, , , . . Tanner, , :–, and Foreville, , . For interpretations of canon , see Foreville, , ; Uytterbrouck, , esp. –; Avril, , –; and esp. Avril, . . Avril, , –, . . Avril, , –, ; De Keyser, , . . Avril, , –. . Uytterbrouck, . . Avril, , –, –. . A sixteenth-century pouillé of the diocese of Orléans lists the chapter of Saint-Aignan as patron of the curatus de Noieriis. Pouillés de la province de Sens, , A. . an, Xa , fols. –. . Collette and Méa, , –. . Bériac, , –, –;Touati, , –. For a picture of the ruinous state of leproseries in the diocese of Paris in the fourteenth century, see the reports compiled by Jean de Villescoublain, bishop’s official visitor, between  and  in Le Grand, . . For example, at the leprosery of Val d’Ocq of Tournai; see Avril, , –. . Avril, , , . . Imbert, , – and esp. –. . De Spiegeler, , –, , describes this process with respect to the leprosery of Cornillon, Liège. . Mesmin, , esp. –:Waleran, count of Meulan, endowed the leprosery of Saint-Gilles of Pont-Audemer coram omni populo in . Around , he recalled to the probi homines their promise of contributions on the basis of which inhabitants of Pont-Audemer would be admitted into the house; failing these revenues, Saint-Gilles would not accept more men from Pont-Audemer than the count’s alms could maintain. . Mesmin, . . Grandin, , , . . Collette, , , has misinterpreted the document. . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , transaction of  naming the vicaire de la vicairie monseigneur St. Ladre (is, Loir-et-Cher, :–). Collette, , , states that the establishment ceased to function in ; I have not been able either to confirm or disconfirm this. . an, S , dossier .

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. The chapel dedication can be inferred by correlating the iconography of the paintings with chapter records concerning the vicariate of Marie-Madeleine-des-Grottes, or Sainte-MarieMadeleine in criptis: ad, Loir-et-Cher, G  (dated ), G  (), and G , pp. – (); see is, Loir-et-Cher, :, –. . Orme and Webster, , ; Gilchrist, , –; Lauwers, , ; Touati, , –; De Keyser, , –; Aubert, , ; Bayliss, , ; Huyghebaert, , . . Guyonnet, , –. . On the foundation of the new hôtelDieu, see Guyonnet, , –. It supplanted the medieval hospital and ultimately became the core of a modern hospital complex. The approximate location of the medieval maison-dieu can be deduced from the many transactions in which it served as a landmark delimiting properties on the border of the parishes of Saint-Aignan and Seigy: e.g., ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , rents,  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :); G , deeds, – (ibid., ); G , rents  and  (ibid., ); G , exchange of properties,  (ibid., ); G , gift,  (ibid., ); G , lease,  (ibid., ). A dependency or annex of the maison-dieu, a farm called the Grange-Dieu is mentioned in a contract of  (ad, Loir-etCher, G ; is, Loir-et-Cher, :–; Guyonnet, , ) and still appears on Cassini’s late-eighteenth-century map of France (César François Cassini de Thury, Carte de France, Paris, c. –, section no. ). According to an entry in a journal written between  and  by an échevin of Saint-Aignan, ground was broken for the new hôtel-Dieu in June  “au lieu où il y avait des tanneries et autres maisons,” and the first Mass celebrated in November  (de la Borde, –; the journal remains unpublished, but an anonymous transcription of selected extracts, including the entry cited here, is available at ad, Loir-et-Cher, photocopie no. ; on this source, see Gallerand, ). . an, S , dossier ter. The edict of  attaching leproseries and hospitals of the realm to Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare was revoked in . In , the properties and revenues of the hospital at Luçay-le-Mâle (Indre), the maladrerie of Noyers, and the almonry of “Porche de Noyers” were attached to the hospital at SaintAignan (an,V , no. , dated September ). See Etat général, , , , and Laget and Grün, –, . These events paved the way for the Beauvilliers’ new foundation. The medieval hospital is not included in the topographic view of SaintAignan by the painter Pileur from , although in fact it still continued to function across from the

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convent of the Capuchins (today the gendarmerie) depicted in the image. . an, S , dossier ter (the  report), and ab, liasse , dossier no.  (the  inventory); and Guyonnet, , . In Berry and the Ile–de–France the cult of Saint Giles was closely tied to that of Saint Loup, archbishop of Sens, whose feast day also fell on the first of September; indeed, Loup appears to have been accorded greater importance, eventually overshadowing Giles altogether: Corbet, , esp. ; Roth, , esp. , ; and Vulliez, , esp. –. . Mollat, , : “Certains signes permettent de reconnaître l’influence canoniale sur les institutions hospitalières: par exemple le patronage identique dans biens des endroits, de certains saints spécialisés, Christophe, Gilles, Jacques, Jean, Julien, Marie-Madeleine, Nicolas.” . See, e.g., Noailles, , ; Grandin, , ; De Keyser, , –; Mollat, , ; De Spiegeler, , ; Pourrière, , ; Coulet, , ; Mollat, in Imbert, , –; Chiffoleau, le Blevec, and Zerner, , ; Collette and Méa, , –, ; Orme and Webster, , –. . Gilchrist, , –, and id., , –. Orme and Webster, , –. . Chiffoleau, le Blevec, and Zerner, , . . ab, liasse , dossier no. ; Guyonnet, , –. . ab, liasse , dossier no. ; cited from Guyonnet, , . . ab, liasse ; Guyonnet, , –, esp. . . See, e.g., Imbert, , , ; Caille, , ; Saint-Denis, , ; Saunier, , –; Orme and Webster, , –. . Saint-Denis, , , and id., , . . Le Grand, , ; Imbert, , ; Saunier, , –, –; Rubin, , ; Carlin, , . Statutes of some medieval hospitals list categories of persons denied admission. I have extrapolated in particular from the statutes of the hôtel-Dieu of Angers, redacted in the early thirteenth century, Le Grand, ,  no. , and those of the hôtel-Dieu-le-Comte of Troyes compiled in , ibid.,  no. . . Saunier, , –; Saint-Denis, , –; and id., , –. . See, e.g., the detailed account of prayer in English hospitals, Orme and Webster, , –; Bird, , ; Horden, . . Orme and Webster, , , indicate that the service of meals was governed by the cycle of daily prayer. . Avril, , , –.

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. Avril, , . . Guyonnet, , –. . ab, liasse , dossier , no.  (extrait des titres qui concernent l’administration de l’hosteldieu en faveur du chapitre de St.-Aignan, drawn up in ), –, presents the contents of charters from  to the end of the fifteenth century; Guyonnet, , . . Guyonnet, , , . . The procession is mentioned in the account of , Guyonnet, , ; a document from , ibid., ; a lease agreement of , ibid., ; an inventory of , ibid., . . ab, liasse , dossier no. ; Guyonnet, , –. . ab, liasse , dossier no. ; Guyonnet, , –. . Guyonnet, , . . De Spiegeler, , –; Saint-Denis, , –; Pycke, . . Mollat, in Imbert, , –. . Guyonnet, , . . Avril, . . Collette and Méa, , –. . Imbert, , ; De Spiegeler, , –, –, –; Mollat, , –; Caille, , –; Gramain, , –; Mundy, , ; Huyghebaert, , –. . See, e.g., Chiffoleau, le Blevec, and Zerner, , , –. . As in the case of both the leprosery and the hôtel-Dieu of Pont-Audemer in Normandy; see Mesmin, , esp. , –, and id., , esp. –. . As at Pont-Audemer: the increasing role of municipal authority reflects the change in the status of the town after Philippe Auguste granted a communal charter in ; see Mesmin, , . . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :–). Guyonnet, , , states that the porticus was governed in  by a master who, in conflict with the canons, claimed to act as servant of the lord of Saint-Aignan. My efforts to track down the document that Guyonnet indicates he consulted (ad, Indre, in the series E. suppl.) have not proved successful. However, reference to the “maistre” of the porticus occurs in  in records of titles to property (ad, Loir-et-Cher, G ; is, Loir-et-Cher, :). . Etat général, , , : “Nota, au diocèse d’Orléans, il a encore été fait union à l’hôpital de St.-Aignan des biens et revenus de la maladrerie de Noyers, et de l’Aumônerie dudit Noyers, appelée la Porche de Noyers, par arrêt du Conseil du quinze Avril .” . Naudet, ; Guyonnet, , –.

. The phrases “ignis sancti silvani,” “infirmitas beati silvani que vulgaliter appellatur ignis gehennalis,” and “sacer ignis” appear in the sources. References to vitae and miracula of Saint Silvanus of Levroux are given in bhl, :. On his legend and cult, see Raynal, , :–, –, –, and :–; Veillat, , –, with pièces justificatives nos. ix–xv; Duroisel,  (but see the review by H. Delehaye in Analecta Bollandiana,  [], –); Delehaye, , –; Laugardière, , –; Saint-Aubin, .The most recent and by far the most exhaustive study of Saint Silvanus’s cult at Levroux unfortunately remains unpublished; I am greatly indebted to M. Jacques Greslier for generously making available his excellent thesis (Greslier, ), on which I have extensively relied. I cite here from his discussion, :–, of the more descriptive terms for Saint Silvanus’s fire that appear in the cartulary of Levroux, ad, Indre, G . . Raynal, , :–, and Greslier, , :–; Saint-Aubin, , . . Greslier, , :–. I cite from Raynal, , :–: videlicet quod ego concedo et confirmo in perpetuum eidem ecclesie donationem quam fecerunt predecessores mei eidem ecclesie Beati Silvani de omnibus hominibus et feminis meis qui infirmitatem Beati Silvani incurrerunt hactenus vel in futurum incurrent, ita quidem quod hujusmodi homines et femine, postquam in porticu Beati Silvani recepti fuerint, cum omni posteritate sua que post acceptam infirmitatem ex ipsis procedet et rebus suis ad dominium et proprietatem ejusdem ecclesie pertineant pleno jure, hoc tamen adjecto quod prior ejusdem loci et omnes canonici qui presentes sunt et etiam illi qui futuri sunt, canonici in canonicatione sua et prior in receptione, jurabunt quod nullum in porticu recipi permittent nisi quem bona fide credent illam infirmitatem habere. Et super hoc a me vel a successoribus meis vel ballivis meis non poterunt amplius molestari. Si qui tamen heredes ante acceptam hereditatem nati fuerint, in meo dominio remanebunt. Verumtamen si qui recepti essent in porticu et appareret postmodum ipsos infirmitatem istam nullatenus habuisse et ecclesiam in ipsorum receptione fuisse deceptam, ad meum nichilominus dominium revertentur. On other aspects of this act, see Devailly, , . . Saint-Aubin, , . . Raynal, , : n. , and Greslier, , :. I say more about matron de Breuil’s healing powers in my last chapter, where I address the role of the Saint-Aignan paintings in the competition between priests and women over the care of the infirm.

NOTES

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. Greslier, , :–, –, –. . Greslier, , :–, –. . Greslier, , :–, –. . Greslier, , :–, –. . ad, Indre, G , fol. r; the document therefore dates to c. –. Greslier, , :– and :. . The only preserved account of the translation is interpolated in a breviary of Bourges bearing a date of : Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms , fols. v–r. Although the late-fifteenth-century scribe must have used earlier materials from Levroux, the narrative becomes a vehicle for addressing contemporary concern over the authenticity of Silvanus’s relics (Greslier, , :–). . Greslier, , :; Buhot de Kersers, –, :, . . See note  above. . aass, September :, col. . . Naudet, , –. It is not possible to determine whether the relic arrived around  through the agency of Guillaume Vaquelin, or somewhat later, c. , when all the saint’s relics except the head found their way to La CelleBruère (see Duroisel, ). Hospital archives for the year  confirm the display of the reliquary in the chapel: Saint-Aignan, Archives de l’hôtelDieu, registre , –, fol. v. . Edeine, , :. . Naudet, , –. . Naudet, , –. . Naudet, , . . Deschamps and Thibout, , –, with reproductions on  (fig. ) and  (pl. lix, fig. ); Greslier, , :–. . The paintings of the lower register were too damaged for transfer. The priest who discovered the Beaumont frescoes was able to identify Rodène’s baptism, her dismissal of her fiancé’s emissaries, and Courroux’s angry pursuit of the virgin (see the previous note). Considering the representation of Courroux on the window splay, the narrative register likely also included the legend’s concluding episodes—Rodène’s horrifying self-mutilation to repulse her insistent suitor and Silvanus’s miraculous restoration of her slashed and amputated facial features, which inspired Courroux’s conversion. . Duroisel, .

chapter  . I am indebted to Bensa, , esp. –, for this idea. . Kraemer, , esp. –.

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NOTES

. Park, , . The considerable problems involved in such translation are outlined by Grmek, , –, and id., , –. . Bloch, , : “Le processus qui d’un guérisseur en général fait un guérisseur spécialisé sera toujours malaisé à suivre dans le détail, parce qu’il se présente comme le résultat d’une foule de petits faits, de nature diverse, dont l’accumulation seule agit.” On Saint Marcoul, see –. . As astutely noted by Greslier, , :. . “infirmitatem illam habere, que dicitur ignis gehennalis,” and “infirmitatem beati silvani que vulgaliter appellatur ignis gehennalis”: ad, Indre, G , fol. v. Greslier, , :, . . Greslier, , :–; C. Bourel de la Roncière, Les registres d’Alexandre IV,  (Paris, ), , no. . . Ehlers, , –; Barger, , –; Chaumartin,  and ; Brazeau, ; Nickerson, ; Sendrail, , esp. –; Sigal, , –; Biraben, , –; Saunier, , –, –; Brodman, , –. Matossian, , –, contains useful information (with scientific bibliography) on ergot and ergotism, but the rest of the study should be approached with a great deal of caution. . The relevant passage from the miracula of the saint is quoted by Chaumartin, , pièce justificative no. , p. VI; on the text, see Oury, , esp. –. . Tessier, b, ; Chaumartin, , . . Biraben, , –. . Sigal, , ; Chaumartin, ,  n. ; id., ,  n. . . As exemplified by the title and tenor of Fuller’s book on the outbreak of ergot intoxication at Pont-Saint-Esprit in  (Fuller, ). . Chaumartin, , , –; Biraben, , –. . Baraillon, ; Fuller, , –, notes in addition that merely handling contaminated flour, even touching the cold sweaty skin of victims, can produce contact dermatosis similar to eczema. . For a description, see Barger, , –, and Chaumartin, , –. . Barger, , . . The famous description by Sigebert of Gembloux (Chaumartin, , pièce justificative no. , p. i ) makes this clear: “. Annus pestilens, maxime in occidentali parte Lotharingiae; ubi multi, sacro igni interiora consumente computrescentes, exesis membris instar carbonum nigrescentibus, aut miserabiliter moriuntur, aut manibus et pedibus putrefactis truncati, miserabiliori vitae reservantur, multi vero nervorum contractione distorti tormentantur.”

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. Poitou, , , commenting on the assertion that in  eight thousand persons in the Sologne died of ergotism (about  percent of the population of the entire district). See also Chaumartin, ,  and pièce justificative no. , p. v, on the death toll of more than forty thousand reported by Adémar of Chabannes for the year . On the basis of such a high rate of mortality, de Jussieu, Saillant, Paulet, and Tessier, , –, thought mistakenly to identify the epidemic of  as bubonic plague. . Greslier, , :–. . For example, one of the entries for December –,  (Greslier, , :): “Anno xxx viii, egrotabat in porticu Iohannes, filius Normant, de parrochia Sante Marie Petite. Et parrochia eius soror habuerat infirmitatem in oculo ante ipsum.” Or the entry for August ,  (ibid., ): “Eodem anno, in vigilia Assumptionis Beatis Marie, exivit porticum Stephanus de Porta, qui erat homo domini Castri Radulfi et domini de Cluies, de parrochia Sancti Dionisii Castri Radulfi. Michael canonicus, Petrus de Aqua Viva, Odo de Furno, Americus sacrista, Petronilla et Maura, et filia, viderunt eum infirmatem. Et erat infirmitas in voltu prope oculum.” See also Greslier, , :. . Greslier, , :–, . . Greslier, , :–. On disease during July and August, the caniculum, and the cult of Saint Guinefort, see Schmitt, , –. . bn, ms lat. , fols. v–v: Catalogus codicium hagiographicorum, , –, esp. nos. – (the manuscript dates to c. –; I thank Patrick Gautier Dalché and Patricia Stirnemann for verifying this information). . The canon Henri de Saalma, sacristan of the parish church of Ninove (Belgium) between  and , observed this same contraction in those who, afflicted with Saint Anthony’s fire, sought relief through the relics of Saint Corneille (Saunier, , ). . “Les contractions des muscles fléchisseurs étoient si violentes dans quelques sujets, qu’elles faisoient presque toucher les talons aux fesses,” Boucher, , , and for a description of the onset and manifestation of gangrene, –; see also Barger, , , –, esp. . The progression from convulsive to gangrenous ergotism was also observed in two elderly individuals during the outbreak at Pont-Saint-Esprit in , the last recorded instance of collective ergotism in France; see Fuller, , –, , . . Barger, , –. . Chaumartin, , pièces justificatives nos.  and , pp. xi–xiv—“Invaserat enim idem ignis faciem et ora praedictae mulieris, et jam cum

horrore intuentinum quidquid carnulentae cartilaginis in naso ejus prominebat, et labium superius quod naso subjacet usque ad maxillares et gengivas molares erat, ignis, tabificus depopulans turbaverat” (Hugues Farsit, p. xii)—and , citing a seventeenth-century physician. See also Boucher, , , for a description of one case in which gangrene covered the face of a girl. . Guérin, b, ; Devailly, , esp. , ; Edeine, , :. . Chaumartin, , ; Barger, , , , –, with map on ; and for the eighteenth century, Poitou,  and , esp. –. . Poitou, , ; Barger, , ; Chaumartin, , –; François Quesnay (–), Traité de la gangrène (Paris, ), –; Saillant, ; Denis Diderot, “Ergot,” Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, new ed. (Geneva, ), : col. a,  col. b,  col. b. . As the physician Denis Dodart noted in a report to the Royal Academy of Sciences in : “Nous observâmes quelques grains de ce seigle qui avoit ainsi dégénré; ils sont noirs en dehors, assez blancs en dedans, & quand ils sont sec, ils sont plus durs, & d’une substance plus serée que les grains naturels. . . . On apelle ces grains des Ergots en Sologne, & du Bled-cornu en Gastinois” (Dodart, , ). . Tessier, a, b, c, and –. See also de Jussieu, Saillant, Paulet, and Tessier, ; Saillant, ; Barger, , –; Chaumartin, , –; Poitou, , –. . See Poitou, , –, for an account of known epidemic years and a discussion of mortality rates. . Ehlers, , . . Tessier, b, –. . For example, ad, Loir-et-Cher, G  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :–) and G – (ibid., –). . Naudet, , . The toponym Noyers derives from the words for walnut tree in Latin (accusative case in the plural, nucarios) and Old French (noier); see Soyer, , , and Nègre, –, :, no. . . Part of the entry for  describes ergotized grain in terms that recall Dodart’s: “A l’égard des bleds [ils] furent serez [,] fort mal conditionnés et presque tous noirs et germez, de façon que le pain en estoit fort noir et mauvais.” De la Borde’s “Livre de raison” is in a private collection in the village of Mer (Loir-et-Cher). Substantial segments were transcribed and published by Guyonnet in the municipal magazine, Revue de Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher (), . . Edeine, , :.

NOTES

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. Guérin, b; Edeine, , :–; Poitou, , –. . Poitou, , –; id., , –. . Tessier, a, : “elles [fièvres intermittentes] ne s’y sont montrées qu’après quelque temps d’une grande chaleur. Il est vraisemblable que c’est au moment où commence à se faire un desséchement dans les marais, que les vapeurs qui s’en élèvent sont dangereuses.” I cannot resist mentioning that Tessier’s “mémoire” on the Solognots is not without an element of caricature (pp. –), as exemplified by remarks concerning the excessive sexual appetite of the shepherds and shepherdesses, which he attributed in part to a staple diet of buckwheat. . Poitou, , –, and id., , . An excellent in–depth analysis of disease in the region in the nineteenth century mentions only once in passing the two primary manifestations of ergotism, leg ulcers and “falling-down sickness” (le mal caduc), Beauchamp, , . . Edeine, , : esp. –, . . Edeine, , : table on –; see the saints entered under the rubrics “Langueur (enfants en), Mort (pour les gens en mal de).” . Edeine, , :– and, on Saint Viâtre at Tremblevif ( or “village du tremble,” renamed Saint-Viâtre in ), one of the most important cults in the Sologne, –. According to Matossian, , , the intermittent chills/ sweating of ergotism can so resemble malaria that historians have tended to misidentify the former as the latter. . Edeine, , : table on – and entries on individual sites, – (for Saint Anthony), –, –, ,  (for Saint Silvanus). On the regional cult of “bons saints” in general, see –. . Edeine, , :, –, , , . . Reference and excerpt provided by Edeine, , : n. . . Chaumartin, , . Henri de Mondeville, –, : nos. –. . Chaumartin, , . . Chaumartin, , , . In the later popular cults of the Sologne, both saints Lawrence and Andrew were much more obliquely tied to convulsive disorders: the former came to be associated with maux des dents, to which seizures in young children were sometimes attributed, and the latter with whooping cough (coqueluche), which is accompanied by violent paroxysms (Edeine, , :, entry for Orçay). . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G  and ; is, Loiret-Cher, :. On the role of Saint Martial as healer of the “mal des ardents,” see Chaumartin, , , , and id., .

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. On the origins of Silvanus’s cult at Levroux, see Laugardière, , –; Saint-Aubin, , . The tale of Martin’s tribute to the patron of Levroux refers to and reworks Sulpicius Severus, vita s. martini, :, an episode situated in vico autem cui Leprosum nomen est (J. Fontaine, Sources chrétiennes, , pt.  [Paris, ], –; see also Rousselle, , esp.  and ). . The legend, intended to dignify Silvanus’s cult, circulated by the thirteenth century. Several versions are recorded: one is contained in a Latin prose collection of Saint Silvanus’s posthumous miracles (Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum, , , pt. , –, no. ); a variation is conveyed by Labbe, , :–; a third is embedded in the vernacular verse life of Saint Martin by Péan Gatineau (Soderhjelm, , –, lines –). . See note  to Chapter . . Brittain, , –; Clay, , , and app. B, , , , , , , , ; the principal leper hospital under the saint’s invocation was Saint-Giles-in-the-Fields, near London; see Honeybourne, , –. . Aubert, , –; Mesmin,  and . . Bienvenu, –, :–. . Corbet, , –, esp. n. . . Rembry, , :; Jones, , –. . Vulliez, , ; Edeine, , :. . Roth, , –. . Grésy, , and Hinkle, , esp. –. . Chaumartin, , . Henri de Mondeville, , . . Grésy, , . . On the cult of Saint Loup in the Sologne, see the tables in Edeine, , :–, numerous entries on individual cult sites, and the remarks on , . For a more general overview of beliefs surrounding the wolf, see Delumeau, , –. . In the early nineteenth century, La Saussaye, an avid student of Solognot folkloric cults, already acknowledged the connection; see Edeine, , :. . Loux, , –. . See Fuller, , , on hallucinations involving animals. . Barger, , , –, –, , . . Fuller, , –, , . . Dodart, , . . Poitou, , –. . Bensa, . . Bensa, , –: la carte du Perche-Gouët peut être considérée comme le support topographique et toponymique

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du savoir médicale populaire; la totalité des lieux de culte est comparable à un dictionnaire médical déployé dans l’espace. . . . Ces correspondances entre les affections et les points de l’espace spatialisent l’image du corps malade. Ce dernier se trouve projeté, par le discours populaire médical et par la pratique des pèlerinages qui l’accompagnent et l’actualisent, sur l’ensemble du terroir. La reconnaissance et l’utilisation de l’espace médiatise les rapports du paysan percheron à son propre corps. . . . Le corps paysan, éparpillé dans l’espace, est un corps meurtri, souffrant. Les cultes populaires viennent soigner chaque organe, chaque membre, chaque affection, de sorte que l’unité du corps n’est saisissable qu’à travers l’unité de l’espace pratiqué. Le pèlerin, en visitant les lieux saints de sa région, reconnaît son propre corps: le langage spatiomythique du discours médical tend à identifier le corps du malade au terroir à la fois support et agent de la guérison. . Touati, , –. . Touati, , , –. . Bensa, , . . On the elaboration of the comparison between confession and medicine, priests and physicians, see Longère, , :, , , , ; Bériou, ; Binski, , ; Biller, , ; Baldwin, , –. . On the relationship between healing the body and healing the soul, see Agrimi and Crisciani, . Developments in the rites accorded the sick are discussed by Paxton, , –, and id., . For the High Middle Ages, see Avril, , and Martimort, . . On the use of the phrase proprius sacerdos and the history of confession to the parish priest, see Avril,  and . . Nelson, a and b, esp. –; Bynum, , –, esp. –, on Gerhoh and Hugh; Elliott, , –, –. . Palazzo, , . . Palazzo, , –. . Palazzo, , .

chapter  . Baylé, . Baylé’s analysis now supplants Berland, ; Lesueur, , –; Mussat, , , , , , ; Renoux and Surchamp, ; Deshoulières, b. . Hubert, b,  . Baylé, , –. . Baylé, , , conjectures that the interruption may have coincided with the king’s punitive siege of the castle in .

. Baylé, , , , raises questions about the authenticity of the style of the four statues-nervures in the tribune of the tower porch: whereas the figures of the Virgin and an unidentified female saint appear medieval in part, the figures of Saints Peter and Paul show signs of being a later pastiche or, at best, recut. She nevertheless accepts as authentic the presence of these statues, for she uses them as a dating element. . These include a barrel-vaulted room off the transept and, from the end of the fourteenth century, a two-storey, two-bay oratory (the “chapelle des miracles”) off the fourth collateral bay. . Guyonnet, –, :. On the place of the jubé in churches occupied by canons, see Hubert, b, –, and, more recently, Le jubé de Bourges, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, . . acmh, Loir-et-Cher, Saint-Aignan-surCher, église, carton , dossier , –. I have taken a letter from Lassus to the minister of beaux-arts, dated October , , as the beginning of his interest in the building. Baylé, ,  and , no. , dates his first report to ; I have not been able to find the original document, only a publication evidently prepared from it: Lassus, n.d. . Lassus, n.d., : “La nef entière telle que nous venons de l’esquisser était couverte de peintures. De grandes figures à longues et roides draperies, et probablement du même temps que celles de la crypte que nous décrirons plus loin, ornaient la voûte. Des phylactères s’enroulaient autour de ces représentations de vertus chrétiennes et d’intelligences angéliques. Toutes ces peintures ont disparu, il y a près de quarante ans, sous une couche de badigeon; on croit possible néanmoins de les faire revivre.” . acmh, Loir-et-Cher, Saint-Aignan-surCher, église, carton , dossier , –. La Morandiére’s restoration, judged excessive even by the standards of the day, caused the building to be declassified in ; it was reclassified in  (see carton , dossier , –). . For a diagram showing the location of the medieval and nineteenth-century capitals, see Lesueur, , . . The building typology formulated by an older generation of French scholars (e.g., Crozet, , –; Deshoulières, , esp. ) distinguished between crypts, like those at Saint-Aignan, that compensated for inhospitable terrain and those dug out of level ground. The former, it was supposed, originated merely as a structural necessity, the latter in order to house relics. But such reductive classification systems no longer guide the interpretation of medieval buildings; see now the remarks of Berland, , esp. .

NOTES

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. For example, Levroux (Saint-Aubin, , ), Yzeure (Baylé, , ), and Saint-Désiré (Andrault-Schmitt, , –). Fenestellae in the façade wall of the confessio at Saint-Aignan, Orléans, allowed the relics to be viewed, not from the choir of the upper church, but from the trapezoidal choir to the east. . Crook, , –. . Lesueur, , . . Baylé, , . . See page  above. . acmh, Loir-et-Cher, Saint-Aignan-surCher, église, carton , dossier , –: the architect Maurice Lotte presented his design for the stairway in a report dated November ,  (rapport no. ), which was accompanied by three drawings, now F,  (plan of crypt), and F,  projet  and  (showing the stairway of two flights). On November  the inspector general Pierre Pacquet presented to the commission a report recommending the project (no. ). An estimate (devis no. ) for the work was approved on December , . The work was actually begun a year later, in November , and completed in June . . ab, inventaire de , fols. v–v; ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , p.  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :), text cited in Baylé, ,  and  n. . . On the social functions of cemeteries, see Schmitt, , –, and Lauwers, , –. . Jacomet, b, –,  n. ,  nn.  and , ,  n. . . The conflation of the two Jameses runs through the Codex Calixtinus, or Liber sancti iacobi, dated c. ; according to book , the beginning of the Catholic epistle (James :–) and Bede’s commentary on this text are to be included in the liturgy for July , vigil of the apostle’s summer— and principal—feast, which celebrates his passion and translation to Compostela. See Moisan, , , –,  n. , –, and Díaz y Díaz, , –, . . Jacomet, b, –. . See Paxton,  and , for the late antique and early medieval period; Avril, , for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. “Extrême onction,” dtc :–, is still useful for the latter period. . The earliest documented reference to the double dedication, to Saints James and Christopher, is contained in a lease dated , ad, Loir-et-Cher, G  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :). Archives pertaining to the vicariate of Saint-Jacques et Saint-Christophe are collected in G – (ibid., –). . When in  the architect J. Grenouillot was studying how to reopen the original stairway, he made a revealing observation:

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Quant à l’escalier, dont vous m’avez demandé d’étudier la réouverture, pour l’accès de l’église supérieure à la crypte de l’église de Saint-Aignansur-Cher, à première vue je l’avais crue facile; mais le relevé, que j’avais commencé de remettre au net, me fait craindre que ce projet soit très difficile à réaliser, si même il le peut être. Le plan ci-joint fait voir que le prolongement jusqu’au sol de l’église recontrerait les pile et colonne engagée qui, au long du mur septentrional, portent la naissance des arcs du bas-côté. L’examen que j’ai fait, me fait supposer que l’escalier projeté au moment de la construction a pu être abandonné à cause du plan du bas–côté, qu’il aurait obstrué, ou qu’il aurait rendu nécessaire une autre disposition comme la suppression du bas de la pile et son remplacement par un encorbellement. (acmh, Loir-et-Cher, Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, carton , dossier , –, letter dated November , , from J. Grenouillot to the directeur des beaux-arts) Grenouillot persisted in his attempts to re-create the stairway, but his plan was not implemented, for as his successor M. Lotte noted some years later, it would have required cutting into the base of one of the piers of the side aisle (acmh, carton , dossier , –, rapport no. , of November , , p. ). . For Levroux and Saint-Aignan, Orléans, see note  above. The crypt of Anzy-le-Duc is described by Sapin, . . Baylé, , : “le mur ouest était bâti dans l’alignement approximatif de la paroi occidentale de la crypte ce qui crée une jonction peu harmonieuse avec le transept sans offrir aucun avantage sur le plan de la circulation des pèlerins. Bien que très incertaine, l’hypothèse d’une utilisation de dispositions antérieures doit donc être mentionnée.” . Baylé, , . . Sigal, , –; Hahn, , –. . Sauer, , –, and Maurmann, , –, –. For discussion of specific examples, see Dow, , ; Beretz, , – n. ; Baschet, , . . Panofsky, , –; Mezoughi, , , esp. n. ; on the west, see Klein, . On the duality right versus left, see Bertrand, , –, who notes that for Hildegard of Bingen “l’opposition entre la droite et la gauche (qu’elle associait au sud et au nord) était l’expression archétypale du combat entre le bien et le mal, le divin et le diabolique.” . Translation by Werckmeister, , , of Hom. in Ez., ii, , , pl , –. . Sicard, , – and passim, esp.  n. , –, .

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. Baschet, , –, esp. . . Dow, , . . Beretz, , –, esp. n. . . Werckmeister, , esp. –. This particular point is in no way vitiated by Seidel’s persuasive interpretation of Saint-Lazare’s reliquary functions (see Seidel, ). She is doubtless correct to argue that the topography of Lazarus’s Holy Land tomb shaped the peculiar siting of his Burgundian shrine with respect to the adjacent cathedral, Saint-Nazaire, so that, in fact, SaintLazare is north oriented. But in my view this global referential determination does not override, but rather coexists with, other directional orientations, for example, the viewer’s and the Judging Christ’s (see next note), that also crisscross SaintLazare apart from its relation to Saint-Nazaire. The coexistence of multiple perspectives (e.g., interior and exterior, plan and elevation) within a single image is commonplace in medieval art; the simultaneity of viewpoints aims at presenting a totalizing description by which many facets of an object can be reconciled. The shifting of orientations also occurs in mappemondes. An especially interesting case is the late-thirteenth-century Ebstorf map: the circle of the world is contained within Christ’s embrace so that its orientation to the east is aligned with his head at top, feet at bottom, and outstretched arms, right and left, to the north and south respectively; but at Jerusalem, the center of the circle, the vignette of Christ climbing out of his tomb violates the map’s global orientation to face north. . Setlak-Garrison, ; Travis, . . Outardel, , –; Hubert, b, –; Bévillard, ; Baratte–Bévillard, ; Davy, , –. . Angels bearing souls to heaven were depicted on the right (or west) side of the archivolt, the torments of hell on the left (or east) side. The right/left duality here takes precedence over the east/west duality with which it is in conflict. For other examples of the analogous distribution of the saved and the damned on the north side of churches, see Baschet, , –. . Baschet, , –. . Baschet, , –. . On the identity of this mysterious Pellegrino (Peregrinus) and his cult, see Baschet, , –, –. On the spiritual ideal of ascetic expatriation implied by the term peregrinus, see Constable, , esp. –. . Vogel, , and, more recently, Mansfield, , –. . Bertrand, , , , observes the integration of vertical and lateral hierarchies in the image of Fortune’s Wheel.

chapter  . Kupfer, , –, –, situates the styles of the two painters in their broader artistic context. . Duprat, , –; Deschamps and Thibout, , –; Lesueur, , . . Di Matteo, , repeats Lesueur’s misreadings. . For these observations, I am most grateful to M. Jean-Pierre Péraro, who has participated in the restoration of numerous ensembles of medieval wall paintings under the aegis of the Monuments historiques. That the fifteenth-century painters removed a layer of twelfth-century intonaco with its painting before commencing their work seems to me improbable, since such an operation would likely have left a pocked or roughened surface requiring new intonaco, rather than the very smooth enduit de parement used as the support for the new painting. . On how subtle shifts in the pose and gesture of majestic Christ figures can create meaning in Romanesque theophanies, see Bonne,  and . . On the revival of the traditio legis at Berzéla-Ville, see now Stratford, , and Palazzo, , –; for Montoire, Davy, , –; on the paintings at Coombes, Toubert, , , . The west portal of the church at Bourg-Argental in the Forez is framed by two jamb statues: next to the door, at right, Saint James holds a phylactery on which is inscribed verse  from the epistle; at left is the damaged figure of another apostle, probably Saint Peter; see Baschet, , –. . Jacomet, b,  n. ; Lempereur, , , ; Davy, , –. . Lempereur, , –. . The scene of the Major’s decapitation appears on the carved capital above the jamb statue of Saint James, author of the epistle at BourgArgental; Baschet, , . . “Giacomo il Minore,” in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vi, cols. –; aass, May, :–. The early legends are codified in Eusebius Pamphili, bishop of Caesarea, Historia ecclesiastica, ..– and ..–, , trans. R. Deferrari as Ecclesiastical History, The Fathers of the Church, vol.  (Washington, D.C., ; repr., ), –, –. According to a version of his legend recorded in the Golden Legend, he was pushed off a raised platform while preaching in the Temple and left lame for the rest of his days (Jacobus de Voragine, , :–, esp. –); I have been unable to trace this variant to any earlier source. . On this combination of prayer postures, see Schmitt, , –.

NOTES

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. Traces of letters above the figure’s head indicate an accompanying inscription, of which only the last two letters, vs, can now be deciphered. Unfortunately, the inscription was not recorded in earlier documentation. It is possible, therefore, that the figure represented a specific individual identified by proper name (perhaps the donor of the painting?); alternatively, a generic label (e.g., peregrinus) may have indicated the status or action of the figure. . Koziol, , –. . Jacomet, a; Davy, , – and pl. xxvii. . bhl, :–, and bhl, suppl., . . The oldest known representation of Saint Giles occurs in the lower church of San Clemente in Rome, where it forms part of a border of saints framing the scene of the translation of Saint Clement’s relics. The single iconic figure, of which only the lower portion survives, is posed in a frontal stance. For a reproduction, see Wilpert, –, : pl.  (). One other cycle, a series of scenes in a fourteenth-century illuminated passional (Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana, ms lat. , pp. , ), is equal in scope to that at Saint-Aignansur-Cher. . aass, September :– (bhl, no. ). For an edition after one of the oldest mss, see Jones, , –. The role of the legend in constructing the institutional identity of the abbey of Saint-Gilles is best discussed by Remensnyder, , esp. , –, –, , –, –, –. . This “acta ampliora” is published in Analecta Bollandiana,  (), – (bhl, no. ). For further commentary on the difference between the aass and Analecta Bollandiana texts, see the remarks of Paris and Bos, [] , xxxvi; Jones, , –; Luiselli Fadda, , –. A version derived from the Analecta Bollandiana redaction is edited in Jones, , – (bhl, no. ). . mgh, Scriptores, , –; Analecta Bollandiana,  (), – (bhl, no. ). . A convenient overview of the cult and its history can be found in Pycke, . . On Giles’s cult outside France, see Rembry, ; Brittain, , –; Paris and Bos, [] , lxxiv; and Jones, , –. . pl , –; Jones, , . . Mone, , :–, nos. –; Wrangham, , :–, nos. lxxi, lxxii. . Jones, , –, –. . Luiselli Fadda, , esp. –, and id., . . Jean of Reims, monk of Saint-Evroul in Normandy (d. ), wrote a Latin metric life of Saint Giles; see Paris and Bos, [] , xvi.

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Jones, , app. D, –, publishes a Latin verse life, preserved in a single manuscript, that she attributes to another, anonymous author. . Gerson et al., , :– and esp.  n. . On the very limited reception of this text, see Stones and Krochalis, . . Paris and Bos, [] ; Gnädinger, , –; Cazelles, . . Paris and Bos, [] , lxxxv–lxxxvi n. . . Jones, , app. E, –. . Jacobus de Voragine, , :–.Voragine’s account lies behind an English verse life of c.  attributed to Robert of Gloucester (Jones, , ) as well as later French compositions. Pycke, , col. , for example, notes that Jean de Vignay relied on the Golden Legend in his life of Giles of the fourteenth century.The English writer John Lydgate (–), however, for his poem on Giles, consulted both the tenth-century Latin vita and Guillaume de Berneville’s verse life (MacCracken, , –; see Jones, , , and Paris and Bos, [] , lxxxvii–lxxxviii). An Italian version of the first half of the fourteenth century is also known (Friedmann, , –). . Caciola, , ; Bureau, . . A miniature showing the saint praying in a boat illustrates the first lesson for the feast of Saint Giles in the Breviary of Philippe le Bel (bn, ms lat. , fol. ); for a reproduction, see Martin, , pl. , fig. xxii. The image does not conform to the episode of Giles’s calming the storm at sea as described in the Vita Sancti Aegidii; the text of the saint’s life specifically states that the saint accomplished the miracle from the shore. Either the scene represents Giles’s voyage from Greece to Provence, or it uses as a model a type of calming scene found in the vitae of other saints. . Di Matteo, , , makes confused, and confusing, assertions about the decoration of the south chapel. . “La cohérence et l’originalité de cette série de scènes a fait ignorer aux archéologues les traces d’un décor antérieur qui est visible dans cette chapelle aussi. La composition de ce décor est nettement la même que celle de la chapelle axiale: personnages dont les têtes sont à la même hauteur, disposés isolés sous des arcatures.” To set the record straight, no fragments of such a figural arcade, which Di Matteo places around the rim of the conch vault, can now be observed under strong, raking light. . She continues, “Le détail d’une trace de plante parasol, à l’est, permet de faire la comparaison de ce décor avec celui de Saint-Savin, confirmant par là la datation du décor à demi effacé, sans doute le

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décor initial, de Saint-Aignan, du début de xiie siècle.” This vegetation is in fact an integral part of the Giles cycle, where it plays an iconographic role in the representation of the pursuit of the hind. Foliage motifs are strictly conventional in depictions of this subject; I know of no examples in which all plant forms are absent. . The second church is dedicated to Saint Priscus in the Anglo-Saxon and other versions; see Luiselli Fadda, , . . Lesueur, , –; Davy, , –. . The Montoire painting is preserved only in the form of a watercolor copy of  by A. Breton. The pardon of Charlemagne may also have been represented in the north apse at Montoire, but the watercolor copy that supposedly corresponds to this scene (painted by J.-B.-J. Jorand in , formerly in the collection of the Musée des beaux-arts at Orléans but itself now lost) shows elements iconographically incongruous, in my view, with such an identification; see La Martinière, ,  fig.  and . For a review of the ensemble at Montoire, which included not only the twelfthcentury paintings now visible but also thirteenthand fourteenth-century work, see Lesueur, , –; Taralon, ; Davy, , –. . Davy, , – and pl. xlvii. . The frescoes were detached from the north wall of the chapel, which now serves as a public building. Deschamps and Thibout, , –; Lejeune, , –, esp. n. ; Lejeune and Stiennon, , :–, esp. –, on the scene of the Pursuit; Davy, , –, passim. As these authors have pointed out, the name floventus inscribed between the two riders derives from the life of Saint Giles by Guillaume de Berneville. In the Anglo-Norman poem, “Flavius rex Gothorum” of the Latin vita became “Flovent, roi de Tulusane, de Gascone, de Provence et de Burgine.” Deschamps and Thibout identify the crowned, white-haired rider as Charlemagne on account of his similarity to the figure of the emperor in the scene of the pardon below; the dark-haired figure riding a dark horse and blowing a hunting horn would therefore be Floventus. Lejeune, however, observes that in Guillaume de Berneville’s text, as in the Latin vita, Floventus hunts without Charlemagne, who encounters Giles in a separate episode; she therefore identifies the crowned figure as Floventus, and his dark-haired companion as his huntsman. What complicates the interpretation of the fresco is a variation of the Giles legend, found in the Chronique rimée of Philippe Mouskès (Reiffenberg, –, :–, vv. –) and in German texts (Lejeune, , –, n. ), in which Charlemagne, not Flavius,

pursues the doe and thus encounters the saint who obtains his pardon. Might the painter have combined Guillaume de Berneville’s version with this variation of the legend? Indeed, the scene of the pardon in the lower register follows not the Anglo-Norman life of Giles but rather a version of the episode close to that preserved in the Karlomagnus Saga. Instead of ignoring the ambiguous placement of the inscription between the two riders, perhaps we might consider the positive effects it produces in suspending the scene between alternative narratives: the image encompasses both. . The painting, very eroded, appears on the south wall of the south transept arm; Deschamps and Thibout, , –. Deschamps and Thibout, , , note fourteenth-century paintings of the Pursuit at Landes and Largny-sur-Automne. . The set of voussoirs also includes scenes of Saint Giles bestowing his garment on a pauper and celebrating his Miraculous Mass. For reproductions, see Willibald Sauerländer, Gothic Sculpture in France, 1140–1270, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York, ),  and figs. , . A similar selection of scenes (Giles cures the beggar, shields the doe, celebrates Mass) occurs in a fourteenthcentury hymnal (Florence, Bibliotheca Nazionale Centrale, ii. i. , fols. v, v). . The version of the legend that Philippe Mouskès incorporated into his Chronique rimée (c. ) as well as the life attributed to Jean Beleth (c. ) note that the saint was wounded in the thigh (Reiffenberg, –, :–, vv. –; Jones, , ).The much abridged Italian version of the fourteenth century indicates the leg (Friedmann, , –, esp. ); the version attributed to Robert of Gloucester reports that the arrow struck Giles’s knee (Jones, , –). In her  study of the vita and its literary offshoots, Jones, –, proposed that the tradition making Giles lame ultimately originated in England. After a church dedicated to Saint Giles was founded in the last decade of the eleventh century in the Cripplegate quarter of London, the saint’s cult was bound up with the Latin connotations of the Anglo-Saxon toponym (these are made clear in a late-twelfth-century document: “ante ecclesiam sancti Egidii ad portam civitatis quae lingua Anglorum Crepelsgate, latine vero porta contractoram vocatur”); “désormais saint Gilles devient patron des boiteux, et de blessé qu’il était devient blessé à la jambe, donc lui-même boiteux.” . Jones, , –, already surmised that pictorial representation played a key role in the broader transmission of the embellished narrative. . On the play of inversion and antithesis in hagiographic cycles, see Kessler, , , and Hahn, , .

NOTES

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. Paris and Bos, [] , lv, lxiv–lxxi; Gaiffier, ; Lejeune, , ; Rouche, , –; Vulliez, , . Paris and Bos, [] , lxx–lxxi, advance the hypothesis that the redactor of the Vita Sancti Aegidii may have known a version of the Charlemagne story in which Giles already appeared as the saintly protagonist; Jones, , –, refutes this theory. Hagiographers (e.g., Rembry, , :–) wishing to reconcile the references to Flavius and Charles have argued that the vita must refer instead to Charles Martel (reigned –). Sigebert of Gembloux situated Saint Giles around , and some versions of the saint’s legend from manuscripts of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries follow the chronicler’s lead (Jones, ,  and ; Luiselli Fadda, , ). On attempts by hagiographers to identify “Carolus rex” in the vita with Charles Martel, see the comments by Paris and Bos, [] , liv, and Girault, , –. As an alternative to Charlemagne, one medieval author writing c. , Gilles de Paris, proposed Charles the Bald (Paris and Bos, [], , xci–xciii; Vulliez, ,  and n.  for reference to a recent edition of the text). . Vulliez, ,  and n. , points out that before Guillaume de Berneville, a Latin text from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, the ars lectoria de magister Siguinus, with the phrase “Hoc Carolo magno regante beatus vivebat Egidius” already specifically associates Charlemagne and Saint Giles. . Lejeune, , –; Folz, , –, esp. , , . . Lejeune, , –. . Lejeune, , ; Paris and Bos, [] , lxxv–lxxvii. . Paris and Bos, [] , lxviii–lxxxii, and, more recently, Lejeune, , –. . Lejeune, , ; Paris and Bos, [] , –, vv. –, and xliv–xlv. . The scene at Chartres, in the SaintClement chapel of the crypt, occurs in the context of an extended Charlemagne narrative; the painting is dated –. I am most grateful to Professor Maines for providing me a copy of his unpublished master’s thesis on the Saint-Clement murals. The scene of the Pardon at Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (north wall) is in extremely fragmentary condition; see Davy, ,  and fig. . . According to Yedlicka, , , “striking the breast symbolized the striking of the heart with the hammer of contrition.” For a fuller discussion of this gesture in relation to the pun on pectus (breast) and peccatum (sin) and to the monastic hand-sign for “infirmity,” see now Ambrose, , esp. , , .

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. Lejeune and Stiennon, , :, mention the existence of the Giles cycle in the crypt at Saint-Aignan, including the scene of the Miraculous Mass, but offer no further commentary. . For a more general discussion of Charlemagne and Roland imagery, see Kahn, . . Schnitzler, , – and fig. ; Lejeune and Stiennon, , :–, –; Maines, ; Manhes-Deremble, , esp. –, –. . Lejeune and Stiennon, , :–, esp. –. . Manhes-Deremble, , : “L’origine incestueuse de Roland ne pouvait être rachetée que par le sacrifice de la vie. C’est ainsi qu’est introduite l’image ultime du pardon du péché. . . . La messe de saint Gilles est l’ultime rachat, par le repentir de l’empereur, après celui, par le martyre, de Roland.” Manhes–Deremble notes the controversy over the position of the medallion showing the Miraculous Mass, but concludes that the current placement is correct; her interpretation of the scene is close to that of Lejeune and Stiennon, , :–. For a different reading of events portrayed in the window, see Rolland, . . For an argument against the current placement of the Giles’s scene at the top of the window, see Maines, , , , –, and fig. . Although Maines repositions the Mass of Saint Giles directly below, rather than above, the depiction of Roland striking Durandel and blowing his horn, his conclusion regarding the meaning and function of the Pardon episode itself is not substantially different from that proposed by Lejeune and Stiennon, , and Manhes-Deremble,  (see note above): “The sequence of scenes representing the third expedition into Spain opens with the Mass of Saint Giles and closes with the announcement of Roland’s death, thus iconographically linking Roland and Charlemagne in the context of sin and forgiveness. As Charlemagne is forgiven through the intercession of Saint Giles and (by implication) through participation in the crusade, so Roland is (and can only be) redeemed through the events culminating in his death, or rather, his martyrdom in Christian combat” (Maines, –). . Lejeune and Stiennon, , :–, : fig. . . Demaux, ; Lejeune and Stiennon, , :– and pl. V. . Lejeune and Stiennon, , :, similarly characterize the pardon scene at Le LorouxBottereau as a flashback. This painting, however, lacks the psychological force of that in the crypt at Saint-Aignan. . Anciaux, , –; Bériou, , .

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. Bériou, , . . Saint-Denis, , –; Saunier, , –. . For an especially probing discussion of hagiographic typology, see Hahn, , esp. –, –, and id., , esp. the introductory remarks, –. Paris and Bos, [] , lvi–lvii and lx–lxi, compare episodes in the legend of Saint Giles to those in other legends. . Abou-El-Haj, , esp. –. . Roth, , –. Saint Giles is named earlier in several liturgical manuscripts, enumerated by Roth, , –: an eleventh-century collectar from the cathedral chapter of Saint-Étienne (Bourges, Bibliothèque municipale, ms ) records the celebration on September  of the martyr Priscus, the Berrichon confessors Placide and Valentin, and the abbot Saint Giles; a twelfth-century lectionary from the abbey of Chezal–Benoit (Bourges, Bibliothèque municipale, ms ) includes eight lessons for Giles’s feast day; two twelfthcentury copies of the martyrology of Usuard, one from the abbey of Saint-Sulpice (Bourges, Bibliothèque municipale, ms ), the other of unidentified provenance (Bourges, Bibliothèque municipale, ms ), mention Saint Giles on September . The entry in the latter, ms , fol. , evokes the Vita Sancti Aegidii in locating Saint Giles, abbot, in the diocese of Nîmes, at a place near the sea called the Flavian valley. Roth, , –, inventories eighteen churches, chapels, and vicariates placed under the patronage of Saint Giles in the diocese of Bourges. . Vulliez, , –. . Paris and Bos, [] , xlv, lxvi, esp. n. , lxvii. . Vulliez, , –. . Duprat, , –. . Deschamps and Thibout, , , and id., , ; Lesueur, , ; Demus, , ; Di Matteo, , –. . Differences that Di Matteo, , , enumerates are grossly exaggerated. . I thank my friend J.-P. Péraro for keeping me abreast of restoration activity at Chalivoy and for sending me slides of this latest development, anticipated by Christe, , esp. . I therefore retract remarks in Kupfer, , , , . . Lesueur, , , and Di Matteo, , . . See Couchman, , on the iconography of representations of Luke :–. . Feuillet, , , . Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum, cap. lxxix, pl , esp. ; see also the Glossa ordinaria on Matt. :, pl , . . Barral i Altet, ; Didi-Huberman, , .

. For a review of the iconographic tradition of the anointings, see Schiller, –, :– and :–, and LaRow, , esp. – and the tables on –. . Feuillet, , , –. See, e.g., Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum, cap. lxxix, pl , –; Glossa ordinaria, on Matt. : and Luke :, in pl , , . Sullivan, , , therefore errs when she states that the unctions described in each of the four Gospels were interpreted in the Western church to refer to a single incident. . Augustine, In Iohannis evangelium tract., xlix, , in ccl,  (Turnhout, ), : “ecce ipsa soror Lazari (si tamen ipse est quae pedes Domini unxit unguento, et tersit capillis suis quos laverat lacrymis) melius suscitata est quam frater eius: de magna malae consuetudinis mole est liberata. Erat enim famosa peccatrix; et de illa dictum est: Dimittuntur ei peccata multa, quoniam dilexit multum.” . I am most grateful to Professor Robert Allison of Bates College for proposing this identification during discussion following a lecture I gave there in March . . Constable, , – (with bibliography),  n. . I thank Robert Godding of the Société des Bollandistes for references to Martha as the woman with the issue of blood in two early texts: Gregory Baeticus, or Illiberitanus, bishop of Elvira (d. ), De Salomone,  (ccl , p. , line ), and Facundus, sixth-century bishop of Hermiane, Pro defensione trium capitulorum lib. XII ad Iustinianun, ,  (ccl  A, p. , line ). The De Salomone was sometimes attributed to Ambrose of Milan (pl , ; col.  for the passage in question). It may be of some interest that in the thirteenth century Jacobus de Voragine credited Saint Ambrose with the identification (Golden Legend, :–), a tradition reiterated also by the fifteenth-century theologian John Gerson (De praeparatione ad missam, in Oeuvres complètes,  vols, ed. Palémon Glorieux [Paris, –], :). . ad, Loir-et-Cher, G  (is, Loir-et-Cher, :). Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources, using the same terms of reference as for the apsidal chapel of Saint-Jacques-des-Grottes, specifically locate the vicariate of the Magdalen in the crypt; ad, Loir-et-Cher, G , document dated  (ibid., ) and G , chapter deliberations dated October , , pp. – (ibid., ). . Saxer, , –; Schiller, –, : – and :–; Feuillet, ; LaRow, ; Sullivan, ; Join-Lambert, ; Iogna-Prat, ; id., , esp. –. For a different approach to the study of the Magdalen, see Didi-Huberman, , esp. –.

NOTES

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. On the two sisters and their exemplification as vita activa (Martha) and vita contemplativa (Mary), see Constable, . . The equation between the flux of blood in the Gospel episode and menstrual blood was supplied by Lev. :: “The woman that hath an issue of blood many days out of her ordinary time, or that ceaseth not to flow after the monthly courses, as long as she is subject to this disease, shall be unclean, in the same manner as if she were in her flowers.” See also Elliott, , , . . Iogna-Prat, , –; Guerreau, . . Iogna-Prat, , ; Guerreau, , esp. –. . On pilgrimage as ritualized movement toward a symbolic “exterior” according to a hierarchy in which sanctity of place is directly proportional to distance, see Guerreau, , esp. –, and, more recently, id., , –, –, –. Incidentally, Alain Guerreau’s attempt at defining a system of Christian pilgrimages establishes the larger theoretical framework in which to situate Linda Seidel’s recent analysis of the links between Saint-Lazare, Autun, and Lazarus’s Holy Land shrine. . On the raising of Lazarus as an allegory of confession, see Kupfer, , –, and for bibliography,  n. . . Lauwers, , , notes: “L’essor et la diffusion de la pénitence privée a mis les fidèles en position d’être Marie Madeleine à certains moments de leur vie. Consciemment ou non, ils sont amenés à un certain mimétisme magdalénien.” . On unguent as a metaphor for alms, see, for example, Morey, ,  n. ; Longère, , –; Bériou and Touati, ,  n. ; and id., ,  n. . Lauwers, ,  and n. , notes in the sermons of Jacques de Vitry the Magdalen’s unction of Christ as a figure for the performance of works of mercy. . Gaiffier, ,  n. ; Payen, , –; Anciaux, , , –. . Lassus, n.d., . . Baylé, , –.

chapter  . Sigal, , –, and esp. Head, , , , –, –. . The medieval terminology for offerings and ex-votos, as well as modern definitions and classification systems, are discussed in Sigal, , –. . Sigal, , , . . Sigal, ,  and –. . Sigal, , –.

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. Barthélemy, , –, esp. –. . Sigal, , –. . Barthélemy, , , –, –. For a general consideration of onerous and degrading markers of servitude, see Freedman, , –, esp.  and . . Barthélemy, , , : “Bonne affaire que d’aliéner un statut temporel contre un passeport pour l’éternité. . . . les rites de l’action de grâce sont proches de ceux de la pénitence. En outre, un pénitent est quelqu’un qui s’avoue vaincu, qui se rend, en adoptant l’une des postures paradigmatiques de la servitude.” See additional pertinent remarks on , –. . Head, , esp. –. . Yedlicka, , , . . See pages  above. . Bériou and Touati, ,  n. . . pl :–; see Morey, , esp.  n. . . Longère, , –. . Longère, , –, discusses textual examples in which the plea for alms and the threat of divine judgment are juxtaposed. . Longère, , –; Lottin, , , . On the penitential dimension of pilgrimage undertaken as satisfaction for sin, see Vogel, , and Berlioz, . . Lottin, ; Études sur l’histoire de la pauvreté, , :; Roch, ,  and  n. . . Saunier, , –; Saint-Denis, , –; and id., , –. . For a discussion of the undecidable in Romanesque art, see Bonne, , on the tympanum of Autun. . Lauwers, , esp. –, –. . Otto Gerhard Oexle has in numerous articles analyzed various facets of the commemoration of the dead; of these articles the most relevant for the present study are Oexle, , , , and . . See pages  above. . Iogna-Prat, , . . Lauwers, , . . See the penetrating analysis in Lauwers, , –. . Le Goff, , –, –, –, –, –. But see also Binski, , –, for an interesting response to Le Goff ’s thesis. . Lauwers, , . . Lauwers, , , –, –. . Finucane, , ; Gonthier and le Bas, , –, ; Sigal, , –. . See Finucane, , –, on men and nonhealing miracles. See Gonthier and le Bas, , , for a table showing that, in the corpus of texts analyzed, infertility counts as less than  percent of

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saints’ interventions. A similar finding is also reported by Sigal, , –, tables on –, , . Incidentally, the low resonance of reproductive issues in medieval hagiographic material agrees with the picture, discerned by Alain Guerreau, , that they were the focus of specialized cults outside the therapeutic domain of church sanctuaries. . Sigal, , –, –. . Sigal, , , –; confirmed by Finucane, , –. . Bynum, , , –. . Geary, , –, esp. –. . Lauwers, , –. . See Constable, , on Mary and Martha as types of the religious life; Elliott, , , on the hemorrhaging woman (Martha) as a type of the priest suffering from nocturnal emissions; Lauwers, , , and Carrasco, , on the Magdalen. . Bynum, , , , , makes the point that all bodily discharges, from nosebleeds to lactation, were analogous to bleeding. . Cadden, , , , . . Elliott, , esp. –. . Elliott, , . . Murray, , with references to relevant bibliography. She concludes, “[T]he sexless souls belong to men. Women’s souls were assigned qualities based on earthly categories; in effect, women’s souls were gendered female.” . Lauwers, , –, esp. . . Bynum, , , –. As Bynum, , , and id., , , points out, the proliferation in the High and late Middle Ages of feminine-gendered metaphors for male religious devotion in no way led to increased sympathy for actual women or enhanced respect for female social roles. The more men adopted a feminized language of spirituality, the less women relied on gendered imagery to express their own spirituality and instead aspired to identification with Christ’s humanity.The intensely somatic character of female religious experience, based on union with Christ’s suffering, bleeding, and nourishing (lactating) body, reinforced devotion to the Eucharist, aggrandized the priesthood, and enhanced exclusive sacerdotal control over the sacraments. . Analyzing miraculous discoveries of holy images in rural Spain, Christian, , –, esp. –, makes a similar point: the narrative structure of the legends reflects the gendered position of the intermediary between human and divine. The finders of miracle-producing images were mostly adult males (humans and animals), and then followed boys, preadolescent girls, and adult women. The majority of the finders were the most masculine; the least likely finders were the most feminine.

. The cases of women mystics, like Gertrude of Hefta (d.  or ), who in their visions were directly commissioned by Christ to take on a quasi-priestly role, are the exceptions that prove the general rule (Bynum, , –). . Héritier, , : “Jésus, sexué, n’a pas fait d’usage de sa sexualité masculine, n’a pas émis de semence et a transmué celle-ci en Verbe divin. Seule le mâle peut réussir cette transformation; Aristote l’a dit et bien des populations fort éloignées de la Grèce ont le même modèle d’explication: chaleur plus grande du corps masculin, coction totale du sang qui aboutit à la fabrication de la semence comme pneuma et non matière. Le pneuma est aussi le Verbe. Chasteté masculine et prédication vont de pair.” . Lauwers, , –. . Lauwers, , –. Elliott, , –: “The obsession with sexual purity began [in the eleventh century] with the monastic reformers. . . . Soon this preoccupation animated the entire Gregorian Reform of the secular clergy, which vigorously strove to outlaw and suppress clerical marriage. Nor did these fears, once called into being, entirely recede after the reformers’ goals were achieved. The clergy, who had struggled so hard to attain its new level of ritual purity, continued to be particularly sensitive to external sources of defilement. Clerics now defined themselves and rationalized their superiority to the laity in the distance they maintained from women. Not only were clerical wives firmly set aside, but women were scrupulously kept away from the altar.” Elliott, , . And Bynum, ,  n. , and : “By the s and s opportunities for women to fill recognized religious roles in society had vastly increased. Yet religious women were more excluded than they had been a hundred years before from exercising clerical authority. The prestige of the clerical role for male—now much more clearly defined as control of the sacraments—had steadily grown.” . Elliott, , –. . McCracken, , . . On the relation between domestic and folk medicine, see Loux, , esp. –. On the preparation of potions, unguents, salves, poultices, and so forth as an aspect of women’s domestic life, see Weisner, , –; Frugoni, , –. On wise women, see Horsley and Horsley, , esp. –. . Green, . . Jacquart, ; on enchanters, see Flint, . . Schmitt, , esp. . . For a general discussion of therapeutic itineraries and the hierarchy of resort, see Kleinman,

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, and Young, ; for discussion of these concepts in Western medieval culture, see Finucane, , –, and Park, , . The classic history of the power of kings to heal scrofula remains Bloch, . . Lauwers, , . . Guerreau, . I am grateful to Jérôme Baschet for bringing this article to my attention. . Schmitt, . . On the cultural construction of the old woman, see Agrimi and Crisciani, . . In “Sermo lii,” in Sancti Caesarii Arelatensis sermones, ed. G. Morin, ccl,  (Turnhout, ), –, esp. :– (trans. M. Mueller, in Sermons One to Eighty, The Fathers of the Church, vol.  [Washington, D.C., , repr. ], –, esp. –:–) Caesarius focuses on the healing practices of women concerned for their infirm children; he defines the healing of children through recourse to magic as the complement of abortion and, indeed, as more cruel than abortion. The later didactic material (including bibliographic references to primary sources) is summarized by Schmitt, , –, –. Vogel, , , notes that for Burchard of Worms sorcery is by definition a female practice. . The best historical critique of the ecclesiastical construction and condemnation of superstition in the medieval period is that by Schmitt, , esp. –, on the origins of the opposition religio/superstitio, a theme reviewed and expanded along different lines by Belmont, , esp. –. For normative ecclesiastical notions of the feminine, see d’Alverny, , esp. , , on the equation mens or ratio : vir :: sensus or sensualitas (faculty of sense, the animal faculty) : mulier. . On the attribution of pharmacological skills to women in literary texts, see McCracken, . . Lauwers, , –; Bériou, , –. . Greslier, , :–, –. . ad, Indre, G , fol. v: Die mercurii post octabas Omnium Sanctorum, anno Domini m cc lx tercio juravit sponte uxor Andree de Brolio quod de cetero no intromittet se de aliquo infirmo curando, quia dicebatur quod intromittebat se de aliquibus languidis habentibus infirmitatem b. silvani contra privilegium prioris et capituli. Sed si dominus vocaverit eam pro se vel suis, poterit ire semel et videre infirmitatem, sed non intromittet se ultra per se vel per alim, nec adhibebit opere vel auxilium, sed dicet quod nescit se intromittere. Et si contra faciat et possit legitime convinci, promisit per juramentum suum ad sancta Dei Evangelia prestitum se solituram dicto capitulo

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NOTES

decem libras monete currentis pro qualibet vice qua super premissis poterit convinci et ad hoc obligavit se et sua. Actum in revestiario novo anno et die predictis. Andrea et P. de Sancero et Guillelmo Boelli priore de Castellione, magistro P. de Boichis, magistris Renaudo Dartac, Jolanon (?),Helia canonicis, Boiat et Alanno vicariis, et Bricio, Humbaudo, Bruno Bruiaudi et dicto Boet presentibus. I am deeply indebted to M. Marc du Pouget, directeur des Archives de l’Indre, for providing me with a transcription of this text. . Greslier, , :–. . I have here preferred a strictly literal reading of the cartulary entry, and so have interpreted “aliquo infirmo” in the first clause to mean any sick person, period—the blanket prohibition being the radical consequence of having meddled in the chapter’s specialization as charged in the second clause, where by contrast, the more precise formulation “aliquibus languidis habentibus infirmitatem b. silvani” is used. Alternatively, a less rigorous reading (that of Raynal, , : n. , and Greslier, , : ) posits that the word “infirmo” in the first clause refers implicitly to a person suffering from the saint’s disease. If this reading is taken to its logical conclusion, then matron de Breuil would have been prohibited from intervening in the cure of Saint Silvanus’s fire, but not necessarily from treating other diseases. A complementarity of functions would therefore have been preserved, with the canons excluding her from the domain in which, according to the terms of the seigneurial privilege, they alone were allowed to operate. The cartulary text might thus be loosely interpreted as a kind of “noncompetition agreement,” typically between unequal parties (the first, to my knowledge, in the history of Western medicine): as in contracts between physicians in the United States today, the more established practitioner (here, the chapter) imposes restrictions on a potential competitor in order to safeguard a client base. . Moore, , . . Tanner, , :. . Tanner, , :. . See Mansfield, , , , , , , , on the definition of the parish as a territorial unit and the role of penance in “forging a visible Christian community” out of it. . Touati,  and ; an overview of his argument appears in Bériou and Touati, , –. . Touati’s chronology fits a model advanced by several historians; as Paul Freedman, , , remarks: “Occasionally, an open, pluralist ‘good’ Middle Ages (with the twelfth century as its high

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point) is contrasted with a rigid, authoritarian, intolerant scholastic and late-medieval era”; see also  n. . . Touati, , –; Bériac, , –. . Moore, , , and cf. . . Moore, , –. . Touati, , –. . Moore, , . . Touati, , . . Imbert, , –; Bériac, , –; id., ; Touati, , –. . Grmek, , –. . The relationship between tsara’ath and Hansen’s leprosy is much disputed. Grmek, , –, , takes the position that the Hebrew concept may indeed have encompassed the disease caused by Hansen’s bacillus. . Touati, , , , –, –, . . Moore, , –, esp. –. . Touati, , –. . Moore, , –; Touati, , –, esp. . . Touati, , –. . Touati, , –. . Touati, , –. . Touati, , –, –. . Touati, , –. . Touati, , –. . Touati, , , table . . Touati, , –, –. . Le Grand, , – n. : “hoc etiam statutum est ut si, aliquo in fraternitatem supradictorum infirmorum transeunte, ad eandem capellam processionem ire contigerit, sacerdos predictus de oblacionibus ejusdem processionis, si tantum valuerint, vel de beneficio transeuntis, XIIeim nummos habeat, nec in oblacionibus aliarum processionum idem sacerdos aliquid elomumenti percipiet, nisi quantum predicti infirmi voluerint ei dare.” Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, confirmed the accord in ; Pope Clement iii approved the bishop’s confirmation in December . . Le Grand, , ; Bériac, ,  and esp. . . Touati, , , . . Touati, , ; Le Grand, , ; Bériac, , . . Lauwers, , –, and Touati, , , –, each with recent bibliography. On

the literary genre of the leper’s congés, see Langlade, ; Foulon, ; Ruelle, ; Zink, . . Touati, in Bériou and Touati, , . . Touati, , –, . . Immunological resistance to Hansen’s bacillus in late medieval/early modern Europe appears to have increased in direct proportion to rampant infection with Koch’s, Mycobacterium tuberculosis; the antagonism between the two bacilli, however, is complex; see Grmek, , –. . Touati, , –. . September  was the date commemorating Lazarus’s second death; Bériac, , . . Touati, , . . Peyroux, . . Moore, , . . Freedman, , –.

epilogue . Lesueur, , , provides a general description of the late medieval ensemble. . Dexter, Châlon: gules, a bend or. Sinister, Parthenay: barruly argent and azure, overall a bend gules. The arms of Châlon are recorded in the Gelre armorial, compiled –, Gelre, , nos.  and . . Guyonnet, –, :–. . Petit, ; Vaughan, , – and –. . Petit, ,  n. , for primary source. . As transcribed by Lesueur, , ; the brackets are mine and indicate that I have been unable to verify Lesueur’s reading. . Ashley and Sheingorn, , –. . Ashley and Sheingorn, , . . As transcribed by Lesueur, , , brackets mine. . Guyonnet, –, : and fig. on , claims that the shield presents the arms of Châlon impaled with those of Perellos (or three pears uncolored; recorded in Gelre, , no. ). It is conceivable that the charge on the sinister half of the shield has rubbed off, but I have been unable to find any traces of its presence. The arms of Perellos survive nowhere in the decor of the crypt. . Guyonnet, –, :–.

NOTES

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Aachen, Charlemagne reliquary shrine, – abortion,  n.  Adoration of Magi,  Agnès of Donzy, , , ,  Alexander IV (pope),  Alexandre de la Borde, , ,  alms. See also charity (virtue of); gift exchange; poor relief solicitation of, , , ,  as investment in afterlife, , – as unguent/unction, , , ,  as satisfaction for sin, ,  and widows, ,  Amis et Amiles,  André de Breuil, wife of, , , ,  n.  Andrew, Saint, , ,  Angers, hôtel-Dieu,  Anianus, Saint, , , , , ,  Anne, Saint,  anointment. See unction Anselm of Gembloux,  Anselm of Laon,  Anthony, Saint, , , , , , ,  anthrax,  Anzy-le-Duc, church crypt,  Aretaeus of Cappadocia,  Ashley, Kathleen, and Pamela Sheingorn,  Autun, Saint-Lazare, , , ,  n. ,  n.  baptism, , , ,  Barthélemy, Dominique,  Barzelle, abbey,  Baschet, Jérôme,  Basel, cathedral,  Baylé, Maylis, , ,  Beaumont-Village, parish church, paintings from, , –,  n.  Beauvais, Saint-Étienne,  Bensa, Alban, ,  Bériac, Françoise,  Bernard of Clairvaux,  Bernier, Jean, 

bleeding. See blood Bloch, Marc,  Blois, , , , , , ,  blood, flux of. See also menstruation Christ’s healing of woman with, , , –, ,  metaphor for impurity/sin, , , , ,  body corruption of by sin, ,  relationship with soul, , , , , , , , ,  saintly versus fallen, ,  sex of and soul, , –,  symbolic representation of and land, , , –,  Bominaco, Santa Maria Assunta, chapel of S. Pellegrino,  Bourges breviary of (Châteauroux, Bib. mun. ms ),  Saint-Ursin,  Bynum, Caroline Walker, ,  Caesarius of Arles, , , ,  Carruthers, Mary,  cataracts,  Catharism,  Celle-Bruère, chapel at,  Celsus,  Chalivoy-Milon, church of Saint-Silvain, paintings,  Chanson de Roland, ,  charity (virtue of), , , , , , , , . See also alms; penance; poor relief Charlemagne, , , , –, , , ,  Chartres, cathedral, , , , ,  n.  Châteaudun, La Madeleine, – Chaumartin, Henri,  chevage, , ,  Chezal-Benoit, abbey,  childbirth, , , , 

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Christ Ascension of,  Crucifixion of, ,  Entry into Jerusalem,  Majesty of at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, , –, , ; as centerpiece of fifteenthcentury program, , , , , ; with paupers/supplicants, –, , , –, –, –,  Resurrection of, , ,  Transfiguration of,  Washing of Feet,  Christian community, definition of, , , , , , –, ,  Christopher, Saint, , , ,  Civray, Saint-Nicolas, ,  Cluny, abbey,  Colin Tavernier (Péageur), –, , , , , , , , ,  Communion. See Eucharist confession. See also penance administered by priests, , , , , ,  in hospital setting, ,  instituted by Christ, , , , , , , . See also Christ, Majesty of at SaintAignan-sur-Cher mandatory universal, , , ,  pictorial theme at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, , ,  as private act, –,  as purgative, , , , , , –,  Contres, , ,  Cornilly, abbey,  Cosne, ,  Council of Vienne,  Crook, John,  cult of the dead. See also gift exchange anniversary Mass, , , ,  burial, , , ,, , , , . See also Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, cemeteries intercessory role of sick poor in, , –, ,  role of women’s suffrage in, , , , , ,  Donzy (borough of),  family, , , , , , , , ,  dysentery,  eczema,  elephantiasis,  Elliott, Dyan, ,  epilepsy, ,  ergotism, , –, , , –,  erysipelas, , , 

198

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Etienne de Bourbon,  Eucharist, , , , , , , , ,  ex-voto,  Faverolles, , ,  fevers, , . See also malaria Francis, Saint,  François de Beauvillier, ,  Frederic Barbarossa,  free towns (ville franche), –,  Freedman, Paul,  Fulbert of Chartres,  Fulk Nerra, ,  Galen, ,  Gargilesse, Notre-Dame, , , ,  n.  garment, symbolic function of, –, –, , ,  Gauzlin, abbot of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire,  Geary, Patrick,  Geertz, Clifford,  gender roles, , , , , , –, –,  n. ,  Genouilly, hospital complex dedicated to St. Slivanus, ,  Geoffrey (the Young) of Donzy, , , ,  Gerhoh of Reichsberg,  Gesta ambaziensium dominorum (Deeds of the Lords of Amboise), , ,  Giles, Saint cult of, –, , , –, ,  n.  in Romanesque painting cycle at SaintAignan, , , , , , , –; calms storm at see, , , ; gives tunic to, and heals, pauper, –, , , , ; heals man bitten by snake, , , ; meets Caesarius of Arles, , ; Miraculous Mass, –, , , , , , ; wounded in hunt, –, ,  statue of at Saint-Aignan,  and sudden death, ,  gift exchange, , –, ,  between saints and supplicants, , – conversion of material into spiritual goods, –, ,  role of clergy in, ,  Gilchrist, Roberta,  Ginzburg, Carlo,  Golden Legend,  graffiti (medieval),  Gratian, Decretals of,  Gregory I (the Great, pope),  Gregory IX (pope), Decretals of,  Green, Monica, ,  Greslier, Jacques, 

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Guerreau, Alain, , ,  Guillaume de Berneville, , , , ,  Guillaume de Chauvigny, lord of Déols, ,  Guillaume of Donzy,  Guinefort, Saint, –, , , , , ,  n.  Guy of Châtillon,  healing, as aspect of gift exchange, , ,  by priests, , , –, , , , –. See also confession; James, Saint, Epistle of; unction by saints, , , , , . See also intercession and relics, in healing cults, , , , , . See also Giles, Saint; Guinefort, Saint; Silvanus, Saint role of images in, , , –, ,  role of women in, , –,  n.  topography of, . See also body, symbolic representation of, and land Hansen, Armauer,  hemorrhage. See blood Henri de Mondeville, ,  heretics, ,  Héritier, Françoise,  herpes zoster, ,  Herveus III of Donzy, ,  Herveus IV of Donzy, , , , , , , , ,  Hippocratic Corpus, ,  Hubert, Jean, , ,  Hugh, bishop of Lincoln,  Hugh of Saint-Victor, , ,  Hugh Farsit,  humors, , ,  Innocent III (pope),  Iogna-Prat, Dominique, ,  impetigo,  impurity. See pollution incest, , , , ,  intercession, by saints, , , , , . See also cult of dead James, Saint cult of, – Epistle of, –, –, , , , . See also scriptural references as hospital saint,  in Romanesque painting cycle at SaintAignan-sur-Cher, –, , , –, , , , ,  statue of at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher,  Jean Beleth,  Jerome, Saint,  Jerusalem, , , , , 

Jews, ,  John the Baptist, , , , ,  John the Evangelist,  John the Fearless,  Juana de Perellos, ,  Julian, Saint,  Karlomagnus Saga, ,  La Morandière, J.-E. Pottier de,  Laon, hôtel-Dieu,  Lassus, Jean-Baptiste, , , ,  Lateran Councils II,  III, , , ,  IV, , , –, ,  Lauwers, Michel, , , , ,  Lawrence, Saint, , , ,  Lazarus associated with leprosy, ,  beggar of gospel parable, ,  Raising of, , , , , –, , , , –,  lepers, , , , ,  as penitents, ,  persecution of, ,  ritualized farewells and separation of, – leproseries, –, , , – seals of,  leprosy, , , , –,  Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, ,  Lesueur, Frédéric,  Leu, Saint. See Loup, Saint Levroux, , , , , ,, canons (chapter) of, , , , ,  porticus of collegiate church, , , , , ,  life cycle,  Lincoln, cathedral,  Loches,  Lejeune, Rita and Jacques Stiennon,  Le Loroux-Bottereau, chapel of Saint-Laurent, , , ,  n.  Lorris, coutumes,  Louis VI (king), ,  Louis VII (king),  Louis VIII (king),  Louis I of Châlon, ,  Louis II of Châlon, – Loup, Saint, , , ,  Lucretius,  lust, , ,  Lyons, Domus Contractoria,  “mal à saint,” tradition of,  “mal de peur,” 

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“mal des ardents.” See ergotism malaria, , ,  Margaret of Bavaria,  Marie de Parthenay, – Marie de la Trémouille,  Martha of Bethany, Saint, , , , , –, , , , –, , Martial, Saint,  Martin, Saint, ,  Martin Guerre (film),  Mary of Bethany. See Mary Magdalen Mary Magdalen as hospital saint, , ,  in late medieval painting cycle at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher,  in Romanesque painting cycle at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, , , , –, –, , –, , . See also Châteaudun, La Madeleine statue of at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher,  Mass. See cult of the dead, anniversary Mass; Eucharist; Giles, Saint Mathilde of Courtney, , ,  Maure, Saint,  Menocchio (miller of the Friuli),  menstruation, , , . See also blood, flux of Mollat, Michel,  monstrous births,  Montaillou, ,  Montoire, Saint-Gilles, ,  Moore, Robert Ian, , , ,  Nelson, Robert,  Nevers, , ,  Nicholas, Saint,  Norbert of Prémontre,  nocturnal emissions, , , ,  Noyers church of Saint-Silvain, , , , ,  leprosary. See Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, hospitals, Saint.-Lazare parish, , , , ,  porticus, , , –, ,  Odo I (count of Blois),  Odo II (count of Blois), , ,  Odo of Sully (bishop),  Orléans cathedral of Sainte-Croix, , ,  church of Saint-Aignan, , ,  diocese of, ,  Paul, Saint, ,  paupers. See also alms; cult of the dead, intercessory role of sick poor; gift exchange;

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poor relief images of at Saint-Aignan-surCher, , , , –, , , , , . See also Christ, Majesty of at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, with paupers/ supplicants Palazzo, Eric,  penance. See also alms; Christian community, definition of; confession; pilgrimage infirmity/physical suffering as form of, , , ,  public versus private,  as rebirth/resurrection,  in relation to sex and gender,  as submission/surrender, , ,  Peter, Saint in legend of Saint Silvanus,  in Romanesque painting cycle at SaintAignan-sur-Cher, , , –, , , –, ,  statue of at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher,  Peter Comester,  Peter of Poitiers,  Peter the Venerable,  Peyroux, Catherine,  Philippe Auguste,  Philippe of Donzy, ,  Philippe of France (eldest son of Louis VIII, king), ,  physicians, , , – Pierrre de Courtenay,  pilgrim attributes of, ,  image of from Beaumont-Village, , – pilgrimage demographics of,  local circuits,  (Perche-Gouët),  (Mâconnais) penitential function of, –, ,  to porticus of Noyers, ,  at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, , , , , , , , , , , ,  and space of Latin Christendom, – Pilgrim’s Guide (in Liber sancti Iacobi),  Pliny the Elder,  Plutarch,  pollution, , , ,  Pont-Audemer,  Pontlevoy, abbey, ,  Pont-Saint-Esprit,  poor relief, , , , , , , , , , ,  categorization of the sick,  definition of the poor,  poverty, virtue of,  processions, , , , , , , , –, 

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Prudentius of Troyes,  purgatory, , ,  Raoul, lord of Déols, ,  relics, , , , , , , , . See also Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, collegiate and parish church, crypt, fenestellae in healing, , , , ,  Resurrection of the dead, , , , , ringworm,  Robert of Arbrissel,  Robert the Strong,  Roch, Saint,  Roches-l’Évêque, chapel of Saint-Gervais, ,  Roland, , ,  Rome, ,  Romorantin,  Santiago de Compostela, , , ,  Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher borough, bridge and donjon, , , –, , , , , ,  cemeteries, , –, –, ,  chapels: Notre-Dame-du-Pont, , ; NotreDame-du-Pitié (cemetery chapel), ; Saint-André, –, , ; Saint-Génefort, –, ; Saint-Laurent, , ,  collegiate and parish church: also known as church of Saint John, , , , , ; building campaigns, –; movement into and around, –, , –,  crypt: altar of Mary Magdalen, ; altar of Saint James, , , , ; fenestellae, , , , –, ; radial plan, –, , , ; Romanesque painting campaign, style and dating, –; Romanesque painting campaign, technical aspects, –, –; tombs in, , , ,  n. ; use as seigneurial mausoleum, , , , –, , , , – Saint-Lazare (leprosary), , –, , , , , , , , ,  maison-dieu, , –, ,  porticus. See Noyers, porticus siting, , , ,  toll at, , ,  topography of, , , –, , , , , , – Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, ,  Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, , ,  Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets, ,  sainteur, –,  Seigy, , , ,  self, concept of the, –, , , , ,  Selles-sur-Cher, , , 

scarlet fever,  Schmitt, Jean-Claude, , ,  scriptural references Leviticus :,  Isaiah :,  Matthew :–, ,  Matthew :–, ,  Mark :–, , ,  Mark :–, ,  Luke :–, ,  Luke :–,  John :–,  John :–, ,   Corinthians :–,  Galatians :,  James : –, –, –, , , , , –, ,  James : –,  scrofula, ,  Sigal, Pierre-André,  Silvanus, Saint, , , , , , , ,  “fire” of, –, , ,  small pox, ,  Sologne, , , , , , , , ,  Sulpicius Severus,  Tessier, A. H., ,  Thibaud IV (count of Blois-Champagne),  Thibaud V (count of Blois-Champagne),  Thoiré-sur-Dinan, Notre-Dame,  Touati, François-Olivier, , , , ,  Tours, ,  traditio legis,  Trento, cathedral,  Troyes cathedral crypt,  hôtel-Dieu,  tuberculosis,  Uncastillo, San Juan,  unction. See also alms, as unction/unguent; James, Saint, Epistle of of Christ by Mary Magdalen, –, , , ,  by priests in healing and last rites, , , , , ,  by women in domestic and folk medicine ,  Valençay, ,  Templars,  Vézelay, La Madeleine,  Villefranche-sur-Cher, Hospitallers,  Villeloin, abbey of Saint-Sauveur, ,  Virgin, , , , 

INDEX

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vision as passive versus touch,  therapeutic function of, . See also healing, role of images in viewing and consumption of images , , –, –,  Vita Sancti Aegidi, , , , , ,  Vita Sancti Karoli, 

202

INDEX

Werckmeister, Otto-Karl, ,  Wheel of Fortune, – widows, , , , , , ,  William of Bourges, Saint (archbishop),  wolves, ,  Yves of Chartres, 

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illustrations

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FIGURE 1

Map of the region indicating sites relevant to the study

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FIGURE 2

Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher), aerial view

Collegiate church and castle (postmedieval structure) from the north

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FIGURE 3

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O pposite page: FIGURE 4 Upper church, interior view of nave toward apse

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FIGURE 5 Upper church, plan, J.-B. Lassus, c. 1851

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FIGURE 6 Crypt, plan, J.-B. Lassus, c. 1851

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FIGURE 7 Crypt, apse, central portion of hemicycle wall and semidome, Christ enthroned between Saints Peter and James with supplicants, c. 1200

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FIGURE 8

Saint James and kneeling petitioner

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FIGURE 9

Saint Peter receives keys from Christ and blesses pilgrim who offers a coin

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FIGURE 10

Detail of Saint Peter, inscription

PETRUS

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FIGURE 11

Pilgrim and figure crawling with crutches

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FIGURE 12

Detail of figure crawling

with crutches

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FIGURE 13

Kneeling petitioner

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FIGURE 14

Detail of coin offered by pilgrim

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FIGURE 15

View into south apsidiole: life of Saint Giles

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South apsidiole, base of conch vault: Saint Giles clothes and heals a beggar; he drives out venom from a man bitten by a serpent

FIGURE 16

Opposite page: South apsidiole, hemicycle wall: Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, or the Pardon of Charlemagne

FIGURE 17

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FIGURE 18

Miraculous Mass, sketch

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View into the axial apsidiole: Raising of Lazarus

FIGURE 19

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FIGURE 20 Axial apsidiole, conch vault: Supper at Bethany with Mary Magdalen anointing Christ’s feet; Raising of Lazarus

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FIGURE 21

Eroded outline of Mary Magdalen at Christ’s feet in the Supper at Bethany

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FIGURE 22

Supper at Bethany, sketch

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Axial apsidiole, hemicycle wall: fragmentary scene showing Christ and Mary Magdalen with foliage between them, or the Noli me tangere

FIGURE 23

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FIGURE 24

Noli me tangere, sketch

Axial apsidiole, hemicycle wall: Christ holds a book and looks over his shoulder at a woman, or Christ healing the woman (Martha) with the issue of blood

FIGURE 25

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Opposite page: FIGURE 26

Axial apsidiole, hemicycle wall: standing figures of Mary and Martha in orans pose

Image not available Healing of the woman (Martha) with the issue of blood; Mary and Martha, sketch

FIGURE 27

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FIGURE 28

Apse, semidome, central theophany of c. 1200 surrounded by the fifteenth-century paintings

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FIGURE 30

Apse, base of semidome, right side: pietà between John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen; angel

presents donors

Opposite page: Apse, base of semidome, left side: donors (Marie of Parthenay, her son Louis II of Chalon, his wife) in the company of an angel with Saint John the Baptist; Saint Anne presenting crown to the Virgin and Child

FIGURE 29

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FIGURE 31

Choir, vault summit: detail of the Last Judgment, Christ, fifteenth century

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Choir, vault spandrels: resurrection of the dead.West wall: Crucifixion between saints and donors rising from their tombs, fifteenth century

FIGURE 32

Castle, postmedieval structure and medieval tower from the north

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FIGURE 33

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FIGURE 34

Castle, medieval donjon from the south

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FIGURE 35

by a serpent

Crypt, south apsidiole, base of conch vault: Saint Giles drives out venom from a man bitten

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FIGURE 36

Saint Giles prays for a storm-tossed ship

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South apsidiole, hemicycle wall: king and hunter pursue a hind divinely entrusted with nourishing Saint Giles in the wilderness

FIGURE 37

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FIGURE 38

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Pursuit of the hind, sketch

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FIGURE 39

Saint Giles, hidden by foliage, is wounded by the hunter’s arrow

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FIGURE 40

Saint Giles hidden by foliage, sketch

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FIGURE 41

1933 excavation carried out in the crypt: fenestella wall and tombs

Nave capital, figures destroyed, scene of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, inscribed

CAPUT IOHANNIS HERODIAS

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FIGURE 42

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Town portrait of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, detail of a painting dated 1631 in the church of Notre-Dame des Ardilliers, Saumur

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FIGURE 43

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FIGURE 44

Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, map of c. , Blois, Archives départementales du Loir-et-Cher

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Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, simplified plan of the medieval borough based on one by Annie Cosperec for the Inventaire général, Centre

FIGURE 46

Opposite page: FIGURE 45

Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, cadastre of 

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FIGURE 47

Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, tanneries, engraving reproduced on a postcard

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Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, pinion, 22 rue de la Pêcherie

FIGURE 48

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Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, façade, east pinion, 45 rue Rouget de Lisle

FIGURE 49

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Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, façade, 8–10 rue de la Raquette

FIGURE 50

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Map of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher and neighboring parishes indicating parish churches, chapels, and hospital institutions

FIGURE 51

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Mareuil-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher), chapel of Saint-André, engraving published in Touchard-Lafosse, La Loire historique, 5 vols. (Paris, 1851), 3:820

FIGURE 52

Noyers-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher), chapel of Saint-Lazare

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FIGURE 53

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Levroux (Indre), collegiate church and porticus based on the cadastral plan of 1844.

FIGURE 54

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Tours, Musée du cloître de la Psalette, pilgrim, detached fresco from church of BeaumontVillage, fourteenth century

FIGURE 55

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Carved seal of the leprosery of Saint-Lazare, Paris, 1264: Christ raises Lazarus in the presence of Mary and Martha; below, a boat

FIGURE 56

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Carved seal of the leprosery of Saint-Lazare, Corbeil, 1263: leper (Lazarus) climbing out of his tomb

FIGURE 57

Section drawing, J.-B. Lassus, c. 1851

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FIGURE 58

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FIGURE 59

Crypt, ambulatory

Image not available Upper church, fourth nave bay, broken arch against the round arch of the crossing

FIGURE 60

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FIGURE 61

Nave vaults, third and

fourth bays

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Nave, reverse of west façade wall with bay into tribune gallery

FIGURE 62

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Nave, north arm of nonprojecting transept, looking west into the side aisle

FIGURE 63

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Nave, fourth bay, looking north into the side aisle

FIGURE 64

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Tribune gallery, rib statue, Saint Peter

FIGURE 65

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FIGURE 66

statue, Saint Paul

Tribune gallery, rib

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Tribune gallery, rib statue,

FIGURE 67

Mary Magdalen

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Tribune gallery, rib statue, unidentified saint, possibly Saint Giles

FIGURE 68

North flank, drawing, J.-B. Lassus, c. 1851

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North porch, entrance into the crypt, from west

FIGURE 70

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North porch, entrance into the crypt, from north

FIGURE 71

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Opposite page: FIGURE 72

Crypt, north portal,

from the interior

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FIGURE 73

Orléans, Saint-Aignan,

crypt, plan

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Proposed stairwell into the crypt, from Paris, Archives de la Commission des monuments historiques (F II, no. 39678): the section indicates the position of the original stairs and the thickened pier that obstructed them

FIGURE 74

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Modern stairwell into the crypt from the north transept arm, view toward medieval steps worn from use

FIGURE 75

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Image not available Crypt, suppression of lateral stairs on the south side

FIGURE 76

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Apse, semidome, left border of the central theophany, intonaco of the Romanesque painting overlapping the plaster finish of the masonry on which the fifteenth-century paintings were directly executed

FIGURE 77

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Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (Loir-etCher), Saint-Jacques, apse, hemicycle wall: Christ in Majesty with Saint James enthroned at Christ’s left

FIGURE 78

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FIGURE 79

Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets, detail of Christ handing Saint James a branch

Les Roches-l’Évêque (Loir-et-Cher), rupestral chapel of Saint Gervais, destroyed painting: Saint James enthroned and supplicated by pilgrims, watercolor copy, S. Trocmé, 1937

FIGURE 80

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Opposite page: South apsidiole, summit of conch vault, angels presenting clipeus of the agnus dei

FIGURE 81

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South apsidiole: in the upper register, Saint Giles prays for a storm-tossed ship and meets Saint Caesarius of Arles; in the lower register, Miraculous Mass

FIGURE 82

Image not available FIGURE 83

Saint Giles before Saint Caesarius of Arles

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Saint Giles before Saint Caesarius of Arles, sketch

FIGURE 84

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Les Roches-l’Évêque (Loir-et-Cher), rupestral chapel of Saint Gervais, destroyed painting, Pursuit of the Hind, watercolor copy, S.Trocmé, 1937

FIGURE 85

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Montoire (Loir-et-Cher), Saint-Gilles, north transept, hemicycle wall: lost Gothic painting, Pursuit of the Hind, watercolor copy, A. Breton, 1851

FIGURE 86

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Thoiré-sur-Dinan (Sarthe), Notre-Dame, north nave wall: Pursuit of the Hind, king on horseback sounding hunting horn and accompanied by dog at left, hunter with bow and arrow at right aiming at doe

FIGURE 87

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Thoiré-sur-Dinan, Pursuit of the Hind, continued: hunter shoots at the hind; his arrow flies past the animal to wound the saint in the leg; a timber beam cuts off the figure of Saint Giles, whose hand reaches for the hind

FIGURE 88

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Le Loroux-Bottereau (Loire-Atlantique), Saint-Laurent (formerly Saint-Gilles), scenes from the life of Saint Giles: upper register, Pursuit of the Hind, king (FLOVENTUS) on white horse accompanied by hunter and dog; lower register, the Pardon of Charlemagne, at left FIGURE 89

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Civray (Vienne), Saint Nicolas, south transept: badly damaged paintings, scenes from the life of Saint Giles: Pardon of Charlemagne, Pursuit of the Hind

FIGURE 90

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FIGURE 91

Civray, Pardon of Charlemagne, detail

Civray, Pursuit of the Hind

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FIGURE 92

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Chartres cathedral, south transept, porch, archivolts, scenes from the life of Saint Giles: from left to right, Giles heals beggar, Pursuit of the Hind (with king on horseback), saint with doe and hunter

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FIGURE 93

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Chartres cathedral, south transept, porch, archivolts, Miraculous Mass: from left to right, angel bearing scroll, Giles at altar, kneeling King Charlemagne and horse with attendant

FIGURE 94

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Montoire (Loir-et-Cher), Saint-Gilles, south transept, hemicycle wall: fragmentary scene from the Romanesque ensemble, Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, angel under arch at right, saint at left

FIGURE 95

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Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets (Loir-et-Cher), nave wall: vestige of the Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, figure inscribed KAROLUS

FIGURE 96

Chartres cathedral, crypt, chapel of Saint Clement: standing saints under arcade

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FIGURE 97

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Chartres cathedral, crypt, detail of painting in the chapel of Saint Clement, Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles: angel hands inscribed scroll to Giles (EGIDIUS) behind altar; Charles (KAROLUS) kneels FIGURE 98

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Faverolles (Loir-et-Cher), ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, portal

FIGURE 99

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Faverolles, ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, archivolt, carved voussoirs, detail: Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles, angel emerges from clouds and presents the scedula to Giles, kneeling and wearing a monk’s habit

FIGURE 100

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FIGURE 101 Faverolles, ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, embrasure of window, mural painting, Miraculous Mass of Saint Giles

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Opposite page: Faverolles, ruins of abbey of Aiguevive, mural painting, detail: Saint Giles stands at left presenting scedula to Charlemagne, crowned and seated at right, behind whom stands his sister FIGURE 102

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FIGURE 103 Axial apsidiole, conch vault: clipeate Lamb with symbols of the Evangelists John and Matthew on one side and narrative scenes on the other

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FIGURE 104

Axial apsidiole, conch vault, detail: symbol of the Evangelist Matthew

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Axial apsidiole, conch vault, detail of the Supper at Bethany: Simon, with an abbriviated form of his name abutting his left shoulder

FIGURE 105

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FIGURE 106

Axial apsidiole, conch vault, detail of the Raising of Lazarus: heads of Christ and disciples

Apse, base of semidome, left side: Louis II of Châlon and his wife presented by an angel; his mother, Marie of Parthenay, at prie-dieu before John the Baptist

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FIGURE 107

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FIGURE 108

Apse, base of semidome, right side: angel with donors

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FIGURE 109

Apse, base of semidome, left side:Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

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Apse, base of semidome, right side: dead Christ on the lap of the Virgin between Saint John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen

FIGURE 110

Opposite page: Apse, semidome: late medieval paintings above the Romanesque Christ, detail, angels bearing coat of arms

FIGURE 111

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FIGURE 112

Detail of late medieval paintings above the Romanesque Christ, lower right, angel bearing

coat of arms

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Detail of late medieval paintings above the Romanesque Christ, lower left, angel bearing coat of arms

FIGURE 113

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Intrados of apsidal arch, foliate ornament and coats of arms, early fifteenth century

FIGURE 114

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FIGURE 115 West choir wall, Christ on the Cross

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FIGURE 116

West choir wall, saint and female donor

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FIGURE 117

West choir wall, saint and male donor