Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers' Abbey of Sainte-Croix 0198837925, 9780198837923

Table of contents :
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Establishing Authority in Poitiers: Radegund and the Foundation of Sainte-Croix
2. Early Tests of Radegund’s Strategies
3. Illuminating the Saint
4. Disputing Privileges
5. The Miracles and Decoration of Sainte-Radegonde
6. Processions and Privileges
7. Contested Elections and Reform
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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S U P E R I O R WO M E N

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Superior Women Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix J E N N I F E R   C .  E DWA R D S

1

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jennifer C. Edwards 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968138 ISBN 978–0–19–883792–3 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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To my feminist men Dad, Scott, Sebastian, and Logan

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Acknowledgments So many people have generously assisted me in this project that I worry an orchestra will play me off stage before I can manage to thank them all. My dissertation advisor Megan McLaughlin introduced me to Radegund, and took an active role in editing every word of the dissertation that grew out of that introduction. My dissertation committee members—Carol Symes, Anne  D.  Hedeman, Ralph Mathisen, and Craig Koslofsky—modeled scholarly excellence and proved wonderful mentors. I  am also grateful to have had the guidance of Dana Rabin, Clare Crowston, John Lynn, Antoinette Burton, Jean Allman, Marilyn Booth, Liz Pleck, Kathy Oberdeck, Stephen Jaeger, Peter Fritzsche, Danuta Shanzer, and Caroline Hibbard during my graduate studies. Richard K. Emmerson was the Dean I needed as an assistant professor, and I will always be grateful for his assistance. Conversations with Jo Ann McNamara, Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Patrick Geary, Barbara Rosenwein, Theresa Earenfight, Sara Ritchey, Rachel Scott, and Monica Green have all encouraged me to push further as a scholar. Recommendations from the anonymous readers for Oxford University Press, the Journal of Medieval History, Gender & History, and Essays in Medieval Studies, as well as editorial advice from Ruth Karras, Chris Woolgar, Stephanie Ireland, Terka Acton, Christina WipfPerry, and Cathryn Steele, have all been essential in bringing these ideas and the text together. Teams of archivists helped me during research, in Poitiers at the Archives Departmentales de la Vienne, the Médiathèque François Mitterand, as well as at the Université de Poitiers’ Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale (CESCM) and the Musée Sainte-Croix and the CESCM Photothèque; at the Bibliotheèque Nationale de France and the Archives Nationales in Paris; at the York Minster Library and the British Library. The archivists in the Salle Patrimonie et Recherche of the Poitiers Médiathèque have been especially patient, kind, and welcoming to me as I have stumbled so clumsily through this research. I am grateful to the many people who helped me with images: Estelle Ingrand-Varenne, Florent Palluault, Chrystel Lupant, Christian Vignaud, Eric Palazzo, Cécile Voyer, and Meghan Brown. Jack Campbell provided crucial help in the manuscript’s final stages. Research and writing for this project has been funded by the University of Illinois History Department, Graduate College, and Women’s Studies program, the Illinois Project for Research in the Humanities, the Worldwide Universities Network—who supported a trip to York to work with Sarah Rees-Jones and Guy Halsall—the German Historical Institute, generous funding from Patricia and Jack Stack, and Manhattan College’s summer grants. Many colleagues and friends have offered good cheer, a champion, a shoulder to cry on, a home, and a sympathetic ear. They are the source of the energy that allowed me to complete this book. Foremost among these are Elisa Miller, Corrie Decker, Charlotte Bauer, Mickey Moran, Andrew Nolan, Cris Scarboro,

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viii Acknowledgments Fedja Buric, Valerie Wilhite, Sarah Long, Erin Donovan, Lesley Sieger-Walls, Dawn Flood, Ruth Fairbanks, Paula Rieder, Kate Pedrotty, Mike Pedrotty, the Herzog family, Jessie Betts, Jason Tebbe, Ruth Fairbanks, Deirdre O’Leary, Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Kelly Marin, Evelyn Scaramella, Bridget Chalk, Paul Droubie, and Claudia Setzer. My sisters have been holding my hand in shifts: Rebecca Edwards was my emotional support through graduate school, and Heather Rockwood has walked with me through pregnancy and working motherhood. I am grateful to participants in the Dante Seminar at Manhattan College, the German Historical Institute’s Medieval Seminar, SEIFMAR’s (Société d’Études Interdisciplinaires sur les Femmes au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance) 2018 conference to which I was kindly invited by Annalena Muller, and in the University of Illinois groups: the Early Europe Reading Group, the Women and Gender Studies group, the Violence and History Reading Group, and the Signifying Body group. Members of the Society for Feminist Scholarship, particularly those serving on the Advisory Board, have been inspirations, particularly Sally Livingston, Linda Mitchell, Vickie Larson, and Liz Herbert McAvoy. I’ve dedicated this book to my feminist men. To my father, David Edwards, who remarked in 1992 that he was not impressed with that year’s presidential candidates but could see voting for either of their wives (Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton), and who filled our home with books, asked unending questions, and filled every school break with art museums and libraries. I am heartbroken that he did not live to see this book published, but grateful that I could at least show him its cover and read these acknowledgments to him during his last few days. To my husband, Scott Welsh, who has listened to dozens of papers and chapters about Sainte-Croix and knows Radegund’s Lenten activities painfully by heart. And to my two boys, Sebastian and Logan, who make me feel like a heavenly queen even during the most earthly of tasks.

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Contents List of Figures List of Maps List of Abbreviations

Introduction

xi xiii xv 1

1. Establishing Authority in Poitiers: Radegund and the Foundation of Sainte-Croix

25

2. Early Tests of Radegund’s Strategies

60

3. Illuminating the Saint

86

4. Disputing Privileges

136

5. The Miracles and Decoration of Sainte-Radegonde

170

6. Processions and Privileges

201

7. Contested Elections and Reform

229

Conclusion Bibliography Index

268 271 309

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List of Figures 1. Reliquary of the True Cross, center plaque 64 2. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 547, fol. 165 65 3. Radegund’s tomb, crypt of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers  75 4. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 251 (137), f. 19v 104 5. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 251 (137), f. 21 105 6. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 22v 110 7. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 24r 111 8. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 29v 112 9. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 34r 113 10. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 39r 115 11. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 41r 116 12. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 42r 117 13. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 27v 118 14. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 31v 120 15. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 38v 125 16. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 36r 127 17. Georges Louis Arlaud, Panoramic view of Poitiers, c.1925, showing churches of Sainte-Radegonde, Sainte-Pierre, Notre-Dame-la-Grande, and Poitiers 165 18. Gossin, Frescoes, church of Sainte-Radegonde choir 178 19. Plan of Sainte-Radegonde’s windows 179 20. Bay 109, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers 180 21. Bay 111, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers 181 22. Drawing of medieval windows from Sainte-Radegonde 182 23. Bay 109, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers 184 24. Sainte-Chapelle of Paris 187 25. North rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres, France, c.1235188 26. Jean-Eugène Durand, photograph of stained-glass window from the church of Sainte-Radegonde at Poitiers, before 1905 189 27. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 36v 190 28. Jean-Eugène Durand, photograph of stained-glass window from the church of Sainte-Radegonde at Poitiers, before 1905 192

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xii

List of Figures

29. Jean-Eugène Durand, stained-glass window from the church of Sainte-Radegonde before 1905 30. Jean Gargot, Statue of the Grand’Goule, 1677 31. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 35r 32. Louis Boudan, Veüe de l’Abbaye Royalle de Saincte Croix de Poictiers, aux Religieuses Bénédictines, 1699

195 220 221 252

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List of Maps 1 . France, marking Poitiers’ location 2. Merovingian and Carolingian Poitiers 3. Poitiers in the twelfth century 4. Local fiefs outside Poitiers owned by Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde 5. Plan of Sainte-Croix 6. Poitiers in the fifteenth century 7. Eighteenth-century Poitiers

2 40 140 161 207 210 238

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List of Abbreviations AASS Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, ed. Joannus Bollandus et al. ADV Archives Départementales de la Vienne, Poitiers AHP Archives historiques du Poitou Annalecta Juris Pontificii AJP Baudonivia Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis, Book 2, ed. Bruno Krusch BMP Bibliothèque Municipale, Poitiers BN Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris BSAO Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’ouest et des musées de Poitiers CCM Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum, ed. Kassius Hallinger DACL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F.  Cabrol and H. Leclercq DF Collection Dom Fonteneau, Bibliothèque Municipale, Poitiers Fort., VR Fortunatus, Vita Radegundis, Book 1, ed. Bruno Krusch Fort., OP Fortunatus, Opera poetica, ed. F. Leo George, 1992 Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul George, 1995 Judith George, Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems Greg., Hist. Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri decem, ed. Bruno Krusch and Rudolf Buchner Greg., GM Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, trans. Raymond Van Dam Greg., GC Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Confessors, trans. Raymond Van Dam Jacobus The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica AA Auctorum antiquissimorum Cap. reg. Fr. Capitularia, Legum Sectio II, Capitularia Regum Francorum SRM Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum SS Scriptores MIÖG Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung MSAO Memoires de la Société des antiquaires de l’ouest et des musées de Poitiers PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne RB Regula Benedicti in the Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. Timothy Fry RC Caesarius of Arles, Regula sanctarum virginum, ed. G. Morin. VC Vita Caesarii

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Introduction Medieval abbesses were important and influential office holders, well-known public figures who offered spiritual guidance to the women under their care, protected their community’s moral well-being, defended the abbey’s property and economic interests, and performed the feudal duties they owed their lords and vassals. The female superior demanded not just the obedience of her own nuns, but of any seigneurial subordinates, or dependent communities—male or female. If head of a large or important community, the abbess could rival bishops’ power and claim the ears of kings and popes. These women’s authority rested on the history of their communities, the strength of their advocates, and their own competence in defending their rights and privileges. The abbesses of Poitiers’ abbey of Sainte-Croix built the strength of their office through the memory of their foundress, Saint Radegund.1 The Merovingian queen had fled her husband in the mid-sixth century in order to embrace a monastic life in Poitiers, an old Roman town in Frankia, south of the Loire (Map 1). Although she never served as abbess personally, for her role in shaping the abbey Radegund became a model for Sainte-Croix’s abbesses as well as a symbol of the community. She was responsible for securing the abbey’s property and its relics, and for establishing a network of allies that would protect her nuns long after her death in 587. It was the abbesses’ responsibility to ensure that these protections remained in place, to cultivate friendships with supporters, and to deal with any future threats to the community. Radegund became an exemplar for maintaining authority and influence. The nuns of Sainte-Croix adopted two methods for maintaining their authority and used them consistently for nearly one thousand years. First, they cultivated a network of high-profile officials outside of Poitiers who would document and defend the abbey’s privileges and authority. Abbesses sought support from different supporters as the time and their needs shifted, first seeking assistance from the Frankish kings until the eleventh century, then the papacy until the thirteenth century when both the king and the pope supported the abbey, until the late fifteenth century when the king of France dominated the abbey’s network. Radegund developed this strategy herself in the sixth century, when she relied on Frankish bishops and kings for support of her projects, from the monastery’s foundation 1 For a detailed history of the abbey, see Yvonne Labande-Mailfert and Robert Favreau, eds., Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers: Quatorze siècles de vie monastique (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1986).

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Paris

Tours

Poitiers

Map 1.  France, marking Poitiers’ location (compiled by the author)

and selection of its Rule to her quest for important relics. Sainte-Croix’s abbesses followed her lead from the sixth century through to the sixteenth. Over time, they created an archive rich with documentation that could convince new generations of supporters of the antiquity of both the abbess’s authority and of their own official backing of her. This involved walking a narrow line between receiving royal or papal support and welcoming in external interference in abbey affairs. Second, Radegund and the abbesses of Sainte-Croix used cultural artifacts to display their holy identity and to gain patrons. Radegund also established this strategy in her friendship with the poet Venantius Fortunatus: through him, or with his assistance, she presented herself to the world in poetry as a lost princess, a great queen, a spiritual nun, and a holy mother. This presentation of Radegund and rewriting of her identity continued immediately after her death: Fortunatus enhanced her image from his poetry with a vita, or holy biography, that depicted Radegund as a saint and martyr, and a fellow nun at Sainte-Croix, Baudonivia, created a second version of Radegund in text with a new vita a few years later.

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Introduction 3 During a tense period of transition from royal to papal support in the eleventh century, the abbess of Sainte-Croix commissioned both decoration in the church of Sainte-Radegonde and a lavishly illuminated manuscript of Radegund’s vitae. Further decoration, sponsored by the abbess, the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, and the count of Poitiers, filled the church with new stained glass in the thirteenth century. And processional emblems became a hotly contested method of connecting to Radegund in the fifteenth century. These two strategies, of support networks and of cultural artifacts, complemented one another well. They ensured that the abbesses of Sainte-Croix had a well-established argument for their authority’s legitimacy as well as a long documented tradition for their claims to power. These tools allowed the abbesses of Sainte-Croix to successfully assert authority over their own community and over the local dependent chapter of canons attached to the church of Sainte-Radegonde, and to expect consistent support for their assertions for a millennium. Questions about power and authority have been at the center of the field of medieval women’s history since its beginning. In the 1970s historians searching for a golden age of women’s power and opportunities seemed to find it in the early Middle Ages, studying the unusual stories of Merovingian queens, the large number of new religious foundations, and equality and power within aristocratic families. These opportunities declined, scholars argued, by the eleventh or twelfth century.2 In Women and Power in the Middle Ages (1988), Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski and others expanded notions of power past its definition as “public authority” in order to revise assumptions “that women were largely powerless and thus marginal” and rescue women’s activities as significant historical topics.3 Essays in that collection, and in Power of the Weak (1995) edited by Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean, examined women’s agency, or their ability to act and to influence the world around them.4 The narrative of decline expanded in the 1980s to encompass most aspects of women’s lives, depicting the eleventh century as a significant turning point in the oppression of medieval women. The rise of primogeniture for settling property on new generations, the development or consolidation of secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies with the accompanying expansion of written culture and legal apparatus, nascent state formation, and ideas of clerical celibacy and of women’s polluting influence were all declared partly responsible for a decline in women’s status, power, and opportunities.5 In Gendering the Master Narrative (2003), Erler and Kowaleski revisited their 1988 introduction through 2  Georges Duby, “Women and Power,” in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in TwelfthCentury Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women Through the Family in Medieval Europe: 500–1100,” Feminist Studies 1 (1973): 126–41; Joan Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 14–52; Marion Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France 987–1237,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1968): 3–48. 3  Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, “Introduction,” in Erler and Kowaleski, eds., Women & Power in the Middle Ages, 1–17 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1988), 1. 4  Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean, eds, Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). 5  Jo Ann McNamara, “The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150,” in Clare A. Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University

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the impact of postmodern philosophy and third-wave feminism—particularly in the work of Michel Foucault, Joan Scott, and Judith Butler—in complicating notions of agency or even of “women.”6 And while the previous essays had celebrated women’s activity and influence, the 2003 essays provided a more complicated depiction of “opportunities shadowed by real losses.”7 Authors turned instead to networks, institutions, and communities to examine “mechanisms of power.”8 Studies in the 1990s and early 2000s challenged this decline narrative by redefining terms and looking at specific cases through documents of practice. As Judith Bennett and Ruth Karras observed in their 2013 introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Women & Gender in Medieval Europe, however, “the notion of ever fewer opportunities for women remains a quiet backbeat in many feminist histories.”9 Work over the last twenty years on women, power, and authority has also been influenced by Judith Bennett’s notion of “patriarchal equilibrium,” consistency in women’s status under the patriarchy, despite seeming improvements or declines. Bennett observed such equilibrium in the history of work and advised scholars to attend to differences between changes and transformations: “there has been much change in European women’s experiences as workers over the last millennium, but little transformation in their work status in relation to that of men.”10 As Bennett and Ruth Karras noted, there has been greater appreciation among scholars that notions of women and power in the Middle Ages were inconsistent and contradictory, making generic assessments difficult and requiring more attention to particular cases and documents of practice.11 Authority is sometimes used synonymously with power or agency, but can be usefully distinguished. While agency references the ability to act and power the ability to use force or compel obedience, authority is more a matter of prestige and the ability to command “respect and obedience in others by personal qualities.”12 Most useful here among the definitions offered by Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, and Tuija Ainonen in Authorities in the Middle Ages is: “A person or thing with authority was considered credible. He, she or it was also perceived as capable of legitimately ruling, governing, conferring dignities, and effectively performing various (legal) actions.”13 As they note, and as suggested in different manners by Max Weber and of Minnesota Press, 1994), 5–8 and 22; Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 6  Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, “A New Economy of Power Relations: Female Agency in the Middle Ages,” in Erler and Kowaleski, eds., Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, 1–16 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 2. 7  Erler and Kowaleski, “A New Economy of Power Relations,” 3. 8  Erler and Kowaleski, “A New Economy of Power Relations,” 15. 9  Judith  M.  Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras, “Women, Gender, and Medieval Historians,” in Bennett and Karras, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women & Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1–17, 4. 10 Judith  M.  Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 62. 11  Bennett and Karras, “Women, Gender, and Medieval Historians,” 6. 12  Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, and Tuija Ainonen, “Foreword,” in Kangas, Korpiola, and Ainonen, eds., Authorities in the Middle Ages: Influence, Legitimacy, and Power in Medieval Society, vii–xiii (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), viii. 13  Kangas, Korpiola, and Ainonen, “Foreword,” viii–ix.

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Introduction 5 Michel Foucault, such authority is constantly negotiated.14 The abbesses of Sainte-Croix received consistent support for their claims to authority over and expectations of obedience from their own nuns and the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, but abbesses had to continually deal with efforts to renegotiate these expectations. Since the abbesses had little ability to compel obedience they had to rely on various methods of appealing to external officials to support them and reconfirm their privileges hence their reliance on Radegund’s two strategies. The deployment of texts—another element of auctoritas in the Middle Ages—and images became a secondary method of establishing and maintaining authority.15 Ultimately, as Susan Broomhall argued, “authority is inherently relational—it must be asserted over someone who allows or is forced to accept this dominance.”16 That the abbess’s claims were continually accepted and only periodically challenged— “renegotiated”—speaks loudly for the local and widespread respect for abbatial authority at Sainte-Croix. The scholarly search for women who held authority or wielded power often focuses on political lives, specifically on aristocratic women serving as queens, duchesses, or countesses. This was particularly true when the separate spheres of the public/private divide was a popular organizational scheme for women’s history, but the notion that aristocratic women wielded power primarily in the public/ political/secular sphere persists. As Amy Livingstone noted, such women “held courts, handed out justice, resolved disputes, engaged in diplomacy, and commanded men,” all of which the abbesses of Sainte-Croix did as well.17 Lois Honeycutt observed that “authority (auctoritas) . . . is here defined as holding a legitimately constituted office such as queen, countess, or abbess. The authority of office allowed the occupant of that office to exercise culturally sanctioned forms of power.” The abbesses of Sainte-Croix used the tradition of office-holding to convince their network of allies, from whom they secured charters supporting their authority; like other powerful women they also employed other “symbolic means” such as images and stories of the saint.18 Of course, the queens, countesses, and abbesses who had access to these types of authority were typically all aristocratic 14  Kanges, Korpiola, and Ainonen, “Foreword,” ix–xi. 15  “[P]ower relations could be exercised through the production of texts or images that catered to women’s interests, or through the reinterpretation of conventional texts and images by women to suit their ends”: Erler and Kowaleski, “Introduction,” Gendering the Master Narrative, 15. Susan Broomhall investigated “forms of authority that were asserted particularly in written, material, and performance texts and that were intended for wide access and/or reception and visibility,” in “Introduction,” Authority, Gender, and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1–17, 1. 16  Broomhall, “Introduction,” 1. 17  Amy Livingstone, “Recalculating the Equation: Powerful Women = Extraordinary,” Medieval Feminist Forum 51, no. 2 (2015): 17–29, 22. As did many other abbesses with rights of jurisdiction, such as at Gandersheim, Essen, and Quedlinburg: see e.g., Conrad Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 63–73, 163–5; Fiona J. Griffiths and Julie Hotchin, eds., Partners in Spirit: Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). 18 Lois  L.  Huneycutt, “Power: Medieval Women’s Power through Authority, Autonomy, and Influence,” in Kim M. Phillips, ed., A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages, 153–78 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 155, 167.

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women. Such elites have occasionally been dismissed as exceptional, particularly when one such woman leaves a large number of sources, like Hildegard of Bingen or Eleanor of Aquitaine. Scholars tend to regard women with remarkable records demonstrating their agency, influence, and power as extraordinary, and thus not representative of the lives and opportunities of medieval women writ large. As the participants in a series of “Beyond Extraordinary” panels and publications have shown, however, elite women’s exercise of power was commonplace in the Middle Ages.19 Ultimately, the abbesses’ claims to authority within their community relied on the nuns’ vows of obedience, their office’s role in enforcing the Rule.20 Beyond the abbey, justifications of her authority required more negotiation. Threats against the abbess’s authority arose quite frequently. Local noble families interfered with abbey elections, bishops of Poitiers increasingly undermined the nuns’ prerogatives, and kings extended their own authority by interfering in the community. But the worst and most enduring threats to the abbess of Sainte-Croix were closer to home, coming from her own nuns and from the supposedly ­dependent neighboring chapter of canons attached to the church of SainteRadegonde that Radegund had also founded. Nuns from Sainte-Croix questioned the merit of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses at least five times between the sixth and sixteenth centuries. On two occasions their challenge to the abbess led to outbreaks of physical violence against Sainte-Croix and its nuns. Since vicious and violent attacks on the abbess came from nuns rebelling against her authority, challenges to abbatial power cannot be blamed, or not blamed entirely, on some crisis of masculinity or fears about female authority held exclusively by men. Many of the strongest defenders of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses and their claims to authority were men such as the king or pope. Thus, the motivations for challenging female monastic authority at Sainte-Croix were much more complicated, as were the reasons for supporting Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ claims to authority. The canons of Sainte-Radegonde frequently challenged the abbess of SainteCroix’s authority from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. Radegund had founded a funerary church, which she dedicated to the Virgin, in Poitiers shortly after completing work at Sainte-Croix. At the church she established a small community to tend to Sainte-Croix’s nuns’ bodies, which would be interred in the church crypt. After Radegund’s own body was entombed within the church in 587, the community took the name Sainte-Radegonde in her honor. By the eleventh century a chapter of canons attached to the church was nominally subject to Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s authority, who claimed certain privileges over their chapter. As Poitevin scholar Robert Favreau reminds us, relations between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde were quite strong.21 The two communities were tightly 19  For a brief bibliography, see Livingstone, “Recalculating the Equation,” 18n.3. 20  Julie Ann Smith, “Shaping Authority in the Female Franciscan Rules and formae vitae (c.1212–63),” Parergon 33, no. 1 (2016): 23–48. 21  The abbess frequently selected Sainte-Radegonde’s canons for positions in Sainte-Croix’s estates and churches, such as Guillaume Fauconnier, canon of Sainte-Radegonde and procurer for the abbess and curé of Sainte-Radegonde on the abbey’s fief of Vasles: see Robert Favreau, “L’épitaphe de Guillaume Fauconnier à Sainte-Radegonde de Poitiers (1458),” Revue historique de Centre-Ouest 4, no. 1 (2005): 211–12.

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Introduction 7 interwoven and relied on one another. Their relationship could likely even be called a “loving” family for much of the time. Both were devoted to Radegund and they made up the heart of her saint’s cult. The canons served at Sainte-Croix’s altar and the abbess helped the canons deal with damage to their church. A set of mutual obligations and privileges, as well as the memory of their foundress, tied the two communities together intimately. But, as in most close relationships, there were issues that could cause significant ruptures—competition, insistence upon hierarchy, changes in status, economic issues, and so on—that led not just to negative emotions but also ferocious disputes into which external authorities were drawn. These were institutions with a human dimension; as personalities changed, so might the relationship between the communities at the time. It is important to remember, however, that these were not bitterly opposed, competing communities, but rather brothers and sisters united in spiritual devotion and typically supporting one another. The canons challenged Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s claims and, on some serious occasions, they flouted her authority as one route for the canons to assert a greater role for their community. The canons did this so regularly we might consider the canons’ own strategy for asserting a greater position in Radegund’s cult was simple avoidance of the abbess’s demands. While the abbess insisted that Sainte-Radegonde was a dependent community obliged to serve Sainte-Croix, the canons capitalized on contemporary ideas about the ecclesiastical hierarchy and gender roles that improved their chapter’s position. The abbess interpreted the canons’ efforts as unacceptable threats against her traditional privileges. In dealing with these challenges the abbess immediately turned to her allies: the papacy, the French monarchy, the count of Poitou, his seneschal, or to friendly bishops. These authorities came to Sainte-Croix’s aid, customarily supporting the abbess’s claims over those of the canons. They issued and reissued letters of support that warned the canons—or any other “malefactor” who menaced the abbey—that tradition, ancient privilege, and her allies’ weighty support buttressed the abbess’s authority.22 Significantly, it was the abbess’s claim to long-standing privilege, supported by a hard-won and carefully maintained archive of texts, images, and objects, that prompted her allies to recognize her authority. Each abbess was able to pursue her claims to superiority and privilege through the documentation her predecessors provided and, ultimately, through Radegund’s efforts. This archive even made it possible to argue, in the fifteenth century, that the abbess held authority by ­reason of her office despite her female sex. Rivals were hard pressed to argue against tradition so well documented or against the medieval respect for office-holding, even in a period when women’s power was increasingly circumscribed. This book examines female monastic authority at Sainte-Croix during the period between Radegund’s death in 587 and the 1520 Grands Jours in Poitiers. At that time the French king demanded a reform of the town’s female communities that significantly transformed the relationship between Sainte-Croix’s abbess and 22 Archives Départementales de la Vienne (hereafter ADV), 2H1/1, January 17, 1492 and January 27, 1492.

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her traditional allies outside Poitiers.23 Over these nine centuries the abbesses of Sainte-Croix were able to successfully secure support for claims to authority, even in the face of serious challenges and physical threats. They received this support from men: male kings, male popes, and their officials. Sainte-Croix’s abbesses adapted well to changing political, cultural, and legal customs, using their two strategies to negotiate shifting climates and to convince male allies to support them. Documentation and expressions of support were not always enough to encourage allies to stand with the abbess. Sainte-Croix’s abbesses encountered threats that were not easily solved by letters articulating the nuns’ superiority, for these letters gave the abbess little actual power to force her opponents to yield. Her adversaries resisted Sainte-Croix’s abbess’ authority through the use of physical force, by delaying their responses, or through other diversionary tactics. Thus while the abbess’s authority was well noted, well demonstrated, and well supported, she occasionally had difficulty enforcing the privileges allies agreed she held. Since this study examines nearly a millennium of Sainte-Croix’s history, it also reveals the difficulties abbesses faced as power shifted in the broader religious, social, or political world. While the kings of France and Frankia had been reliable supporters of Sainte-Croix from its foundation, the counts of Poitou’s power and influence discouraged royal involvement in their lands in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The abbess then struggled to find a new ally, finally connecting with the papacy and its legates by the late eleventh century. The pendulum started swinging back in the thirteenth century when the king of France took more direct control of Poitiers, or in the fifteenth century when the kings made greater efforts to control the French Church by rejecting papal involvement in the territory. During crises, the nuns proved to be sophisticated readers of the political climate and adept at adapting to its current needs. When their network of supporters shifted, they relied more on Radegund’s artifacts and created new spins on her life or her relics. Then they secured new supporters and allies. Saint Radegund’s cult was quite flexible, as early stories of the saint’s life included a great many themes and topics that permitted new interpretations. As Pierre Delooz suggests, this is common, even definitional, in the cult of the saints, where “La sainteté dépend donc du souvenir qu’a gardé une communauté de l’existence passée d’un défunt.”24 Delooz highlighted the social construction of saints by groups devoted to them, demonstrating saints’ usefulness to express something about the identity of the groups constructing them. Thus, the “real” Radegund is unattainable, and her lived reality is not my subject here. Rather, I am concerned with the ­“constructed” Radegund, and the ways that Sainte-Croix’s nuns, Sainte-Radegonde’s canons, and the authors who worked with or around them identified Radegund in succeeding and competing constructions.25 In the sixth century, texts emphasized 23  Félix Pasquier, Grands Jours de Poitiers de 1454 à 1634 (Paris: E. Thorin, 1874). 24  Pierre Delooz, “Pour une étude sociologique de la sainteté canonisée dans l’Eglise catholique,” Archives de Sociologie des Religions 13, no. 1 (1962): 17–43, 22. 25  Delooz, “Pour une étude sociologique,” 23: “Et tous les saints, plus ou moins, font figure de saints construits en ce sens qu’étant nécessairement saints pour les autres, ils se trouvent remodelés au niveau des représentations mentales collectives.”

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Introduction 9 Radegund’s royalty as Thuringian princess and Frankish queen, and her preference for the monastic life over that royal status. Some texts stressed the saint’s asceticism, while others her relics-hunting and political involvement. Radegund was queen, nun, martyr, spiritual mother, ascetic, and foundress. In later centuries, the nuns and canons found that they could use the saint’s malleable identity to hammer out representations that best fit their communities’ needs at that moment. As these needs shifted, so did the emphasis of Radegund’s cult image. This sort of play was common in saint’s cults—as Sharon Farmer showed for St. Martin of Tours and Virginia Blanton showed for St. Aethelthryth, to name just two.26 Since competing and complementary vitae of Radegund appeared within decades after her death, Radegund’s early texts provided a particularly large set of options for her later cult. Until the last few decades, female monastics had been underexamined in the studies of the medieval church and its communities. With the exception of major works from Eileen Power and Lina Eckenstein, monasticism was primarily studied from the male perspective, with even the institution itself consistently gendered masculine.27 It is no longer necessary, however, to complain about the lack of attention to nuns; the last five decades of interest in women’s history have seen an explosion of scholarship on monastic women. In the 1980s and 1990s, Penny Gold, Penelope Johnson, Suzanne Wemple, Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, and Jo Ann McNamara, among others, demonstrated that medieval monasteries for women were important institutions with robust source bases, and that these communities had offered medieval women opportunities to control property and exert influence. Several studies focused on challenging the then standard depiction of nuns’ houses as poor, weak, licentious, and unimportant. Johnson in particular demonstrated nuns’ connections to their local communities and their competence in gaining extensive abbeys and estates. McNamara’s Sisters in Arms showed historians the large number of sources available, as well as the broad range of activities nuns participated in, while Gold showed that monastic communities founded in the high Middle Ages welcomed female participants, despite traditional assumptions that

26 Sharon A. Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). 27  Some important works treating monasticism as universally male are: David Knowles, Christian Monasticism (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969), and The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950) (reprint); Friedrich Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich: Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, der Rheinlanden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1965); and Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961). This blindness is obvious in Giles Constable, Medieval Monasticism: A  Select Bibliography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976). The exceptions were Lina Eckenstein, Women Under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896); and Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, c.1275–1535 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), though even Power accepted contemporary critiques of female monasticism too easily. Philibert Schmitz devoted one of his seven volumes on the Benedictine order to nuns, the last one: Schmitz, Histoire de l’Ordre de Saint-Benoît, VII: Les Moniales (Éditions de Maredsous, 1956).

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these new orders were hostile to women.28 Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq showed that the female community of La Celle continued to expand its properties and membership in the thirteenth century.29 Suzanne Tunc observed a similar expansion in the authority of abbesses at Fontevraud as the Fontevrist movement spread.30 In Sisters in Arms, Jo Ann McNamara also argued that female monastics were potent rivals to secular clerics and a hierarchy that excluded women, and that nunneries provided a space for female activity.31 For McNamara, monasteries became spaces where celibate women were able to join with their male colleagues and work together—in a way of life she termed syneisactism—to avoid the patriarchal control of women.32 By focusing on the foundation, destruction, and rededication of monastic houses, Bruce Venarde demonstrated that female monasteries flourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.33 Moving to a later period, Marilyn Oliva challenged the traditional depiction of English nunneries as dilapidated houses filled with uneducated elites by demonstrating that these houses—though poor—were well governed by competent superiors.34 A 1995 English translation of Herbert Grundmann’s Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, originally in German in 1935, encouraged this enthusiasm to investigate women’s religious lives, and to look beyond the monastery, as Grundmann observed the strong enthusiasm for spiritual connection among medieval women, which he contrasted with the availability of institutional opportunities for their religious expression.35 These studies resuscitated the history of monastic women, but they also embraced a narrative of decline best articulated by Richard Southern in Western Society and The Church and Penelope Johnson in her 1991 Equal in Monastic 28  Penny Schine Gold, The Lady & the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985); Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 252–66; Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Susan Mosher Stuard, Women in Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976); Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Michel Parisse, Les Nonnes au Moyen Age (Le Puy: Christine Bonneton, 1983). 29  Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, Le Monachisme féminin dans la société de son temps: Le Monastère de La Celle (XIe-début du XVIe siècle) (Paris: Cujas, 1989). 30  Suzanne Tunc, Les Femmes au pouvoir: Deux abbesses de Fontevraud aux XIIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993). As the extensive bibliography of the Monastic Matrix demonstrates, however, there are numerous local studies of abbeys offering a wide variety in the experiences of female monastics in medieval Europe. See https://monasticmatrix.osu.edu (accessed April 7, 2008). 31 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 99, 280–1, 368–74, 382. 32  McNamara, “The Herrenfrage,” 3–29, 5–8, and 22. 33 Bruce L. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), xi–xii, and 9–11. 34  Marilyn Oliva, The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England: Female Monasteries in the Diocese of Norwich, 1350–1540 (Rochester, NY: Boydell, 1998). See also Valerie  G.  Spear, Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries (Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2005). 35  Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages . . . (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).

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Introduction 11 Profession.36 Johnson posited that medieval female monastics had enjoyed a position similar to their male colleagues until a mid-twelfth-century decline.37 Although female communities continued to receive strong lay support into the thirteenth century, Johnson suggested that nuns encountered challenges from the ecclesiastical hierarchy after 1150, as well as structural problems that affected female but not male monastics. Although women had been equal to men in their “monastic profession,” after the twelfth century nuns were increasingly seen as subordinate to the male hierarchy.38 Female religious also faced a serious economic threat from the new emphasis on endowments requiring masses for the dead which, unlike the prayers nuns said in their traditional opus dei, required the nunnery to hire priests. This extra expense drained female houses’ resources, while male monasteries benefitted from these endowments, as they could rely instead on ordained members to perform the masses.39 This chronology places the twilight of monastic life for women in the twelfth century and further suggests that, after this point, abbesses retreated with their sisters behind their monastic walls, in which they were strictly cloistered. McNamara similarly read the eleventh-century emphasis on clerical celibacy as a key turning point, forcing clerics to abandon their lovers and pushing these women into the monastic life. This narrative of female monastic peak and decline fits perfectly with 1990s notions of crisis and decline for women in general during or after the eleventh century. Concerns about pollution explained supposed monastic failure: canons rejected the cura monialium out of dread or fear of contact with nuns.40 Increasing Church hierarchicalization limited women’s opportunities, while the formation of states limited the abilities of queens to endow and support monasteries. Eleventh- and twelfth-century reforming ideals supposedly limited Church structures to men. The reform movement resulted, according to McNamara, in male bishops’ and priests’ tight control of female communities, perhaps sparking a masculinity crisis.41 Bruce Venarde saw the period of growth he described for female communities between 950 and 1150 ending by the late twelfth century.42 Roberta Gilchrist also noted women’s houses’ poverty in the later Middle Ages.43 36 R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 310–12; Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession. 37  An influential argument. See McNamara, Sisters in Arms; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society; Oliva, The Convent and the Community; Patricia Ranft, Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); and Nancy Bradley Warren, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 38 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 62–89 and 257–60. 39 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 136–8. Interestingly, Johnson excluded Sainte-Croix from the sample used in her qualitative analysis, but included another abbey from Poitiers, La Trinité. 40  Micheline de Fontette, Les religieuses à l’âge classique du droit canon: recherches sur les structures juridiques des branches féminines des Ordres (Paris: Vrin, 1967); Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession; Parisse, Les nonnes au Moyen Age, 134–43; Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, 89ff. 41  McNamara, “The Herrenfrage,” esp. 8–10. 42 Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society, 170–9. 43  Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: the Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994), 41 and 44.

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Since the late 1990s scholars have complicated and nuanced this depiction of monastic women under siege and in decline, arguing instead for the vitality of female monastic traditions and institutions. For the past twenty years we have learned about nuns’ spiritual and devotional lives, their literary, musical, and artistic talents, their education and literacy, their liturgical work, and their economic competence.44 A focus among scholars on documents of practice has helped them demonstrate alliances between monastic women and men and truths about contentious issues such as enclosure.45 It has revealed the growth of monasteries or orders that were supposedly in decline.46 There has been some new attention on late medieval female monasticism’s vibrancy, with the study of Sisterbooks in Dominican convents, nuns’ artistic and literary efforts, on patronage and book collecting.47 Further, scholars have pushed into the late Middle Ages and focused on the strength of female monasticism after the twelfth century.48 Sherri Franks 44  Virginia Blanton, V. O’Mara, and P. Stoop, eds., Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), and Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), and Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016); Julie Hotchin, “Women’s Reading and Monastic Reform in Twelfth Century Germany: The Library of the Nuns of Lippoldsberg,” in Alison I. Beach, ed., Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 139–90; Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); Erika Lindgren, Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Jeffrey Hamburger and Susan Marti, eds., Crown and Veil: The Art of Female Monasticism in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), and Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Gertrud Jaron Lewis, By Women, For Women, About Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996); Fiona Griffiths, The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Sara Ritchey, Holy Matter: Changing Perceptions of the Material World in Late Medieval Christianity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). Elizabeth  A.  Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005); Sherri Franks Johnson, Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 45  Erin L. Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities: The Cloistering of Religious Women in the Thirteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42, no. 3 (2012): 597–614; Julie Ann Smith, “Clausura Districta: Conceiving Space and Community for Dominican Nuns in the Thirteenth Century,” Parergon 27, no. 2 (2010): 13–36. 46 Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society; Constance  H.  Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, 2010); Leslie Knox, “Clare of Assisi: Foundress of an Order?” in Jean François Godet-Calogeras and Roberta McKelvie, eds., An Unencumbered Heart: A Tribute to Clare of Assisi 1253–2003 (Allegany, NY: St. Bonaventure University, 2004), 11–29; Anne E. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). 47 Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary and Nuns as Artists; Lindgren, Sensual Encounters; E.  Ann Matter and John  W.  Coakley, eds., Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); WinstonAllen, Convent Chronicles; Griffiths, The Garden of Delights; Lewis, By Women, For Women, About Women; Anna Harrison, “‘I am Wholly Your Own’: Liturgical Piety and Community Among the Nuns of Helfta,” Church History 7, no. 3 (2009): 549–83. 48 Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain; Silvia Evangelisti, Nuns: A History of Convent Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Sharon  T.  Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of

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Introduction 13 Johnson shows, for example, that religious orders’ organization in the high and late Middle Ages led to the integration of women religious into centralized orders, and that those who remained outside those orders were not marginalized, but instead simply continued a more traditional observance of monastic practice.49 Much scholarship has challenged the decline narrative by pointing to the rise of new orders and new forms of religious devotion, such as the Cistercians, the Franciscans, and Dominicans, the Modern Devotion, the beguines, mystics, among others.50 This group of studies demonstrates the significant interest among women in the religious life, but their undercurrent is an acceptance of the traditional narrative—first by accepting that it was real for traditional Benedictine monasticism, which is left out of this exciting story of female religiosity and expanding opportunity, and, second, by even demonstrating the same bell curve of rise, peak, twilight, and decline that has so captivated medieval and monastic scholars, simply plotting the points at new levels in new areas.51 For example, in pointing out the opportunities female communities offered, in 2003 Kowaleski and Erler wrote “on the one hand, such female cultures could provide emotional and even financial support, instill self-confidence, and foster leadership skills, especially when occurring within institutionally sanctioned female communities such as monasteries. On the other hand, they were often informal, marginalized, viewed with mistrust, and open to attack when they began to exercise power that threatened the patriarchal status quo.”52 This “push-pull” model of women’s power, success always mixed with some limitation, offered a more realistic narrative of women’s experiences, but it still mapped onto a narrative of rise vs. decline, strengthening vs. waning, rather than emphasizing consistencies. This sort of curve the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Late Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Oliva, The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England; Sigrid Schmitt, Geistliche Frauen und städtische Welt: Kanonissen – Nonnen – Beginen und ihre Umwelt am Beispiel der Stadt Straßburg im Spätmittelalter (1250–1525) (Mainz: Habilitationsschrift, 2001). 49 Johnson, Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval Bologna, 237. 50 See recent work on Cistercians and women, such as Constance  H.  Berman, Women and Monasticism in Medieval Europe: Sisters and Patrons of the Cistercian Reform (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), and “Were there Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?” Church History 68, no. 4 (1999): 824–64; Brigitte Degler-Spengler, “The Incorporation of Cistercian Nuns into the Order in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century,” in John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank, eds., Medieval Religious Women (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995); Martha  G.  Newman, “Crucified by the Virtues: Monks, Lay Brothers, and Women in Thirteenth-Century Cistercian Saints’ Lives,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Faith: Cistercian Men, Women, and their Stories, 1100–1250 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns; Erin L. Jordan, “Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns, and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut,” Speculum 87, no. 1 (2012): 62–94. For Franciscans and Dominicans, see Maria Pia Alberzoni, Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century (Allegany, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2004); Lezlie  S.  Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2008); Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. For the Modern Devotion, see Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life. 51  Scholars of Cistercians, who argue for the vitality of these houses for women, still accept an eventual decline. See Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” where she accepts decline in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but seeks to decouple it from attitudes toward enclosure: 600; Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns. 52  Gendering the Master Narrative, 13–14.

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is possibly inherent to the study of medieval women’s history, given the field’s original emphasis on a hunt for golden ages and women worthies whose lives were better than those of their daughters in the modern world, a drive that required a rise and a fall. It is also satisfying, for a medievalist, to be able to tell the complete story of an institution that was founded, that grew and thrived, and then ended its story, particularly for so many abbeys that did not outlast the Ancien Régime.53 Judith Bennett has discussed the seductiveness of decline and transformation as a model for modern history scholarship in her theory of patriarchal equilibrium, in which situations change over time but do not result in much alteration of the basic realities of women’s status and power. Change, particularly change over time, is an attractive historical topic for women’s historians because it offers more “significant moments of seeming transformations in women’s status, particularly on seeming advances or declines in women’s status.”54 But continuities within women’s lives, especially over time, sometimes reveal bigger stories and broader trends, as Bennett demonstrated by pointing to consistencies of women’s work in Europe across the Industrial Revolution. Seeming rises and falls in status did not mark any meaningful improvement, as women’s labor remained low-status and compensated at the same 53 Many of these studies emphasizing the religious devotion of medieval women focused on remarkable individuals who claimed power as visionaries and mystics or on tertiary orders that broke with enclosure. They thus emphasize the unusual authority of women with extraordinary gifts not available to all women, or of women who gained authority only by rejecting traditional monasticism. There are several studies of individual abbesses—especially famous examples such as Hildegard and Heloise—but they, like the studies of elite women, have been dismissed as exceptional cases and not representative of superiors in general. For a small selection, see Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), and Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Sabina Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life (London: Routledge, 1989); Frances Beer, Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1992); Régine Pernoud, Hildegard of Bingen: Inspired Conscience of the Twelfth Century (New York: Marlowe & Co., 1998); Bonnie Wheeler, Listening to Heloise: the Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and C. J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). Such a focus assumes that the status of monastic superiors without such gifts or freedom remained low. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) and Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Catherine  M.  Mooney, ed., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Patricia Ranft, Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women; and Elizabeth A. Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). While Daniel Bornstein argues that monastic women “were able to carve out for themselves broad areas of influence” by “carefully exploiting the institutional church” and “by astutely manipulating religious precepts,” he primarily points to women like Catherine of Siena and Angelo of Foligno: Daniel Bornstein, “Women and Religion in Late Medieval Italy: History and Historiography,” in Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, eds., Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1–27, here 2–6. Margery Kempe, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, and Christine de Pisan also receive a great deal of attention from scholars arguing for the agency and power of high or late medieval women. As the “beyond exceptional” studies have made clear, however, these cases are remarkable, but not exceptional. It is possible to observe the powers and authority of such abbesses more broadly, particularly through greater investigation of documents of practice. 54 Bennett, History Matters, 61.

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Introduction 15 rates in relation to those of men. While women’s working lives changed, there was little transformation of women’s status, either in terms of decline or improvement. Superior Women demonstrates similar continuities in Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ status and authority: while some of these women exercised authority with more confidence, support, and ease than others, over the course of this study’s millennium there is remarkable consistency in the claims they made, the power they wielded, and the support they received. They consistently required external support in order to truly wield authority, but they were able to draw on the same strategies in order to win that support. As Kanges, Korpiola, and Ainonen noted, authority is gained through negotiation and dialogue, and is only wielded with consent: “authority may rarely reside in the orbit of a single institution or person, but because of its partial and contextual nature, it is continuously negotiated, re-negotiated and shared by various interested parties . . . . Whether strong or weak, direct or indirect, legitimate or coerced, shared or seized, authority is very much seen as an institution based upon and limited by norm and tradition. As such, authority functions in a society to maintain and conserve rather than revise.”55 Sainte-Croix’s abbesses used their archive of privileges to demonstrate their abbey’s traditions, which their network of allies had so well supported in the past, in order to negotiate for continued support in the present and future. Their allies, in turn, had their own motivations for supporting female monastic authority at Sainte-Croix, which were often about shoring up their own claims to authority and power by demonstrating their ability to grant support to the nuns. We might avoid the constant, spiraling questions about what Merry Wiesner referred to as the “Glinda question,” whether a movement, trend, event, or period was “a good thing or a bad thing for women.”56 Focusing on the longue durée stretches out the timeframe in which changes may seem transformative, but permits better study of patterns, strategies, and consistencies in status. As Marie Kelleher observed, “women’s power need not necessarily offer ‘more’ or ‘better’ for women in order to be considered ‘power.’ ”57 Thus the 900 years of this study permits us to move beyond a narrative of decline or of transformation and instead emphasize the remarkable longevity of Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s claim to authority. Historians of monasticism primarily fall into three groups, like many medievalists, based on periodization: those studying the early medieval houses, those interested in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and those tracing institutions in the later Middle Ages, or the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. There are, of course, further distinctions such as by region and order, but these tend to be subdivisions of the larger chronological one. As a result, many histories of monasticism tend not to get an overview of a community or the institution’s development over the entire period, and instead divide into silos by period. This book seeks to solve that problem. But, of course, by ending in 1520 I replicate another “great divide” by limiting the 55  Kangas, Korpiola, and Ainonen, “Foreword,” xi; Broomhall, “Introduction,” 1. 56 Merry Wiesner, “Women, Gender, and Church History,” Church History 71, no. 3 (2002): ­600–20, 609. 57  Marie A. Kelleher, “What Do We Mean by ‘Women and Power’?,” Medieval Feminist Forum, 51, no. 2 (2015): 104–15, 114.

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story to the medieval period. I argue that this division is not arbitrary, though, because the nature of the abbey’s relationship to supporters and surrounding community, as well as its internal operation, underwent significant changes in 1­ 519–20. While abbesses after that point returned to Radegund’s model and to the strategies she had established, the story was definitely in a new chapter. But this new chapter, while different, was still consistent with the larger pattern at Sainte-Croix. Abbesses relied upon and cultivated special relationships with their network of allies; they simply permitted these allies much more access and control than Radegund would have found comfortable. Within studies of monasticism there are some major areas and topics that recur across these periodized divisions. Debates over enclosure persist, for example, to question how seriously clerical insistence on monastic women’s strict enclosure was enforced or even embraced as a concept and whether women embraced it or not.58 Similarly, fierce discussion has debated the way clerics and nuns perceived the cura monialium, or the priestly care for nuns and administration of the sacraments, and whether it was a burden on them or, indeed, on the monastic women they cared for.59 Other hotly contested issues include: Male hierarchies’ response to monastically inclined women—whether bishops, clerics, popes, or leaders in various monastic movements wanted to exclude women, or to restrict them to certain places and specific ways of life; whether there really were double monasteries or mixed-sex monasteries, and if they remained in that status after the twelfth century; an abbey’s autonomy from its secular patrons, particularly in the selection of a new superior; how well-endowed a monastery was; how well the abbess ran her estates; whether it was really the abbess who oversaw the property or if a man had the true influence there. There is less acceptance of the older narratives that treated women’s devotion with skepticism or saw all monasteries as dens of licentiousness or saw child oblates 58  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities”; Smith, “Clausura Districta”; Kirsty Day and Kathryn Maude, “Breaking Down Enclosures: A Collaborative Approach to the Cloistering of Medieval Nuns,” (2014), unpublished paper available on Academia.edu, https://www.academia. edu/13239492/Breaking_down_enclosures_a_collaborative_approach_to_the_cloistering_of_ medieval_nuns (accessed July 26, 2017). For Kathryn M. Rudy, enclosure is inherent to the concept of a nun: “Because strictly speaking, only those women who lived within enclosure under vows should be called nuns given the fluctuating identification of various houses in the Low Countries, I will use the term religious women to describe women who dedicated their lives to prayer (rather than, say, to family.) Nuns, a category comprising a subset of religious women, took vows and lived within enclosure. Under this nomenclature, tertiaries, anchorites, beguines, and Sisters of the Common Life, were religious women, but not nuns”: Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 28. 59  Fiona  J.  Griffiths, “‘Men’s Duty to Provide for Women’s Needs’: Abelard, Heloise, and their Negotiation of the cura monialium,” Journal of Medieval History 30, no. 1 (2004): 1–24; Klaus Schreiner, “Mönchtum zwischen asketischem Anspruch und gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit: Spiritualität, Sozialverhalten und Sozialverfassung schwäbischer Reformmönche im Spiegel ihrer Geschichtsschreibung,” in Speculum Sueviae: Beiträge zu den historischen Hilfswissenschaften und zur geschichtlichen Landeskunde Südwestdeutschlands: Festchrift für Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 1982), 250–307; Julie Hotchin, “Female Religious Life and the Cura Monialium in Hirsau Monasticism, 1080–1150,” in Constant  J.  Mews, ed., Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, 59–83 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); Constant J. Mews, “Negotiating the Boundaries of Gender in Religious Life: Robert of Arbrissel and Hersende, Abelard and Heloise,” Viator 37, no. 1 (2006): 113–48.

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Introduction 17 as forced into holy orders—the sorts of tales promulgated by the Protestant Reformation, visitation records, and especially the documentation justifying the dissolution in England or propaganda for attacks during the French Revolution. The abbesses’ role within and beyond the abbey still requires study.60 In examining the gender of the office, Felice Lifshitz has argued that abbatial authority rested on a repudiation of traditional gender roles and the embrace of an honorary fatherhood that allowed the abbess to govern. She also suggested that the most successful abbesses had their authority supported and reinforced by episcopal allies.61 Maria Teresa Guerra Medici has countered the notion that the abbesses’ power declined with the difficulties that faced monastic communities in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Rather she has suggested that some abbesses were effective and powerful both within their community and with the power to compel obedience from priests into the fifteenth century.62 There are studies of individual abbesses or of individual monasteries. But the office, its occupants, their powers, and their claims to authority remain understudied, particularly when considered in proportion to the number of abbesses and the scope of the roles they held in medieval society. I suggest that the ecclesiastical community as a whole retained a high respect for abbatial authority from monastic women through the fifteenth century and beyond, despite some questioning of female authority, and despite real threats from local communities with their own reasons to flout or undermine these women’s powers. While I do not dispute the arguments that female religious communities experienced greater difficulties, received smaller donations, shrank in size, were cloistered more strictly, and faced greater interference from male clerics, or that this had disastrous results for many female monasteries, an abbey such as SainteCroix does not fit neatly into the commonly held chronology. The abbess of Sainte-Croix continued to wield enormous influence beyond her abbey walls well into the fifteenth century. She was doggedly active in protecting her privileges, especially those that required her to leave her cloister. The male authorities some scholars have accused of limiting female influence generally in the Church were, in fact, the greatest advocates for Sainte-Croix’s abbess. These men championed her superiority over men repeatedly. The fact that she needed to seek their support so frequently does attest to the fact that her claims were fragile and that opposition to her authority was sometimes fierce. But the abbesses’ success at having their powers supported by the secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies suggests that women were still acceptable—and even effective—authority figures well into the sixteenth century. The methods and resources of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses were available to other superiors of ancient, well-endowed monasteries. Indeed, in many important ways this book is also about men—the officials who supported Sainte-Croix’s abbesses— and about reconsidering our current thinking about their priorities and values. 60 Spear, Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries. 61  Felice Lifshitz, “Is Mother Superior? Towards a History of Feminine Amtscharisma,” in John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Medieval Mothering (New York: Garland, 1996), 117–38. 62  Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, “For a History of Women’s Monastic Institutions. The Abbess: Role, Functions and Administration,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 23 (1999): 35–65.

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While the abbesses of Sainte-Croix demonstrated tenacity and resourcefulness in appealing to various male officials for their support, it is crucial to understand why such appeals so successfully fit the needs, desires, and expectations of these men and how these negotiations shifted over time. Because the abbesses used representations of Radegund to bolster their own authority, Superior Women contributes not only to the history of female monasticism, but also to the history of the cult of the saints. Historians of saints’ cults have too long focused on either the artistic and literary production of the cult, the life of the saint adored, or the institutional history of the saint’s devotees. By braiding these historiographies together my work demonstrates that texts, art, memories of the saint, rituals, and the social experiences of her communities were inextricably interwoven. Crucial to this project is the work of historians André Vauchez, Peter Brown, and Caroline Walker Bynum, who have demonstrated the importance of holiness and the power of holy biographies in inspiring intense affective spiritual responses among medieval men and women. Art historians Meredith Parsons Lillich and Cynthia Hahn have located artistic imagery devoted to the cult of the saints at the heart of medieval political debates.63 Thus, my work embraces Sharon Farmer’s model examination of rivalries within Saint Martin’s cult at Tours, but impels medievalists and historians to consider both the larger world of a saint’s cult, using an interdisciplinary methodology, and the crucial role of gender in these types of conflict.64 Finally, this project is a modest contribution to Poitiers’ local history during the Middle Ages. Two seventeenth-century monks, Dom Fonteneau and Dom Estiennot, created handwritten copies of documents in the local libraries and thereby preserved many medieval records that have since been lost.65 Local archivists, most importantly René Crozet and Xavier Barbier de Montault, have collected and edited enormous collections of documents essential to this study with the assistance of the members of the Société des Archives Historiques du Poitou and the Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest.66 Radegund and her cult have received a great deal of attention in Poitiers, most notably from René Aigrain, Émile Briand, and Émile Ginot.67 The most important work on the county, the town, the ­diocese, and on Radegund’s cult during the twentieth century has been produced 63  André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981); Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; Meredith Parsons Lillich, The Armor of Light: Stained Glass in Western France, 1250–1325 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Cynthia Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 64 Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin. Also important is Blanton, Signs of Devotion. 65 See Bibliothèque Municipale de Poitiers (hereafter BMP) Collection Dom Fonteneau, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BNF) MS Lat. 12755, Recueils de D. Estiennot, vol. Poitou. 66  The most important of these for this study are Xavier Barbier de Montault, Le Trésor de l’abbaye de Sainte-Croix de Poitiers avant la Révolution d’après les inventaires, les chartes et les monuments (Poitiers: Impr. Tolmer, 1883); and René Crozet, Textes et documents relatifs á l’histoire des arts en Poitou (Moyen Ages—debut de la Renaissance) (Poitiers: SAHP, 1942). 67  René Aigrain, Sainte Radegonde (vers 520–587 ) (Poitiers: Éditions des Cordeliers, 1917); Émile Briand Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, Reine de France et des sanctuaires et pèlerinages (Paris: Librairie religieuse H. Oudin, 1898); and Émile Ginot, Le Manuscrit de Sainte Radegonde de Poitiers et ses peintures du XIe siècle (Paris: SFRMP, 1920).

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Introduction 19 by Robert Favreau or under his direction.68 Poitiers is a haven of medieval texts thanks to the exhaustive work of these scholars and of archivists at the Archives Départementales de la Vienne and the Bibliothèque Municipale in Poitiers. As an important town through most of the Middle Ages, Poitiers is well known, but surprisingly little covered as a main topic, outside of local studies. The 732 and 1356 Battles are well studied, but Poitiers’ vibrant ecclesiastical life, urban culture, saints’ cults, markets, and university have not received much attention and certainly not much in English. My sources include hagiographical manuscripts of Radegund’s vitae (biographies) and miracle tales; liturgical manuscripts members of her cult used and created, such as antiphonaries, breviaries, psalters, and books of hours; registers, customaries, necrologies detailing the daily histories of the abbey and chapter; and a large body of letters, receipts, and charters recording the relationship between these communities and their outside worlds. Beautifully preserved art and architecture of the church of Sainte-Radegonde also allow a study of the cult’s material culture.69 These documents of practice are crucial cultural products to examine Sainte-Croix’s history beyond the prescriptive literature. The documents available raise some issues. In particular, in examining the contestations of the abbess’s authority we must rely mainly on documents prepared in response to requests for assistance, rather than the initial pleas themselves or more intimate descriptions of the nuns’ and canons’ activities. This requires that we read between the lines and let go of seeking the ultimate causes or even the resolutions of particular incidents. Patrick Geary has urged historians to focus on the uses and meanings of conflict rather than reconstruct beginnings and ends invisible from our vantage point.70 I follow his lead in focusing on strategies, rather than motivations, examining the rhetoric the abbess or her rivals used and the pattern of disputes that challenged her authority. Despite the obvious problems in the source base, which all too often obscure these communities’ voices, Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s concern for asserting and maintaining her authority, and the myriad ways in which that authority could be challenged, become clear in the documents. Although the abbess probably enjoyed peaceful, loving relationships with her nuns, with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde—and probably even with the bishop of Poitiers—for most of this period, I focus on the plethora of well-documented moments of tension, when threats to the abbess’s authority transformed into open conflict or legal dispute. I explore efforts made to 68 Robert Favreau, Histoire de Poitiers (Toulouse: Privat, 1985), Le Diocèse de Poitiers (Paris: Beauchesne, 1988), La Ville de Poitiers à la fin du Moyen Age: une capitale régionale (Poitiers: Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1978); La Vie de sainte Radegonde par Fortunat: Poitiers, Bibliothèque municipale, manuscrit 250 (136) (Paris: Seuil, 1995); and Poitiers: Sainte-Radegonde (Poitiers: Association les amis de Sainte Radegonde, 1999). 69  The Abbey of Sainte-Croix was, unfortunately, razed in the French Revolution and the community of nuns, now reconstituted, has moved to the nearby town of Saint-Benoît. The old site of the abbey is now the Musée Sainte-Croix. 70  Patrick J. Geary, “Living with Conflicts in Stateless France: A Typology of Conflict Management Mechanisms, 1050–1200,” in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 125–60, esp. 159.

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nurture friendships or manage hostilities with local and distant authorities through legal battles and religious celebrations; cultural productions such as vitae, miracles, and legends about Radegund; the town’s material space; and the cult’s artifacts out of a conviction that these were all key elements in the assertion of or challenge to authority in Sainte-Croix. Examining challenges to abbatial authority over the longue durée offers several advantages. Putting these different episodes together reveals that, even as their situations changed, there was a strong continuity in the ways Sainte-Croix’s women maneuvered through challenges. Their strategies’ patterns in asserting privileges and negotiating threats surface when taken in with this broad view. In some ways this is satisfying for feminist academics Bennett encouraged to emphasize continuity over transformations, as discussed above.71 But such a view leads us to combine topics we would not normally put together; disagreements over arbiters’ role in elections during the twelfth century are not obviously linked to fifteenth-century legends about serpents. But both situations reveal a similar challenge and a similar resolution to conflict Sainte-Croix’s abbesses handled, and one repeatedly resorted to, over this long period. Their juxtaposition reveals the use of certain strategies consistently, regardless of the issue of the moment. Tracing these disputes through nine or ten centuries risks some oversimplifications, however. Each was context-specific and must be understood within the setting— spatial, mental, social, political—of that moment. This method also hazards overemphasizing tension, dispute, and conflict, and of characterizing Radegund’s cult as constantly consumed by bitter enmity. This was certainly not the case; the abbesses and nuns of Sainte-Croix lived harmoniously as spiritual siblings for long spans of time. However, the abbess’s efforts to maintain her position over her community, as well as over Sainte-Radegonde, sparked serious and bitter responses that ­ ependent reveal important ideas about female monastic authority and the urgency d communities felt to assert their liberties. CHAPTERS The book contains seven chapters and moves chronologically from Radegund’s sixth-century life through the sixteenth century with a comparative chapter examining election conflicts throughout the period. Sainte-Croix’s abbesses enjoyed such a strong position in their abbey and the ecclesiastical community because of their connection with Radegund, while their authority relied on the deeds of the abbey’s foundress. Radegund had secured the abbey’s property, generated a network of advocates, and established a model of strong female leadership in the monastery. The abbesses looked to ancient texts describing Radegund’s life for justifications for their authority, precedents for their legal claims, and for allies who might support them. 71 Bennett, History Matters.

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Introduction 21 Chapter  1 thus examines the sixth-century foundation of female monastic authority in Poitiers and the model for that authority created through artifacts of Radegund’s life available to Sainte-Croix’s abbesses in later centuries.72 Radegund’s biography and history penned by Venantius Fortunatus, the nun Baudonivia, and Gregory of Tours articulated competing understandings of her sanctity. Their narratives became the primary texts for approaching the saint. Through them Radegund’s use of two strategies to protect her monastery become clear: first, she relied on networks of allies, primarily bishops and kings, to support her; and second, she created a set of cultural ideas, symbols, and materials that later nuns might use to invoke her memory or attach new allies to the Abbey of Sainte-Croix. Radegund also left two holy objects that became the center of her cult: a portion of the relic of the True Cross and her own physical relics. These artifacts launched Radegund’s cult and became key elements in the abbess’s efforts to assert her authority. Radegund sought to free Sainte-Croix’s abbesses from their local bishop and connect them, instead, to the bishop of Tours, the Frankish kings, the Byzantine emperor, and the papacy, believing that this would strengthen SainteCroix. Descriptions of her selection of Agnes as the first abbess, correspondence with bishops, friendships with royal relatives, the contentious relationship with the local bishop, and her miracles initiated the archive of privileges and were all crucial to future abbesses’ authority. Radegund’s two strategies for protecting Sainte-Croix were immediately tested, and Chapter  2 examines the strategies’ success through three examples. First, I trace Radegund’s pursuit and installation of a prestigious relic at Sainte-Croix, over her local bishop’s hostile objections, through the support of kings, emperors, and more prominent bishops. Second, the chapter recalls this hostile bishop’s absence from Radegund’s funeral and Sainte-Croix’s Abbess Agnes calls on Gregory of Tours for assistance. And third, it examines the struggles of Leubovera, first abbess after the death of Sainte-Croix’s “founding generation,” as she dealt with an extensive rebellion within Sainte-Croix. All three of these women succeed over their local officials or rivals through the support of Frankish kings and bishops, whose alliances Radegund had established and subsequent leaders in the monastery cultivated. Chapter 3 establishes the relationship between Radegund’s foundations after the saint’s death. The abbesses engaged in the local community especially with their dependent canons at the church of Sainte-Radegonde. The nuns of Sainte-Croix cultivated friendships with Frankish monarchs and, in the mid-eleventh century, they created a richly illuminated manuscript (“libellus”) of Radegund’s vitae that presented the saint and her community as powerful, relevant, and well-connected. These illuminations emphasized that the foundress had willingly embraced claustration, a choice that positively reflected upon the monastic life and power of the nuns living in her community. They stressed Radegund’s ability to work miracles, and located that miraculous power within Sainte-Croix. This presentation of Radegund’s identity trumpeted Sainte-Croix’s glory and the power of a female 72  Parts of Chapters 1 and 2 appeared in Jennifer C. Edwards, “Their Cross to Bear: Controversy and the Relic of the True Cross in Poitiers,” in Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 65–77.

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monastic. Visible on the abbey church’s altar to the canons of Sainte-Radegonde and visiting patrons, the libellus illuminations presented to the men a powerful image of female authority at a time when the position of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses was threatened. It was at this time that the increasing control of the Count/Dukes of Poitou and Aquitaine made it difficult for the nuns to receive assistance from Frankish kings. While they searched for a new ally, the nuns poured their energies into renewing and restoring stories and symbols of Radegund, such as with the libellus and Radegund’s tomb’s “discovery,” which became an opportunity for the abbess to engrave her authority and connection to Radegund publicly into SainteRadegonde’s church wall. By the end of the eleventh century Poitiers’ spatial, administrative, and mental orientation had shifted to give greater power to the count and bishop, enhance Sainte-Radegonde’s canons’ status, and place new pressures on the nuns. The abbess of Sainte-Croix entered into jurisdictional disputes with the canons over privileges the nuns claimed, especially those that overtly demonstrated the abbess’s control of space within her monastery and over Sainte-Radegonde’s church, and over Radegund’s relics, while the canons sought greater autonomy from the abbess. When the men resisted the abbesses’ claims, the women appealed to the papacy, which supported the nuns and encouraged the bishop of Poitiers to intervene on the abbesses’ behalf. Poitiers’ bishop was also a rival to the abbess, however, and he, too, sought a grander role in Poitiers’ religious community through reducing the reach of Sainte-Croix’s abbess. Chapter 4 demonstrates that popes repeatedly supported Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ authority, despite the eleventh- and twelfth-century reform’s supposed misogyny; it shows that the gendering of authority in the high Middle Ages was complicated for both men and women, and that Sainte-Croix’s abbesses constantly sought ways to muster support from allies who were, themselves, eager to demonstrate power, keenly positioning Sainte-Croix as an opportunity for the pope to achieve his own goals while simultaneously supporting those of the nuns. The story is not entirely a victory narrative, as the documents show these negotiations contained frustrating steps backward for the nuns’ traditional superiority, but they also demonstrate very little misogyny and no sense that the women’s exercise of power was inappropriate. The bishop and Sainte-Radegonde sought to expand their own power, not to undermine that of an officeholder they thought unsuited to the role. And many of the documents demonstrate extensive support for abbatial privileges that the women persistently defended and successfully protected. In the thirteenth century the French king asserted greater control over Poitiers and by mid-century Poitou had become an apanage the king or members of his family held. During this reorientation of the town the nuns and canons sought to appeal to the royal family as a way of re-establishing them as members of the cult’s network of allies. Chapter 5 examines the efforts to use a church decoration program at Sainte-Radegonde to interest Count Alphonse of Poitiers and his brother King Louis IX through symbols that evoked their mother, Blanche of Castile. The abbesses of Sainte-Croix participated in this decoration program, but a series of vacancies at the abbey undermined their ability to closely and systematically

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Introduction 23 supervise the decoration or its themes. With this resulting freedom, the canons articulated a bold stained-glass program that asserted strong ties between Radegund and the canons’ church, and even challenged the depiction of the saint contained in the nuns’ libellus. The stained-glass windows created a new biography for the saint that shifted Radegund’s power from the monastery (as in the libellus) to the church, but the canons did not stop there. In the same period, the canons also commissioned manuscripts and miracle tales that represented the improved status of the men in the community. New miracle tales recording healings at Radegund’s tomb demonstrated the power housed within the church. To draw in royal patrons they focused on Radegund’s royal identity, even though she and the nuns had consciously rejected Radegund’s temporal power in previous depictions. While Chapters 4 and  6 examine direct confrontations between the nuns and canons, Chapter 5 reveals the subtle challenges the canons worked in text and image to oppose the nuns’ domination of the saint’s cult. Their efforts resulted in greater patronage and prestige for the canons, which placed new pressures on the abbess of Sainte-Croix, and new difficulties in asserting her authority. Indeed, the king became very interested in the abbey by the 1280s, and possibly interfered in an abbatial election. During the fourteenth century Sainte-Croix’s nuns engaged in very few disputes, or at least very few disputes left a record in the nuns’ existing archive of documents. Elections appear to have gone smoothly, the nuns seem to have been at peace with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, and they were content with their leaders. As discussed in the context of disputes over jurisdiction in Chapter 4, the bishop of Poitiers asserted a greater role in the administration of Sainte-Radegonde, but he otherwise left the abbess to her business. The abbess was deeply involved in protecting her fiefs and properties from encroaching landlords, and she appears to have been quite successful here: ongoing disputes with the lords of MontreuilBonin, for example, did not blow up until the mid-fifteenth century. Perhaps the Hundred Years War proved a distraction, particularly with Edward, the Black Prince’s success in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, from other local disputes, which would heat up again in the next century. In the fifteenth century the abbess again fought to maintain the superiority she claimed over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde at a time when Poitiers’ citizens were crafting a new identity for the city. The flashpoints for this contest were the town’s public processions during Rogation Days and the nuns’ demand to have physical possession of Sainte-Radegonde on the saint’s feast day. While the canons drew upon rhetorical strategies that denied female competence, the abbess drew instead on theories championing women’s political abilities. When the men refused to perform traditional obligations to the nuns, the abbess initiated a legal dispute forcing canons to serve in public displays according to her strict requirements. The king and his seneschal supported the nun’s position, suggesting that office trumped gender, and the abbess’s female sex did not diminish her claims to hold authority. The abbess received this support because she understood the complicated issues driving royal claims to authority, and pitched her own arguments to appeal to the king’s concerns. Chapter 6 emphasizes the importance of material objects such as

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Radegund’s relics, the relic of the True Cross, and banners recalling her sanctity in the public performance of civic and ecclesiastical identity during town processions.73 Despite struggles with the canons and the bishop of Poitiers, the most difficult challenges to Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s authority came from her own community. Chapter 7 examines conflicts over elections or the merits of a particular abbess that shook the abbey between 589 and 1512. These conflicts demonstrate the enormous pressures on the abbess of Sainte-Croix, and her position’s importance in the broader community. By stepping outside a chronological organization for Chapter  7, I am able to compare the repeating rhetoric used to attack female authority, even by other women, as well as the strength of external male support in such contests.74 These conflicts reveal the violent potential of the disputes between Saint Radegund’s communities: in 1491 the women allowed troops to physically assault their sisters, endangered relics Radegund had secured, and threatened their own archive in support of their claims on the abbacy. While these conflicts demonstrate that Sainte-Croix’s advocates respected the authority of a properly elected abbess, they also reveal that accusations of immorality or mismanagement of resources could seriously challenge an abbess, even if there was little merit to the charges and that monastic reform could empower some nuns while threatening others. Threats against and assertions of the abbess’s authority must be understood through her foundation’s relationship with Radegund. For the nuns, Radegund was not only a patron who had died in the sixth century but a living member of their spiritual community, a protector of their economic pursuits, and a representative of their institution. These women believed that Radegund’s praesentia—in Peter Brown’s definition, the “physical presence of the holy”—within their community was a gift recognizing God’s favorable judgment.75 Radegund’s example provided a powerful model of female authority on which the women of SainteCroix were able to draw, with great success, despite high and late medieval movements that sought to limit religious women’s public exercise of power. Indeed, Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ success through much of this period and the extensive support they received demonstrate that these movements, in practice, did not operate as previously assumed. So long as Sainte-Croix was competently governed by abbesses talented in the deployment of the two strategies Radegund had established, the abbey remained strong, well supported, mostly autonomous, and in firm control of its dependents.

73  Part of Chapter 6 appeared in Jennifer C. Edwards, “‘Man Can be Subject to Woman’: Female Monastic Authority in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers” Gender & History 25, no. 1 (2013): 86–106. 74  Parts of Chapter 7 appeared in Jennifer C. Edwards, “My Sister for Abbess: Fifteenth-Century Power Disputes over the Abbey of Sainte-Croix, Poitiers,” Journal of Medieval History 40, no. 1 (2014): 85–107. 75 Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 88.

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1 Establishing Authority in Poitiers Radegund and the Foundation of Sainte-Croix Radegund’s arrival in Poitiers circa 550 greatly increased the town’s reputation as a holy site. A Roman town (Pictavium) well placed atop a natural plateau rising 40m above the Clain and Boivre rivers that surround it, Poitiers by the fourth century had become an episcopal city of about 4,000–8,000 residents and, after the death in 368 of Saint Hilary, the Bishop of Poitiers, an important site in the growing network of saint’s cults.1 The “Athanasius of the West,” Hilary had fought against Arianism, taking on Martin as a student in the 360s before Martin became bishop of Tours, helping him to found a monastery in Poitiers at Ligugé. Explicitly following in the footsteps of Hilary and Martin, Radegund earned a reputation for the monastery she founded, the relics she gathered—most importantly the relic of the True Cross—as well as for the miracles she performed.2 Through her life, as  narrated by her biographers, Radegund established the authority abbesses at Sainte-Croix held and shaped the tools nuns used to defend their abbey, privileges, and powers from Radegund’s time through the sixteenth century. This chapter examines the sixth-century foundation for female monastic authority in Poitiers and the model for that authority created in Radegund. Merovingian royal women such as Clothild, Brunhild, and Fredegund—Radegund’s mother-in-law and daughtersin-law—wielded extensive power through their undeniable personal charisma, but their influence was limited to their own lifetimes and force of personalities. Radegund spun a web of influence, support, privilege, alliance, material, and holy wealth, ensuring that women at Sainte-Croix long after her death could continue to exercise the same authority as that she claimed for the community’s first abbess. Composed shortly after her death in 587, Radegund’s vitae, or holy biographies, articulated the case for her sanctity, and in so doing they created a map for SainteCroix’s abbesses, detailing how Radegund had left for them her authority, her power to speak and be heard, to influence officials to support her, and to compel the 1  The city boasted about 1,000 additional residents in burgs outside the walls: Dietrich Claude, Topographie und Verfassung der Städte Bourges und Poitiers bis in das 11. Jahrhundert (Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1960), 59–60. 2  Fortunatus also identified himself through his relationship with these three saints: in poem 8.1 he declared that he was “residing at Poitiers, the city in which Saint Hilary was once born” but “eager for Martin” so “I have attached myself to the wishes of Radegund”: “Pictavis residens qua sanctus Hilarius olim / natus in urbe fuit . . . Martinum cupiens voto Radegundis adhaesi”: Fort., OP 8.1, trans. Michael Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow: The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009), 188.

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action of others. This authority was long-lasting at Sainte-Croix, because the ­community’s women learned from Radegund to defend vigorously their rights and privileges, whether by petitioning the pope or king, calling on friendly officials, undergoing lengthy legal claims, fashioning competing textual and visual narratives of the saint, or using armed troops. And in these arguments the nuns referenced the records (or versions of records) of Radegund’s life left from the sixth century. The saint established the abbey, and along with it the bases for defending female monastic authority in Poitiers. Following the examples of Martin of Tours, Queen Clothild, and Caesarius and Caesaria of Arles, when Radegund founded her monastic community she ensured its financial stability. She accomplished this first by appointing a capable abbess and attracting members to join the community. Then she created a network of secular, ecclesiastical, and holy supporters to protect the nuns.3 She inspired authors to fashion versions of her life after her death—perhaps even cultivating a close relationship with Frankia’s most luminous poet with this purpose in mind. The vitae, along with other early texts and artifacts, demonstrated the nuns’ power over Radegund’s other foundation, the church of Sainte-Radegonde, their autonomy from the bishop of Poitiers, their friendships with Frankia’s kings and bishops, their power over holy relics, the power of their monastic Rule, their right to select a superior freely, and the importance of their enclosure. These texts and Radegund’s relics, both those she collected and those she left behind, became symbols of her community and sources of her foundations’ influence. Sainte-Croix’s nuns remained enmeshed in the relationships Radegund cultivated and the enmities she aroused long after her death. Radegund created networks of supporters, alliances that later abbesses of Sainte-Croix nurtured and relied upon for support in later conflicts. The early texts of her cult established the symbolic language for representing the saint in art, literature, and petitions for patronage, but the sophisticated depictions her biographers created also left room for competing notions of the saint’s identity. Not all of her examples proved easy: the nuns would have to cope with the hostility Radegund had inspired during her lifetime, as well as with the rivalries her cult instigated between the abbey and the chapter of canons at Sainte-Radegonde. 3  The desire to live a monastic life took hold of people living in the West in the sixth century, resulting in large numbers of new foundations, although these are not always recognized as formal monasteries. As Ian Wood has noted, the patrons of Gallo-Roman monasticism were aristocrats. St. Martin brought the tradition of monastic asceticism to the area: Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London: Longman, 1994), 22; Jean-Marie Guillaume, “Les abbayes de femmes en pays franc, des origins à la fin du VIIe siècle,” in Michel Parisse, ed., Remiremont: L’abbaye et la ville (Nancy, 1980), 29–46; Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Women’s Monastic Communities, 500–1100: Patterns of Expansion and Decline,” Signs 14, no. 2 (1989): 261–92; Dom Cottineau, Répertoire topobibliographique des abbayes et prieurés, 2 vols. (Mâcon, 1935–9); E. de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique (Brussels, 1948); Lisa M. Bitel, Women in Early Medieval Europe, 400–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Helen M. Jewell, Women in Dark Age and Early Medieval Europe, c.500–1200 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and Anne-Marie Helvétius, “L’organisation des monastères féminins à l’époque mérovingienne,” in Gert Melville and Anne Müller, eds., Female “vita religiosa” between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages: Structures, Developments, and Spatial Contexts (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2011), 151–69.

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These early medieval sources exist in a complicated space between history and legend, and it is not always possible to verify the veracity of written accounts for recording “factual” histories of what “actually happened.”4 The purposes for which men like Gregory of Tours wrote saints’ lives, or propagandizing poetry, or even specialized historical accounts do not fit with modern historians’ desire for faithful records or chronological narratives. This would be a problem if this chapter sought to record sixth-century events as they transpired, but it does not. Rather, with this first chapter I set out the various representations of Radegund’s life, her holy deeds, her relics, and her relationships that were available to members of her cult in later periods. Whether or not Radegund’s vita is a factual account of her life in sixthcentury Frankia, its descriptions of that life provided useful details to later abbesses attempting to find precedents for their own power, and they either believed the accounts as real, or were untroubled by any inaccuracies. The artifacts I consider here became the canon of Radegund’s cult, unquestioned by those who drew upon them in later disputes. Such an archive of texts and artifacts has been important in other monasteries, such as Saint-Jean in Arles, a major model for Sainte-Croix. William Klingshirn notes that for the community of Saint-Jean: “The Vita might have appeared even more persuasive in combination with the Testamentum and Regula Virginum of Caesarius, with which it formed a valuable dossier of texts for the monastery’s future use.”5 Later abbesses, as we will see in following chapters, mined the resources of Radegund’s holy dossier to understand, maintain, and defend the rights and privileges she had established for her community. These texts and artifacts became the way that the nuns understood and articulated their own sense of authority over abbey property, personnel, and privileges. Scholars have seen early medieval monasticism as an exciting period filled with opportunities for monastic women. A number of royal women founded abbeys, several founders and nuns became saints, and historians such as Gregory of Tours were very interested in these women’s activities. Unfortunately, beyond saints’ vitae, books like Gregory’s, and poems by Venantius Fortunatus, there are few sources to help us understand women and their institutions in this period. There are some architectural and archeological remains, but so many of these sites were rebuilt that this record is also not clear. Albrecht Diem and Lindsay Rudge have demonstrated that the pre-Carolingian monastic world was complicated and filled with myriad monastic rules and practices; Diem has further demonstrated that the Carolingian period did not transition that messy world neatly either.6 Few monastics lived in a tightly enclosed abbey with a strict Rule and an abbot or abbess. Even Sainte-Croix, 4  The abbey has not yet been the subject of a full excavation: Patrick Périn, “Settlements and Cemeteries in Merovingian Gaul,” in Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 67–98, 88. 5  W. E. Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles and the Composition and Function of the ‘Vita Caesarii,’ ” Revue Bénédictine 100 (1990): 475. 6  Albrecht Diem, “New Ideas Expressed in Old Words: The Regula Donati on Female Monastic Life and Monastic Spirituality,” Viator 43, no. 1 (2012): 1–38, and “Inventing the Holy Rule: Some Observations on the History of Monastic Normative Observance in the Early Medieval West” in Hendrik Dey and E. Fentress, eds., Western Monasticism ante litteram: The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 53–84; Lindsay Rudge,

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an institution that claimed a Rule and an abbess close to its foundation, included nuns not well ordered before or even during the ninth century, with a great deal of variety of practice.7 As Régine Le Jan has shown, the monastic world itself was chaotic, with powerful personalities, rivalries, and outbreaks of violence.8 Indeed, it was the Merovingian world’s chaotic nature that opened up spaces for women such as Radegund to create powerful institutions that were well endowed and well protected. S O U RC E S After Radegund’s death in 587 three authors composed extensive descriptions of  her life. Venantius Fortunatus and Baudonivia wrote formal vitae depicting Radegund as a holy woman, and arguing for her sanctity, and Gregory of Tours included her as an example in his Decem Libri Historiarum and other writings about the saints. Like other devotees, Radegund’s followers created texts to ensure her holy memory, but also to protect themselves. As Albrecht Diem has argued, For those communities that strove to overcome or to prevent the crisis that inevitably resulted from the death of their founder . . . the production of texts was one of the most obvious options to ensure continuity, to perpetuate charisma and to define a collective identity. Some monasteries may have written down or assembled regulae to replace the authority of their leader; others created their founding saint and a foundation history in a hagiographic narrative (and often also materialized it in dust and bones), while still others received (or forged) charters giving their community a legal basis.9

As we will see below, Sainte-Croix had all three, which the nuns then embellished: Radegund left them with a Rule, with charters ensuring support, and with the example of her life, which became the subject of two vitae. Such texts emphasized Radegund’s holiness, her relationships with powerful people, and her monastery’s importance, providing important depictions of the abbey for both her nuns and the broader community.10 Depicting Radegund’s holiness and establishing a positive reputation for Sainte-Croix were especially important tasks after a notorious rebellion against the community’s abbess in 589–90—the crisis Diem warned often followed a founder’s death—threatened to tarnish the respectable reputation Radegund had worked so hard to establish through her relic collecting and letter writing.11 This rebellion’s notoriety overshadowed even her holy memory and the power of her relics. Fortunately three talented authors also recorded her life in “Texts and Contexts: Women’s Dedicated Life from Caesarius to Benedict” (Ph.D. diss., University of St Andrews, 2006). 7  Helvétius, “l’organisation des monastères féminins à l’époque mérovingienne,” 151–69. 8  Régine Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” in Mayke B. de Jong and Carine Van Rhijn, eds., Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2001): 243–69. 9  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 57. 10  As Klingshirn observed for the life of St. Caesarius of Arles: “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 456. 11  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 57.

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compelling prose. These texts are thus important records of Radegund’s deeds for later generations of nuns to use in their disputes, as well as key pieces of propaganda seeking to right the upended ship of Radegund’s abbey through stories of her life. These texts established and demonstrated the protections available to Sainte-Croix’s abbesses for asserting their authority in the abbey, over its dependents and to her supporters. For the last twenty years of Radegund’s life the great Italian poet Venantius Fortunatus became her agent and friend, writing poems and carrying letters for her.12 Born in Venetia circa 530, Fortunatus was educated in Byzantine-held Ravenna. In the 560s Fortunatus left Italy and traveled to Gaul, perhaps on a pilgrimage of thanks to Saint Martin, whom the poet claimed cured him of blindness.13 Upon his arrival in Gaul, Fortunatus headed not to Tours, however, but to Metz, arriving there at the perfect moment in 566 to earn a royal patron: he composed an epithalamium honoring the Visigothic princess Brunhild on her wedding to King Sigebert.14 Fortunatus spent the rest of his life in Frankia, traveling and writing for royal and episcopal courts, attached first to Sigebert and then to Charibert in Paris. After Charibert’s death in 567 Fortunatus finally made it to Tours to thank Martin and meet Bishop Eufronius. Judith George has suggested that Eufronius of Tours or Germanus of Paris sent Fortunatus on to Poitiers to meet the town’s bishop Pascentius, but I will argue below that it is more likely that Sigebert had asked Fortunatus to assist Radegund with preparations for an embassy to Byzantium.15 Once he arrived in Poitiers Fortunatus remained there for most of the rest of his life and enjoyed close friendships with Radegund and her abbess Agnes, and with Gregory of Tours.16 Fortunatus declared his love for Agnes as a sister and for Radegund as a mother, clearly comfortable portraying himself as a beloved member of their spiritual family.17 In his poems he frequently thanked the women for gifts of food and the visits they enjoyed almost daily.18 They may have been involved in his 12 On the friendship between Fortunatus and Radegund, see Richard Koebner, Venantius Fortunatus: Seine Persönlichkeit und seine Stellung in der geistigen Kultur des Merowingerreiches (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1915), 45–66. 13 Fortunatus, Vita S. Martini, 4. 14 Judith George, Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), poem 6.1, 25. 15  George, 1995, 29. 16  Before leaving Paris Fortunatus composed a poem honoring Charibert and praising his widow Ultrogotha: Fort., OP 6.6; George, 1995, 29. Michael Roberts saw Fortunatus’s friendship with Gregory as his strongest, with over thirty poems “written to, about, or at the request of Gregory”: The Humblest Sparrow, 5–6. The relationship began formally with poem 5.3 celebrating Gregory’s adventus to Tours in 573 although Reydellet and Heinzelmann suggest that the two men had met earlier, perhaps at Sigebert’s court: Marc Reydellet, “Tours et Poitiers: Les relations entre Grégoire et Fortunat,” in Nancy Gauthier and Henri Galinie, eds., Grégoire de Tours et l’espace gaulois (Tours, 1997), 159–76; and Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 32–3. 17  For example, he thanked them for the food they provided. He entertained the women during their meals, suggesting that the abbey’s enclosure was fairly permeable and that requirements for sober dining were not always followed. But he also wrote flowery love poems, comparing Radegund to violets—a purple flower with a royal scent: Fort., OP 8.6, 7, 9; 11.11. 18  The claim that the relationship between Fortunatus and the nuns was inappropriate has been floated by many historians, such as Samuel Dill, Roman Society in the Merovingian Age (London, 1926),

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hagiographical writing as well: he thanked Radegund and Agnes for suggesting that he write his Vita S. Martini, dedicated to Gregory of Tours, and he dedicated his Vita  S.  Hilarii to Poitiers’ bishop Pascentius, probably to create goodwill between these bishops and the nuns.19 Perhaps because he shared Radegund’s trouble with Pascentius’s successor, Maroveus, Fortunatus celebrated the ordination of Plato, an archdeacon from Tours friendly with Gregory, as bishop of Poitiers in 591.20 Plato’s tenure in the office was not long and within a few years Fortunatus followed him as bishop of Poitiers, likely with Gregory’s support. Fortunatus’s vita of Radegund, written after her death in 587, followed a traditional model in the vitae of Germanus, Caesarius, Martin, Clothild, and many others.21 He established that Radegund’s holiness was evident in childhood by describing her early charity and special interest in the poor, as well as her devotion to prayer and to the cross, which he stressed throughout the vita. Fortunatus depicted Radegund in several stages of her life: as a captured princess, queen, a roaming deaconess, and—finally—a nun in Poitiers. Throughout these stages, he emphasized her devotion to Christ, her charitable deeds, and her asceticism.22 While Fortunatus wrote vitae for several other saints, his description of Radegund’s asceticism stands out as the most violent. For Fortunatus, Radegund’s authority and semi-episcopal power came from her withdrawal from the world, her violent mortifications, and her piety. In the seventh century Sainte-Croix’s abbess Dedimia tasked her sister nun Baudonivia with writing a new vita, with two purposes. First, this vita fleshed out aspects that Fortunatus had omitted but were important to Sainte-Croix’s nuns, such as visions of Jesus, the relic hunting, and her struggles with the local bishop.23 Second, a new vita returned the spotlight to Radegund’s holy acts and, to some small extent, covered up the black mark on the abbey’s reputation left so indelibly by the 589–90 rebellion at Sainte-Croix. Baudonivia mitigated the rebellion’s notoriety 377–80; but well dismissed by Brian Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” Traditio 41 (1985): 49–78, 69–70; George, 1995, 173–7; and Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 283–315. 19  This is the reading proposed by Solange Quesnel, ed., Œuvres. Vol. 4, Vie de Saint Martin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), xv. 20 Fort., OP 10.14; Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 6. 21 In poem 8.1 Fortunatus identifies other models for Radegund, including Thecla, Eugenia, Fabiola, Paula, Melania, Marcella, and Eustochium: Fort., OP 8.1. Several of Radegund’s ascetic activities in Fortunatus’s vita for her follow the model of Germanus: Jo Ann McNamara and John E. Halborg, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 77n.60. Fortunatus wrote after Radegund’s death, but it is not clear how long. His vita does not cover the rebellion, her funeral, or her relics quest, which McNamara suggested meant he had finished the vita before the rebellion, but these three major omissions are not explained by that timing, since the funeral and relics predated events he did include, such as a posthumous miracle. More likely is that Fortunatus edited out these events because they all portrayed the bishop of Poitiers negatively. 22 Fort., OP 4.1, 11.6, 11.9, 10, 14, 15, and 19; Koebner, Venantius Fortunatus, 45–66; Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” and Brennan, “St Radegund and the Early Development of Her Cult at Poitiers,” The Journal of Religious History 13, no. 4 (1985): 340–54. Fortunatus himself was celebrated as a saint during the Middle Ages: B. de Gaiffier, “S. Venance Fortunat, évêque de Poitiers: Les témoignages de son culte,” Analecta Bollandiana 70 (1952): 262–84. 23  Sabine Gäbe, “Radegundis: sancta, regina, ancilla: Zum Heiligkeitsideal der Radegundisviten von Fortunat und Baudonivia,” Francia 16, no. 1 (1989): 1–30.

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by emphasizing monastic, holy, and peaceful aspects of Sainte-Croix’s past such as the many miracles and relics at Sainte-Croix. Baudonivia’s vita also shifted the emphasis away from the ascetic extremes and holy violence of Fortunatus’s version, either to avoid such violence altogether or refocus on other aspects of Radegund’s life. Like Fortunatus, Baudonivia’s account established Radegund’s place among the saints, but she skipped over Radegund’s life before her consecration, since her colleague had covered it well. She stressed, like Fortunatus, how unsuited Radegund was for life as a secular queen, but emphasized the saint’s authority to engage the broader world by detailing her correspondence with her secular relatives and search for relics. Baudonivia also relied on the Vita Caesarii, which the abbess of Saint-Jean in Arles had commissioned, in composing her vita for Radegund. The two vitae had a similar purpose in promoting the saint’s cult and “encourag[ing] continued support and protection for [the] monastery,” which was the abbess’s first task, Caesaria in Arles and Dedimia in Poitiers.24 There were several ties between the monasteries, including the use of the Caesarian Rule (RC). In Baudonivia’s version, Radegund’s extraordinary authority came from her success as a collector of relics, her miraculous healings, her devotion to the abbey, and her influence within the wider world.25 Gregory of Tours composed a third Merovingian account of Radegund’s life. Gregory was born in 539 in the Auvergne region, raised by episcopal uncles in Lyons and Clermont, and he claimed a strong family connection to Tours, asserting that all but five of Tours’ bishops had been his relatives.26 Gregory was ordained as bishop of Tours in 573 and thereafter became close friends with Fortunatus. He admired Radegund and described her life extensively in his historical and hagiographical compositions, Decem Libri Historiarum, Glory of the Confessors, and Glory of the Martyrs, recording her holy deeds and contributing to the case for her sanctity, although he did not write her a separate vita. Gregory described the major rituals and events involving Radegund: the cross relic’s installation, her funeral, the letter she secured from the bishops, and the rebellion at Sainte-Croix.27 Throughout his description Gregory focused on the saint’s holiness, her struggles in Poitiers, and his own role in helping Sainte-Croix’s nuns establish themselves. Like Fortunatus, Gregory had close relations with Sigebert and Brunhild, who possibly had appointed him as bishop of Tours.28 His support for Brunhild continued even after Sigebert’s 24  Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 446. 25  Baudonivia’s version has often been dismissed on the poor quality of her Latin, particularly visible when compared to Fortunatus’s poetic language, but her vita has been resurrected more recently as a notable and rare example of a work by a Merovingian female author: Krusch, MGH SRM, 2:362–3; and McNamara and Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. 26 Greg., Hist. 5.49; J. Verdon, Grégoire de Tours: le père de l’histoire de France (Le Coteau: Horvath, 1989); Ian Wood, “Topographies of Holy Power in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in Topographies of Power (Brill, 2001), 137–54, 140; Greg. Hist., 1.1. For Gregory’s family, see Ralph Mathisen, “The Family of Georgius Florentius Gregorius and the Bishops of Tours,” Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984): 83–95. 27 For more on Gregory’s writing, see Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, 2001). 28 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 110. Fortunatus suggests that Sigebert and Brunhild appointed Gregory in poem 5.3.15–16: “Huic Sigiberchtus ovans favet et Brunichildis honori: iudicio regis nobile culmen adest,” and Gregory himself does not mention an election.

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death and earned him Chilperic’s hostility, as when the king accused him of slander against Brunhild’s nemesis Fredegund at the Berny-Rivière synod in 580.29 Gregory was eager to intervene in both secular and ecclesiastical matters, and he used his compositions to push a particular perspective on appropriate living in Gaul. His discussion of saints emphasized a moral life conducted in support of the Frankish Church, and in that context Radegund was an important symbol of royal and holy power for Gregory. His narration of Radegund’s life allowed Gregory to moralize about the respect due a holy woman and on his contemporaries’ inappropriate actions, some of his favorite topics. Her story also reflected his growing influence at Tours. He was able to place himself in a superior position over his colleague, the bishop of Poitiers, when he interfered at Radegund’s funeral and, later, when he advised her rebellious nuns.30 Fortunatus and Gregory are both notorious for presenting shaped representations of their subjects. The literature dismissing Gregory of Tours’ Decem Libri Historiarum as a work of “history” is deep.31 Gregory’s histories constantly moralize, contrasting Merovingian kings’ violence against the glories of the saints, and particularly denouncing those who assaulted the Church. Indeed, as Conrad Leyser noted, Gregory’s “artful advertisement for the cult of relics at Tours and elsewhere” was purposeful propaganda designed to “[convince] his readers of the invincible and increasing power exercised by Martin at his shrine” and by so doing “Gregory made his own position in the city and beyond that much more secure” since he, like most early bishops, relied on apostolic authority in his position as bishop.32 We might 29 Greg., Hist. 5.49; Ian Wood, “The Individuality of Gregory of Tours,” in Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Boston: Brill, 2002), 44. The attack came from his own see—the priest Riculf. Fortunatus was present at the trial in Berny-Rivière and delivered a panegyric for Chilperic. 30  E. T. Dailey suggests that Gregory narrated these events to justify his actions in the rebellion of 589, particularly shaping the history of Sainte-Croix’s adaptation of the Rule and the hostility of Maroveus during the relics quest: “Misremembering Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix,” in Hartwin Brandt, ed., Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), 117–40. While her perspective on Gregory’s motivations is compelling, Gregory’s late arrival in Radegund’s life—knowing her for about twelve years before her death and not observing either the arrival of the Holy Cross relic or the selection of the RC—also explains his perspective. Gregory could have confused or conflated events that took place before his consecration as bishop, just as Baudonivia confused the search for relics before she entered Sainte-Croix in her vita. 31  Michael Wallace-Hadrill, “Gregory of Tours and Bede: Their Views on the Personal Qualities of Kings,” Early Medieval History (1975): 96–7; Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History; Ian Wood, Gregory of Tours (Oxford: Headstart History, 1994); Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours; Adriaan H. B. Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul: The Histories of Gregory of Tours Interpreted in their Historical Context (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); Felix Thürlemann, Der historische Diskurs bei Gregor von Tours: Topoi und Wirklichkeit, Geist und Werk der Zeiten: Arbeiten aus dem Historischen Seminar der Universität Zürich 39 (Bern, 1974); and Giselle de Nie, Views from a Many-Windowed Tower: Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987). On the title Decem Libri Historiarum and not Historia Francorum, see Walter Goffart, “From Historiae to Historia Francorum and Back Again: Aspects of the Textual History of Gregory of Tours,” in Thomas F. X. Noble and John J. Contreni, eds., Religion, Culture and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987), 55–76. 32 Conrad Leyser, “ ‘Divine power flowed from this book’: Ascetic Language and Episcopal Authority in Gregory of Tours’ Life of the Fathers,” in Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden: Brill, 2002); and Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 170.

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read Fortunatus as doing the same for Poitiers and his own position there through his vitae for Radegund and Hilary. Fortunatus’s poems are typically laudatory and aspirational, such as when he described Sigebert as the ideal Christian king, Roman administrator, and German warrior in poem 6.1.33 Like these men, Baudonivia was writing to present a specific notion of Radegund as a protector, agent, and miracle-worker at the monastery. All three wrote in the wake of the rebellion at Sainte-Croix and were eager to ensure that disaster did not smear the reputation of the foundress or her abbey. Thus, it is impossible to treat any of these texts as objective, factual narratives of events as they “really” transpired or to approach a notion of the “real” Radegund through them.34 Instead, these texts are foundational artifacts establishing female monastic authority at Sainte-Croix, explaining the parameters of the abbess’s powers through the model of Radegund and Agnes that later authors and artists adopted and adapted for their own purposes. Indeed, as Janet L. Nelson points out, “the churchmen of the eighth and ninth centuries” depended on hagiography from authors such as Gregory, Baudonivia, and Fortunatus as much as “we depend [today] on hagiography for our knowledge of the Merovingian period.”35 This is just as true for later medieval periods, in which kings, bishops, canons, and nuns who wanted to assert the abbess of Sainte-Croix’s superiority over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde relied upon the same flawed sources. Whether these texts presented reality or myths, they found in these pages a Radegund whose reported life established their own position, and whose “deeds” could justify abbatial claims to privilege and support. Indeed, Radegund’s identity proved flexible and could be stretched to suit different audiences upon command. While Fortunatus routinely emphasized Radegund’s royalty in his poetry, in his vita Radegund became a humble woman who rejected worldly status and her royal title. As Jamie Kreiner argues, “Merovingian hagiography was constrained by the past it narrated, but it was also a literature of persuasion” with a “close and charged connection that the texts maintained between truth and argument.”36 The Radegund on the page was as real to the generations of nuns who succeeded her at Sainte-Croix as the Radegund who had shared her table with Agnes and Fortunatus. Members of Radegund’s cult used aspects of these textual representations to tailor their devotion and remembrances of her to their needs. Fortunatus, Baudonivia, and Gregory presented Radegund as saint, queen, nun, healer, ascetic, and showed her to be charitable, powerful, humble, diplomatic, and unyielding; such a complicated textual identity permitted multiple interpretations for later cult members. In eleventh-century pictorial narratives, Sainte-Croix’s nuns emphasized Radegund’s monasticism over her royalty in order to connect her more tightly to their community 33  George, 1995, 41. 34  We might also follow Patrick Périn for Gregory and term these authors each a “witness of the conditions of his time”: “Settlements and Cemeteries in Merovingian Gaul,” 67. 35  Janet L. Nelson, “The Merovingian Church in Carolingian Retrospective,” in Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Boston: Brill, 2002), 241–59. 36  Jamie Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 2.

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(Chapter  3), while the canons of Sainte-Radegonde did the opposite in the thirteenth century, stressing her royalty over her monasticism to please royal patrons (Chapter 5). In the early texts, however, these interpretations were complementary depictions of the saint. In Baudonivia’s vita, Radegund was the consummate nun: loving mother and sister, obedient, generous, and an example to the community; and in Fortunatus’s vita Radegund embraced that monastic life by fleeing her royal one. But, even in selecting a monastic life, Baudonivia’s Radegund did not remove herself entirely from the world outside Sainte-Croix, while for Fortunatus she embraced increasing levels of separation in the vita while entertaining him with meals in his poetry. Gregory’s depiction of Radegund also emphasized her royal status and her political connections, even during her enclosure in her abbey. Indeed, Baudonivia and Gregory demonstrated that Radegund used her monastic mission to interact with the political world by employing her nuns to pray for their kings. And just as Radegund’s vitae relied on that of Clothild or Caesarius, the saints Balthild, Sadalberga, and Burgundofara all looked to Radegund as model, and their vita authors borrowed ideas from Radegund’s vitae. In these vitae, identifying a monastic saint’s authority relied on several themes, including the saint’s piety, holy maternity/paternity, relics gathering, miracle working, peaceweaving, asceticism, and royalty. A FRANKISH QUEEN Radegund was royal by birth and marriage, born a Thuringian princess and married to a Frankish king, Clothar, spending most of her life in Frankia. The importance of the Franks is usually traced to Clovis’s conversion to orthodox, Nicene Christianity but a battle between the Franks and Visigoths offers a clearer moment for the enormous success of the Franks. In 507 Clovis led the Franks south of the Loire to defeat the Visigoths at the battle of Vouillé, near Poitiers, bringing Aquitaine under Frankish control. According to Fortunatus, Saint Hilary of Poitiers aided Clovis in his victory, as part of his continuing battle against heretics.37 From then Poitiers was formally part of Frankia and the town’s saint connected to the success of the Merovingian ruling family. In 508 Clovis received an honorary consulate and a crown from Anastasius, the Byzantine emperor, a decisive and important moment that, according to Danuta Shanzer, “gave Clovis the political and personal capital that allowed him to incorporate the other Frankish peoples under his rule.”38 He had married the Burgundian princess Clothild, an orthodox Christian who likely influenced Clovis’s conversion. In honor of her piety and charity she was 37 Fort., Liber de virtutibus sancti Hilari 7.23, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH AA 4.2 (Berlin 1885), 9; Gregory of Tours would give credit instead to Martin: Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, “Ravenna, Saint Martin, and the Battle of Vouillé,” in Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer, eds., The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE: Where France Began (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 2012), 167–82, 171–2. Greg., Hist., 2.37. 38  Danuta Shanzer, “Foreword,” in The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE: Where France Began, ix–xxiv, xvi–xvii.

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celebrated as a saint. Like her daughter-in-law Radegund, Clothild experienced a great deal of violence and loss, being raised in her uncle’s household and suffering the death of her daughter and grandchildren, and she was thus an important model for Radegund and her vitae. When Clovis died, usually dated to 511, his four sons divided the kingdom. All four brothers fought for territory and control of their father’s formerly united kingdom. Clothar ruled from Soissons at the initial division of Clovis’s lands, and he managed to gain control over the lands of his brothers, uncles, and nephews as they died, as well as to deny other relatives their inheritances.39 By 558, Clothar was Frankia’s sole ruler, until his own death three years later. According to Radegund’s early biographers she was born circa 520 to King Bertechar of Thuringia, a German kingdom to the east of Frankia, but raised by her uncle Hermanfrid after he defeated and killed Bertechar. In the 520s Clothar and Theuderic defeated Hermanfrid, seized Thuringia, and Clothar claimed Radegund and at least one of her brothers as part of the booty.40 Clothar confined Radegund to a royal villa in Athies where he appointed guardians and teachers to raise her. Radegund was certainly too young to marry at the time and Clothar was already married.41 By 538 Clothar had either repudiated his other queens or embraced polygyny, as he married Radegund and made her his queen.42 Marrying Radegund may have strengthened his control over Thuringia or perhaps given him a more aristocratic wife to improve his position in his rivalry with his brother Childebert. Radegund’s villa in Athies became part of her dowry/morgengabe and she established a hospital there.43 During her marriage the queen demonstrated a greater interest in a holy life than in her marital duties and spent her time praying or performing charitable deeds. According to Fortunatus, Radegund’s devotion kept her from the marital bed, as she chose to spend her nights in prayer, and led her to reverse several of Clothar’s royal orders such as by freeing prisoners.44 This attempt to live a holy life, rather than one devoted to her royal husband, put a strain on the marital relationship.45 According to Fortunatus, when Clothar ordered Radegund’s brother’s 39  See Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 56–7. 40 Greg., Hist. 3.4, 99–100; Fort., VR, 2. Hermanfrid had also murdered hostages and killed hundreds of women: Greg., Hist. 3.7, 103–5. Fortunatus said that Clothar and Theuderic had brought chaos to the region and fought over Radegund, nearly to the point of taking up arms against each other: Fort., VR, 2. 41  His marital timeline is hard to pin down and it is likely that some of his marriages overlapped. Evidence suggests that Clothar also married, in addition to Radegund, Guntheuca, Ingund and her sister Aregund, and Vuldetrada. Shanzer, “History, Romance, Love, and Sex in Gregory of Tours’ Decem Libri Historiarum,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, 406 and 412. 42  According to Jo Ann McNamara, forcing captured women to marry was a common Merovingian practice intended “to prolong the humiliation of their defeated men”: “Chastity as a Third Gender in the History and Hagiography of Gregory of Tours,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, 201. 43  Fortunatus claimed the marriage took place against her will: Fort., VR, 2. 44 Fort., VR, 4, 7, 10, 11. 45 Fort., VR, 3–10. Suzanne Fonay Wemple suggested that Clothar must have had another wife in  order to tolerate Radegund’s asceticism: Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, 221n.61. See Janet L. Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Derek Baker, ed., Medieval Women: Essays Dedicated to Professor Rosalind  M.T.  Hill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 31–77, 34–5 on Clothar’s possible polygyny. Eugen Ewig saw Clothar as a serial

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execution about ten years into their marriage, Radegund fled his court, and eventually settled sometime between 552 and 557 on a monastic life at the abbey she built in Poitiers with Clothar’s financial support. Despite some initial attempts to win her back, Clothar seems to have been satisfied to let Radegund stay at Sainte-Croix and content himself with other wives who were much more observant in their duties of producing royal heirs.46 Fortunatus argued that Radegund had always been destined for this contemplative life of spiritual devotion even during her ten-year marriage. He recounted episodes of charity from her childhood and her attempts to live as a nun while married to Clothar, which seemed sufficient until her brother’s murder, when she fled and, with Bishop Mèdard of Noyon’s help, became a deaconess.47 For several years after her consecration, Radegund wandered, establishing hospitals and monasteries and distributing charity through gifts of her royal clothes and jewels. She initially lived in a villa Clothar had given her in Saix, then traveled to Tours. Baudonivia was so keen to demonstrate Radegund’s commitment to her monastic life that she described her terror that the king might come to reclaim her in a legend known as the “Miracle of the Oats,” which circulated in Poitiers in the later Middle Ages. The legend claimed that Clothar really sought Radegund at Saix, but she fled into a field of grain and God protected her by causing the grain to grow miraculously, hiding the queen from her husband. Even after Sainte-Croix’s foundation this fear persisted: when Clothar’s 561 pilgrimage to Saint Martin’s shrine in Tours brought him near enough to Poitiers to possibly regain his wife, Radegund begged Germanus, bishop of Paris, to intervene; he persuaded Clothar to leave Radegund in peace.48 Radegund’s fears of Clothar’s pursuit might have been well founded, and other nuns had similar concerns, as Yaniv Fox observed: “Bildechild cut her hair when her husband became bishop, in an attempt to make herself appear unattractive, lest her husband be driven to re-consummate the marriage.”49 Clothar’s initial hostility and attempts to recapture Radegund might be read as the hagiographic topos of marriage rejection, which created opposition for the female saint to struggle against and triumph over in order to demonstrate sanctity and virginity/chastity. As Régine Le Jan has shown, this topos restored harmony between relatives and facilitated “joint-foundations” by male and female relatives, as in this co-foundation of Sainte-Croix by ex-husband and ex-wife. The hostility narrative restored Clothar’s honor—in jeopardy when his wife and bishops ignored his power—and allowed him, once reconciled with Radegund, to assist in her foundation.50 Clothar’s death in 561 freed her from any risk he posed, and his sons became her allies. monogamist, suggesting a quick succession of wives with both Aregund, Chunsinna repudiated between 537 and 540, “Studien zur merowingischen Dynastie,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974), 1–59, esp. 56–7. 46  Baudonivia, 4. 47 Fort., VR, 2–12. 48  Baudonivia, 6–7; and Greg., Hist. 4.21, 154. 49  Yaniv Fox, Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul: Columbanian Monasticism and the Frankish Elites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 233. 50  This argument relies on Le Jan’s discussion of the marriage refusal topos: “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 264–6.

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Her freedom from Clothar also freed Radegund, in her biographers’ eyes, from any further risk of marital sex. None of her biographers was explicit on whether Radegund paid the marital debt; indeed, Fortunatus was at pains to demonstrate Clothar’s frustration that his wife spent so much of the night in prayer rather than in his bed. Once Radegund was no longer living with her husband, though, she was able to fully embrace chastity. Some have described the medieval saint’s sexual asceticism as a “third gender,” which freed women from both male and female roles.51 For Radegund, however, her expression of chastity and sanctity were innately feminine—she embraced roles as mother, as peaceweaver, as relics hunter in Helena’s style. While Radegund did not fear to act or to involve herself in religious or political affairs, she saw her right to do so as a royal woman, as a holy woman. Given the prominence of other royal women in Merovingian politics, it is not necessary to describe her as a virago becoming male, or as a “third gender,” in order to account for her authority, autonomy, agency, or power. And, as E. T. Dailey has argued, it is not necessary to see Gregory of Tours’ praise for holy women’s chastity as envisioning them as a “third gender”: “Gregory’s understanding of the relationship between sexual activity and righteousness were not so simplistic: not only was he not willing to describe some sexually active people as righteous . . . but he also refused to assume that sexual abstinence necessarily made one holy.”52 In fact, Gregory could be harsh toward some women who embraced a monastic life, and hostile to the notion that their life of chastity was superior.53 Gregory was never so harsh to Radegund and never condemned her for choosing to leave Clothar for the Church, but he did not assume the purity of her intentions was universal for all women interested in that model. Radegund’s royalty offered her biographers rich allusions to other. Her royal status prompted comparisons to Mary as queen of Heaven, Clothild, Helena, and Ultrogotha. In Baudonivia’s vita Radegund acts as a queen primarily in claiming respect from other royal figures, or in acting as a new Helena by bringing a portion of the True Cross to Frankia. But for Fortunatus Radegund’s royalty became a malleable and exciting poetic device. In his vita Radegund exchanged her earthly queenliness, symbolized by her royal clothing, for saintly power: she gifted her robes and jewels to various churches, embraced enclosure, and was able to work miracles. Thus for Fortunatus it is in rejecting her royalty that Radegund became a saint. In his poetry, Fortunatus again contrasted her earthly and spiritual power and made her enclosure—not just within Sainte-Croix, but her further enclosure 51 Nancy Partner, “No Sex, No Gender,” Speculum 68, no. 2 (1993): 419–43; Lisa  M.  Bitel, “Convent Ruins and Christian Profession: Toward a Methodology for the History of Religion and Gender,” in Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz, eds., Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 1–15; Jacqueline Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe, 34–51; Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); McNamara, “Chastity as a Third Gender,” 199–210; and Gilbert Herdt, “Introduction: Third Sex and Third Gender,” in Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History (New York: Zone Books, 1996), 21–81. 52 E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 55; and “Misremembering Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix,” 117–40. 53  As can be seen in his story of Ingitrude and her daughter Berthegund: Greg., Hist. 9.33 and 10.12.

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within a cell during Lent—the gate between these worlds.54 But he also referenced her royalty lightheartedly, as when he sent her a gift of violets in poem 8.6, and then violets and saffron in poem 8.8. These are appropriate gifts, of royal purple and gold, for a woman he called “regina potens” but also for an ascetic who rejected worldly wealth. They prefigure, as Michael Roberts notes, the prizes Radegund will win in heaven, which will resemble a “royal court”: “Fortunatus’ conception of heaven is permeated by the idiom of secular majesty and display; his admiration of Radegund’s special holiness is inseparable from his knowledge of her former queenly status.”55 Fortunatus and Baudonivia established Radegund’s royalty as both a terrestrial and a heavenly queen, but in Fortunatus’s vita Radegund must reject her secular, royal life in order to embrace saintly humility despite the praise he gives that same status in his poetry. Rejecting her royal birth and marriage, Radegund consciously divested herself of all symbols of this life, giving away her royal clothes and jewels to devote the rest of her life to God.56 One motivation for this narrative of status reversal or rejection was the bitter and complicated feuding between the Merovingian queens of Radegund’s later life. Her royal daughters-in-law, Brunhild, Galswintha, and then Fredegund, were enormously powerful agents in their kingdoms, serving as regents and/or strong influences over their husbands and sons. They were important models for the power and authority women might claim in Frankia, but they were also murderous, violent, and hard to champion as models for a saint. If they demonstrate what queenliness meant at the end of the sixth century, it makes sense that Fortunatus’s Radegund would reject queenly status and embrace a new sort of monastic, pious authority as a humble nun. This is a key moment for Radegund in Fortunatus’s vita, as she gave away all material reminders of her royalty in favor of monastic dress and a monastic life. Thus Radegund began a new chapter as a nun and ascetic that, for Fortunatus, shifted her life away from politics and royalty. But then Baudonivia’s vita and Gregory’s history provided a more seamless transition that repurposed but did not reject the saint’s earlier royal authority. NUN AND FOUNDRESS Founding monasteries was a popular activity among noblewomen of the early Middle Ages.57 Clothild, Balthild, Burgundofara, Sadalberga, Caesaria, Hild, Cuthburga, Ethelburga, Etheldreda, and Gertrude were prominent and well-regarded “founding mothers,” instigators of a movement of monastic foundation. They each became recognized as saints for their holy devotion and contribution to the early Church, and Radegund’s actions certainly belong in their company. Clothild and Caesaria, Radegund’s predecessors, were important models for her own foundation, just as she became a model to others. 54 Fort., OP 8.5. 55 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 288. 56 Fort., VR, 13. 57  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 245n.6; and Schulenburg, “Women’s Monastic Communities, 500–1100.”

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Radegund settled in Poitiers in the 550s, where she founded the monastery that would become her home, on land that Clothar had given her.58 She then gave ­herself over entirely to a religious life. Radegund was content to eschew all formal power, even subjecting herself to the rule of an abbess she selected, Agnes, whom she described as a spiritual daughter. Germanus of Paris consecrated Agnes as abbess, a moment that Fortunatus celebrated in his poem De Virginitate (8.3).59 Giving up formal power did not mean that Radegund yielded control over the convent. All her biographers depict Radegund as firmly guiding the monastery’s direction, selecting its Rule, protecting its members, and corresponding with external officials. While she no longer wished to be queen, Radegund was certainly eager to remain influential amongst Frankia’s secular and ecclesiastical authorities. For her, founding a monastery was not necessarily a way to retreat from that world, although she did do so periodically, but a way to demonstrate her faith’s power. As Régine Le Jan has argued, “founding a monastery was as much a political as a religious act” for the Merovingians and “monasteries . . . were places of power.”60 Radegund and her biographers understood the opportunities, influence, and power her new foundation offered her, and created a blueprint for the ways future abbesses might capitalize on these prospects. It was typical for women’s monasteries in Gaul to be built inside city walls, primarily for the women’s protection.61 Radegund built her abbey in Poitiers’ “episcopal quarter,” inside the southeastern walls near the Clain River (Map 2).62 The location may have honored canon 28 of the Council of Agde, presided over by Caesarius of Arles, which required “that women’s monasteries . . . lie some distance from those of men,” since this site was the opposite side of Poitiers from the existing male monastery dedicated to Saint Hilary, known later as Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand.63 It may also have sought connection to the old Roman structures, such as the baptistery of Saint-Jean built in the fourth century. Given her familiarity with Caesarius of Arles, Radegund followed the model of Caesarius’s female monastery of Saint-Jean, also built in the episcopal quarter and close to the baptistery. Radegund’s reputation immediately drew women from mostly local noble or royal families to join her monastic community. Fortunatus wrote poem 8.4 recruiting for Sainte-Croix, and he was wildly successful: Bishop Gregory of Tours reported that 58  Baudonivia, 5. There is also an eleventh-/twelfth-century false diploma for Radegund and her foundation in BMP ms 130, 75r–76v. 59 Fort., OP 8.3. 60  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 243. 61  Nancy Gauthier, “From the Ancient City to the Medieval Town: Continuity and Change in the Early Middle Ages,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, 60; and Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 443. 62  Gauthier calls this sector of a medieval town the “ecclesia”: “a cathedral complex, a complete set of buildings organised around several courtyards and porticos: one or sometimes two or three churches, a separate baptistery, a large episcopal palace, etc. . . . ” located within the walls at the edge of a Roman city: “From the Ancient City to the Medieval Town,” 57. 63  Lindsay Rudge, “Dedicated Women and Dedicated Spaces: Caesarius of Arles and the Foundation of St. John,” in Hendrik Dey and Elizabeth Fentress, eds., Western Monasticism ante litteram. The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 99–116, 99; Agde (506), can. 28, Charles Munier, Concilia Galliae A.314–A.506 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963), 205.

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Superior Women Roman Walls Merovingian foundation Carolingian foundation

Notre-Dame-la-Grande

Count’s Palace Cathedral Saint-Pierrela-Puellier Sainte-Croix Saint-HilaireBaptistry de-la-Celle

SainteRadegonde

La Trinité Arena

Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand

Map 2.  Merovingian and Carolingian Poitiers, adapted from Robert Favreau, La Ville de Poitiers a la fin du Moyen Age: Une Capitale Régionale (Poitiers, 1978), 611

Sainte-Croix boasted 200 professed nuns, a number that, if accurate, had declined to at most 100 by the Carolingian period.64 Gregory’s own niece Justina joined the abbey. Within Radegund’s lifetime, the abbey expanded from modest buildings to extensive holdings both inside Poitiers and beyond its ancient Roman walls. As guidance for the community she adopted the monastic Rule that Bishop Caesarius of Arles had written from 512 to 534 for his sister Caesaria the Elder’s female community of Saint-Jean.65 A former monk of the influential abbey of Lérins, Caesarius demonstrated an unusual interest in the monastic life for a bishop: he founded his own monastery, wrote the first general Rule for the monastic life, Regula ad monachos, and composed a “private” Rule for his sister’s abbey, the widely 64 Fort., OP 8.4; Greg., Hist. 9.39, 462. Caesaria’s monastery of Saint-Jean in Arles also held “two hundred” nuns according to Caesarius’s vita: VC 2, 47. There is no reason to believe that Gregory was accurate. Perhaps 200 is a standard number for expressing a large institution, or perhaps that number represents the influence of Saint-Jean over Sainte-Croix. 65 For Radegund’s interest in the Rule, see Georg Scheibelreiter, “Königstöchter im Kloster: Radegund (d. 587) und der Nonnenaufstand von Poitiers (589),” MIoG 87 (1979): 1–37, 12–13; Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich, 76–84.

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popular Regula ad virgines (RC).66 Gregory of Tours reported that Saint-Jean’s ­second abbess, Caesarius’s niece Caesaria the Younger, sent Radegund a letter and a copy of the RC.67 Albrecht Diem proposed that adopting such a Rule could “prevent the crisis that inevitably resulted from the death of their founder or the disappearance of the founding generation” and could “ensure continuity, perpetuate charisma and . . . define a collective identity.”68 Sainte-Croix had copies of the vita of Caesarius (VC ), as well as Caesarius’s will. As Baudonivia and Gregory described, Radegund was well versed in the RC and an advocate of following it strictly at Sainte-Croix. A monastic Rule was not an essential part of an early medieval monastic foundation, and there were many Rules to choose from. Radegund’s decision to impose a Rule, and to select this particular one, was a long-sighted choice to offer her monastery security and guidance even after her own death and encourages us to consider how the RC met Radegund’s desires for the shape of her monastery.69 Baudonivia and Fortunatus borrowed from the VC in their Radegund vitae; Caesarius’s testamentum is a direct model for a letter Radegund wrote requesting support from bishops as Gregory of Tours described.70 I suggest that Radegund embraced Caesarius as a model for Sainte-Croix and for her own life. By selecting the RC she brought the key texts—the VC, the Rule, the testamentum—to Poitiers. They may have inspired her to embrace a more ascetic life, to enclose strictly her nuns and to practice a further Lenten enclosure, to reach out to bishops for support formally in writing as had Caesarius, to ensure that her monastery was well endowed and supported before her own death. Thus her use of Caesarius and his texts as a model for her own actions made the VC a clear model for her biographers, demonstrating that 66  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 60–2. See also Albrecht Diem, “The Gender of the Religious Wo/men and the Invention of Monasticism,” in Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 432–46, 439; and Rudge, “Texts and Contexts.” 67 Greg., Hist. 9.40; René Aigrain suggested that Radegund traveled to Arles and gained the Rule there in 570: Aigrain, “Le voyage de Sainte Radegonde à Arles,” Bulletin philologique et historique (1926–7), 119–27. There is a copy of this letter in a ninth- or tenth-century manuscript: Bibliothèque Municipale de Troyes Ms 1248, “Vite et passiones Sanctorum.”. 68  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 57. 69  Agnes and Radegund may not have agreed on adopting this Rule, or on enforcing certain of its requirements, as Roberts observes some tension between the nuns in Fortunatus’s poem App. 13, or the tension might simply have been the result of a confused hierarchy established by placing Agnes (younger, not royal, filial) as abbess over Radegund (older, royal, maternal, founder). See Maria Caritas McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of St. Caesarius of Arles: A Translation with a Critical Introduction (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1960). Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles.” A ninth-century manuscript created in Corbie and held by the abbey also contains Eusebius’s VC: BMP Ms 17 (65), Livre d’Evangiles de l’abbaye Sainte Croix. Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 305–6. Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 57. Rudge, “Dedicated Women and Dedicated Spaces,” 102. In her PhD thesis, Rudge suggested that Caesarius worked closely with his sister and niece in writing and revising the Regula, so that this is really a work of collaboration: see “Texts and Contexts.” Radegund probably adopted the Rule at the foundation of Sainte-Croix: Wilhelm Meyer, Der Gelegenheitsdichter Venantius Fortunatus (Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1901), 97–102; Caesarius of Arles, Regula ad Virgines, ed. and trans. J. Courreau and A. De Vogüé (Paris: Sources Chrétiennes 345, 1988), c. 36, 443–60. 70 Klingshirn demonstrates that Baudonivia drew from the VC verbatim in several passages: “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 478n.138; Fortunatus’s depiction of saintly asceticism follows the VC.

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this was an imitatio Caesarii that she approved of and considered admirable. Radegund seemed to be most keen about two facets of the Rule: its requirement for enclosure and for literacy among the nuns.71 In the RC Caesarius mandated strict enclosure, both prohibiting the nuns from leaving the cloister walls (active enclosure) and denying entrance to outsiders (passive enclosure).72 This was the “primary consideration” of the Rule, taking up two chapters of the preface.73 After death the nuns’ bodies would be transported to a funerary church for burial, but other nuns could not participate in the funeral: “until her death she shall not leave the monastery, or from the basilica where a door may be seen.”74 The nuns of Saint-Jean in Arles took this enclosure so seriously that, according to the VC, when fire threatened the monastery they refused to leave and started throwing themselves and precious items into cisterns.75 And when Clothar II ordered Saint-Jean’s abbess Rusticula to come to him, she vowed she “would die rather than transgress the precepts of the holy father Caesarius” so she was dragged out and imprisoned.76 This strict emphasis on enclosure was one reason that Caesarius required his female monasteries to be well founded and the abbess to “think constantly” about the abbey’s holdings, so that the women would not be required to leave the abbey to provide for themselves. He did not make this stipulation for his male foundations.77 Indeed, he personally secured a privilege from Pope Hormisdas to safeguard Saint-Jean’s privileges, autonomy, and property, which became a model for monasteries of both men and women.78 While Caesarius did not prohibit male monastics from leaving their abbey, he was strict in denying them the right to break passive enclosure by hosting women in the abbey, and the 535 Council of Clermont “prohibited women from entering any monastery or abode of monks ‘in order to safeguard the monastic life and to avoid the snares of the devil’ ”; as Julia M. H. Smith noted, this exclusion became widespread by the ninth century.79 Thus, sixth-century enclosure sought to protect the autonomy, 71  Klingshirn suggested that Radegund selected this Rule because of its protection from the interference of local bishops because she wanted to avoid Maroveus, which would require that the Rule was adopted after 568: Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles.” 72  RC. For the success of the Caesarian Rule, see Prinz, Frühes Monchtum im Frankenreich, 80–2; Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 441–81; and Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). According to Diem the RC was the first Rule to demand strict enclosure: “The Gender of the Religious,” 440. 73  Rudge, “Dedicated Women and Dedicated Spaces,” 107. 74  “usque ad mortem suam de monasterio non egrediatur, nec de basilica, ubi ostium esse videtur.” Caesarius, Regula ad Virgines, PL 67, 1105–21, 1107. 75  VC II.26. 76  Vita Rusticulae, 10–12, Krusch, ed. MGH SRM 4: 337–51, trans. McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 128–9. 77  The Rule for Nuns. McCarthy trans., chapter 27. Diem, “New Ideas Expressed in Old Words.” 78  Diem, “The Gender of the Religious,” 442. 79  Julia M. H. Smith, “Women at the Tomb: Access to Relic Shrines in the Early Middle Ages,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, 169–70 and 163. For the Regula ad Monachos, see PL 67, col. 1100. Male monasteries embraced the Caesarian “model of secluded and cloistered female monasticism” in order to guard against “malicious gossip in the world outside”: Mayke de Jong, “Monastic Prisoners or Opting Out? Political Coercion and Honour in the Frankish Kingdoms,” in Mayke de Jong, F. Theuws, and C. van Rhijn, eds., Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 291–328, 301.

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safety, and morality of the monastic life from the very real dangers of urban life in the period, either by keeping women from leaving their own abbeys or entering those of men.80 Radegund and Agnes took the Rule’s requirement of enclosure seriously, as they demonstrated on a number of occasions. Radegund embraced enclosure for the reason Caesarius had imposed it: to ensure the abbey’s independence.81 Radegund refused to allow Chilperic to remove his daughter Basina from the abbey once he had installed her there.82 The nuns did not leave Sainte-Croix for Radegund’s funeral in 587 although clearly distraught by her death.83 And the reactions of Gregory and Fortunatus to a rebellion in 589–90 suggest that the nuns’ departure from the abbey’s cloister was their greatest crime. Fortunatus visited Sainte-Croix frequently, as demonstrated in his special knowledge of Radegund in his vita and in his extensive poetry addressed to Radegund and Agnes or written on their behalf.84 Some have suggested that this was an inappropriate rupture of enclosure, but the Rule did permit abbesses to meet with visitors separately from the rest of the nuns and different rules seemed to apply to Radegund as queen and founder.85 Fortunatus did not discuss the Rule’s mandate of enclosure in his vita, although he celebrated Radegund’s retreat to a cell during Lent.86 Radegund embraced the enclosure mandated in the RC as a method of extending the ascetic’s eremitical withdrawal, but did not limit herself to it, either by excluding Fortunatus or by cutting herself off from the secular world she had supposedly renounced. Radegund also embraced the Rule’s mandates for reading, requiring that the women spend two hours a day learning to read.87 To Fortunatus, Radegund’s reading was an ascetic practice that facilitated her spiritual life and, eventually, The confrontation between Columbanus and Theuderic with his mother Brunhild demonstrates how seriously male monasteries considered seclusion and cloister: Jonas of Bobbio, Vita  S.  Columbani abbatis discipulorumque eius, Liber II,” in Krusch, ed., MGH SRM 4, 130–43. 80  Autumn N. Dolan, “ ‘We have chosen a few things from among many’: The Adaptations and Suitability of Nuns’ Rules in Merovingian Gaul” (PhD thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2009), 15. 81  Dolan, “ ‘We have chosen a few things from among many,’ ” 16. 82 Greg., Hist. 6.34. 83  Baudonivia, 21–4. 84  Book 11 especially demonstrates frequent visits, and in App. 21 he complains that he has been away from Radegund for an entire day, suggesting that they were daily companions: Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 311. 85 McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of St. Caesarius of Arles, 183–4. Gossip about the nature of Fortunatus’s relationship with the women may have caused them to part for a time: see Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 302, 306–8; Fort., OP 11.6, App. 10, App 13, App. 24. Modern authors certainly saw the relationship as inappropriate, even erotic: Reto R. Bezzola, Les origins et la formation de la literature courtoise en occident (500–1200): Première partie. La tradition imperial de la fin de l’antiquité au XIe siècle (Paris, 1958); Verena Epp, “Männerfreundschaft und Frauendienst bei Venantius Fortunatus,” in Thomas Kornbichler and Wolfgang Maaz, eds., Variationen der Liebe: Historische Psychologie der Geschlechterbeziehung, Forum Psychohistorie 4 (Tübingen: Kimmerle, 1995), 9–26; Peter Dronke, Woman Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (d. 203) to Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Jean Leclercq, “Relations entre Venance Fortunat et Sainte Radegonde,” in La riche personnalité de Sainte Radegonde, Conférences et homélies prononcées à Poitiers à l’occasion du XIVe Centenaire de sa mort (587–1987) (Poitiers, 1988), 61–76. 86 Fort., VR, 22. In VR 24 Fortunatus mentions the Rule, but nothing further. 87  Reg. Virg., 17: “Omnes litteras discant; omni tempore duabus horis, hoc est a mane usque ad horam secundam lectioni vacant”: Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge

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her martyrdom.88 Her desire for a community of literate nuns who might read the church fathers and communicate with the broader community speaks again to Radegund’s sense of the abbey as a seat of power and authority—their education improved their reach and influence. Radegund also built a funerary church to serve the abbey and care for the nuns’ bodies after their deaths, a purpose that forced the church’s location outside the walls, into a “peri-urban cemetery zone . . . associated with high-prestige burials” typical, according to Patrick Périn, for a funerary church.89 In building a funerary church in this area Radegund followed the model of other great basilicas housing saints’ relics outside cities, such as Saint-Rémi in Rheims, Saint-Martin in Tours, SaintDenis in Paris, and Saint-Aignan in Orléans, and followed the example of monastic founders like Caesarius of Arles and John of Reomé.90 Originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and later remembered as “Notre-Dame-hors-les-murs,” the church was renamed Sainte-Radegonde when the saint’s body was entombed there after her death in 587. Sainte-Radegonde followed the typical suburban basilica plan, with an apse in the east and a group of tombs below, like the churches of SainteGeneviève of Paris and Saint-Martin in Tours, designed to attract the pilgrims who Gregory of Tours suggested were constantly seeking access to the saints.91 A group of priests tended the nuns’ bodies buried in the church, and perhaps served the nuns in the abbey church. Scholars have sometimes described the two communities, the nuns of Sainte-Croix and the priests of Sainte-Radegonde, as a double monastery. The precise nature of the relationship between the two in the early period is impossible to assess with certainty, but Carolingian royal documents discussed in Chapter 2 treat the two groups together as a single community. There is no suggestion, however, that the men attached to Sainte-Radegonde were monks or subjected to a regular life until the late eleventh century, and their community appears to have been consistently subordinated to Sainte-Croix’s nuns.92 Ambiguity in the documents over the precise nature of their early relationship created room for dispute in later centuries but the evidence does not depict Radegund founding a double house with brothers and sisters. They appear more as an established abbey and a funerary church to serve the nuns’ spiritual needs and care for their bodies in death. Whatever their original University Press, 1990), 203–4. Radegund’s reading list overlapped with that of Caesarius and Gregory of Tours. Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 115–16, 284, and 294–9; Fort., OP 8.1 and 5.3. 88 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 117. 89  Périn, “Settlements and Cemeteries in Merovingian Gaul,” 72. 90  Smith, “Women at the Tomb,” 164 and 171; Bonnie Effros, “Beyond Cemetery Walls: Early Medieval Funerary Topography and Christian Salvation,” Early Medieval Europe 6 (1997): 1–23; and Bernhard Kötting, “Die Tradition der Grabkirche,” in Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch, eds., Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 48 (Munich, 1984), 76–7. 91  Gauthier, “From the Ancient City to the Medieval Town,” 64. 92  Such communities—a female abbey supported by a small male community of priests—appear to have been quite common, especially after the influence of Columbanus in Gaul: Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 246. For further discussion of debate over the double monastery, see Katharine Sykes, “ ‘Canonici Albi et Moniales’: Perceptions of the Twelfth-Century Double House,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60, no. 2 (2009): 233–45.

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status, Radegund’s two foundations guarded Radegund’s relics and remembered her life carefully; both defined their identity and articulated their power through representations of their saint. N E T WO R K S W I T H B I S H O P S A N D K I N G S While Radegund had left her royal title, wealth, and clothes behind, these early authors suggested that she had continued to use the influence her royal title brought her. Radegund had energetically pursued alliances with influential leaders among the Merovingian ecclesiastical and secular nobility, following the example of other monastic founders such as Caesarius of Arles and Martin of Tours, and becoming an example to the large movement of women founding monasteries in the seventh century.93 She established a network of supporters for her monastery by nurturing relationships, securing and sending gifts, and offering advice and support. As Le Jan has shown, Merovingian monasteries were commonly hubs for power networks that carried favors, gifts, friendships, treaties, and other negotiations for the broader community. By keeping herself strongly connected to this power matrix, Radegund encouraged support for her monastery, specifically for the authority of Sainte-Croix’s abbess in her office, and recorded her allies’ backing for the encouragement of future supporters. She also found ways to display her credentials—as an aristocrat, a princess, a queen, a holy woman—to best convince officials to recognize her as a person with authority despite the limitations they might usually accord someone of her sex.94 Although Sainte-Croix was not formally a royal abbey, or an Eigenkloster, it did receive royal protection and support.95 After Clothar’s death in 561, Poitiers became a political football for his sons through the Merovingian practice of partible inheritance. When they divided Clothar’s lands among themselves Poitiers and Tours initially went to Charibert, who had placed his illegitimate daughter Clotild in the abbey. After Charibert’s death in 567–8 Chilperic seized Poitiers with the support of a local faction, and sent his own daughter Basina to Sainte-Croix, but Sigebert’s general Mummolus gained control of the city and forced its citizens to take an oath of support for Sigebert. His control of the area was advantageous for Radegund, Fortunatus, and Gregory of Tours, all of whom benefitted from Sigebert’s and Brunhild’s support, and would all scramble for new patrons after his assassination in 575.96 Sigebert had ambition, demonstrated by marrying a princess, his diplomatic missions to Byzantium, the famous tutor for his son, and his patronage of Fortunatus. 93  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 425. 94  Merovingian women appear to have relied on charisma to gain authority. Marriage with a king helped, but personal status was not necessary. Compare the backgrounds, for example, of Fredegund and Brunhild, two of the most powerful women of Radegund’s time, able to act through sheer personality and through their relationship with royal men. After leaving her husband and his court, Radegund relied on charisma and her holy spirituality to jockey for the same influence. 95  Scheibelreiter, “Königstöchter im Kloster,” 12–13. See Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 96  Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 73.

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Baudonivia claimed that Radegund continued to play a role in these political struggles from her monastic retirement in Poitiers. Whether welcome or not, she sent letters of advice to the quarreling kings and taught her nuns to pray for peace and for the kings who had been her stepsons.97 Baudonivia emphasized Radegund’s efforts in the cause of peace as well as her sway over the kings.98 For example, when Radegund sought Sigebert’s support for her mission to obtain relics from the Byzantine court, Baudonivia reported that Radegund intended the request to ensure the kingdom’s health and stability.99 Gregory of Tours also appreciated Radegund’s emphasis on peace, as his hagiographical writings tended to focus on the saints as forces for order and as promoters of peace.100 And Fortunatus became her agent, writing poems that encouraged peace or sought to solve conflicts. Indeed, when Chilperic accused Gregory of treason for insulting Fredegund in 580, Fortunatus composed poem 9.1 to encourage the king to be peace-loving, and referenced Radegund’s support for the king as encouragement to treat Gregory well. And when Chilperic and Fredegund’s sons died, Fortunatus composed epitaphs for them. But he had also written poems of consolation to Brunhild on her sister Galswintha’s murder, a crime Fredegund had instigated so that she might marry Chilperic.101 Radegund used her connections with the royal family to benefit her monastery and protect her nuns. Her efforts to pacify the warring Franks were repaid with royal favors. Clothar’s descendants respected the land he had gifted Radegund’s abbey, guaranteed the nuns’ privileges, and occasionally added to them. Sigebert championed her requests to the Byzantine court for relics, likely with an eye on the diplomatic potential of her delegations eastward.102 In his bid for power, Clothar’s unacknowledged son Gundovald cited Radegund as a witness for his good character, a reference that demonstrates not only her positive relationship with Clothar’s children, but also her continuing influence.103 Baudonivia noted that Radegund worked hard to keep the kingdom peaceful, both through her prayers and through letter-writing campaigns that were particularly necessary in the dispute between Sigebert and Chilperic and the long feud between their queens. In their battles with one another these kings sometimes endangered her community in Poitiers, such as when Chilperic’s son Theudebert attacked Poitou and the Touraine in 575, especially targeting religious buildings. Radegund also thwarted the attempts of Frankish kings to interfere with her abbey. King Chilperic’s daughter Basina was tricked into entering the abbey by his wife Fredegund, but once she had joined the community Basina’s membership was permanent. When Chilperic later considered sending Basina to marry Recared in Spain, Radegund refused to allow her back into the secular world.104 The kings may have believed that they could use Sainte-Croix 97  Baudonivia, 10. 98  Baudonivia, 10. 99  Baudonivia, 16. 100 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 165. 101  George, 1995, 53 and 33. 102  Baudonivia, 16. 103 Greg., Hist. 7.36, 357–8; and Ian Wood, “The Secret Histories of Gregory of Tours,” Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire 71 (1993): 253–70. 104 Greg., Hist. 5.39, 245–6; and 6.34, 304–5. Chilperic wanted to send Basina in the place of Rigunth, a daughter he could not bring himself to part with after the death of his son Leuvigild.

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for their own purposes, but Gregory and Baudonivia present Radegund protecting her community and carefully guarding its rights, as would Sainte-Croix’s future abbesses. Although Radegund did not live long enough to see it, her efforts for peace saw success in the 587 Treaty of Andelot, in which Sigebert’s brother Guntram made peace with Brunhild and his nephew Childebert II, who took control of Poitiers and Tours. All three authors demonstrated that Radegund relied on bishops’ protection, although not, as Barbara Rosenwein pointed out, on her local bishop.105 She found supporters among men she had known as Clothar’s wife, and men she had met while establishing her monastery, hunting for relics, or defending her community. Radegund sought influential men who were loyal to her husband or his children and inspired them to serve her interests. Some bishops even defied their king to ensure that Radegund could live a religious life unmolested. Médard of Noyon consecrated her as a deaconess.106 Radegund built her monastery in Poitiers through the assistance of Clothar’s strong supporters Bishop Pientius of Poitiers (d. 564) and Duke Austrapius.107 When the abbey was ready, Bishop Germanus of Paris convinced Clothar to let Radegund go and consecrated Agnes as Sainte-Croix’s first abbess.108 His successor Ragnemodus continued to support the abbey, such as when he sent Parian marble to decorate the shrine of the True Cross.109 As discussed above, she sought the RC and relied on Saint-Jean as a model, using another bishop’s authority to increase her abbey’s reputation. The bishops of Tours became special friends to Radegund and her monastery: she begged Eufronius of Tours to install relics in the abbey’s altar, and Gregory of Tours officiated over her funeral.110 When Radegund sought episcopal aid outside of Poitiers, she drew on the ties she had already made. None of the external bishops who became friendly with Radegund had a right Basina, daughter of Audovera, was, apparently, expendable after the machinations of Fredegund against her brother Clovis. Given the 589–90 rebellion, it might have been better for Sainte-Croix if Radegund had let Basina go. 105  Barbara Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters: Gregory of Tours and Episcopal Exemption,” in Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 181–98, 190, emphasis is Rosenwein’s. 106 Greg., Hist. 4.19, 152; 4.21, 154; and 4.51, 187–90. Rather than punish him, Clothar honored Médard of Noyon with an impressive burial and new tomb, which Sigebert completed; both Clothar and Sigebert chose to be buried with him there. 107 Greg., Hist. 4.18, 150–1; Ragnemodus’s gift is referenced in Fortunatus’s poem Ad Ragnemodum episcopum, Carmina, 9.10 in Poèmes, Venance Fotunat, ed. Marc Reydellet, 3 vols. (Paris, 1994–2004), 32–3. 108  Baudonivia, 7. 109  Typical episcopal exemptions of the time included the right to choose the bishop who performed such ceremonies: Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 182; and Eugen Ewig, “Beobachtungen zu den Klosterprivilegien des 7. Und frühen 8. Jahrhunderts,” in Josef Fleckenstein and Karl Schmid, eds., Adel und Kirche (Basel, 1968), 52–65. 110  For Eufronius, see Greg., Hist. 9.14, 428. Beyond her friendships with these bishops, Radegund also sought the spiritual aid of episcopal saints. She put herself and her abbey under the protection of Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of Poitiers. Greg., Hist. 9.42, 472. It was in the name of Saint Martin that Eufronius and Gregory were able to assist Radegund and interfere in the see of their colleague, the bishop of Poitiers. This follows Barbara Rosenwein’s argument that these men acted under the aegis of Saint Martin: Barbara Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 53.

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to interfere in the diocese of Poitiers, but the “invited bishops” appeared to have no qualms about stepping in to assist this former queen.111 Although Bordeaux was the metropolitan for Poitiers, her biographers did not report that Radegund ever sought help from that city, and there is no suggestion that the archbishop expressed interest in Sainte-Croix before the notorious rebellion in 590.112 Rather than following Merovingian episcopal hierarchy and jurisdiction, Radegund preferred bishops with whom she already had some relationship.113 As in her secular dealings, Fortunatus served as Radegund’s agent in building episcopal support networks, frequently conveying greetings from Radegund and Agnes in his letters and poems to ecclesiastical figures.114 Fortunatus composed poems of praise celebrating Gregory’s ordination as bishop of Tours and his adventus into the city in 573, a poem that “was clearly designed to stimulate public enthusiasm and promote consensus in the city” in Gregory’s favor.115 This poem is explicit in offering Radegund’s support to Gregory, and links her approval to Sigebert’s and Brunhild’s: “Julian is sending his own foster-son to Martin / . . . to relieve the people, for Radegund to love. / Sigebert with joy supports this election and Brunhild too; / a noble eminence in the judgment of the king is here among us.”116 He sought other bishops’ friendship through his poetry with this familial language, such as in poems for Germanus of Paris circa 576 (poems 2.9 and 8.2, in which he calls Germanus “father” to parallel Radegund as “mother”) and Felix of Nantes (poems 3.9 and 5.7). Fortunatus also wrote a poem in honor of Médard of Noyon, which gave him another opportunity to praise Sigebert, here for completing a church in Médard’s honor.117 It was especially important for Fortunatus and Radegund to ensure friendly ­relations with Tours, their closest episcopal city, which was likely the reason for Fortunatus’s Vita  S.  Martini, dedicated to Gregory with a preface that thanked Agnes and Radegund for proposing the subject, probably written soon after Gregory’s ordination as bishop in 573.118 As Brennan suggested, Fortunatus, Gregory, and Radegund likely pulled closer together when they lost Sigebert’s royal patronage

111  For the role of these “invited bishops” see Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 54. 112 Greg., Hist. 9.41. 113 For episcopal boundaries see Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, ch. 5; and Raymond Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 114 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 283. 115 Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 71. On the adventus, see Sabine G. MacCormack, “Change and Continuity in Late Antiquity: The Ceremony of Adventus,” Historia 21 (1972): 721–52, and Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 328-42; Pierre Dufraigne, Adventus Augusti, Adventus Christi. Recherche sur l’exploitation idéologique et littéraire d’un ceremonial dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1994), 268–84. 116 Fort., OP 5.3.11–16, trans. Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 110: “Martino proprium mittit Iulianus alumnum /. . . ut populum recreet, quem Radegundis amet. / Huic Sigiberchtus ovans favet et Brunichildis honori: iudicio regis nobile culmen adest.” 117 Fort., OP 2.16; Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 168. 118 Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 55; and Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 199n.91.

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and protection after he was assassinated at Fredegund’s command in 575.119 Not simply Radegund’s ally in securing these supporters for her abbey, Fortunatus benefitted personally from relationships with these bishops. Gregory of Tours gifted Fortunatus a villa near the Vienne River, noted in poems 8.19 and 8.20, and Fortunatus treated him as a patron, such as by dedicating his first collection of published poems to Gregory in 576–7.120 In addition to these informal episcopal friendships, Radegund attempted to protect Sainte-Croix by gaining important bishops’ support in writing. In documenting these bishops’ support, the saint again followed Caesarius, who formally secured the aid of seven bishops for Saint-Jean in Arles. And, like Caesarius, Radegund “wanted to protect the monastery from future bishops . . . who might be tempted to assert their authority over the monastery by interfering in its internal affairs or to rescue their church from financial need by laying hands on the monastery’s endowment.”121 To do this, Radegund reached out to Gaul’s leading bishops. Gregory of Tours recorded two letters, the first from Radegund to a set of bishops and the second their reply. In her letter, Radegund requested the protection of “princes of the Church” against any who molested her abbey, alienated its property, or disturbed its Rule.122 She stressed that secular authorities had confirmed all donations to the abbey since Clothar’s gift. She also emphasized that the bishops must protect the community against any internal rebellion and from nuns who might break the Rule.123 Radegund begged the bishops to protect her abbey after her death. She was particularly concerned with the fragility of the community’s property and its Rule, and she asked the bishops to keep both safe from powerful secular lords, from bishops, and even from the sisters themselves.124 Foremost among Radegund’s concerns, however, was the possible intrusion of Maroveus, the bishop of Poitiers (584–591/2), and his followers. Since Gregory described this letter in his account of the nuns’ rebellion in 589–90, he certainly could have tailored its contents—and Radegund’s concerns—to that particular situation.125 If so, he condemned the rebellious nuns.

119  Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 73. 120 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 269–71. 121  Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 459. 122 See  P.  Monsabert, “Le ‘testament’ de Sainte Radegonde,” Bulletin philologique et historique (1926–7), 129–34; and Jane E. Jeffrey, “Radegund and the Letter of Foundation,” in Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey, eds., Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe: Volume 2: Medieval Women Writing Latin (New York: Routledge, 2002), 11–23. On Gregory’s rhetoric and narrative style, see Joaquin Martinez Pizarro, A Rhetoric of the Scene: Dramatic Narrative in the Early Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989). The testamentum of Caesarius of Arles similarly sought to protect Saint-Jean and its property—Klingshirn notes “verbal echoes” in Radegund’s document and suggests that she imitated Caesarius’s text. The document we have is only remembered in Gregory of Tours, who also was familiar with the testamentum: Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 478. 123  A convenient line given the context in which Gregory claimed Leubovera had revealed the letter. 124 Greg., Hist. 9.42, 472–3. 125 Dailey finds this timing suspicious, since Gregory was eager to justify his interference in Maroveus’s see: Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines, 62–79. Even if the letters were completely fabricated, later abbesses referenced the freedom the letters asserted.

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In the letter, Gregory tells us that Radegund asked the bishops to excommunicate any person who had harassed the abbey and its community. The bishops did indeed promise to protect Sainte-Croix and to excommunicate anyone who broke the Rule.126 Seven bishops signed the reply to her request: Bishops Eufronius, Praetextatus, Germanus, Felix, Domitianus, Victorius and Domnolus.127 Recognizing that women from their own dioceses had sought out Radegund, whom they compared to Saint Martin, they mandated that any woman who entered the monastic life of her own free will could never again leave it, upon threat of excommunication. Their concern was protecting the monastery’s enclosure and enforcing the individual nun’s claustration. Among their protections the bishops threatened that any man who agreed to marry a former nun as well as the priest who brought about the union would also face excommunication.128 By seeking support from both secular and ecclesiastical princes, Radegund protected her monastery from the meddling of either. She was aware of the community’s vulnerability after her death and the abbey’s loss of her forceful, royal, and well-connected personality.129 As Barbara Rosenwein argued, “[U]sing the contemporary vocabulary of dependency and subordination (commendare), Radegund placed the monastery under the protection of outside bishops as well as of kings.”130 Radegund thus built sets of protectors for her abbey by securing the friendship of Frankia’s kings and bishops, creating alliances that would remain in place long after her death. Although she gave up her royal titles, she embraced the power and authority her former networks could ensure for her new family and by doing so she established precedent for Sainte-Croix and its future dealings with such officials. Abbesses would be able to assert that these bishops’ predecessors had defended the abbey and supported the abbess’s right to govern it, defend its members, and guard its property. While Radegund was able to inspire prominent bishops to safeguard her nuns, there was one major exception to her success with the episcopate, and that was her local bishop. Relations with the bishop of Poitiers had not always been unfriendly: Radegund had initially enjoyed a very positive relationship with the local bishop, Pientius (d. 560), who had supported her efforts to build Sainte-Croix.131 His successor Pascentius, abbot of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, may have been hostile to Radegund and Sainte-Croix. To win him over, Fortunatus offered a vita of Saint Hilary.132 By 569, though, Poitiers had a new bishop, Maroveus, who remained openly hostile to Sainte-Croix and to Radegund for the rest of her life. Under the 126 Greg., Hist. 9.39, 462–3. 127  Gregory of Tours recognized that this was the same number of bishops writing to support Caesarius’s foundation for Caesaria: Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 460. 128 Greg., Hist. 9.39, 462–3. All these bishops were present at the Council of Tours in 567, which is the date given by Krusch in MGH SRM 7:342—but Van Dam and Pietri have argued for 570, see Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles; and Luce Pietri, La Ville de Tours du IVe au VIe siècle: Naissance d’une cité Chrétienne (Paris: École française de Rome, 1983), 232. 129 Greg., Hist. 9.42, 472. 130 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 54. 131  Baudonivia, 5. Greg., Hist. 4.18, 151. 132 Greg., Hist. 4.18. Van Dam demonstrates that Pascentius was hostile to Radegund: Saints and their Miracles, 30–3.

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pens of Gregory of Tours and Baudonivia, Maroveus appeared a cruel man, negligent in his duty to protect Sainte-Croix’s nuns and conniving against any success for Radegund or the abbey. While he mostly avoided the subject of Maroveus, even Fortunatus referenced hostility in poem 5.9, in which he had to decline an invitation to Tours because Gregory’s “brother in rank” had forced him to stay in Poitiers.133 Maroveus certainly had cause to be jealous of Radegund. As her reputation for holy deeds grew she outshone Saint Hilary’s cult, which was closely associated with his bishopric in Poitiers. She also rivaled his authority in the city by attracting petitioners away from his cathedral through her close ties with royal relatives. It is unclear from the available sources, however, whether Radegund took efforts to sidestep Maroveus’s authority and protect her abbey from his influence as a result of his hostility, or if those very efforts provoked his resentment. In either case, Radegund’s adoption of the Caesarian Rule, her campaign to secure potent and important relics for the abbey, her funeral, and her friendships with external bishops shaped the abbey as well as its future relations with Poitiers’ bishops. Although Sainte-Croix was never granted an official episcopal exemption, the description of Radegund’s efforts and her legacy allowed her abbey to become almost autonomous even though the Council of Chalcedon in 451 had placed monastic institutions under bishops’ authority.134 The negative relationship with Maroveus is well documented, but the hostility might also serve the hagiographical topos of “wicked men” in a founding narrative, such as that of Itta and Gertrude founding Nivelles, or of Burgundofara at Faremoutiers.135 Even Gregory of Tours’ depiction of himself and his predecessor Eufronius’s support of Radegund and her abbey over Maroveus became a regular feature in monastic women’s vitae: Baldwin became the defender of Anstrude and Saint-Jean in Laon, Chainulf protected Faremoutiers, and Grimoald protected Nivelles.136 As we will see below, while Maroveus did not receive high ratings from Radegund, he was not a bad bishop for Poitiers. Good relationships with external bishops and trouble at home affected the choices Radegund made for her monastery and its situation within ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies. In later centuries the nuns of Sainte-Croix also struggled with the local bishop and followed Radegund’s model of seeking assistance from the most 133  Roberts and Tardi both see this as a reference to Maroveus, suggesting that Fortunatus “found himself implicated” in the hostility between Radegund and Poitiers’ bishop: Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 281; D.  Tardi, Fortunat: Étude sur le dernier représentant de la poésie latine dans la Gaule Mérovingienne (Paris 1927), 140. 134 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 57. Mayke de Jong declared the requirement “wishful thinking”: “Monastic Prisoners or Opting Out?”, 301. Diem, “The Gender of the Religious,” 443; Canons of the Council of Chalcedon 4, 7, 8, 16, 24, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, trans. Richard Price and Michael Gaddis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 3:95–102. Other Church councils intensified the subjection of monasteries to bishops, such as the 511 Council of Orléans and the 554 Fifth Council of Arles. See Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 181. 135  Vita Geretrudis prima, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2 (Hanover 1887), 452–63, trans. McNamara and Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 220–34, 2, 224: “But at the instigation of the enemy of human kind, who has been envious of good works from the beginning and hardens the hearts of the wicked to oppose them, she suffered no small opposition from those who ought to have helped her in doing God’s will.” For Burgundofara, see McNamara and Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 155–75. 136  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 258–9.

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influential ecclesiastical officials, especially those outside Poitiers. Reading the saint’s vitae demonstrated the potential for strong support from the Church hierarchy, even if they faced resistance from their local bishop. M A RT Y R The primary purpose of Radegund’s vitae was establishing and promoting her sanctity. Radegund’s holy identity was not fixed, however; it fluctuated as each author contributed to her holy dossier, and even within different texts each author created. In his vita and his poems, Fortunatus made the case for Radegund’s sanctity by focusing on the extraordinary suffering she experienced during her earthly life. His vita of the saint is rife with the violence the saint endured at others’ hands—the murders of her family, her abduction, hints of attempted rape—as well as the violence she routinely inflicted on her own body. Among the many models for Radegund’s vita was her mother-in-law Clothild, a Burgundian princess raised by her uncle, pressed to marry Clovis, a Frankish king whose religion or piety did not meet her standards, a woman who suffered enormous family losses, who turned to asceticism to better connect with her faith as a widow, and who founded a monastery and church. The violence in the lives of both queens made their biographers’ accounts of their piety and holy deeds even more remarkable. Violence was central to the concept of sanctity in the early Middle Ages, as saints imitated the passion, often in their own martyr narratives, such as with Perpetua and Felicitas. After Constantine ended such persecutions, saints pursued a more private imitatio Christi through ascetic practices such as fasting and self-mortification. Fortunatus emphasized Radegund’s choice to enter not just Sainte-Croix, but a cell, further enclosing herself. It was from her cell and from within her abbey— layers upon layers of enclosure—that Radegund performed her torments and worked her miracles. Indeed, Radegund’s practice of enclosing herself within this cell during Lent gave Easter special importance to Fortunatus. In his poems, he linked Christ’s resurrection with Radegund’s re-emergence from her cell at Easter, an analogy that, according to Michael Roberts, found “expression in the one case in the renewed fertility of spring, in the other in the enhanced beauty of flowers in  the saint’s presence.”137 Fortunatus linked Radegund’s violent asceticism, her enclosure, and her sanctity to create a living martyrdom. According to Fortunatus, the saint constantly devised greater tortures for herself, first refusing food or rest, or caring for the sick and hungry more than her own needs, then moving from privations into extreme ascetic practices such as torturing her own body with hair shirt, burning, flagellation and mutilation.138 The saint starved herself, refusing to eat anything but grains and water, she spent day and night serving her fellow nuns and tending the sick, “scrubbing . . . scurf, scabs, lice or pus, she plucked off the worms and scrubbed away the putrid flesh” all with 137 Fort., VR, 21; and Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 289.

138 Fort., VR, 25 and 26.

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eagerness and joy.139 The saint wore a hair shirt during Lent, demonstrating her willingness to endure pain during times linked explicitly with Christ’s suffering. This hair shirt would later be an important relic for the nuns of Sainte-Croix. In the vitae the shirt’s power is already established by working two miracles, resurrecting her agent Andered’s dead baby and healing Bishop Leontius’s eyesight.140 During Lent her attacks against her own flesh increased, even in her confessor’s eyes.141 Beyond the hair shirt, Fortunatus described painful mutilations Radegund imposed on herself so that she could be a martyr to her faith. Fortunatus goes into great detail about this fleshly mortification: she bound her body with iron during Lent so that her flesh would swell, causing it to be ripped open when she removed the iron circlets. This resulted in massive bleeding and scars over her back and chest. This pain was not sufficient, so that another Lent she branded herself twice with a heated brass plate made to resemble Christ. She suffered the bleeding and pain in silence, although she apparently shared her torments’ details with Fortunatus.142 This ascetic suffering proclaimed for Radegund a living martyrdom that justified naming her a saint.143 In the early Middle Ages, sanctification was not an orderly, regulated process; after the age of the great martyrs even beatification was a difficult achievement, particularly for women. Asceticism began to stand in for and constitute martyrdom, an imitatio Christi that became a primary means of establishing a holy woman as a saint because she was willing to bear her suffering sweetly in the name of Christianity.144 Radegund suffered, according to Fortunatus, “so that she might be a martyr though these were not the times of persecution.”145 He did not limit this depiction of Radegund to her vita; as Roberts noted, Fortunatus’s poems depicts the saint as “a fierce ascetic who has transcended her former queenly status” in a way “typical of the public image of Radegund disseminated by Fortunatus.”146 In poem 8.1 Fortunatus described Radegund’s mortifications in order to show that she deserved sanctification twice over, even in a period that imagined saints as bishops or great men, as a holy martyr, in honor of the extraordinary violence she had suffered in Christ’s name, as well as a simple holy woman, or confessor.147 Historian Caroline Walker Bynum has argued that saints’ vitae describing extreme ascetic practices reveal medieval women’s abilities to assert control over their own lives and claim some autonomy from patriarchal expectations. In her study of vitae 139  “[I]psa succinta de savano, capita lavans egenorum, defricans, quidquid erat, crustam, scabiem, tineam, nec purulenta fastidiens, interdum et vermes extrahens, purgans cutis putredines, singillatim capita pectebat ipsa, quae laverat”: Fort., VR, 17. Anneke Mulder-Bakker also points to the “cheerful heart” expected of a saint throughout his or her suffering and devotion, in her introduction to The Invention of Saintliness, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (London: Routledge, 2002), 3. 140 Fort., VR, 34; and Baudonivia 15. 141 Fort., VR, 25 and 26. 142 Fort., VR, 26. 143  The potency of asceticism for female saints has been a major theme in medieval studies since Peter Brown’s The Body in Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), and Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast; Fort., VR, 2. 144 Brown, The Cult of the Saints; and Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, 15. 145  “[Q]uia non essent persecutionis tempora, a se ut fieret martyra”: Fort., VR, 26. See also Ruth Wehlau, “Literal and Symbolic: The Language of Asceticism in Two Lives of St Radegund,” Florilegium 15 (1998): 251–66. 146 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 285. 147  “terram habitans caelos intrat bene libera sensu”: Fort., OP 8.1; Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 116–17. Fort., VR, 21. Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, 14.

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from the high Middle Ages, Bynum argued that the extraordinary suffering these women inflicted upon themselves—starvation, flagellation, and self-mutilation—was a potent means of declaring their holiness, gaining respect, and asserting some control over their own fates.148 Bynum argued that saints’ vitae describing asceticism demonstrate the power women may claim over themselves and within their communities. We can see the potency of this violence in Radegund’s life, where she was able to escape an unpleasant marriage and choose a monastic life through her reputation for asceticism. From the very beginning Fortunatus defended Radegund as an appropriate candidate for devotion because of her femininity, which he claimed made women physically weak but mentally strong, as her mortifications proved.149 Such a notion of femininity was not universal, as Baudonivia avoided depicting the saint as ascetic, preferring instead images of maternity and active queenly engagement in politics. Even this notion of gender was complicated in Fortunatus’s vita by Radegund’s clerical status as a deaconess. Fortunatus portrayed Radegund in much the same way as he depicted bishops in his prose hagiography; as John Kitchen has observed, her charity work and miracles are an “exercise of episcopal power.”150 Radegund even blessed with the sign of the cross—a reference to the relic she secured for the abbey, but also to her assertion of semi-episcopal power. Several saints have been described as “becoming male,” like Perpetua in her vision of gladiatorial display, and once again Radegund’s asceticism might justify the assumption of episcopal power. But, we might also read the origins of such authority earlier in her vita, before Radegund began her mortifications: perhaps when she became a deaconess she received authority from Médard—one bishop consecrating another. The combination of her asceticism and her clerical office gave Radegund authority to act in this semi-episcopal fashion, not despite her femininity, but in embracing the religious positions and tools available to her. And the many ascetic bishops of her day inspired her. There was an “ascetic invasion” in the Gallo-Roman episcopate according to Robert Markus, made popular by leaders—“high-born ascetics”—coming from Lérins, who combined the pastoral office with monastic humility—a model that was influential on Gregory of Tours and on Fortunatus through him.151 The VC presented Caesarius as an ascetic in order to “inspire others to similar acts of ascetic self-denial and, in the case of the sisters of Saint-Jean in Arles, to encourage appropriate behavior within the monastery as well.”152 Caesarius urged an ascetic life for other bishops, as well as his congregation, not just for the nuns.153 As we have seen, Caesarius had great influence over Radegund through texts, yet, while Baudonivia relied on the VC in writing a vita for Radegund, she avoided discussion of Radegund’s asceticism, not depicting these as appropriate models for her sister nuns, and Gregory 148 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 208–18. 149 Fort., VR, 1. 150 John Kitchen, Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 123. 151  See Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, ch. 13, esp. 201–2. 152  Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 453. 153 Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 210.

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of Tours likewise avoided descriptions of extreme asceticism in describing Radegund. It could be that they felt Fortunatus had adequately demonstrated Radegund’s mutilations and so wished to focus on other subjects, or that they did not share the private knowledge of Radegund’s intimate activities as her confessor had, although they certainly had learned of them from Fortunatus’s vita. Both Gregory and Baudonivia likely preferred to avoid the image of violence in Sainte-Croix after the recent rebellion. Neither may have wanted to suggest that monastic women must be ascetics, a difficult role to emulate.154 By the time Baudonivia wrote, Radegund’s cult was more established, so she may have been simply less anxious to establish Radegund’s sanctity, and more eager to develop an image of the saint’s political and episcopal allies. As Ruth Wehlau suggests, the difference in rhetoric between the two vitae may simply be “two different styles of language, with Fortunatus tending to literalise his terms while Baudonivia draws on symbolic meanings.”155 For Baudonivia, Radegund’s holiness was more apparent in her relics hunting and in her maternity; for Gregory Radegund’s significance lay in the relics she brought to Poitiers, in her death, and in the relics she herself became. These differences between the accounts’ emphasis or even their notions of sanctity, demonstrate once again the flexible nature of Radegund’s identity as well as the malleability of hagiography as a form of persuasion. MIRACLES As we might expect in a saint’s life, Radegund’s vitae describe many miracles. There are minor miracles, such as when she took vengeance against a mouse that bit through thread she had spun, or when she struck down a sister who foolishly sat in her chair, but most of the miracles depict Radegund as a healer, curing ailments from blindness to ill-humor to demonic possession. The authors included miracles from her life, when she exorcised and healed from within her cell, and after her death or in her absence, when she was invoked through prayer. Two of the miracles Baudonivia recounted later grew into major legends for Poitiers and the cult. The first further connected Radegund to Christ: while Radegund was at prayer a young man appeared to her and called her his chosen one.156 The young man, believed to be Christ, left behind his footprint, known in later legend as the Pas-Dieu, and a chapel was named in its honor at the abbey. According to Baudonivia, Radegund also saw Christ at Saix, and the saint repeatedly made the sign of the cross while working miracles, which linked Radegund to Christ as well as to the cross relic.157 In the second miracle that became legend, Radegund protected the abbey against thousands of goat-like demons trying to get in over the wall. When the saint raised 154  The imposition of the Benedictine reform in the ninth century would further discourage such asceticism. 155  Wehlau, “Literal and Symbolic: The Language of Asceticism,” 76. 156  Baudonivia, 20. 157  Baudonivia, 3, 20. See also de Nie, Views from a Many-Windowed Tower, 238–9 and 273; Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 267ff.

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her hand and made the sign of the cross the demons dispersed.158 By the fifteenth century this became the legend of the Grand’goule, a serpent who troubled the monastery until Radegund, making the sign of the cross, banished it to the River Clain beyond the abbey wall (see Chapter 6). Each of these stories demonstrated Radegund’s holy power, her support from Christ, and her protection of the abbey. Thus, the authors of the saint’s vitae focused on discrete facets of the saint’s holy identity in recounting her miracles. In Fortunatus’s vita, Radegund’s miraculous deeds were mainly cures and healings of sick women or children, while healings in Baudonivia focused on possessed women and sick men.159 Radegund appeared in Baudonivia’s vita to protect her abbey from demons, and she had a special influence over birds: first a dove helped her servants find their way home and then she silenced a “raucous nightbird.”160 Both vitae establish that Radegund exercised holy power of a caliber worthy of saintly devotion and associated her with the holiest of Christian protectors. I will examine these miracles in greater detail in discussing their translation into image in Chapters 3 and 5. M OT H E R Radegund’s female sex created representational difficulties for her vitae authors. In the original texts it is clear that, as a married woman, Radegund was no virgin, she never bore earthly children, and she was not male, all of which made the usual hagiographical tropes of saint as virginal Bride of Christ, as the Virgin Mother (Mary), or as Christ less feasible.161 Non-virginal women challenged hagiographical authors seeking to claim their subjects were saints, especially during the early Middle Ages.162 Radegund’s biographers instead created complicated combinations of these images, casting Radegund as both Christ and Mary, queen and virginal nun, redemptive, suffering virgin and loving, beloved mother. This representational compromise would then become a model for future hagiographers, such as in the vitae of Balthild and Sadalberga.163 158  Baudonivia, 18. 159  Bishop Leontius of Bordeaux, and the abbot Abbo, who traveled with the Bishop Leifast of Burgundy. Baudonivia, 15; see also Baudonivia, 16 and 27. 160  Baudonivia, 19. 161  At least as she was described in the early medieval texts; the language changes significantly (casting Radegund as a virgin who resisted her husband’s sexual desires) in an eleventh-century vita by Hildebert of Lavardin. See BMP ms 252 (8) “Vie de sainte-Radegonde: et miracles de la meme sainte,” and ms 253 (8 bis) “Lectionnaire de Sainte Radegonde”; also Briand, Histoire de Sainte Radegonde. 162  Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, ed., Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1995). We find few mother saints in medieval devotional literature, however; women who have rejected motherhood or escaped the lusty advances of suitors in favor of a divine (chaste) marriage to Christ are much more commonly sainted. There are some holy mothers (holy women whose role in society was based on their maternity) or mother saints (women sanctified for their roles as mothers), as described by Mulder-Bakker and others. 163  Vita Sanctae Balthildis, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 11 (Hanover 1888), 475–508; Vita Sadalbergae abbatissae Laudunensis, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 5 (Hanover, 1910), 40–66, trans. McNamara and Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 176–94.

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Remembering Radegund as a mother seems an odd choice from a brief outline of her biography. The saint was not abbess (a holy mother) and she never bore earthly children.164 Radegund’s maternity came from her relationships and her spiritual fertility, not her bodily qualifications.165 Giselle de Nie argued persuasively that a “new role model of spiritual motherhood” was possible through the practice of extraordinary asceticism. Indeed, Radegund’s haircloth revealed her asceticism, but then it also focused her power to heal infants such as Andered’s dead baby.166 Radegund’s biographers built on themes of spiritual parenthood that were well developed in hagiography: for example, Caesarius in the VC is a spiritual father to Saint-Jean’s nuns, with his pastoral care of them, with a relationship between the saint and his community that continued after his death.167 In his poetry Fortunatus played extensively with such themes of spiritual family, describing Agnes variably as his sister or mother, but consistently depicting Radegund as spiritual mother to both Fortunatus and Agnes.168 In poem 5.11 he told Gregory that he had reached his mothers, Radegund and Agnes, in safety, and that they sent the bishop their greetings. But in poem 11.6 he described himself and Agnes as twins from Radegund’s “chaste womb” whom she nourished with her breasts.169 As Roberts suggested, in this imagery Radegund was a mother who provided “spiritual comfort, sustenance, and protection.”170 Baudonivia also hailed Radegund as the mother of her community and showed that Radegund thought of her fellow nuns as spiritual daughters; although Agnes became abbess of Sainte-Croix she called Radegund mother.171 In her vitae, Radegund rejected her marriage and sexual life in favor of the chaste monastic life, mortified her flesh to demonstrate her spiritual purity, and then served as a maternal guide to her community whom she protected with “pious concern and maternal love.”172 The vitae authors created a holy maternity for the saint by depicting her as nurse, virgin queen, healer, and through her special connection to infants. Her haircloth healed Andered’s baby, and once Radegund had entered her cell at Sainte-Croix she was able to cure possessed women, she was able to revive a fellow nun’s sister, and to restore eyesight. All of this was in addition 164  Neither Baudonivia or Fortunatus claim that the saint avoided her wifely duties, but they show that she did not allow her marital obligations to interfere with her spiritual devotions. Some scholars have argued, mainly following Jo Ann McNamara, that Clothar responded to Radegund’s priorities with physical abuse or even rape, but there is little to support this in the text, which vaguely mentions quarreling (rixa): Fort., VR, 5. 165  Giselle De Nie, “ ‘Consciousness Fecund through God’: From Male Fighter to Spiritual BrideMother in Late Antique Female Sanctity,” in Mulder-Bakker, Sanctity and Motherhood, 101–61. 166 Fort., VR, 34. 167  Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 468. 168  In Fort., OP App. 12 he calls Radegund father and grandmother as well. 169 Fort., OP 5.11 and 11.6; Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 280–1. 170 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 300–1. While some have seen Fortunatus’s language here as erotic (Epp, “Männerfreundschaft und Frauendienst bei Venantius Fortunatus,” 24; Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages; and Jean Leclercq, “Relations entre Venance Fortunat et Sainte Radegonde”) Brennan and Roberts are right to point out that the language is not unusual or sexual for Fortunatus. And sexualizing breastfeeding misses its purpose of nourishing, feeding a child. 171  Baudonivia, 8. De Nie, “ ‘Consciousness Fecund through God,’ ” 139–51. The nuns themselves refer to Radegund as a mother repeatedly in Fortunatus: see esp. Fort., VR, 33. Baudonivia claimed that Radegund called the nuns her children and acted out of maternal love for them: Baudonivia, 8 and 9. 172  Baudonivia, 9.

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to her work tending the nuns’ clothing, feeding the sick, and washing the diseased, even lepers.173 Like images of royalty and of Helena these images of Radegund as mother connected her to the cult of the Virgin Mary. Gregory of Tours also connected motherhood and virginity in Radegund’s sanctity. In Glory of the Confessors, upon Radegund’s death her nuns exclaimed: “Alas for us, who have been abandoned by our holy mother! Happy were those who migrated from this world while you were alive! We know that you have been admitted to the chorus of holy virgins and to the Paradise of God. Although we are consoled by that, the fact that we cannot see you with the eyes of our bodies is a reason for us to weep.” They said these words and others while they wept.174

Gregory described Radegund as the nuns’ holy mother several times, even asserting that the women at Sainte-Croix rejected their parents in favor of Radegund, and that the abbess considered Radegund her mother.175 Gregory suggested that Radegund joined the “chorus of holy virgins” in heaven, an idea that others would pick up in later discussions of the saint. C O N C LU S I O N With their description of Radegund’s lifelong devotion to the poor, her charity, ascetic suffering, relic collecting, and miracles, texts by Gregory, Fortunatus, and Baudonivia display all of Radegund’s qualifications for sanctity. Their texts build on the admiration that had already developed around the holy queen during her life and the cult focused on her tomb when she died. More, their inventory of her holy deeds, and their identification of the important artifacts of her life, defined the nature of her sanctity for future devotees. As Courtney Luckhardt noted, Radegund had consciously protected her abbey and established a web of alliances, supporters, dependents.176 As we will see, these texts and artifacts became tools for remembering and honoring Radegund as well as for protecting Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ authority. The abbess of Sainte-Croix would later use these early texts to demonstrate her own authority’s antiquity, to show that the specific powers she claimed had come from Radegund, to call upon the friendship of external patrons, and to connect her community to Radegund’s symbolic power. It was the saint’s charisma and the many protections that she established for her foundation that gave Sainte-Croix’s 173  Radegund’s decision to kiss a leper she cared for follows closely on the model of Martin’s kiss in Fort., OP 10.6.33. 174 Greg., GC, 106. 175 Greg., GC, 106. 176  “Radegund herself was a figure that worked to link herself, her monastery, and her networks with the divine by gaining a remnant of the cross; she also tried to keep that divine connection powerful by using her elite networks to keep access to that relic privileged and controlled . . . . Her most important activity is as an instigator though, setting up and maintaining networks of communication through her relationships with her kin, from her cousin in Constantinople, to her former husbands’ royal successor, to her spiritual (but not social) episcopal superiors”: Courtney Luckhardt, “Gender and Connectivity: Facilitating Religious Travel in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries,” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 44 (2013): 29–53, 38.

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abbesses an authoritative position. Radegund’s nuns paid careful attention to these texts describing their foundress’s effort to secure episcopal support outside Poitiers. An eleventh-century manuscript containing the saint’s vitae also included Gregory of Tours’ account of Radegund’s letter.177 This support was the first item in the nuns’ archive of protections, kept in one of their most precious manuscripts. Radegund’s identity was not stable in these texts, however. Her artifacts provided the raw material for claiming power and demonstrating support in her cult. Doing so required the skillful, agile manipulation of symbols Sainte-Croix’s future abbesses employed. 177  BMP ms 250 (136).

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2 Early Tests of Radegund’s Strategies This chapter examines the first tests of the two strategies Radegund established for maintaining female monastic authority: first, her networks of supportive allies, primarily kings and bishops, and second, a set of cultural ideas, symbols, and materials based on Radegund’s life that later nuns at Sainte-Croix relied on to attract new allies and supporters. Radegund’s holy life and her sanctity permitted her to claim power, but her strategies enabled the women who followed her to do likewise even in the face of opposition. There were three immediate opportunities to test the effectiveness of these strategies. In the first, Radegund pursued and installed a prestigious relic at Sainte-Croix over the objections of Maroveus, bishop of Poitiers. Second, the abbess Agnes handled Maroveus’s absence during Radegund’s funeral. And in the third, Leubovera, the first abbess after the death of Sainte-Croix’s “founding generation,” dealt with an extensive rebellion within the abbey. All three of these women succeeded, and they did so through the support of Frankish kings and bishops, even if their own local officials, including the bishop of Poitiers and the local count, were unwilling to help. RELICS-HUNTER Radegund’s greatest success came from her quest for the relic of the True Cross. Ecclesiastical and secular aristocrats pursued relics to create new cult sites under their own control.1 Relic collecting exploded after the late fourth century, and collectors sought authentic relics from prestigious saints, mainly martyrs whose bodies lay in eastern cities such as Constantinople and Jerusalem. While the Carolingians would later strengthen royal and ecclesiastical control over the cult of relics in the ninth century by requiring that relic translations and veneration receive the approval of bishops and kings, in sixth-century Frankia there was little control over relics or the creation of new cults.2 Bishops installed new relics in their shrines, but were otherwise not yet essential to the process. Portions of this chapter were published in Jennifer C. Edwards, “Their Cross to Bear: Controversy and the Relic of the True Cross in Poitiers” Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 65–77. © 2008 West Virginia University Press. Reprinted with permission. 1  Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 90ff. See also Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 39, 43, and 68. 2  For Carolingian control over relic cults, see Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, 16–19.

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Noble and ecclesiastical leaders sought the assistance of saints in establishing their positions. Bishops in Merovingian Gaul were often associated with the local cult of a saint—such as the bishops of Tours with the cult of Saint Martin or the bishops of Poitiers with the cult of Saint Hilary. These saints could become so popular as to rival the power of secular authorities, to the point that later Merovingian kings avoided Tours and Martin except on special ritual moments. But noble families also pursued local cults, such as that of Saint Julian at Brioude, which the bishops of Clermont had largely ignored and, instead, came under the influence of Gallus and Florentius, the uncle and brother of Gregory of Tours.3 Gregory himself was an avid defender of saints’ cults, protecting relics under his control in Tours. Participating in this aristocratic cult, Radegund became an enthusiastic relics-hunter in order to collect further protectors for her abbey, to establish her foundations as holy sites, and out of spiritual devotion. She was aware of the power that would arrive at Sainte-Croix along with a saint’s holy bones. Both Baudonivia and Gregory detailed Radegund’s efforts to associate her communities with a prestigious collection of relics. In his vita Fortunatus neglected any mention of her relics-hunting, perhaps because of his personal involvement or because of his unwillingness to reflect poorly on the bishopric of Poitiers. Radegund had started collecting relics while living in Saix, where she had obtained several relics through the efforts of a priest, Magnus.4 At Poitiers she sought royal approval for her relic campaigns, but her biographers did not record any official sanction for these earlier translations at Saix. Her collecting became more extensive after she entered her monastery, and she sought prizes from Jerusalem and the East. Barbara Rosenwein observed that Radegund was more interested in gaining “exotic” relics, as well as “exceptionally rare and potent ones,” as when Radegund sent her agent Reovalis to Jerusalem for a relic of the martyr Mammas.5 The patriarch of the city received the delegation, heard Reovalis’s request, and gave Radegund’s agents a relic.6 Baudonivia’s is the only contemporary account of the delegation to Jerusalem or the arrival of the Mammas relic in Poitiers, subjects on which there has been much skepticism.7 Isabel Moreira suggests that the mission was not intended to secure a relic from Mammas at all, but was part of a quest for a relic of the True Cross, and that the Mammas relic was a consolation prize for failing to secure the cross. Moreira concludes that Baudonivia “fabricated the episode set in Jerusalem to make the best of the disappointment.”8 While it seems clear that Baudonivia’s story is in some error, she may not have completely concocted the story. There was a series of delegations searching for important relics to bring to Sainte-Croix, either 3  Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles, 45. 4  Baudonivia, 13. 5  Baudonivia, 13; Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 55. 6  Baudonivia, 14. The agent is also the doctor who conferred with Radegund about the young boy who, according to Baudonivia, became a eunuch: Greg., Hist. 10.15, 504; and Baudonivia, 14. 7  Some have doubted the relic’s existence and Delehaye accused Baudonivia of, at the very least, confusing her story, since Saint Mammas had been buried in Caesarea and no translation of his relics to Jerusalem was recorded: Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Origines du culte des martyrs (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1912), 203–4. 8  Isabel Moreira, “Provisatrix Optima: St. Radegund of Poitiers’ Relic Petitions to the East,” Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993): 285–305, esp. 298.

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before Baudonivia arrived at Sainte-Croix or when she would have been very young. She likely confused the story or conflated a series of eastward missions in her account. Whether Baudonivia’s story is accurate or not, we can be sure that Radegund’s agents collected several relics, that her sights were set on a great prize, and that she finally won from the imperial court the best of all relics: a portion of the True Cross. By the sixth century the cult of the True Cross had spread throughout Christian cities east and west, based on a legend that claimed Helena, the mother of the first Christian Emperor Constantine, had discovered the relic during her 326 pilgrimage to Jerusalem and brought some portions of the cross to Constantinople.9 The Byzantine rulers Justin II and Sophia had sent at least one of these portions of the cross westward to Rome in a silver cross reliquary.10 Radegund planned her mission carefully, first gaining permission from King Sigebert to petition the Byzantine court, shortly after Sigebert seized Poitiers from Chilperic.11 She understood the diplomatic ramifications of her request. As Courtney Luckhardt suggests, “Radegund’s role in promoting this exchange is evidence of the role high-status holy women played in connecting the distant locales to one another with real items of symbolic value, such as relics, which involved actual physical movement of messengers and ambassadors.”12 The mission also demonstrates, as Conrad Leyser noted, the “Mediterranean breadth of Merovingian cultural horizons” already suggested in Radegund’s adoption of the Caesarian Rule.13 Sigebert was a sophisticated politician well able to see the diplomatic opportunity in Radegund’s mission. Sigebert had already demonstrated imperialistic ideals, from his selection of a Visigothic princess as his wife—a major departure from the much more modest backgrounds of his brothers’ wives—to his patronage of Fortunatus, a noted Italian poet trained in the Byzantine style. Sigebert’s very public support of Radegund’s request also bolstered his control of Poitiers. Radegund sent a delegation headed by her agent Reovalis to Constantinople in 568–9. Normally such envoys would carry rich gifts, but Radegund sent her messengers with nothing but her prayers, the guidance of saints, and a gift of eloquent poetry, courtesy of Fortunatus.14 Indeed, the timing of Fortunatus’s arrival in Poitiers in the midst of Radegund’s search for the relic suggests that Sigebert had sent Fortunatus to Poitiers in order to help Radegund prepare an adequate presentation for the Byzantine court, given Sigebert’s approval for the mission and his previous patronage of Fortunatus. Since Fortunatus had been educated in Ravenna, 9  H. A. Drake, “Eusebius on the True Cross,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 1 (1985), 1–22. Helena only became associated with the story of the cross’s discovery in Ambrose’s funeral oration in 395, although versions of the Invention probably circulated in Jerusalem several decades earlier. Edward David Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 41. On the circulation of the story, see Drake, “Eusebius on the True Cross,” 2; and Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, 39–41. 10 MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, 84–6 and plate 24. 11 Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 61 suggests this as the earliest date for Radegund’s request. 12  Luckhardt, “Gender and Connectivity,” 37. 13  Leyser, “‘Divine power flowed from this book,’” 284. 14  Baudonivia, 16.

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his credentials included experience with Byzantine poetry and protocol. If so, Sigebert’s introduction initiated a lifelong friendship between the nun and poet.15 Fortunatus composed three poems as part of Radegund’s pursuit of this relic. The first two, De excidio Thoringiae and Ad Artachen, accompanied the delegation to the imperial court, to explain who Radegund was and why she was worthy of receiving such a relic. The third was a poem of thanks sent to Justin II and Sophia after the relic arrived in Poitiers.16 All of these poems must have had Sigebert’s approval as part of the diplomatic mission. As Brian Brennan and Averil Cameron note, the poem of thanks was important as part of potential new ties between Merovingian Gaul and the Byzantine court, which may have sought an alliance with the Franks against the Lombards in northern Italy.17 Fortunatus used Radegund’s family as a frame for the poems he sent to Constantinople in search of the relic. De excidio Thoringiae and Ad Artachen addressed her cousin Amalafrid, who had survived Clothar’s attack on her homeland by fleeing to Constantinople, but the two poems introduced Radegund to the entire Byzantine court when they circulated there.18 The poems depicted Thuringia’s demise as a new fall of Troy, and portrayed Radegund as a Trojan woman mourning the loss of her brother, a grieving princess. The epic nature of De excidio Thoringiae was crucial to portraying Radegund as a heroic figure, displaying her royal status and her loyalty to the empire. While Fortunatus later depicted Radegund rejecting royalty in his vita, here her royal status justified requesting a royal gift from the imperial court. As Judith George observed, it served to “establish the religious and cultural credentials of the Frankish kingdom and demonstrate that the relic was not being requested for some barbaric or heretical backwater.”19 The cross, Fortunatus’s poems demonstrated, would be in good hands. Reportedly, Fortunatus’s letters and Radegund’s request created a sensation in Constantinople. In 569 Reovalis returned from Justin and Sophia with precious gifts of decorated gospel books, as well as a plain wooden box that contained a relic of the True Cross.20 Piotr Skubiszewski and Cynthia Hahn have demonstrated that the items Justin and Sophia originally sent have been lost, replaced in the eleventh century by the reliquary we see today, a small Byzantine cross with two transverses. 15  George, 1992, 29 suggests that Germanus of Paris sent Fortunatus to Poitiers with an introduction to Bishop Pascentius, but I prefer this explanation. 16  Averil Cameron dates this poem to 569 in “The Early Religious Policies of Justin II,” Studies in Church History 13 (1976): 59–60. 17  Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 62; and Cameron, “The Early Religious Policies of Justin II,” 59. 18  “De excidio Thoringiae,” Fort., OP Appendix 1; and “Ad Artachen,” Fort., OP Appendix 3. Ad Artachen is written in the first person from Radegund’s perspective, leading some scholars to argue that she was its author but Tardi and George both conclude that the style matches with that of Fortunatus and the forms of this genre. See George, 1995, 116nn.21–2; Tardi, Fortunat; and Dronke, Women Writers in the Middle Ages. Poem 8.1, “Ex nomine suo ad diversos” was also sent with the delegation to Constantinople. 19 Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992), 165. 20  Baudonivia, 16. The gospel books are not mentioned in the abbey’s inventories compiled in 1476 and 1571 and may have been lost. See Barbier de Montault, “Le Trésor.”

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Figure 1.  Reliquary of the True Cross, center plaque, © CESCM- G. Mongiatti, CM XLI, 709

The wood of the cross in this replacement is seated in the main plaque of a ­magnificent triptych with missing wings (Figure  1).21 The triptych’s two wings would originally have closed over the cross, with a frieze extending above and below the closed wings, as depicted in an eighteenth-century drawing (Figure 2).22 The plaque is decorated with enamel, gold, and stones and measures 6cm by 5.5cm.23 The nuns’ need to replace the lost relic and reliquary demonstrates its 21  The triptych reliquary probably dates to the tenth or eleventh century and replaced the early medieval one in order to “more accurately [embody] later medieval audience expectations of reliquaries of the True Cross, and more clearly [convey] the nature of the relic as the focus of Radegund’s sanctity”: Cynthia Hahn, “Collector and Saint: Queen Radegund and Devotion to the Relic of the True Cross,” Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 22, no. 3 (2012): 268–74, 268; see also Piotr Skubiszewski, “La Staurothèque de Poitiers,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale Xe–XIIe siècles 35 (1992): 65–75. Hahn suggests that the original reliquary was larger, such as a processional cross: Hahn, “Collector and Saint,” 272. This makes more sense in the story of Clotild’s 590 rebellion, when she wielded the reliquary like a sword. The replacement, however, better suited the devotional purpose of relics by the eleventh century. The new reliquary has five pieces: the lower transverse and the portion extending beneath it, the head, and two pieces to form the arms of the upper transverse. Martin Conway, “St. Radegund’s Reliquary at Poitiers,” Antiquaries Journal 3, no. 1 (1923): 1–12, 6. The relic of the True Cross is kept today by the nuns of Sainte-Croix in their new location in Saint-Benoît, where they relocated after the French Revolution. 22  BMP ms 547, fol. 165. 23  Conway, “St. Radegund’s Reliquary at Poitiers,” 6–8.

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Figure 2.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 547, fol. 165. Credit: Olivier Neuillé.

importance in later celebrations of Radegund’s cult and in negotiations over the nuns’ claim on her authority. The portion of the cross (the most potent and significant relic in Christendom) that the emperor sent to Poitiers at Radegund’s request was a major asset for the abbey. She renamed her community Sainte-Croix in its honor. The relic also contributed to Radegund’s growing fame and associated her with Helena. According to Baudonivia, “just as wise and blessed Helena instructed . . . what she did in

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Eastern lands, blessed Radegund did in Gaul.”24 Indeed, in addition to following her devotion to the True Cross, Radegund followed Helena’s humility by washing the feet of the poor and freeing prisoners.25 As a queen, married non-virgin, and a maternal figure, Helena offered yet another clear model for Radegund’s holy life and saintly reputation, a feminine route to sanctity and authority. In thanks for the relic, Fortunatus wrote the poem, Ad Iustinium et Sophiam Augustus.26 He compared the emperor and empress to Constantine and Helena: “Behold, Augusti, you rival each other with like offerings; you ennoble your sex, as he does his; the man brings back Constantine, the godly woman Helena; as the honour is alike so is the very love of the Cross.”27 He depicted them spreading Christianity by sharing the cross with the western world: “Through you the Cross of the Lord claims power over the whole world; where it was unknown now it is manifest and offers protection.”28 The poem displayed Radegund’s gratitude for the gift since “she prays, pouring dust over herself, with constant chanting, that the highest honour may remain yours through the long years.”29 In his poem of thanks Fortunatus established Radegund’s special devotion to the cross, setting the stage for his later vita, but presented her as a Thuringian queen.30 Emphasizing her royalty and origins connected Radegund to her cousin in Constantinople and depicted her as worthy of receiving an imperial gift. This royal imagery demonstrates once again the flexibility of Radegund’s holy image—Fortunatus could fit her identity to each audience’s preferences. For the Byzantine court Radegund must be an eminent person worthy of attention and gift exchange, while her holy vita required humility, which Fortunatus portrayed through her rejection of the royalty so important for obtaining this relic. Once the relic arrived in Poitiers in 569, Radegund expected Maroveus, as bishop, to install it in the abbey church’s altar. Such a relic enhanced the prestige and influence of both the monastery and Radegund. Placing the relic in or on the abbey’s church altar was a typical practice, but the True Cross relic had special significance in this location: the Council of Tours in 567 had ordered “that body of Lord [be] placed on the altar not in a figurative manner but in the image of the cross.”31 Radegund was shocked when Maroveus refused to install the relic. In many cities, the bishop was associated with the holy dead contained in his diocese. Bishops were also responsible for bringing new relics into the city. In Peter Brown’s words, “[t]he arrival of a relic or the establishment of a festival was an acid test of the alignments of a community.” The ritual of its arrival, guided by the bishop, “was an occasion between relic and bishops in which the secure holiness of the one high-lighted and orchestrated the personal and, so, fragile holiness of the other.” 24  “. . . ut sicut beata Helena sapientia inbuta. . . . Quod fecit illa in orientali patria, hoc fecit beata Radegundis in Gallia”: Baudonivia, 16. 25  Jo Ann McNamara, “Imitatio Helenae: Sainthood as an Attribute of Queenship” Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 141 (1996): 51–80. 26 Fort., OP Appendix 2.57, 87–90, 96. 27  George, 1995, 114. 28  George, 1995, 114. 29  George, 1995, 115. 30  Luckhardt, “Gender and Connectivity,” 37n.25. See also George, 1992, 62–7. 31 Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 186, citing Council of Tours (567), c. 3, Concilia Galliae, 178.

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This was also a chance for the city to come together in support of the bishop: “The saint arrives at a shrine and this arrival is the occasion for the community to show itself as a united whole, embracing its otherwise conflicting parts, in welcoming him.”32 By becoming host to the relic, Poitiers would enter an elite group of cities—including Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome—and become a greater pilgrimage destination. Radegund assumed that Maroveus would welcome such a potent relic and perform the installation without question. Instead, Maroveus refused to install the relic in Sainte-Croix’s abbey church altar. So firm was Maroveus’s refusal that he mounted his horse and left town for his properties outside Poitiers.33 Gregory described Maroveus’s disappearance as negligence, but Baudonivia was a good deal more critical of the bishop, condemning Maroveus as the agent of the “enemy of men” for failing to welcome the relic.34 For Baudonivia, Maroveus’s absence was far more than “negligence,” and she cast him as an opponent to the cross and an agent of evil. Diplomatically, Fortunatus avoided dealing with the entire situation by not even discussing the True Cross relic in his vita. Since the relic was a major event in Radegund’s life, in her relationship with Fortunatus, in his poetry, and in Poitiers’ history, its absence from Fortunatus’s biography is remarkable; his silence might indicate even greater disapproval than Baudonivia expressed. Although Radegund had managed to win over bishops throughout Gaul, Maroveus remained hostile to her and to her community. Modern interpretations of the bishop’s motivations have been more generous to Maroveus than were Radegund’s early medieval biographers. Raymond Van Dam has argued that Radegund’s presence in the town threatened Saint Hilary’s more established cult in Poitiers, closely associated with the bishops of Poitiers.35 Hilary had been bishop of Poitiers in 349 and his successors remained devoted to his cult, especially when Pascentius, abbot of the chapter church Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand that housed Hilary’s relics in a suburb just outside Poitiers’ southern walls, became bishop.36 Pascentius may have been hostile to Radegund, which would explain Fortunatus’s efforts to win him over by writing and dedicating both his Vita S. Hilarii and Liber de virtutibus S. Hilarii to him circa 567–8.37 Brian Brennan attributed the difficulties between Radegund and Maroveus to shifting devotional space in the town. Barbara Rosenwein suggested that Maroveus might have been annoyed that Radegund went over his head to Sigebert for approval of the relics mission.38 Radegund also rivaled Maroveus’s authority in his episcopal quarter of the city with her enormous popularity attracting petitioners away from his cathedral and through her close ties with royal relatives. 32  Peter Brown, “Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours,” in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 240, 238, and 247. 33 Greg., Hist. 9.40. 34 Greg., Hist. 9.40, 464; Baudonivia, 16. 35  Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles, 34. 36 Greg., Hist. 4.18. See also L. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule (Paris, 1910): 2.83. 37  Vita  S.  Hilarii, ed. B.  Krusch, MGH, AA 4.2 (1885); and Liber de virtutibus S.  Hilarii, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, AA 4.2. 38  Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 192.

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Since Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand and Hilary’s relics sat outside the city’s walls, while Sainte-Croix was built within the walls and next to the bishop’s cathedral, the installation of a prestige relic at Sainte-Croix had the potential to undercut the Saint Hilary cult.39 Radegund honored Hilary: Radegund had suggested that Hilary’s relics drew her to Poitiers, and she placed her abbey under Hilary’s protection in her letter to the bishops. Gregory of Tours first arranged to meet Radegund during a visit to Saint Hilary’s shrine but in the Glory of the Martyrs Gregory claimed that during his visit he offered a prayer before Sainte-Croix’s cross relic and witnessed a miracle that stunned him to silence.40 Baudonivia tells us that, after Radegund’s death and entombment in her funerary church, Poitiers’ monks were celebrating Saint Hilary’s feast in the church of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, when two women possessed by demons made so much noise that they disturbed the service. When the “abbot” Arnegisselu of Sainte-Radegonde and his priests returned to their own church, the women followed, prayed to Radegund for help, and were freed. While the story indicates that Radegund was more powerful in defeating these demons than Hilary, Baudonivia stresses that some were healed by Radegund and some by Hilary, “which showed that they were equals in virtue just as they were equals in grace”41 Nevertheless, the development of Sainte-Croix and then Radegund’s cult proved competition for Hilary’s devotees. Despite his negative press with Radegund’s biographers, Maroveus was a competent bishop who protected the town well. As Rosenwein noted, Maroveus demonstrated that he was an able protector by ransoming the town from King Guntram’s army in 585 by melting down a chalice, and he asked Childebert and Brunhild to send tax inspectors to Poitiers in order to revise the tax-lists for the relief of widows and orphans. Of course, these services came later—about twelve years after the relic’s arrival—and do not testify to his previous attentions.42 By 585 Sigebert had been dead ten years, and Radegund had lost her most prominent ally, while Gregory of Tours had faced charges from Chilperic—Maroveus was in a greater position of power then he had been in 567. Indeed, at Sigebert’s death Maroveus petitioned Childebert II to have the same authority over Sainte-Croix that he held over all the other monasteries in his diocese and, according to Gregory, received it.43 Any control the bishop did gain was short-lived and lost during the rebellion that started at Sainte-Croix two years after Radegund’s death. But even the excuses Gregory and Baudonivia offered for his disinterest in attending to Radegund or to her community show Maroveus tending to other members of the community; their criticism could also justify Gregory’s problematic interference in

39  See Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles, 33. 40 Greg., GM, 5. M. Vieillard-Troiekouroff wonders whether Gregory ever saw the relic, since his description seems wrong but the description is vague and we know that the reliquary we see today is not what Gregory observed: Les monuments religieux de la Gaule d’après les oeuvres de Grégoire de Tours (Paris 1976), 228. 41  Baudonivia, 27. 42 Greg., Hist. 7.24, 344, and 9.30, 448; Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 193. 43 Greg., Hist. 9.40, 465.

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another bishop’s see.44 Maroveus surely saw the nun as a threat to his authority, and found it irksome that her abbey lay within his diocese but beyond his control.45 Or, the relic’s destination was the problem: Rosenwein has suggested that Maroveus really objected to installing the cross within the abbey walls because it would make such an important and powerful relic inaccessible to the rest of his flock.46 There was a shift at this time from locating relics in episcopal cathedrals, where they might be accessible to all, as well as enhance the bishop’s authority, to moving major relics into a monastery.47 Radegund’s relics would be buried in an accessible funerary church rather than in the separated space of Sainte-Croix, and other major saints such as Martin, Médard, and Denis were buried in cathedrals where all Christians could visit their relics. By the late sixth and seventh centuries, however, monasteries increasingly housed saints’ relics, a practice that received official sanction from Queen Balthild in 660, when she reformed the churches for Médard, Denis, Aigrain, and other key saints into monastic institutions. Since access to monasteries was limited, this meant that relics in male monasteries became inaccessible to women, and relics in female monasteries were cut off to most of the population, one reason why Saint Romanus refused to be buried in his monastery, where women would not have access to his relics.48 In Saint-Jean at Arles, strict enclosure did not affect the local population’s access to Caesarius’s relics, because they lay in an external basilica.49 Maroveus demonstrated a preference for traditional access and hostility to such new ideas of bringing relics into monastic cloisters, such as by enclosing the True Cross at Sainte-Croix. The relics enhanced Sainte-Croix’s power and the abbess’s authority. Since Radegund followed Arles’ model, with an external funerary basilica, her decision to install the relic in Sainte-Croix reveals specific purpose. Perhaps Maroveus would not have objected if the True Cross’s destination was the church of Sainte-Radegonde. By choosing to bring her precious relics into Sainte-Croix, rather than deposit them in her funerary church, Radegund claimed their power for the nuns, and limited their use to her cloister alone. Thus Maroveus’s attitude is understandable. This was not a relic that had come to Poitiers to augment his reputation. Radegund, with royal consent, had secured the relic and it was intended for the altar within Sainte-Croix’s cloister, not the bishop’s cathedral. While the cross was a high prestige, desirable relic, its potency also exceeded Hilary’s, and thus the bishop’s. Maroveus was already dealing with a charismatic rival in Radegund and, since “the arrival of the relic was an occasion to highlight the personal merits of its recipient,” the advent of the powerful relic 44  Rosenwein, “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 195; Ian Wood, “The Secret Histories of Gregory of Tours.” Breukelaar suggests that the royal division that lumped Poitiers with Tours trumped the ecclesiastical division that made Bordeaux, not Tours, Poitiers’ metropolitan: Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul, 188–9. 45  For more on the challenge Radegund posed to Maroveus, see Brennan, “St. Radegund and the Early Development of Her Cult at Poitiers,” 340–54. 46 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 56; and again in “Inaccessible Cloisters,” 188. 47  Smith, “Women at the Tomb,” 170. 48  Smith, “Women at the Tomb,” 170. 49  Klingshirn, “Caesarius’s Monastery for Women in Arles,” 473.

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enhanced Radegund’s reputation instead of Maroveus’s standing.50 Of course, Maroveus’s cathedral had no significant relics to compare to the True Cross, and even Saint Hilary’s bones were held across town.51 He likely had a further ­complaint, however, that went unvoiced. As an ordained man who had risen so high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Maroveus was not accustomed to challenges from women, even from nuns or from queens. With her royal backing from Sigebert, Maroveus could not reasonably challenge Radegund, thus his removal from the entire situation. Radegund was left with a problem: how to install the relic without Poitiers’ bishop. In distress at Maroveus’s refusal, the legation from Constantinople withdrew to Tours to await a solution to their dilemma. Since the installation ceremony required an episcopal authority Radegund sought Sigebert’s aid once again. The king sent Bishop Eufronius of Tours (555–73), who installed the relic in SainteCroix’s altar with all due ceremony.52 Radegund thanked the king and his “most wise” queen Brunhild for sending Eufronius by commending her monastery to them.53 Radegund’s gratitude toward Eufronius cemented a strong relationship between her abbey and Tours—her nuns would, in the future, turn to the bishop of Tours for assistance rather than their own bishop. Gregory tells us that “Eufronius and his clerics came and, with the splendor of great chanting of psalms and twinkling candles and incense, he delivered the holy relics into the monastery in the absence of the local bishop.”54 Once again, Gregory is full of praise for his own see. Fortunatus wrote at least one poem and two letters for Eufronius, and Brennan suggests that these were composed after the True Cross relic’s installation in Sainte-Croix.55 Sigebert was thus deeply involved in this relics quest. He approved Radegund’s request to petition the Byzantine court in 567. He possibly sent her Fortunatus to help prepare suitable poems for the Byzantine emperor and court, for thanking the emperor once the gift arrived, and for installing the relic with glory. Then, when the relic arrived he approved its installation and sent her a friendly bishop to ensure that the ceremony was a success. The relic of the True Cross was a glorious prize that enhanced the prestige of his kingdom, the city he controlled, and the monastery his father had helped found. Sigebert already had experience with honoring saints with religious building projects as with the church for Médard in Soissons and knew how important these tasks were. He was also aware of the potential strength an alliance with Justin II might bring him, so creating this channel for negotiation was a powerful beginning. Brunhild may have been quite involved in these missions: Radegund’s thanks to her in Fortunatus’s poem could be just a formality, 50  Brown, “Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours,” 240. 51 Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 74. Of course, Hilary himself had penned the earliest hymns to the Cross in Poitiers. See Joseph Szöverffy, Hymns of the Holy Cross: An Annotated Edition with Introduction (Leyden: Classical Folia Editions, 1976), 55; and Joseph Szöverffy, “‘Crux Fidelis . . .’ Prolegomena to a History of the Holy Cross Hymns,” Traditio 22 (1966): 1–41, 5. 52 Greg., Hist. 9.40, 464. 53  Baudonivia, 16. 54 Greg., Hist. 9.40, 464. 55  Brennan, “The Career of Venantius Fortunatus,” 63.

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but they could be taken as acknowledgement of an important ally in the Visigothic princess and Frankish queen. Further evidence of this connection to the queen comes in 569, when Fortunatus composed a consolatio (poem 6.5) for Brunhild mourning the death of her sister, Galswintha, who had traveled through Poitiers and met Radegund on her way to marry Chilperic the previous year.56 Fortunatus put himself in the poem at Radegund’s side: “Indeed, I, newly arrived, watched her passing by . . . . With motherly love, gentle Radegund desired eagerly to see her, in case any could be of help to her. After close exchanges, the sweet princess came to her sweet presence, and spent time with her in peace; this Radegund now mourns bitterly.”57 Such a poem places Fortunatus and Radegund squarely in Brunhild’s camp against Chilperic and Fredegund, Galswintha’s murderers. When it finally took place, the installation ceremony involved a procession of the imperial delegation and gifts through the city gates and into the abbey. The procession was an adventus of a most holy relic and one that required even more celebration than an episcopal entrance.58 Fortunatus wrote his three famous hymns to the cross that are still popular in modern liturgy for the procession welcoming the relic to the city: Pange lingua gloriosi, Vexilla regis prodeunt, and Crux benedicta nitet.59 These texts, composed early in his relationship with Radegund, demonstrate the benefit of having a poet of Fortunatus’s caliber connected to her project— his hymns magnified her success and promoted the abbey as well as its important new relic. All three poems honored Christ and the cross and evoked the wood of the cross, depicting the relic as a tree. Pange lingua gloriosi portrayed the cross as the Tree of Salvation, emphasizing its importance in redemption. Both the Vexilla regis prodeunt and the Crux benedicta nitet used imagery of the Tree of Life, while the former emphasized Christ’s body and the latter focused on his sacrifice. Vexilla regis prodeunt used military language suggesting that the cross relic was on the march, conquering, and celebrating a noble triumph (prodeunt, vincis, triumpho nobili) and the Pange lingua poem used a meter (trochaic catalectic septenar) typically used in marching songs in Roman triumphs.60 Such language evokes a military triumph in the Roman style, one of the adventus ritual’s precursors. But also given the trouble with Maroveus, Fortunatus and Radegund felt the victors in a sort of battle once the relic finally entered Poitiers. As we will see in Chapter 6, the vexilla mentioned in the hymn will have special significance for the nuns in the fifteenth century, when they have a protracted dispute over banners and proper respect for the True Cross relic during Rogation Day processions. 56 Greg., Hist. 4.28; Fort., OP 6.5. 57 Fort., OP 6.5; trans. George, 1995, 46. 58 Dufraigne, Adventus Augusti, Adventus Christi, 297–318; Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 128. Fortunatus was familiar with processions and their pageantry, coming as he was from Byzantine ­territory, as his poetry shows: Fortunatus’s poem 5.3 for Gregory’s ordination as bishop of Tours describes Gregory’s adventus into that city, and poem 5.9 addressed to the clergy also details a procession. 59  Inge B. Milfull, “Hymns to the Cross: Contexts for the Reception of Vexilla regis prodeunt,” in Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer, and Karen Louise Jolly, eds., The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 43–57. 60 Milfull, “Hymns to the Cross,” 44. See also Josef Szövérffy, Die Annalen der lateinischen Hymnedichtung (Berlin, 1964–5), I: 69–73, 78–94.

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With the relic installed in Sainte-Croix, Radegund established a regular schedule for its “display and devotion.”61 Its shrine soon earned a reputation for potency through a series of miracles demonstrating an ability to restore the blind, deaf, mute, and lame, and the power to expel demons.62 Baudonivia’s description suggests that all were able to benefit from the cross’s power, which was a gift for all of Poitiers, perhaps to counter Maroveus.63 Gregory of Tours recorded three miracles at Poitiers, including one he witnessed, all involving sight or light, and all three occurring within Sainte-Croix in front of the church’s altar. First, a miraculous spark became a beacon of light during the Easter vigil, then, despite Gregory’s doubts, an oil lamp overflowed at the cross’s proximity, and, last, a blind girl placed before the relic regained her sight.64 The miracles established, for Gregory as well as other Christians, that the True Cross was a legitimate relic, and that it belonged enshrined in Sainte-Croix.65 The cross’s power was attached to Sainte-Croix’s altar, but it also imbued Radegund with authority, from the affiliation with both Helena and the Cross. According to Cynthia Hahn, the association with the cross gave Radegund her power to work miracles, which was possible because of her pure body. Making the sign of the cross brought other saints similar ability: “The power of the cross originates in the virtuous body that imitates Christ” such as Saint Margaret and other holy virgins. This virginal purity in Radegund was “reinforced by the presence” of the cross relic within her abbey.66 As Sofia Boesch Gajano noted, relics give power to their possessor. The relic becomes a “place” for miracles, bestowing that power on the larger place and person.67 While Radegund would eventually leave the abbey and be entombed at Sainte-Radegonde, the relic of the True Cross remained to protect Sainte-Croix. The nuns would draw on its prestige as a symbol for their community, and as a bargaining chip in times of trouble. It was the center of their power and authority. As Hahn has demonstrated, the relic of the True Cross at Poitiers enjoyed several layers of enclosure—within the city walls, within Sainte-Croix’s cloistered abbey, within the church, within its châsse, within its reliquary, and within the church’s altar.68 Although the cross was placed inside Sainte-Croix, it was not completely 61 Greg., GM, 5; Hahn, “Collector and Saint,” 271. 62  Baudonivia, 16. 63  Baudonivia, 16. 64 Greg., GM, 5; see also Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 56. De Nie notes that Gregory also described a miracle of a broken lamp at the death of Galswintha: Greg., Hist. 4.28; and de Nie, Views from a Many-Windowed Tower, 271. 65  Gregory also mentions a miracle at Saint-Martin, Greg., GM, 4.28 that Giselle de Nie, “History and Miracle: Gregory’s Use of Metaphor,” in Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 261–79 sees in Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi, 3.5–6. De Nie further discusses light and fire imagery related to miracles in Gregory’s writing in Views from a Many Windowed Tower, 167–79. 66  The illuminations in BMP 250 depict Radegund making the sign of the cross several times: Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 267–8. 67  Sofia Boesch Gajano, “Les reliques, un enjeu de pouvoir: Reliques et pouvoirs,” in Les reliques: objets, cultes, symbols: actes du colloque international de l’Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale (Boulogne-sur-Mer), 4–6 septembre 1997, ed. Edina Bozóky and Anne-Marie Helvétius (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999). 68  Hahn, “Collector and Saint,” 268–9.

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inaccessible to the people of Poitiers during the Middle Ages. Even the strict RC followed at Sainte-Croix allowed bishops to enter the nuns’ church, which is how Gregory witnessed the miracles, and workmen to enter the abbey precincts for repairs. We know from his poetry that Fortunatus was a frequent guest at Radegund’s table, we know that Sainte-Radegonde’s canons routinely officiated at the abbey’s altar, and we know that the nuns hosted the occasional visiting noble. The abbey was hardly a sealed vault with its relic under lock and key and, as we shall see in later centuries, the nuns were eager for others to observe this relic and attach its power to their abbey. Even if the average Poitevin did not enter SainteCroix or see the altar in the abbey’s church, the relic of the True Cross was displayed to the town during processions (see Chapter 6). On the Rogation Days, SainteRadegonde’s canons traveled to Sainte-Croix and then carried the abbey’s banners, processional cross, and relics in the procession that started from the cathedral. The last canon in Sainte-Radegonde’s contingent carried the True Cross relic’s châsse and was required to walk barefoot “out of reverence for God.”69 The relic also made an appearance in other processions that involved Sainte-Croix, including three feasts honoring the cross and all four of Saint Radegund’s feasts.70 On processions the relic became a symbol for its community, as well as a portion of the “Tree of Salvation.” Although the earliest attestations of these processions come in the ­fifteenth century, the cross’s place in these rituals likely began much earlier as is indicated by descriptions of procession, banners, and crosses in Fortunatus’s poetry, images the fifteenth-century rituals echo.71 After the French Revolution, in which Sainte-Croix’s buildings were destroyed, the community of nuns rebuilt their abbey outside Poitiers. That is the relic’s current location—so it is even more dramatically a relic belonging to Radegund’s nuns and not a relic for Poitiers’ townspeople.72 This contentious relationship between Sainte-Croix and the Bishop of Poitiers continued into later centuries. The stellar stained-glass window depicting the crucifixion installed in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Poitiers during the thirteenth century may have been some effort by later bishops to claim the connection to the cross and Christ’s sacrifice the relic brought to Sainte-Croix. Maroveus did have good reason to be jealous that it was Radegund, and not he, who brought the cross to Poitiers. Radegund was a powerful and successful rival who did not allow him his prerogatives or offer him much respect. Further, she had the ears of the king, Maroveus’s colleagues, and even the imperial court. Radegund’s mission to gain the cross and her insistence on installing it in the town after his refusal undermined the bishop’s authority. Radegund’s relics-hunting was yet one more facet of her construction of alliances, in this case allying herself with the congregation of saints, as Hahn argued, “imagining their presence in her devotions

69  BMP A6 (426), 21, Article VI, f. 2. 70  Sainte-Croix celebrated the Invention of the Cross on May 3, the Exaltation on September 14, and the translation of the relic of the True Cross to Poitiers on November 19. Radegund’s feasts were October 15, February 28, August 3, and her great feast on August 13. 71  See Chapter 6. 72  The Abbey of Sainte-Croix is now located in Saint-Benoit, about 6km outside Poitiers’ city center.

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and joining their company,” this time against a hostile local authority.73 She also tested her networks’ strength, relying on the support of ecclesiastical and secular authorities beyond Poitiers to augment her authority when not given her local officials’ respect. This woman had proven her connections to be broader and more significant than the bishop’s. HER FUNERAL AND RELICS Radegund’s funeral proved to be another test to Maroveus’s authority. Towards the end of her life Radegund wrote a letter to Gaul’s bishops (significantly, not to the bishop of Poitiers) in which she declared her wish to be buried in the church she had built near the abbey.74 Baudonivia confirmed that when Radegund died in 587, her body was brought to this church and interred with the other nuns’ bodies.75 None of the texts tells us much about this church or the chapter of canons Radegund had established to attend to the nuns’ tombs and minister to the spiritual needs of the nuns living at Sainte-Croix. We know that the church was initially dedicated to the Virgin and built outside the city walls, since Roman custom prohibited the burial of bodies within the walls.76 Carolingian kings treated the chapter and abbey as a single or united community (see Chapter 3). We also know that by the eleventh century this chapter contained thirty canons and began to rival Sainte-Croix for prominence in Radegund’s cult, but much more than that is not clear until then. Radegund died on August 13, 587 and was buried three days later.77 Early descriptions of Radegund’s funeral emphasized three elements: Maroveus’s failure to appear or honor the saint, the nuns’ distress at seeing Radegund’s body leave Sainte-Croix, and the acclaim for Radegund’s holiness even at her funeral. Gregory of Tours reported that he begged Abbess Agnes to stop weeping long enough for the funeral preparations, and discovered that Maroveus had not yet arrived from his parishes to perform the ceremony.78 In his account, Gregory pushed Agnes into having the funeral immediately but she resisted, worrying that it was wrong to bury Radegund in a place that had not been blessed by a bishop. Gregory claimed that she, and the unnamed people who attended the funeral, begged him to officiate— begging that was necessary to push him to interfere in another bishop’s see. Succumbing to their pleas, he blessed the altar in Radegund’s cell, and took charge of moving the body out of the abbey and into her tomb. They carried her body in a wooden casket, placing it inside a larger black marble sarcophagus (Figure 3).79

73  Hahn, “Collector and Saint,” 271. 74 Greg., Hist. 9.42, 474. 75  Baudonivia, 23. 76  See Chapter 4. 77 Greg., Hist. 9.2, 415. 78 Greg., GC, 104. 79  The Merovingian sarcophagus types Périn identified following Delehaye include a poitevin style, but Radegund’s black marble sarcophagus better resembles that of the Bordeaux style: Patrick Périn, “Les sarcophages mérovingiens: sarcophages de plâtre,” in Naissance des arts chrétiens: atlas des monuments paléochrétiens de la France (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1991), 299–305.

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Figure 3.  Radegund’s tomb, crypt of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers. Photo by Liliane Roch

Gregory offered a prayer at the tomb, but left for Maroveus the duty of performing the funeral mass and covering the tomb with a lid.80 Baudonivia followed Gregory’s description in Glory of the Confessors of his role in the ceremony. She offered no excuse for Maroveus, mentioning only that he was absent when it was time for the funeral and that Gregory arranged for the body to be buried, while leaving the final details for Maroveus.81 Neither Baudonivia nor Gregory reported whether Maroveus ultimately fulfilled his duties, performed the mass, or sealed the tomb, but we might assume from their silence that he did at least this much. Fortunatus’s silence on Maroveus’s absence at the funeral, like his decision not to discuss the True Cross, suggests he thought it impolitic to criticize Poitiers’ bishop. Since Fortunatus could not relate the saint’s funeral without mentioning Maroveus he left it out of his vita.82 80  It may not have been legal for Gregory to interfere in Maroveus’s diocese. See Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, 68; and Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul, 188–9. Breukelaar used royal administrative units to argue that Gregory had a legal right to interfere in Poitiers, since Tours and Poitiers were in the same royal unit, even though Bordeaux was Poitiers’ metropolitan. Rosenwein took issue with this in Negotiating Space, 58n.55, where she argued that Merovingian jurisdictions were not so neat. She suggests that the metropolitan was willing to intervene in the case of Clotild’s rebellion and thus Gregory should not have interfered. But the rebellion was rather a special case, in which everyone was involved. Plus, matters might have been different while Sigebert governed Poitiers than under Childebert, who held Poitiers during the rebellion. 81  Baudonivia, 23 and 25. 82  De Nie suggested that Gregory’s floral language in describing Radegund’s funeral was an imitation of Fortunatus, or perhaps even a quotation: De Nie, Views from a Many-Windowed Tower.

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Baudonivia emphasized the nuns’ distress after Radegund’s death, and their inability to follow her body out of the abbey. The women lined the abbey’s walls, weeping, as attendants transported the body to the nearby funerary church soon to be renamed Sainte-Radegonde in honor of her relics housed there.83 We can see in this episode confirmation of the nuns’ observance of enclosure as mandated by the RC, a notion that Baudonivia would be eager to emphasize writing in the wake of the nuns’ 590 rebellion. The scene recalls the vita of Pachomius, which says women were so cloistered they could not take their sister out of the monastery for burial.84 We can also see the removal of Radegund’s body as a loss of power for the nuns. In the seventh century monastic founders were more frequently buried in the abbey church—Burgundofara was buried inside Faremoutiers; Itta, Gertrude, and their successor Wulftrude inside Nivelles; Sadalberga and her daughter Anstrude in Saint-Jean of Laon. By maintaining authority over founders’ and saints’ tombs, the abbesses succeeding these women could claim their relics’ miracle-working power. Strict Caesarian enclosure suggests that Sainte-Croix lost this power to the church of Sainte-Radegonde, and thus later focused on the power they did have in the relic of the True Cross. When Radegund died in 587 her reputation as a holy woman was well established. Reports of Radegund’s funeral suggest that a movement to recognize her as a saint began directly after her funeral. Gregory, in whose world tombs were very important, recalled that “when we began to move the holy body and to escort it with the chanting of psalms, then possessed people shouted, acknowledged this saint of God, and said that she was tormenting them.”85 Baudonivia also recorded a miracle that took place at Radegund’s tomb: while women held candles around Radegund’s casket, some of the crowd claimed the candles should be placed on the tomb, to recognize her sanctity, while others disagreed. A clumsy boy settled the issue by dropping one of the candles on the tomb. The miraculous fall of the candle onto the tomb proclaimed the nun’s sanctity.86 Further miracles bore witness to her sanctity: a blind man regained his sight, Abbo of Burgundy was cured of toothache, possessed women were freed of their demon tormentors, and anyone drinking water from the tomb was healed of any general illness.87 Radegund’s body was thus another important relic in Poitiers, one observers immediately recognized as potent. Baudonivia stressed the tomb and Radegund’s body in describing primarily posthumous healing miracles, while Fortunatus focused on miraculous acts Radegund performed in life. Baudonivia’s different focus could be attributed to coming second—perhaps she was filling a lacuna in Fortunatus’s narrative, since posthumous miracles were popular demonstrations of sanctity—or to writing 83  Baudonivia, 24. 84  Rudge, “Dedicated Women and Dedicated Spaces,” 108n.62. 85 Greg., GC, 104, trans. Van Dam, 107. Peter Brown noted that “Gregory’s world is full of tombs”: “Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours,” 223. 86  Baudonivia, 25. That is the reading René Aigrain suggested: Sainte Radegonde, 145. McNamara suggests that some wanted to hail Radegund as a saint immediately after her death in order to forestall any attacks from Maroveus: NcNamara and Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 104n.130. While that may have been one motivation, Fortunatus’s poetry and Gregory’s reverence for the queen during her life suggest that the local population was eager to recognize Radegund as a saint. 87  Baudonivia, 24, 26, 27, 28.

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later, since there had been more opportunity for miracles to occur at the tomb. But even accepting both those ideas, Baudonivia and Dedimia may have been doing more: for the nuns who observed a strict rule of claustration to advertise miracles their founder had performed outside the abbey, in a space they could not access or control, seems strange, unless the abbess really did have clear, strong, and regular control over Radegund’s tomb and the basilica of Sainte-Radegonde. Since strong authority over that church and chapter appear clear in the eleventh century, since ninth-century charters treat the two communities as a single unit, and since a twelfth-century false charter asserted separation and authority for the church and chapter at this time, I suggest that Baudonivia and Dedimia stressed miracles at the tomb because the abbess had already established superiority and control over the basilica’s chapter, and such miracles would thus benefit the nuns as well as the canons in any resulting patronage. This argument would mean, however, that some of Radegund’s and Baudonivia’s stress on enclosure either stretched the truth, did not apply to the abbess (most likely), or had shifted in practice soon after the saint’s death. If so, the placement of Radegund’s body in Sainte-Radegonde would not have been so devastating initially, but as relations between Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix shifted over time, so would access to Radegund become more limited. REBELLION A major, violent rebellion over the choice of a new abbess at Sainte-Croix a few years after Radegund’s death threatened to upset all the careful protections she had established. Radegund’s choice to appoint Agnes as abbess, rather than take the position for herself, had freed Radegund from those responsibilities, letting her embrace a more ascetic life, and it ensured a clear transition after Radegund’s death, with officers selected according to the Rule. Agnes died shortly after Radegund and by 589 Leubovera had replaced her as Sainte-Croix’s abbess. Two nuns, Clotild and Basina, daughters of Frankish kings, believed that Leubovera was unsuited to the office and claimed that their own status as princesses made them better candidates.88 In 589 they left the abbey with forty nuns, sought help from their royal relatives, and—when that assistance was delayed indefinitely—hired mercenaries to help them attack the abbey.89 Their rebellion became a test of the protections Radegund had established for Sainte-Croix, and one of many opportunities for disputants to present competing notions of the precedents for female power and authority in the 88  Leubovera’s origins are unknown, but context suggests that she was of lowly birth. Our only source for the conflict is Gregory of Tours’ detailed account in his Decem libri historiarum, which describes Gregory’s interactions with the rebellious nuns, letters between Radegund and Frankish bishops, the actions of the bishops and kings in response to the rebellion, and the sentence imposed on Basina and Clotild: MGH SRM 1.1. 89 Greg., Hist. 10.16, 505. For more on the scandal, see Sarah Rütjes, Der Klosterstreit in Poitiers: Untersucht anhand der hagiographischen Quellen von Gregor von Tours “Decem libri historioarum” (Norderstedt: Grin, 2009); Kathrin Götsch, “Der Nonnenaufstand von Poitiers: Flächenbrand oder apokalyptisches Zeichen? Zu den merowingischen Klosterfrauen in Gregor von Tours Zehn Büchern Geschichte,” Concilium Medii Aevi, 13 (2010): 1–18; and Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines, chapter 3.

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abbey. The rebellious nuns’ bid for power gained traction because Radegund’s presence had confused the standard for leadership within the community: was Radegund authoritative because of her holiness, her royalty, or as a result of both? Since Radegund had appointed Agnes, her own example ran counter to the Rule’s requirement for elections, and her basis for the selection—their close relationship— suggested a precedent based not on merit but affinity. Such confusion permitted these princesses to claim power for themselves once Radegund and her designated leader died. Such a threat was common in Merovingian Frankia, as Régine Le Jan noted in her study of violence surrounding Frankish monasteries. She observed that abbesses faced violent threats soon after the death of an abbey’s protector, typically a close male relative: The sudden absence of a defender weakened the abbess’s position and enabled her enemies to assault her directly, hence to strike her family at the very heart of its symbolic power by seizing control of the sacra which, up to then, the abbess and her kinsman-protector had jointly guarded. In this society, politics turned on the control and manipulation of the sacred: aristocratic families had to make good their claims to a share of that key resource in order to sacralise their own power.90

Radegund (d. 587), Clothar (d. 561), Sigebert (d. 575), and Agnes (d. c.589) had protected Sainte-Croix. With the loss of these founding protectors, a new abbess was subject to competition from those nuns with family support. Le Jan argued persuasively that family honor motivated contests between abbatial contestants, with “competing groups . . . bent on strengthening their own position at others’ expense, and hence, on undermining their rivals’ position on their home territory.”91 Indeed, since Radegund had been married to Clothar, brother of Charibert and Chilperic, Basina and Clotild may even have seen themselves as Radegund’s nieces, heir to her power and authority, next in line after Agnes, Radegund’s “adopted daughter.” For them, Radegund was family, and since none of her relatives were named in the sources, Leubovera may not have had strong enough connections to offer Sainte-Croix sufficient protection. Gregory offers two versions of the nuns’ motivations for rebelling against Leubovera. The first is this complaint about Leubovera’s status, with Basina and Clotild jealously complaining that they deserved the abbacy because of their personal prestige.92 The second motivation, offered only after the rebellion ended in a tribunal set to judge the nuns, is more sophisticated: the women alleged that Leubovera was an unsuitable abbess because she lived immorally and she had mismanaged the abbey. Beyond their claims of status, the nuns’ specific complaints

90  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 261–2. 91  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 261. 92  Labande-Mailfert mentions a message Gregory claimed to have received from Fortunatus: see Yvonne Labande-Mailfert, “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” in Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers: Quatorze siècles de vie monastique (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1986), 21–116, 63; and Fort., OP 8.12a and 12.

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depict them more as reformers intent on removing an inappropriate influence from Sainte-Croix than as spoiled princesses demanding greater office for themselves. The rebellion led by Clotild, King Charibert’s natural daughter, and her cousin Basina, daughter of King Chilperic and his first wife Audovera, led to extraordinary violence within the abbey and the city.93 The kings had placed their daughters in the abbey: Charibert had sent Clotild to Sainte-Croix when he was in control of Poitiers, at some point between 561 and his death in 567–8. Chilperic had placed Basina in Sainte-Croix and then tried to remove her for a marriage, but was stopped by Radegund. Gregory of Tours depicted Clotild as the instigator of the conflict, binding Sainte-Croix’s nuns through an oath that they would bring charges against Leubovera, remove her from office, and replace her with Clotild.94 Gregory’s account is biased against Clotild—as he is against most who act violently against the Church—and the accuracy of his account is questionable. As Dailey has shown, Gregory took extensive liberties with this material, depicting Maroveus and the rebelling nuns as more vicious than necessary and altering details about SainteCroix’s adoption of the RC.95 Unfortunately, he is our only source for the details of this extraordinary rebellion. Fortunatus may have sought Gregory of Tours’ assistance in vague terms in poems 8.12 and 8.12a but did not explicitly discuss the rebellion. Gregory’s account circulated widely, and probably became the ­motivation for Baudonivia’s vita, designed to remind the Christian community that Sainte-Croix was a peaceful abbey, and demonstrate that the abbey had a tradition of devout monastic women inside its walls. According to Gregory, forty or more nuns swore an oath with Clotild and left Sainte-Croix’s abbey walls in late winter 589 in order to seek an audience with her royal relatives. Although both Chilperic and Charibert were dead, the women could see their uncle Guntram or cousin Childebert II. The men had made peace with one another in the 587 Treaty of Andelot, and arranged to govern together, but Childebert was more formally in control of Poitiers. The nuns arrived in Tours on March 1, en route to see Guntram at Chalon-sur-Saône, perhaps expecting more support from him than from Childebert. Clotild sought out Bishop Gregory and asked if she might leave the entourage of nuns in his care. The women must have been badly in need of his help; they had walked the 100km from Poitiers to Tours, nobody had offered them food or hospitality along the way, and rain had made the roads wet and muddy.96 Although Gregory claims he advised them to return to the abbey, upon fear of excommunication for breaking their Rule’s enclosure, Clotild and her sisters persisted.97 When Gregory suggested that they seek out the aid of their local bishop, Maroveus, they exclaimed that the situation was partly his fault. Their claim did not surprise Gregory, who had dealt with poor 93  Clotild’s royal parentage is suspect: Greg., Hist. 9.39, 460; and Ian Wood, “Deconstructing the Merovingian Family,” in R.  Corradini, M.  Disenberger, and H.  Reimitz, eds., The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources, and Artefacts (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149–72. 94 Labande-Mailfert suggested that Clotild lured Basina into turning against Leubovera: “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” 61. 95  Dailey, “Misremembering Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix.” 96  Although not too muddy for the tax collectors: Greg., Hist. 9.30. 97 Greg., Hist. 9.42, 470–4; and see Chapter 1.

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relations between the abbey and Poitiers’ bishop before, but the assertion might have confused Childebert had he heard it. The same year that Clotild left her abbey, Maroveus asked Childebert to revise the tax rolls for Poitiers, appearing to help his town and care for its residents again. Maroveus had received permission from Childebert to supervise Sainte-Croix in the same way as all the other abbeys in his diocese at Radegund’s death in 587. In Gregory’s account, Maroveus appeared as Leubovera’s strong supporter, a major change from his hostility to the nuns, suggesting that they had indeed found a way to work together. But this new relationship and support for Sainte-Croix’s abbesses meant no local assistance for these rebels. Since Clotild insisted upon seeking her family’s help Gregory convinced her to wait for warmer months before moving on from Tours. By offering the nuns support he involved himself again in the bishop of Poitiers’ affairs without proper jurisdiction. In the summer, Clotild left the nuns in Tours under Basina’s control and sought King Guntram, who received her with honor and promised to send some bishops to Tours to investigate her complaints against Leubovera. Clotild discovered upon her return that several of the nuns she had left in Tours had accepted marriage proposals. She and the nuns waited in Tours in vain for the promised investigators. After a few months, the nuns returned to Poitiers, but not to Sainte-Croix. They took over the church of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, just outside the town walls. Gregory reports that they “took refuge” in that building, perhaps seeking sanctuary there, but Saint-Hilaire’s canons did not find the nuns’ presence congenial, since the women had surrounded themselves with a gang of criminals.98 Installed at Saint-Hilaire, the women once again asserted that their royal blood made them more suitable to lead the abbey than Leubovera, and demanded her dismissal. Gregory hinted that dissension was not new among Sainte-Croix’s nuns—a previous nun had accused Agnes of many crimes and fled to Saint-Hilaire. She later used the same rope that she used to escape to climb back inside Sainte-Croix’s walls and became an anchorite. When she later heard of Clotild’s revolt against Leubovera, she broke down the door to her cell and joined in the revolt.99 Gregory tells of a similar dispute in Tours: Ingitrude, founder of a monastery in SaintMartin’s forecourt, appointed her daughter Berthegund abbess, but she was unable to stay in the monastery. Mother and daughter later quarreled over property. Ingitrude then appointed her niece abbess and barred Berthegund from entering the abbey. When Ingitrude died, Berthegund asked Childebert to make her abbess, and the king gave her control over all her mother’s property, even that already given to the abbey. Berthegund seized the estates and goods with a group of toughs, and was abusive to the abbess (her cousin).100 Gregory put this incident and the Sainte-Croix rebellion in the same chapter of his History, and Berthegund was

98 Greg., Hist. 10.15, 502. Labande-Mailfert says that Childéric the Saxon was the head of the band of criminals but gives no citation for that information: “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” 65. How they funded these troops is unclear. 99 Greg., Hist. 9.40, 466. 100 Greg., Hist. 10.12.

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from Poitiers, so Gregory’s close experience with this dispute must have been in his mind while telling the story of Clotild and Basina.101 Attacks on abbesses were common in the seventh century: Le Jan notes that violence against three abbesses, Fara at Faremoutiers, Wulftrude at Nivelles, and Anstrude at Laon, was intended to “drive them out and to take over control of their foundations.” Since the violence these three abbesses suffered followed attacks and murders on close male relatives, Le Jan sees the abbesses’ struggles as part of “power-struggles that pitted rival groups against one another: they were the sign and expression, in each case, of a crisis of familial power” after the loss of a protector.102 In Laon, for example, the founding abbess Sadalberga appointed her daughter Anstrude as her successor, but Anstrude suffered such extensive violence from the mayor of Neustria Ebroin, including her brother Balduin’s murder, that even her sister nuns turned on her.103 Clotild and Basina’s thugs are less shocking in that context. While we know nothing of Leubovera’s family, we do know that the abbey had suffered major losses in quick succession with Radegund’s and Agnes’ deaths. Without the firm rudder that these two women had provided Sainte-Croix since its foundation, it would be surprising had the abbey not faced some crisis about its leadership and direction. Sainte-Croix’s rebel nuns’ use of Saint-Hilaire as a refuge earned them the attention of the neighboring bishops of Bourdeaux, Angoulême, and Périgueux, as well as of Maroveus. While the nuns had long awaited the chance to air their grievances, they did not find this council of bishops open to their arguments. The bishops immediately censured the women for violating enclosure and urged them to return to Sainte-Croix. When the nuns refused to leave Saint-Hilaire or return to their abbey, the bishops excommunicated the women. To the assembled bishops’ shock, Clotild’s thugs attacked the bishops “so that the bishops fell onto the pavement and it was difficult for them to stand again; the deacons and survivors were covered by blood and left the church with their heads smashed.”104 Emboldened by the attack’s success, Clotild used her thugs to gain control of Sainte-Croix’s estates and forced the abbey’s dependents to work for her. She remained unable to enter Sainte-Croix, however, since she threatened to murder the abbess if only she could gain entry to the buildings. This threat finally attracted King Childebert’s attention, and he ordered the local secular authority, Count Macco, to end the rebellion, but Macco made no effort to interfere. Childebert’s next move was to send a priest, Theuthar, to settle the dispute, but Clotild refused to appear before him unless her excommunication was lifted. The bishops refused to bow to her pressure. Now eight or nine months into the rebellion, lack of resources accomplished what the bishops’ sanctions had not. The winter’s cold forced most of the women 101  Dailey, “Misremembering Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix.” 102  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 250. 103  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 258–9; Vita Anstrudis, ed. W. Levison, MGH SRM 5 (Hanover 1913), 66–78. 104 Gregory’s description reveals his own horror at the nuns’ actions, but also masks whether Clotild had any role in setting the men on these bishops: Greg., Hist. 9.41, 467.

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to disperse. Some returned to their families, some to religious houses they had lived in before entering Sainte-Croix, and some moved on to new relationships they had formed with men, but Clotild, Basina, and a few others remained at Saint-Hilaire until the spring. Even these few fought amongst themselves for supremacy. A year after the revolt’s beginning, a desperate Clotild sent her gang to attack the abbey, kidnapped Abbess Leubovera, assaulted the prioress (briefly kidnapping her instead), and set fire to an abbey storehouse, all just before Easter in 590. Maroveus ordered Clotild to return the abbess, and refused to celebrate Easter until she did so, thus rousing the townspeople against her and proving, again, his willingness to protect the town and oppose the nuns. Favianus, a royal official, somehow managed to free the abbess from a house near Saint-Hilaire while the ruffians were on the other side of town launching an assault on the abbey and on the church of Sainte-Radegonde. Gregory tells us that someone was killed in front of the shrine of the True Cross and in front of Saint Radegund’s tomb. In this foray, Clotild took control of Sainte-Croix and, apparently, began using it as her base of operations, leaving Basina behind at Saint-Hilaire. This separation increased friction between Clotild and Basina; the latter sought reconciliation with Leubovera, only to quarrel with the abbess again almost immediately. For some reason Leubovera remained in the church of Saint-Hilaire after her rescue, rather than returning to the abbey, and in this quarter her servants fought a three-sided battle with Clotild’s gang and Basina’s servants. The gangs were only tenuously under their mistresses’ control, as Basina’s and Leubovera’s men fought one another even after the two nuns made a second peace. Finally Kings Childebert and Guntram together sent bishops from their two kingdoms to end the revolt. Gregory of Tours refused to participate until the “bloodthirsty rebellion” was over, upon which the kings ordered Count Macco to end the revolt, with force if necessary. Clotild’s band of ruffians was no match for the Count, who crushed the revolt, killing those men who resisted him.105 During the encounter, Clotild recklessly used the abbey’s most holy relic—the True Cross—against the men, waving it about and warning them not to touch her! Wisely, the men refused to engage her, but the rebellion nevertheless was over. After the rebellion ended, Bishops Guntram and Childebert established a tribunal, determining the rebellious nuns’ fate as well as whether their charges against Leubovera had any merit. According to Gregory, who served on the tribunal, the bishops relied on the RC in their deliberations. While Albrecht Diem has demonstrated early medieval abbesses typically addressed conflict through their “personal charisma” without reference to a Rule, the RC was an exception that enforced discipline, maintained order within the abbey, and ensured continuity with the “founding generation.”106 105  Those who resisted the Count suffered injury, and some had their ears and noses cut off. See the debate in the Journal of Women’s History over the mutilation of noses as punishment: Patricia Skinner, “The Gendered Nose and its Lack: ‘Medieval’ Nose-Cutting and its Modern Manifestations,” Journal of Women’s History 26, no. 1 (2014): 45–67; and Bonnie Effros, “Blaming it on the ‘Barbarians’: Alleged Uses of Nose-Cutting among the Franks,” Journal of Women’s History 26, no. 1 (2014): 74–80. 106  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 55 and 57.

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When Basina and Clotild had the tribunal’s attention, they presented more serious allegations against Leubovera than Gregory had recorded for them in his initial discussion of their grievances. While the rebellion had appeared to be about status and royal blood, at the tribunal Clotild and Basina complained that Leubovera was too cruel, that she had failed to provide the proper amount of food or clothing, and that she did not treat her nuns with respect.107 They alleged that Leubovera had misused material meant for the altar, making clothing with it for her niece.108 They claimed that Leubovera had invited lay visitors to dine at her table and had even celebrated her niece’s engagement with a lavish party at the abbey’s expense while the nuns went hungry. The nuns alleged that Leubovera kept a man in drag for her personal pleasure, that she kept eunuchs to give herself imperial grandeur, that she played board games, had visitors, misdirected abbey property and funds, and that she failed to provide proper food, clothing, and housing for her nuns.109 Such complaints present the nuns as reformers seeking to address abuses present in their community, committed or encouraged by the abbess. Leubovera defended herself by pointing out that Radegund had followed or permitted the same policies she was accused of performing—for the first time the foundation Radegund had established permitted an abbess to build a defense of the powers and privileges the saint had left to her. The bishops determined that Leubovera could not be charged.110 They restored the abbess and excommunicated Clotild and Basina, but Guntram soon lifted even that penalty. The women continued to pursue their grievances against Leubovera with Childebert II, alleging a conspiracy between Leubovera and Fredegund, whom none of them had reason to love, but this too was declared baseless.111 The nuns’ decision not to accuse the abbess of further crimes such as homicide, witchcraft, or adultery when invited to do so by the bishops suggests that their grievances were in earnest.112 Basina later recanted, sought forgiveness, and returned to Sainte-Croix, while Clotild refused to be governed by Leubovera and so lived on an estate gifted by Childebert.113 We might read her refusal to return to Leubovera—yet her persistence in the monastic life in private—as petulance, or as conviction in her vows and righteousness. The light penalties for a rebellion that included theft, murder, assault on bishops and nuns, as well as the breaking of the Rule, demonstrate that Basina and Clotild were indeed women of high status, good connections, and strong convictions. 107 Greg., Hist. 10.16, 505. 108 Greg., Hist. 10.16, 505. 109  The man Clotild identified as the transvestite, however, turned out to live more than 40km from Poitiers, to be impotent, and unknown to the abbess. Unsuccessful in that charge, Clotild alleged that Leubovera had castrated men to keep as eunuchs as if she were an empress: Greg., Hist. 10.15, 504. Also see Partner, “No Sex, No Gender,” 419–43; and Guy Halsall, “Material Culture, Sex, Gender, Sexuality and Transgression in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in History and Archeology, 1992–2009 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 323–56. Halsall makes the important point that Gregory’s telling of the story followed his custom of exposing “the worldly to ridicule and satire, something only too possible at the tribunal of the rebellious nuns, which frequently descended into farce.” Gregory might expect us to see the claims of Clotild and Basina as ridiculous demonstrations of their petty worldliness rather than as serious charges intended to seek justice for valid grievances. 110 Greg., Hist. 10.16. 111 Greg., Hist. 10.17. 112 Greg., Hist. 10.16, 505. 113 Greg., Hist. 10.20.

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In the end it was only violation of enclosure and the Rule that earned them any penalty at all, at least as Gregory reported it, demonstrating again how very important that Rule selection was for Sainte-Croix and in its supporters’ eyes. This incident also begins a pattern of complaint and reform that is explored in Chapter 7. It demonstrates the power of the support network Radegund had initiated with her episcopal friendships. Gregory “copied” several letters as part of his description of the nuns’ rebellion— letters to and from bishops, letters to and from Radegund. As with everything in his History, we should hesitate to believe these are pure transcripts of letters the asserted authors composed. However, later nuns, bishops, and kings acted upon Gregory’s evidence as if it was a factual and honest telling of events, and as if these letters were historical fact. Thus, when Gregory claimed that Radegund wrote in her letter to the bishops: “May it never be allowed to come about that our Mother Superior . . . shall be molested or harassed by any man or that anything in this nunnery should in any way be alienated or changed, on the contrary, may they be given every protection and assurance,” he gave a powerful piece of documentation to future abbesses at Sainte-Croix—whether he faithfully transcribed Radegund’s words or he fabricated them to shame the rebels. Later abbesses could claim on the basis of Gregory’s account that their founder and patron saint had established Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s autonomy and power and that she had secured the bishops’ protection and support for that abbess. By specifically stating that nothing in the abbey change, the letter gives the nuns a powerful argument against shifting power dynamics in the later Church. The rebellion made Radegund’s abbey and nuns notorious in Merovingian Frankia and jeopardized the entire project that had, until then, been so successful. As Dailey has suggested, Gregory’s account is so detailed and so harsh in its telling because the bishop was embarrassed about his interference in another bishop’s diocese. His own niece, Justina, was one of the nuns who suffered violence for remaining loyal to Leubovera, so his initial assistance for Basina and Clotild was not only inappropriate but harmful to his own family.114 Gregory’s desire to moralize against such violence against the Church made his account a lurid story and forced Sainte-Croix’s nuns as well as Radegund’s hagiographers to adjust their own actions. Fortunatus responded by avoiding any contentious issues, such as the relics quest, the funeral, or the rebellion. Baudonivia made sure to have a villain outside the abbey to blame for Radegund’s frustrations, whether Clothar or Maroveus. Composing these texts as defense of Radegund’s abbey as well as her holy memory against notorious violence would become a precedent, similar to Anstrude’s commissioning of a vita for her mother Sadalberga in the midst of the attack on her abbey of Saint-Jean-de-Laon according to Yaniv Fox, “in an attempt to salvage what remained of her family’s prestige.”115 Fortunatus’s poetry may have done the same; as Roberts observed, the poems in book 8 may be seen “as part of an initiative to restore the foundation’s standing after the damage to its reputation incurred 114  Dailey, “Misremembering Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix,” 121. 115 Fox, Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, 85.

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by the revolt.”116 Of course, the precedent worked in reverse, as well, as when the Anglo-Saxon princesses Saethryth and Aethelburh came to govern Faremoutiers as, Le Jan suggests, the result of crisis in the abbey.117 These first tests of Radegund’s two strategies demonstrate how effective they were at defending female monastic authority, as well as provide documentation for later abbesses on how to employ these strategies at crisis moments. Radegund’s network of secular and episcopal allies defended her abbey during her struggle to procure a major relic for Sainte-Croix, during the crisis of her funeral, and during the rebellion at Sainte-Croix in 589–90. Even while under literal siege, the abbesses of Sainte-Croix found success by relying on the networks of allies Radegund had established, as well as in leaning into the stories of Radegund’s cult. Abbess Dedimia employed Baudonivia to restore the abbey’s reputation after the crisis of 589–90, which gave the nuns crucial stories of Radegund’s funeral and relics hunt that would otherwise have been unavailable in the later cult. These three tests then demonstrated the power of Radegund’s efforts to protect monastic authority in Poitiers, just as they helped guide later abbesses when they faced their own struggles. 116 Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow, 285. 117  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 254.

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3 Illuminating the Saint The story of Radegund’s life remained the crux of the saint’s cult that developed in Poitiers for centuries after her death, as her two communities based their communal identity on their patron’s life stories. In the late eleventh century the nuns of Sainte-Croix created a magnificent illuminated manuscript that offered a visual translation of the sixth-century vitae for contemporary audiences. The illuminations depicted Radegund as a young captive, a reluctant queen, a cloistered nun, a miracle-worker, and a saint. Five centuries after Fortunatus’s original composition, this manuscript renewed Radegund’s cult and allowed its devotees to focus on a saint with a newly burnished aspect. This fit into a larger eleventh-century effort to restore attention to Radegund and her cult, a campaign the abbess of Sainte-Croix spearheaded, and one that saw the restoration of the saint’s tomb in the funerary church of Sainte-Radegonde. Memories of Radegund were powerful for her foundations. As Amy Remensnyder has argued, the past such institutions remembered or, “imagined,” created an identity through which they negotiated the broader world. Focus on Radegund’s tomb or her depictions in manuscript illumination were cohesive, bringing the nuns and canons of Radegund’s communities in Poitiers together. Their efforts to refocus on a mutually constitutive, identifying past may also betray stress and crisis, as Remensnyder noted: “recourse to the past may also result from a sense of general discontinuity, alienation from a present characterized by rapid social change, and from a past become too distant. The remedy is found through a rediscovery of the past, the creation of a meaningful continuity between it and the present.” The eleventh century was such a time of change in the ecclesiastical world, and SainteCroix’s nuns reaffirmed their authority through connection with their founder. As we shall see in Chapter 5, the canons explored this same tactic two hundred years later. What happened in the past is less important than what can be remembered ­ resent and used as a model, which can “(consciously or unconsciously) . . . structure p action.”1 The legend of Radegund’s life, foundations, authority, and influence could grow, transform, and adapt to her devotees’ needs as they changed over time. Sadly, we know little of what transpired over those five centuries after Radegund’s death. Following the rebellion at Sainte-Croix in 589–90, evidence about Radegund’s communities in Poitiers becomes even more fragmentary. There are some royal diplomas from the Carolingian period, some architectural and epigraphical evidence 1 Amy  G.  Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 2–4.

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from the church of Sainte-Radegonde, and the illuminated manuscript, created between 1050 and 1100. Starting in the 1070s, papal involvement in jurisdictional disputes provided more robust documentation of Radegund’s foundations, as we will see in Chapter 4, but for the earlier part of the eleventh century we must work harder to excavate the skeletal source base. Such digging reveals that Poitiers and Radegund’s foundations experienced a crisis in their traditional support network at the time they devoted such attention to Radegund’s vitae and to rediscovering and articulating their past. In this chapter, I examine Radegund’s two communities’ development in Poitiers during the period between the composition of her vitae and the communities’ jurisdictional issues at the end of the eleventh century. During this period, Radegund’s foundations grew as royally supported, influential communities within Poitiers’ religious landscape, as well as in the broader Church. They used the archive established with Radegund’s hagiography to gain patrons for their institutions, while Sainte-Croix’s abbesses adapted models of female authority in the sixth-century texts for contemporary audiences. They also left to later abbesses, nuns, and canons a newly developed network of supporters and a crucial visual language for depicting Radegund. We will see in the chapters that follow their work’s enormous impact on the later cult and its relationships. The royal support network that Radegund had established for her abbey continued to protect Sainte-Croix through the tenth century. Carolingian kings followed the example of their Merovingian predecessors in supporting Radegund’s communities. Between the 770s and the 880s the Carolingians governed Aquitaine as a kingdom directly under their control rather than entrusting the large territory to a duke. A series of kings placed the abbey under royal protection and took an interest in its affairs.2 Abbesses followed Radegund’s example by seeking royal confirmation of privileges and properties and contributed to the archive that future abbesses might draw on to further enhance their authority. The Capetian kings also followed this model, or began to do so, as in 1012 Abbess Béliarde thanked King Robert II for his help in finding Saint Radegund’s relics, which had gone missing at some point.3 Robert was a great monastic patron, and had given extensively to Cluny, to the abbey of Saint-Aignan in Orléans, SaintSerge in Angers, and he was also a patron of colleges of secular canons. Apart from Robert II’s financial assistance, however, the Capetian kings pulled back from the abbey of Sainte-Croix and church of Sainte-Radegonde as the Counts of Poitou, who also became the Dukes of Aquitaine, exerted firm control over Poitiers in the eleventh century. The Capetian kings, nominally suzerain lords over Poitou and Aquitaine, had a difficult time exerting any direct influence in the duchy without the Count/Duke’s agreement, just as the Capetians saw counts and dukes throughout 2  Although Walther Kienast argues that the Carolingians were not terribly active in governing the region: “Wirkungsbereich des französischen Königstums von Odo bis Ludwig VI (888–1137) in Südfrankreich,” Historische Zeitschrift 209, no. 3 (1969): 529–65. 3  Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale. 1. Ville de Poitiers, ed. Robert Favreau and Jean Michaud (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1974), 95–6.

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their territory “appropriate” their royal power.4 They even faced outright hostility in Poitou: Count/Duke William II/IV had opposed the election of Hugh Capet (Robert II’s father) and, in 988, fought against him in support of Louis of Lower Lorraine, one of the last Carolingian claimants to the Frankish throne, whom William protected in Poitiers. William V/VII even refused King Henry I’s summons against Normandy in 1051–2. The Capetian kings were not again notably involved at Sainte-Croix until the thirteenth century. Yet, the Count/Dukes that replaced the Capetians as the ultimate secular power in the area were distracted from Poitiers by struggles with rebellious castellans, particularly in the south of the duchy of Aquitaine, and came to rely on a newly created seneschal in Poitiers starting in the mid-eleventh century. As a result, the abbey of Sainte-Croix found itself without the strong secular support it had relied upon for centuries. By the end of the eleventh century the nuns of Sainte-Croix resolved this crisis by tying a new defender into their network of support: the pope and his legates (see Chapter 4). The period between King Robert II’s last demonstration of assistance in 1012 and Pope Alexander II’s letter in 1072 was one of transition between a traditional network and a new supporter for Sainte-Croix’s abbesses. Indeed, one might even argue that the Count/Dukes encouraged connections between monasteries and the papacy through the exemptions William I/III established for Cluny at its foundation in 910 and again by William VI/VIII giving Saint-Eutrope at Saintes to the order in 1081. When the nuns’ traditional strategy for maintaining authority by relying on authorities’ support struggled for seven decades in this period, Sainte-Croix’s abbesses sought other ways to demonstrate their power and privileges, relying on their secondary strategy of cultural connection. First, Sainte-Croix’s abbesses supported construction in the church of SainteRadegonde. Some of this building work repaired damage wrought on the church by military assaults and an earthquake. Some of the construction restored access to Radegund’s tomb and body.5 The abbess recorded her support of the construction in the church with an inscription. By doing so she announced her place as superior over a dependent church and chapter, and claimed connection to the relics in front of all who visited Radegund. Second, the nuns restored their greatest relic, the fragment of the True Cross, with a new reliquary that better suited the personal devotional practices of an eleventh-century female monastic community.6 Such an important relic and luxurious reliquary must have sat on Sainte-Croix’s church altar or in the abbey’s treasury, reminding high-status visitors of the community’s wealth, power, and reach. Third, Sainte-Croix’s nuns created an illuminated manuscript of Radegund’s vitae.7 This libellus, or “little book”—a genre devoted to the saint’s miracles, vitae, 4  Patrick Geary, “Monastic Memory and the Mutation of the Year Thousand,” in Sharon Farmer and Barbara  H.  Rosenwein, eds., Monks & Nuns, Saints & Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 19–36, 21. 5  Whether or not this was actually the sixth-century saint’s body was immaterial; the tomb contained relics and they were declared Radegund’s. It was common to “discover” holy bones hidden in the church during cults’ refoundation: see Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, 30. 6  Hahn, “Collector and Saint.” 7  BMP 250 (136).

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and liturgical material—presented a rich pictorial narrative of the saint’s life, enhancing sixth- and seventh-century representations of Radegund.8 Narrating Radegund’s life again in manuscript illumination allowed the nuns to fashion their own vision of the saint, calling attention to the holy details that best demonstrated Sainte-Croix’s power and authority. To this purpose, the manuscript’s miniatures emphasized the monastic ideal of a cloistered, obedient woman devoted to prayer, virginity, and charity, creating a new version of Radegund’s vitae that better re­presented Sainte-Croix’s eleventh-century community. The manuscript reflected the abbey’s efforts to maintain Radegund’s alliances and to gain further support from external authorities. The manuscript, the saint’s vitae, and documents secured from allies after 590 created an archive documenting the abbess’s authority that later abbesses could tap when dealing with challenges. These two approaches follow, once again, the pattern Radegund established: in order to maintain authority the abbess secured assistance and encouragement from her supporters—as she did in 1012 with the Frankish king. Then, especially when this support was complicated or slow in yielding results, as it was in the mid-eleventh century, she enhanced the abbey’s prestige through cultural artifacts. By rebuilding Sainte-Radegonde’s church she opened public access to Radegund and her church’s beauty. By mid-century she also created the more private but luxurious manuscript whose content claimed Radegund’s holy identity and authority for the nuns.9 As discussed in Chapter 1, Radegund founded the abbey of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers sometime between 552 and 557, as well as a funerary church, originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, just outside Poitiers’ walls. Work probably began on the church before 561 and was complete enough for Radegund’s funeral in 587, when the building became known as the church of Sainte-Radegonde. The church had figured in early texts of the saint: Gregory of Tours described an assault on the church during the nuns’ rebellion, and Baudonivia recalled Abbot Abbo of Burgundy’s miraculous healing before Radegund’s tomb.10 We also know that some kind of semi-monastic male community was attached to Radegund’s burial church: Baudonivia mentions a miracle in which the abbot of “the blessed queen’s basilica” and his community returned home after participating in the vigils at Saint-Hilaire, only to discover that two possessed women had followed them into their church, praying for Radegund to save them. For Baudonivia this miracle demonstrated that the sanctity of Radegund and her basilica were equal to those of the more established Saint Hilary.11 It is hard to say much about the original church as the building has disappeared, but it likely was a basilica, and the men probably had housing nearby in a burg developing 8  Francis Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Lives of the Saints,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 35 (1952): 248–68. 9  Much like the way Abbess Dedimia had restored Sainte-Croix’s reputation after the 589–90 rebellion by commissioning a new vita from Baudonivia. Unfortunately we do not know the name of the abbess responsible for this manuscript. Petronilla’s name appeared in charters in the 1040s, likely before work on the libellus began, and there is no other abbess named until Adelaide in 1091. 10 Greg., Hist. 9.39–40, 458–74; and 10.15, 501–4; and Baudonivia, 25. 11  Baudonivia, 27.

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outside Poitiers’ walls. This is the last bit of detailed information we hear about Radegund’s communities until the ninth century. ROY A L S U P P O RT Extant documents show that Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde were tightly interwoven and were well supported by the Frankish nobility and kings.12 There are hints in charters and chronicles that the church of Sainte-Radegonde attracted pilgrims and that its crypt became a resting place for famous men. In the late ­seventh century, for example, the relics of Saint Leger lay in the “suburban basilica in which blessed Radegund rests” for a short period while touring the region. The young king of Aquitaine, Pepin I, was buried in Sainte-Radegonde’s crypt in 838.13 In the ninth century, Carolingian kings such as Pepin and his father Louis the Pious, Louis the Stammerer, and Carloman offered the abbey royal protection and took an interest in its operation.14 In 822–4, as part of his monastic reforms, Louis the Pious established a missus, Ramnulfus, to act for Sainte-Croix and exempted the abbey from charges for the militia.15 At the same time he limited the number of nuns at Sainte-Croix to 100, a number that may reflect the abbey’s contemporary resources more accurately than Gregory of Tours’ aspirational sixth-century claim of 200. The abbey also attracted ninth-century royal and noble women’s attention, including Louis the Pious’s wife Judith of Bavaria—whom Louis’ sons briefly pressed into Sainte-Croix in 830—and the sister of Abbot Wala of Corbie and Adelard (grandchildren of Charles Martel) Gundrade, who became a nun at Sainte-Croix.16 12  We do not have original copies of these diplomas. Most of Sainte-Croix’s early documents exist now only in collections created in the eighteenth century or later. The eighteenth-century monks Dom Fonteneau and Dom Estiennot created massive volumes copying documents they found in Poitiers’ archives. Comparing their work with extant archival materials demonstrates a remarkable accuracy level, particularly in the copies Fonteneau created. 13  “[I]n suburbana basilica in qua beata Radegundis requiescit”: AASS, October I, 480–1; Ademar de Chabannes, Chronique, ed. Jules Chavannon (Paris: A. Picard et fils, 1897), 132; La chronique de Saint-Maixent 751–1140, ed. Jean Verdon (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1979), 50–3; Robert Favreau and Marie-Thérèse Camus, “Le Chapitre et L’Église de Sainte Radegonde à Poitiers,” in Robert Favreau, ed., La Vie de Sainte Radegonde par Fortunat (Poitiers, Bibliothèque Municipale, Manuscrit 250 (136)) (Poitiers: Seuil, 1995). 14 See Georg Scheibelreiter’s demonstration that the abbey was under “royal protection”: “Königstöchter im Kloster. Radegund (d. 587) und der Nonnenaufstand von Poitiers (589),” MIÖG 87 (1979): 1–37. 15  On the advocate’s role for the abbeys, see Josef Semmler, “Traditio und Königsschutz: Studien zur Geschichte der königlichen monasteria,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung 45, no. 1 (1959): 1–33. 16  Yvonne Labande-Mailfert, “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” in Yvonne Labande-Mailfert and Robert Favreau, eds., Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers: Quatorze siécles de vie monastique (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1986), 84. For Gundrade, see Paschasius Radbert, Vita sancti Adalhardi, MGH SS 2, 524–32. For Judith, see Vita Hludovici Pii Imperatoris, MGH SS 2, 633; “Annales Mettenses,” Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France 6, 212; and Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris: H. Champion, 1926), 10. Gundrade joined Sainte-Croix around the time that her brothers Adelard and Wala were forced to enter monasteries themselves (Adelard to Hermoutier and Wala to Corbie). Rosamund McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751–987 (London: Longman, 1983).

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The abbey continued to interest members from illustrious families during this period, and at least one of the nuns in 860—Rothrude, a candidate for abbess—was the daughter of a king, Charles the Bald.17 Several kings granted the abbey privileges. In an 826 document that appears to be the oldest extant donation charter for Sainte-Croix, Pepin I of Aquitaine awarded the abbess Gerberga and her monastery freedom over existing markets in Cajoca, in Poitou, and Fulchrodo, in Angoumois.18 Along with the archbishop of Bordeaux, the bishop of Poitiers, and the bishop of Tours, Charles the Bald arbitrated an abbatial election contested between his daughter, Rothrude, and an outsider named Odile in 860–3 in Rothrude’s favor.19 Pressing Rothrude onto Sainte-Croix was probably an attempt to make Sainte-Croix into a royal abbey like Chelles or Faremoutiers. In 878 Louis the Stammerer issued a diploma of ­immunity for the nuns and confirmed the abbey’s right to free abbatial elections at Abbess Ava’s request, perhaps in response to the recent difficulty over Rothrude’s election, and gave his personal tuitio to Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde.20 Such a guarantee of protection typically was tied to immunity and free elections.21 Carloman similarly responded in 884 to Abbess Adalgarde’s request to confirm the abbey’s immunity and right to free elections.22 These diplomas granting and confirming the abbey’s privileges had stopped, however, by the tenth century, as they did throughout the region.23 The abbey of Sainte-Croix had come to count on Frankish kings’ patronage and protection. The abbess had rights, privileges, and property the kings recognized and documented, as well as support from the community attached to the church of Sainte-Radegonde. Constance Brittain Bouchard has argued that there was also a cost to the Carolingians’ royal attention: receiving the kings’ protection also meant accepting treatment as their royal possessions. Whereas Merovingian kings had supported Frankish monasteries, Bouchard argues that the Carolingians demanded contributions from the Church. For example, in 819 Louis the Pious required gifts from two-dozen monasteries in Frankia, to be paid in cash, military service, or prayers. Sainte-Croix fell into the category of monasteries that could simply pray for the royal family. Bouchard sees the royal “protection” offered through the extension of tuitio and a missus as a new form of control.24 Even so, Sainte-Croix’s nuns in later years were eager to document this relationship with the Carolingian kings. 17 Flodoard, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, MGH SS 13, 548–9. 18  DF 5, 523–7; and Labande-Mailfert, “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” 85. This is the oldest donation charter that appears to be genuine. The false charters recorded in BMP 250 (136) assert a much older donation from Clothar in the sixth century. As Kathleen G. Cushing notes, “such grants of immunity and/or protection were generally the product of a prolonged process of negotiation”: Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century: Spirituality and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 59. 19 Flodoard, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, MGH SS 13, 548–9. 20  “[T]uitone cum monasterio Sanctae Radegundis, quod est situm in suburbio praedictae urbis”: DF 5, 527–9. 21 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, 38. 22  DF 5, 535–8. This is the first record of naming the church Sainte-Radegonde. 23 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, 39. 24  Constance Brittain Bouchard, Rewriting Saints and Ancestors: Memory and Forgetting in France, 500–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 128, 139, 140.

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Whether or not ninth-century nuns struggled against royal “protection,” as they appear to have done when it interfered with their freedom to elect an abbess (as with Rothrude), later abbesses saw the value in demonstrating the royal interest and support such diplomas documented. The situation did not last into the Capetian era. As noted above, the kings of Frankia found it difficult to intervene in Poitiers or with the abbey of Sainte-Croix as the power of their vassals in Poitou and Aquitaine grew, and as the clergy began to demand greater control over ecclesiastical affairs. Thus in the tenth and eleventh centuries secular involvement shifted to the Count/Dukes. THE COUNT/DUKES Aquitaine remained an important, powerful, and difficult region to govern throughout this period. Dukes and occasionally Merovingian kings had controlled Aquitaine in the sixth through eighth centuries, most notably Odo, who claimed the title of “princeps,” perhaps to differentiate himself from those around him claiming “dux.” Under Odo the raids of Abd ar-Rahman Emir of Cordoba became dangerous enough for Charles Martel to intervene and, in 732, to fight and win the Battle of Poitiers. That intervention became an excuse for Charles Martel’s further campaigns in Aquitaine in 735, the year Odo died.25 Odo’s son Hunald (retired to a monastery in 745), grandson Waifar (d. 768), and great-grandson Hunald II (d. 769) resisted the Carolingians’ efforts to attach Aquitaine to the Frankish kingdom. King Pepin I forced Count Waifar to submit in 762 after meeting him in battle multiple times, but Waifar continued to resist until his death. Hunald II (or Hunald I back from retirement) continued the fight, but Charlemagne subdued the Aquitanians in 769.26 Charlemagne took steps to ensure he would firmly control this difficult region. He divided it into counties and marches in 778, so that the counts of Poitiers, Auvergne, Saintonge, the Angoumois, and Périgord governed Aquitaine.27 He also named his son Louis (later known as “the pious”) king of Aquitaine in 781 and replaced many local counts with men loyal to him. Louis followed suit by naming his son Pepin king of Aquitaine in 817, which gave Pepin a launching pad for a series of rebellions against his father in the 830s. At Pepin’s death and burial in the church of Sainte-Radegonde in Poitiers, Louis named his youngest son Charles the Bald king of Aquitaine, while the Aquitainians named Pepin’s son, Pepin II, their king. Struggles between Charles and Pepin II continued after the Treaty of Verdun in 843 gave Charles control of the western portion of the Frankish kingdom.28 25 Edward James, The Origins of France: From Clovis to the Capetians, 500–1000 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 154, 151–2. 26 James, Origins of France, 160–1. 27  Jim Bradbury, The Capetians: King of France, 987–1328 (New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), 59–60. 28  The fighting between Charles and Pepin proved challenging for many of the families in the area. Bernard of Septimania, whose wife Dhuoda wrote the Manual for William, fought for Pepin, but left his son as a hostage with Charles. This strategy failed and Bernard was tried and executed in 844: see James, Origins of France, 172–3. James argues that Bernard and Dhuoda’s younger son was the father

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The contest for Aquitaine required Charles to offer supporters extensive lands, compromising Carolingian control in the region permanently; Pepin may also have invited assistance from Vikings, which ultimately lost him support. In 848 Charles was crowned and anointed king of Aquitaine, while Pepin and Vikings continued to be a problem; the Vikings raided Poitiers in 854 but Pepin was captured in 864. After Charles the Bald’s death, a quick succession of Carolingians took the title of king of Aquitaine without having much real control of the area, including Louis the Stammerer, but by 888 the Frankish kingdom fragmented. In that year Odo I, Robert the Strong’s son, took control of the kingdom of West Frankia. Ramnulf II, Count of Poitou and descendent of Louis the Pious, claimed the title of king of Aquitaine and briefly challenged Odo, but Ramnulf dropped his claim and supported Odo the next year.29 In the ninth century the Ramnulfid Counts of Poitou asserted claim to the title Duke of Aquitaine, collecting these powerful western territories in one family’s hands. Odo toured Aquitaine to maintain his authority in the region and tried to name a successor as Count of Poitou at Ramnulf ’s death in 890 but he lacked enough support. Control of Poitou and Aquitaine went to another descendant of Ramnulf I, William the Pious of Auvergne, duke of the Aquitanians and founder of the abbey of Cluny in 910, and remained in his family until the thirteenth century. William claimed the titles of count, duke, and marcher lord, the last a title that eventually became marquis. Under William and his successors the Frankish kings had authority but very little actual power in the region, a situation that the kings experienced in Burgundy and Flanders.30 These Count/Dukes used various cities as their capital, moving between Limoges, Bourges, and Poitiers, encouraged the arts, and brought several southern customs—such as the troubadours—to northern cities. As noted above, while the Count/Dukes were strong and powerful, rebellious Aquitainian vassals who required a great deal of attention also challenged them.31 During the ninth through twelfth centuries, then, the Count/Dukes jealously protected their privileges in Poitiers, which kept the Frankish king from intervening much, although the Counts did mostly support the Capetians. Despite the Count/Dukes’ jealous protection of their lands they spent little time on minor issues in the relatively peaceful north. For Sainte-Croix’s abbesses, this meant that the robust royal support they had received from Merovingian and Carolingian kings evaporated in the early Capetian period, and left a void they searched to fill in the late eleventh century. The Count/Dukes and their family could, at times, take a strong interest in the ecclesiastical community, such as when Adèle, wife of “Towhead” William I/III, founded the female abbey La Trinité in Poitiers in 963.32 But this intermittent interest was insufficient for the nuns. of William the Pious, the great duke of Aquitaine. Pepin attacked Poitiers while the empress Judith was imprisoned at Sainte-Croix in 830. 29  Ramnulf’s grandfather, Gerard, Count of Auvergne, married Rothrude, daughter of Louis the Pious. 30 James, Origins of France, 180–1. 31  Gaston Dez, Histoire de Poitiers, MSAO 10 (1966), 35; and Alfred Richard, Histoire des comtes de Poitou, 778–1204. 2 vols. (Paris: Alphonse Picard & fils, 1903). 32 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 36.

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Rivalries with other secular lords also affected the Count/Dukes’ city. Churches built outside the early walls such as Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand and Sainte-Radegonde made easy, attractive targets. Both churches suffered assault, robbery, and arson. Poitiers had experienced several attacks from Vikings in the mid-ninth century, and in 955 Count of Paris Hugh the Great attacked Poitiers in a bid to take control of Aquitaine, with King Louis IV’s support, and again the suburban burg around the church of Sainte-Radegonde suffered: unable to breach the city walls Hugh burned the burg.33 Indeed, these suburban churches were so vulnerable in 969 that Geoffrey Greymantle, Count of Anjou with a great many family interests in Aquitaine, agreed to protect Sainte-Croix’s property and became the abbey’s advocatus. As part of the ceremony in which he accepted this position, Geoffrey kissed the relic of the True Cross held at the abbey. Just as the women of Sainte-Croix gained an experienced and able protector for their lands and the propaganda value of a great noble recognizing their relic, paying homage to the nuns’ relic helped Geoffrey to demonstrate his piety and his fidelity to Poitevin monasteries.34 This surely complicated their relationship with Count Duke William II/IV, who was struggling to keep Geoffrey out of Aquitaine. By the late tenth century, the Count/Dukes had firm control of the city and were actively resisting royal involvement in their lands, which Poitiers’ placement on a promontory facilitated by permitting close observation of the surrounding area. Despite some struggles, Poitiers flourished in the Ramnulfids’ care, as it became a wealthy city, a haven for troubadours and courtly literature, and a popular pilgrimage destination. Tours would remain a larger, more cosmopolitan neighbor, but Poitiers was far enough away to dominate culture in its own region. And, like many medieval cities at the time, Poitiers’ markets expanded to draw greater commercial activity to the area and there was a population explosion in and around Poitiers, from the late tenth century on. The townspeople rebuilt areas within the walls that had fallen into disrepair and expanded the suburban areas considerably. The town’s industries—particularly metalwork—rebounded.35 There were also new building projects: repairs to the cathedral in 1024 and to Saint-Hilaire in 1049, and the foundation of the abbeys of Saint-Nicolas in 1059 and Montierneuf in 1096. Much of this construction in the town repaired damage from an earthquake and fire in 1018, but the projects also reflect the increased wealth and population of Poitiers in the eleventh century. At the same time, the Count/Dukes became increasingly involved in disputes with troublesome vassals, and even contentious monasteries—such as a revolt Aimery IV, viscount of Thouars instigated, at the abbey of Luçon in 1069—that kept them distracted from Poitiers and Sainte-Croix.

33  Annales Nivernenses, MGH SS 13 (1881), 89; Flodoard, Annales, MGH SS 3 (1839), 403. 34  DF 5; see also Thomas Head, “The Development of the Peace of God in Aquitaine (970–1005),” Speculum 74, no. 3 (1999): 656–86, 659. Geoffrey was in a precarious position in Poitou—he had gained control of land by attacking William but recognized William’s seniority over him. 35 Dez, Histoire de Poitiers, 42–5.

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THE BISHOP Radegund’s communities occupied Poitiers’ ecclesiastical quarter, with Sainte-Croix tucked inside and Sainte-Radegonde sitting just outside the walls, both on the bank of the river Clain that flowed nearby. The bishop’s cathedral, the ancient baptistery Saint-Jean, and some small oratories devoted to Saint Martin and Saint Hilary dominated this quarter of Poitiers. Hilary’s monastery, Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, was across the city in its own suburb.36 While some of Poitiers’ bishops had been hostile to Radegund and Sainte-Croix, the situation must have reversed when Venantius Fortunatus became bishop in the seventh century. Since Maroveus had secured from Childebert authority over Sainte-Croix, “just as over his other parishes,” SainteCroix no longer enjoyed a royal exemption from episcopal oversight as Radegund had intended.37 We hear little else for the Merovingian period. Carolingian kings, especially Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, worked to restore Church property that laymen had seized. At the same time, they also believed, with the support of clerics such as Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, that kings and other laymen had the right to control benefices.38 The bishops of Poitiers, along with the region’s monasteries and churches, were major supporters of the Frankish kings. For example, Bishop Ebroin supported Charles the Bald in his conflict with Pepin and was captured and imprisoned as a result, and then later died defending the city for the king against rebels.39 Such support follows from the kings’ control of episcopal appointments or nominations, from at least the time of Pascentius.40 Between 975 and 1086 a succession of nephews and uncles occupied the ­episcopal seat in Poitiers. Robert Favreau declared this an unusual pattern in the region, and one that left no evidence of the Count/Dukes influencing the bishops’ elections. The cathedral chapter that appeared in the ninth century played an important role in this “dynasty”: with each generation the current bishop’s nephew joined the cathedral chapter and worked his way through its ranks, eventually becoming elected to succeed his uncle. Bishop Isembert II (d. 1086) was the last of this family.41 The bishops oversaw the rituals related to Poitiers’ many construction projects—including the 1012 construction at Sainte-Radegonde and the Romanesque reconstruction of the cathedral Saint-Pierre in 1025. By the episcopacy of Pierre II in 1086 any secular influence over the bishops of Poitiers had definitely waned. Previous bishops had been building institutional support in Poitiers: first with the cathedral chapter and then, in the tenth century, with regular diocesan synods that gathered together canons, abbots, and priests. When Pierre II took power, the eleventh-century reform movement was underway, and the pope had already been active in supporting the reform of Sainte-Radegonde’s chapter of canons. This movement, playing out over the next two centuries,

36 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 29. 38 James, Origins of France, 202–3. 40 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 19.

37 Greg., Hist. 9.40–2. 39 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 17–18. 41 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 38.

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ultimately enhanced the bishop’s independence and deepened his authority over Poitiers’ ecclesiastical community.42 That community grew, particularly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. There were new abbeys such as Saint-Savin, Saint-Cyprien, and the female abbey of La Trinité. As noted above, the Count/Dukes and their wives fostered these foundations and were generous patrons to the ecclesiastical community. Adele of Normandy, wife of William I/III, founded La Trinité in 963; her daughter-in-law Emma of Blois, wife of William II/IV, founded Maillezais; her daughter-in-law Aumode of Gevaudan, first wife of William III/V, gave funds to Saint-Savin; and Agnes of Burgundy, his third wife, donated funds for construction at Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, patronized the canons at Saint-Nicolas, and then later founded the Abbaye-auxDames in Saintes.43 Like his wives, William III/V was generous, serving as lay abbot of Nouaillé, Saint-Jean-d’Angély, and Saint-Hilaire. Maillezais featured prominently in the charity of Emma’s descendants: her son William III/V funded new construction and her grandson William VIII sponsored its 1160 reform.44 These donations and involvement in Poitou’s monastic community are important: as Mickey Abel has argued, Maillezais, and thus Emma and her comital descendants, was a key player in the Peace of God movement while Saint-Savin was a player in the Benedictine reform movement. The Count/Dukes patronized abbeys out of pious spirituality, but also to further their own political purposes. Indeed, Emma of Blois’s mid-eleventh-century biography draws on Radegund’s vita, which suits as a local, noble, married, female monastic founder.45 In this period the Church was increasingly pressing the Count/Dukes out of direct involvement in episcopal affairs, while the Count/Dukes faced significant challenges from vassals in the south. Emma’s vita suggests that Sainte-Croix’s traditional patrons may have wished fiercely to be available for, and derive benefits from, supporting these monastic communities, even as various forces separated them. Sainte-Croix, however, did not benefit from the bulk of the Count/Dukes patronage, which again explains why they might have been on the hunt for more supporters.46 Not all bishops were keen to disconnect from close involvement with the Count/ Dukes. William VIII/X had some difficulty producing a male heir, and Bishop Isembert II assisted him by annulling and approving a series of consanguineous 42 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 34–5. 43  Mickey Abel, “Emma of Blois as Arbiter of Peace and the Politics of Patronage,” in Therese Martin, ed., Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 853n.116; Constance Berman, “Women as Donors and Patrons to Southern French Monasteries in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Constance Berman, Charles Connell, and Judith Rothschild, eds., The Worlds of Medieval Women: Creativity, Influence, Imagination (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1985), 53–69. See also Isabelle Soulard, “Agnes de Bourgogne ou la tentation du pouvoir,” in Les femmes du Poitou au Moyen Âge (La Crèche: Geste, 1998), 140–50. 44  Abel, “Emma of Blois,” 823. 45  Abel, “Emma of Blois,” 839; Georges Pon and Yves Chauvin, La fondation de l’abbaye de Maillezais: récit du moine Pierre (La Roche-sur-Yon: Centre Vendeén de Recherches Historiques, 2001), 183. 46  The Countess/Duchesses may even have been redirecting funds toward monasteries that served their children’s or even their natal families’ interests: Mickey Abel, “Recontextualizing the Context: The Dispute Capital from Saint-Hilaire in Poitiers and Storytelling in the Poitou around the Time of the Peace of God Movement,” Gesta 47, no. 1 (2008): 51-66, 58.

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marriages. William’s third marriage, to Audéarde of Burgundy, drew the ire of Pope Alexander II and his successor Gregory VII, who called a council at Saint-Maixent in 1075 to deal with the marriage. By then Audéarde had given birth to a son, and William and Isembert were determined to defend his legitimacy. Isembert not only failed to attend the council but sent troops to attack it, earning his colleagues’ condemnation and an excommunication from Gregory. Isembert and William visited Rome the next year and succeeded in having the new heir legitimized and William, in thanks, founded Montierneuf, a new Cluniac house in Poitiers. Of course, that heir, William IX/XI, faced several challenges during his tenure, as vassals found questions around his legitimacy justification for rebellion, which caused him to turn a blind eye to secular attacks on the Church. This resulted in a difficult relationship with Isembert’s successor, Pierre II, and general hostility to the reform project.47 L I F E AT S A I N T E - C RO I X At Radegund’s death, her monastery had property, royal support, holy relics (a portion of the True Cross, fragments of other saints, Radegund’s hair shirt, her laurel tree, the saint’s writing desk, etc.), the support of the male community at her funerary church, and guidance for the community in the Caesarian Rule. The rebellion Clotild and Basina led against the abbess Leubovera in 590, however, had fragmented Sainte-Croix’s reputation and good standing. As Régine Le Jan has discussed, such attacks on abbatial authority were common in seventh-century abbeys after the loss of an important defender left an abbess vulnerable, such as at Faremoutiers, Laon, and Nivelles.48 Abbess Dedimia used Baudonivia’s new vita to restore Sainte-Croix’s reputation and focus on Radegund’s important example, her sanctity, and her protection of the monastery. Baudonivia included in her vita the story of the Caesarian Rule (RC), which Fortunatus had only mentioned in passing, to demonstrate that the abbey had a strict text guiding its community. Early medieval monastic practice was in no way consistent or coherent, and Sainte-Croix’s use of a monastic Rule was not necessarily characteristic of all monasteries at the time. More prevalent among monasteries was a concern for authority and obedience, in whatever shape that took. Asceticism, for example, operated alongside textual guidelines, since following a monastic Rule was, according to Albrecht Diem, not a “stable and persistent feature” of monasticism before the ninth century.49 Diem has well demonstrated the variety of texts that circulated in the early Middle Ages, and Lindsey Rudge has shown the wide variety of monastic practice in this period. It is thus not easy to say whether SainteCroix’s nuns remained so strictly devoted to the RC after the time Fortunatus, Baudonivia, and Gregory of Tours described, or even if those authors’ claims to 47  As can be seen in one of William IX’s songs, Song 5: William M. Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia and Japan, 900–1200 CE (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 92–6. 48  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 250ff. 49  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 54.

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strict adherence to the RC were accurate then. What we can say is that Radegund’s biographers believed that the depiction of a female abbey strictly adhering to a Rule would enhance Sainte-Croix’s prestige and respect in the early medieval community. Monastic reform under the Carolingians included efforts to tune this complicated cacophony of practice into a harmonious monastic observance. Reforming synods in the mid-eighth century looked to impose the Benedictine Rule (RB) uniformly on all monasteries under Carolingian control. This was a lengthy and complicated process that ultimately ordered the RB’s adoption throughout Frankia.50 The abbot-general Benedict of Aniane and Odo of Cluny led the effort to reform Frankish monasteries. Benedict officiated over assemblies of Frankia’s abbots in August of 816 and July of 817. The imperial edict based on these assemblies’ decrees commanded Frankish abbeys to observe the RB and appointed missi to enforce these decrees. This does not mean that all monasteries immediately adopted the RB, of course, only that a program of encouraging monasteries to adopt a Rule, and this Rule, was encouraged from the center. Louis the Pious established a missus for Sainte-Croix and became the abbey’s advocate as part of this monastic reform project.51 Despite the imperial edict and pressure to adopt the RB, it is possible that Sainte-Croix resisted these orders. Like other abbeys, Sainte-Croix might have used both the Caesarian and Benedictine Rule simultaneously before finally adopting the latter in the eleventh or even twelfth century.52 One question, then, is how Sainte-Croix might have changed its fundamental practices between the sixth and eleventh centuries, when we start to have more evidence for their activity. The RC required strict enclosure in order to protect nuns, for example, but the RB was much looser on this issue. Indeed, broader monastic practice suggests that many nuns and monks continued to be well informed about and heavily involved in secular matters beyond their abbeys even as early as the seventh century.53 It is possible that with the RB’s introduction, as well as the importance of Sainte-Croix’s involvement in Poitiers’ religious community, their estates outside the city, the care for Sainte-Radegonde’s church, and in Radegund’s cult, that Sainte-Croix’s nuns let go of the RC’s strictures on enclosure, if they had ever followed them. Cluny’s Benedictine reforms, or the contemporary reform at 50  Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 70. 51  “[U]t omnino provideatur ne clericorum numerus plus quam xxx augeatur; et ipsi per omnia ad dictam congregationem sanctae crucis honeste et perfecte obedientes sint atque subiecti”: MGH Cap. reg. Fr. 1, 302. Louis says he is confirming earlier privileges—he could be referring to the 817 act that has been lost: see Labande-Mailfert, “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” 80–3; C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn. (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2001). Louis established a missus to act as the nuns’ advocate: “si quando necesse fuerit, periussionem domni Pippini regis Ramnulfum specialiter missum habeant; quando vero necesse non fuerit, advocatus earum per se iustitiam faciat et accipiat”: MGH Cap. reg. Fr. 1, 302. See Adalbert de Vogüé, Communauté et l’abbé dans la règle de saint Benoît (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961); and Labande-Mailfert, “Les Débuts de Sainte-Croix,” 80–5. 52  As suggested in the ninth-century dispute over Rothrude’s election. Hendrik Dey, “Bringing Chaos out of Order: New Approaches to the Study of Early Western Monasticism,” in Hendrik Dey and E. Fentress, eds., Western Monasticism ante litteram: The Spaces of Monastic Observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 19–42, 34. 53  Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition,” 266.

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Saint-Savin that had such influence in Poitou, may have pushed Sainte-Croix into fully adopting the RB in the tenth century.54 Even if this is true, however, enclosure was a monastic ideal whose rhetoric was useful to a community like Sainte-Croix. Claustration marked the nuns out as ­different, with special status, requirements, privileges, and protections. The abbess and her community must have crossed the monastic wall frequently in performing abbey business and interacting with their families, but they would want to cling to the idea of enclosure because it was a notion tightly connected to the identity of female monasticism, as well as to the abbess’s power and authority.55 As we will see later in this chapter, the nuns gave extensive weight and power to monastic enclosure in the illuminations of Radegund’s vita. Such rhetoric and identity were important to eleventh-century nuns at Sainte-Croix whether or not they actually adhered strictly to its original design in practice. The royal diplomas Frankish kings issued focused on Sainte-Croix—probably since they were responses to the abbess’s requests for confirmations of the abbey’s privileges and rights—and usually either ignored the male community at SainteRadegonde or presented them as a chapter subordinate to Sainte-Croix.56 Louis the Pious described the community attached to Sainte-Radegonde as clerics subject to Sainte-Croix and limited their number to thirty, which suggests that a robust community already existed in the early ninth century.57 Louis the Stammerer extended his protection to both communities in 878 and described them as “the nuns of Sainte-Croix” and “the brothers of Sainte-Radegonde,” which has led scholars to assume that they operated as a double monastery.58 This is the same language used 54 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 27. 55  Following Erin Jordan, I am consciously not referring to the exiting of the monastery as a “transgression” or a “rupturing” of enclosure, which suggests that the nuns were committing an offense: Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities.” Contemporaries did not seem to consider such movement a problem before, or perhaps even after, the promulgation of Periculoso. 56  For example: “immunitatis priscorum regum praedecessorum nostrorum, seu etiam atavi nostri sanctae recordationis Karoli Augusti, necnon et praeceptum piissimi Caesaris Hludouvici proavi nostri, pariterque et praeceptum Pippini avunculi nostri, quibus idem monasterium quiete in Dei servitio degere sanxerunt”: DF 5, 535. 57  “Ut omnino provideatur ne clericorum numerus plus quam XXX augeatur; et ipsi per omnia ad dictam congregationem sanctae crucis honeste et perfecte obedientes sint atque subiecti”: MGH Cap. reg. Fr. 1, 302. 58  “[M]onasterio Sanctae Crucis quod est situm intra muros urbis Pictavensis . . . monasterio Sanctae Radegundis, quod est situm in suburbio praedictae urbis,” and “fratribus Sanctae Radegundis et ancillis clauisti Sanctae Crucis”: DF 5, 527 and 529. The interpretation of Sainte-Croix as a double monastery persists: see Christina Carlson, “Exploring the Authorship of the Life of St. Radegund,” Magistra, 15 no. 1 (2009), 47; as well as most modern devotional works on the saints that include Radegund. Fiona Griffiths noted such a misunderstanding of Fontevraud’s similar arrangement of priests and nuns: “The Cross and the Cura monialium: Robert of Arbrissel, John the Evangelist, and the Pastoral Care of Women in the Age of Reform,” 83, no. 2 (2008): 303–30, 304n.4. Sharon Elkins and Penny Schine Gold demonstrated the issues with the term “double monastery” in the 1980s: Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); and Gold, The Lady and the Virgin; and followed by McNamara in Sisters in Arms, 144–5. Thomas Cramer, whose 2011 dissertation argued in favor of the term, did not class Sainte-Croix as a double monastery and, indeed, distinguished it from monasteries, such as Faremoutiers, that he put in this category: Thomas Cramer, “Defending the Double Monastery: Gender and Society in Early Modern Europe,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2011), 82–3. Since all female abbeys required the services of

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in charters from the early tenth century.59 The nature of the community attached to Sainte-Radegonde remained ambiguous before 969–70, when we find the first reference to them as a group of canons in a charter of the local abbey of SaintCyprien, which records that a “canon of the canonry of Saint Radegund” donated an allod to the abbey.60 Thus, some community of clerics had cared for the church of Sainte-Radegonde since Radegund’s death, probably extending the cura monialium to Sainte-Croix without much conflict. Early medieval commenters observed a close link between that community and the nuns, occasionally describing the male chapter as subordinate to Sainte-Croix’s abbess, occasionally seeing them as joint communities. In the 1070s, when we start to learn more about the community at Sainte-Radegonde, the men organized into a college and specified carefully their obligations to the abbess, which, as I discuss in Chapter 4, became the subject of some dispute for the following century. Until the late eleventh century there is no reason to think that the relationship between the nuns and the canons was anything but collegial, peaceful, and harmonious. Sainte-Croix’s abbess appears to have collaborated with or protected the canons as she repaired their church and restored Radegund’s tomb, which would draw pilgrims, patrons, and prestige to the community of Sainte-Radegonde, as well as to the abbey. TO M B A N D R E L I C S We have little information about building at Sainte-Croix at this time, but the church of Sainte-Radegonde was the focus of a great deal of construction. Vikings likely destroyed the original Merovingian church Radegund had built; a new church dedicated in 863 was burned by Hugh, count of Paris in 955.61 As noted earlier, Abbess Béliarde of Sainte-Croix oversaw repairs at the church in 1012, according to an inscription in the crypt where Radegund’s sarcophagus lay (see Figure 3).62 priests to perform the sacraments, and many communities did develop such a symbiotic relationship, we run the risk of declaring every female monastery a “double monastery,” stretching the term beyond usefulness. For more on the double monastery and its forms, see Kasper Elm and Michel Parisse, eds., Doppelklöster und andere Formen der Symbiose männlicher und weiblicher Religiosen im Mittelalter (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1992); and Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel, “Double Monasteries in the South-Western Empire (1100–1230) and their Women’s Communities in Swiss Regions,” in Fiona J. Griffiths and Julie Hotchin, eds., Partners in Spirit: Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 47–74. 59  Chartes de l’abbaye de Nouaillé de 678 à 1200, ed. Pierre de Monsabert (Poitiers: Société des archives historiques du Poitou, 1936), 54–5; Robert Favreau, “Une charte de Sainte-Radegonde de Poitiers de janvier 926,” BSAO ser. 5, no. 3 (1989): 205–12. 60  “[E]x canonica Beatae Radegundis canonicus”: Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Cyprien de Poitiers, ed. L. Redet (Poitiers: Oudin, 1874), 80. 61  C. H. Kneepkens, “À propos des Débuts de l’histoire de l’église funéraire Sainte-Radegonde de Poitiers,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 29 (1986), 331–8. 62 “annis mille dei carnis bissexque peractis / omnibus ignota radegundis sancta manebat / scrobis in absconso tumulus tegebatur in umo / aula suo venerabatur de nomine sancto / abbatissa sacris scrutans beliardis in antris / pridie kalendarum marcii patefe- / cit criptamque lucernis honeste fecit / illustrari mundule beliardis tum servavit / dum esset

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Béliarde’s construction did not last long: an earthquake destroyed at least part of this church in 1018, when a fire also destroyed part of the neighboring cathedral of Saint-Pierre, and Sainte-Radegonde suffered damage again during another earthquake and fire on October 18, 1083.63 Repairs led to a new dedication exactly sixteen years later on October 18, 1099.64 Abbess Béliarde’s construction and inscription deserve further inspection. The need for such repairs was likely Hugh’s attack but, whatever the extent of the damage wrought on the church, this inscription suggests one of the repairs’ major goals was to restore access to Radegund’s tomb. Cynthia Hahn has demonstrated that saints’ crypts became inaccessible to lay people during the Carolingian period as part of a “clericalization of care for the saintly dead.”65 In the eleventh century, however, as Barbara Abou-El-Haj has argued, saints’ cults placed new attention on their patrons’ entombed relics in order to encourage pilgrimage and devotion at their shrines, particularly with new building programs or translations.66 The abbess of Sainte-Croix claimed credit for making Saint Radegund’s body available to pilgrims again in Sainte-Radegonde’s crypt inscription, where she announced her wealth and her authority over the church. As the nuns of Sainte-Croix at least rhetorically observed strict active and passive enclosure, the church of Sainte-Radegonde was the abbey’s public face for the cult of Saint Radegund, a space that pilgrims and all visitors might access, unlike the abbey.67 Thus the abbess opened up Radegund’s cult to attract pilgrims along the popular route to Compostella, demonstrated her robertus rex duxque pictavis willelmus quintus apex gisleberto regente ecclesiam”: Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale. 1. Ville de Poitiers, 95–6. Neither the editors nor Kneepkens express doubt in dating the inscription to 1012. 63  Ademar of Chabannes, Chronique, 56. 64  This leads to obvious questions about the saint’s relics’ true location, and whether they actually lie within her marble sarcophagus. The sixteenth-century chronicler and historian Jean Bouchet suggested that the saint’s body had been moved to Saint-Benoît-de-Quinçay, about 4km outside the city, in order to be safe from Viking attacks but, as Robert Favreau points out, this location was also vulnerable, and there is no other evidence for this move: Chronique de Saint-Maixent, 146–7, 170–1. The church we see today contains nothing earlier than the eleventh century. Its Romanesque apse, choir, and western tower-porch date from the late eleventh century, and its Gothic nave was added in the thirteenth century: Favreau and Camus, “Le Chapitre et L’Église de Sainte Radegonde,” 255. The tomb certainly contained a body when it was opened in 1412 at Jean de Berry’s request, who tried to take Radegund’s wedding ring, and there were bones of a small female adult present when the sarcophagus was again opened on December 13, 1988. Jean Bouchet, L’Histoire et cronicque de Clotaire, premier de ce nom, VII roy des Fraçoys et monarque des Gaules: et de sa tres illustre espouse madame saincte Radegonde: extraicte au vray de plusieurs cronicques antiques & modernes (Poitiers: Imprimee par E. de Marnef, 1527), 12; Favreau and Camus, “Le Chapitre et l’Église de Sainte Radegonde,” 255; and B. Boissavit-Camus, H. Duday, and J. Dupuy, “Le Tombeau de sainte Radegonde, étude archéologique, anthropologique et palynologique,” in Les Amis de sainte Radegonde, 2. Whether these are Radegund’s holy relics is impossible to say. 65  Cynthia Hahn, “Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early-Medieval Saints’ Shrines,” Speculum 72, no. 4 (1997): 1079–106, 1100; “The Carolingians even found it necessary to legislate, requiring a separate oratorium for monks’ prayers in the places where there were ‘corpora sanctorum’ ”: Hahn, “Seeing and Believing,” 1100; see also Megan McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1994). 66  Barbara Abou-El-Haj, The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 18. 67  With thanks to Oxford University Press’s anonymous reviewers for this suggestion.

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superiority over the canons’ church, and retained her own community’s privacy and enclosure. She did this by connecting her authority over the church of SainteRadegonde to support from King Robert II, and, of course, by connecting herself and the abbacy to her patron saint and foundress. Abbess Béliarde’s “rediscovery” of the saint’s tomb in 1012 was not the only eleventh-century attempt to demonstrate Sainte-Croix’s power or direct attention to Radegund’s cult, but it was the last to receive royal support. Later that century, the nuns commissioned two important objects: an expensive illuminated manuscript of the saint’s vitae and a beautiful and expensive new reliquary for the True Cross relic to replace the (likely lost) original, highlighting the abbey’s most precious relic and their community’s status (see Chapter 2). As Cynthia Hahn suggests, this small reliquary was well suited to the nuns’ devotional needs in the eleventh century; a more personal and internal devotion that demonstrated the wealth and beauty of  their abbey quietly to visitors approaching the altar, such as SainteRadegonde’s canons and Poitiers’ bishops.68 Repairs to Sainte-Radegonde’s crypt honored Radegund’s physical remains and created an accessible shrine that drew public devotion, and the relic of the True Cross would be visible on Sainte-Croix’s altar and during processions in the town, while the manuscript appealed to a more limited audience consisting of the nuns, the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, the bishop, and other important patrons who could gain access to the abbey church.69 Otto Werckmeister suggested that the hectic efforts to promote saints cults circa 1100 came out of economic necessity as the newly emerging monetary economy of medieval Europe made churches and abbeys dependent on monetary patronage, but Hahn has demonstrated that these efforts had important spiritual bases as well.70 All three projects within Radegund’s cult refocused attention on the saint and on her communities, as well as demonstrated the abbess’s importance. The abbess positioned herself and her community as the power behind the cult’s renewal by literally inscribing her role in finding the tomb on the walls of the church and by presenting a lavish reworking of the saint’s vitae in the manuscript housed at Sainte-Croix. The libellus illuminations articulated a notion of monastic authority based on Radegund’s vita, and reflecting the importance of SainteCroix’s superior.

68  Abou-El-Haj argues that the creation of new pictorial cycles accompanying saint’s vitae in the high Middle Ages expressed the renewal and expansion of earlier cults, and could demonstrate the competition among cults, “whether they were displayed in private or public spaces”: The Medieval Cult of Saints, 2, 33–5. 69  A late fifteenth-century customary specified that the abbey church’s great altar contained the relic of the True Cross, and this is a reasonable place to find such a precious relic from its arrival in the abbey: Monsabert, “Anciens Usages de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers avant la réforme de 1519, ed. Pierre de Monsabert,” Revue Mabillon 12 (1922): 263–76, 266, item 3. 70  Otto K. Werckmeister, “Cluny III and the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela,” Gesta 27 no. 1/2 (1988): 103–12; Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart; for this contrast, see Kirk Ambrose, The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2006), 38–9.

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MANUSCRIPT The nuns’ libellus, Bibliothèque Municipale de Poitiers (BMP) manuscript 250 (136), is the earliest extant manuscript of Radegund’s vitae from Poitiers. The manuscript today features Venantius Fortunatus’s vita (folios 22–43) with narrative miniatures illuminating the text, followed by an author portrait of Baudonivia on the last folio of Fortunatus’s text.71 The inclusion of Baudonivia’s image suggests that the manuscript once held an illuminated version of her vita, now missing. Since Baudonivia’s author portrait is in the same style as Fortunatus’s portrait (folio 21v), it appears that the artist created the two vitae together, but we cannot say definitively why the one vita disappeared. Perhaps Baudonivia’s vita became important later and circulated separately, or was moved to a particular spot for display on its own. In this case, it seems peculiar to leave Baudonivia’s portrait behind; surely it would have been easier to copy Fortunatus’s vita’s last few lines than to replicate Baudonivia’s author portrait. Alternatively, perhaps the manuscript’s later owners found Baudonivia’s vita and its illuminations unsatisfactory or contradictory to the image of Radegund they preferred and so expunged the second vita from the manuscript. Since the canons of Sainte-Radegonde possessed the manuscript from the early seventeenth century, we might ponder how illuminations of Baudonivia’s text could frustrate the men of Radegund’s church to such a point that they would remove her vita. Fortunatus’s vita is also missing a folio, between those currently numbered 35 and 36, but is otherwise intact.72 Fortunately, the images from this folio are maintained in an eighteenth-century sketch of BMP 250 (136) so we have a sense of their contents (Figures 3 and 4).73 Following Fortunatus’s vita and Baudonivia’s portrait in the manuscript as it now exists are selections from Gregory of Tours (folios 44–6), seven homilies for the main feasts of the liturgical year (folios 47–73), and Saint Radegund’s “testament,” also from Gregory of Tours (folios 73 verso–75). These are the manuscript’s eleventh-century portions, and its oldest contents. 71  The earliest extant manuscripts of the vitae are from the tenth century: Codex Monacensis Lat. 3810 and BNF Ms. Lat. 13761, labelled 1b and 2, respectively, by Bruno Krusch: MGH SRM 2, 360–1. Krusch omitted BMP 250 (136) in his edition, but listed fifteen other manuscripts dating from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. BMP 250 (136) seems to belong in Krusch’s group 5, and fits most closely with 5a (BNF Ms. Lat. 5351), also from the eleventh century. So far the only other illuminated version of Radegund’s vitae I have discovered is BMP 252 (8), a manuscript in very poor condition, whose illuminations are missing. In 1766 Antoine-Joseph Pernéty created copies of the miniatures in both these manuscripts. Based on his work, the images in BMP 252 (8) follow the eleventh-century manuscript closely; his copies are now BMP 251 (137). Piotr Skubiszewski argues convincingly, based on the illuminations, that the earlier manuscript followed a Carolingian model, based on the illuminations, and that the miniatures are the work of two illuminators: Piotr Skubiszewski, “Le décor de la ‘Vie de Radegonde’ de Poitiers,” in Favreau, ed., La Vie de sainte Radegonde par Fortunat, 127–237. See also Piotr Skubiszewski, “L’image de la femme consacré et de la sainte vers 1100: le décor peint de la ‘Vie de Radegonde,’ Poitiers, ms. 250,” in Perrine Mane et al., eds., La femme dans la société médi´vale et moderne: actes du colloque de Nieborów, 6–8 juin 2002 [organisé par l’Académie polonaise des sciences] (Warsaw: Institut d’histoire, Académie polonaise des sciences, 2005). 72  Pernéty’s sketch for the missing text depicts two of Radegund’s miracles from Fort., VR, 30: BMP 251 (137). Pernéty did not include cartoons of illuminations for Baudonivia’s vita, so we might assume that her text was missing from BMP ms 250 (136) by the mid-eighteenth century. 73  One was another illumination of an exorcism within Radegund’s cell, and another depicted a miracle in which Radegund struck down a mouse who bit her thread.

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Figure 4.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 251 (137), f. 19v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

Folios 1–19 contain liturgical material—readings from the gospels used for the principal feasts—in a fifteenth-century hand. The last portion of the manuscript, also in a fifteenth-century hand, contains two false diplomas, the first attributed to  Clothar and the second to his sons, and the authentic diploma of Louis the Stammerer (folios 75–9). This is the material we might expect to find in a libellus created for a monastic saint’s shrine, fitting with the pattern Francis Wormald observed. The illustrated libellus appeared as a genre in the tenth century and was especially popular in the eleventh century. Wormald associated the libellus’s popularity with the expansion and reform of Benedictine abbeys, beginning with the Cluniac reform, and most libelli appeared in major abbeys associated with saints’ cults. The libelli functioned, he claims, like relics for the abbeys, luxurious manuscripts kept in abbey treasuries, not libraries. The libelli frequently contained liturgical materials related to observances at the abbeys, as well as monastic deeds and records.74 This type of shrine book declined in production by the end of the twelfth century, perhaps with the rise of new forms of monastic devotion. Thus Sainte-Croix’s libellus appeared precisely when the genre came into fashion and served the abbey’s 74  Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts,” 250, 256–64.

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Figure 5.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 251 (137), f. 21. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

needs in the same way that libelli did at such institutions as at Fulda (St. Margaret), Durham (St. Cuthbert), and Angers (St. Aubin).75 Sainte-Croix’s libellus manuscript is large, measuring 280mm by 215mm, and made of white parchment.76 Jean Vezin concluded that Fortunatus’s life was the work of a single scribe who also completed Baudonivia’s author portrait. The contemporary pieces related to Radegund (folios 44–75) were another scribe’s work.77 Besides the twenty-two illuminations there are several large decorated initials, occasionally with gold. The text begins with letters on a purple field enhancing the manuscript’s luxury. Based on handwriting evidence, Vezin dated the vita 75  Josepha Weitzmann-Fiedler, “Zur Illustration der Margaretenlegende,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 3, no. 17 (1966): 17–48; and Passio Kiliani, Ps. Theotimus, Passio Margaretae, Orationes, ed. Cynthia Hahn (Graz: Akademische Druck-U. Verlagsanstalt, 1988); Anne LawrenceMathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), especially ch. 4; Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “The Construction of Sanctity: Pictorial Hagiography and Monastic Reform in the First Illustrated Life of St. Cuthbert (Oxford, University College Ms. 165),” Studies in Iconography 21 (2000): 47–89, and “Some Illustrations of the Life of St. Aubin (Albinus) of Angers (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. N. a. l. 1390) and Related Works” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980). 76  Jean Vezin, “Étude Paléographique et Codicologique du Manuscrit de la Vita Radegundis,” in Favreau, ed., La Vie de Sainte Radegonde par Fortunat, 115–25. 77  Vezin, “Étude Paléographique,” 118.

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transcription to the second half of the eleventh century, with a second scribe working a bit later on the material filling folios 44–79, perhaps 1070–1100.78 Stylistic details confirm the paleographical dating. Cynthia Hahn has located this rich, detailed, and expensive libellus within the context of the eleventh-century production of texts and, more importantly, the new emphasis on pictorial hagiographies designed to spur interest in local saints.79 Such illuminated manuscripts were immensely popular in the high Middle Ages with a wide monastic, clerical, and popular audience.80 It is unfortunate that we may not be more precise in dating the manuscript; it would be useful to place the illuminations either in the period after the jurisdictional dispute with Sainte-Radegonde’s canons began, or just before. Were the nuns of Sainte-Croix creating this manuscript simply to enhance Radegund’s cult, as well as the abbey’s prominence, and to renew attentions from their secular patrons, or attract new ecclesiastical support? Or were they responding to the canons’ efforts to raise their own chapter’s status through the papacy’s support? Were these two communities working together or at odds? Did this manuscript prove a catalyst for the jurisdictional disputes we see beginning in the 1070s, or was it a response to them? A definitive answer to these questions is unfortunately elusive, but I prefer to consider the manuscript a product of the early period—sometime between 1050 and 1070—and thus to predate the contentious disputes I discuss in Chapter 4, and to see the manuscript as part of the nuns’ broader eleventh-century program of raising the cult’s profile. If this chronology is correct, then the canons responded to the nuns’ efforts to locate the center of Radegund’s cult at Sainte-Croix with a bid for greater autonomy and authority within Poitiers’ religious community. It is equally possible for the manuscript to have been the nuns’ own response to the canons’ shake-up of their traditional hierarchy. With such lavish illuminations the libellus enjoyed a privileged position, either on Sainte-Croix’s altar or in its treasury.81 The liturgical material added in the 78  Vezin, “Étude Paléographique,” 124. 79 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 259–76, 280–1. The first serious study of BMP 250 was Ginot, Le Manuscrit de Sainte Radegonde in 1920. See also Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts”; Tony Sauvel, “A propos d’une exposition récente: les manuscripts poitevins ornés de peintures,” BSAO ser. 4, no. 3 (1955): 257–71, esp. 261–70; Albert Boeckler, Abendländische Miniaturen bis zum Ausgang der romanischen Zeit (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1930), 197–8; Jean Porcher, “Vie de sainte Radegonde, manuscript,” in L’Art Roman, exposition organisée par le Gouvernement Espagnol sous les auspices du Conseil de l’Éurope. Catalogue 1961 (Barcelona: Gráfica Bachs, 1963), 98; C. Nordenfalk, “L’enluminure à l’époque romane,” in A. Grabar and C. Nordenfalk, eds., La Peinture romane du onzième au treizième siècle (Geneva: Skira, 1958), 131–206; Henri Leclercq, “Poitiers,” DACL 14, no. 1: col. 1336–8; Émile Mâle, L’Art religieux du XIIe siècle en France. Étude sur les origins de l’iconographie du Moyen Âge (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1922), 229–30; and M. Lavarret, “L’iconographie de sainte Radegonde dans les manuscripts,” BSAO ser. 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–112. 80  Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts,” 248–66, 255–6. 81 While the canons of Sainte-Radegonde held the manuscript in the later period, Magdalena Carrasco has persuasively argued that the themes, style, and narrative of the libellus make clear that the nuns of Sainte-Croix created the manuscript, a position with which many agree: Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., Ms. 250),” in Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 414–35, 417; and see, for example, Skubiszewski, “Le décor de la ‘Vie de Radegonde’ de Poitiers.”

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fifteenth century indicates that it played a role in services held in the abbey and perhaps also in services the nuns attended at Sainte-Radegonde (see Chapter 6). We might expect it to have been on display at the very least during Radegund’s four feast days, when visitors, pilgrims, patrons, and especially the canons of Sainte-Radegonde who officiated at Sainte-Croix’s altar would be able to view the miniatures. Such a rich object would function like a relic for the community and thus take on a role in the nuns’ processions to Sainte-Radegonde for major liturgical feasts.82 In many ways, Radegund’s libellus is characteristic of contemporary pictorial hagiographies, in that it illustrated the vitae of an ancient saint in a region that “lacked a strong central means of political control” in which “the saint slipped easily into a symbolic role of power similar to that of the secular lord.”83 This is why that earlier dating is so attractive: at a time when the abbey faced a crisis in secular support, they returned to Radegund as their protector. The nuns’ libellus served as a crucial piece of propaganda for the saint and her nuns by telling of her holy deeds both in text and in illuminations, and it also ­presents a window into eleventh-century readings of Radegund’s original texts. Just as these early texts constructed a version of Radegund’s holy life, so, too, did the libellus: through the selection, arrangement, and depiction of scenes from Fortunatus’s text, the illuminations focus the observer’s attention on particular aspects of the saint’s identity, such as her preference for the monastic life, her charitable deeds, and her miracles. They also downplay or marginalize other elements of Radegund’s life, such as her royalty and asceticism, aspects of Fortunatus’s text that were key to his notion of Radegund’s sanctity but which were no longer essential to SainteCroix’s eleventh-century nuns.84 The libellus re-emphasizes Radegund’s sanctity while connecting it to Sainte-Croix and suggesting that her miraculous powers could still be felt within the abbey walls. Eleventh-century illuminated manuscripts of saints’ lives monasteries created worked in concert with contemporary decoration of relics and their shrines. We might read the creation of Sainte-Croix’s libellus, then, as a piece with their new setting for the True Cross relic, and Abbess Bèliarde’s work to restore Radegund’s tomb at Sainte-Radegonde. Sainte-Croix’s abbesses launched a program to glorify Radegund and draw attention to her cult, attracting pilgrims both to the saint’s relics at Sainte-Radegonde and to precious items such as the cross and libellus held in Sainte-Croix’s own abbey church. It is also possible, however, that the situation circa 1050 was different from that in 1012, and that the abbess who had directed the creation of Sainte-Croix’s libellus and the restoration of the True Cross reliquary was working in competition with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde. Many shrines created libelli in competition with one another, as Hahn noted, and Carrasco has 82  On the liturgical function of libelli, see Eric Palazzo, “Le role des libelli dans la pratique liturgique du haut moyen âge: historie et typologie,” Revue Mabillon, n.s. 1 (62) (1990): 9–36. If the manuscript did travel, the illuminations would have been present in the same space as the pictorial narrative of Radegund’s life added to Sainte-Radegonde’s windows in the thirteenth century and could have served as their model (see Chapter 4). 83 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 5 and 25. 84  Thanks to Anne D. Hedeman for her guidance in interpreting these images.

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previously read Sainte-Croix’s libellus—by locating it in the period after 1070—as an effort to shift emphasis in Radegund’s cult from Sainte-Radegonde to the abbey.85 Given the libellus’s emphasis on Radegund’s monasticism, it is possible to read the libellus illuminations as a competing narrative, drawing attention to the nuns and away from the tomb. If we had them, the illuminations accompanying Baudonivia’s vita would have offered a more conclusive analysis of this issue, since Radegund’s tomb and her quest for a Cross relic only appear in Baudonivia’s vita. Had the illuminator skipped the tomb, or focused that illumination on the weeping nuns rather than the move into Sainte-Radegonde; or had the illuminator lavished attention on scenes of the True Cross while minimizing the entombment’s depiction, we might more conclusively argue for competition in the eleventh-century cult rather than for a coherent program the abbess led. Without those images, these conflicting readings remain equally possible. However, the hostility of the jurisdictional disputes beginning in the 1070s pushes me in favor of a reading that stresses competition between the two communities, perhaps beginning with the libellus and becoming fully realized in the jurisdictional disputes. Moreover, the removal of Baudonivia’s vita from the libellus is itself suggestive. Were those folia removed in order to create a separate and more accessible libellus that some parties (nuns or canons?) wished to emphasize? Or were they removed because they had been consistent with a harmonious state of the cult early in the century that no longer matched the situation at century’s end? Unfortunately we do not have those images and unless they appear suddenly from a Poitevin attic, we cannot conclusively determine their role. Twenty surviving narrative miniatures illuminate Fortunatus’s vita in BMP 250 (136), with two more miniatures preserved in eighteenth-century cartoons of the now missing folio (Figures 4 and 5), for a total of twenty-two narrative illuminations. The artist’s selections for illumination focus attention on certain aspects of Fortunatus’s vita of Radegund. Sixteen of the twenty-two images depict Radegund’s miracles, enhancing the original case for her sanctity and power. Every miracle mentioned in the vita receives a half or whole-page miniature. Indeed, this focus on the miracles is a shift away from the martyrdom narrative that Fortunatus had so carefully constructed in his original vita, and which the libellus reduces to only a single image. The manuscript illuminations give new prominence and importance to a different aspect of Radegund’s life from the original vita: the saint in the libellus images is a nun above all else. From within her enclosed monastic walls and cell, Radegund devotes herself to prayer and charity, from which she gains the power to heal. Her mortifications and much of her asceticism, so prominent and evocative in Fortunatus, appear only in the background of this monastic image. The images’ distribution and layout divide the vita into three sections. In the first, full-page illuminations depict the saint’s early life, her marriage to Clothar, her charity, her consecration, and her confinement within a cell while a nun at Sainte-Croix (Table 1). These full-page illuminations represent long sections of text that follow each image, each page is split into multiple scenes, and each is placed 85 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 24; and Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context.”

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Table 1.  Illuminations in BMP ms 250 (136) Folio

Topic

Size

Original Text

21 verso 22 verso

Fortunatus as author Radegund as a young girl captured by Clothar/gathering dust before the altar Dinner with Clothar/in prayer/lying on floor rather than in bed with Clothar Radegund frees the prisoners Radegund’s consecration Radegund’s charity: washing the feet of the poor, feeding them Radegund enters her cell/binds herself with iron circlets Cures Bella of blindness Exorcises demon from Frailfled Expels work from Leubela Cures sick nun at Sainte-Croix Strikes a mouse dead (based on BMP 251) Expels a demon (based on BMP 251) Saves Florius, a fisherman, at sea Goda and the candle Cures carpenter’s wife Agnes and the laurel tree Cures nun’s eye with wormwood Hair shirt cures Andered’s baby Cures Animia with a bath Criticizes dancing Resuscitates baby (depicted as an adult) Appears to Domnolenus at the moment of her death Baudonivia’s author portrait

Full page Full page

VF 2

Full page

VF 4, 5

Full page Full page Full page

VF 11 VF 12 VF 17

Full page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Half page Full page Full page Full page Full page Full page

VF 21, 25 VF 27 VF28 VF 28 VF 29 VF 30 VF 30 VF 31 VF 32 VF 33 VF 33 VF 34 VF 34 VF 35 VF 36 VF 37 VF 38

24 recto 25 verso 27 verso 29 verso 31 verso 34 recto 34 verso 35 recto 35 verso Missing Missing 36 recto 36 verso 37 recto 37 verso 38 recto 38 verso 39 recto 40 recto 41 recto 42 recto 43 verso

at the start of one of Fortunatus’s chapters. The section contains three pairs of miniatures, all emphasizing Radegund’s choice of a religious rather than a secular life, indicated by her good works and visualized with the saint kneeling devoutly in each image.86 The first pair depicts Radegund as a young captive (folio 22v, Figure 6) and then as a queen (folio 24r, Figure 7), trying to preserve her faith in the face of challenges from Clothar. The second set depicts Radegund’s charity, helping to free prisoners while queen (folio 25v) and her care of the poor and sick after her consecration as a deaconess (folio 29v, Figure 8). The third set of images is key to the narrative of Radegund’s monasticism: the saint’s exchange of royal for monastic clothing (folio 27v, see Figure 13) and her enclosure inside her Lenten cell (31v, see Figure 14). In the second section, beginning with folio 34r, the manuscript shifts from fullto half-page miniatures in the upper part of the page with text in the lower portion (Figure 9). All twelve of the miniatures in this section depict Radegund’s miracles, and all the miracles Fortunatus described receive illumination, if we include the missing folio. This section of Fortunatus’s text is more densely illuminated, with each short chapter receiving its own miniature and illuminations appearing on both sides 86  We do not see Radegund’s knees in folio 31v because her lower body is obscured by the cell walls, but it does appear that she is kneeling within her cell.

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Figure 6.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 22v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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Figure 7.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 24r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

of each folio. As Hahn has shown, these images emphasize Radegund’s claustration (the saint worked six of the miracles from the window in her cell) and the power of her right hand.87 The saint uses this hand to bless possessed women in the manner of a bishop, calling out the sign of the cross, referencing the relic of the True 87 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 259, 267, and 270.

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Figure 8.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 29v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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Figure 9.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 34r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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Cross, and exorcises demons. Five of the illuminations depict miracles responding to prayers offered to the saint in her absence. While the earlier illuminations had divided the vita evenly and moved through Fortunatus’s text at a steady pace, this section slows the pace of the libellus, illustrating smaller sections of text. By so doing, the artist drew attention to the miracles and spent significant time on each, articulating a visual argument for Radegund’s sanctity and emphasizing this aspect of her holy biography. The artist thus gives the miracles greater prominence in Radegund’s vita than they had originally received from Fortunatus. The artist also located many of the miracles visually within the abbey, stressing its importance in her healing miracles. The libellus returns to full-page miniatures in the third section in order to focus on some of Radegund’s most impressive miracles. The shift begins with the healing of Animia (folio 39r, Figure 10), a nun at Sainte-Croix whose sickness and recovery Fortunatus details at greater length than he allotted to earlier miracles. This section also includes Radegund’s resuscitation of a dead infant (folio 41r, Figure 11), and the only posthumous miracle Fortunatus included, her appearance to Domnolenus at the moment of her death (folio 42r, Figure 12). These are the miracles on which Fortunatus poured the most attention, the ones in which Radegund most clearly performed an imitatio Christi, and the artist likewise indicated the greater importance of these moments with more impressive, full-page treatment. Thus the illuminations’ narrative follows Fortunatus’s overall connection of miracle, monastic enclosure, asceticism, and charity. But the manuscript pacing shifts the emphasis, privileging miracles in place of asceticism. Likewise, the stress on images of Radegund’s cell increases the focus on enclosure. The dramatic visual shift, in folio 27v (Figure 13), from Radegund as queen to Radegund as nun, also enhanced the importance of Radegund’s choice of a monastic life. F RO M Q U E E N TO S A I N T The artist selected only the most significant aspects of the manuscript’s first section to represent in image. An illumination of Radegund collecting dust from the altar as a young girl (folio 22v, see Figure  6) demonstrated that Radegund’s sanctity began in childhood, typical for saints’ lives. Since Radegund’s marriage was a major part of her life it required a full-page illumination, yet the artist again stressed those scenes that demonstrated Radegund’s holiness—such as her preference of prayer to the marriage bed (folio 24r, see Figure 7) and her decision to defy Clothar’s orders by freeing his prisoners (folio 25v). We see the couple together only three times: at table, where Radegund talks with Clothar, in the bedroom, where Radegund avoids his bed, and upon her capture as a child. It is clear that Radegund was not going to fulfill the expected demands of her role as queen. Only three of the illuminations in BMP 250 (136) portray Radegund as a queen wearing royal clothing, and all of them contain a contrasting scene of the saint at prayer (folios 24r, 25v, and 24v; see Figure 7). As we saw in Chapter 1, Fortunatus declared that Radegund had rejected her earthly royalty when she convinced

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Figure 10.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 39r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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Figure 11. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 41r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

Bishop Médard of Noyon to consecrate her as a deaconess; for Fortunatus Radegund’s decision to give her jewels and clothes to the church symbolized her transformation to a nun.88 The libellus miniature narrates this moment in two scenes of a full-page 88 Fort., VR, 13.

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Figure 12. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 42r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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Figure 13. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 27v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

illumination (see Figure 13). In the upper register Radegund beseeches Médard to consecrate her despite the threats from Clothar’s men, who appear to be chasing her. She wears her gold dress and crown to show her status as a queen. In the lower register, however, she wears a nun’s simple clothes, exchanging her crown for a blue

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head covering. She wears these clothes for the rest of the libellus, appearing as a nun for the remainder of her life, and even at her death. In the libellus, once Radegund put off royal clothing she became a nun permanently, sending a clear message from the nuns: Radegund rejected her royalty and preferred a monastic life. It is significant that this imagery coincided with a shift in the abbey’s support, as the Capetian monarchy pulled back from the provinces and the count of Poitou asserted greater authority. Royal images of Radegund were less useful at this time. Even so, the artist avoided any negative depictions of the monarchy: the more violent episodes between Clothar and Radegund are oddly absent or downplayed in the illuminations, threats shifted from Clothar to his men. And, although Radegund appears as a nun, the manuscript is laden with purple and gold, royal colors. The libellus thus accentuates Radegund’s monastic life while reminding its audience of her royal background. It communicates the idea that the monastic life of Sainte-Croix’s nuns is superior to a royal one, even while asserting their claim to that high position. Such ideological acrobatics are particularly interesting at a time when Sainte-Croix drew its members from the local petty aristocracy and no longer from the royal families of the Merovingian and Carolingian period. The nuns both wanted a claim on the royal status of its previous members, and to underscore the superiority of their own way of life, right at the time that they faced a crisis in their support network. ENCLOSURE Radegund’s choice to live as a nun is also emphasized in the manuscript’s use of space, locating the saint within Sainte-Croix and within her cell. The illuminations place Radegund’s life in an enclosed space through the frames that evoke buildings around her. The imprisonment of her early life is suggested by further framing for the division of scenes (see Figure 7). Once Radegund chooses a monastic life, the manuscript focuses on her enclosure, and specifically on her enclosure within Sainte-Croix (the illuminator neglected the time she spent in Saix and Athies, as well as her building projects there).89 Folio 31v (Figure 14), the last full-page miniature of the first section, focuses on this monastic choice and contains two scenes: on the upper register, Radegund enters a building while crowds watch, while on the lower register the saint stands at the building’s window. The illuminator put together in the upper register scene two parts of the large chunk of text that follows the image. The crowds come from Fortunatus’s chapter 21: “Quanto vero congressio popularis extitit die qua se sancta deliberavit recludere ut quos platee non caperent ascendentes tecta complerent.”90 The text indicates that Radegund secluded herself when she entered her newly constructed monastery of Sainte-Croix.91 But many scholars, including Hahn and Carrasco, have interpreted 89 Fort., VR, 15. Baudonivia goes into more detail on these foundations in her vita. 90 Fort., VR, 21, BMP 250 (136), folio 32r. 91  As Yves Chauvin and Georges Pon noted, “recludere” does not necessarily mean strict enclosure: translation in Robert Favreau, ed., La vie de Sainte Radegonde, 89n.93.

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Figure 14.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 31v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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this building not simply as the monastery but as a depiction of Radegund’s cell, which Fortunatus described in the next chapter: “Prima quoque quadragesimana, qua se reclusit in cellula.”92 The illuminator gives us the crowds from the entrance to Sainte-Croix and the cell from her Lenten seclusion.93 The saint’s decision to enter her cell, and her time within the cell, receive the most attention in the illuminations. The cell exterior appeared in eight of the twenty-two illuminations (counting the missing folio preserved in cartoon), or more than 36 percent of the total, which is much more attention on the cell than in the original vita. Fortunatus mentioned Radegund’s cell in five chapters, and all five received miniatures in the libellus.94 The illuminator went on to add the cell to three chapters (27, 28, and 30) that had not discussed it originally. Further, the illuminator split two chapters (28 and 33) into smaller units, granting each chapter two miniatures, both containing images of the cell (Table  2). Since this was the site of most of Radegund’s miracles, repeated presentation of the cell’s image stressed the connections between Radegund’s exercise of holy power and the cloister. The images’ frames enclosed Radegund on the page; the image of her cell created a second enclosure, evoking the cloistered lives of the nuns.95 Thus Radegund was carefully ensconced Table 2.  Depictions of cell in Fort., VR and BMP 250 (136) Chapter

Cell in Fort., VR

Illumination in BMP 250 (136)

Cell depicted

22 26 27 28 28 29 30 33 33 37

Yes Yes No No No Yes No No Yes Yes

31v, Radegund enters cell (upper) 31v, Radegund’s asceticism (lower) 34r, heals blind woman 34v, exorcism 35r, exorcism 35v, Radegund heals sick woman Missing folio, BMP 251 (137), 21v, exorcism 37r, exorcism 37v, Laurel Tree 41r, heals infant

Exterior Exterior Exterior Exterior Exterior Perhaps interior Exterior Exterior Exterior Exterior

92 Fort., VR, 22, BMP 250 (136), folio 32r. 93  Carrasco had observed that the illuminator created a “feminine variation on the contemporary themes of intense piety and charitable works” because Radegund “does not appear preaching in public to a large crowd, a common image for bishops.” But the artist did not dispense with the crowd altogether; instead s/he included the crowd as observers of Radegund’s enclosure within the cell. She is as observed and attended as a bishop might be, but in a feminine and enclosed space: Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 433. Barbara Abou-El-Haj noted similar depictions of St. Maur and of St. Amand enclosed in cells in other manuscripts: The Medieval Cult of Saints, 169. 94  Fortunatus mentioned the cell in discussing Radegund’s self-mortifications with a brass plate in Fort., VR, 26; while the illumination does not present this exact practice, it does represent her asceticism from the same part of the manuscript. In VR 29 Fortunatus describes a healing miracle Radegund performed within her cell, so while the cell’s exterior was not depicted, the artist indicates that the scene is within the cell, in the same way he contrasts an exterior and interior depiction in 41r, where Radegund receives a petitioner through the cell’s window in the upper register and performs a healing miracle within the cell on the lower register. 95  For more on the effect of frames and other elements of layout in medieval pictorial narratives, see Kumiko Maekawa, Narrative and Experience: Innovations in Thirteenth-Century Picture Books (Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 2000).

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in the female space of Sainte-Croix, in the enclosed life of a female monastic, and this enclosure gave her great power, or so suggests the illuminator. As Carrasco has suggested, such a stress on Radegund’s cell in the libellus offers tantalizing evidence for the cell of the Pas-Dieu, which has no other attestation before the late fourteenth century.96 Gregory of Tours had observed Radegund’s cell in the sixth century, and Baudonivia described the vision of a young man who was, in later legend, understood to be Christ; the tale connected Radegund to Christ and Christological healing.97 The story expanded later to include a footprint that the young man left behind—the step of God, which was celebrated annually on August 3 by the fifteenth century. By the mid-fourteenth century a prioress from Sainte-Croix served at a chapel built around the footprint.98 In selecting the Caesarean Rule Radegund opted for strict active enclosure for Sainte-Croix, and we saw the impact of that Rule on the nuns at Radegund’s funeral. The women of Sainte-Croix lined the abbey’s wall, grieving the loss of their sister and saint as Radegund’s body moved out of the monastery and into the church that became Sainte-Radegonde.99 The RB the Carolingians pressed on Frankish monasteries after the ninth century did not contain that strict mandate for female monastic claustration, however, and there is a great deal of evidence that monastic women left their abbey sanctuary for a variety of purposes, from administering monastic property to visiting their families.100 As we have seen, Abbess Béliarde was active in restoring the crypt at Sainte-Radegonde. Documents of the nuns’ jurisdictional dispute with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde indicate that in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the nuns had regular access to the church and crypt that contained Radegund’s body, and the nuns continued to demand access to her tomb in later centuries. While prescriptive texts emphasized enclosure, it does not appear that monastic women embraced its strictures in practice any more than monastic men did—hence the repeated calls among theologians for greater enclosure (discussed further in Chapters 4 and 6).101 But we need not interpret this new emphasis on Radegund’s cell, as Carrasco has done, as evidence of the strictly enclosed lives of Sainte-Croix’s nuns.102 Instead, 96  The Pas-Dieu legend is first attested in 1392, when Marie de Maillé visited Sainte-Croix and prostrated herself before the step of God: “cum intrasset ecclesiam in monasterio sanctæ Crucis Pictauiensis, vbi est sanctum vestigium pedis Christi, gratia humilitatis reputans se indignam appropinquare vestigium prædictū, prostrauit se in oratione in parte inferiori dictæ ecclesiæ longe ab eodem vestigio”: AS Mart., III, 755. There are then references to a priory and prioress of Pas-Dieu in the documents of the 1466–72 dispute: BMP A6 (426), 21, and ADV 2H1/2. See Chapter 6 in this volume. There may be an earlier attestation in the thirteenth century: see Chapter 5. 97 Greg., GC, 104; Baudonivia, 20. 98  Favreau, “Heurs et Malheurs de L’Abbaye, XIIe–XVe s.,” Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers: Quatorze siècles de vie monastique (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1986), 117–58, 179; ADV 2H1/2. In 1912 a replica chapel was built on the same site and stands there today. André Rhein, “Église de Sainte-Radegonde,” Congrès archéologique Angoulême, 79th session (1912), vol. 1, 269–70; B. de la Liborlière, Vieux souvenirs du Poitiers d’avant 1789 (Poitiers, 1846), 78; M.  Viellard-Troikouroff, Les Monuments religieux de la Gaule d’après les oeuvres de Grégoire de Tours (Paris, 1976), 228–9; Paul Vigué, Une visite à la cellule de sainte Radegonde et à la chapelle du Pas de Dieu (Poitiers, 1913). 99  Baudonivia, 24. 100  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities.” 101  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 597. 102  Or of their lack of Radegund’s body, which the nuns likely accessed regularly at Sainte-Radegonde. See Carrasco, “Sanctity and Experience in Pictorial Hagiography,” 66; Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,”

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we might take this repeated and expanded depiction of Radegund’s cell as a defensive insistence that Sainte-Croix valued enclosure as much in the eleventh century as Radegund had in the sixth. Indeed, enclosure may have been important to the nuns of Sainte-Croix rhetorically: to demonstrate that they were devout nuns living a pious life in Radegund’s image. They used the rhetoric of enclosure to spotlight their specialness and superiority to other forms of religious life. This does not mean that their lives strictly imitated the art of their libellus. ASCETICISM The libellus also departed from Fortunatus’s original text in its treatment of Radegund’s asceticism. Much of the saint’s charity is condensed into a few scenes of her freeing prisoners, washing feet, and feeding people. Her simple diet receives almost no reference outside of two dining scenes, one in which she debates with Clothar (folio 24r, see Figure 7) and another in which she brought food to others (folio 29v, see Figure 8); Radegund eats nothing in either scene. As Caroline Walker Bynum has shown for later female holy women, control of food was an opportunity for women to assert power over themselves and their environments through the only resource available to them. In these two scenes the saint ignores a banquet, and in the other she offers her bounty to others, two typical ways that holy women expressed ascetic self-control and rejection of limits to their power.103 While the miniatures stressed Radegund’s transition from queen to nun, the manuscript’s artist avoided some of the more violent scenes that, in Fortunatus’s narration, motivated this shift. Radegund had been taken as booty in the Thuringian war, along with her brother. Clothar later killed the boy, motivating Radegund’s flight and decision to take the veil. While Radegund appears before the king, plainly as captive, on folio 22v (see Figure 6), it is Clothar’s men, not the king himself, who hold her.104 When her brother is killed and Radegund flees; the manuscript shows only the threats from Clothar’s cronies, not the boy’s death. Fortunatus also suggests that Radegund’s ascetic practices and charity aggravated Clothar, who punished his queen, but all we see is a fairly patient Clothar lying in bed while Radegund lies on the floor (see Figure 7). Indeed, this scene becomes almost humorous, watching Clothar stare upward in frustration while his queen lies on the floor ignoring him, his needs, and her queenly duty. The nuns may have wished to avoid opposing their saint to the monarchy, or portraying the king as a brute,

433–4; and Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience (ca. 500–1100),” in John  A.  Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank, eds., Medieval Religious Women. Volume One: Distant Echoes (Oxford: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1984), 51–86. 103 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. 104  The visual language, of a young girl’s wrist held in this grip, suggests rape: Diane Wolfthal, “ ‘A Hue and a Cry’: Medieval Rape Imagery and Its Transformation,” Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 39–64. See especially the image Wolfthal reproduces of the Rape of Dinah from the Pamplona Bible, Amiens, BM, ms lat. 108, fol. 20v, on Wolfthal, “ ‘A Hue and a Cry,’ ” 44.

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and so left out these damning sections of Fortunatus’s text.105 While the nuns’ ancient connections with kings may not have been as active when they created this libellus, the nuns certainly would have found it unwise to vilify a patron and ally by insulting his predecessor. Clothar’s violence thus fades into the text.106 But the manuscript likewise subverted the violence of Radegund’s physical mortifications that had featured so prominently in the written account. This is especially notable since medieval hagiography so frequently lingers over female saints’ embodied experience.107 Fortunatus’s evocative language described painful scenes that were crucial to his case for her martyrdom and sanctity. As discussed in Chapter 1, during Lent Radegund wore a hair shirt under her clothes to torment her skin, she branded herself with a brass plate in Christ’s image, and she bound herself with iron circlets. Radegund’s asceticism appears more mild and modest in the manuscript—ropes are tied over her clothes in a single image in the lower register of a page that, as noted above, actually stresses the saint’s entry into a cell (folio 31v, see Figure 14). These tortures took up multiple chapters of Fortunatus’s text and evoked disturbing mental images of the extent of Radegund’s devotion. The libellus, however, downplayed the violence of Radegund’s asceticism in favor of images of her monasticism. The manuscript illuminator included only one of these torturous episodes that significantly undercuts the violence of the text, condensing six chapters to just a single image on the page’s lower register. Even the selection of scenes paired with this image of self-mortification undermines the power of Radegund’s asceticism: the upper register contains Radegund’s entrance into her cell, drawing the eye upward. Further, although the hair shirt is displayed as a conduit for working miracles (folio 38v, Figure 15), Radegund does not wear it in the illuminations, nor do we see her with hot coals or a brass plate. Instead, we see through the cell’s window on the lower register the saint’s three “iron bars,” appearing more like rope than iron, and bound over the nun’s clothes, preserving her modesty (see Figure 12). The cell becomes the more significant element on the page and even in that same scene. One must look carefully to notice the “bars.” By putting the scenes of Radegund entering the cell (chapter 22) and her Lenten torment (chapter 25) together the illuminator omitted a large section of the text describing Radegund’s charity and pleasure in household chores, which demonstrates the artist’s desire to include this scene in that particular pairing; this is the largest 105  Indeed, in the fifteenth century a false diploma included with this manuscript asserted that Clothar co-founded the monastery and that he guaranteed its privileges and properties: BMP 250 (136), ff. 77–8. 106  It would return to cult images in later centuries, such as in the Miracle of the Oats in the fourteenth century: celebrated by the nuns in 1358 (BMP DF 5, 671–8) and at the church of SainteRadegonde in 1364 (ADV G1344); it was also depicted in an illumination of the Breviary of Anne de Prie (abbess of La Trinité 1480–1505), illumination, Treasury of the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre, Poitiers. 107  Elizabeth Robertson, “The Corporeality of Female Sanctity in the Life of Saint Margaret,” in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Klara Szell, eds., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 168–87; Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), and Holy Feast and Holy Fast.

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Figure 15. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 38v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

jump in material depicted on the same page in the libellus. Thus, Radegund’s self-mortification is present in the pictorial cycle, but it loses its prominent place in favor of the overwhelming display of the saint’s miracles. While her self-inflicted violence has now became passive—the saint stands in her cell, bound, rather than actively branding her flesh—the miracles contain energy and movement; they

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depict the saint blessing, her movement toward her cell, the departure of demons.108 Moreover, as Carrasco has argued, the illuminator has added a book to this image of Radegund’s mortifications, perhaps in reference to the gospel and Radegund’s imitatio Christi, perhaps in reference to the nuns’ literacy, perhaps in reference to the importance of a libellus like BMP 250 (136). The illuminator contextualizes Radegund’s ascetic suffering, which had been key to Fortunatus’s narration of a living martyrdom, within the more important features of a monastic life: enclosure, literacy, calm obedience, prayer.109 By entering the cell, passively enduring pain, and holding the book Radegund generates the energy she will then use to cure her petitioners and establish her sanctity. This juxtaposition of the saint enclosing herself in the abbey and performing asceticism shifts the focus from the martyrdom that Fortunatus had carefully constructed to prove her holiness; the new emphasis is on claustration and the miraculous power worked through Radegund from within her cell. This is a major revision of Fortunatus’s text, and one that privileges Sainte-Croix’s cloistered women’s power. Rather than depict the exemplary asceticism of Fortunatus’s vita, the libellus Radegund presented a monastic image that is easier to follow. Her enclosure, her book, her mild Lenten sacrifice became aspects of the saint’s holy identity that nuns could more easily reenact in an imitatio Radegundae. The libellus thus markets Sainte-Croix in an idealized but not unattainable version of its ­eleventh-century nuns’ lifestyle. MIRACLES Fortunatus had balanced his vita between Radegund’s asceticism, charity, and ­miracles, while the stress of the libellus illuminations goes squarely onto the saint’s holy miracles. Sixteen of the vita’s twenty-two images, or more than 72 percent of the illuminations, depict the miracles. Every miracle from the vita received a whole or half-page miniature, which occasionally required the artist to create two illuminations for the same short chapter while skipping over three or four chapters that did not contain miracles. The layout shift from the first to the manuscript’s second section gave the miracles greater prominence in the text, while the shift from the second to the third section further enhanced the final few and most important miracles with full-page treatment. As Hahn noted, in the “absence of tortures” Radegund inflicted on herself, the miracles must do more work to demonstrate Radegund’s sanctity to the illuminations’ audience.110 108  Hahn notes the shift in this image from an “active” life to one that is “contemplative”: Portrayed on the Heart, 263. As Hahn has noted, the image of Radegund bound and in her cell is a crucial scene for establishing the miracles to come: Radegund’s right hand, the hand with which she works many of the miracles, is covered in a gold cloth, marking the hand as special, potent and explaining the power of a woman to bless as a bishop: Portrayed on the Heart, 267. 109  This sort of move away from violent imagery related to martyrdom and toward depictions of the saint as “exemplary model of the monastic life” may have been common: a similar shift can be seen in Vézelay decoration containing St. Eugenia: Ambrose, The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay, 41. 110 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 281.

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Figure 16. Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 36r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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Following the description of Radegund’s miracles in Fortunatus’s vita, the miracles’ illuminations present Radegund primarily as a healer of women, although they show her performing other types of miracles, such as when she saved lost fishermen (Figure 16) and struck down an obnoxious mouse (see Figure 4).111 She cures women of illness, blindness, and, especially, possession. The exorcisms are the most striking, with serpents or little demons climbing out of the possessed women once Radegund blesses them. As with most of her healings, Radegund performs these miracles from within her cell, demonstrating that it is her enclosure inside the abbey that brings her the holy ability to heal. Hahn has noted the importance of Radegund’s right hand held in blessing throughout her miracles. The illuminator may have asserted episcopal authority in the saint’s use of miraculous power. Hahn linked the gold cloth covering Radegund’s right hand in folio 31v (the hand that held her book) (see Figure 14) with the gold cloth wrapping Bishop Médard’s hand before consecrating her, on folio 27v (see Figure 13). She went on to observe that Radegund’s healing miracles are worked through a blessing gesture in the sign of the cross, “sharing the healing power of [the hands] of a bishop.” Perhaps this is a method of asserting Radegund’s holy power and authority, even while limiting its scope to her monastic cell.112 This is another area in which it would be useful to have the illuminations that probably accompanied Baudonivia’s life. Unlike Fortunatus, she had emphasized the difficulties Radegund had with Bishop Maroveus, at a time when the abbey may still have enjoyed immunity from his oversight. Given the stronger authority Poitiers’ bishops had over Sainte-Croix in the eleventh century, I wonder whether those sections would have received illuminations, or if the sort of episcopal authority suggested for Radegund in the extant illuminations were subtle claims to that authority and immunity for Sainte-Croix’s abbess. Fortunatus and Baudonivia had exhibited Radegund’s miraculous healing of infants in their vitae in order to demonstrate a maternal spirit for a saint who was neither virgin nor mother and defied customary models of sanctity. The illuminations represent two such moments from Fortunatus’s vita: the hair shirt’s healing of Andered’s child and the resuscitation of a second infant in her cell (see Chapter 1).113 The first miniature does not include Radegund; instead, her hair shirt floats holding the revived infant smiling at his father (see Figure 15). The hair shirt was an important secondary relic for the nuns; its depiction in the manuscript references this treasure still held in the abbey at the time. Andered’s child is clearly an infant in the libellus—swaddled and placed on Radegund’s hair shirt. However, the illuminator changed a second miraculous healing of an infant: the vita text is clear that Radegund resuscitated an infant (infantula), but the artist chose to change the dead child’s age and make him look like an adult (see Figure 11).114 Perhaps seeing an infant pass through the window of a monastic cell was too scandalous and suggestive for an eleventh-century audience concerned with celibacy and chastity. Radegund’s sixth-century vitae had portrayed her as a maternal saint and we will see the canons of Sainte-Radegonde return to this theme in their thirteenth-century 111 Fort., VR, 30, 31. 113 Fort., VR, 34.

112 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 267. 114 Fort., VR, 37.

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church decoration program, which connected the saint to the Virgin Mary. But this eleventh-century libellus moved away from that imagery, avoiding references to maternity just as the nuns avoided Radegund’s asceticism. They focused instead on Radegund’s enclosure and on her healings; by doing so they emphasized the aspects of the saint’s holy life that best fit with the nuns’ own monastic life. Indeed, the illuminations preserved the focus on Radegund’s healing of women, stressing especially in the repeated healings through the cell window that the saint paid particular attention to the suffering of women caused by demons. The saint was attentive to fellow nuns within the abbey (folios 35v, 36v, 38r, 39r, 40r), but the most frequently repeated miracle was the expulsion of some evil beasty from a woman petitioning Radegund outside her cell (folios 34v, 35r, 37r, 37v; and the missing folio in BMP 251), with another strikingly similar image of Radegund reaching out to cure a blind woman (folio 34r).115 This Radegund was devoted to her monastic sisters and to the care of women approaching her enclosed home. The manuscript’s final shift drew attention to three important moments: her revivification miracle discussed above, Animia’s healing, and the saint’s posthumous appearance to Domnolenus. These are the miracles that make the greatest case for Radegund’s sanctity, particularly once the narrative of a living martyrdom disappeared from the text, and so they deserve the full-page treatment devoted to them. While the bulk of the life’s miracles focus on exorcism, minor healings, a punishment, and a rescue, these three miracles are the closest to an imitatio Christi, which Carrasco noted was enhanced by Radegund’s “use of the sign of the cross to work miracles,” and through her “isolated prayer.”116 The original vitae had established that the saint’s miracles and good works were Christ-like, and the illuminator made sure to enhance that.117 In the text, Fortunatus described Animia’s dream-vision of Radegund. Fortunatus’s description of this miracle is longer than that of the earlier miracles; image and text would not fit on the same page. The full-page image of Animia’s healing contains two scenes (folio 39r, see Figure 10). In the upper register, Animia appears near death while three nuns watch her. The lower register depicts Animia’s vision: Radegund pours oil over her head while Animia bathes and prepares to cover her head with a new cloth. In Fortunatus’s text, when Animia awoke from the vision, she was cured; this is not illustrated in the miniatures.118 This miracle suggests Radegund’s sanctity by demonstrating her power to heal even through visions. It also evokes the importance of baptism, referencing the life of Christ.119

115  I argue below, in Chapters 4 and 5, that these illuminations lay the track for the depiction of the Grand’Goule legend that became popular in later centuries. 116  Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 421. 117  For another depiction of the Christological charity a female saint performed, see Ivan Gerát, “Dei Saturitas. St. Elizabeth’s Works of Mercy in the Medieval Pictorial Narrative,” in Colum Hourihane, ed., Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 168–81. 118 Fort., VR, 35. 119  Carrasco has interpreted this scene as an allusion to the position of a deaconess at baptism, to martyrdom as a second baptism, to monastic profession: Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 425.

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An even more potent miracle is depicted on folio 41r (see Figure 11), in which Radegund revives a dead “infant,” as discussed above.120 The miracle of the dead infant and its full-page illustration reinforce Radegund’s claim to sanctity by showing that she could resuscitate the dead. This image also connects Radegund’s imitatio Christi, as Jesus had raised Lazarus, to her cell and locates the power in the monastery. In the vita’s final illuminated scene, folio 42r (see Figure 12), Domnolenus recalls the power of Christ’s resurrection, when the saint appears to him at the moment of her death just as Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. The page has two scenes: Radegund appears on the upper register and points to a partially constructed church, telling Domnolenus to build a church; on the lower register she holds his chin and points to prisoners, telling him to free them. This echoes the charity work and imitatio Christi Radegund had performed earlier in the vita, when she washed the feet of the poor and freed prisoners. Not only does the scene demonstrate Radegund’s sanctity, it shows that her concern for prisoners, the church, and the poor continued after her death.121 The manuscript also emphasized Radegund’s piety, particularly during the early sections. Like the repeated image of the cell, the illuminations repeatedly show Radegund kneeling, usually before an altar (Table 3). To see a holy woman at prayer in images accompanying her holy biography is hardly surprising, but the uneven weighting of such images within the libellus is notable. In the manuscript’s first section, five of the six full-page miniatures depict Radegund kneeling and one, folio 24r (see Figure 7), shows her kneeling in two of its three scenes. Carrasco had noted the importance of Radegund’s sole as a secondary relic and suggested that the manuscript emphasized it, visible as the saint kneeled, as one more local relic, but I think there’s much more to this emphasis on the image of the saint in prayer.122 Since Radegund had married and had enjoyed an exalted position as queen, she presented a complicated case for sanctification. While there were other medieval Table 3.  Depictions of Radegund kneeling Folio

Kneeling

22v 24r 24r 25v 27v 29v 40r 41r

Lower register, as a young girl before altar Upper-right register, as queen before altar Lower register, as queen next to bed (could be lying down) Lower register, as queen before altar, with freed prisoners Lower register, as newly consecrated nun Upper register, to wash feet Lower register, before altar, unfazed by noisy sisters Lower register, healing “infant”

120  The text is clear that Radegund healed an infant, yet the image presents an adult. “Quae mortuam sororem nuntiavit infantulam et, frigida qua lavaretur, paratam esse iam calidam. Condolens sancta tunc imperat, ut cadaver ipsius suam deferret in cellulam”: Fort., VR, 37. 121  Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 420–5. 122  Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 430.

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married saints, many of them lived in the later Middle Ages; a woman who was not a virgin in the eleventh century faced a difficult path to sainthood.123 In the sixth century Radegund’s biographers dodged the question of Radegund’s virginity by pointing to Clothar’s violence, depicting her as a martyr, and emphasizing her maternal role. As we have seen, the maternal imagery declined in the manuscript, but the artist did enhance Fortunatus’s suggestion that Radegund did not share Clothar’s bed with the humorous image in folio 24r. By depicting Radegund as a pious and devoted woman throughout her life, as a young captive, as a queen, and as a nun, the manuscript emphasizes that this was the saint’s true identity. The illuminator enhances Fortunatus’s assertion that Radegund was always a nun at heart, particularly at the times when she was unable to live as one. The images of Radegund kneeling also depict her authority. There is only one scene of a cleric with authority over Radegund, at her consecration (folio 27v). In all other images of the kneeling saint, Radegund is the ultimate authority in the space. People rush to her in three scenes (folios 25v, 40r, 41r) and she is the person in control. As Radegund washes the feet of the poor in folio 29v she supposedly humiliates herself, but she appears to be in calm control of the action here, with authority to demonstrate her own piety. Indeed, Carrasco observed that “the image of foot-washing, which for Christ is an image of humility, would appear to become, for Radegund, a source of glorification.”124 Radegund blesses with the sign of the cross in an episcopal gesture from within her cell, but her kneeling at prayer also commands: with only the one exception, she leads the prayers and is the authority figure from whom others seek assistance. Her feminine spiritual authority and independence is written on page after page. The manuscript illuminations depicted the life of a saint that eleventh-century nuns might emulate, wearing simple monastic clothing, performing charity for the poor and ill, avoiding extreme self-mortifications, respecting enclosure, kneeling to pray, and concerning herself with the community’s life and needs.125 Indeed, the illuminations presented to patrons and visitors a monastic life they might observe at Sainte-Croix, along with locating a holy and miraculous power in their cells. The illuminations enhanced this association with the abbey of Sainte-Croix by depicting objects of veneration from Radegund’s cult that could probably still be found there at the time. The saint’s hair shirt from folio 38v was listed in a sixteenth-century inventory, and Gregory of Tours observed the bathing facilities referenced in Animia’s healing (folio 39r) and the spindle that killed a mouse in the missing

123  Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et Canonisations (Liege: Faculte de Droit, 1969); Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, “Introduction,” in Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1995), 4. 124  Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 434. 125  Carrasco preferred to think of the presentation of Radegund in the BMP ms 250 (136) as an “intercessor” because her “ascetic behavior is far too extreme” and that is a valid reading of Radegund in Fortunatus’s vita, but the illuminations do not present an extreme or difficult to emulate asceticism: Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 421.

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folio (BMP 251 (137) 19v).126 The book added to the image of Radegund’s asceticism on folio 31v’s lower register was, as Carrasco has suggested, also a reference to the abbey’s scriptorium or emphasis on literacy since Radegund’s time. The image might even be a depiction of the libellus itself, suggesting its importance and association with Radegund. Thus the libellus illuminations advertised Radegund as a monastic saint and promoted the secondary relics and locations most associated with Sainte-Croix. They likewise omitted any depiction of the saint’s physical relics interred at SainteRadegonde. The nuns’ twenty-two illuminations do not contain a single image of the church of Sainte-Radegonde or of Radegund’s tomb—but this is not shocking, since Fortunatus did not mention Radegund’s funeral or Sainte-Radegonde. The illuminations also omitted the abbey of Sainte-Croix’s most prized relic, the fragment of the True Cross, since it was only referenced in Baudonivia’s vita. The illuminations accompanying Baudonivia’s no longer extant vita may have included a reference to the tomb or cross relic, as she had detailed them in her vita.127 But the illuminator also did not attempt to insert the tomb into the earlier vita’s images, the way s/he included the book or greatly enhanced the place of the cell. Abbess Béliarde’s (re)discovery of the tomb in 1012 during the reconstruction of Sainte-Radegonde even offered an opportunity to draw connections between the abbey, the church, and Radegund’s powerful relics. The nuns did not simply ignore Radegund’s final resting place: rather, they re-imagined their own cloister as Radegund’s tomb. In the image on folio 31v (see Figure 14), we see the nun within the cell from which she performed her miracles, represented in the next few illuminations. Hahn has interpreted this portrayal of Radegund’s retreat into monastic seclusion as an analogy to a tomb: The short flight of stairs leading upward recalls similar symbolic ascents by martyrs and reinforces the textual analogy of the cell to a prison, tower, or even tomb. . . . Radegund’s entrance into her cloister seems to imply a rebirth for the saint and her community. She begins a new life by entering a symbolic tomb . . . she moves ‘swiftly,’ running to enter the monastic life. Hereafter, Radegund’s actions are restricted; they occur behind monastic walls.128

With this illumination, the manuscript artist could redefine the abbey as Radegund’s tomb, bringing the miraculous power of her entombed body back to the abbey under the abbess’s control. Since the saint was able to work so many of her miracles from within her cell, the theme of enclosure emphasized in the manuscript relocated the saint’s holy power and her relics to Sainte-Croix. As Hahn observed, the image recalls the approach of a martyr imprisoned or entombed, such as in a tenth/eleventh-century manuscript illumination of Saint Agatha.129 This imagery 126 Carrasco observed this collection of local objects in “Sanctity and Experience in Pictorial Hagiography,” 62–3. On the hair shirt, see Barbier de Montault, Le Trésor, 81, 201. On bathing, see Greg., Hist. 10.16; and on the spindle, Greg., GC, 104. 127  Baudonivia, 23. 128 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 263. 129  Collection of Saints’ Lives, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, ms lat. 5594, f. 68v, reproduced in Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 67.

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plays on the experience of female anchorites, whose practice of walling themselves up in a cell mimicked funerary rites.130 The illuminator perhaps leaned on these holy women’s entombment to port their chastity, asceticism, and piety to the abbey. In doing so, the illuminations would also associate Radegund’s cell with her tomb, but located at the abbey. This is a significant change from the vita, in which Fortunatus is clear that Radegund’s use of a cell was only temporary, during Lent. In the manuscript images we see Radegund in her cell through the window or from an interior scene, until her death. C O N C LU S I O N S As we shall see in Chapter 4, tensions between nuns of Sainte-Croix and canons of Sainte-Radegonde were increasing in the last quarter of the eleventh century. With Béliarde’s inscription, the new reliquary for the True Cross, and this new pictorial narration of Radegund’s life, the nuns responded to the real control the canons of Sainte-Radegonde had gained over Radegund’s relics and cult by downplaying the importance of her physical relics in favor of her abbey. The nuns presented, in their libellus miniatures, a visual redefinition of the saint’s identity, as well as an assertion of their own community’s splendor. In the illuminations, Radegund’s monasticism is painted on her body by her choice of clothing, her rejection of the crown, and her seclusion in her cell in Sainte-Croix. It is there the images assert, in the abbey’s enclosed space, that the saint worked her most striking miracles: exorcism, revivification, and posthumous communication. Radegund’s claustration, her choice to embrace a monastic life, and her consequent authority are all forcefully demonstrated in the libellus miniatures. Representations of Radegund were also important public demonstrations of Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s power. The eleventh-century libellus images communicated to a rich and influential group of privileged viewers the ancient history of female authority and holy power housed at Sainte-Croix. This audience included secular patrons, ecclesiastical visitors, pilgrims stopping in the abbey church, and the communities of Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix themselves. The libellus built on the sixth-century narratives that claimed a holy identity for the saint and connected her power to her abbey. Those narratives had already inspired the community beyond Sainte-Croix: Countess Emma of Blois followed in Radegund’s footsteps to found a monastery, Mallezais, with the reluctant assistance of a disappointing husband, William IV, and was remembered by that community in similar ways.131 Sainte-Croix’s libellus illuminations in turn became the foundation for the ­thirteenth-century windows described in Chapter 5. While the church decoration at Sainte-Radegonde demonstrated that Sainte-Croix’s abbess continued to have influence in the chapter and to patronize the church, the scenes in the windows 130 Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 131  Abel, “Emma of Blois.”

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devoted to Radegund may also have challenged the nuns’ traditional superiority. Thus, the continual reworking of Radegund’s life opened opportunities for the nuns to assert their authority, and for others to test their power. Presenting the early texts in this way provided a visual vita for Radegund, a  thread linking the abbey back to its sixth-century founder, and bolstered the abbess’s authority. The abbess of Sainte-Croix saw herself as superior to the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, whom she claimed as dependents; the manuscript, as well as Béliarde’s inscription in Sainte-Radegonde, confidently claimed that priority. These lavish illuminations articulated a monastic identity for Radegund and argued visually for female monastic power. The nuns’ libellus displayed Radegund’s monastic asceticism, her holiness, her miraculous power, and reconnected their community to her at a moment when the abbess was publicly exercising authority over Radegund’s cult. This was also an attempt to control the history of the monastery, its property, and its neighbors. By including important documents with the libellus, the next generation of nuns claimed control over their community’s memory, just as monastics in other areas were doing at this time.132 The manuscript appeared at a tense moment for the abbey. While throughout the early Middle Ages the abbesses had secured royal support for their position of superiority in diplomas that enhanced the archive of privileges and network of supporters Radegund had built, that network declined by the eleventh century through the rise of the Count/Dukes and retreat of the monarchy from Aquitaine. The loss of their royal protectors and the absence of a strong secular advocate for the abbey threw the abbesses’ traditional support network into chaos. In the later eleventh century the nuns were able to gain a new supporter through c­ orrespondence with the pope and his legates, but in the meantime the abbess returned to the strategies for maintaining female monastic authority that Radegund and her abbesses had established five centuries earlier: she drew on cultural tools and artifacts to narrate a powerful position for the monastery. Rather than cultivate a talented poet, as Radegund had, the eleventh-century abbesses used the manuscript libellus. The libellus also appeared at a crisis moment in the relationship between the nuns of Sainte-Croix and the clerics of Sainte-Radegonde. In the 1070s the canons reformed their chapter into a college of canons, and opened questions about the hierarchy of Radegund’s cult. While the canons continued to observe the abbess’s superiority over their college, they did assert an expanded role for themselves in the cult and a greater control over their own community, church, and tomb. The version of Radegund’s life that the nuns presented in the libellus—which so forcefully asserted Radegund’s monasticism, enclosure, and holy power, located within Sainte-Croix—must have played a role in this dispute, either in provoking the canons through their exclusion (if the manuscript appeared before the 1070s) or in responding to their new claims (if it appeared after the canons’ efforts to reform their chapter). Indeed, Robert Favreau suggested that some of the diplomatic pieces attached to the manuscript in the twelfth century appeared during the 132  Geary, “Monastic Memory and the Mutation of the Year Thousand.”

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confirmation of Sainte-Croix’s holdings in 1165.133 Regardless, the harmonious cult directed by Sainte-Croix’s abbesss who had protected, restored, and patronized the church of Sainte-Radegonde moved, in the late eleventh century, into a contentious, litigious competition between Radegund’s two communities. The nuns’ eleventh-century efforts to entice new patrons and pilgrims through renewed emphasis on the abbey’s important place in Radegund’s cult did yield a new network of support for Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ authority: the pope and his legates. It may also have disrupted, if temporarily, the harmony Radegund’s cult had previously enjoyed. 133  Favreau, “Heurs et Malheurs de L’Abbaye, XIIe–XVe s.,” 137.

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4 Disputing Privileges While on pilgrimage in April 1137 the Count/Duke William X/XII died and left his extensive lands in Poitou and Aquitaine to his daughter, Eleanor. As this made her the wealthiest and most powerful heiress in Christendom, King Louis VI arranged for Eleanor to marry his son, the future Louis VII, that year. Louis VI died a month after the wedding celebration. With Eleanor’s marriage to the Capetian prince, the small and weak kingdom of France grew enormously in size, strength, and sophistication, while Eleanor’s lands in Aquitaine gained a new sovereign, French governors, and French troops—none of them especially welcome there.1 The marriage was not a peaceful one, although Eleanor and Louis had two daughters and a lackluster Crusade together. Eleanor found Paris dull after Poitiers’ culture and beauty; reportedly she also found some lovers. After fifteen years of wedlock, in March 1152, Louis and Eleanor dissolved their marriage claiming consanguinity; two months later Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine—an even closer relative. This marriage made Henry, nominally Louis VII’s vassal, the most powerful man in France, and it brought Aquitaine and Poitou another outsider as duke. Within two years, Henry became king of England, making Eleanor queen once more and further complicating the duchy’s governance. Schemes, rebellions, and affairs challenged Eleanor’s second marriage. Nevertheless, Eleanor would govern Poitou and Aquitaine off and on during the reigns of her husband and sons, Richard and John, until her death in 1204; soon after her lands fell fully into French hands under Louis VII’s son Philip II (Augustus). As discussed in Chapter 3, the position of the Count in Frankia had originated in the eighth century in Pepin’s division of the kingdom of Aquitaine into jurisdictional units. In the tenth century, Count of Poitou William Iron-Arm had claimed the title of Duke of Aquitaine, creating the Count/Duke title for the joint ruler of Poitou and the Aquitaine; he is known as William II as Count and IV as Duke, or William II/IV, a convention that continues for his descendants.2 His son, William III/V the Great, made that claim a reality and ruled, in addition to Poitou and Aquitaine, Berry, Limousin, Périgord, the Charente, and the Auvergne. Thus, his heir Eleanor’s 1137 marriage to Louis VII and subsequent 1152 marriage to Henry of Normandy in Poitiers’ Saint-Pierre cathedral united important families. 1 Jean Dunbabin called Capetian rule “impotent”: France in the Making 843–1180 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 133. 2 Dez, Histoire de Poitiers, 35; and Head, “The Development of the Peace of God in Aquitaine,” 659.

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As wealthy landholders, Eleanor’s and Henry’s pockets were deep, and they were generous patrons of Poitiers’ communities. Although later townspeople attempted to forget the period of “English” control under Kings Henry II, Richard, and John, Poitiers benefitted greatly from entering the Plantagenet sphere. A great deal of wealth, patronage, and support resulted in massive construction projects in Poitiers. In the span of Eleanor’s life, Poitou and Aquitaine shifted from powerful, independent feudal states into not one but two royal domains. While Louis, Henry, Richard, and John governed Aquitaine and Poitou as Count/Dukes, their larger interests were not Poitevin independence but French or English royal power. Richard certainly appreciated the Aquitaine’s beauty, poetry, and joviality more than the culture of his English kingdom, but even he spent most of his reign away fighting—against Muslims or against Philip Augustus. For Philip, control of the duchy and county demonstrated control over his own realm as well as his intolerance of rebellious vassals. Under Philip a centralized Capetian kingdom with a bureaucracy and expanding territory historians recognize as the origins of a French state slowly emerged.3 More so than his father, he attached these fiefs to the royal domain by refusing to appoint a separate Count/Duke who might grow to challenge him.4 Philip’s grandson Louis IX named his own brother Count only to an apanage kept within the royal family, as we will see in Chapter 5, and Poitou would remain the French kings’ possession for the rest of this period, with the exception of a brief English occupation of Poitiers in 1356. As the capital city of a duchy that ran from the Loire to the Pyrenees, Poitiers was the heart of a desirable, powerful, contested territory and the seat of power for dukes, counts, and kings. While Poitiers had already been undergoing a great deal of change when Sainte-Croix’s nuns created their Radegund libellus circa 1050, the town’s status and identity shifted constantly in the twelfth century: it was seat of an independent county, then loosely part of the French kingdom, English, and finally French. Poitevins had long desired their autonomy and, under Louis VII in 1138, the townspeople attempted to form a commune to control its own courts, territory, guilds, and crafts, but Louis quickly subdued the rebels. Another attempt to form a commune came under Henry II in 1173, but he and his son Richard crushed that attempt as well. Finally, Eleanor confirmed a charter creating a commune in Poitiers in 1199, after her husband’s death and during her son’s absence. Only five years later the Plantagenets lost control of Poitiers when Philip Augustus occupied the city on August 10, 1204, but Philip also confirmed the city’s charter once Poitou was in his hands.5 Such identity calisthenics would complicate later memories of this period, as well as later attempts to demonstrate longstanding

3  Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). 4  John W. Baldwin and Walter Simmons show the importance of the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 for consolidating French territory under Philip. While John did not lose Poitou in the battle (it had been taken six years earlier), he lost a great many of his territories to Philip: “The Consequences of Bouvines,” French Historical Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 243–69. 5 Dez, Histoire de Poitiers, 61.

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French loyalty. The region’s independence proved difficult to explain in a much more tightly controlled French kingdom under the Valois (see Chapters 6 and 7). The abbey of Sainte-Croix too was involved in an identity crisis as the abbess negotiated new changes in status, practice, and expectations for monastics and canons during a period of religious reform. At the start of the eleventh century the abbess was secure in her position of authority with Frankish kings’ support. She confidently exercised authority over her own community, over the chapter of ­canons, over her tenants in Poitiers, and over seigneurs in fiefs outside Poitiers’ walls.6 She had extensive properties, powers, and privileges connected to her position—including the right to exercise high justice over her neighbors. As we have seen, she defended these rights and privileges by drawing on the network of allies and the archive of documents Radegund had established and her predecessors had nurtured. In the late eleventh century, however, important changes took place in Poitiers and in Christendom generally that threatened the abbess of Sainte-Croix’s position. New ecclesiastical culture discouraged lay involvement in church affairs, which complicated the abbess’s traditional support networks and encouraged both episcopal oversight of local ecclesiastical communities and the reform of chapters of canons as colleges subject to a Rule. As a result, abbatial authority at SainteCroix faced two major challengers in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries: the canons attached to the church of Sainte-Radegonde and the bishops of Poitiers, both of whom pressed the advantage of a newly expanded and defined power to challenge the privileges of Sainte-Croix’s abbess. As we saw in Chapter 3, the abbess first sought to enhance her community’s prestige by creating a libellus of Radegund’s vita, by restoring the True Cross reliquary, and by restoring the saint’s tomb. Jurisdictional disputes in the last quarter of the eleventh century forced the abbesses to return to their primary strategy. This was particularly necessary in Poitiers as the major transformations in ecclesiastical authority came at the same time that the town’s secular leadership was in turmoil. Changes in the structure of ecclesiastical authority and secular governance in Poitou encouraged the nuns to seek assistance from a new source: the papacy. New scholarship has challenged the traditional narrative that developments and “movements” in the high medieval Church limited the power, influence, and even financial security of traditional female monasteries. Similarly, this chapter demonstrates that Sainte-Croix’s abbesses managed to protect their abbey, maintain their claims to superiority over such dependents as the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, and manage their finances well despite these challenges.7 They accomplished this by 6  The abbess’s counterparts at Gandersheim and other important abbeys likewise exercised significant secular jurisdiction and governed their domains as a seigneur: Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society, 63–73 and 163–8. 7  See Alison I. Beach, Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Griffiths, The Garden of Delights, and “The Cross and the  Cura monialium”; Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages; John B. Freed, “Urban Development and the ‘Cura Monialium’ in Thirteenth-Century Germany,” Viator 3 (1972): 311–27; Berman, Women and Monasticism in Medieval Europe; Anne  E.  Lester, “Making the Margins in the Thirteenth Century: Suburban Space and Religious Reform Between the Low Countries and the County of Champagne,” Parergon 27, no. 2 (2010): 59–87 and Creating

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actively defending their rights, petitioning for papal assistance, and demonstrating that their claims had ancient support. This was the traditional strategy employed by Sainte-Croix’s abbesses, and it relied upon the archive of privileges Radegund had established and that previous abbesses had nurtured over centuries. This chapter examines disputes between the nuns of Sainte-Croix, the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, and the bishop of Poitiers between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, detailing the challenges to and defenses of female monastic authority at Sainte-Croix. Over this period, Sainte-Croix’s abbesses engaged in a series of disputes regarding the privileges they claimed over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde. Letters and decisions issued by the papacy and its delegates between 1072 and 1192 document an ongoing conflict between these two communities. In letters, the pope and his representatives ascribed superiority and traditional rights over the canons to Sainte-Croix’s abbess, while nevertheless declaring that the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde should control its own elections and have some privileges in elections at the abbey. Toward the end of this period, papal authorities also assigned some previously unrecorded powers over Sainte-Croix to the bishop of Poitiers. The popes’ intentions, by intervening in the disputes between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde, were to end these quarrels. Their documents reveal other motivations, however, such as the imposition of papal or episcopal authority, and the reform of religious communities. Abbesses drew upon these papal interests in order to gain support for their privileges, carefully crafting arguments to appeal to papal agenda. Thus, this chapter also considers the impact of eleventh- and twelfth-century reform movements, changes to secular and ecclesiastical structures of authority, and shifting urban space on these communities and their negotiation process. S PA C E These disputes contesting privileges, obligations, and claims to superiority were, in part, consequences of identity shifts wrought by and reflected in the major reshaping of Poitiers’ urban space. Over this period new construction projects physically altered Poitiers’ cityscape and the look of its most important structures. This flurry of construction displayed the wealth and importance of the Counts of Poitou and other Poitevins in the twelfth century, as well as their interest in fortifying the city. Comital funds rebuilt the Counts’ palace and the cathedral, which together secured Poitiers’ reputation for urban sophistication. Growth and urban renewal also reshaped relationships between Poitiers’ communities. In the twelfth century ancient Roman walls still protected Poitiers. While the city reinforced its walls in the tenth century, they still fortified the narrowest area Cistercian Nuns; Steven Vanderputten, “Female Monasticism, Ecclesiastical Reform, and Regional Politics: The Northern Archdiocese of Reims, circa 1060–1120,” French Historical Studies 36, no. 3 (2013): 363–83 and “Crises of Cenobitism: Abbatial Leadership and Monastic Competition in Late Eleventh-Century Flanders,” English Historical Review 127, no. 525 (2012): 259–84.

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Superior Women Twelfth-century walls Roman Walls Merovingian foundation Montierneuf

Carolingian foundation Eleventh-century foundation

New Market

Notre-Damela-Grande

Count’s Palace

Old M arket

Sain tde-la Hilaire-Cell e

Cathedral

Sain la-P t-Pierre uell ier -

Sainte

SainteRadegond e

-Croix

Bapti

stry

La

Trin ité

Arena

Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand

Saint-Cyprien

Map 3.  Poitiers in the twelfth century, adapted from Gaston Dez, Histoire de Poitiers, MSAO 4th series, vol. X (1966), map 3

possible (Map 3). These walls protected the Count’s palace in the west, important churches such as Notre-Dame-la-Grande in the center, and the bishop’s cathedral in the east. The Abbey of Sainte-Croix sat in the episcopal quarter, near the cathedral and ancient baptistery, up against the eastern wall, an area that was out of the marketplace’s noise and undesirable to the artisans who wished to attract more regular traffic along the town’s main roads.8 The churches of Sainte-Radegonde and Saint-Hilaire both protected saints’ relics and sat in the suburbs or “burgs” outside the city, respecting the ancient prohibition against the burial of bodies within the city walls.9 Such burgs with expanding urban populations were common in Merovingian Frankia as devotion to the saints and the proliferation of relics created shrines outside cities. In Poitiers these suburban areas developed into permanent settlements made up of merchants, pilgrims, townspeople, and clerics, often around a church. By 1069 8  Howard Saalman, Medieval Cities (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 23–5. 9 McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints, 109–10; Saalman, Medieval Cities, 25–6; and David M. Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1997), 28.

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there were as many as fifteen burgs outside Poitiers.10 Since the burgs were vulnerable to attack, the communities attached to both Saint-Hilaire and Sainte-Radegonde had built their own modest walls fortifying their burgs. These walls were not as strong as those of the main city.11 As we saw in Chapter 3, when Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris, was unable to breach Poitiers’ walls in 955, he instead attacked and burned Sainte-Radegonde.12 New city walls constructed in the twelfth century, however, enclosed the suburban burgs, fortified the entire area, and redefined the city space. With the new walls defining a larger city, the palace became the town’s center, rather than marking its western limit. As the Count’s court, the palace also became the town’s cultural center while the city grew around it. Bringing the burgs within the walls affected the town’s mental as well as physical environment. The churches Sainte-Radegonde and Saint-Hilaire, which had suffered most in the attacks on the city in the early Middle Ages, now occupied a safer position inside the new fortifications.13 No longer vulnerable and marginal, the businesses and churches of the former suburbs enjoyed not just the protection of the walls but also a new and stronger identity and connection to the city.14 In the earlier period the burgs’ residents identified not with Poitiers but with their suburban area—those living in the Bourg de Sainte-Radegonde or the Bourg de Saint-Hilaire identified with the saint, church, and other residents in the burg. The new walls interrupted the “poly-nuclear” nature of the early medieval city and encouraged the growth of newly shared urban identities with the larger town.15 It is no coincidence that Poitiers’ townspeople were agitating to become a commune in this same period. Alterations in the arrangement of Poitiers’ urban space had a direct impact on Radegund’s two communities. While Sainte-Croix had always been a part of the city and protected by its walls, the church of Sainte-Radegonde did not benefit from that privilege until the construction of the twelfth-century walls made a single coherent space in the episcopal quarter. With Sainte-Radegonde now included in the city proper, the masonry barrier separating the nuns and canons was gone. Sainte-Radegonde’s canons became regular citizens of Poitiers, neighbors of SainteCroix and the bishop of Poitiers and, in 1199, members of the commune. They did not need to travel through the urban gate to access Poitiers’ safety or to perform their service at the abbey. Such a spatial reorientation reflected the canons’ sense of their chapter’s position in relation to Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s authority. For the ­canons, this benefit from the walls built on a rise of status that had begun with the Church reforms starting in the eleventh century. 10 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 40. 11 Favreau, Histoire de Poitiers, 93–7. 12  Ademar de Chabannes, Chronique, 132. 13 Richard, Histoire des comtes de Poitou. 14  Favreau described the shift in status in Histoire de Poitiers, 107–8. According to him, those ­people living within the walls were considered citizens and subject to the administration, while those who lived outside the walls but in the burgs were called burghers, relying entirely on the ecclesiastical lords. Favreau specifically discussed the burgs around the collegial church of Saint-Hilaire to the south of the city and the monastery of Montierneuf to the north. Both were male communities who exercised direct authority over their surrounding burgs. 15 Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City, 28; Thomas Hall, Mittelalterliche Stadtgrundrisse: Versuch einer Ubersicht der Entwicklung in Deutschland und Frankreich (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978), 53–61.

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As noted in Chapter 3, for the mid-eleventh through early thirteenth centuries the French kings had little direct involvement in Poitiers, which complicated the ancient network of royal support Radegund and Agnes had established for SainteCroix. Moreover, the secular leaders who were available, the Count/Dukes, were either engaged in their own ecclesiastical battles, in military conflict with the king or other lords, interested instead in Fontevraud—a new foundation where Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Richard I were all buried—or too involved in England to be able to pay much attention to abbatial disputes in Poitiers. This change, combined with papal interest in reaching every provincial church and with reform policies limiting secular involvement in ecclesiastical institutions, encouraged Sainte-Croix’s abbesses and Sainte-Radegonde’s canons to seek ecclesiastical assistance instead. Papal letters during this time reveal tense negotiations as the canons of Sainte-Radegonde embraced the eleventh-century reform, and the nuns adjusted to a new relationship. The canons remained subordinate to the nuns, but expected new privileges, powers, and freedoms within their own community. Both had to contend, as well, with the bishop’s rising influence over their institution. Much of the papal involvement in reform in Poitiers supported Sainte-Croix’s abbess’s claims to significant authority. Later abbesses relied upon the support these letters established or documented. From 1072 to 1192, the pope or his legate sent eleven letters referencing SainteCroix, most arbitrating jurisdictional disputes between nuns of Sainte-Croix and the canons of Sainte-Radegonde. Most of these papal letters were written in reply to the nuns’ requests for assistance and so present some challenges for understanding jurisdictional conflicts between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde.16 We have a papal description of events, not the nuns’ or canons’ own words. The papacy’s agenda of protecting the Church’s independence, guaranteeing the rights of ecclesiastical officials, and expanding the papacy’s scope and reach may have overwhelmed the intentions of Radegund’s communities. Since we only have the letters and bulls, we must read between the lines to discern the maneuvers in Poitiers that resulted in these letters from Rome and theorize about the nuns’ goals, or the nature of their original requests for assistance. Such reading suggests the women of Sainte-Croix repeatedly petitioned the papacy either to confirm the privileges they claimed or to seek support in redressing a grievance against the canons. The majority of the papal letters responding to these requests support the nuns’ position. Further, the letters reissuing statements of the abbess’s privileges indicate that SainteRadegonde’s canons had ignored previous papal commands to yield to the abbess. The timing of these letters suggests that the need for papal intervention was related to Sainte-Croix’s mid-eleventh-century program to improve their abbey’s 16  AJP 10:404 (April 2, 1072); AJP 10:413 (c.1081); Bullaire du pape Callixte II: essai de restitution, ed. Ulysse Robert (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891), 2:231 (December 3, 1123); Papsturkunden in Frankreich, ed. Wilhelm Wiederhold (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1906–13), 6:30 (February 27, 1140) and 6:35 (1140); “Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de l’abbaye de Sainte-Croix de Poitiers,” ed. Pierre de Monsabert, Revue Mabillon 9 (1913), 63–4 (two letters in 1144); Papsturkunden in Frankreich, 6:73–5 (February 19, 1165); Jean Besly, Evesques de Poictiers avec les preuves (Paris: Gervais Alliot, 1635), 111 (1167); and DF 5, 613–16 (1192).

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profile in Poitiers. As we saw in the last chapter, the nuns of Sainte-Croix had created a new reliquary to contain and promote the relic of the True Cross, had advertised their abbess’s role in restoring access to Radegund’s relics in SainteRadegonde’s church crypt, and had created a libellus that promoted female monasticism practiced at Sainte-Croix. Sainte-Croix’s abbesses had been pressing their superiority and control over the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde, the church, and the saint’s cult. By the eleventh century the abbey was well established with an archive of ancient privileges confirmed and supported by Frankish kings and bishops, and was a massive property holder in Poitiers. Although their new reliquary, manuscript, and inscription depicted the nuns of Sainte-Croix in a dominant position in the mid-eleventh century, by the century’s end the canons were better able to employ their power over the saint’s relics, their male monopoly over the sacraments, and their relative ease of movement as canons to challenge the abbess’s notion of Sainte-Radegonde’s inferiority. As part of the ecclesiastical reform movement, chapters of canons were reformed into collegial chapters subject to a Rule. Such a reform at Sainte-Radegonde raised the canons’ status in the church and introduced new conflict with Sainte-Croix.17 REFORM There was a recurring cycle of reform movements within the medieval Church. We have already discussed the ninth-century Carolingian reforms that encouraged monasteries to embrace the Benedictine Rule, which may have taken many years to succeed. Janet Nelson has argued that Christian belief was fairly coherent in the tenth century until the reappearance of heresy in the eleventh century, which prompted a reform that reaffirmed traditional religious positions such as the prohibition of simony, concubinage, and pluralism. In the eleventh century, calls for reform focused on the freedom of the Church and its property, particularly from lay oversight; the supremacy of the papacy; and the morality of clerics, monastics, and, eventually, of all Christians.18 Initial reform efforts led to an “intensification and institutionalization of the Church,” which encouraged further reform in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Since several popes advocated for reform the movement has been associated with the papacy, but there were multiple agents interested in reforming ideas. The process did not begin with or rely on the topdown imposition of order, either in the Church as a whole or in Poitiers. While a reform movement’s origin and development in the central Middle Ages are controversial and complicated subjects, local communities concerned with the rights and privileges of their churches and monasteries, with ideas of hierarchy, and 17  Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); and Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 18 Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 4; Janet L. Nelson, “Society, Theodicy and the Origins of Heresy,” Studies in Church History 9 (1972): 65–77; and Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century, 31–2.

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with control of ecclesiastical property certainly played a role. Such communities promoted peaceful and stable society in their areas. Beginning in the Auvergne and Aquitaine in the tenth century, bishops called councils to promote peace, a trend eventually called the Peace of God, and one that laid the groundwork for the eleventh-century reforms.19 The Peace of God councils opposed violence and warlike behavior, mostly committed by the nobility, against the Church, churchmen, and the poor or weak. Ecclesiastical authorities and their noble allies, perhaps inspired by the perception of disorder in Christendom, mobilized the army of saints under their control, bringing relics to councils to discourage violence. Bishops initiated, occasionally with the assistance of secular authorities, councils for peace that secured the oaths of noblemen to protect the Church and people declared inappropriate targets for attacks. The Peace of God movement also brought bishops and their secular allies greater control over property and the community generally by discouraging aggression against Church property and secular holdings. By the mid-to-late eleventh century these concerns also received propulsion from the papacy, steered by men eager to deepen the observance of Christianity and to expand their influence and reach, placing their office at the head of the Church’s intuitional hierarchy and superior to secular rulers. The councils eventually expanded their focus to consider heresy, simony, and sexual sins. The eleventh-century reform movement was primarily local and diffuse, and Poitiers’ bishops and Dukes invested in promoting it. Councils instituting reform policies were held in Poitiers in 1000–14, 1029–31, 1036, 1078, and 1100. Count/Dukes William III/V and William IV/VI participated in these peace councils as they had the potential, in powerful men’s deft hands, to enhance the prestige and power of secular as well as ecclesiastical authorities. King Robert the Pious used the Council in Poitiers in 1029–31 to strengthen his weak control of Frankia and Aquitaine.20 The councils also helped the Count/Dukes to consolidate their position over Aquitaine by curtailing the violence committed by smaller castellans who threatened their authority.21 While Aquitaine’s Count/Dukes supported the Peace of God, they resisted papal infringements on rights they claimed and even disrupted two councils in Poitiers in 1078 and 1100 when they broadened beyond the Peace.22 The dukes enjoyed strong control of several monasteries in Aquitaine, 19 Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century, 39. 20 Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century, 42. Cushing argues that the strength of the Peace of God movement in Aquitaine, an area firmly in the control of the Dukes of Aquitaine, suggests that the councils were not responses to actual violence or disorder, but rather to “increased perception of disorder” by the clergy (p. 45). 21  The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000, ed. Thomas Head and Richard Landes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Dominique Barthélemy, “Le Paix de Dieu dans son contexte (989–1041),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 40 (1997): 3–35; and Daniel Callahan, “The Peace of God and the Cult of the Saints in Aquitaine in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” in Thomas Head and Richard Landes, eds., Historical Reflections: Essays on the Peace of God: The Church and the People in Eleventh-Century France (Waterloo, ON: University of Waterloo, 1987), 445–66. For an example of trouble faced by the counts, see George T. Beech, “The Lord/Dependant (Vassal) Relationship: A Case Study from Aquitaine c.1030,” Journal of Medieval History 24, no. 1 (1998): 1–30; and Richard, Histoire des comtes de Poitou. 22 Richard, Histoire des Comtes de Poitou, 1:342, and 429–30. William later apologized to the council.

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including Saint-Hilaire, Saint-Maixent, and Nouaille, and had founded the important monastery of Cluny. They likely objected to the reform’s threat to the revenue, prestige, and power the communities offered secular patrons. There were also personal reasons to resist reform. Count/Duke William VI/VIII ran afoul of the reforming Pope Gregory VII when Gregory took issue with William’s third marriage, even calling a council in 1075, held at the abbey of Saint-Maixent in Poitiers. The council’s primary topic was William’s marriage, and Bishop of Poitiers Isembert II (1047–87) refused to attend. Isembert’s family had occupied the episcopal seat in Poitiers since 975, with the comital family’s approval.23 Bishop of Poitiers Peter II (1087–1117) supported Gregorian policies, and his long tenure in office helped institute reforms and limit lay lords’ influence in Poitiers’ religious institutions.24 Not all members of the comital family were hostile, however. William VI/VIII’s sister Agnes of Poitou, like Mathilda of Tuscany and Blanche of Castile, remained a close friend of the papacy, especially Gregory VII, and a firm, influential supporter of Church reform. Daughter of Count/Duke William III/V, Agnes was married to Henry III of Germany, who died in 1056 and left his ­six-year-old son Henry IV the throne, with Agnes as his guardian until a coup in 1062 removed him from her care. Agnes’ daughter Adelaide became abbess of Gandersheim in 1061 and of Quedlinburg in 1063. Agnes may have learned monastic patronage from the model of her mother Agnes of Burgundy.25 Despite opposition from some Count/Dukes, ecclesiastical reform was also local. Indeed, the manuscript tradition demonstrates that Poitou’s interest in reform predated the arrival of legates, such as Hugh of Die who had convened the 1078 council, or Amatus of Oloron, who settled disputes in the abbey in 1081.26 The circulation of texts in Poitou both facilitated reforming ideas and gave the reform a boost in the region. As became apparent in the Peace of God councils, reformers sought to purify the Church by eliminating simony, nicolaitism, and, eventually, lay investiture. Building on monastic reforms at Cluny and the Peace of God movement’s ­successes, reformers worked to protect Church property, expand Church privileges and the reach of its hierarchy, and to subordinate Christian rulers to the

23  Anna Trumbore Jones, Noble Lord, Good Shepherd: Episcopal Power and Piety in Aquitaine, 877–1050 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 67–71. Jacques Duguet, “La famille des Isembert, évêques de Poitiers, et ses relations (Xe-XIe siècles),” BSAO, 4th series, 11 (1971): 163–86. 24 Favreau, Le Diocèse de Poitiers, 44–5. 25  Wolfgand Eggert, “Agnes von Poitou, Ein Leben in Sorge und Frömmigkeit,” in Erika Uitz, Barbara Pätzold, and Gerald Beyreuther, eds., Herrscherinnen und Nonnen, Frauengestalten von der Ottonenzeit bis zu den Staufern (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaft, 1990). 26  Linda Fowler-Magerl, “Fine Distinctions and the Transmission of Texts,” Zeitschrift Der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 83 (1997): 146–86, 149–52; Uta-Renate Blumenthal, “Poitevin Manuscripts, the Abbey of Saint-Ruf and Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Century,” in Martin Brett and Kathleen G. Cushing, eds., Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 87–100; and Gabriel Le Bras, “L’activité canonique à Poitiers pendant la réforme grégorienne (1049–1099),” in Pierre Gallais and Yves-Jean Riou, eds., Mélanges offerts à René Crozet (Poitiers: Société d’études médiévales, 1966).

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papacy’s power.27 Popes Alexander II (1061–73), Gregory VII (1073–85), Urban II (1088–99), Pascal II (1099–1118), and Calixtus II (1119–24) especially ­promoted these Church reforms, while enhancing their office’s authority. The reforming impulse dictated closer observation of monastic and clerical communities by the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the papacy welcomed excuses to involve itself in disputes and, indeed, encouraged religious communities to turn to the papal office for help in settling even minor disputes. Although the abbess of Sainte-Croix had previously received assistance from secular leaders, reforms encouraged them to attach a sympathetic papacy to their list of protectors, by connecting to reformist ideas about hierarchy and office at the same moment that the papacy sought ways to limit secular involvement in ecclesiastical affairs. The canons of Sainte-Radegonde similarly used reform ideas to their advantage, arguing for their prior’s freedom from Sainte-Croix’s abbatial oversight based on the canons’ reform as a college with Pope Alexander II’s support. R H E TO R I C A L AT TA C K S O N WO M E N Historians have long accused the reform movement of limiting women’s authority and autonomy. Herbert Grundmann suggested that men in reformed communities, particularly Cistercian men, found women’s spiritual needs a burdensome obligation on their time and resources, a complaint that culminated in Boniface VIII’s 1298 decretal Periculoso.28 According to Richard Southern, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries orthodoxy and ecclesiastical organization developed alongside and in cooperation with male domination and female marginalization.29 Jo Ann McNamara argued that misogyny was the heart of the reform movement and, as a result, the reforms limited or ended opportunities for women in the Church.30 According to McNamara, reformers’ rhetoric in favor of clerical celibacy encouraged fears of pollution stemming from women’s sexuality and sin, and resulted in a push to separate from all women, including nuns.31 Both McNamara and Southern 27  Augustin Fliche, La Réforme grégorienne, 3 vols. (Paris: E. Champion, 1924–37); Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), and Gregor VII. Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2001); Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century; Gerd Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); John Howe, Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy: Dominic of Sora and His Patrons (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) adds the nobility’s reform of the Church to these pre-Gregorian movements. 28 Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages; Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, 350–1250 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988, 2010). 29 Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, 310. 30  McNamara, “The Herrenfrage”; Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex. 31  McNamara, “The Herrenfrage” and Sisters in Arms, 202–29. This line of thinking was picked up by Schulenburg, “Strict Active Enclosure,” and “Sexism and the Celestial Gynaeceum from 500–1200,” Journal of Medieval History 4 (1978): 117–33; James  A.  Brundage and Elizabeth  M.  Makowski, “Enclosure of Nuns: The Decretal ‘Periculoso’ and its Commentators,” Journal of Medieval History 20, no. 2 (1994): 143–55, 146–7; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Petra Marx, and Susan Marti, “The Time of the Orders, 1200–1500: An Introduction,” in Hamburger and Marti, Crown and Veil, 44–5; Dyan Elliott,

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agreed that “women were systematically excluded” from the new and re-energized eleventh-century male monastic and university communities, just as rhetorical attacks on clerical concubinage appeared to target women. This judgment has set the narrative of women in the period.32 Historians connected this need to separate from women with female monastics’ enclosure, which, they argued, removed women from positions of power and influence, as well as provided opportunities for episcopal oversight. According to this line of thought, nuns lost their autonomy and power in the Church, came increasingly under ecclesiastical control, were excluded from Church ritual as well as from the new spiritual movements located in Cluny and Cîteaux.33 As nuns relied on male clerics for their spiritual needs and male provosts for managing their secular affairs, they ceded their power and autonomy to these men. At the same time, rhetorical attacks accused nuns of abuses requiring greater episcopal oversight. While monasticism thrived for men, women’s monasticism declined.34 A shift from prayers for the dead to masses in this period also led to the impoverishment of female monasteries by requiring nuns to pay priests more than the monastery received in donations.35 Thus, as Fiona Griffiths observed, “historians have typically constituted reform as having either excluded or opposed women.”36 John Van Engen’s 1986 article “The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered” has quashed speculation that Benedictine monasticism was in some sort of crisis in the eleventh through twelfth centuries.37 Such scholars as Giles Constable, Caroline Walker Bynum, Lester Little, Stephen White, Constance Berman, Sharon Farmer, Constance Brittain Bouchard, and Barbara Rosenwein among many others have demonstrated the vitality of medieval monasticism in this period.38 Yet notions of a high medieval crisis for women in the Church have been much more tenacious. Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), and Fallen Bodies. For Pauline Stafford this hostility began in the Carolingian reforms: “Queens, Nunneries, and Reforming Churchmen: Gender, Religious Status, and Reform in Tenth and Eleventh-Century England,” Past and Present 163 (1999): 3–35. 32  Fiona J. Griffiths, “Women and Reform in the Central Middle Ages,” in Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 447–63, 452. 33 Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages; Ranft, Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe; Lawrence suggested that Premonstratensians tried to keep women out of the order: Medieval Monasticism. 34 Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, 310–12; Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England; Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 248–66; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society, 133–69. 35 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession; Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. 36  Griffiths, “Women and Reform in the Central Middle Ages,” 449. 37 The “crisis of cenobitism” was developed by Norman Cantor, Jean Leclercq, and Germain Morin, among others: Cantor, “The Crisis of Western Monasticism, 1050-1130,” American Historical Review 66 (1960–61): 47–67; Leclercq, “La crise du monachisme aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 70 (1958): 19–41; and Morin, “Rainaud l’ermite et Ives de Chartres: Un episode de la crise du cénobitisme au XIe–XIIe siècle,” Revue Bénédictine 40 (1928): 99–115. John Van Engen, “The Crisis of Cenobitism Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150,” Speculum 61 (1986): 269–304. 38  Constance H. Berman, “The ‘Labours of Hercules’, The Cartulary, Church and Abbey for Nuns of la Cour-Notre-Dame-de-Michery,” Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 1 (2000): 33–70; Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Views from Afar: North American Perspectives on Medieval Monasticism,”

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Scholars of women and monasticism have begun to demonstrate that misogynist rhetoric was less influential than previously believed, however.39 They have shown that some men claimed that women mismanaged their estates or broke their vows in order to seize property from female communities, not because women were actually incompetent.40 By focusing on documents of practice historians are now demonstrating that female monasticism thrived in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. For example, Bruce Venarde has shown that there was an explosion of new nunneries in the late eleventh to late twelfth centuries, and Anne Lester has demonstrated a similar frenzy of Cistercian nunneries a century later.41 Patrons appreciated the spiritual benefit of founding women’s houses, which, as Michel Parisse has argued, offered economic opportunities for the family as well as potential political ones in the control of the abbacies. New orders appeared out of some new foundations, like Fontevraud, whose founder Robert d’Arbrissel was an active reformer focused on stamping out simony, consanguinity, and adultery, as well as enforcing obedience to authority.42 Robert not only valued women among his group but subjected Fontevraud’s men to a female superior. He set high expectations for austerity, sexual propriety, and obedience for the men and women of his new order.43 Steven Vanderputten has also shown that in Reims, patronage of female monasteries was pursued eagerly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by aristocrats seeking to control their foundations and enhance their prestige, and by patrons inspired by the ecclesiastical reforms.44 Perspectives are also shifting on the Cura monialium, nuns’ spiritual care— celebrating the mass, hearing confession, assigning penance—which Grundmann and others have described as a burden for men since women could not be ordained, and nuns relied on male priests to perform these services. Such care was a financial in Giancarlo Andenna, ed., Dove va la storiografia monastica in Europa? Temi e metodi di ricerca per lo studio della vita monastica e regolare in età medievale alle soglie del terzo millennio (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2001), 67–84, and To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society; Parisse, Les Nonnes au Moyen Age; Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture; Warren, Spiritual Economies. While monasticism may not have been in crisis, Steven Vanderputten has suggested that monastic superiors were challenged by “episodes of institutional instability, uncertainty regarding patronage and lay protection, and fierce competition with other Benedictine institutions, other ecclesiastical agents, and local aristocrats”: Vanderputten, Reform, Conflict, and the Shaping of Corporate Identities: Collected Studies on Benedictine Monasticism, 1050–1150 (Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2013), xxvi. 39 Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary. 40  Berman demonstrates that this happened to La Cour-Notre-Dame-de-Michery, while Abbot Suger similarly seized Argenteuil and its rich vineyards from Heloise’s nuns: Berman, “The ‘Labours of Hercules,’ ” 42; see also Thomas A. Waldman, “Abbot Suger and the Nuns of Argenteuil,” Traditio 41 (1985): 239–71. Berman’s argument has been challenged by Anne  E.  Lester and William Chester Jordan, “La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery: A Response to Constance Berman,” Journal of Medieval History 27, no. 1 (2001): 43–54. 41 Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society; Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns. 42  Bruce L. Venarde, “Robert of Arbrissel and Women’s Vita Religiosa: Looking Back and Ahead,” in Gert Melville and Anne Müller, eds., Female “Vita Religiosa” between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages: Structures, Developments, and Spatial Contexts (Vienna: Liturgical Press, 2011), 329–40, 331. 43  Venarde, “Robert of Arbrissel and Women’s Vita Religiosa,” 336. 44 Vanderputten, “Female Monasticism, Ecclesiastical Reform, and Regional Politics,” 382. Vanderputten also argues that female Cluniac monasteries were “increasingly integrated into male structures of government and male methodologies of reform” circa 1100: p. 380.

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burden for the women, and monasteries increasingly sought ways to attach to their abbeys male communities of canons or ordained monks who might be obliged to perform clerical services; the canons of Sainte-Radegonde fulfilled such a need at Sainte-Croix, as would other chapters the abbey later established nearby, such as those of Saint-Hilaire-de-la-Celle or Saint-Austregesil. Clerical rhetoric of the eleventh and twelfth centuries focused on the burden the cura monialium supposedly placed on priests who would have preferred to separate entirely from women, and who begrudged them the time commitment such care required. Until recently historians have broadly accepted the claims made in these treatises and blamed the cura monialium and resulting enclosure for declining patronage, financial instability, and problems with discipline in female abbeys.45 Despite such complaints, men did provide women with spiritual care and some did so eagerly. Fiona Griffiths has demonstrated that men such as Peter Abelard argued for and personally committed to the care of monastic women.46 Indeed, Abelard suggested that men, too, might receive spiritual benefits from the cura monialium, a notion that Robert d’Arbrissel cultivated in his foundation of Fontevraud.47 Likewise Guibert of Gembloux’s letters to Hildegard of Bingen demonstrate his eagerness to offer her spiritual care as an escape from his contentious life at Gembloux.48 Epistolary relationships between Abelard and Heloise, and Guibert and Hildegard are reminiscent of the affectionate and spiritually dense letters between Fortunatus and Radegund, and such relationships persisted.49 At Fontevraud men and women lived in joined communities, as at contemporary double monasteries such as Sempringham or Hirsau. Robert also ensured that the community would be governed by an abbess, permanently subjecting the male monastics to female authority.50 Like Fontevraud and Abelard’s Paraclete, Hirsau and Sempringham valued the spiritual opportunity the women brought men 45  Édouard Hautcoeur, Histoire de l’abbaye de Flines (Lille: R. Giard, 1909); Schulenberg, “Strict Active Enclosure,” 75–9; William Chester Jordan, “The Cistercian Nunnery of La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery: A House that Failed,” Revue Benedictine 95, no. 3 (1985): 311–20; Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society. 46  Griffiths, “‘Men’s Duty to Provide for Women’s Needs’”; Alcuin Blamires, “Caput a femina, membra a viris: Gender Polemic in Abelard’s Letter ‘On the authority and dignity of the nuns’ profession,’ ” in David Townsend and Andrew Taylor, eds., The Tongue of the Fathers: Gender and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Latin (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 55–79. 47 For Abelard, see Fiona  J.  Griffiths and Julie Hotchin, “Women and Men in the Medieval Religious Landscape,” in Griffiths and Hotchin, eds., Partners in Spirit, 10; and Griffiths, “‘Men’s Duty to Provide for Women’s Needs,’ ” 12. 48  For Robert and Fontevraud, see Jacques Dalarun, “Pouvoir et autorité dans l’ordre double de Fontevraud,” in Les religieuses dans le cloître et dans le monde des origins à nos jours: Actes du deuxième Colloque international du CERCOR, Poitiers, 29 September-2 October 1988 (Saint-Étienne, 1994), 335–51, and L’impossible sainteté: La vie retrouvée de Robert d’Arbrissel (v. 1045–1116) fondateur de Fontevraud (Paris, 1985). See also Fiona J. Griffiths, “Monks and Nuns at Rupertsberg: Guibert of Gembloux and Hildegard of Bingen,” in Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit, 145–69, 147. 49  John Coakley, “Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography,” in Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Szell, Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, 222–46 and “Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,” Church History 60 (1991): 445–60; Mooney, Gendered Voices. 50  Although, as Griffiths observed, “contemporaries saw [Fontevraud] primarily as a female monastery, with a staff of priests and lay brothers attached”: “The Cross and the Cura monialium,” 304n.4.

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through the cura monialium, as did the Premonstratensian abbeys of the twelfth century.51 These new foundations’ popularity for both men and women suggests the satisfaction both groups saw in living an apostolic ideal of separate togetherness and encouraging male–female cooperation.52 Men providing pastoral care to women in these communities and others appear to have appreciated the opportunity to connect with their charges in a relationship of mutual obligations. Scholars have also questioned the extent to which eleventh- and twelfth-century reforms truly were misogynist, suggesting that scholars have been too quick to assume that “the prominence and relative autonomy of nuns did come to an end with reform.”53 Certainly reformers opposed clerical concubinage and depicted the women who took roles as priests’ wives in hostile terms. Griffiths argues against the notion that misogyny was inherent to reform.54 While reformers used women rhetorically to denounce their opponents’ greed, lust, or other lack of virtue, the women in these discussions were symbolic, and the conversation was truly about men and masculinity, not about women at all.55 Moore argued that reform was about stressing the importance of the clergy over the laity; thus advocating clerical celibacy wasn’t about hating on women at all.56 As Constance Berman has argued, “if women could no longer marry priests after the twelfth century, many more

51  Griffiths, “Women and Reform in the Central Middle Ages,” 455. An early advocate for this idea was Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England. On men’s provision of pastoral care for women, see Klaus Schreiner, “Pastoral Care in Female Monasteries: Sacramental Services, Spiritual Edification, Ethical Discipline,” in Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries, ed. by Jeffrey  F.  Hamburger and Susan Marti (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 225-44; Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession; Parisse, Les Nonnes au Moyen Age, 134–43; Les Religieuses dans le cloître et dans le monde des origines à nos jours: actes du deuxième colloque international du C.E.R.C.O.R.: Poitiers, 29 Septembre–Octobre 1988, ed. Bouter (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1994), 331–91; Brian Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order, c. 1130-c.1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and focusing on Fontevraud, Gold, The Lady & the Virgin, 76–115. For the Premonstratensian abbeys, see Shelley Amiste Wolbrink, “Necessary Priests and Brothers: Male–Female Co-Operation in the Pre-Monstratensian Women’s Monasteries of Füssenich and Meer, 1140–1260,” in Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit, 171–212. 52  Griffiths and Hotchin, “Women and Men in the Medieval Religious Landscape,” 10. See also Shelley Amiste Wolbrink, “Women in the Premonstratensian Order of Northwestern Germany, 1120–1250,” Catholic Historical Review 89, no. 3 (2003): 387–408; Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel, “Das Doppelkloster—eine verschwiegene Institution: Engelberg und adere Beispiele aus dem Umkreis der Helvetia Sacra,” Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige 101 (1990): 197–211, and “‘Officium Paterne Providentie’; ou ‘Supercilium Noxie Dominationis’: Remarques sur les couvents de bénédictines au sud-ouest du Saint-Empire,” in Les religieuses dans le cloître et dans le monde, 367–71. 53  Griffiths, “Women and Reform in the Central Middle Ages,” 450. 54  Griffiths, “The Cross and the Cura monialium,” 310–12. 55  Conrad Leyser, “Custom, Truth, and Gender in Eleventh-Century Reform,” in R. N. Swanson, ed., Gender and Christian Religion (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 75–91; and Maureen C. Miller, “Masculinity, Reform, and Clerical Culture: Narratives of Episcopal Holiness in the Gregorian Era,” Church History 72, no. 1 (2003): 25–52. For more on these symbolic uses of gender and their relation to society, see Megan McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 56 R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution, c.970–1215 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 11.

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could marry Jesus—be brides of Christ—as nuns often living in considerable comfort in new communities of monastic women.”57 Reform also brought nuns opportunities that are hard to read as misogynist. While monastic founders and patrons expected to maintain familial control over the abbeys, eleventh- and twelfth-century reforms empowered nuns to take control of their institutions and their property by discouraging lay interference in Church affairs and wealth.58 While the Cistercians were supposedly hostile to incorporating women into the order, this was a response to the much larger number of Cistercian women compared to men.59 Alison Beach and Fiona Griffiths have powerfully demonstrated that women engaged in the reforms themselves, in their own quite spiritual and learned way.60 Indeed, some nuns, such as Hildegard of Bingen and Elisabeth of Schönau, used the reform to criticize clerics for misdeeds: “women’s exclusion from the ecclesiastical hierarchy might actually have increased their investment in reform issues.”61 Many of these women have been dismissed as “exceptional” or “extraordinary” and thus not representative of women more broadly. Abbesses were exceptional women with extraordinary power, yet there were many of them across Europe with access to similar resources and opportunities. It seems unfair to dismiss the significant power they claimed or the significance of their experience because a few of these women became famous. Moreover, the reform provided opportunities for nuns to act independently. Gisela Muschiol has suggested that women did not rely so completely on clerical men as the rhetoric claims. As Muschiol has shown, scholars may have been too quick to assume women’s total dependency on male priests, particularly for early medieval period. Indeed, she suggests that monasteries that were tightly enclosed— such as those subject to the Caesarian Rule—offered nuns greater opportunity to celebrate the liturgy on their own. Since male clerics’ entrance to an enclosed house was tightly regulated it could only happen once a week, leaving the nuns to celebrate the hours alone with the abbess presiding and even saying the collecta, typically said by the priest.62 Even once the mass was a regular occurrence it is possible, as Jean

57  Constance Berman, “Gender at the Medieval Millennium,” in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. by Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 554. 58  Michel Parisse, Religieux et religieuses en empire du Xe au XIIe siècle (Paris: Picard, 2011). 59 Berman, The Cistercian Evolution; Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns; Elizabeth  M.  Freeman, “Male and Female Cistercians and their Gendered Experiences of the Margins, the Wilderness and the Periphery,” in Liz Herbert McAvoy and M.  Hughes-Edwards, eds., Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs: Intersections of Gender and Enclosure in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), 65–76. 60 Beach, Women as Scribes; Griffiths, The Garden of Delights. 61  Griffiths, “Women and Reform in the Central Middle Ages,” 457–8. See also Lewis, By Women, For Women, About Women. 62 Gisela Muschiol, Famula Dei: Zur Liturgie in merowingischen Frauenklöstern (Munster: Aschendorffsche, 1994), 74–6, 101–6; and “Das ‘gebrechlichere Geschlecht’ und der Gottesdienst. Zum religiösen Alltag in Frauengemeinschaften des Mittelalters,” in Günter Berghaus, Thomas Schilp, and Michael Schlagheck, eds., Herrschaft, Bildung, und Gebet. Grüdung und Anfänge des Frauenstifts Essen (Essen: Klartext, 2000), 19–27.

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Leclercq argued, that some women communicated in the absence of priests.63 Penny Gold has shown that male agents conducted Le Ronceray d’Angers’s business, but under the abbess’s strict and careful leadership.64 Anne Lester found that Cistercian nunneries in Champagne maintained their own archives and employed local clerics for creating documents rather than relying on Cistercian monks who might take on more authority in the convent.65 And Heloise’s letters to Abelard demonstrate her competence both in running the abbey and in exploring the nuns’ spiritual lives.66 If reformers wanted to encourage separation from women religious, they had to acknowledge the sisters’ basic competence to govern their own communities with only occasional involvement and oversight by men. The realities of governing an abbey and its estates were not lost on nuns. The period saw the rise of widows, with experience managing estates, selected as abbesses, such as Robert d’Arbrissel’s choice of Petronilla of Chémilly to head Fontevraud. Such women might hire provosts, and oversee their work, yet not need to rely on them. Documents from monasteries demonstrate the abbesses’ skill in carefully maintaining and administrating their institutions.67 This was a period in which abbesses devised new sources of revenue and created endowments for their abbeys. Berman has suggested that such careful estate management and the acquisition of new property may even have caused clerical misogyny as “a sort of backlash” against women’s success.68 If she is correct, such a backlash successfully obscured female monastic competence for historians reading only clerical rhetoric for centuries, and demonstrates the importance of documents of practice. An implication of the traditional notion that clerics found the cura monialium burdensome and women’s presence polluting was the need to tightly enclose monastic women, which supposedly removed nuns from liturgical celebrations, estate management, and all other public responsibilities outside the cloister walls. Strict active enclosure, the notion that monastic women should remain in their abbeys, had long been associated with women’s monastic Rules, such as the sixth-

63  Jean Leclercq, “Eucharistic Celebrations Without Priests in the Middle Ages,” in Living Bread, Saving Cup: Readings on the Eucharist (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1982), 222–41. Eva Scholtheuber, “The ‘Freedom of their own Rule’ and the Role of the Provost in Women’s Monasteries of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit. 64  Penny S. Gold, “The Charters of Le Ronceray d’Angers: Male/Female Interaction in Monastic Business,” in Joel  T.  Rosenthal, ed., Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 125–6. 65 Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 175–7. 66  Griffiths, “ ‘Men’s Duty to Provide for Women’s Needs,’ ” 15–19; Constant J. Mews, “Heloise and the Liturgical Experience at the Paraclete,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 11 (2002): 25–35. 67  See Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture; Heike Uffmann, “Inside and Outside the Convent Walls: The Norm and Practice of Enclosure in the Reformed Nunneries of Late Medieval Germany,” The Medieval History Journal 4, no. 1 (2001): 83-108; Loraine N. Simmons, “The Abbey Church at Fontevraud in the Later Twelfth Century: Anxiety, Authority and Architecture in the Female Spiritual Life,” Gesta 31, no. 2 (1992): 99-107; Katherine Gill, “Scandala: Controversies Concerning Clausura and Women’s Religious Communities in Late Medieval Italy,” in Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500 ed. by Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 177–203; Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain. 68  Berman, “Gender at the Medieval Millennium,” 556, and “The ‘Labours of Hercules,’ ” 42.

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century RC, and was an ideal of the Carolingian monastic reform.69 In 1298 Boniface VIII had required enclosure for all female monasteries, regardless of order, in his decretal Periculoso.70 He mandated both active and passive enclosure, prohibiting anyone from leaving or entering a female monastery without a license. Such enclosure then, according to this argument, led to female monasticism’s impoverishment and decline and women’s further subordination to men.71 It is possible, however, to read the rhetorical encouragement of enclosure another way. Narratives of monastic decline are challenged by the clear explosion of female interest in the religious life, noted by Grundmann in the 1930s and described by John Van Engen as a thirteenth-century revolution.72 Large numbers of enthusiastic women embraced religious lives outside the cloister in growing urban communities as beguines or pinzochere from the end of the twelfth century, challenging the monastic orders.73 But women also flocked to the new orders, joining Fontevrist priories or seeking incorporation for new Cistercian abbeys, which the Cistercian General Chapter limited in the thirteenth century. The Cistercians may also have encouraged enclosure—such as with Periculoso—as a way of differentiating Cistercians from other religious groups. Rather than mandating enclosure out of fears of sexual pollution and need to separate from women, Cistercians may have sought a symbolic way of making Cistercian nuns distinct from other religious movements emphasizing purity, celibacy, ecclesiastical independence, and devotion to charity and learning.74 Erin Jordan notes that this was especially important for Cistercian 69  Diem, “The Gender of the Religious,” 440; Schulenburg, “Strict Active Enclosure,” 51–86. Diem, “Inventing the Holy Rule,” 61–3. This reform required women to remain within their abbey walls for their own protection, but did not enforce passive enclosure. Smith, “Clausura Districta,” 13–36. The abbess saw her abbey as the seat of her authority, as she took charge of large estates and governed the lives of her nuns and dependents. It was a threatening site for a bishop whose power monastic claims to autonomy undermined, or an opportunity for control, as more bishops became engaged in monastic visitation and oversight. It was a site of obligation for priests engaged in the cura monialium. It was also a space that elevated the status of local families through their female relatives. Thus, the female monastery was a contested site where definitions of space—the power of women, of local families, of bishops, of secular leaders—competed. 70  Elizabeth Makowski points out the similarities between Caesarius’s Rule and Periculoso—both written for women and both mandating strict enclosure: Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 29. Evangelisti, Nuns. See also Brundage and Makowski, “Enclosure of Nuns,” 143–55. 71 James R. Cain, The Influence of the Cloister on the Apostolate of Congregations of Religious Women (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1965); Rita Ríos de la Llave, “Gender, the Enclosure of Nuns, and the Cura Monalium in Castile during the 13th Century: The Dominican Order as a Case Study,” in Carla Salvaterra and Berteke Waaldijk, eds., Paths to Gender: European Historical Perspectives on Women and Men (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2009), 179–93. Erin Jordan argues that the Cistercian nuns also declined in the later medieval period, but pins such decline on other issues: “contracting patrimonies, financial crises, fewer postulants . . . plague, continuous war, political upheavals”: Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 609. 72 Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages; Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life. This revolution was supported by Jacques de Vitry and Thomas of Cantimpré. 73 Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages; Franz J. Felton, “Frauenklöster und stifte im Rheinland im 12. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Frauen in der religiösen Bewegung des hohen Mittelalters,” in Hubertus Seibert and Stefan Weinfurter, eds., Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch-frühstaufischen Reich (Mainz, 1992), 189–300. 74  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 605; Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns; Berman, The Cistercian Evolution. The Cistercian General Chapter in 1228 required nunneries to be self-sufficient

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nuns since they were typically urban like many of the new semi-monastic groups. Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, too, was a monastic abbey challenged by new urban competitors, a desire to distinguish themselves, and the need to manage urban and seigneurial property. For this reason the abbess may, at times, have emphasized the abbey’s strict enclosure to demonstrate Sainte-Croix’s special status, while at others she broke enclosure without great concern. Moreover, scholars such as Jordan are demonstrating that enclosure was hardly so rigid in practice, and that the traditional notion of enclosure depicts nuns in an impossible situation: “Enclosure forced medieval nuns into an untenable position: managing affairs necessitated violation of policy and accusations of inappropriate conduct. Yet observing enclosure resulted in economic difficulties and accusations of financial misconduct.”75 Several scholars have demonstrated that cloister walls were far more permeable than the rhetorical treatises have suggested, but depicted nuns as transgressive Rule-breakers for choosing to manage their abbey estates rather than observe claustration.76 However, by attending to documents of practice, Jordan has shown that patrons, Cistercian monks, and others willingly interacted with supposedly “transgressive” nuns. Not only did the community not indicate any negative judgment of women who broke enclosure to attend to abbatial business, but such women were actually perceived as capable, competent administrators.77 They may not have even considered such activity a “break” or “transgression” at all. THE LETTERS Pope Alexander II encouraged reform in Poitiers when Agnes of Poitou, daughter of William III/V of Poitou and widow of the emperor Henry III of Germany, alerted the pope to the position of the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde.78 Agnes had long been involved in reform and papal concerns as empress in Germany and, since 1061, had retired to Rome where she was frequently active in the papal and and incorporated, which echoes the concerns of the RC: Anne E. Lester, “Cleaning House in 1399: Disobedience and the Demise of Cistercian Convents in Northern France,” in S.  Barret, ed., Oboedientia: Zu Formen und Grenen von Macht und Unterordnung im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum (Munster: LIT, 2005), 423–44, 426. 75  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 597. 76  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 598; Penelope Johnson, “The Cloistering of Medieval Nuns: Release or Repression, Reality or Fantasy,” in Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 27–39. 77 Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 599–603. Berman has shown that charter ­evidence reveals that nuns were especially competent in this period, a fact obscured by cartulary ­presentation: “The ‘Labours of Hercules.’ ” 78  “Omnibus Christi Ecclesiae filiis notum esse volumes quod beati Petri et nostra dilectissima filia Agnes imperatoris conjux paternitati nostrae lacrimabiliter conquesta est super ecclesiae beatae Radegundis, quae in suburbia Pictaviensis urbis sita est, destructione, instanter supplicans atque suppliciter petens ut supra scriptam ecclesiam in canonicum statum apostolica auctoritate reformantes nostris privilegiis, quibus et dejecta erigere, et inveterate renovare perpetuum jus est, muniremus”: AJP 10:404 (April 25, 1072).

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imperial courts. In his April 1072 letter to the canons, Alexander claimed that Agnes had asked him to reform the community there. Alexander placed the canons under his protection (tuitio), and he confirmed their chapter’s reform into a college. This change transformed the chapter into a semi-monastic community subject to a Rule, an improvement in their status in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. As Caroline Walker Bynum pointed out, the differences between regular canons and monks might be hard to identify.79 Just as Carolingian policy had dictated the Benedictine Rule for Frankish monasteries, the Carolingian Rule of Aix had organized communities of canons in 816. The Rule required canons to live a common life but permitted them to own property privately. During the tenth century several communities had lost even the common life and had taken to living and dining apart, and some canons had married. Reformers in the eleventh century pressed canons to restore the common life by eating and sleeping in communal refectories and dormitories, and some reformers went further to demand canons give up private property. The Council of 1059, as part of the future Gregory VII’s attack on the Rule of Aix’s policy on property, “made it obligatory for clergy to live at the churches which they served and share a dormitory and refectory, and exhorted them to practise ‘the apostolic, that is the common life.’ ”80 Alexander II came from Lucca, an area heavily involved in the reform of canons into organized, Rule-based colleges. His 1072 letter encouraged the canons at Sainte-Radegonde to live the common life. Alexander confirmed the canons of Sainte-Radegonde’s right to elect their own officers such as the prior and dean, and reserved the community’s property and offices for those living the common life. However, he also preserved Sainte-Croix’s privileges: Alexander confirmed that the canons owed the abbey subjection and reverence, and that it was the abbess’s privilege to invest the chapter’s officers with their benefices. He clarified that the abbess should invest only clerics living the common life at Sainte-Radegonde.81 By limiting offices and property to those men living as part of a canonical community at Sainte-Radegonde, Alexander ensured greater stability for the chapter. Alexander’s letter reflected his own interest in preserving Church property, in ensuring that offices were properly held and invested, and above all in promoting a common life for clerics. The letter also underlined his majesty and magnanimity—as he swooped in to rescue the canons from destruction, placing them under his protection, and applauding them for already embracing 79  Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Spirituality of Regular Canons in the Twelfth Century: A New Approach,” Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series No. 4, 1973; Morris, The Papal Monarchy. 80 Morris, The Papal Monarchy, 74–5. See also Canon 4, MGH Leges Const. I, no. 384, 547; Peter Damian, “Contra Clericos Regulares Proprietarios,” PL 145, 479–90. 81  “[C]lericos predicate ecclesiae qui prius divino compuncti timore communem claustralemque vitam ducere instituerant videlicet ut decaniam et thesaurum cum omnibus sibi pertinentibus, praeposituaram quoque et armariam, cellariam, et si qua sunt alia official cum propriis beneficiis nullus praesumat attingere aut nulla occasione tractare, praeter eos qui claustralem vitam duxerint, et praeter illum quem priorem aut omnes aut melior pars in commune viventium fratrum elegerint, salvis in omnibus privilegiis monasterii sanctae Crucis, cui debitam subjectionem et canonicam reverentiam, quam ab ecclesia sanctae Radegundis habere visa est, non auferimus, ita tame nut non liceat abbatissae praedicti monasterii sanctae Crucis aliis nisi claustralibus clericis et communiter viventibus supra scripta official cum propriis beneficiis dare aut investire”: AJP 10:404 (April 25, 1072).

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canonical reform.82 We do not know whether Alexander’s letter actually changed the situation in Poitiers or whether it reflected changes already in place, but it did establish papal interest in protection for the canons, and provided the first extant documentation asserting the pope’s claim to interfere in Sainte-Radegonde. While the pope’s letter documented Sainte-Radegonde’s new status and rights, it also demonstrated the continued superiority and authority of Sainte-Croix’s abbess. While subsequent letters suggest some significant conflicts between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde, we do not see either community set out to harm the other, such as happened in Flanders, where, according to Vanderputten, “the abbots of Saint-Bertin set out to effect, and then consolidate, the subordinated position of the new abbey by preventing it from gaining any prominence in the region.”83 The situation in Poitiers resembled that of loving but squabbling siblings. The nuns of Sainte-Croix did not easily exercise the privileges Alexander ascribed to them in his 1072 letter, as the canons challenged the abbess’s privileges enough to require papal assistance again within a decade. In 1081, at the Council of Saintes, Pope Gregory VII’s legate Amatus of Oloron again confirmed the abbess’s authority over the chapter.84 He reminded those assembled at the council that Alexander had confirmed the abbess’s superiority over the canons, and her right to grant the chapter’s prebends and offices to those men elected by the members. Amatus went on to explain that the investiture should take place in the church at Sainte-Radegonde, although the dean had to make his profession to the abbess at the altar in the church at Sainte-Croix before he was invested.85 According to Amatus, during his profession the dean should swear his subjection and obedience to the abbess.86 Sainte-Croix’s church altar likely contained, at least part of the time, the True Cross relic Radegund obtained in the sixth century and the nuns’ eleventh-century libellus. If so, so Sainte-Radegonde’s dean swore his oath before visible signs of the abbess’s authority and connection to Radegund. Bringing the canons into SainteCroix, to the abbey’s church and altar to swear this oath allowed the abbess to 82  Their rights to live together as a community had, apparently, been troubled by the Archbishop: AJP 10:404 (April 25, 1072). 83  Vanderputten, “Crises of Cenobitism,” 268. 84  Along with Hugh of Die, Amatus of Oloron was one of the most prolific legates of his time and heavily involved in Gregory VII’s reforming projects: Kriston R. Rennie, “‘Uproot and destroy, build and plant’: Legatine Authority under Pope Gregory VII,” Journal of Medieval History 33, no. 2 (2007): 166–80, 173. He was bishop of Oloron from approximately 1073 to 1089, and then archbishop of Bordeaux 1089–1101. He was well known in Poitiers: Amatus had previously imposed sanctions on Isembert, bishop of Poitiers, and called a council at Saint-Maixent in 1074 to deal with the marriage of Count/Duke William: H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 356. 85  “[U]t videlicet abbatissa Sanctae Crucis jus suum et debitam dominationem in ipsos canonicos obtineat, salvo tamen privilegio pape Alexandri, quod super conservanda inter eosdem canonicos vivendi communitate composuit. Prebendarum ergo donum et earum investitures abbatissa in capitulo sanctae Radegundis faciet his, quos decanus et fratres canonice elegerint. Decanatus quoque et investituram similiter. Et a decano, antiquam investiatur, in presencia Dei coram altari sanctae Crucis abbatissa professionem accipiet”: AJP 10:413 (c.1081). 86  “Profitebitur autem decanus his verbis: Ego ill. in ecclesia sanctae Radegundis decanus electus, promitto Deo et ecclesiae sanctae Crucis, et tibi, abbatissa ill. subjectionem et obedienciam justam secundum constituta sanctorum patrum et hujus loci privilegia, quamdiu susceptum officium decanatus tenuero”: AJP 10:413 (c.1081).

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demonstrate her authority at a site of great strength for the abbess, within her abbey and in the presence of her most valuable artifacts. Additionally, Amatus stated that during elections at Sainte-Radegonde the abbess could overrule the brothers if the community had all agreed on the worst candidate, a powerful sign of her superiority over the chapter. If the brothers disagreed among themselves the abbess and the dean were empowered to favor the better party. If the brothers wished to go over the dean’s head, however, they were required to go to the abbess. This gave her, at least in theory, extensive influence in the chapter’s internal workings as she could reject the canons’ selection to impose her own. Amatus also pointed to the bishop’s special power in this document. First, he established that he had written his letter at the prompting of Bishop Isembert II of Poitiers. This suggests that the bishop represented himself as these communities’ proper advocate and protector, even more powerful since Amatus had previously sanctioned Isembert in 1074 for the latter’s role in Count/Duke William VI/VIII’s improper marriage. Amatus stated that if the dean and canons should join together in a complaint against the abbess, it would be the bishop of Poitiers’ role to settle the issue, an insertion of episcopal privilege into the two communities that had not been documented previously in Poitiers, even if Maroveus had attempted to oversee Sainte-Croix centuries before.87 Amatus confirmed the bishop’s superiority over both groups here—which fit with contemporary efforts, in which Amatus was deeply involved, to expand the influence of a reformed episcopacy. The reform movement had grown increasingly concerned with ensuring that the investiture of Church offices was free from lay interference, thus protecting Sainte-Croix’s interest against any secular encroachment. The reformers also stressed bishops’ powers in a properly functioning Church hierarchy. The letters from Alexander and Amatus established an archive of papal support that the women would use in later appeals for support and assistance, and provided precedents for officials responding to conflicts in Poitiers. They became part of the archive of privileges Sainte-Croix’s abbesses maintained, even through the eleventh-century shift from secular to ecclesiastical alliances. The creation of this archive was facilitated by a renewed emphasis on the written word, particularly in monastic settings, as Kathleen Cushing notes: “monastic and clerical writers in general were now being called upon to write, copy and use texts and records. . . . Furthermore, these monastic and clerical writers increasingly privileged the text on account of their role . . . as custodians of memory.”88 While the nuns could not count on the distracted, distant, and weakened monarchy to intervene much in the lands of the Dukes of Aquitaine, their strategy of securing documented support from distant allies persisted in this ecclesiastical arena. While the nuns had not requested papal assistance in 1072 or 1081, they discovered through Alexander and Amatus that Sainte-Croix had a powerful ally to call upon if necessary. Later abbesses defended Alexander and Amatus’s confirmation of their privileges and 87 “Si decanus cum fratribus super abbatissa querelam habuerit, talis causa judicio episcopi ­terminabitur”: AJP 10:413 (c.1081). 88 Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century, 29–30.

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pursued further papal support. According to Urban II, Abbess Adelaide specifically asked him to confirm Sainte-Croix’s privileges, which he did in a bull addressed to her on March 29, 1091. In response to her petition he placed Sainte-Croix under the protection of the apostolic see and guaranteed all the rights accorded to the monastery by previous popes. He declared the church of Sainte-Radegonde subject to her rule and to the rule of her successors, in perpetuity. Urban also threatened to excommunicate anyone who opposed his order.89 Urban stopped in Poitiers for three weeks in January 1096 during his tour of the region. While there is no certain evidence that he visited Sainte-Croix or Sainte-Radegonde, given his role in consecrating Montierneuf and touring other abbeys and churches in the area, it is likely he met the nuns and canons.90 These decrees established that the canons owed the abbess their obedience, protected the abbey’s wealth, and offered papal support for the women’s superior authority, yet the canons resisted their community’s subjection under Urban and throughout much of the twelfth century. These are the first examples of a strategy of resistance the canons would pursue through the fifteenth century. Three popes wrote to the canons, Calixtus II (1119–24) in 1123, Innocent II (1130–43) in 1140, and Lucius II (1144–5) in 1144, ordering them to show Sainte-Croix’s abbesses the obedience they had been neglecting. In the first letter, Calixtus revealed that Abbess Sara had written him complaining that the men of SainteRadegonde had failed to show her due service and obedience.91 Calixtus had visited the diocese of Poitiers four years before and may have met Sara then. He had also visited Fontevraud, another female abbey in the diocese, and met with Abbess Petronilla in 1119.92 Innocent and Lucius reissued Calixtus’s commands without explicitly stating a purpose for their letters, but we may surmise that they had received some request or complaint from Sainte-Croix as well. Each of these popes ordered the canons to fulfill their obligations without delay or contradiction, as required by the privileges the nuns possessed—by ancient custom according to Innocent.93 While the canons apparently resisted an acknowledgment of their subjection to Sainte-Croix’s abbesses, the nuns received repeated support for claiming superior monastic authority over Sainte-Radegonde’s chapter. 89  Bulles inédits, AJP 10:527–8. 90  René Crozet, “Le voyage d’Urbain II en france (1095–1096) et son importance au point de vue archéologique,” Annales du Midi 49 (1937): 42–69. 91  “Abbatissa monasterii Sanctae Crucis S[ara] de vobis conqueritur quod cum ab ejus monasterio beneficia teneatis, obedientiam et servitium ei et ecclesiae commissae negligitis exhibere”: Bullaire du pape Callixte II, ed. Robert, 2:231 (December 3, 1123). Here it is clearer that the women sought help because the canons did not observe the privileges conferred by earlier popes. 92  See Bruce Venarde, “Making History at Fontevraud: Abbess Petronilla of Chemillé and Practical Literacy,” in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue, ed. by Virginia Blanton et al. (Brepols, 2013), and The Two Lives of Robert of Arbrissel: Legends, Writings, and Testimonies (Brepols, 2006). 93  “Unde mandamus vobis atque praecipimus quatinus, secundum praefati monasterii privilegia, ecclesiae servire et abbatissae debitum honorem impendere nullatenus differatis”: Bullaire du pape Callixte II, 2:231 (December 3, 1123); and “Quocirca per presentia uobis scripta mandamus et ­mandando precipimus, quatinus ecclesie sancte Crucis, in qua sanctimoniales Domino seruiunt, de presbitero diacono subdiacono et ceteris que antiquitus constituta et predecessorum nostorum priuilegiis confirmata sunt, absque contradictione aliqua seruiatis et sic in omnibus debitum et consuetum seruitium eidem ecclesie persoluatis”: Papsturkunden in Frankreich, 6:30 (February 27, 1140).

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Papal support for the abbess of Sainte-Croix had several bases. Popes Alexander II, Gregory VII, and Urban II had spent time in Cluny and strongly supported both the reform movement and Cluniac monasticism. They privileged the stricter asceticism of the monastic life over secular clergy. Even once the canons were subject to a Rule they were not monastics. Devoted to the Benedictine Rule, like Cluny, the nuns were able to demonstrate their privileges’ antiquity and well-established precedent, a result of a carefully nurtured network and a well-maintained archive. This ancient tradition encouraged papal support of women’s authority. Innocent and Lucius also wrote to the bishop of Poitiers, each ordering him to step in and ensure that the canons followed orders, reflecting expected hierarchical norms in the Church.94 The papal legate Amatus had established in 1081 that the bishop of Poitiers should arbitrate disputes between the abbess and the chapter. These two popes reminded the bishops, first William (1124–42) in 1140 and then the famous theologian Gilbert de La Porée (1142–55) in 1144, that it was their role to settle this conflict. That Lucius needed to reissue these orders reveals either that William had not stepped in, although he had had two years in office to do so, that he had been unable to resolve this conflict, or that Lucius simply repeated his predecessor’s directive. The letters also reveal that the bishops had not initiated the correspondence by writing to the popes to alert them to the canons’ negligence, as Bishop Isembert had in the eleventh century. As a result, the nuns needed to take more direct action to protect their privileges and authority. When it was forthcoming, the bishop’s assistance seems to have only complicated matters. In May 1145 Eugene III’s papal legate Aléric of Ostia attempted to settle a quarrel between Abbess Sara and Gilbert de la Porée over the prior of SainteRadegonde’s installation in his seat.95 Unfortunately only a fragment of the legate’s report survives showing that the abbess drew on each of the documents described above to demonstrate that earlier popes and legates had confirmed her rights over the chapter, specifically her sole right to install Sainte-Radegonde’s prior. Convinced by Sara’s documentation, Aléric upheld her privileges in 1145.96 Twenty years later, Pope Alexander III (1159–81) wrote to the abbess to confirm once again that Sainte-Croix held authority over the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde, 94  “[P]er presentia tibi scripta mandamus et mandando precipimus quatinus eosdem canonicos de presbitero diacono subdiacono et ceteris que antiquitus constituta sunt, eidem ecclesie absque ulla contradictione humiliter deseruire districte commoneas. Quod si contemptores extiterint, de ipsis debitam iustitiam facias”; and “Ea propter fraternitate tue per apostolica scripta mandamus, quatinus priorem et clericos sancte Radegundis studiose commoneas, ut ecclesie sancte Crucis secundum quod a predecessore nostro bone memorie papa Innocentio eis iniunctum est et in eiusdem ecclesie priuilegiis continetur, debitum seruitium in presbiteri et diaconi seu subdiaconi amministratione humiliter exhibeant; alioquin debitam de ipsis iustitiam facias”: Papsturkunden in Frankreich, 6:30 (February 27, 1140), and 6:35 (1140). 95  “Documents inédits,” ed. Monsabert, 63–4. 96  “[Q]erela que erat inter fratrem nostrum Gislebertum Pictavensem episcopum et abbatissam sancte Crucis super intronizatione Prioris Sancte Radegundis . . . sede, . . . per predictam abbatissam Sancte Crucis plenitudinem dignitatis et potestatis habentem, accepimus, prefato G. Pictav. episcopo multisque aliis presentibus, ubi siquidem ad confirmationem sue rationis eadem abbatissa privilegia Romanorum Pontificum Alexandri, Gregorii, Calisti, legatorum etiam sedis apostolice Giraudi Hostiensis predecessoris nostri, Amati quoque Ellorensis episcoporum, in medio fecit poni et exponi”: “Documents inédits,” ed. Monsabert, 62–4.

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that the canons should serve at the abbey’s church for a week in turn, that no one other than the abbess should bestow offices—and only in Sainte-Croix’s church— and that only the abbess had the right to install the prior of Sainte-Croix. Alexander sent much the same order to Bishop Jean Bellesmains (1162–93), warning him of the consequences of neglecting the papal letter.97 But Jean refused to yield power over Sainte-Radegonde’s prior to the abbess. Jean investigated conflicts between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde and summarized the situation on April 11, 1167. The document referenced Aléric’s 1145 report and shed more light on Gilbert’s claims, which are missing in the fragment of Aléric’s letter. Jean argued that the right to install the prior in his seat belonged jointly to the abbess and bishop, citing as precedent that Gilbert de La Porée had installed Reginaud as prior of Sainte-Radegonde.98 Now the bishop and abbess relied on competing traditions of their privileges within the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde, and while the abbess could point to an older tradition defining the privileges as hers, the papal letters had not stated absolutely that the right of installation belonged only to the abbess. Moreover, these same letters acknowledged a supervisory role for the bishop. Given the tension surrounding installation and episcopal rights, particularly in the Angevin empire in the 1160s, as well as Jean’s support of Thomas Becket, it is unsurprising that the prior’s installation became the most problematic of the abbess’s privileges. Resolution of this issue would have to wait until the end of the century. There is no direct evidence for the canons’ opinions, but it is possible that they welcomed the bishop’s gambit. The bishop holding the power to install the prior jointly with the abbess could have given the chapter greater flexibility than subjecting them entirely to the abbess’s authority. It also connected them directly to male ecclesiastical hierarchies rather than leaving them as a dependent chapter. They, too, likely appreciated contemporary notions about the bishop’s power and may have seen him as a more suitable and prestigious person to perform this ritual. Notions about gender hierarchies may also have led the men to prefer the bishop’s authority to that of the abbess. Conflict between the canons of Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix’s nuns persisted. In 1192 Pope Celestine III’s legate Octavian appointed two local men, the abbot of Saint-Jean and a canon of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, to settle disputes between the abbey and chapter. The conflict had many issues but centered on the territory of Frozes, which lay between the canons’ fief of Vouillé and the nuns’ fief of Maillé, both not far outside Poitiers (Map 4). Frozes remained a subject of much 97 “Statuimus autem ut ecclesia sancte Crucis in eadem sancte Radegundis ecclesia secundum a­ ntiquam institutionem dominationem obtineat, quatinus canonici eiusdem ecclesie unusquisque in ordine suo per hebdomadas ecclesie sancte Crucis deseruiant nec cuislibet dignitatis donum preter abbatissam in eadem ecclesia quilibet dare presumat”: Papsturkunden in Frankreich, 6:73–5 (February 19, 1165). Originally from Canterbury, Jean took office in Poitiers in 1162 and likely was the force behind the rebuilding of Saint-Pierre cathedral. Jean had King Henry II of England’s support, although Jean sided with Thomas Becket in his dispute with Henry. Jean was elected archbishop of Lyon in 1181; he resigned his position in 1193 to join the Cistercian community at Clairvaux. 98 This was probably the act that had sparked Abbess Sara’s complaint requiring the legate’s ­mediation in 1145. Besly, Evesques de Poictiers avec les preuves, 111.

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1, Les Fosses 2, Brieuil 3, Vasles 4, Ayron 5, Maillé 6, Frozes 7, Vouillé 8, Cherves 9, Villiers 10, Boucoeur

11, Bilazais 12, Martaizé 13, Rossay 14, Saix 15, Velléches 16, Saint-Romain 17, Jard 18, Jaulnay 19, Pouillé 20, Sainte-Radegonde

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8 19 45 6 3

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Montreuil-Bonnin Poitiers

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Map 4.  Local fiefs outside Poitiers owned by Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde, adapted from Robert Favreau, La Ville de Poitiers a la fin du Moyen Age: Une Capitale Régionale (Poitiers, 1978), 631

contention between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde into the eighteenth century, but the main issues in 1192 were (a) a sum of money the nuns allegedly owed the canons and (b) the canons’ claim to proprietary lordship—the ability to select and install the priests at Frozes—which, allegedly, the nuns had refused to honor.99 In this case, the nuns appear to have adopted the very strategy they complained about when used by the canons: they ignored, avoided, or delayed observing the rights and privileges the men claimed. However, the canons could not document their claim in Frozes with the same depth of tradition and archive the nuns had used at Sainte-Croix, and thus were less convincing. Octavian granted the men a portion of the money they claimed, but ordered them to cede their proprietary claim to Sainte-Croix.100 After resolving the issue of Frozes, the mediators listed other issues over which Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde had been fighting and gave much more detail than revealed in earlier documents of the disputes. They clarified that the canons should perform the liturgy for the feast of the Dedication of 99  See A.  Dernier, “Le Conflit entre Ste-Radegonde et Ste-Croix au sujet de Frozes,” BSAO 1 (1950–1): 829–50. 100 “Proinde, de consensus partium statuimus quod abbatissa Sancte Crucis reddet predictis ­canonicis viginti quinque solidos andegavensis monetae annuatim in festo beatae Radegundis pro recompensatione pensionis non solutae, et quod ipsi cedunt juri proprietatis si quod ibi debent habere in perpetuum”: DF 5, 613–16.

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Sainte-Croix as accustomed, in return for the nuns’ payment of 100 sous for the procuratio, or maintenance, of the canons and their clerics on that day.101 The canons were also told to celebrate the office of the mass and the hours on feast days without trying to avoid that duty “wickedly.”102 While previous documents had focused on the abbess’s privileges in elections at Sainte-Radegonde, the mediators declared that the canons had the right to serve as one of the arbiters in contested elections for Sainte-Croix’s abbesses. If the prior were in town this would be his role; if not, the nuns could choose the most suitable member of the community.103 Once the abbess was elected, the canons were enjoined to receive her in SainteRadegonde in procession, which, they were warned, should not be denied or “wickedly delayed.”104 The document was also concerned with the fate of the abbesses’ bodies after death. The mediators stated that when the abbess died, she should be laid out in Sainte-Radegonde with four wax candles burning around her body—two of which would then be placed and lit around Saint Radegund’s body, linking the abbess to the saint in death. The other two candles went to the clericulus, or junior cleric, of the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde.105 The abbess and the canons had been struggling with some of the issues addressed in these papal documents for decades. Sainte-Croix expected the canons to perform the cura monialium and to serve in the abbey church weekly as well as during important feasts. Letters from Calixtus II, Innocent II, and Lucius II suggest that the canons had resisted this service to the abbey. Whether the men accepted and agreed with contemporary clerical rhetoric depicting the cura monialium as ­burdensome, or whether the canons simply wanted to receive a fair payment for services they performed for the nuns is unclear. The men may still have wanted to maintain the harmonious, familial relationship they had previously enjoyed with the nuns, without remaining the complete subordinate the nuns demanded. Requesting remuneration for their service is not the same thing as rejecting the 101  “[P]ro procuratione quam solebant habere canonici memorati cum suis clericis in ipsa abbatie Sanctae Crucis in die Dedicationis annuatim, percipient ipsa die centum solidos andegavenses annuatim, ita tamen quod ipsi et clerici sui nichilominus celebrabunt officium Dedicationis in monasterio Sanctae Crucis integre et solempniter, sicut solent”: DF 5, 613–16, 614. 102  “Preterea illud firmiter ducimus statuendum, ut consuetum et debitum officium Missarum et horarum quod canonici beatae Radegundis debent in sollempnibus et festivis diebus ecclesiae Sanctae Crucis, deinceps ejusdem ecclesiae a canonicis exhibeatur nec malitiose, subtrahatur”: DF 5, 613–16, 615. A similar situation existed during the twelfth century at Hohenbourg, where the secular canons were warned that misbehavior would be met with the withdrawal of their benefices: see Griffiths and Hotchin in “Women and Men in the Medieval Religious Landscape,” 25. 103  “Quando vero tractabitur de eligenda abbatissa, si forte, quod absit, non convenerint moniales in eligendo et compromiserint in arbitros forisecos de eligenda abbatissa, prior beatae Radegundis erit unus de arbitris, si praesens sit tunc in civitate; sin autem, alius canonicus ejusdem ecclesiae quem moniales credant ad hoc magis idoneum, ita quidem quod ille arbiter in nullo poterit impedire ­electionem nisi sicut alii arbitri”: DF 5, 613–16, 614. 104  “Denique cum abbatissa fuerit electa, recepietur in processione solempni in ecclesia beatae Radegundis et afferent ibidem pannum sericum, nec processio hujusmodi debet ei negari nec malitiose differri”: DF 5, 613–16, 614–15. 105  “Ad hoc, quando abbatissa Sanctae Crucis diem clauserit extremum, sepelietur, sicut moris est, in ecclesia beatae Radegundis, et de quatuor cereis qui solent ardere circa corpus, remanebunt duo cerei clericulis beatae Radegundis, et alii duo ardebunt circa corpus beate Radegundis quamdiu durabunt”: DF 5, 613–16, 614.

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cura monialium altogether, and it acknowledged the canons’ ability to charge others for similar services. We also cannot say whether the canons had resisted their service because the nuns had failed to pay a sum previously agreed upon, so that the popes’ letters were confirming their position as well. It is possible that the abbess was unable to pay or to pay as much as the canons wished. It may also be that the men of Sainte-Radegonde valued the cura monialium and their relationship with the nuns, as did Abelard and Guibert and some other clerics, but that the cura monialium was an easy subject on which to attract attention, when some other problem was really at work. They may, for example, have desired greater reciprocity with the nuns and a more considered role in Radegund’s cult, as we see them claiming in the 1260s (see Chapter 5). While the 1192 arbitration is the first documented claim of the canons’ desire to serve as arbiters in contested elections at Sainte-Croix, such a request forms a parallel with the abbess’s own right to arbitrate elections at Sainte-Radegonde, and depicts the two communities more as equals. Like many other female houses, the nuns of Sainte-Croix were concerned with preserving their estates from aggressive local landholders’ encroachments, collecting their rents from tenants, protecting their privileges from male rivals and superiors (the canons, the bishop), and ensuring their abbey’s income. The twelfth-century general shift in funerary donations to monasteries from prayers to masses for the dead created a serious financial hardship for female abbeys, as Penelope Johnson has demonstrated, since the cost of employing priests to perform annual masses overtook the original donation, and the bar against female ordination necessitated this arrangement. This is one reason why the abbesses of Sainte-Croix were so insistent in their privileges over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, forcing the ­canons to perform weekly duties at Sainte-Croix for a nominal fee; it is also possible the nuns wanted to preserve traditional costs, while the canons wanted more after their reform. The nuns’ success at confirming this privilege is a major cause for the abbey’s healthy financial profile in the later Middle Ages, and demands over payments a regular feature of the two communities’ negotiations even in the fifteenth century. The disputes further point to a shift in concerns over space. In 1192 the women were concerned with the abbess’s ability to enter Sainte-Radegonde and be properly received there upon her election, rather than with pulling the dean into SainteCroix. This change may reflect greater confidence in the abbess’s ability to bring the dean into her community, but may also indicate issues with her ability to leave her own abbey and gain access to the chapter church, possibly due to contemporary concerns about enclosure. The abbess was also concerned, in 1192, with the procedure for honoring her body after death. She sought to ensure that her corpse would lie in Sainte-Radegonde and have a particular connection to the saint’s relics through the candles’ movement from around her own body to Radegund’s tomb. Here the abbess tried to confirm her access to the inner sanctum of the canons’ masculine spaces, as well as to pull the men into their own church to perform services there. It seems that the abbess was anxious that she might be denied entrance to the church, or her entry rights limited. Such limitations threatened her authority over the community of Sainte-Radegonde, as well as her monastic

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community’s ability to commune with the saint. The dispute’s documents, then, reveal the nuns’ struggle to maintain overt demonstrations of their superiority and control over the canons. As Steven Vanderputten has demonstrated, such concern for the crucial role of the abbatial superior was central in reform thinking, and so Sainte-Croix’s interest in preserving the abbess’s rights and the papacy’s support fits with the broader reform movement, even if scholars’ perceptions of female authority have not clearly attended to this.106 Octavian confirmed Sainte-Croix’s privileges over Sainte-Radegonde, ordering the canons to serve at the abbey church and to end their strategy of resistance to the abbess’s authority. Although he gave the canons the right to serve as arbiter in contested elections, he reminded the men of privileges the elected abbess would immediately claim in their church upon her election, and again upon her death. And he acknowledged the nuns’ rights over the territory of Frozes. Although the canons had risen in status within the church since their reform as a college, the abbess’s traditions, archive, and network continued to privilege her position above theirs to a papal audience. BISHOP With the newly constructed twelfth-century walls bringing Sainte-Radegonde into Poitiers, Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix were now just on separate sides of Saint-Pierre, the neighboring cathedral, whose reconstruction began circa 1160 under the Plantagenets and ended in the 1370s under the Valois. The cathedral was an enormous Gothic structure that broke the sightlines between Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix, dominating the town’s eastern portion (Figure  17). The construction’s first wave, circa 1160–90, produced a major portion of the building’s northern face. The cathedral, even in this first phase, must have been impressive, providing Poitiers’ bishops with a more dominating presence in Poitiers’ newly defined urban space. Large portions of the structure were complete in 1307, when the influential Bishop of Poitiers Arnald d’Aux (1307–14) took office.107 The new Gothic building contributed to its episcopal occupant’s glory, with its luxurious windows, paintings, and sculptures. The building’s overwhelming presence attested to the bishop’s grand notion of his own importance and pre-eminence in his town, and underlined the threat he posed to the autonomy of the communities located only steps away. The bishop of Poitiers also controlled a massive diocese—by the end of the thirteenth century it contained 1,200 parishes, making it one of the largest in France.108 106  Steven Vanderputten, “Death as a Symbolic Arena: Abbatial Leadership, Episcopal Authority, and the ‘Ostentatious Death’ of Richard of Saint-Vanne (d. 1046),” Viator 44, no. 2 (2013): 29–48. Belle Tuten also observed “prolonged, retaliatory conflicts” between the nuns of Notre-Dame-de-laCharité and monks of Saint-Nicolas, neighboring communities in Angers. During the eleventh ­century they especially feuded over burial rights: Belle Stoddard Tuten, “Disputing Corpses: Le Ronceray d’Angers versus Saint-Nicolas d’Angers, ca 1080–1140,” Medieval Perspectives 10 (1995): 178–88. 107 Yves Blomme, Poitiers: La Cathédrale Saint-Pierre (Paris: Fondation d’enterprise Gaz de France, 2001). 108 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers.

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Figure 17.  Georges Louis Arlaud, panoramic view of Poitiers, c.1925, showing churches of Sainte-Radegonde, Sainte-Pierre, Notre-Dame-la-Grande, and Poitiers. © Ministère de la Culture/Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

These eleventh- and twelfth-century debates and the bishop’s role in them were revisited after a century of calm by the vigorous Bishop Arnald d’Aux. During the thirteenth century Sainte-Croix had suffered a series of vacancies and ineffective abbesses, while the canons of Sainte-Radegonde thrived. The canons’ church was also under construction and benefitted from an extensive new decoration program funded, in part, by French nobles and kings. While Sainte-Croix rebounded under the strength of Abbess Jeanne de La Vergne (1269–84), conflict rocked the abbey during her successor’s election, in which two women named Isabelle contended for the abbacy, possibly until one candidate’s death in 1310. This difficult period at the abbey, the canons’ chapter’s strong rise, and an especially talented and well-connected bishop’s arrival combined for a dramatic impact on the relations between the three communities. His relative, Pope Clement V (1305–14), named Arnald as bishop, and later designated him as papal legate to England, and then as a cardinal in 1312.109 In 1307, Arnald entered Poitiers in an episcopal procession, a symbolic demonstration that displayed him to Poitiers’ citizens but also marked out the areas over which he had control.110 At the end of this procession and following his 109 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 67. 110  Royal Entries also displayed the power of the entering secular leader: Lawrence Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual, and Art in the Renaissance

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installation in his own cathedral, Arnald declared that he, as bishop, would pursue all the privileges, liberties, and customs that rightly belonged to his church.111 From the very moment of his accession, Arnald made clear to the townspeople that he planned to protect all of the bishopric’s interests, whether they had been exercised or alienated by his predecessors.112 In the document describing his entry, Arnald rearticulated Jean Bellesmains’ claims from 1167, including Jean’s descriptions of Gilbert’s role in giving SainteRadegonde’s prior his office. In April 1308, Arnald was so certain about his privileges over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde that he threatened Abbess Isabelle with an interdict if she persisted in installing the priors on her own, which suggests that the abbess had continued to exercise her privileges of installing the prior, and that she had done so alone, regardless of the twelfth-century bishops’ argument.113 This conflict apparently arose because Isabelle had disputed the bishop’s decision to install a certain John Mantrole as prior. But, under pressure from Arnald, the abbess was forced to concede. In her 1310 reply to the bishop’s order, Isabelle, “the Abbess of the Poitevin monastery of Sainte-Croix”—who could be either of the Isabelles who had claimed the abbacy in 1284—declared that she “recalls, cancels, and annuls absolutely, openly, and publicly” whatever she had done to the prejudice of the bishop’s rights over Sainte-Radegonde. She acknowledged that the right of installing priors now included Arnald and his successors as bishop of Poitiers.114 Arnald’s episcopal predecessors had established enough of a precedent that the abbess was not able to enforce her “ancient” privilege to control installations at Sainte-Radegonde. Bishop Arnald was able, not even a year after taking office, to force the abbess to relinquish this privilege over the chapter permanently. Isabelle’s concession demonstrates how, over the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and certainly by the fourteenth century, the bishop of Poitiers had managed to insert himself into the affairs of an operationally exempt monastery and eventually had come to dominate the ecclesiastical organization in the town, just as his cathedral, (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1986); Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966). See also Maureen C. Miller, “Why the Bishop of Florence Had to Get Married,” Speculum 81, no. 3 (2006): 1055–91. 111  “Ego Arnaldus dei gratia episcopus Jura ecclesiae pictavensis servare et male alienata revocare pro posse statuta, privilegia, libertates, et consuetudines ecclesiae pictavensis rationabiles et approbatas, quae et quas servare teneor, juro me observaturum, excludendo leves observantias a predictis”: DF 3, 445–6. 112  Arnald’s later position as cardinal, and his manipulations that placed a relative in Poitiers’ cathedral after him, demonstrate his ambition. 113  Cartulaire de l’évêché de Poitiers ou Grand-Gauthier, ed. Rédet, AHP 10 (1881), 127. 114  “[R]eligiosa domina soror Esabellis, abbatissa monasterii Sancte Crucis Pictavensis, revocavit, cassavit et annulavit omnino palam et publice, quantum potuit et in ipsa erat, quicquid et si quid fecerat seu attemptaverat contra jus competens reverendo patri domino Arnaldo, digna Dei providentia episcopo Pictavensi, et ejus successoribus ac ecclesie Pictavensi, in prejudicium eorumdem, in installacione domini Johannis Mantrole, concorditer, ut dicitur, electi per capitulum beate Radegundis Pictavensis in priorem ejusdem ecclesie, et, si quid quper predictis et ea tangentibus fecerat in prejudicium dicti domini episcopi et ecclesie Pictavensis, dixit et voluit quod nullius esset penitus valoris vel momenti”: Cartulaire de l’évêché de Poitiers ou Grand-Gauthier, 127 (April 12, 1308).

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now nearly finished, visually dominated the landscape, looming over both the church of Sainte-Radegonde and the abbey of Sainte-Croix. In this way, the reshaping of Poitiers’ geography was intimately connected to, and significantly affected, the balance of power for the ecclesiastical communities inhabiting Poitiers’ urban landscape. While the abbess’s superiority over Sainte-Radegonde was well documented and supported, and she had long been able to act independently of Poitiers’ bishop, by the fourteenth century the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the bishop of Poitiers dominated other communities in his diocese, male and female.115 It is worth noting, however, that while Arnald claimed a privilege for himself and his own office that had traditionally belonged to the abbess, he did not otherwise reorient the relationship between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde, nor did he try to interfere otherwise with the superiority the abbess claimed over the canons’ chapter. Indeed, in 1358, Bishop Jean de Lieux confirmed Sainte-Croix’s privileges over Sainte-Radegonde and warned the canons, upon pain of excommunication, not to violate their entry rights on certain feast days.116 C O N C LU S I O N S In the eleventh century, physical barriers clearly demarcated the spaces Radegund’s communities occupied. The church of Sainte-Radegonde sat outside the city, marked by its own fortifying wall, while the abbey of Sainte-Croix sat inside Poitiers, and the bishop occupied the heart of the city in his ancient cathedral. By eleventh-century definitions and practices, the abbess of Sainte-Croix occupied a powerful position that gave her a great deal of autonomy over her own abbey, as well as authority over the neighboring church of Sainte-Radegonde. This situation frustrated the canons attached to the church, as well as the local bishop who had difficulty enforcing his authority over the abbey.117 Over the course of the high Middle Ages, however, these two groups—the canons and bishops—challenged the abbess’s powers outside her monastery’s boundaries, either by claiming her powers for their own office or by rejecting her claims to exercise them. These conflicts were not unique to Poitiers—female monasteries throughout France faced increasing challenges from male communities as their status rose through the eleventh-century reform movement, and from bishops extending authority over all religious groups in their dioceses. Episcopal visitation brought female communities increasingly under male supervision and undermined female monastic autonomy. Traditionally, scholars relying on rhetorical sources have blamed new attention on nunneries’ enclosure, particularly after Periculoso in 1298, for limiting or altogether 115 It is notable, however, that the bishop primarily contested the abbess’s authority over the c­ hapter of Sainte-Radegonde and not within her own abbey or over her estates. The abbess of Sant Daniel did not fare so well, when succeeding bishops of Girona insisted that she yield control of her abbey to a procurator, over great protest from the abbey: Michelle Herder, “Substitute or Subordinate? The Role of a Male Procurator at a Benedictine Women’s Monastery,” Journal of Medieval History 31, no. 3 (2005): 231–42. 116  DF 5, 671–8. 117 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 52–8.

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destroying female monastic authority. More recently scholars such as Erin Jordan, Fiona Griffiths, Constance Berman, and Anne Lester have demonstrated that enclosure and Periculoso had a less severe impact than previously thought. Many women continued to engage actively in the world outside their cloister walls—to administer property, participate in rituals, hold courts, and so on—yet, as Jordan notes, “there is no indication in the documents of practice that the nuns who left their cloister to attend to monastic business were perceived as engaging in ‘inappropriate’ activities.”118 As she argues, Cistercian men engaged with nuns both within the abbeys and outside their walls, which “challenges views about the degree to which male members of the order may have shared the misogynistic concerns articulated by Boniface VIII” in Periculoso.119 Instead, Cistercian men saw these women as successful administrators, not as burdens or undisciplined Rule-breakers.120 This is also part of a high medieval discourse that gendered power masculine and required male control of female bodies and female spaces. This is particularly true in the way historians have understood the eleventh-century reform movement. While scholars have revised notions that reformers and other clerics rejected women outright over fears of pollution, out of misogyny, or out of disinterest, there were meaningful changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy that affected the women of Sainte-Croix. Increasingly, male bishops expected, and were expected, to monitor female abbeys that had once exercised great authority over their neighboring communities.121 Female control over male monasteries and chapters affiliated with their own abbeys, either as collegial chapters or double monasteries headed by an abbess, was becoming less acceptable, according new autonomy to these formerly subject male communities. Female monasteries became poorer and smaller by the thirteenth century, burdened by new donations for masses that required clerics to be paid, eventually far more than the value of the donation, and were challenged by popular religious movements that allowed women more independence. The women of Sainte-Croix did not easily accept these changes, however. Their privileges had been well documented and they deployed those written testimonies of their rights in petitions to the papacy and while testifying before legates and episcopal councils, relying on networking strategies in place at Sainte-Croix since Radegund’s days. They deployed these written demonstrations of privilege at a moment when written records were becoming better valued and more authoritative to a legalist, scholastic community, and just as they were adjusting to the loss of royal support discussed in Chapter 3. Most importantly, their requests for assistance succeeded and popes and papal legates repeatedly confirmed the privileges claimed by the abbess of Sainte-Croix, with each new letter increasing the abbey’s archive. The letters from Calixtus, Lucius, Innocent, and Aléric reveal conflict between Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde that the popes and legate asserted as their purpose in writing. The issues they discussed—the prior’s installation, proper investiture with benefices and offices, honor, service, and obedience owed the 118  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 599. 119  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 599. 120  Jordan, “Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities,” 603. 121 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 67–74, 84–5.

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abbess, the bishop’s power over his diocese, and respect for papal orders—were issues the papacy pursued with vigor throughout Christendom at this time. As abbesses of Sainte-Croix would do for centuries, these women perfectly positioned their requests for support by understanding their audience’s interests. Similar contests over privileges and jurisdiction in later centuries would employ the same sort of rhetoric in secular courts. The abbess’s efforts helped their abbey maintain autonomy and authority— certainly to a greater degree than some of their neighbors, such as the nunnery of La Trinité in Poitiers. La Trinité struggled with the canons of Saint-Pierre-lePuellier, a subject, dependent chapter obliged to serve the women of La Trinité.122 The bishop of Poitiers eventually gained firm control over the abbey and its chapter. That the abbesses of Sainte-Croix succeeded in protecting their privileges more than their neighbors were able to suggests that their community was adept at convincing their supporters of Sainte-Croix’s privileges. They were especially skilled at defending female monastic authority that officials were not necessarily supporting even elsewhere in Poitiers. This might be why the challenge from Sainte-Radegonde, once their status had changed, complicated their relationship with Sainte-Croix, but not in any way that referenced the supposedly hostile rhetoric of the eleventhcentury reform movement: no fears of pollution or need to separate men and women appear in extant documents related to Sainte-Croix or Sainte-Radegonde from this period. Instead, papal documents forcefully convey their closeness, and the subordination of Sainte-Radegonde’s canons to Sainte-Croix’s abbess. The abbesses’ efforts to gain papal support for Sainte-Croix may not have brought them easy enjoyment of their rights, but it did help them maintain a position in which they might assert those rights. Certainly they suffered challenges, but the abbesses relied on their strategies, drawing on their network of supporters and their archive of privileges to document their authority. The growing status of Poitiers’ bishop and of Sainte-Radegonde’s canons became increasing challenges to the abbesses of Sainte-Croix and threats to their carefully nurtured alliances. But Sainte-Croix’s abbesses persisted in defending their authority and in adapting to new challenges, and they continued to be successful in winning supporters for their claims.

122  ADV 2H/2 1. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 186–9.

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5 The Miracles and Decoration of Sainte-Radegonde In the thirteenth century, Poitiers experienced a major identity shift, first as a ­commune, and then as the town came fully under the French king’s control as part of an apanage held by his family members. Moreover, the papal letters of support that had helped Sainte-Croix and Sainte-Radegonde renegotiate their relationship in the eleventh and twelfth centuries did not continue into the thirteenth century. Whether this is because the abbesses felt no need to reach out to the papacy, because the popes no longer took time to write to the nuns, because the nuns found support elsewhere, or because the letters did not survive, is unknown. For whatever reason, in the thirteenth century both the canons of Sainte-Radegonde and the nuns  of Sainte-Croix were eager to advertise Radegund’s power, her relics, and the other important relics and miracles in their communities. Previously, the abbesses had drawn on their two strategies to bolster their authority in Poitiers over SainteRadegonde and within Radegund’s cult: they nurtured a network of powerful supporters and allies, and they created new literary and artistic representations of the saint that emphasized her relationship to contemporary institutions and communities. In need of a new patron after papal interests shifted elsewhere in the thirteenth century, Radegund’s communities turned to their secondary, cultural strategy through an ambitious decorative program in the church of Sainte-Radegonde. The abbesses of Sainte-Croix were involved in this decoration program, which probably focused on beautifying Sainte-Radegonde as the cult’s public face visited by pilgrims en route to Compostella.1 The nuns and canons promoted Radegund’s cult through frescoes, stained-glass windows, and statuary designed to display the saint’s glory and to interest the royal family. In this goal they succeeded, as Count Alphonse of Poitou donated for the windows. A series of vacancies in Sainte-Croix’s abbacy during the mid- and late-thirteenth century undermined the abbesses’ ability to supervise the program or its themes in the way Abbess Béliarde had overseen reconstruction of the church’s tomb in 1012. In the absence of strong and consistent leadership from the abbey, the canons embraced the opportunity to articulate a vision of Radegund with strong ties to the church of Sainte-Radegonde that conflicted with the version of the saint’s life told in the libellus. To attract royal patrons, they emphasized Radegund’s royalty, something the nuns’ illuminator had minimized. 1  Meredith Parsons Lillich discussed the stained-glass program at Sainte-Radegonde in detail in The Armor of Light.

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The canons prioritized elements of Radegund’s cult that represented their own community and omitted or displaced key artifacts, such as the relic of the True Cross. They also created new manuscripts containing miracle tales that depicted Sainte-Radegonde’s popularity as a pilgrim destination, as well as the holy power Radegund worked within the church, emphasizing their role as the site for her tomb and relics. These new cultural products foregrounding Sainte-Radegonde’s church and chapter challenged the abbess’s sole control over Radegund’s image and memory, and used the abbess’s own strategy to secure royal supporters for the chapter. They showcased the chapter’s new wealth, status, and fame, and promoted their interpretation of Radegund’s cult. The result was great prestige for the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde that challenged the abbess of Sainte-Croix’s authority. Their success in attracting royal support, however, drew attention to issues in Sainte-Croix’s abbacy and may have led to royal interference in their abbatial elections in the 1280s. As the nuns had re-narrated Radegund’s sixth-century lives in eleventh-century manuscript illumination, the canons likewise revisited the source material and called attention to those details that best depicted their community’s holy power and authority. The canons’ challenge to Sainte-Croix’s abbesses’ authority is most clear in comparing the canons’ depiction of Radegund in their windows, carvings, and miracle tales to that in the nuns’ libellus. The canons’ program emphasized Radegund’s relics, royalty, maternity, and her healings in the church, which countered the libellus image of the saint articulated as a cloistered ascetic. The canons’ images appealed to royal patrons—attempting to attach royal influence to the chapter rather than to the abbess—by drawing on contemporary devotion to the cult of the Virgin. By emphasizing Radegund’s special care of infants and devotion to Mary, rather than depicting her as a virginal monastic, the canons stressed Radegund’s role as a nurturing protector.2 They also related her to contemporary notions of royal mothers such as Blanche of Castile, mother of Count Alphonse and King Louis IX, important patrons the canons hoped to attract. Blanche’s regency in France demonstrated the power of a queen protecting her son’s kingdom. Thus, the canons challenged Radegund’s image as a potent, episcopal, cloistered, and authoritative nun, presenting her instead as a well-connected holy queen, and locating that power in their own church. The artwork of the paintings and windows demonstrated that the canons controlled the building and the potent relics contained within its walls. For them, the crucial element of Radegund’s cult and miraculous power was her holy body entombed within their church. Radegund had built this church and founded the chapter as a burial place for herself and the nuns of Sainte-Croix. The canons claimed importance in Radegund’s cult primarily through the power of the tomb containing the saint’s relics. Like the libellus, the canons’ decoration narrated a new version of Radegund’s life pictorially, one whose power rested in the church of SainteRadegonde. Such a notion of the saint was bolstered by the vita composed by Hildebert of Lavardin, which was included in the thirteenth-century manuscript with the new miracle tales. With the windows and these miracle tales, the canons 2  See Lifshitz, “Is Mother Superior?,” 117–38.

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communicated their relics’ holy power to eager pilgrims, advertised the saint’s ancient royalty, and pleased royal patrons.3 These thirteenth-century productions also announced to Sainte-Croix’s abbess, who would sit beneath the windows and frescoes on major feast days, that the canons held a powerful claim on the saint. The windows, frescoes, and miracle tales may all be read not just as marketing for Radegund and her church, but also as a challenge to the abbess’s claim to authority over the canons, to her assertion of their inferiority and subordination, and to her tradition of control over the church building. The thirteenth-century decorative program was part of a larger project of construction at the church. The damage the church of Sainte-Radegonde had suffered in the ninth through eleventh centuries had been repaired by 1099, resulting in the Romanesque tower-porch, choir, and ambulatory.4 A Gothic nave was built during the new construction in Poitiers during the high Middle Ages, during which the canons also expanded the church’s eastern portion.5 The nave’s construction was completed in the first half of the thirteenth century, while the paintings decorating the choir and the stained-glass program filling windows in the nave date to the 1260s and 1270s. The church of Sainte-Radegonde might have taken on a role at this time as the cult’s public face, drawing pilgrims away from the abbey and giving the nuns peace that their contemplative life required.6 The promotion of Radegund’s cult, church, and tomb through a decorative program and the circulation of miracle tales benefitted the canons of Sainte-Radegonde and the nuns of Sainte-Croix, as well as the town of Poitiers. Attracting patrons and pilgrims to Radegund encouraged them to also seek out the relics of Saint Hilary and the True Cross, and to visit the impressive church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande and the cathedral Saint-Pierre, among other shrines in Poitiers. The mid-thirteenth century was an important time for Poitiers to accentuate its power and beauty. In this period, the county of Poitou had only recently joined the French king’s domains after a long struggle with the dukes of Aquitaine/kings of England, and English–French violence over these territories had continued into the 1250s. Having learned a painful lesson about trusting important territories to France’s baronial families, King Louis IX granted Poitou to his brother Alphonse as an apanage, meaning it would revert to the crown and remain within his domain. Shifts over the previous century had moved Poitiers in and out of the French royal orbit. As discussed in Chapter 4, while Poitou and Aquitaine had begun the twelfth century as independent territories loosely subject to the French king, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage had united them with the French crown until her 1152 annulment, and her subsequent marriage to Henry Plantagenet brought 3  Throughout the tales the saint is described as a queen and special attention is paid to her crown. 4  The portal was added to the tower-porch in the mid-fifteenth century: Jacques Bidaut, “Église Sainte-Radegonde de Poitiers,” in Congrès archéologique de France: CIXe session tenue a Poitiers en 1951 par la Société Française d’Archéologie (Paris: SFA, 1952), 96–117. 5 Briand, Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, 306–7. 6  The abbess’s apparent involvement in at least part of the program supports this interpretation. The later development of the cult of the Pas Dieu at Sainte-Croix, however, suggests that the nuns may later have eagerly welcomed pilgrims at Sainte-Croix, when they saw the benefit to the chapter church.

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them, in 1154, to the English crown. Neither of Eleanor’s husbands, Louis VII or Henry II, found their vassals in her lands easy to govern—her lords had a long history of strong independent streaks. Philip Augustus and Louis VIII had wrestled Western France back from the English and Philip seized Poitiers in 1204, but the Poitevin and Aquitainian barons did not prove any easier to govern under the French. Alphonse’s arrival as Count of Poitiers was both a warning and an opportunity. The canons of Sainte-Radegonde were aware that the loyalty of the county, town, and chapter was at issue. The presence of a Frankish queen in their tomb offered an ideal chance to assert their church’s longstanding affiliation with the crown. Guichart, a canon whom Alphonse had placed in Sainte-Radegonde’s chapter by 1268, remained the king’s agent and may have influenced them.7 The canons were also seizing a different sort of opportunity: vacancies in SainteCroix’s abbacy in the 1240s to 1260s that left it vulnerable, without the strong, guiding hand that had steered the abbey so well in the past. In this period the abbey lost lands to encroaching seigneurial lords, lost rents, and in general maintained its rights and properties poorly. They were also competing for patronage with new monastic houses in the new orders.8 The period demonstrated the importance of a strong, capable, and alert abbess ready to defend the abbey, and set the stage for an election conflict between Isabelle de Marmande and Isabelle de La Puye later in the century (see Chapter 7). These troubles for Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, and in Christendom more broadly, facilitated the canons’ efforts to resist the abbess’s authority or claim a larger role in the cult. A N E W V I TA An important thirteenth-century manuscript produced by the canons, Bibliothèque Municipale manuscript 252 (8), accompanied the church construction projects. It contains Fortunatus’s vitae (ff. 32–57), Baudonivia’s (ff. 58–90), and a third life created by Hildebert de Lavardin (ff. 3–31). Like BMP ms 250 (136)—the nuns’ eleventh-century libellus—this manuscript contains copies of Gregory of Tours’ description of Radegund’s funeral (ff. 91–95v). The manuscript also includes a record of miracles worked in the church of Sainte-Radegonde between 1249 and 1268, in folios 96–98v.9 Unfortunately the manuscript is in poor condition and we know little about its origins. Seventeenth- and nineteenth-century observers numbered it among Sainte-Radegonde’s possessions, and descriptions of the miracles, which stress the holiness of Radegund’s shrine and tomb, suggest the canons were the creators of at least that portion of the manuscript’s contents.10 A second 7  Henry Kraus, Gold was the Mortar: The Economics of Cathedral Building (London: Routledge, 1979). 8  See, for example, Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 4. 9  BMP ms 252 (8). 10  Jean Filleau, Prevues historiques des litanies de la grande reyne de France saincte Radegonde . . . (Poitiers, 1643); Antoine-René-Hyacinthe Thibaudeau, Abrégé de l’histoire de Poitou . . . (Desmonville, 1782), 1: 201–2; M.  Largeault and H.  Bodenstaff, “Miracles de Sainte Radegonde XIIIe et XIVe Siècle,” Analecta Bollandiana 23 (1904), 433–47. The manuscript only entered the collection of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Poitiers in 1892. It had been in the collection of M. L. Clouzot at Niort

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manuscript the canons created in the fifteenth century, known as the Lectionnaire de Sainte-Radegonde, contains an expanded version of these miracles and demonstrates that they remained important for devotion and pilgrimage for at least 200 years.11 All together, the windows, frescoes, and the manuscripts demonstrate the growing wealth and status of the canons’ chapter, as well as their ability to assert their own representations of the saint and draw on their own network of allies and supporters. Already adapted for different purposes by Fortunatus, Baudonivia, Gregory of Tours, and the libellus artist, Radegund’s holy identity and textual representation were again manipulated while her communities argued over jurisdiction. Hildebert of Lavardin (c.1056–1133), bishop of Le Mans and, later, Tours composed his biography of Radegund in the early twelfth century likely at the request of the bishop of Poitiers or the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, as the text aligns well with their interests, but he did not reveal his reasons for writing.12 His text was included in the thirteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts of Radegund’s vitae but had circulated much earlier.13 Based on content, this third vita seems designed to draw pilgrims to the church of Sainte-Radegonde and largely overlooks the abbey’s importance in Radegund’s life. Hildebert downplayed Radegund’s interest in her community of Sainte-Croix, a major theme of Baudonivia’s vita, and ignored the Cross relic that was so important to the abbey. Instead, he emphasized Radegund’s royalty, her experiences as the king’s spouse, her body, and her miracles. While Baudonivia and the eleventh-century libellus artist had minimized Fortunatus’s description of Radegund’s tortures, Hildebert, like Fortunatus, focused on her selfmutilations as a way to explain how Radegund could be both queen and saint.14 Hildebert’s vita privileges the church of Sainte-Radegonde in the saint’s life and encourages devotion to her relics. While the nuns had produced their lavish, illuminated libellus of the saint’s vitae to highlight the abbey’s role in Radegund’s life, Hildebert’s vita narrates a version of that life that opens up greater space for the chapter to establish a rival importance in Radegund’s cult. Hildebert’s text fit well in their new manuscript recording Radgund’s vitae and her miracles in the thirteenth century. and, before him, in the library of the marquis of La Rochetulon. Jean Bouchet discussed the miracles, L’histoire et cronique de Clotaire (Poitiers, 1527); Picquot, Vie de saincte Radegonde, jadis royne de France (Poitiers, 1621), 501–20; and J.  Dumonteil, Histoire de la vie incomparable de Sainte Radegonde (Rodez, 1627), 276–84, 293, 311. 11 BMP ms 253 (8 bis). Xavier Barbier de Mantault studied the manuscript in two articles, “Miracle de sainte Radegonde en faveur d’une Bordelaise l’an 1269,” in Revue de Saintonge et d’Aunis 12 (1892), 415–16; and “Lectionnaire de la vie de sainte Radegonde,” L’Intermédiaire de L’Ouest 1 and 2 (1892). This manuscript adds descriptions of two additional miracles, one from 1303 and the second from 1306. 12  Hildebert of Lavardin, De S. Radegunde regina, postmodum moniali, pictavii in Galii, AASS Aug. III, 83–92. This vita is primarily a compilation of the earlier texts Baudonivia and Fortunatus composed, although Hildebert’s style has received greater praise. 13  BMP ms 252 (8), “Vie de sainte Radegonde”; and BMP ms 253 (8 bis), “Lectionnaire de la Vie de Sainte Radegonde.” 14  “Sic Regina pariter et conjugio deferens, et pudorem conservans, nec maritum reverentia defraudavit, nec libidine bonum minuit nuptiarum”: AASS Aug. III, 86.

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MIRACLES Radegund’s original vitae recorded several miracles, as discussed in Chapter  1. Fortunatus and Baudonivia had emphasized Radegund’s cures for women and children and her efficacy as a miraculous healer. The thirteenth-century miracle tales the canons collected in BMP ms 252 (8) emphasized the saint’s healing power by presenting miracles worked by Radegund’s relics entombed in the church crypt, and the desire of pilgrims seeking the saint’s aid to come “to the sepulcher of the most happy queen.”15 In 1265, for example, a pilgrim Petronilla’s hand had remained useless for two years, until one day she kissed and touched Radegund’s casket and her hand was miraculously healed.16 The same day, two others who prayed to Radegund were also healed at her tomb, and all three went together to praise the saint, “at the church of the most blessed queen.”17 These new miracles record the healings of seven men and six women through the intercession of Saint Radegund in the 1240s to 1260s. All the people described traveled to the church of Sainte-Radegonde; none were from Poitiers. Several were described as traveling with companions: one man arrived with his son, a woman came with her husband, several arrived with unnamed companions, and two of the healed women traveled there together to visit Radegund’s church.18 The pilgrims came from different social groups; two of the men were described as craftsmen, a stonemason and a carpenter, and two as famous clerics. The first of these was a canon of Tours, Radulphus of Lièze, who suffered a migraine and a deformed limb. The record of Radulphus’s miracle also notes the cleric’s attempt to find some medicinal (and more scientific) cure before seeking Radegund’s help, as if he were unsure whether Radegund would help him, or wanted to establish that his issue was beyond contemporary medical interventions in order to demonstrate the saint’s superior power.19 Each pilgrim received an answer to his or her prayers and a miraculous solution to the problem. The new miracles, most worked at Radegund’s tomb, have two themes: Radegund’s church’s power, and her special care of ailments in the hand, arm, and leg. Petronilla’s hand had been useless for two years, but was restored completely.20 A widow who had been unable to stand spent the night praying and crying before Radegund’s 15 Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), ch. 3. “[A]d sepulchrum felicissime regine,” Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 438. 16  “[M]ulier, Petronilla nomine, uxor Gaufridi de Leissaco, que contractas habuerat manus per duos annos et ad omnes operationes inutiles, ad sepulchrum beate Radegundis devote veniens, eo tacto et osculato, perfectam sanitatem recepit”: Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 438. 17  “[A]d ecclesiam beatissime regine,” Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 438. 18  Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 438 and 443. 19  “Infinita medicamenta plures famosi medici adhibuerant, expensas magnas fecerat, multosque labores spe curationis tam horrende egritudinis sustinuerat, nec poterat remedium invenire”: Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 439, 440, 444. This was common in saints’ lives. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 20  Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 438.

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tomb and in the morning she was able to walk without help. But others were cured from afar by promising Radegund that they would visit her church. Once healed, these pilgrims came to offer thanks and tell their miracle story. So, even if Radegund’s tomb was not the site for the miraculous cure, the saint required recipients of her miracles to visit her church, which, of course, the canons controlled. Visiting the shrine was an essential component of celebrating the miracle, acknowledging the saint’s power, and praising God and returns as a theme in many saints’ lives. Saint Æthelthryth, for example, had told a young girl she had healed to visit her shrine at Ely in order to complete the cure. The girl resisted and became blind as punishment, with a warning from the saint’s messenger that she would not have her sight restored until she went to the shrine.21 This was also an opportunity for the pilgrim to offer financial thanks to the canons for maintaining the shrine. The miracles relate some lucrative donations, such as a benefice from the widow in 1249 and a foundation from the canon of Tours in 1265; several, however, describe simpler offerings. Twelve of the thirteen tales recorded healings involving limbs that were twisted, arthritic, useless, or in some other way damaged; Radegund seems to have specialized in such trouble with limbs. In several of the tales the grateful pilgrim left behind his or her crutch as a votive offering. The thirteenth tale recorded a mother’s plea that Radegund revive her sick—seemingly dead—child, connecting Radegund to mothers and infants as in her vitae miracles. Such simple votives carried a powerful message.22 They represented Radegund’s power to work miracles—through God’s grace—as well as her church’s holiness. Poitiers was along one route pilgrims from Northern Europe might use to travel to the shrine of Saint James at Compostella, giving the canons an opportunity to promote the power of Radegund’s relics and their church’s significance as her shrine. There were several local competitors for pilgrims’ attention—although Radegund’s relics were ancient, those of Saint Hilary maintained at Saint-Hilaire-leGrand were older and housed at a grander church receiving episcopal support. The chapter of Notre-Dame-la-Grande in Poitiers’ city center had started promoting its church’s importance in the Miracle of the Keys legend, in which holy advocates, especially the Virgin Mary, protected Poitiers against an army. Even Saint-Martin’s shrine in Tours was close enough—not to mention wealthier and more prolific—to serve as a competitor with Sainte-Radegonde. The nuns of Sainte-Croix had also been promoting the relic of the True Cross housed at the abbey. The miracle tales wove golden threads representing Sainte-Radegonde into the vibrant tapestry of local pilgrimage sites. The tales demonstrated that Radegund had not only served as an intercessor in the sixth century, but that her holy body continued to serve as a site of miraculous power accessible to pilgrims patronizing her shrine in the thirteenth century.

21  Jennifer Paxton, trans., “The Book of Ely,” in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (New York: Routledge, 2001), 469–72. 22  Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 440.

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D E C O R AT I O N The church’s decorative program, like the miracle tales, promoted the church shrine by reminding visitors of Radegund’s holy power. The tales encouraged pilgrims to visit and the decoration encouraged their devotions once there. The frescoes and windows enhanced the beauty of the church, encouraging visitors who did not seek holy healing; word of mouth about the decoration could also draw future pilgrims. The decorations relied on the saint’s vitae, and they echo images in the eleventhcentury libellus. At least one of these thirteenth-century miracles was recorded in the canons’ thirteenth-century windows; it is possible that several others were once included in the church decoration as well, connecting the canons’ major artistic program to their textual one. Complementing the windows, thirteenth-century frescoes decorate the choir of Sainte-Radegonde and depict Radegund as a queen, a martyr, and a saint. While stylistic details and content date the paintings to this period, a nineteenth-century restoration likely altered the original images.23 At the back of the choir is an image of Christ Pantocrator, flanked by badly damaged scenes from the saint’s life. Above, the frescoes include images of Radegund’s biographers Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours (but omit Baudonivia), of abbess Agnes and Saint Disciola, whose bodies were in the church crypt, and of Bishop Médard of Noyon, who consecrated Radegund as a deaconess. The scenes from the saint’s life are further reminders of her sanctity. The north wall displays Radegund in a scene of charity (Figure 18) and the south wall in one of devotion. Above these scenes, both walls bear frescoes of Radegund reading. They emphasize her life of prayer and her charity, but they may also have contained a reference to the miracle of the Pas-Dieu Baudonivia recorded, an image that became a major part of Radegund’s cult devotion by the fifteenth century. The frescoes also associate Radegund with the Virgin Mary, with an emphasis on the Virgin Enthroned in a place of honor and Radegund to the right. Such placement connected Radegund to both the Virgin’s royalty and maternity. It is noteworthy that the images as they appear now present Radegund in the martyr’s red dress, without representing any ascetic practices for her. The illuminations included in the eleventh-century manuscript of Radegund’s vitae seem to have influenced several of the frescoes. Two bays of stained glass windows devoted to Radegund sit side-by-side in SainteRadegonde’s nave’s north wall, just west of the choir (Figure 19), casting light onto the frescoes. Each bay contains two windows, all united by their border of alternating fleur-de-lis and castles, and each is divided into eight panels or scenes. The individual scenes measure 50cm high, making each window 85cm wide and 4m tall.24 The easternmost windows (Figure 20), in bay 109, are devoted to the holy life and 23  Radegund’s clothing, in particular, suggests the thirteenth century. For references on the restoration, see Christine Landry, “Les peintures murales du choeur de l’église Sainte-Radegonde de Poitiers,” BSAO 12 (1998): 109–55, 114n.8. 24  Measurements by Jean Verdon in his 1959 thesis: “Étude iconographique et historique des vitraux consacres à la vie de sainte Radegonde” (Ph.D. diss., Université de Poitiers, 1959).

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Figure 18.  Gossin, frescoes, church of Sainte-Radegonde choir. © Ministère de la Culture/ Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

miracles the saint performed, while the windows in bay 111 contain images of Radegund’s temporal life (Figure 21).25 The scenes all have a grisaille background and are filled with figures in vibrant colors. Radegund herself appears in all but six of the scenes, dressed as a holy queen with a nimbed head, crown, and dress covered in fleur-de-lis.26 As Meredith Parsons Lillich has demonstrated in her study of Sainte-Radegonde’s medieval glass, only two of these four windows date to the thirteenth century, however. The scenes in bay 109 bear signs of restoration (patching, rearrangement) as well as of age (leading, cracking) while the bay 111 windows are the work of a nineteenth-century restoration. Although the windows depicting Radegund’s life and miracles share borders, many stylistic details, and even reference the same 25  Grodecki and Brisac call the bay 5 windows a Childhood cycle: Louis Grodecki and Catherine Brisac, Gothic Stained Glass: 1200–1300, translated from Le Vitrail gothique au XIIIe siècle (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1985). 26  Meredith Lillich and Grodecki and Brisac comment on the style of using vibrant figures on grisaille, also known as appliqué, to conclude that the style is sophisticated, dates to the mid-thirteenth century, and owes debts to the court style of northern France: Lillich, The Armor of Light, 91; Landry, “Les peintures murales,” 109–56. During this project, the canons also enlarged the eastern portion of the church.

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Figure 19.  Plan of Sainte-Radegonde’s windows, adapted from Xavier Barbier de Montault, “Poitiers,” in Jules Robuchon, Paysages et Monuments du Poitou: Volume 1: Poitiers (Vienne) (Paris, Motteroz, 1890), 106

manuscript, only the bay 109 windows contain medieval glass.27 Sadly then we do not have all the original glass, and several restorations have jumbled what remains. The first mention of work completed on these windows after the original construction is in the mid-fifteenth century. In 1456 and 1457 Guillaume Dubac received 47 sous and 6 deniers to repair the windows.28 During 1455–61 a great deal of work was completed at the church, including an enlarged altar and new tapestries, as well as general reconstruction.29 Dubac may have worked on new windows or have been repairing destruction wrought by the English and Gascons who attached Poitiers’ churches for nearly a fortnight under the leadership of Henry of Grosment, Duke of Lancaster and Earl of Derby in 1346, though this is quite a long delay, if so.30 Huguenots attacked the church and broke several of the windows in 1562. 27 Lillich, Armor of Light, 76; and Briand, Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, 306–7. 28 “Item a Guillaume Debuc, victrier, pour avoir rappiller les victres de ladite eglise [Sainte Radegonde],” ADV series G, liasse 1529 (register), 87ff., printed in Crozet, Textes et documents, 137. 29 Crozet, Textes et documents, 137–46. Lillich suggests this was the construction of “a flamboyant portal . . . added to the old Romanesque tower-porch” perhaps founded by the Duc de Berry (who opened Radegund’s tomb) or by Charles VII (who founded a procession in the saint’s honor c.1455): Armor of Light, 78–9. 30 Froissart, Oeuvres, ed. Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, 25 vols. (Brussels 1867–77), 4:221.

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Figure 20.  Bay 109, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers. Photo by Estelle Ingrand-Varenne

Although the Radegund windows are not referenced in the inventory of damage on the church, Lillich believes that the original program was not upset until the Huguenot attack.31 In 1898 an aggressive and destructive restoration was carried out by Henri Carot, who moved panels around, created new scenes, polished the backs of the windows (removing their backpainting), and repainted.32 Carot added 31  See Édouard de Fleury, Histoire de Sainte Radégonde Reine de France au Vie siècle et patronne de Poitiers, (Poitiers: Librairie religieuse H. Oudin, 1843), 349–57; Lillich, Armor of Light, 83. 32 There are records of two eighteenth-century restorations: ADV G1624, G1625, InventaireSommaire, Vienne 119, 120; Lillich, Armor of Light, 79; ADV G 1564 fol. 169r. According to Fillon and de Fleury, the bottom (eighth) scene did not exist and scenes five and six of the left panels had been transposed at some point: Fillon, “Notice Sur les Vitraux de Sainte-Radegonde,” MSAO 11

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Figure 21.  Bay 111, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers. Photo by Estelle Ingrand-Varenne

two new scenes to the bottom of each window in bay 3 to replace the panels the Huguenots destroyed. A nineteenth-century drawing (Figure 22) and photographs from 1881 (see final section of this chapter) give some indication of the windows’ (1844); and de Fleury, Histoire de Sainte Radégonde, 349–60. Carot restored this by exchanging the woman receiving her baby belonging to panel five with the demons expelled in scene six, and he created entirely the first panel in the left window; a total of three scenes completely new and inserted by Carot. Ginot describes the scene in which Radegund asked a bird to stay quiet in 1920, Le Manuscrit de Sainte Radegonde. Francis Chigot carried out a further restoration in the 1950s.

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Figure 22. Drawing of medieval windows from Sainte-Radegonde, from Ferdinand de Lasteyrie, Histoire de la peinture sur verre d’après ses monuments en France (Paris, 1853–7), plate XIX

state before Carot’s restoration.33 There has also been a great deal of patching (particularly for faces, distinguishable by the present use of pink faces) and the grisaille has been cleaned up in places. The Radegund windows as they now exist are a 33  The drawing is in Ferdinand de Lasteyrie du Saillant, Histoire de la peinture sur verre d’après ses monuments en France (Paris: Typ. de Firmin Didot frères, fils et cie., 1853–7), plate XIX; nineteenthcentury photographs of the windows are held by the Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris.

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c­ ollection of glass from, it appears, two bays—perhaps the top portions, which were beyond the reach of Huguenot destruction—put together without reference to the original order, whatever it might have been. Based on Lillich’s reading of the glass style and donation history, the surviving medieval glass dates roughly to the period 1268–76.34 Appliqué windows—the use of brightly colored figures over grisaille—appeared in other French churches (Rouen, Chartres, Evreux) in this period and may have been popular in western France’s rural parishes. Lillich described the grisaille in this particular bay as “crosshatched ground, somewhat desiccated palmettes in a centripetal design with no vertical emphasis, in panneautage of bulged quarries,” and dated it to the 1260s.35 In total we have less than half the original Radegund cycle. The two bays would have together contained thirty-two scenes, while only thirteen remain. With this small portion of the evidence it is not possible to know, or even to guess at, how the initial designers intended to narrate the story or what aspects of Radegund’s life they left out. The remaining scenes, however, do reveal their artistic and thematic inspiration and suggest the canons’ larger message in this series. Eight of the original scenes in the Radegund windows relied on Sainte-Croix’s eleventh-century libellus illuminations accompanying Fortunatus’s vita.36 Three further scenes from Baudonivia’s vita may have come from illuminations now missing from the libellus.37 Only two scenes lack an obvious referent in the textual descriptions of the saint. The first contains an image of the Virgin Mary enthroned with the Christ child appearing to Radegund in prayer (Figure 23, R3). This scene doubles the contemporary fresco painting of the Virgin Enthroned in the choir. The second depicts an image that possibly references a miracle from the thirteenthcentury (Figure 23, R5).38 The window images show that the artist relied on the texts of the vitae for inspiration. Closeness in figure placement, staging, and the content chosen for illustration demonstrate the influence of the nuns’ libellus on the window master, which might indicate collaboration and cooperation with the nuns, but certain small changes suggest that the artist was working from memory or description rather than from cartoons or the manuscript itself. The vitae, the libellus illuminations, and the windows are thus all related, and even subtle changes in the window images may suggest the canons’ rearticulation of Radegund’s identity. In the vita version of Bella’s miraculous healing, for example, Fortunatus observed that she was “prostrate at the saint’s knees” when the saint deigned “to sign her eyes.”39 The libellus illumination deviated from the text by placing Radegund in 34  Meredith Lillich, Studies in Medieval Stained Glass and Monasticism (London: The Pindar Press), 2001, 69n.16 argued that the glass dated to the mid-century; Grodecki and Brisac agree with Lillich’s dating and place these windows in the “court style” of northern France. In Armor of Light Lillich ­narrowed her range of dates to that above based on evidence that points to the patronage of Alphonse and Philippe le Hardi. She chose 1268 for the year Alphonse began to recover from his earlier illness and 1276 for the gift Philippe gave to Sainte-Radegonde in honor of his uncle Alphonse. 35 Lillich, Armor of Light, 87. 36  BMP ms 250 (136). 37  One of these (Figure 23, L1) follows an illumination (BMP 250 f. 37v) but this must be a product of Carot’s restoration in 1898 since the window was blank in 1844: Lillich, Armor of Light. 38  The window Carot constructed in 1900 follows the format of the medieval windows, including their reliance on the text of Radegund’s vitae and illuminations in BMP 250 (136). 39  “Prostrata cuius ad genua, ut dignaretur oculos eius signare, vix impetrat,” Fort., VR, 27.

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Figure 23.  Bay 109, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers. Photo by Estelle Ingrand-Varenne with my labels

a cell, reaching out her window to heal a standing Bella, as the nuns wished to emphasize Radegund’s claustration and locate her holy power in the Abbey, (see Figure 9). While the Sainte-Radegonde window also places Radegund in her cell, the window panel returns to Fortunatus’s text, with Bella kneeling before the saint (Figure 23, L7). The window thus borrows from both the vita text and the libellus illuminations. The canons would have had access to the libellus miniatures when officiating at the church of Sainte-Croix as part of their weekly service; it is possible that the nuns also brought the manuscript with them to Sainte-Radegonde during their feast-day processions. Scenes in the windows highlighted the saint’s royalty, connections to royal patrons, and her miraculous power, a major shift from previous representations of Radegund. In his vita, Fortunatus had emphasized Radegund’s rejection of royal status and royal clothing; the miniature accompanying this text was a crucial turning point in the nuns’ libellus, which used the saint’s clothing to mark a shift from her royal to her monastic life (see Figure 13).40 Radegund’s rejection of worldly status and embrace of a monastic ascetic one was summed up in that one miniature. In the windows, however, Radegund does not reject her royal clothes or her status. 40 Fort., VR, 13.

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Instead, the canons emphasize Radegund’s position as a royal, powerful woman. In fact, the saint wears the same crown and royal dress in all thirteen of the surviving medieval window panels, while she appears as a nun in none of them, emphasizing the importance of Radegund’s royal body. This emphasis may build on Hildebert of Lavardin’s twelfth-century vita, which stressed Radegund’s royalty and her relationship with her husband, Clothar. A similar emphasis fell on Radegund’s royal body in the miracle tales during the thirteenth century, which repeatedly stress the location of the saint’s body within that church, as well as the fact that it was a royal body of a most “blessed queen.”41 The windows from the canons of Sainte-Radegonde connected the saint’s royal clothing to Capetian political power through the use of fleur-de-lis on Radegund’s rich robes. She was not only a queen, but a French queen. There are no scenes from the saint’s days as a queen or images of her with Clothar; rather her royalty is written onto her body. This is a significant visual shift from the presentation of the saint in vitae and libellus. By dismissing the monastic garb emphasized in the manuscript, and decorating their church with images of a French queen, the ­canons positioned themselves nearer to the heart of political power in Poitiers and in France. Given the recent turbulent history of the area, it is understandable that Sainte-Radegonde’s nave windows displayed an eagerness to curry favor with the Capetian family by depicting Radegund as a queen. While the French kings had been mostly absent in the jurisdictional issues described in Chapter 4, by the 1260s the kings were consolidating authority over the provinces and kept direct authority over valuable cities such as Poitiers tightly tied to monarchy. Appealing to the monarchy, the canons attracted at least one and possibly two royal patrons for their decoration program. The accounts of Alphonse, Count of Poitou and brother of King Louis IX, list a gift of 100 sous in 1269 to the church, marked for window construction.42 Alphonse’s will (1270) also established a chantry in Radegund’s crypt and named the canon Guichart, Alphonse’s former agent, as a testator.43 Philippe le Hardi, Alphonse’s nephew, assumed control of Poitou after his uncle’s death in 1271 and made a donation in support of Alphonse’s chantry in Sainte-Radegonde five years later. Circumstantial evidence points to Philippe as 41 For example: “Demum sacratissime regine Radegundis presidium invocans, vovit devote se ecclesiam, in qua sanctum corpus quiescit, visitare et eidem honorem et servitium exhibere”: Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 440. Not only is this the body of a royal saint housed within the canons’ church, but one should visit this church in order to call out for her help, express devotion to her, and, perhaps, leave a donation in her honor. 42 “[E]cclesie Beate Radegondis pro vitreis faciendis c solidos pict.”: Auguste Molinier, ed., Correspondance Administrative D’Alfonse de Poitiers (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1894), 655. This document lists donations to all the major religious and charitable institutions in and around Poitiers, including Sainte-Croix and Saint-Pierre, but Sainte-Radegonde is listed twice: fifth among the regular donations, “domui Dei Sancte Radegondis Pictav. c solidos pict.,” which seems to be a usual gift of money in a similar amount as other communities, and then again with an extraordinary gift for the construction of windows, which is also the only explanation of a donation in this list. See also Archives Nationales JJ 24D, folio 10. 43  Elie Berger, Layettes du trésor des chartes IV (1261–1270) (Paris, 1902), 452–62, no. 5712, ref. on 455. Sainte-Radegonde’s prior Guillaume de Chatellerault was also the testator for Alphonse’s nephew Pierre d’Alençon in 1282: Lillich, Armor of Light, 76.

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the patron, in Alphonse’s name, of at least some of Sainte-Radegonde’s windows.44 Alphonse’s gift may have funded several different windows in the church but, throughout, the program seems designed to please this royal patron. Several of the themes in the windows portrayed Radegund as a heavenly and terrestrial queen, according her a special relationship with the Virgin, with Christ, and Alphonse. Even the fleur-de-lis, a lily that also symbolized Mary’s purity, on a field of the Virgin blue, did double work to associate Radegund with the Virgin Mary and with the French monarchy. In this way the canons pursued a supporter whom Sainte-Croix’s abbesses counted among their traditional allies. The canons may have wished to repackage their sixth-century saint as a Capetian queen in order to recall for Alphonse and Louis their mother, Blanche of Castile, certainly a potent royal woman. The use of a border mixing Castilian gold castles on red background and French fleur-de-lis on blue suggested that connection. Such a border and reference to Blanche of Castile appeared in windows in other churches that have a connection with Blanche or her family. The most prominent mix of the castle and fleur-de-lis was Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle of Paris (Figure 24) in the 1240s, but the North Rose Window in Chartres (Figure 25), which contains the dual castle/fleur-de-lis symbol, is another example from the 1230s. The fleurde-lis and castle border also appears in a window devoted to Saint Genevieve in the York Minster chapter house, directly across from the chapter house entrance, and may have been supported by the funds Edward I devoted for the construction of the chapter house while his first wife Eleanor of Castile, great-niece of Blanche of Castile, was still living. The castle and fleur-de-lis pairing similarly appeared in the windows of Merton College’s Chapel, Oxford, and on Eleanor of Castile’s tomb at Westminster, as well as on that of her son Edward II.45 Hervé Pinoteau has argued that the castle/fleur-de-lis combination was not intended as a reference to Blanche of Castile in French symbolism, but was part of a claim on Castile—one that the French and then English kings might assert through their mothers.46 Like so much medieval art, however, these images could do double work, both promoting a political claim and honoring the memory and influence of an important figure 44  Lillich concludes that Philippe must have donated windows, which now only exist in fragments, narrating the Miracle of the Oats based on the heraldic design set in the windows, and that the final glazing of the windows came from this donation: Armor of Light, 76, 112. Pilgrimage to the church, well underway as witnessed by the thirteenth-century miracle tales, also contributed funds for these building projects. Philippe de Long has occasionally been named patron of the windows, based on a donation Philippe made to the church in 1315, but these funds seem to have been marked for a chapel rather than for windows. Fillon believed that Philippe was the patron based on his particular devotion to Radegund, citing Philippe’s gift of a chapel during his tenure of Poitou in apanage, 1311–16: Fillon “Notice sur les Vitraux de Sainte-Radegonde,” 483–95, 486–8. Lillich also suggests that the miracles depicted in the windows demonstrated Radegund’s power to heal ailments close to Alphonse’s heart after he suffered some paralysis and, later, blindness in the early 1250s. The family was interested in encouraging the religious life. Alphonse and Louis’s sister Isabelle of France wrote a Rule for a female Franciscan community she was founding in Paris: Smith, “Shaping Authority in the Female Franciscan Rules,” 27. 45 de Lasteyrie also depicts the castle/fleur-de-lis border for a window from Moulineaux near Rouen, Histoire de la peinture sur verre, plate XXIV. 46  Hervé Pinoteau, L’heraldique de St. Louis et de ses compagnons (Paris: Les Cahiers Nobles, 1966).

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Figure 24.  Sainte-Chapelle of Paris. Photo by Didier B (Sam67fr) via Wikimedia Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en

such as Blanche. In any case, the combination appeared until the 1290s, after which it declined in use.47 The canons may also have wished to dispute Sainte-Croix’s depiction of Radegund as a cloistered ascetic, distant from Sainte-Radegonde. Depicting Radegund as a queen and referencing Blanche was a powerful method of connecting the chapter to royal patrons, but also of praising royal women who had exercised extensive authority. Blanche had served well as France’s regent and dominated not just her sons but much of France’s politics. The canons’ praise of royal women and depiction of Radegund in a way that references Blanche even obliquely at this time demonstrates the canons’ comfort with feminine authority, even if they wished for a larger role for their own community in Radegund’s cult. Beyond the saint’s royalty, the windows emphasized the importance of Radegund’s tomb and her maternity. Lillich has convincingly argued that a panel often 47  Meredith Lillich, The Gothic Stained Glass of Reims Cathedral (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), 216–17. Louis IX rebuilt a church in Vézelay devoted to Mary Magdalene that contains many images of royal maternity, which Raymond Clemens construes as devotion to Blanche: Neal Raymond Clemens, Jr., “The Establishment of the Cult of Mary Magdalen in Provence, 1279–1543” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1997).

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Figure 25.  North rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres, France, c.1235. Photo by Guillaume Piolle/public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en

­ isinterpreted as an image celebrating the miracle Gregory of Tours witnessed at m the altar of Sainte-Croix, and worked by the relic of the True Cross, more likely depicts one of Radegund’s healing miracles (see Figure 23, R7). This could be an image of Abbot Abbo whom, Baudonivia tells us, Radegund healed of a toothache, suggested by the windows’ portrayal of the sufferer biting down on the curtain above the saint’s tomb.48 Alternatively, as Lillich has suggested, based on an 1881 photograph, this could be a reference to the canon of Tours, Raoul de Liez, who visited the nun’s tomb in 1265 and was cured of a headache according to the canon’s thirteenth-century miracle tale collection (Figure 26).49 Another image in this set could also be a representation of one of the miracles Sainte-Croix’s nuns recorded in the thirteenth century. Figure 23, R5 is usually interpreted as the scene 48  Baudonivia, 26. 49  Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles”; and Lillich, Armor of Light, 91–2.

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Figure 26.  Jean-Eugène Durand, photograph of stained-glass window from the church of Sainte-Radegonde at Poitiers, before 1905. © Ministère de la Culture/Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

of Radegund healing Goda Fortunatus described.50 Goda had suffered some illness in bed for a while, and Radegund ordered a candle made to match Goda’s height. When it was the usual time for Goda to have the chills, she lit the candle and before it burned out, the chills were gone.51 The stained-glass window purporting to depict this scene does not follow Fortunatus’s description, however, since Radegund is present and the candle, supposed to be as tall as Goda, is far too short. The window scene also deviates from the libellus illumination (folio 36v), in which Goda stands alone and the candle is full-sized (Figure 27). More likely is Lillich’s interpretation that the window scene portrays a candle a pilgrim offered or an exvoto, such as a walking stick, cane, or baton. Miracle tales claim that the carpenter Guillaume left behind a crutch after he was cured at the tomb in 1270, for example, and there are a handful of other pilgrims whose limbs Radegund cured, and who 50 Fort., VR, 32. 51  A similar miracle took place in the cult of the Anglo-Saxon Saint Frideswide: the father of a sick girl measured her with a thread, coated the thread with wax, and offered the candle as a votive at Frideswide’s shrine: Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 85.

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Figure 27.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 36v. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

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might have left behind an offering.52 If this reading of the windows is correct, the new decoration celebrated such miracles, and advertised to observers that the saint buried at Sainte-Radegonde answered pilgrims’ prayers. Including the miracle tales in contemporary church decoration as well as in a manuscript make sense for a community seeking stronger connection to popular pilgrimage routes and patronage, and the panels now missing might have included more representations of these tales. In the nuns’ libellus the use of space had defined Radegund as a nun, enclosing her on the page and within her monastic life through the use of frames and depictions of her cell. This placed the saint in an intensely female space, while the saint’s corpse, her physical relics, actually lay entombed in the masculine space of the canons’ church. In the thirteenth century the canons attempted to overcome the association of Radegund’s power with the female spaces of Sainte-Croix, which the nuns’ libellus had used so well to define Radegund as a nun. The miracle tales accomplished this by demonstrating that Radegund’s holy power worked in the saint’s crypt. The canons faced a dilemma similar to that of the Benedictine monks at Ely in England during the twelfth century, which Virginia Blanton described. The monks derived their identity and their power through their association with the Anglo-Saxon Saint Æthelthryth, whose body lay entombed in their monastery. Like Radegund, Æthelthryth was a queen, a nun, and an abbey foundress. As Blanton has shown, the monks at Ely drew upon textual images in the Liber Eliensis of the saint’s “royal and abbatial position to define itself as a sovereign body.”53 While the canons of Sainte-Radegonde made no claims about Radegund’s virginity or the incorruptibility of her physical relics at this time—both of which were crucial at Ely—they did emphasize Radegund’s enclosure in their church’s crypt in the miracle tales, linking her body and holy power to the church and their community. Blanton argues that monks at Ely were able to assert their male space and “masculinize” the saint’s female body, in order to turn her into an aggressor and violent protector of their monastery, which they had previously depicted as a feminized victim. The canons at Sainte-Radegonde, rather, downplayed Radegund’s earthly location at the abbey and, instead, promoted the potency of the relics entombed within their church. They sought to portray the saint as a monarch whose relics were potent miracle-workers and protectors, and located in the church under their control.54 52 Lillich, Armor of Light, 93; BMP ms 252 (8); and Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 444–5. 53  Virginia Blanton-Whetsell, “ ‘Tota integra, tota incorruputa’: The Shrine of St. Æthelthryth as Symbol of Monastic Autonomy,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 2 (2002): 227–67, 228. 54  Blanton-Whetsell, “ ‘Tota integra, tota incorruputa,’ ”: 227–67. The community of monks guarding the body of Saint Æthelthryth saw an attack against the inviolability of their saint as an attack on their community because their communal identity was constituted through her sanctity and purity. They saw themselves as the victims of Normans who wished to view the saint (and threaten her tomb). Similarly the canons of Sainte-Radegonde attached themselves to Radegund’s holiness and purity, connecting her suffering to the nuns’ attack, placing themselves with the saint as victim. See also Virginia Blanton, “Imagines Ætheldredae: Mapping Hagiographic Representations of Abbatial Power and Religious Patronage,” Studies in Iconography 23 (2002): 55–107; and Signs of Devotion.

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The windows helped the canons remind visitors of the powerful miracles Radegund had performed for the entire town. As Lillich suggested, in addition to Radegund’s vitae miracles and thirteenth-century miracles, three of the extant window scenes may depict miracles that had become significant legends in Poitiers: the Grand’Goule, the Pas-Dieu, the Miracle of the Oats and the Miracle of the Keys (see Figure 23, L6, L4, R7). The saint’s role in protecting the town and serving as an intercessor for the broader Christian community was crucial for her cult. One scene, visible as it existed before Carot’s reconstruction in 1881 photographs, portrays Radegund ejecting demons from a walled-in space, an image that could portray an early version of the Grand’Goule legend (Figure 28).55 This is an image that has no equivalent in the manuscript illuminations, nor is it a reference to a thirteenth-century miracle. While the scene could have been a reference to the demons Radegund had expelled from Sainte-Croix’s battlements, the demons no longer look like the goats of Baudonivia’s story (see Chapter 3), and there is no person from whom she is exor-

Figure 28.  Jean-Eugène Durand, photograph of stained-glass window from the church of Sainte-Radegonde at Poitiers, before 1905. © Ministère de la Culture/Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY 55 Hahn comments on the building of Sainte-Croix bounding Radegund’s power to heal: see Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 267; see also Lillich, Armor of Light, 90–1.

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cising the demons, as in libellus depictions of her other exorcisms. The Grand’Goule legend, as told in the fifteenth century, stressed Radegund’s power over demons, namely a serpent troubling her abbey. The “draco” became an important part of Poitiers’ religious processions, remembered on a banner the canons carried for the nuns of Sainte-Croix (see Chapter 6). The Pas-Dieu remembered a story that Baudonivia had told about Radegund’s vision of a young man she later realized was Jesus who, in later legend, left behind a footprint, the pas dieu. By the fifteenth century this legend was remembered at the abbey with a feast on August 3 and a chapel staffed by a prioress, but the earliest formal attestation of the legend is in 1392 when Marie de Maillé visited Sainte-Croix and prostrated herself before the step of God.56 If Lillich is correct in identifying Figure 23, L4 in the appliqué windows as a reference to the Pas-Dieu, it moves the earliest date for the observance of the legend up by more than a century. The Miracle of the Oats, or Miracle des Avoines, recalls Radegund’s fear that Clothar would try to reclaim her as his wife after her consecration as a deaconess. While living at Saix Radegund heard that Clothar approached and she fled with her followers. Praying to God for protection, Radegund hid in a field of oats, which miraculously sprouted and grew to conceal her from the king. In the fifteenth-century miracle tales collection, pilgrims offered oats as votives to Radegund’s shrine, in miracles as early as 1303.57 Some fragments in the thirteenth-century stainedglass show scenes from the Miracle of the Oats, which is the earliest attestation for the legend’s observance.58 As already noted, images in the church decoration and in the nuns’ libellus drew on the cult devoted to the Virgin Mary in the high Middle Ages. The stained glass windows connect images of Mary and Radegund as mothers and as queens, as did the frescoes and miracle tales. Several of the thirteenth-century miracles worked at Radegund’s tomb took place on days devoted to Mary. For example, on the Feast of the Annunciation, a sick nobleman approached Radegund’s tomb and asked for a piece of her relics. The moment he touched this bit of her corpse health returned to his whole body.59 In a 1303 miracle, the author claimed that “the blessed mother Mary and blessed Radegund” shared a “surety of virtue, grace and divine charity.”60 The frescoes added to Sainte-Radegonde’s nave in the thirteenth century give Radegund a place of honor on the right of the Virgin.61 Mary appears already royal, crowned, and enthroned. Her proximity to Mary reminds the viewer of Radegund’s 56  “cum intrasset ecclesiam in monasterio sanctæ Crucis Pictauiensis, vbi est sanctum vestigium pedis Christi, gratia humilitatis reputans se indignam appropinquare vestigium prædictū, prostrauit se in oratione in parte inferiori dictæ ecclesiæ longe ab eodem vestigio”: AASS Mart., III, 755. 57  Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 445–6; Lillich, Armor of Light, 111. 58  Fillon, “Notice sur les vitraux de Sainte-Radegonde,” 493–4. 59  “[A]d sepulchrum sancte Radegundis accessit; qui asserebat unam partem sui corporis de infirmitate sancte Radegundis esse dirutam, quod illius partis menbra sentire non poterat. Qui ad sanctam Radegundem oblationem suam reddidit, et ibidem sanitatem sui corporis totaliter recuperavit”: Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 445. 60 “Sed ultimo confidens de virtute, gratia et largitate divina, beate Marie matris sue et beate Radegundis, cui se specialiter vovit, petendo ab ipsa auxilium a Deo impetrari”: Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 445. 61  Landry “Les peintures murales,” 127.

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devotion to Christ in her ascetic practice and of her devotion to the Virgin in her original dedication of the church. Even sculptures in the church paired Christ with a queen. A pair of carvings near Sainte-Radegonde’s church portal present Christ seated opposite a woman crowned and enthroned with the expansive drapery typically used for Mary. These carvings are older, dating to the eleventh century but show the connection and the ease of reading Mary as or with Radegund. The second figure has been interpreted as an image of Mary or of Radegund. The Virgin Enthroned with child also appeared in one panel of the stained-glass windows devoted to scenes from Radegund’s holy life and deeds (see Figure 23, R3). Here, the saint crowned, garbed in the fleur-de-lis, is shown praying in her cell before an apparition of the Virgin and child, both nimbed, the Virgin crowned. The nimbs and crowns connect the two women as holy and royal. Lillich suggests this is an early reference to an image of the Miracle of the Keys (discussed in Chapter 6) that depicts Radegund praying before a statue or vision of the Virgin and child holding a key.62 The placement of the Virgin and child on an altar, as if a statue, supports this interpretation, particularly as it mimics a statue that sat on an altar in Notre-Dame-la-Grande. And nineteenth-century photographs suggest the image included a key that was removed in Carot’s restoration (Figure 29).63 The Miracle of the Keys, first recorded in 1463 but describing events of the thirteenth century, was a legend in which Poitiers’ holy protectors saved the town from an encroaching English army circa 1200. Since English kings governed the town as Counts of Poitou at the time, the miracle makes little sense, except as a later attempt to demonstrate Poitiers’ loyalty to the French kings. If Lillich’s reading is correct, the canons were again seeking royal allies through the representations of the saint in their decorative program at the church; they were also using the Miracle of the Keys to connect French monarchs to Poitiers 200 years earlier than previously considered. The depiction of the Virgin and child here reflects contemporary styles. Mary’s body bends in a characteristic S-shape, turned toward her son, whose original face may have turned toward hers. The Christ child half sits, half stands on her left leg while offering a blessing, to us and to the praying saint. Mary holds something in her right hand that may be an apple, like in the contemporary tabernacle from the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Vivegnis in Oupeye or a bird, as in the contemporary Lambeth Apocalypse manuscript, or a sprig, as in the window of the church at Eaton Bishop in Herefordshire.64 The structure of the window program in the nave may also have affiliated Radegund with the Virgin.65 The two “appliqué” bays (109, 110) that depicted Radegund’s life were paralleled by two contemporary bays in a “button” style (111, 112), a combination of colored medallions and grisaille (see Figure 19). The button windows would have filled two bays: one devoted to the Virgin Mary, and the second another narrative of Radegund’s life. While Lillich’s reconstruction places both 62  See Chapter 6 in this volume and Lillich, Armor of Light, 95. 63 Lillich, Armor of Light, 93. 64  Miri Rubin discussed these images in Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), figure 19, 205, 209. 65  Here I rely on Meredith Lillich’s reconstruction and analysis of the windows.

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Figure 29.  Jean-Eugène Durand, stained-glass window from the church of Sainte-Radegonde before 1905. © Ministère de la Culture/Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

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Radegund appliqué windows in the north wall, all four of the easternmost bays are close enough in size to take on any order. I suggest, then, that the windows originally were grouped in pairs facing each other across the nave, and probably linked both by style and by theme. Such an arrangement fits the pattern of the rest of the nave. In this arrangement there would be, moving east to west, two appliqué windows depicting Radegund’s life facing each other across the nave, followed by two button windows depicting Radegund and an Infancy cycle, followed by two grisaille windows of the Last Judgment and an unknown topic (113, 114), and two medallion windows telling the story of saints (115) and of the Passion and True Cross (116). Given other associations between Mary and Radegund in the church decoration it is possible to speculate that the artists intended to link them with the structure and content of these windows. Lillich has argued that one of the two “button” windows, a combination of colored medallions and grisaille, depicted a different version of Radegund’s life, while the other “button” depicted an Infancy cycle. Linking the Infancy window with one depicting Radegund’s holy deeds associated the Virgin with the saint once again. Although not enough of the glass remains to allow a definitive conclusion, the program’s designer may have wished to emphasize Radegund’s spiritual maternity, which we see in her healing of several infants; her devotion to Mary, evident in the original dedication of the church; or to associate the saint with another holy queen, this time one whose throne was heavenly. As the images flank the entrance to Radegund’s tomb, such a link would be communicated to pilgrims just as they approached the saint’s relics.66 Associations with the Virgin Mary were not just based on royalty, however. Radegund’s body was also potent for its maternal potential, as we see in several of the miracles Baudonivia and Fortunatus related, linking Radegund with the Virgin’s holy maternity. Baudonivia tells us that Radegund “bore Christ in her heart” as Mary had borne Him in her womb. Beyond seeking Christ as a bridegroom or seeking to imitate him, Radegund’s vitae show that she bore Him in her holy motherhood.67 Maternal imagery is also picked up in the canons’ miracle tales, in frescoes added to the choir, and in the windows that located new thirteenthcentury healings both at Radegund’s tomb and within the canons’ church. Maternal imagery in the tales, lives, and artwork cast Radegund as a spiritual mother. But the thirteenth-century works reveal the fluidity of maternity and the changing status of virginity in the high Middle Ages. The miracles Fortunatus described and depicted in the libellus had stressed Radegund’s power to heal, and even resuscitate, infants. Radegund’s nurture and care of infants are continued in the canons’ miracle tales. According to the texts, in 1265 a grieving mother brought her dead infant to the church of Sainte-Radegonde and begged the saint, amidst her tears, to heal her baby. According to the tales, the saint took pity on the woman, as a caring mother, and resuscitated the child. Afterwards, everyone visited Radegund’s tomb to give thanks and praise.68 Radegund’s ability to act as an intercessor in the healing of infants 66 Lillich, Armor of Light, 113. 67  de Nie, “ ‘Consciousness Fecund through God,’ ” 143. 68  She calls out to Radegund: “ ‘Sancta domina Radegundis, que tot et tanta miracula divitibus et pauperibus facitis, que in vita et post mortem semper misericors extitistis et compatiens miseris,

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continued at her shrine. Three of the scenes in the thirteenth-century windows depict the infant miracles Fortunatus recorded. The staging of the scene in which Radegund’s hair shirt revives an infant shows some familiarity with the nuns’ libellus image from BMP 250 (136) folio 41r (see Figure 11): the shirt floats in mid-air with the baby upon it, the child’s father stands with some onlookers; Radegund is absent (see Figure 23, R1).69 The baby in the libellus miniature, however, is swaddled while the limbs of the child in the windows are visible. This difference may be evidence that the glazier did not have direct access to the manuscript and its illuminations, and that he worked from descriptions. The differences might also reflect a conscious change, since Radegund’s thirteenth-century miracle tales reveal a specialization in the healing of limbs at the tomb. This change could be an opportunity to show the infant’s limbs and reiterate the saint’s power. In the windows’ second miraculous healing of a baby, in which Radegund resuscitates the infant sister of one of Sainte-Croix’s nuns, the canons’ window follows the manuscript illumination. The miniature narrates the story in two scenes: the upper register shows the dead body given to Radegund through her cell’s window, and the lower register shows the saint pulling her back into life (see Figure 11). As noted in Chapter 3, the manuscript illuminator chose to depict the infant as an adult, although it is clear from the miniature’s location in the text that this is meant to illustrate the miracle of the infant girl. The canons’ window follows this change in the lower register’s portion of the illumination: the saint kneels in prayer and pulls the arm of an adult body back into life (see Figure 23, R2). Since this is a change from the text made by the manuscript illuminator, the glazier must have had some knowledge of the manuscript’s version. To preserve Radegund’s connection to infants, however, the windows include a second panel depicting the upper register of the illumination. Here, in one of the few examples of architectural detail in the windows, Radegund steps out of a doorway, evoking her cell, to take what appears to be an infant from a woman (see Figure 23, L5). The image is difficult to read and the bundle exchanged might be something else—another votive offering, perhaps. This could also be a reference to the miracle from 1265, in which the mother begs Radegund to help her son. Whichever of these meanings we might attach to the scene, medieval viewers could read in the panel Radegund’s devotion to those beseeching her help, and her willingness to answer their cries. The strong associations between Radegund and the Virgin, and the strong hints of maternal imagery running throughout the canons’ thirteenth-century program—in fresco, glass, and manuscript—demonstrate a systematic effort to return spiritual maternity to the afflictis et desolatis, non patiamini domina, me miseram mulierem sic remanere me unici filii solacio destitutam. Domina, domina, filium, quem michi mors surripuit, redde michi. Domina domina, placeat vobis michi facere quod, si placet potestis. Heu me dolorosa! Vobis eum, domina, si viveret, cum oblatione presentare proponebam et devote vestram ecclesiam visitare. Set ut reor, meum propositum impleri non curatis. Ubi sunt misericordie tue antique, domina, ubi pietas solita, quas soletis desolatis et afflictis exhibere?’ ”: Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles,” 441–2. 69  In the canons’ image, the scene is flipped (the child and hair shirt are on the left rather than the right) but mimicked; the major difference is that the healing has no location—the abbey has disappeared from the miracle altogether: Fort., VR, 34.

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center of Radegund’s cult after the nuns had moved away from such representations two centuries earlier. Doing so allowed the canons to assert their own importance in the cult (as the caretakers of the healing relics and of the church once known as Notre-Dame), to connect themselves to royal maternity, and to challenge the nuns’ control of Radegund’s imagery. There is also a major departure from the libellus in the use of space in the images. The libellus illuminations relied on frames to depict Radegund’s enclosure in all areas of her life—in Clothar’s castle, in the abbey—and then connected her enclosure to her miraculous power, worked through her cell’s window. In the c­ anons’ images, however, those frames and enclosures are mostly gone, freeing Radegund in the depiction of space she occupies. Radegund heals from within her cell, as in the manuscript, but other frames are missing in her portrayal. Interestingly, the only other frame that remains is in Figure 26, the image of Abbo or Gregory of Tours praying before Radegund’s tomb—and here the frame suggests Sainte-Radegonde’s church, not the abbey. The two most important relics in Radegund’s cult were the saint’s body, contained in the tomb and responsible for these miracles, and the fragment of the True Cross, installed in the abbey in the sixth century. The Cross relic did not feature prominently in the church decoration, however. According to Lillich’s reconstruction, a window devoted to the passion may also have contained a narrative of the True Cross, located in the western-most bay of the south wall (116, see Figure 19). There is a possibility that the abbess of Sainte-Croix provided funds for this window. This is based on two images of the Agnus Dei, an image with wordplay referencing the lamb of God, the name Jehan or Jeanne, and also the name Agnes, who was first abbess of Sainte-Croix. The image suggests the interest of either the Abbess Jeanne de Plaisance (1264–9) or Jeanne de la Vergne (1269–84) in commissioning these windows.70 Jeanne de la Vergne ended a series of vacancies and short abbacies at Sainte-Croix and stabilized the abbey, at least for a time. Upon her death in 1284 the abbey fell into chaos again during an election conflict between two women named Isabelle, as discussed in Chapter 7. It is also possible that the Agnus Dei references another Abbess Agnes, who governed in 1240. If that is the case, this window would date earlier than the Radegund cycle, to 1245 at latest, when Hilaire was abbess. If the canons decided to include its imagery, why would such a high-status relic as the cross not be placed in a more prominent position within the church? The location of the window makes it almost impossible to see from the nave, especially given the placement of the canons’ organ. The nuns and canons may have come to an agreement about depicting the abbey’s relic. It is more likely, however, that commissioning a window that honored their most prized relic was the nuns’ attempt to gain some control over part of the church decoration, while the canons moved the cross imagery to a less privileged position in order to focus attention on their Radegund windows. The series of vacancies in Sainte-Croix’s abbacy permitted this displacement of the cross; Jeanne de la Vergne may have attempted to salvage some role for the abbey in the windows late in the work under 70 Lillich, Armor of Light, 108.

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her much stronger term in office. That explains this less prominent position for the relic of the True Cross but shows greater cooperation between the communities once strong direction was restored at the abbey. It was difficult, however, for the nuns to compete with the canons’ claims to Radegund and with their position in the town, particularly without stable and consistent leadership. The nuns maintained control of the True Cross relic but, since access to the relic was restricted—and became more so over the course of the Middle Ages—it was not easy to display its holy power, as Bishop Maroveus had feared in the sixth century. As events in which the abbey’s insignia could be seen publicly and their relics were prestigiously displayed, processions provided an important visible declaration of the abbey’s holy possessions and connections as we will see in Chapter 6. They may also have been, for the nuns, counter-balances to the canons’ status as the public space of the cult. Both communities created images of Radegund that glorified the saint. The nuns of Sainte-Croix reminded visitors and potential patrons of Radegund’s exalted history with the eleventh-century libellus that brought Radegund’s vitae to life in rich color and bold, attractive pages. The women used that opportunity to declare their own connections to Radegund, and to represent the saint as a member of their community: a nun, cloistered, veiled, withdrawn from the world. The decoration of Sainte-Radegonde completed during the second half of the thirteenth century was a more complicated effort building onto the representational language the nuns devised, but translated to different media for architecture, glass, and fresco. Much was at stake for the canons in the success of the messages communicated on their church walls. They sought to convince royal viewers of the chapter’s complete loyalty to the Capetian throne and to demonstrate the potent relics available to supplicants and generous pilgrims. The canons challenged the depiction of Radegund as a nun with images of her as a queen, while maintaining references to her monastic life, asceticism, and purity. The complex images they created carried a heavy load of symbolic work. The nuns’ libellus, probably visible to canons performing the mass at SainteCroix, could have been one cause for the canons to attempt to break away from the abbey beginning in the later eleventh century. Likewise, the canons may have taken the opportunity of abbatial vacancies of the second half of the thirteenth century, when the abbey dealt with problems finding a strong head for the monastery, to create their miracle collection and their window program, claiming Radegund as their own. This may have also been an opportunity for the canons to promote their community’s stability and success, gaining royal patronage and greater pilgrim traffic by using the nuns’ strategies. The canons also produced a book containing further miracle tales and a new, but not illuminated, redaction of Radegund’s vitae in the fifteenth century, while struggling against the nuns’ vision of the cult during processions and rituals, and while the nuns faced their most vicious election conflict.71 Disputes placed pressure on these communities and ratcheted up the stakes of their communal representations, just as their visual and textual representations 71  BMP ms 253 (8 bis).

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sparked further debates and conflicts between the rivals. These representations of the saint became necessary at crucial moments, as the communities contested their privileges and identities. The abbess of Sainte-Croix did not take these challenges lightly. Once Jeanne de La Vergne took power in 1269 she resolved much of the chaos resulting from the previous twenty years of uncertainty. Her successor Isabelle de La Puye pursued connections with the monarchy, even securing a gift of wood from King Philippe le Bel in 1297. In fact, trouble with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde might have encouraged the nuns to elect Isabelle de La Puye, an outsider, over the usually preferred local candidate, in the hopes of attracting royal patronage once again (see Chapter 7). The canons’ decorative program demonstrates the tools available to the canons in challenging female authority in the thirteenth century at a moment when Sainte-Croix’s abbesses were facing some difficulties. Once those issues were resolved, however, the abbess was better prepared to retain all privileges and rights pertaining to her position. In Chapter  6 we will see the canons become more aggressive in their strategies, and the abbess demonstrate her sophistication in maintaining both her rights and her alliance network.

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6 Processions and Privileges Despite the challenges predecessors had faced from the canons of SainteRadegonde—and the male chapter’s new wealth, church decoration, and royal patrons—fifteenth-century abbesses of Sainte-Croix continued to demand obedience and respect from the canons. The relationship between Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix was not always easy; in fact, as we have seen, the men tried several times to limit the authority of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses over their chapter. However, the nuns continued to receive extensive support from a network of allies that included the papacy and the monarchy, who confirmed the abbesses’ claims to “authority, superiority, and pre-eminence” over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, proving the nuns’ primary strategy’s strength and longevity. The men tested this support in 1466 when they refused to obey the nuns during two public celebrations, causing Abbess Isabeau de Couhé to complain to the king and his seneschal about Sainte-Radegonde’s negligence. The canons usually resisted their obligations to Sainte-Croix by delaying their customary service until the nuns complained to an official. When such an official commanded the canons to obey, they customarily complied. So long as the abbess of Sainte-Croix defended her rights, she continued to exercise them. In this case, however, the men went much further than in previous disputes: during the seneschal’s investigation of Isabeau’s complaint the canons broke with tradition and vigorously attacked Isabeau’s authority. They rejected her claim over them and asserted that it was “against nature” to be subject to a woman’s ­authority.1 This represented a new strategy for the canons, one that contested the abbess’s ability to hold any authority over men. By rejecting the abbess of Sainte-Croix’s demands on the basis of her sex, the canons embraced the late medieval anti-feminine rhetorics that depicted women as incapable of wielding authority. The men likely shifted to this strategy in order to appeal to the French monarchy, which had recently claimed control over France’s religious communities, and whose advisors had been emphasizing masculine authority in recent French political theory. Indeed, the canons’ use of anti-feminine rhetoric is hardly surprising, as historians have widely described late medieval secular and ecclesiastical officials as misogynists who had by the late Middle Ages eradicated, or at least severely limited, women’s authority. Scholars have depicted traditional Benedictine female monastic power as lost behind a cloister wall, circumscribed by episcopal oversight and reviled by male theorists and theologians. Sainte-Radegonde’s canons simply drew on these theories in order 1  ADV 2H1/1, f. 16v.

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to assert greater control over their own community. The canons’ desire for greater autonomy fits their chapter’s growing wealth and prestige described in Chapter 5, as well as changes in the late medieval church. What might be surprising, then, about Sainte-Croix’s dispute in 1466 is that Isabeau won the support of the king’s seneschal and his lieutenant. These officials agreed with the abbess’s claims and ordered Sainte-Radegonde’s men to obey her demands, to acknowledge her superiority, and to respect her authority. Further, the seneschal’s order restricted the status of the men’s community in processions and forced them to yield control of their own church at the abbess’s command. Thus the king’s officials supported the abbess’s extensive demonstration of female ­authority over male dependents, as well as its frequent and public expression in Poitiers’ religious rituals. Of course, this outcome is not actually surprising in the context of the consistent support Sainte-Croix’s abbesses received over centuries of these conflicts, only within the larger narrative of female monastic authority. This chapter thus examines these religious women’s efforts to display their superiority publicly, to use holy spaces to emphasize their authority, and to convince secular authorities to confirm such powers when questioned by male dependents. Sainte-Croix’s case demonstrates that authority was not gendered exclusively masculine in late medieval France or, if it was, a female body was no bar from its exercise despite contemporary claims. I argue that monastic women’s authority was not consistently undermined or rejected by male officials in the later Middle Ages and that aggressive and powerful abbesses could find support for their claims to ­authority from the secular hierarchy that had, allegedly, been undermining them. These conclusions demand a re-evaluation of current assumptions that privilege anti-feminine rhetoric and thus emphasize a supposed decline of female authority in the church. They demonstrate the importance of looking beyond prescriptive texts that condemn or circumscribe women’s power and testing the reality of such claims in practice. Although late medieval theorists claimed success in limiting women’s power in the Church, examples from Poitiers suggest that their claims were premature and that we should not accept their assertions as fact. Closer attention to royal officials’ dispute negotiation may reveal many more powerful and dominant female monastic superiors in late medieval France and Europe, as well as more respect for religious women among male officials than previously imagined for the fifteenth century. The canons challenged the abbess in two incidents in 1466, the first during Poitiers’ Rogation Day Processions—the three days preceding the Feast of the Ascension—in May, and the second during Radegund’s great feast, celebrating the anniversary of her death, August 13.2 Abbess Isabeau de Couhé—a well-connected abbess from a local aristocratic family that frequently placed its women at SainteCroix—complained to King Louis XI that Sainte-Radegonde’s canons had refused to perform important services during Rogations and had failed to grant the nuns entrance to the church of Sainte-Radegonde during Radegund’s feast. The king 2  The Feast of the Ascension is always Thursday, forty days following Easter. In 1466 Easter was April 6, placing Ascension Thursday in May.

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ordered his seneschal in Poitiers, a local royal position his friend Louis de Crussol held, to investigate the grievance. The seneschal and his lieutenant explored Isabeau’s complaint for six years, making reports in 1467 and 1472 that summarized the nuns’ grievances, the canons’ defense, the nuns’ response, and twelve local witnesses’ testimony. These reports make a detailed study of the 1466 dispute possible.3 The canons’ attack was not unique, as men had long argued in favor of limiting women’s influence in the medieval church.4 Ecclesiastical and secular theorists portrayed women as weak, incompetent, disobedient, emotional, sinful, and easily tempted. Clerical authors separated men and women by a binary that subordinated the female sex physically, emotionally, and ethically.5 This misogynist rhetoric did not go unchallenged, however, and late medieval authors such as Christine de Pisan and Jean Gerson persuasively argued a pro-feminine response that emphasized the accomplishments of actual women.6 Despite these well-known pro-feminine positions, the perception that male officials in the later Middle Ages were hostile to the female exercise of power has pervaded the modern understanding of the period. As a result, the picture we have of late medieval monasticism depicts nuns under attack and abbeys in decline. Financial difficulties for many female communities, the imposition of episcopal oversight after the Fourth Lateran Council, and the enforcement of enclosure after the promulgation of Periculoso (1298) have all been charged with circumscribing the power of monastic women who, by the fifteenth century, were generally poor, cloistered, and tightly monitored.7 Even scholars who point to the vitality of late medieval women’s religious institutions refer not to traditional communities, but to new movements such as the Devotio Moderna, Observants, and beguines rather than challenge this narrative for traditional Benedictine houses.8 Clerics and royal officials are often credited with a repressive and misogynist attitude toward women 3  BMP, A6 (426); and ADV 2H1/1. 4  See, among others, Elliott, Fallen Bodies; McNamara, “The Herrenfrage,” and Jo Ann McNamara, “Canossa and the Ungendering of the Public Man,” in Constance Berman,ed., Medieval Religion: New  Approaches (London: Routledge, 2005), 102–22; Miller, “Masculinity, Reform and Clerical Culture”; R. I. Moore, “Sex and the Social Order,” in R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution, c.970–1215, 65–111. 5  Alcuin Blamires, Karen Pratt, and C. W. Marx, eds., Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Caroline Walker Bynum, “‘And Woman His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages,” in Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 151–79; and Lester, “Cleaning House in 1399.” 6  Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 7  Although many scholars demonstrate that women found ways to thrive in the ecclesiastical community, they agree that female monasteries faced serious difficulties maintaining their status after the eleventh century, with the challenge becoming greater over time: Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women; Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession; McNamara, Sisters in Arms; Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society; Parisse, Les Nonnes au Moyen Age; Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture; Warren, Spiritual Economies; Lester, “Cleaning House in 1399.” Indeed, Marilyn Oliva argues that royal and papal support for English convents declined after the fourteenth century and monastic women had to rely on more local sources of support from the gentry and local farmers: Oliva, The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England, 211. 8  Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life; Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. As noted in the Introduction, some scholars have moved the timeline for the decline of female monasticism by a few centuries: see e.g., Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns.

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with authority. Certainly, secular landowners, bishops, money-hungry nobles, male dependents, and kings all saw the female monastery as a vulnerable target to exploit for their own status, power, or wealth. Indeed, many sources support Valerie Spear’s observation that [t]he history of the later Middle Ages shows no mitigation of the discomfort and disapproval exhibited by male officials faced with the exercise of power by religious women. . . . [The] prejudices [of anti-feminine clerical authors] were perpetuated by the very officials charged with the evaluation and supervision of women’s religious lives. The result was a repressive environment in which surveillance of females escalated.9

According to such scholars, women’s few positions of authority in the Church disappeared, and male officials were responsible for their loss. The overall image of female monastic authority in decline in the later Middle Ages has not changed much, and the culprits are still assumed to be male clerics and royal officials. There are many disputes between female abbeys and their secular neighbors, bishops, or rival religious houses to fuel this interpretation.10 Previous abbesses of Sainte-Croix had defended their authority through skilful management of an archive documenting privileges and an extensive network of supporters over several centuries.11 She was well informed, advised, and trained, as well as personally gifted. Isabeau demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of current debates about political authority and gender, and she drew upon political theories that best supported her position. Isabeau demonstrates the strength, competence, and consistency the abbey had lacked in the mid-thirteenth century. In her response to the canons’ assertion that female power was “against nature,” for example, Isabeau did not claim an unusual ability to wield authority normally restricted to men, nor did she engage with the canons’ attempt to use her sex to exclude her from power. Instead, she responded by claiming that gender and sex were irrelevant—power could be wielded by office-holders of whatever sex with ancient and traditional claims to that authority—and then demonstrated the multiple privileges pertaining to the abbess’s office. Isabeau succeeded because she pitched her case well, to the right audience at the right time, but also because her predecessors at Sainte-Croix had already established her authority. She is a characteristic example of the competent, clever abbesses who had successfully maintained 9 Spear, Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries, 6–7. This is clear in visitation registers and the writings of theologians. Although the authors with essays in Erler and Kowaleski, eds., Gendering the Master Narrative caution us to avoid a polarized dichotomy between male public power and female private power, they nonetheless suggest that women’s public authority was not supported or visible in the high or late Middle Ages. They suggest new ways of looking for female power, by which they often mean agency, rather than focusing on traditional forms of authority. See Erler and Kowaleski, “A New Economy of Power Relations: Female Agency in the Middle Ages,” in Gendering the Master Narrative, 1–16. See also the discussion of women and power in the Introduction to this volume. 10  There are those who complicated this depiction, such as: Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit; Griffiths, The Garden of Delights; Hamburger, Crown and Veil; Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain; Berman, The Cistercian Evolution. 11  Albrecht Classen offers another way of seeing these interactions that gives women more status in Power of a Woman’s Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 35–6.

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female monastic authority at Sainte-Croix since its sixth-century foundation and would continue to do so until the abbey’s sixteenth-century reform.12 By the fifteenth century, Poitiers’ many transfers between England and France had confused the town’s loyalties and status. A false diploma in a fifteenth-century hand records Clothar’s supposed gift of land for Sainte-Croix in the libellus of Radegund’s vitae (see Chapter 3); the forgery suggests the nuns were eager in the fifteenth century to demonstrate the antiquity of their royal support.13 Plantagenets had governed the town until Philip Augustus seized it in 1204, which paved the way for the royal patronage cult members sought from the French throne in the thirteenth century. The Hundred Years War, however, led to the English recapture of Poitiers in 1356. Chaos of the war must have exhausted Sainte-Croix and SainteRadegonde, since records in that period focus on fortifications of their properties, as well as a bitter struggle between the abbess of Sainte-Croix and the Lords of Montreuil-Bonnin, who frequently encroached on abbatial territories in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Chaos persisted into the fifteenth century, as Poitiers became a refuge for the future Charles VII. Charles had shown devotion to Radegund and her communities while he had held a Parlement in Poitiers from 1418 to 1436. The papacy also had a strong history of supporting Sainte-Croix, especially during conflicts between the nuns and Sainte-Radegonde’s canons, as we saw in Chapter 3, but was not the nuns’ primary supporter in this conflict. The abbess of Sainte-Croix claimed “superiority, pre-eminence, and domination” over Sainte-Radegonde’s clerics, in part based on the order of their foundation— abbey, then church—and on Radegund’s expectation that the clerics from her church would serve the abbey and nuns.14 In these conflicts, the nuns were vigilant in protecting their privileges by complaining to external officials, who regularly supported the abbess’s assertion of her position and privileges and ordered the men to obey. As we have seen, this pattern emerges infrequently but consistently, setting a crucial precedent of resistance, appeal, support, and obedience. An important facet of the disputes between the chapter and monastery was control over and access to their churches, which contained the heart of each community’s power and represented each group’s identity: the saint’s corporeal relics entombed in Sainte-Radegonde’s crypt and the True Cross relic installed in SainteCroix’s church altar. Maintaining authority over this center of the community’s holy identity and sacred space—or gaining influence over their rivals through 12  Nor was Sainte-Croix alone in claiming such powerful administrators. Other fifteenth-century abbesses heading large, ancient, and well-established monasteries had the same opportunities as Isabeau. Fontevraud, Notre-Dame-de-Saintes, and Saint-George-de-Rennes, to name just a few, were led by similarly competent abbesses and contained similar archives documenting longstanding support for female abbatial authority over male communities. While these are not the average female community, they are not rare, either. Such powerful monasteries appear throughout late medieval Europe, with abbesses who maintained—through personal relationships and special appeals—autonomy and authority over dependents. Sainte-Croix’s example may point to a broader acceptance of female monastic authority than we have recognized. 13  BMP ms 250 (136). 14  Isabeau de Couhé asserted that “the queen Madame Saint Radegond, out of holiness, founded the abbey of Sainte-Croix” on a site that she discovered “miraculously”: BMP A6 (426), 21.

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access to such spaces—proved key to these communities’ disputes for centuries. While they demonstrated peaceful cooperation with one another many times, these disputes periodically interrupted that harmony. Pope Alexander II’s eleventh-century reorganization of Sainte-Radegonde as a collegial chapter, which transformed the canons into a semi-monastic community subject to a Rule and also increased their status within the Church, might explain why disputes between the nuns and canons began in that period. The canons may have sought to renegotiate their subordination to Sainte-Croix after their own chapter’s status improved. But, despite this improvement, Alexander required the canons to continue recognizing the abbess’s superiority and required the officers of  Sainte-Radegonde’s chapter to take their oaths of office—including oaths of subjection and obedience to the abbess—at Sainte-Croix’s church altar.15 Bringing the men into Sainte-Croix for these rituals was a powerful statement of the abbess’s authority. Swearing an oath upon taking office emphasized the canons’ subservience and the abbess’s superiority. She demonstrated that the canons were, indeed, her servants by compelling their regular entrance and service at the altar that contained the True Cross relic, the most powerful object within the abbess’s control as well as the nuns’ eleventh-century libellus, whose illuminations highlight her choice to live as a nun.16 The canons would see during their services and during the swearing of their oaths images representing the abbey’s power. Everything about these rituals was designed to emphasize the abbess’s superiority, using the heart of her authority, the relics, the altar and the manuscript, to reinforce the message that she also had control over these men. During these early conflicts, the nuns had also protected their rights to enter the church of Sainte-Radegonde. Upon the abbess’s election, the canons were enjoined to receive her in Sainte-Radegonde in procession and, they were warned, this procession should not be denied or “wickedly delayed” (negari nec malitiose differri).17 After entering Sainte-Radegonde, the abbess was to be installed in the most eminent place of the church for a service in her honor. This was a visual demonstration of her status and her superiority over the canons, taking pride of place within their own choir. It also presents a powerful contrast with the election of the chapter’s officers. While the abbess demanded that the canons’ newly elected prior swear an oath of obedience before Sainte-Croix’s altar, she received a procession and place of honor within his church upon her own election. Entering Sainte-Radegonde was essential for the nuns’ devotion to Radegund. Because the saint’s body was entombed in a marble sarcophagus within SainteRadegonde’s crypt, the general community of nuns could only visit Radegund on special, scripted occasions. Although the abbess and her officers frequently left Sainte-Croix to tend to the abbey’s estates, deal with tenants, or execute abbey 15  AJP 10:404 (April 25, 1072); and AJP 10:413 (c.1081). 16  A late fifteenth-century customary specified that the abbey church’s great altar contained the True Cross relic: Monsabert, “Anciens Usages de l’Abbaye de Sainte Croix de Poitiers,” 266, item 3, BMP ms 250 (136). See also La vie de Sainte Radegonde par Fortunat; Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context,” 417; Ginot, Le Manuscrit de Sainte Radegonde; and Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart. 17  DF 5, 613–16.

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Approximate area of Sainte-Croix’s Abbey Enclosure Roman Walls

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Map 5.  Plan of Sainte-Croix, adapted from a 1782 map and from Dez, Histoire de Poitiers, map 2

business, the larger community was expected to remain within the abbey’s walls (Map 5). Monastic enclosure was not strictly enforced at Sainte-Croix even in the fifteenth century, yet cloister was not taken casually either. The women en masse typically made official visits to the church crypt and Radegund’s tomb four times a year, on her feast days.18 In their disputes, the nuns demonstrated that access to Radegund’s body was crucially important to them.19 The abbess wanted to protect her nuns’ ability to commune with the saint, as well as to protect her own superior position. Thus, the nuns insisted that the bodies of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses continue 18  These were October 15, when Radegund first arrived in Poitiers; February 28, celebrating the Miracle of the Oats; August 3, celebrating the legend of the Pas-Dieu; and August 13, Radegund’s great feast: BMP A6 (426), 21, Article 11, f. 2v. According to a 1358 letter from Bishop Jean de Lieux to the canons and nuns, there were a number of occasions on when the abbess and her nuns had the right to process to Sainte-Radegonde, seat the abbess in the prior’s position in the choir, and then celebrate a mass at the great altar. In addition to these feasts, the nuns of Sainte-Croix had the right to possess the altar on Christmas before the first mass, on Epiphany, on Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, on several saints’ feast days (Hilary, Stephen, Sebastian, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Innocent, Peter and Paul, Nicholas, and many others), feast of the circumcision, of the Purification, the Annunciation, the Assumption of Mary, Nativity of Mary, among others: DF 5, 671–8, August 4, 1358. 19  See DF 5, 613–16. This emphasis on Radegund’s body goes back to the origins of her cult. Baudonivia and Gregory of Tours emphasized the pain Sainte-Croix’s nuns felt watching Radegund’s body pass beyond the abbey walls after her 587 death, to move where they could not follow under claustration: Baudonivia, 24.

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to receive traditional honors in Sainte-Radegonde after death: an abbess’s corpse was laid out in Sainte-Radegonde and surrounded by wax candles that, after the abbess’s burial, were then moved to surround Radegund’s relics.20 This cemented a connection between the abbess and Radegund, and demonstrated that the abbess commanded a position of respect and status within the canons’ church even in death. While the relationship between nuns and canons was primarily harmonious, these tensions grew out of the abbess’s insistence upon a hierarchical relationship that privileged the abbey, a relationship typical of monastic houses and the chapters of canons who served them. Throughout these disputes, and others like them, the abbess of Sainte-Croix demanded access to the inner sanctum of holy spaces the canons controlled and she protested, vociferously, any limitation imposed on the rights she claimed were “traditional.” As we have seen, the canons’ strategy for contesting these claims was resistance; they simply avoided granting the abbess the privileges she required, which caused the abbess to petition the papacy or king for assistance. The stakes were high in 1466: if the canons thwarted the abbess’s rights to enter Sainte-Radegonde or to compel their service in Sainte-Croix, they would threaten her authority over the canons’ chapter, her monastic community’s ability to commune with the saint, and even their salvation due to the interruption of the canon’s service at the abbey’s altar. In general, such an interruption was not the canons’ goal or even a strategy that they employed. There is no evidence that they shirked the cura monialium or even that they found it burdensome. They may, like Peter Abelard, have found their services for the abbey to be pious acts important for their own spirituality.21 They did, however, demand fair compensation for their service, and increasingly demanded acknowledgment and recognition for their similarly important place in Radegund’s cult. Even these moments of dispute might point to a healthy relationship between the two communities—one that is interwoven and complicated—such as that of the Premonstratensian houses of Füssenich and Meer, where male and female religious worked together and supported one another.22 The pope, or his agents, had replied consistently to the abbess with support for her superiority and with orders for the canons to submit to her. The strength of papal support so firmly behind the abbess left the canons little room to maneuver in favor of their own rights. Thus, they adopted the strategy of resistance rather than complaint. We have no examples of the canons complaining about the abbess’s requirements or contesting the abbess’s authority directly until 1472.23 This fifteenth-century dispute, then, presents a new strategy for the canons, of challenging the very basis of the abbess’s authority. Their confidence in changinge strategy likely came from four directions: the new royal authority over French religious communities, the popularity of anti-feminine rhetoric, the canons’ increased status, and challenges the canons faced elsewhere in Poitiers. By the later Middle 20  DF 5, 613–16. 21  Griffiths, “Monks and Nuns at Rupertsberg,” 147. 22  Wolbrink, “Necessary Priests and Brothers.” 23  In 1192 the canons complained about payment they claimed Sainte-Croix owed them, but they did not contest the nuns’ ability to demand service from their chapter.

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Ages the canons came from the same local noble families as Sainte-Croix’s nuns, and they enjoyed the same economic benefits. The two communities operated as siblings—with all the love and squabbles that entails. Chapter members appear as important authorities in documents related to every religious community in Poitiers, and several of Sainte-Radegonde’s canons were also members of Poitiers’ influential Saint-Pierre cathedral chapter. Sainte-Radegonde also became a popular destination for pilgrims, who might visit the church en route to Compostella. The canons thus received patronage from wealthy, noble, and royal benefactors who donated benefices to support chapter members and created expensive decoration projects such as stained-glass windows (see Chapter 5). With the new building came new pilgrims, patrons, and prestige for the canons. Sainte-Radegonde had control, in their own right, over extensive property and fiefs outside Poitiers. The canons’ increased prestige, as well as the popularity of a misogynist rhetoric about women’s authority, emboldened the canons to shift their strategy from resistance to aggression in order to convince the king to support Sainte-Radegonde. P RO C E S S I O N S The first contested incident in 1466 involved Poitiers’ annual processions for the Rogations, the three days preceding Ascension Thursday. During these days, male members of Poitiers’ religious communities met at the cathedral before processing through the fields around Poitiers, defining the town’s boundaries and visiting each of the city’s holy sites before returning to the cathedral. Participants included representatives from the town’s chapters, colleges, parish churches, and monasteries, who carried banners and relics from their communities, collectively representing the religious identity of the town. Participants in the procession sang psalms and recited special prayers, accompanied by the ringing of the town’s church bells. The entire spectacle was meant to seek the aid of saints and God in protecting the fields and driving evil spirits out of the town.24 By processing around the town’s boundaries and visiting its important holy buildings, these processions demarcated Poitiers’ religious and urban identity. While the town’s celebrations continued on all three days of the Rogations, each community had its own rituals for participating in the town’s processions. On the morning of Rogations Monday Sainte-Croix’s entire community processed the short distance to Sainte-Radegonde to celebrate a mass there, a ritual they also observed on Radegund’s feast days. On Tuesday and Wednesday, however, SainteRadegonde participated in the town’s processions, which excluded members of 24  The practice of processing during the Rogation Days was widespread across the Latin West by the fifteenth century; Gregory of Tours testified that the custom had begun in France in the fifth century: Greg., Hist. 2.34, 81–4. See also Stephan Borgehammar, “A Monastic Conception of the Liturgical Year,” in Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter, eds., The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2001), 13–44, 15, 16n.5; DACL 14, 2, cols. 2459–61; John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 73–5; and Jean Balde, Les Rogations (Paris: Flammarion, 1931).

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Poitiers’ female communities. Presumably the expectation of female claustration barred the nuns from participating in the town’s processions, which completed a circuit around Poitiers’ walls (Map 6) and may have proven too far from their abbey walls compared to the forty or fifty feet the women traveled to visit SainteRadegonde on Rogation Mondays. That day’s procession may also have justified their exclusion from the larger celebration. Nuns elsewhere participated more fully in their Rogation Day processions. At Barking Abbey the nuns processed several miles unless the weather was bad, in which case they were permitted to process around their cloister and church. Other nuns and even monks, such as at Syon Abbey, processed only within their own abbey. The processions included special liturgy: long litanies, set antiphons, and responsaries. At Syon the litanies were carefully timed with the procession so as to not require the addition of more saints.25 Sainte-Croix was not completely absent from the processions, however. The abbess required Sainte-Radegonde’s canons to carry banners or emblems representing the abbey on Rogations Tuesday and Wednesday. The abbess expected the men to

Twelfth-century walls Montierneuf

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Map 6.  Poitiers in the fifteenth century 25 Anne Bagnall Yardley, Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 156–7. See also Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 93–8, and on antiphons, 120–62. Processions at Klosterneuburg included extensive liturgies controlled by the women: Michael L.  Norton and Amelia  J.  Carr, “Liturgical Manuscripts, Liturgical Practice, and the Women of Klosterneuburg,” Traditio 66 (2011): 67–169.

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process to their abbey church on these days, celebrate a mass, take up the abbey’s banners, and carry Sainte-Croix’s insignia in the town’s processions. She further required the canon carrying the relic of the True Cross to do so with great reverence by walking barefoot.26 Having their banners, relics, and insignia carried in these processions demonstrated Sainte-Croix’s continued presence within Poitiers’ ecclesiastical community. Forcing the canons to act as porters also displayed to the town the abbess’s superior position, even in her absence. The abbess specified that the chapter had no right to refuse to perform this service, since doing so would undermine her authority over the canons.27 She required this service and that the canons serve in the exact manner she desired. Her superiority compelled obedience just as it had for centuries. In 1466, however, Abbess Isabeau de Couhé complained, first to the king and then to his seneschal, that the canons had attempted to include their own banners in addition to the items they traditionally carried for the abbey. According to the complaint, the canons came to Sainte-Croix, performed their customary station in the abbey church, picked up the abbey’s banners and relics, and carried them from the abbey. But when they reached the street between the abbey and the cathedral the canons also revealed newly constructed banners representing their own chapter.28 This innovation outraged the nuns: by including banners that represented SainteRadegonde, the canons depicted the two communities equally, a flattening of the hierarchy that privileged the abbess. In demanding the canons’ service the abbess cited longstanding custom. Witness testimony recorded by the seneschal’s lieutenant in 1467 asserts that the nuns had required the canons’ service in these processions for as long as could be remembered.29 The testimony further stated that the canons had entered SainteCroix’s abbey church, performed a mass, and carried the banners and reliquaries on Rogation Days since at least the 1420s, and that the canons performed those services for no other church, including their own. The abbess thus claimed that her privileges allowed her to command the canons to carry Sainte-Croix’s banners—and no others. No matter the canons’ preference for self-representation, she required their obedience. In their response, the canons did not refute the basic elements of this testimony. They agreed that their chapter’s members had carried the abbey’s banners and relics for many years, and that they had not carried any other church’s insignia during that time. When pressed, however, they did contest the abbess’s claim that the chapter was required to serve as a result of subjection to her authority. The canons 26  The canons were required to carry the abbey’s banners on both the Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension. On Wednesday, the most prestigious day of Rogations, the canons of SainteRadegonde also carried the abbey’s reliquary chasses: BMP A6 (426), 21, Article VI, f. 2. Isabeau de Couhé oversaw an inventory ten years later that listed luxurious processional items, but did not list the banners; these are known as only “une grant banniere une moyenne et une autre bannier ou enseigne s’appele dragon”: ADV 2H1/1, f. 1; also in BMP A6 (426), 21, Article IV, f. 1v. For the inventory, see Barbier de Montault, Le Trésor, 56 and 58 and Cynthia Hahn, “The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries,” Gesta 36 (1997), 20–31. 27  BMP A6 (426), 21, Articles 8 and 9, f. 2. 28  ADV 2H1/1, f. 15.    29  BMP A6 (426), 21, Article 17, f. 3.

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countered that they carried the abbey’s banners and relics “voluntarily” and out of convenience.30 When the canons stated that they carried the abbey’s banners and relics only out of their “will and devotion” (volunte et devocion), Isabeau de Couhé dismissed the notion that this was a voluntary and friendly gesture. In her view the canons acted not by their “will and devotion,” but as “subjects.”31 The abbess thus argued, through witness testimony, that the abbey had a longstanding claim on the chapter’s service and that the canons served as dependents. The men countered that their chapter had only recently assisted the abbey and as willing neighbors rather than as servile dependents, contesting the abbess’s assertion of an ancient superiority. The abbess’s witnesses demonstrated that the canons had carried only Sainte-Croix’s banners—and no insignia from Sainte-Radegonde–as the abbey’s subordinates for the extent of living memory. Isabeau demonstrated that the canons were accustomed to carrying only Sainte-Croix’s banners.32 The canons resisted the abbess’s authority, she complained, and she vehemently asserted the tradition and precedent for her superiority, as well as for the canons’ obedience. ENTRANCE Isabeau averred that, in 1466’s second incident, the men had failed to grant her nuns access to Sainte-Radegonde’s church during Radegund’s great feast on August 13. According to the complaint, each year Sainte-Croix’s nuns celebrated their foundress and patron saint on Radegund’s four feast days.33 The abbess claimed that on each of these days the nuns had the right to process from the abbey to Sainte-Radegonde’s church. The canons were required to receive the nuns, open up the church to them, and abandon the choir’s most eminent place to the abbess. Once there, the entire community of nuns would have their chaplains sing a mass at Sainte-Radegonde’s great altar.34 Similar rituals demonstrated authority held by other nuns in Poitiers. During the thirteenth century the abbess and claustral prioress of Sainte-Croix’s neighboring monastery, La Trinité, processed to their dependent chapter church of St-Pierre-lePuellier on the Tuesday and Wednesday of Rogations. While these canons were not required to admit the entire community of La Trinité’s women or to abandon their choir to the nuns, Penelope Johnson has argued that the placement of la Trinité’s abbess and prioress in the choir’s most important positions was a “visual statement of their power over the canons.”35 The access Sainte-Croix’s abbess commanded went much further, however, for the men were required to entirely abandon control of their own choir and great altar—the sacred heart of their church—to a much larger group of women. According to Isabeau, on the morning of Radegund’s great feast day, August 13, 1466, the nuns of Sainte-Croix had processed to Sainte-Radegonde at eight or nine 30  ADV 2H1/1, f. 13v. 31  ADV 2H1/1, f. 13v. 32  ADV 2H1/1, f. 12. 33  BMP A6 (426), 21, Article 11, f. 2v. 34  BMP A6 (426), 21, Articles 10, 12–14, f. 2v. 35 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 189.

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o’clock, when the canons usually ended matins, expecting to enter the church and take command of the choir as accustomed. When the abbess and nuns arrived at the church, the prior, canons, and chapter refused to allow them entry to the choir.36 The nuns claimed that the canons denied them access by extending their devotions to nine or ten o’clock, adding pauses between their chants. The abbess complained that she had heard the canons’ new organ used in an elaborate and unusual fashion, which also extended the service until the nuns were finally forced to return to the abbey without celebrating their mass. Isabeau asserted that the men had purposefully extended their service in order to prevent the women from enjoying their traditional rights of entry.37 The rare sight of the entire community of nuns outside the abbey and taking control of the canons’ church was a powerful demonstration of their authority over the men. The men may have designed their church decoration in the 1260s to challenge this control: when the abbess and nuns of Sainte-Croix had come to take over the choir of Sainte-Radegonde four times a year, they had been confronted by images asserting the canons’ control of Radegund’s relics and imagery. But the men went even further in 1466. By refusing to open up their choir to the women, the men of Sainte-Radegonde demonstrated power over their own church, choir, and altar. They also turned the abbess’s triumphant procession of nuns into a humiliating mockery by forcing the women to mill about, waiting and, finally, to return home denied and defeated. The canons’ assertion of control over their own community’s sacred space effectively undermined the abbess’s authority and displayed her rejection publicly to the townspeople. This was a neat reversal from the domination the abbess had wanted to put on parade earlier that year, as well as of her archive of privilege, and was a humiliation she refused to ignore. The image the abbess wished to present of a chapter entirely subordinate to her authority did not fit the canons’ notion of their own position, and their frustration is clear in the seneschal’s account of these disputes. The canons had not opposed the abbess’s authority within her own community or asserted dominance over her during the initial incidents in 1466. Rather, they had asserted their chapter’s autonomy and status. They did not find the seneschal to be their ally, however, and he depicted the canons as deceptive, disobedient, and willful subordinates. ROY A L S U P P O RT Seneschal of Poitiers Louis de Crussol completed his investigation on May 30, 1472 and fully supported the nuns in his report.38 He privileged Abbess Isabeau de Couhé’s claims and the testimony that supported them; he required the canons to 36  ADV 2H1/1, f. 9. See also BMP A6 (426), 21, Articles 21–2, f. 3–3v. 37 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 84. The chants were sung with their new organ, added to the church after 1459: ADV 2H1/1, f. 9. 38  The first inquest is in BMP A6 (426), 21, and the final verdict in ADV 2H1/1. See also DF 5 and Louis Rédet, “Un Épisode des processions des rogations à Poitiers en 1466,” BSAO 58 (1856), 210–18, 210.

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serve Sainte-Croix as Abbess Isabeau had demanded. He ordered the canons to open up Sainte-Radegonde on feast days without delay and to leave the choir so that members of Sainte-Croix might have a mass performed at the great altar, and on Rogation Days to carry the nuns’ banners, chasses, and insignia as they required. The seneschal’s decision thus supported the abbess’s claims to superiority, as well as the canons’ subordination. He chastised the men for their rebellion and reinforced traditional power hierarchies between the two communities. One major difference between this dispute and earlier conflicts was the abbess’s choice of champion. Since the eleventh century, Sainte-Croix’s abbesses had sought the papacy’s assistance, which had proven generous in supporting their claims and privileges. This was not an option in 1466, however, because the 1438 Pragmatic Sanction, issued by King Charles VII, prohibited petitions to the papacy until a case had exhausted the French courts. Thus Isabeau was required to seek King Louis XI’s assistance and could not appeal to the pope until she had already pursued all secular avenues. While Louis XI had abolished the Pragmatic Sanction in 1461 in the hopes of fostering better relations with Pope Pius II—a move that had frustrated his Parlement of Paris—Francis I eventually established a new concordat that brought him greater power over ecclesiastical offices in France, and these negotiations with the pope and with the Parlement were ongoing during Sainte-Croix’s dispute with Sainte-Radegonde.39 Although kings of Frankia and then France had supported the abbess of Sainte-Croix in the past, the abbesses had sought greater connection to the papacy, while the canons of Sainte-Radegonde had sought to tie the monarchy to their church through their decoration program that had emphasized Radegund’s monarchy. The fact that Isabeau’s case found support with the king’s officials—and that the canons did not believe it worth their effort to seek the pope’s assistance themselves at the conclusion of the process—suggests both how extensive support was for female monastic authority and how well the nuns presented their case to the king’s agents. Isabeau’s strategy also continued to leave the bishop of Poitiers out of Sainte-Croix’s dispute negotiation. Isabeau’s deployment of her archive of privileges was designed to appeal to the king and his agent. Her presentation of Sainte-Croix’s position demonstrates a shrewd understanding of political circumstances in France and how best to win the king’s support. Poitiers, and Radegund’s cult, had enjoyed close connections with the Valois monarchy in the early fifteenth century, when the town had provided a haven for the dauphin, the future Charles VII, Louis XI’s father. While the English had controlled Paris and northern France during the Hundred Years War, the dauphin had spent much of his time in Poitou. With Paris unavailable, he held a Parlement from 1418 to 1436 in Poitiers. This was a major opportunity for Poitiers to demonstrate loyalty to France: since the town had long been associated with English kings—including an awkward period following the 1356 Battle of Poitiers 39 Tyler Lange, The First French Reformation: Church Reform and the Origins of the Old Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 82. The Concordat allowed the pope the ability to reject royal candidates but undermined the rights of free election within French chapters and abbeys: see Frederic J. Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 41–3.

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that saw Edward the Black Prince’s capture of King John II and left the town in English hands until Bertrand du Guesclin recovered it in 1372—Poitiers’ officials and noblemen encouraged this Valois connection. While in town, Charles founded the Université de Poitiers (1432) and established Poitiers as his main court.40 In 1429 the town was a site of Joan of Arc’s inquest. With Charles in residence, Poitiers experienced an influx of wealthy and noble visitors, and the townspeople enjoyed this short-lived glory.41 Mid-century, Charles initiated a civic procession in Radegund’s honor on her feast day in appreciation of his success in the Hundred Years War.42 By the 1460s these visitors had left, but the townspeople eagerly sought their return. Radegund’s cult had especially encouraged royal patronage through the years and saw the king as a powerful potential ally. Louis XI, long mired in squabbles with his father, had finally inherited a tangled and treacherous kingdom in 1461. In Poitou, rebel noblemen joined the “League for the Public Weal” against the king, with the goal of helping England’s King Edward IV regain the “ancient Plantagenet lands,” including Poitiers. When the nuns complained about the canons’ failure to serve in 1466, Louis had just made peace with these rebellious nobles by offering the leaders land. This put Poitiers in a precarious position between the French and English monarchs, a situation Poitiers’ historical connection with the English aggravated.43 Poitiers’ townspeople even reimagined their past in 1463 by articulating an entirely French identity and history for the town with the “Miracle of the Keys.” The Miracle recalled that holy protectors had saved Poitiers from English invaders during a thirteenth-century assault. This was particularly miraculous since Poitiers was a Plantagenet possession at the time of the supposed Miracle. It was a tale that had long been told in Poitiers, but the 1463 version emphasized two aspects: that the Virgin Mary and Saint Hilary protected the town, and that Poitiers was loyal to French, not English, monarchs. According to a 1463 municipal statute book, in 1200 Poitiers’ mayor had sent his trusted servant to Périgueux, where the clerk showed himself to be a traitor. This “other Judas” accepted a bribe to betray Poitiers to the English at midnight the following Easter. When the appointed day and hour arrived, the servant tried to steal Poitiers’ gate keys, only to discover they had vanished. When the servant rushed to tell his co-conspirators of this hitch in their plan, two figures—a queen and a bishop—appeared before the gates. The queen was identified as the Virgin Mary and the bishop as Saint Hilary; the missing keys appeared in the Virgin’s 40 Hilary J. Bernstein, Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 169, based on her “Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1996); Roger G. Little, The Parlement of Poitiers: War, Government and Politics in France 1418–1436 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1984), 1, 4. 41  For the wealth that the relocation of the Parlement brought to Poitiers, see Little, The Parlement of Poitiers, 6–13. For the desire to hold onto this wealth and status, see Bernstein, “Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers,” 342–4. 42  M. Lecointre-Dupont, “Mémoire sur le miracle des clefs et sur la procession du lundi de paques,” MSAO 12 (1845), 209–48, here 245. 43 Bernstein, Between Crown and Community.

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arms. The sight of these holy defenders threw the waiting English army into chaos, and they began attacking one another. The noise alerted the townsfolk to the danger, and the mayor led a search for the missing keys, which they found in the town’s church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande, clutched in the hands of the statue of Mary sitting on the altar.44 In celebration of the miracle and the town’s holy protectors, the townsmen pledged to hold an annual procession in their honor on Easter Monday.45 Although the municipal manuscript contains the earliest extant descriptions of the Miracle, references to it appear in several thirteenth-century sources—statues, stained-glass windows, and legal documents. There are also hints that early versions included a third holy protector for the town: Saint Radegund. Notre-Dame-la-Grande had claimed the right to hold the keys to Poitiers’ city gates from vespers on Rogation Monday to vespers on Wednesday since 1257, suggesting some thirteenthcentury association between the Virgin and Poitiers’ keys, but related documents do not describe or mention the “Miracle of the Keys.”46 While the canons of Notre-Dame-la-Grande connected the Virgin to the city’s keys, the canons of Sainte-Radegonde associated their saint with the Virgin. Stained-glass added to Sainte-Radegonde in 1269 included a panel portraying Radegund kneeling in prayer before an image of the Virgin and child, perhaps even of a statue on an altar (see Figure 29). Moreover, Meredith Lillich has suggested that an object appearing near the Virgin in this image may have been a set of keys referencing the Miracle.47 If so, it represents Radegund as a partner with Mary in protecting the town. Or, the image may have assigned Radegund even greater power, suggesting that she invoked the Virgin through the power of her prayers, just as she brought Christ to Poitiers in the miracle of the Pas-Dieu (see Chapter 5). Jean Bouchet’s 1524

44 The Statuts des corps de métiers de Poitiers et autres documents concernant ladite ville, BMP Ms 391 (51), f. 22. The author of this description cited the thirteenth-century author Vincent de Beauvais’ Speculum Morale as his source for the miracle, but since there’s no reference to any episode resembling the miracle in existing versions of the Speculum, he was probably referencing Vincent’s authority or a manuscript with an interpolation. According to Lecointre-Dupont, the version in the statute book was a copy of Notre-Dame-la-Grande’s Proprium sanctorum ac festorum, which has vanished since his own examination of the manuscript in 1847: Lecointre-Dupont, “Mémoire sur le miracle des clefs,” 209n.1. Bernstein, “Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers,” 328–68. A statue of the Virgin clutching keys did sit on Notre-Dame-la-Grande’s altar in 1463, but Huguenots burned it in 1562; a replacement sits there now. 45  Lecointre-Dupont, “Mémoire sur le miracle des clefs”; and BMP Ms 391 (51). 46  They also claimed the right to high and low justice during the Tuesday and Wednesday of Rogations with all the profits that pertained to that right. On June 2, 1257 Theobald de Noviaco, seneschal of Poitou, defended the chapter’s claim. The chapter ceded that privilege to the town temporarily in 1278, but reclaimed it in 1303: Recueil de documents concernant la commune et la ville de Poitiers: Tome I: de 1063 à 1327, ed. E. Audouin (Poitiers: Nicolas, Renault & Cie, 1923), 139 and 276–7. See also Recueil de documents concernant la Commune et la Ville de Poitiers, ed. E. Audouin (Poitiers: Nicolas, Renault & Cie, 1923), 103–4, 139, 276–7, 307–8, 320–1, 352–4, 357–8. The seneschal of Poitou confirmed Notre-Dame-la-Grande’s privileges, specifically their claim on the keys to the city gates, repeatedly between 1257 and 1318, as the mayor, commune, and count’s castellan each attempted to withhold the keys from the chapter. On the Friday before Ascension in 1313, seneschal Johan Gaboreau ordered his lieutenant to ensure that the chapter received the keys: Recueil de documents concernant la Commune et la Ville de Poitiers, 320–1. 47 Lillich, Armor of Light, 94–5.

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description of the Miracle of the Keys in his Annales d’Aquitaine also lists Radegund as Poitiers’ defender alongside Hilary and the Virgin.48 It is curious, then, that the 1463 statute book omitted Radegund from its description of the Miracle. Including Radegund in the Miracle would only have underscored Poitiers’ longstanding loyalty to the French crown and stretched the history of fidelity back to the sixth century. Authors and artists had stressed Radegund’s role as queen of France in town histories, in legal documents referencing her communities, and in letters from the monarchy. The canons’ thirteenth-century decoration program had emphasized Radegund’s royalty by depicting her in crown and fleur-de-lis. And Charles VII had shown devotion to Radegund during his stay in Poitiers by establishing a procession for her feast. Historian Hilary Bernstein has persuasively argued that the fifteenth-century version of the Miracle of the Keys played an important role in Poitiers’ articulation of its urban identity.49 Poitiers’ leaders used this miracle to demonstrate the town’s supposedly longstanding loyalty to the French crown. They reimagined the town’s past as an English possession through this legend of miraculous protection against an encroaching English force—despite the anachronism of such an army’s attack. If the story’s retelling was meant to attract royal patrons, reference to the town’s royal saint could only add to the charm. Radegund’s absence might indicate a rivalry between Sainte-Radegonde and Notre-Dame-la-Grande.50 It is possible that Sainte-Radegonde’s stained-glass window could have placed the canons in competition with Notre-Dame-la-Grande and suggested a claim on the latter chapter’s privileges to hold the keys during Rogations.51 Indeed, the canons might even have sought to emphasize their church’s connection to the Virgin Mary, since Radegund had originally dedicated Sainte-Radegonde to her and the church was still known for its former title, NotreDame-Hors-les-Murs (Our Lady Outside the Walls). On Rogations Monday, when the rest of the town participated in processions that honored the Miracle, 48  The municipal manuscript’s description located the miracle in April 1200, but the English king John was, in fact, the Count of Poitou and held the town. Recognizing the anachronism of existing descriptions, Jean Bouchet shifted the date of the miracle to 1202 in order to place it, and the attacking English army, amidst the troubles between John and Philip Augustus, despite the fact that the English army never approached Poitiers. Bouchet’s version added several layers of detail. He reports that the English were willing to trust in the mayor’s clerk because he had an uncle under English control, and he specifies the payment offered for the servant’s treachery: Jean Bouchet, Les Annalles d’Acquitaine faicts et gestes en sommaires des roys de France et D’Angleterre et des pays de Naples et de Milan (Paris: Et sont imprimees & a vendre a Poictiers a la Boutique de Jacques Bouchet deuant les Cordeliers, 1524). It is possible that Bouchet inserted Radegund into the legend, since he was a particular devotee of hers and wrote a biography of Radegund: L’Histoire et cronicque de Clotaire. For Bouchet, see Henri Ouvré, Notice sur Jean Bouchet: poète et historien poitevin du XVI siècle (Poitiers: A. Dupré, 1858); Auguste Hamon, Un grand rhétoriqueur poitevin: Jean Bouchet 1476–1557? (Paris: H. Oudin, 1901); Jennifer Britnell, Jean Bouchet (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the University of Durham, 1986). 49  Bernstein, “Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers,” 329–31. 50  Most convincing is Lecointre-Dupont’s suggestion that Notre-Dame-la-Grande included a version very similar to that of the statute book in an earlier liturgical manuscript that has since been lost: Lecointre-Dupont, “Mémoire sur le miracle des clefs,” 95. 51  No records indicate that Sainte-Croix or Sainte-Radegonde claimed the privilege of holding Poitiers’ gate keys.

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Sainte-Radegonde and Sainte-Croix participated in a quieter ritual—the nuns’ procession to Sainte-Radegonde for a morning mass. But there are no other indications of a rivalry between Sainte-Radegonde and Notre-Dame-la-Grande. The canons of Sainte-Radegonde let several opportunities to place a claim on the Miracle pass: they did not mention it in their thirteenth- or fifteenth-century miracle collections, or in their community’s liturgical calendar as the canons of  Notre-Dame-la-Grande had.52 The canons of Notre-Dame-la-Grande had included reliefs of Mary, Hilary, and Radegund in their late-fourteenth- or earlyfifteenth-century church façade. Thus, reasons for excluding Radegund from the Miracle are unclear. Most likely authors wished to emphasize connections between Saint Hilary and the bishop of Poitiers and connect Notre-Dame-la-Grande, located in the town’s center, with the power centers at Saint-Hilarie-le-Grand in the west and the bishop’s cathedral to the east. Ignoring Radegund in this prominent retelling of the Miracle of the Keys might have alarmed the canons of Sainte-Radegonde, and made them eager to demonstrate their power and importance in Poitiers’ religious communities. Such an omission could have inspired them to create new banners representing their community in the town’s processions and to exaggerate their typical liturgical celebrations, demonstrating their organ’s beauty. Radegund’s absence from the statute book’s presentation of the Miracle and of Poitiers’ identity increased pressure on Radegund’s communities, as well as on their commemorations of the saint. They had used visual depictions of the saint to enhance their prestige in the thirteenth century; doing so again to communicate their chapter’s status on procession made sense. Isabeau made efforts, in her letter and testimony, to demonstrate support for Louis XI. The abbess used the personal history of her abbey’s foundress, as a Frankish queen, to argue that her community had “authority, dominance, and pre-eminence” over the canons of Sainte-Radegonde.53 She reminded the king that the church of Sainte-Radegonde was Sainte-Croix’s dependent, and that bulls and charters from the pope and previous kings had documented this relationship.54 Isabeau also emphasized the abbess’s power, noting that Radegund had selected Agnes as the abbey’s first abbess.55 Even Radegund, a queen and saint, had subordinated herself to the abbess’s authority, so of course the men could accept their subjection. Crucial for these arguments was the abbey’s ancient collection of ­archival documents preserving support and privileges from previous kings and a cache of manuscripts presenting the stories associated with Radegund. Isabeau also drew upon a legend known as the “Grand’Goule,” which claimed that Radegund had defeated a dragon in Sainte-Croix. The three banners SainteRadegonde’s canons carried formed the heart of the service Sainte-Croix compelled, and the banner known as “dragon” was the only banner named in the dispute’s documents.56 Isabeau and her witnesses repeatedly mentioned the “draco” banner 52  Largeault and Bodenstaff, “Miracles.” 53  ADV 2H1/1. 54  ADV 2H1/1, f. 6. 55  ADV 2H1/1, f. 4v. 56  We know less of the other two banners, although each probably bore some reference to the abbey’s most notable assets, the relic of the True Cross and Saint Radegund herself. Testimony from witnesses further explained that one of these banners was “of the color white” but we do not know for

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in their testimony, stressing the importance of her community’s dragon symbol for King Louis XI—a Valois king whose family had selected Saint Michael’s victory over a dragon as a sign of their dynasty’s power.57 Isabeau placed at the center of her complaint the detail that the canons had rejected orders to honor Sainte-Croix’s symbol of a saint’s power over a dragon to draw the king’s attention. The “dragon” banner referenced, but did not name, the Poitevin legend of the Grand’Goule, a winged serpent covered in scales and sporting a scorpion tail (Figure 30).58 According to Jean Bouchet, who provided the earliest extant account of the legend, the serpent lurked in Sainte-Croix’s cellars and fed on any nuns foolish enough to venture downstairs. Radegund used the relic of the True Cross’s power to deal with this pesky serpent: making the sign of the cross, she forced the beast out of the town and into the river, which put a stop to its snacking on her sisters.59 While the legend of the Grand’Goule as we know it did not appear in Radegund’s early vitae, two incidents Baudonivia described and an image from the nuns’ libellus were probably conflated and developed into this legend. The first portrayed Radegund expelling demons from her abbey through the sign of the cross and in the second she expelled a noisy night bird to demonstrate her power over animals.60 An image included in the eleventh-century libellus portrayed a demon Radegund expelled from a possessed woman as a serpent slithering out of her ear—an image not described in Fortunatus’s vita text (Figure 31). The legendary Grand’Goule may have been a concoction of these images and stories—a winged serpentine creature Radegund expelled through the sign of the cross for demonically troubling her nuns. The dragon that appeared on Sainte-Croix’s banner followed a wider use of serpents in the Rogation Day processions in Western France, as does the nuns’ required schedule for presenting symbols, displaying the banners alone on Tuesday and then including the relics on Wednesday.61 The True Cross relic may have taken certain what images they contained, if any: BMP A6 (426), 21, f. 5v. The inventories did not include any descriptions of banners and, unfortunately, the Huguenots destroyed the banners in the sixteenth century. For the effects of the Huguenot attack on Sainte-Radegonde, see DF 79; and de Fleury, Histoire de Sainte Radégonde, 349–60. 57  Robert Jean Knecht, The Valois: Kings of France, 1328–1589 (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), 5. 58 Today, Poitevins know the Grand’Goule—literally “Big Mouth”—best for the discotheque opposite the church of Sainte-Radegonde, or through the seventeenth-century statue the nuns commissioned. 59  It is not clear how early the story of the Grand’Goule was articulated; the first reference to the full story that I can find appears in the early sixteenth century, in Jean Bouchet’s history of Radegund: L’Histoire et cronique de Clotaire. 60  Baudonivia, 18 and19. 61 In his thirteenth-century Golden Legend, Jacobus de Voragine explained that townspeople believed that ringing church bells and carrying crosses during Rogations processions protected against evil spirits: 1:287–8. On Jacobus, see Alain Boureau, La Légende Dorée: Le système narratif de Jacques de Voragine (d. 1298) (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1984), 75. See also Ernest Cushing Richardson, Materials for a Life of Jacopo da Varagine: I. A Maker of the Italian Language (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1935). Jacobus claimed that this practice of using a dragon in processions was common in France. A Dominican, Jacobus attended both provincial and general chapter meetings for his order in Paris and Bordeaux, and it is possible he observed serpents paraded in French Rogation processions during these trips. See Richardson, Materials for a Life of Jacopo da Varagine, 25, 57–8.

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Figure 30.  Jean Gargot, Statue of the Grand’Goule, 1677. Collection des musées de Poitiers. © Musées de Poitiers/Christian Vignaud

the Dragon banner’s former position in Poitiers’ Wednesday procession, displaying Christ’s power over the serpent. By the fifteenth century there was some tradition associating a draco with Radegund’s cult. The serpent had become a crucial part of  Sainte-Croix’s Rogation Day observations. In 1458, the canons of SainteRadegonde even performed the mystery of Saint George, famously associated with a dragon, in the old marketplace. The banners fit into an ancient tradition of honoring the cross at Sainte-Croix that stretches back to the sixth century. Upon the arrival of the True Cross relic in Poitiers, Fortunatus composed a series of hymns on the cross as the Tree of Life, intended to be sung during the procession installing the cross in Sainte-Croix’s altar (see Chapter 2). One, Vexilla regis prodeunt, or “The banners of the King are flying,” connects banners, the relic, and processions. This hymn was well known throughout Christendom, and appears in Sainte-Croix’s liturgical manuscripts. Thus, when the abbess asserted the ancient tradition for her privileges she was calling out artifacts Radegund had left the abbey. If we return to the central issue of Isabeau de Couhé’s first complaint, that the canons carried banners representing their own church in addition to Sainte-Croix’s insignia despite her requirement that the men serve only the abbey, the dragon banner becomes a tool in this ongoing tension between the two communities. The abbey held several important relics, particularly the True Cross fragment, but the monastery’s claim to ancient power and prestige came from Radegund. Since the saint’s body was buried in Sainte-Radegonde’s crypt and outside the nuns’

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Figure 31.  Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, Ms 250 (136), f. 35r. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

direct control, it was difficult for the women to marshal processional imagery that drew a clear line from Radegund to the abbey without directing some of that power to the canons. Traditionally such empowering spillover was acceptable— despite occasional disputes, the relationship between the nuns and canons was supportive and complementary; what benefitted one reflected well on the other. But given the women’s reliance on the canons to represent them in these processions,

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a prominent symbol that depicted the abbey and asserted Radegund’s place in the women’s community was essential. Depicting the Grand’Goule on their banner accomplished that connection: Radegund had defeated the serpent at Sainte-Croix and her holy protection lived on at her abbey. The legend made no mention of Radegund’s holy relics or the church outside the walls. When the dragon banner was replaced with the relic of the True Cross in the Wednesday Rogation procession, it cast a spotlight on the town’s most significant relic, the cross, and its protectors, the nuns of Sainte-Croix. This image used the language of Rogations to recall the battle between civilized humanity and demonic wilderness, as well as their saint’s success in protecting the town’s boundaries all from the crucial location of SainteCroix. Thus the Grand’Goule legend presented Radegund as a protector of her communities and town at the very moment that the townspeople ignored her role in the Miracle of the Keys, and even in the absence of the physical women in the procession. While many Poitevin communities used dragons on Rogation Days to demonstrate Christ’s power and the symbol of his cross over evil, Sainte-Croix’s possession of a True Cross relic gave their dragon image particular force.62 Carrying a serpent through the streets and fields of a town on the days preceding the Ascension was a potent spectacle. The serpent communicated visually the nuns’ connection to Saint Radegund, their claims on the canons’ service, and the abbey’s influential role in the town community. The Grand’Goule demonstrated the power SainteCroix’s abbess wielded within their abbey, displayed that power on Poitiers’ city streets, and demonstrated an affinity between the symbolic power of the abbess and that of the king. By arguing that the abbey’s “subject” had refused to honor their superior’s dragon symbol, Isabeau described a threat sure to resonate with King Louis’s recent experience of rebellion. When Isabeau pointed to her abbey’s traditional superiority and the support her predecessors had received from the papacy, she appealed to the king and his officials. Louis XI apparently received the nuns’ letter well, as he appointed his seneschal to launch an inquest. Louis de Crussol, the seneschal of Poitou, was Louis XI’s boyhood friend and frequent companion. By 1472, when his final report was made, Louis de Crussol was one of the few remaining friends the king maintained from his youth, and one who knew well the king’s hatred of disobedience, disloyalty, or treachery. As the investigation carried on, Isabeau’s support for the king and respect for his effort to expand the Pragmatic Sanction’s notion of his absolutist powers over the Gallican Church also challenged the growing conciliarism of the Parlement of Paris, which reached its fullest expression of his reign in his 1472 canceling of the 1438 Pragmatic Sanction and his negotations with Sixtus IV.63 The nuns’ complaints were pitched perfectly for both men’s 62  Yves Bourdonneau, Si Poitiers . . . vous était contée: vingt siècles de légendes et de chroniques du Poitou recueillies (Poitiers: Diffusion Poitevine, 1972); Michel Morin and Nicole Morin, “Le Bestiaire Legendaire Poitevin,” in Bestiaire Poitevin: expression traditionnelle expression contemporaine (Prahecq: UPCP, 1982). 63 Lange, The First French Reformation, 59; Paul Ourliac, “Le concordat de 1472: Étude sur les rapports de Louis XI et Sixte IV,” in Études d’histoire du droit médiéval (Paris, 1979), 399–489.

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interests. Louis de Crussol found the nuns’ arguments persuasive. Given his close and continued association with Louis XI, we might assume that he did so with the king’s support and that Isabeau’s strategy succeeded. C H A N G I N G S T R AT E G I E S While the nuns’ strategy in this dispute was to appeal—in their most appealing way possible—to royal support, the canons pursued the same strategy of resistance they had used in the past: they avoided confrontation with the women. Since the nuns had proven adept at negotiating their challenges, the canons sidestepped the nuns’ demands: during the Rogation Day processions, the canons only revealed SainteRadegonde’s own new banners after they had passed outside the nuns’ view, in a street beyond the abbey.64 The canons resisted the abbess’s requirements, although passively and out of sight. Although they flouted the nuns’ requirement that the chapter carry only the abbey’s insignia, the canons still respected the abbess’s superiority: they gave their new banners representing Sainte-Radegonde, in their words, “the place most eminent after that of the abbey.”65 The canons argued that their community should have a grander role in the public representations of Radegund’s cult, but still one that was subordinate to the abbey. This is consistent with earlier disputes, in which the canons resisted privileges that exalted the abbey over Sainte-Radegonde, but not the abbess’s claims to service altogether. With the entrance dispute, again the men challenged the abbess indirectly. Rather than confronting the nuns or refusing to give over the church outright, the men passively resisted by lengthening their prayers and repeating them more than the women claimed was customary. By extending their matins service, the canons prolonged the moment at which they were required to turn their choir and great altar over to the women, without overtly denying them access. Knowing that the women would find it difficult to interrupt the liturgy, the canons challenged the authority of the waiting abbess, but only indirectly. Even when challenged, the men denied that their resistance was intended: while the abbess asserted they had extended matins to keep the nuns from saying their mass, the canons countered that they had lengthened the office for the honor of the feast.66 The canons never asserted superiority over the abbess or attempted to dominate her; they advocated autonomy or increased representation for their community. Their approach might have been a ploy designed to exert some power for their community, but they recognized that this tactic of resistance had its limitations. While the abbess’s authority was bolstered by constant support from external officials, the canons received repeated orders to submit—orders that were increasingly 64  ADV 2H1/1, f. 15 and 15v. The abbey’s chaplains acted as the abbess’s eyes and ears, complaining that the canons had introduced new banners, and forced them to hand over the châsses and reliquaries. The chaplains then took the holy objects back to the abbey. 65  “et la firent mectre en l’eminant lieu apres celle de lad. abbaye”: ADV 2H1/1, f. 15. Emphasis mine. 66  ADV 2H1/1, f. 16.

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difficult to ignore when they came from the king and his local armed officials. The men needed to find another tactic. During the seneschal’s investigations, the canons’ strategies shifted. The men became aggressive with an attack on the legitimacy of female authority unprecedented in these two communities’ history. In their response to the seneschal, as noted above, the canons declared that they did not need to observe the abbess’s repeated claims to authority over them, since “[i]t is against nature that men should be subject to a woman, at least it isn’t decent or proper.”67 The canons suddenly questioned whether the abbess could claim any authority over the chapter because of her sex. This was a major departure even from the original events in 1466, when the canons had continued to respect the abbess’s superiority, even as they asserted a larger role for their chapter by carrying Sainte-Radegonde’s banners. Although this was a new claim from these canons, it was hardly an innovative statement in 1466. The canons were asserting well-accepted clerical notions about the place of women in the Church. A late medieval rhetoric of misogyny asserted that women were naturally incapable of wielding power because women were emotional, fearful, subject to temptation, and lacking mental capacity, all characteristics that disqualified them from political office. This discourse had ancient witnesses, such as Aristotle and Saint Paul, but it was also popular with late medieval theologians and political theorists.68 In 1435 Jean Juvénal des Ursins, whose brother Jacques served as the bishop of Poitiers from 1449 to 1457, argued in an allegorical depiction of France that Given that it is a manly office to be king of France, a woman may neither be king nor possess me, since women are barred from all virile offices. And it appears, everything considered, that to maintain that a woman by succession or otherwise might come to my crown is as great an error as asserting that a woman could be dean of a cathedral church—I would not dare to say pope or bishop. . . . One would not suffer a woman to be a bailiff or provost, which are offices of justice.69

Proponents used anti-feminine claims to exclude women from positions of ­authority—such as ruling France—as well as from powerful positions in the church—such as the priesthood or public preaching. 67  “C’est contre nature que hommes soient subgietz à femme, aut moins qu’il n’est décent ne convenable”: ADV 2H1/1, f. 16v. This may be a reference to a scholastic commentary on Paul. The Université de Poitiers was founded in 1432 and the archival record demonstrates that Université members and the canons of Sainte-Radegonde came into a great deal of contact. See P.  Boissonnade, Histoire de l’Université de Poitiers passé et present (1432–1932) (Poitiers: Imprimerie moderne, 1932). In The Book of the City of Ladies (London: Penguin, 1999), Christine de Pisan ponders, “wasn’t it Cicero who said that man should not be subject to woman and that he who did so abased himself because it is wrong to be subject to one who is your inferior?” (p. 23). 68  The presence of this misogynist discourse is acknowledged even by scholars who have emphasized the range of perspectives in late medieval Europe. See Jacqueline Murray, “Thinking about Gender: The Diversity of Medieval Perspectives,” in Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean, eds., Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 1–26; Bynum, “. . . And Woman His Humanity”; Blamires, The Case for Women. 69  Quoted in Lange, The First French Reformation, 4; Écrits politiques de Jean Juvénal des Ursins (C. Klincksieck,1978), vol. 1.

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Christine de Pisan, Peter Abelard, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jean Gerson, and Jean La Fèvre, among others, challenged this anti-feminine rhetoric. These authors defended women and created an alternative, pro-feminine discourse by pointing to women’s strength, loyalty, role in bearing and nourishing children, and ability to manage homes. This “case for women” suggested that it was dishonorable to argue an anti-feminine rhetoric, which disrespected the sacrifices women had made for men.70 Women such as Hildegard of Bingen—an important abbess herself—had previously demonstrated that even monastic obedience did not prohibit a woman from ruling over her community, or over men. As Prudence Allen has shown, Hildegard believed that “[o]bedience was not forced by nature, but practiced by choice. . . . it would happen that, in certain circumstances, the woman would rule and the man obey.”71 Christine de Pisan also pointed to the many extraordinary women, especially queens such as Blanche of Castile, who had wielded extensive political authority with success, an impossible feat if women were truly mentally or emotionally incompetent.72 Although this substantial profeminine rhetoric existed, Isabeau did not choose to employ its arguments in responding to the canons, because it was not necessary. Instead, Isabeau declared that, “[w]oman as woman is naturally subject to man as man by reason of sex; nevertheless man can be subject to woman not as woman but by reason of lordship, office, power, and authority.”73 Isabeau agreed with the canons’ position that the natural hierarchy of the sexes placed women under men, but she refused to accept that this “natural order” undermined her own authority. Rather, she placed the power of office and lordship above nature in determining hierarchies of authority. With this argument, Isabeau connected to another branch of rhetoric regarding women and public authority visible in the debate over Salic Law. Fifteenth-century Valois political theorists employed this ancient law, in Craig Taylor’s description, as a “postfactum justification for the exclusion of women from the royal succession” in order to stop women from claiming positions of authority or passing on claims to their children.74 Their purpose was to invalidate the claims of English kings who used their female Plantagenet or French royal ancestors to promote a claim to the 70 Blamires, The Case for Women, 58–61. 71  Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution Vol. II: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250–1500 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 312. 72  Blanche was also likely referenced by the canons in their church decoration, showing how much the men had reversed their argument in 1472. de Pisan, The Book of the City of Ladies. As Tracy Adams has shown, de Pisan’s book might have been even more political than previously understood, championing Isabeau of Bavaria as a successful, competent regent appointed by her husband: “Notions of Late Medieval Queenship: Christine de Pizan’s Isabeau of Bavaria,” in Anne Cruz and Mihoko Suzuku, eds., The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1700 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 13–29. See also Tracy Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 73  “[N]aturaliter racione sexus mulier, ut mulier, homini, ut homo, subiciatur, nichilominus homo mulieri non ut mulierii sed racione dominii, officii, potestatis et auctoritatis, potest subici”: ADV 2H1/1, f. 16v. 74  Craig Taylor, “The Salic Law, French Queenship, and the Defense of Women in the Late Middle Ages,” French Historical Studies 29 (2006): 543–64, citation on p. 543.

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French crown during the Hundred Years War. As Taylor has shown, this move toward the Salic Law shifted the debate over gender in French political theory. While previous theorists had argued, like the canons, that women were naturally excluded from positions of authority because of their weakness, incompetence, or other incapacity, the Salic Law provided a simple legal exclusion that obviated the need to reference any inherent or natural failing in women. This move was necessary after a series of successful female regents had powerfully steered France through crisis—women such as Blanche of Castile, Isabeau of Bavaria or, later, Louise of Savoy. The Salic Law could allow French monarchs to value their female relatives’ contributions, while also undermining the claim that such women could rule in their own name or bestow a claim to rule on their children. Thus, the Plantagenet claim could be neutralized without any reference to a misogynist discourse that dishonored the king’s own relatives. Indeed, any misogyny ­arising from this argument was, in Tyler Lange’s words, “the consequence of a constitutional position” rather than inherent to the concept.75 As a result, that antifeminine rhetoric so popular earlier in the century fell out of fashion with Valois political theorists. Isabeau de Couhé had a keen understanding of these competing discourses regarding women’s political authority. While the Valois’ use of the Salic Law prohibited secular women from asserting a claim to political office in their own name, women’s capacity for exercising the duties of that office was recognized and supported. Thus Isabeau could demand respect for the authority she and her predecessors had wielded successfully, because her rights were so well documented, like the ancient tradition and custom the French monarchy had emphasized for itself, proving the nuns’ primary strategy’s power. There was no Salic Law barring abbesses from wielding authority, and no legitimate dismissal of women’s competence for guiding their abbeys in these theories. When the canons drew upon a well-established misogynist discourse to argue that their subjection to a woman went against nature, they failed to grasp this shift in Valois political ideology. By agreeing that women were naturally subordinate to men, Isabeau reinforced the basic idea that men ruled, which still underpinned the Salic Law. But she disagreed that any natural hierarchy undermined her claim to authority, as there was no inherent incapacity that prevented her from ruling. Isabeau did not claim authority because she was a woman, but because of her office. Her sex was no limitation on that claim and no restriction on her office, and Isabeau depicted it as irrelevant. The seneschal’s support for her argument demonstrated the effectiveness of this rhetoric and extended Valois support to women’s monastic authority. Isabeau was thus effective in gaining for Sainte-Croix the continued support of the French monarchy and its officials, who commanded the canons of Sainte-Radegonde to obey her. Given the fact that the abbess did not later complain about this issue, we might assume that the men did submit.

75 Lange, The First French Reformation, 6.

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C O N C LU S I O N S While the abbey of Sainte-Croix and chapter of canons of Sainte-Radegonde were tightly intertwined communities with generally pleasant relations, these moments of tension demonstrate a deep-seated power struggle. Competition between the two groups had high stakes, in terms of patronage and privileges. The women relied on the canons’ willingness to serve in order to participate in important religious celebrations but these services increasingly troubled the canons. By refusing to serve the abbey, the canons of Sainte-Radegonde may have attempted, like the canons of Saint-Martin in Tours, to “circumscribe the rituals that would have symbolized their own hierarchical subordination” just as the abbess pushed to maintain the rituals that demonstrated her community’s hierarchical superiority over them.76 Because of the abbey’s technical claustration, the canons’ refusal to carry banners in processions or to open Sainte-Radegonde’s choir for the nuns’ procession meant the women could diminish or even disappear from Poitiers’ public celebrations. But Sainte-Radegonde’s canons were reluctant to subject themselves to the abbess any longer because doing so would jeopardize their attempts to craft a larger role in Poitiers’ religious community.77 The men seemed eager to include their chapter in the town’s public representations, hence their innovation with the banners in 1466. And they sought to limit visible articulations of the abbess’s control by denying her entry to the church of Sainte-Radegonde on the saint’s feast day. Sainte-Radegonde’s status was on the rise: they had recently installed a new organ, constructed a new portal for their tower-porch, received an expensive tapestry, and benefitted from their church’s decoration program that asserted even greater control over Radegund’s relics and cult. The men believed they were in a position of strength, a good time to introduce new banners.78 This was also the perfect moment to challenge the abbess since the Pragmatic Sanction had limited SainteCroix’s access to their traditional ally, the pope. The canons turned toward a new strategy and the misogynist rhetoric at this time because they had a new opportunity, with a secular arbiter instead of a papal agent, and they hoped this royal official would ally with the men to undermine the abbess’s traditional assertions of superiority. They had some reason to expect this, given their own success in connecting to royal patrons in the thirteenth century. Moreover, the canons witnessed neighboring canons’ positions rising without them, such as with Notre-Dame-la-Grande’s representation of the Miracle of the Keys that threatened Sainte-Radegonde by omitting Radegund as Poitiers’ holy protector. The example of the chapter of Saint-Pierre-le-Puellier’s rejection of La Trinité’s abbess’s claims to power over that chapter and the canons’ ability to limit the privileges she received may have proven an intriguing local model. The antifeminine rhetoric popular in fifteenth-century discourses of power, combined with these real demonstrations of increased status for Sainte-Radegonde, must have made the abbess’s reminders that Sainte-Radegonde was subject to her authority 76 Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, 46. 77 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 52–8. 78  For the windows, see ADV G1529, f. 83; and for the tapestry, ADV G1581, f. 10v.

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frustrating. The canons’ aggressive, anti-feminine gambit drew on popular discourses, which the canons hoped would be effective in gaining them greater autonomy and respect. The canons’ use of such a strategy and rhetoric also demonstrates that they were clever, aware, and confident in crafting an argument to persuade their audience. Male communities expected, and were expected, to monitor female abbeys that had once exercised great authority over their neighboring communities.79 Female control over male monasteries and chapters affiliated with their own abbeys, either as collegial chapters or double monasteries headed by an abbess, was becoming less acceptable, according new autonomy to these formerly subject male communities. Unfortunately for the chapter of Sainte-Radegonde, however, the canons were not as sensitive to the implications of current French political theory as Sainte-Croix’s abbess was. Just as the canons reached out for a discourse that would aid them in their competition, so did the nuns. That the women succeeded shows their competence, the extent of their support, and that the misogynist rhetoric was not as compelling to officials as it has been portrayed. Clerics had argued that women should have limited authority in the Church—just as Periculoso argued that women should be cloistered.80 In practice, however, women were able to negotiate such rhetoric in ways that enabled them to continue exercising authority with ecclesiastical and royal officials’ full support. While the canons asserted that authority was masculine, the abbess of Sainte-Croix retorted that such an understanding of superiority did not bar the female sex from holding positions of authority.81 Connecting their position to anti-feminine rhetoric was probably the best argument that SainteRadegonde’s canons could have made at the time. The men were outmatched, however, by Isabeau de Couhé, her archive, and her agents, all of whom had tradition and the king’s political theorists on their side.

79 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 67–74, 84–5. 80  See Blamires, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended for some prominent examples. 81  Isabeau felt no need to contest misogynist rhetoric, as that would engage her in a likely fruitless and demeaning debate, but nor did she think that sexist notions rewrote existing, traditional, and well-documented hierarchies of authority. She may have, as Caroline Walker Bynum has suggested for medieval holy women, identified first as a human—in this case a human office holder—than as a woman limited by misogynist concerns. Bynum, “. . . And Woman His Humanity,” 167.

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7 Contested Elections and Reform The monastery’s abbesses built networks of secular and ecclesiastical officials with careful presentations of Saint Radegund’s images, legends, and miracle tales, as discussed in previous chapters. A new abbess’s election created another opportunity to win external support, or to negotiate investments from eager patrons. Most of Sainte-Croix’s nuns came from Poitou’s local nobility and provided the abbey with powerful supporters and large properties around Poitiers (see Map 4).1 Selecting abbesses from these locals, from the royal family, or from other prominent monasteries helped ensure that the king, the pope, and local landholders remained friendly supporters for the nuns when they faced trouble. Maintaining the abbey’s estates was one of the abbess’s primary duties; SainteCroix’s abbesses appear in charters as vigilant defenders of the abbey’s property and privileges. The abbess governed a vast network of holdings, commanding fealty from vassals as far as 60km outside of Poitiers. She also held the right to exact justice, and collect related fees, in the area of Poitiers surrounding Sainte-Croix as well as in parishes beyond the city walls, such as Saint-Romain and Vellèches. The abbacy required a strong personality who could keep order in her house, keep her vassals in line, keep officials interested but distant, and keep greedy neighbors at bay.2 Both Radegund and Agnes had served these roles when Sainte-Croix was first founded, but after that first generation responsibility fell solely on the abbess’s shoulders. Within the monastery the abbess tended to the spiritual and temporal needs of her community. She shared this enormous task with her officers, such as the prioress or the cellerer, but ultimate responsibility for her community’s welfare lay with the abbess. She was the force for fiscal stability, obedience, discipline, and spiritual purity. The abbess was more than her community’s leader or protector: she was its living symbol. She represented her monastery and its reputation as SainteCroix negotiated with its neighbors. Selecting an appropriate abbess was a delicate process because her role was so public. Elections were an intensely controversial subject throughout Medieval Europe, particularly in and after the eleventh century. Religious institutions throughout Christendom struggled to assert their rights to free elections in the face of secular involvement, such as during the Investiture Controversy, or in competition 1  As the abbey’s prioress described the community in a 1509 complaint about the abbess: “. . . une belle et notable abbaye . . . en laquelle a grand nombre de religieuses nobles et de noble lignee de bonnes et grandes maisons . . .”: ADV 2H1/2 1509 f. 1. 2  Penelope Johnson argued that an abbess must work hard to protect her institution’s property: Equal in Monastic Profession, 167–9.

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with other religious figures, such as the bishop who sought to impose episcopal oversight over all communities in his diocese, or rival institutions who claimed privileges in sister or subordinate groups. As part of this Europe-wide controversy over election rights and procedures, the nuns of Sainte-Croix ferociously protected their right to elect their superiors without interference. Sainte-Croix was a prize many families wanted their relatives to lead. The very factors that made Sainte-Croix’s abbesses so successful at maintaining authority over the years—the abbey’s large estates, extensive network of supporters, ancient history, connection to Radegund and her tradition of unfettered female leadership, extensive cultural resources with the saint’s life—are the very ones that made the abbacy so attractive. Many local families, and some royal ones, were eager to have their relatives control such an influential abbey. While a new abbess’s election remained in the hands of the nuns at Sainte-Croix, a great many eyes—and occasionally some grasping hands—were set on the community while they made their choice. For the most part the transition between abbesses went smoothly, but extant records show that at least five abbesses over the nine hundred years of this study (590–1520) faced significant personal attacks during their election or shortly thereafter. The challenges to Abbess Leubovera and Abbess Rothrude have already been discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, respectively; this chapter examines issues abbesses faced between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The circumstances in which the abbatial seat came open, the method of voting, and the procedures for arbitration and confirmation all shaped the possibilities for abuse and factionalist disputes among the nuns, or interference from outsiders. Previous chapters have focused on challenges to the abbess’s authority from external rivals; this chapter examines challenges to the exercise of her authority from within her community. Over this millennium several patterns emerge both in the ways that nuns of Sainte-Croix challenged their abbess or her election, and in the strategies abbesses or abbatial candidates used to maintain their position. As we have seen in other conflicts over jurisdiction, representation, and space, the women of Sainte-Croix were knowledgable about their community’s history, and drew useful lessons from previous incidents. As time passed, nuns unhappy with their abbess drew upon successful strategies for challenging her authority that they could observe in incidents from the past. Candidates and their opponents used Sainte-Croix’s archive of documented privileges, rights, and friendships to secure support against rival nuns. The network of supporters that had assisted the abbess in combating external threats to her authority could also be deployed against the abbess when her own community challenged her. Calling on their broader networks for support, especially from kings, bishops, and popes, pointing to a particular sort of failing in the abbess’s background, and stressing the power of tradition and properly executed procedure as Clotild and Basina had done in 590, were effective, regularly relied upon strategies for these women, across hundreds of years. The nuns crafted their complaints to draw the attention of external authorities and demand investigation of their alleged oppressors (whether the abbess, her rival, or a meddlesome official). Complaints of mismanagement, immorality, and misconduct most successfully inspired outsiders to intervene—possibly by vacating

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an improper election or imposing sanctions on a properly elected abbess. Complaining nuns at Sainte-Croix proved clever plaintiffs, with excellent legal advisors and a keen knowledge of their predecessors’ efforts to dispose of undesirable abbesses. The grievances the nuns cited, and the investigations into their charges, had an enormous impact on the cult, on Poitiers, and on the larger networks of a­ ssociations surrounding Sainte-Croix. Even baseless accusations concerning the financial competence and moral probity of a female superior could threaten an abbess. Ultimately, however, a proper election brought a strong mandate and granted an abbess a great deal of support from her allies, even in the face of serious accusations from her sisters. Such an abbess was almost impossible to remove from office until the sixteenth century, when the French monarchy’s power over monasteries expanded. This chapter describes the election process at Sainte-Croix from vacancy to confirmation with a focus on three cases that illustrate the high stakes for selecting a new superior: Isabelle de Marmande’s thirteenth-century election, Jeanne de Couhé’s 1491 election, and her niece Marie Berland’s 1512 election. The disputes eventually facilitated a dramatic power shift from the nuns’ capable hands into the grasping reach of the French monarchy and its relatives. They also reveal deeper issues within the abbey or pressing on the nuns. Many of these cases stretched out fingers far beyond an election, and the nuns’ use of courts and external support networks was only one facet of their attempts at resolving disputes, but the one that left behind the clearest record. ISABELLE As part of his 1192 decision to settle the dispute between Sainte-Croix and SainteRadegonde, discussed in Chapter 4, Legate Octavian had established that election arbiters should come from local religious communities familiar with the nuns, and guaranteed that the prior of Sainte-Radegonde would have a role in any arbitration.3 This new process was tested during the 1284 abbatial election at Sainte-Croix, when two women sharing the name Isabelle—Isabelle de Marmande, a nun of Sainte-Croix from an important local family, and Isabelle, prioress of the Fontevrist priory of La Puye—fought for the abbatial office. This was already a tense time for Sainte-Croix because a series of abbatial vacancies had left the monastery in a weakened position, forcing Pope Clement IV (1265–8) to appoint a special protector in 1265.4 Sainte-Croix’s abbacy usually became open only with the sitting abbess’s death, and an election followed the funeral; retirements were rare, probably because

3  DF 5, 605–9. 4  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 47ff., 279–81, 69, 261–2. Clement also limited the abbey’s size to fifty. Whether this represents a reduction in the number of nuns the abbey’s resources could support or a more realistic assessment of its size is difficult to know, but the fact that the abbey was also purchasing new properties during this same time suggests that they were not in financial hardship.

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they led to confusion.5 A vacancy was a dangerous time for the abbey, and ­prioresses—whose tasks included setting the election—usually tried to make them as brief as possible by holding the election soon after the abbess’s death. Between the 1240s and the 1260s abbesses struggled to maintain the abbey’s possessions from land-hungry noblemen, including the Count of Poitou.6 As Penelope Johnson has noted, “a convent superior had to have a strong constitution when defending her institution’s rights,” and a long tenure as abbess certainly helped as did class status and a powerful family.7 Sainte-Croix finally found strong leadership and long tenure again under Abbess Jeanne de La Vergne, who worked hard to repair damage resulting from the vacancies and protect the abbey’s wealth. She was largely successful during her long years of good government, from 1269 to 1284, but her resignation in 1284 threatened to throw the abbey back into the dangerous and vulnerable position it had occupied between the 1240s and 1260s.8 For one thing, the financial implications of maintaining a retired abbess could compromise the abbey’s wealth. Jeanne had begun to divert funds for her retirement as early as 1278 by attaching a benefice to herself and stipulating that it would remain in her use even if she resigned her office.9 However the abbatial seat became open, a new abbess’s selection required an election according to the Rule and to canon law. Both the RC and RB offer limited details regarding superiors’ election. Each required the community to elect the abbess, and to choose a candidate based on merit and wisdom rather than on s­ tatus. The Rules contain an important difference: Caesarius required the community to elect their abbess unanimously, while Benedict allowed a “wiser” minority to elect an abbess when the entire community was unable to reach a unanimous decision.10 Benedict also allowed external interference by empowering the bishop to overturn elections of inappropriate candidates. In the thirteenth century the Fourth Lateran Council clarified monastic election procedure, establishing three possible methods for electing a new abbess: unanimous public election by all the community’s eligible members; election by ballot (scrutinum)—a process in which three selected members collected the nuns’ votes; and the designation of some “confidential persons” to represent the community and choose a new abbess.11 The council’s goals in establishing these three methods 5 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 172 about pensions and retirement. 6  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 84–8, 259–60; and ADV 2H1/1. 7 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 168. 8  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 261–77. On abbatial resignations, see Dom Jacques Hourlier, L’Age classique: 1140–1378—Les Religieux, ed. Gabriel Le Bras (Saint-Amand-Montrond: Éditions Cujas, 1971), 321. 9  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 272–4, and 277–9. See Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 172, about pensions and retirement. 10  RC, 61; and RB, 64. When the nuns sought assistance in Rothrude’s 860 election, they had tried and failed to elect a candidate unanimously, suggesting they were still using the RC. See discussion in Chapter 3. 11  Histoire des conciles oecuméniques, ed. Raymonde Foreville (Paris: Fayard, 2007), 4:24. Even with this clarification, a great many interpretations in procedure were possible. See Jean Gaudemet, Les Elections dans l’eglise latine des origines au XVIe Siecle (Paris: Editions Fernand Lanore, 1979), 293–4; and Parisse, Les Nonnes au Moyen Age, 116–17.

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were to protect the monastic right to free elections, avoid external influence, and prevent disputed elections that led to turmoil in the community.12 The Council required the local bishop to confirm elections of monastic superiors in his diocese and to investigate the “process and circumstances of the election as well as the person of the elected” since “the one unworthily promoted is to be removed, but the one also who furthered such promotion (by confirmation) is to be punished.”13 The Council also limited lay officials’ influence on the elections of ecclesiastical officers. Canon 25 prohibited those who gained their office through secular officials from holding the position.14 The focus was on ensuring that procedure was followed, and that the community was free to select their own superior wisely. These clarified election procedures did not result in smooth abbatial transitions at Sainte-Croix, however. While surviving documents offer few details for the 1284 election, the fact that the voting split between two candidates suggests that the nuns opted either to vote by scrutin and were unable to reach a majority, or that they had attempted to select a candidate unanimously and failed. Only after they were unable to elect an abbess on their own did the women turn to an external group of “confidential persons” to arbitrate the election for them. Arbiters included the prior of Sainte-Radegonde and the abbot of Notre-Dame-la-Grande, who ruled for Isabelle de La Puye, the candidate Sainte-Croix’s prioress Aénor also supported. Unlike earlier cases, the king and the bishop of Poitiers had no role in the arbitration process now that it was better defined. After arbiters selected Isabelle de La Puye in 1284 they presented the new abbess to Gauthier de Bruges (bishop of Poitiers 1279–1306), for confirmation.15 While the community had the right to elect its own superior freely and install the new abbess in her choir stall, according to canon law the newly elected abbess’s position was not official until confirmed by the bishop. During the confirmation ceremony, a rich liturgical event, the bishop blessed and consecrated the new abbess.16 Sainte-Croix’s customary mentions a 12 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 169. A desire to protect these rights stretched back to at least Gregory I. See Henri Lévy-Bruhl, Les Élections Abbatiales en France: I. Époque Franque (Paris: Librairie Arthur Rousseau, 1913), 177ff. Abbeys did not consistently draw on the same method in each election. Even elections determined by scrutin could be contested, as happened in 1434 at the abbey of Saint-Georges de Rennes. See Laura Mellinger, “Politics in the Convent: The Election of a Fifteenth-Century Abbess,” Church History 63, no. 4 (1994): 529–40. Since scrutin required the tallying and recording of votes, if the nuns of Sainte-Croix voted by scrutiny in 1284 the documents have been lost. 13  Histoire des conciles oecuméniques, ed. Foreville, 4:26. 14  Histoire des conciles oecuméniques, ed. Foreville, 4:25. 15 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 56. Gauthier represented a period of difficulty in Poitiers’ episcopacy. Pope Nicholas III had imposed him after an eight-year vacancy that resulted from an election dispute in the cathedral chapter. The chapter had split between two members, Raoul and Jean. Pope Nicholas overlooked them both to select the great scholar Gauthier. This was not a smooth transition even then, as Gauthier was opposed by royal officials and Bertrand de Got, at the time archbishop of Bordeaux, but soon to become Pope Clement V. 16  For text of Benediction, see “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 73. On benedictions, see Hourlier, L’Age classique, 324. For a description of a benediction at Fontevraud, see Suzanne Tunc, “De l’élection des abbesses de Fontevraud à leur nomination par le Roi,” in Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’Ouest (Anjou, Maine, Touraine) 99, no. 3 (1992): 78–83, 205–13. Also see Johnson for a discussion of an election and benediction at la Trinité in Poitiers: Equal in Monastic Profession, 170.

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benediction Gauthier offered for Isabellis nunc ordinanda abbatissa.17 Typically, the abbess and the nuns would take oaths, the abbess promising to protect the abbey’s wealth, to guide the community according to tradition, and to maintain the nuns under her care, while the nuns swore to obey their new abbess.18 These oaths bound the community together in mutual obligations; it was for failing in any of the categories of her oath that an abbess of Sainte-Croix faced a complaint from her house. All the nuns did not accept the arbiters’ decision, however. Isabelle de Marmande’s supporters, led by nuns of Sainte-Croix Marguerite and Alice, petitioned Pope Honorius IV for assistance and he ordered an investigation in 1287.19 This investigation continued for some time, with Pope Boniface VIII continuing it in 1298, giving his representative power to vacate Isabelle’s election and appoint a new abbess if he found merit in the charges against her.20 These charges included complaints that Isabelle de La Puye had won with a vote from an excommunicate nun, a procedural violation since all of the community was barred from association with an excommunicate. Nuns claimed that an unspecified “secular power” had imposed Isabelle on Sainte-Croix.21 The king, Philippe le Bel, probably this “secular power,” gave Isabelle de La Puye wood from his forest, a gift that reduced in scale if she was no longer the community’s head.22 They alleged that she had a defect of birth (natalium defectum), suggesting that she was illegitimate, a bar to the abbacy.23 17  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 73. Unfortunately the short text of the benediction is undated and does not specify which Isabelle was being referred to, or the details of the celebration. Here I disagree with Robert Favreau, who argues that the customary’s benediction refers to Isabelle de Marmande sometime around 1300, after Boniface’s letter. He bases this analysis on the dating of documents that follow the benediction in the customary. These actually indicate, however, that the benediction must have been included prior to 1295. There is no other evidence to suggest that this benediction took place any later than 1287: Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 137. 18 Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 170. 19  Maurice Prou, Les Registres d’Honorius IV publiées d’après le manuscrit des archives du Vatican (Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1888), 763 (February 9, 1287). 20 Prou, Les Registres d’Honorius IV; and Georges Digard, Les Registres de Boniface VIII: recueil des bulles de ce pape publiées ou analysées d’après les manuscrits originaux des archives du Vatican, vol. 2 (Paris: Boccard, 1904), 2597 (March 21, 1298). This is the same year that Boniface issued Periculoso, a time when he was interested in imposing order and clarity on female monasteries. Boniface had elsewhere been clear that he preferred unanimous elections for the superiors of female communities in order to prevent disputed elections such as this one: see Mellinger, “Politics in the Convent,” 532; and Hourlier, L’Age classique, 318. Indeed, Boniface began by vacating the election of Isabelle de Marmande and appointing a cardinal to investigate the crimes alleged against Isabelle de La Puye. Charters from Sainte-Croix between 1298 and 1320 describe “Isabelle” as abbess, but there is no way to know which Isabelle. Since there is no further extant correspondence between the pope and Sainte-Croix, however, it may be safe to assume that the charges against Isabelle de La Puye were dropped. 21 Digard, Les registres de Boniface VIII: “denique quod se fecisset in abbatissam monasterii Sancte Crucis intrudi per potentiam secularem.” Even papal involvement in elections at this time could threaten the community’s rights, as when Clement V imposed his relative on Saint-Maixent or Jean XXII pressed a Cluniac onto Montierneuf: Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 59. 22  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 280–1. 23  Unfortunately, we do not know the identity of this nun or how Isabelle answered the charge, except that it was dismissed. It did, however, draw enough suspicion to continue the papal investigation. Illegitimacy was not forbidden by the Rule, but Pascal II (1099–1118) had declared illegitimacy a bar to ordination at the Council of Poitiers in 1099, and perhaps others saw it as a bar to monastic

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Marguerite and Alice also alleged that the bishop of Noyon had passed Isabelle over for the abbacy of a monastery in Compiègne, in northern France, as a result of her dissolute life and for “wasting the wealth” (“propter . . . dilapidationem bonorum”) of that monastery.24 Since Isabelle had destroyed another monastery’s wealth, the women argued, she should not be entrusted with the care of Sainte-Croix. Papal investigators found no merit in the charges. Marguerite and Alice complained that Isabelle de La Puye not only lived a dissolute life personally, but that she encouraged licentiousness in others.25 She had, they claimed, introduced dishonorable morals into Fontevraud and then encouraged the nuns under her authority at the priory of La Puye to follow in her dissolute ways.26 They did not specify what crimes and sins they feared Isabelle might encourage in the community at SainteCroix, and no later allegations of wrongdoing survive. It seems the papal agents found no validity in the nuns’ claims: no action was  taken against Isabelle de La Puye, who remained abbess, and Isabelle de Marmande became abbess upon La Puye’s death. We know definitively that Isabelle de Marmande acted as abbess of Sainte-Croix between 1320 and 1329. This Isabelle must have been fairly young in 1284—perhaps too young for the pope, the arbitrators, the bishop of Poitiers, or Prioress Aénor to support as a suitable abbess, even if the nuns railed against an external candidate.27

office as well: RB, 64. On this understanding of “natalium defectum” as bastardy, see Innocent III, Epistolae 8 (PL 216, 978); and Honorius III, Epistolae 14 (PL 216, 984). A sixteenth-century commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict by Edmund Martene also suggests that “natalium defectum” could be grounds for dismissing a monastic from the community: “Quod si quis defectum natalium patiens, vel fallaciter recipientis dissimulatione receptus fuerit, a visitatore, quam citius hoc eidem innotuerit, expellatur; et abbas in hoc delinquens per patrem abbatem vel visitatorem citetur ad capitulum generale”: PL 66, 807. We know that bishop of Poitiers Isembert II had applied illegitimacy as a prohibition for the secular canons of Saint-Hilaire as early as 1086: Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 43–4. It is not certain, however, that Isabelle’s birth would have legally impeded her election as superior of Sainte-Croix. The nuns of the abbey expected their abbess to come from the nobility and surely hoped the papacy would share that expectation in answering their grievance. In the end, however, Isabelle did become abbess, which suggests that while “defects of birth” may have been undesirable, they were not a barrier to office in practice. 24 Prou, Les Registres d’Honorius IV, 763 (February 9, 1287). 25  Radegund continued to be a role model for abbesses in Poitiers, even those of rival institutions. See Véronique Peyrat Day, “Recycling Radegund: Identity and Ambition in the Breviary of Anne de Prye,” in David S. Areford, ed., Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences: Essays in Honor of Sandra Hindman (London: Routledge, 2004), 151–78, 159–63. While a licentious nun caused problems within a community, placing such a person over the nuns as the abbey’s head and representative would have been disastrous. On sexual license among nuns, see Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 112–33. 26 Digard, Les registres de Boniface VIII, 2597 (March 21, 1298). 27  It is likely that either Isabelle de La Puye or the cardinal gave Isabelle de Marmande a position of authority that placed her, although close by, outside Sainte-Croix’s walls: Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 129. ADV 2H1/11 and 44. After Isabelle de La Puye’s death Isabelle de Marmande was probably elected abbess, as she appears in fourteenth-century charters; the last act in which she appears is dated March 13, 1329: DF 5, 665–6; and Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 128–30. Her relative Béatrice de Marmande succeeded Isabelle in 1329, suggesting that this family was exceptionally well-placed in the abbey.

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Just over two centuries later, another local woman and nun of Sainte-Croix, Jeanne de Couhé, struggled with another Fontevrist nun, Marguerite de Vivonne, for the abbatial seat.28 This conflict also began with a resignation. In 1491 Abbess Anne d’Orléans, sister of the future king Louis XII, fell ill and attempted to resign due to her failing health. Since 1471 Anne had also been abbess of Fontevraud—a powerful house, head of its own order based on an adaptation of the Benedictine Rule—and at her request for a nun to replace her in Poitiers Fontevraud sent Marguerite de Vivonne to Sainte-Croix. Anne died shortly before Marguerite arrived, unable to assist her in convincing Sainte-Croix’s nuns that continued Fontevrist governance was in their best interests. On September 21, two days after Anne d’Orléans’ death, Jeanne, as prioress, called the nuns to chapter to set the date for  the abbatial election on September 30. She also recalled absent nuns and selected counselors, notaries, and witnesses to observe the election proceedings. On September 25, Pierre d’Amboise (bishop of Poitiers 1481–1505), gave his approval to hold this election at the abbey.29 For the nine days between the chapter meeting and the election itself the abbey erupted into chaos. Her opponents claimed that Jeanne de Couhé campaigned to be elected, and even promoted some young novices—her relatives—so that they could vote in the election. These rivals also claimed that Jeanne’s brother Méry de Couhé, a local landholder, brought a number of troops into the abbey, hoping to encourage (or frighten) the nuns into supporting her. By the time the election was held, Marguerite de Vivonne had arrived from Fontevraud. Her brother André de Vivonne then sent Nicolas Royrand, the lieutenant general of the seneschal of Poitou Jacques de Beaumont (who happened to be André’s father-in-law) into the abbey with sixty to eighty men-at-arms under the pretext of expelling Méry’s troops. These men exhorted Sainte-Croix’s nuns to vote for Marguerite. The stakes for the election were high for these men—each was a local landlord eager to protect his land, power, and prestige. The selection of the next abbess meant a great deal to Poitiers’ citizens, since the woman in her position held the power of high justice, was an influential landlord, governed their sisters, aunts, nieces, and served as an important symbol in the local community. As these candidates’ brothers, André and Méry also stood to gain personally. By successfully gaining for a sister the abbacy of such a monastery as Sainte-Croix, the family prestige would increase, and the abbess would be better able to protect family lands

28  The details of this election are laid out by Favreau in Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers and in “Une Élection à l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers en 1491,” Revue d’histoire de l’eglise de France 65 (1979): 75–87. McNamara also discusses the case briefly in Sisters in Arms. While Favreau notes that Jeanne’s election controversy illuminates the pressures of family interests on the abbey, I further situate the election, and its resulting conflict over Marie Berland’s abbacy, in the fifteenth-century reform movement, in struggles over monastic authority, and in the ambitions of the French monarchy, based on the extensive documentation available in ADV. 29  ADV 2H1/1, October 7, 1491.

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and interests.30 Méry might even have believed that the abbacy of Sainte-Croix was a position that belonged to his family since the previous abbess, Isabeau de Couhé—discussed in Chapter 6—was their relative. Not to be left out, Pierre d’Amboise, bishop of Poitiers, also entered the monastery encouraging the nuns to elect Rochechouart of Bourbonnais, his niece (as well as the niece of the seneschal). When the bishop realized that the seneschal’s support was actually behind Marguerite, however, he quickly changed sides and supported her instead.31 This was a familial rivalry that extended beyond Sainte-Croix’s walls as well as a contest for the abbey’s control. When the nuns assembled for their election, they were facing pressure not just from two bands of troops, but from Poitiers’ most influential centers of power. On the morning of September 30, witnesses for the election—all local clerics— entered, filling the monastery with male observers. They included two notaries, three witnesses, and nine counselors, all led by Florent d’Allemagne, the abbot of Saint-Savin and canon of the cathedral chapter.32 Their purpose was to ensure that the community followed procedures properly, oversight that suggests concern regarding the abbey’s ability to do so, since the presence of officials monitoring the election was not mentioned in Sainte-Croix’s earlier elections. Thirty-one professed nuns, with two absent members voting by proxy, entered the abbey church to hear a mass, confess, and take communion. The women then filed into the refectory where they took an oath before witnesses to elect the most suitable abbess, and to avoid any external influence on their votes. Florent d’Allemagne asked the nuns to select the election’s form. Selecting the process of scrutin, the nuns designated three “scrutatrices” who counted twenty-three votes for Jeanne de Couhé and nine votes for Marguerite de Vivonne.33 After Jeanne accepted the position, the women processed to the abbey church, sang the Te Deum, and installed Jeanne in the abbatial choir stall. Three nuns then announced the election to the people waiting outside the abbey’s great door.34 The election was filled with ritual, from the oath to avoid any external influence on their votes, an improbable oath given recent activity, to Jeanne’s installation in the abbatial seat.35 (See also Map 7.) The ritual 30  Whether or not she would privilege her natal family over her monastic one is a serious question; the women of Sainte-Croix worried about a conflict of interest. 31  A fourth candidate, Isabelle de Bourbon, a nun from the Dominican convent of Poissy who lived at Fontevraud, also sought the abbacy at Sainte-Croix. Isabelle pursued her claim through papal and royal channels, seeking and receiving support from Innocent VIII with the permission of the king on September 27, 1491. Isabelle’s efforts to obtain the office were not publicly revealed until July 1492. Her bid for office may have been orchestrated by another faction, but her candidacy was not ultimately a factor in the final decision. See ADV 2H1/1 (September 27, 1491; October 2, 1491; November 18, 1491; and December 7, 1491). 32  ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491. 33  The bishop’s vicars listed the nuns and their votes as part of an episcopal investigation: ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491; as did Jeanne herself in pressuring the bishop to confirm her election: ADV 2H1/1, December 8, 1491. The original record of the scrutatrices is gone. 34  This sequence of events primarily follows the description in ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491. See also BMP A6 (426); and Archives Nationales X1A 4833 f. 150v. 35  ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491. The abbey church and the refectory were spaces into which the nuns often welcomed guests to observe their days. The election avoided the private areas, such as the chapter house, in favor of public zones. Sainte-Croix was destroyed during the French Revolution

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Map 7.  Eighteenth-century Poitiers, by Tusseau, “Plan de la ville de Poitiers au XVIIIe s,” Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Poitiers, PL11. Credit: Olivier Neuillé

procession and the abbess’s installation were crucial symbols that the abbey had the power to elect its own superior and that the choice was now complete. Although Méry de Couhé removed his troops at the conclusion of the election, André de Vivonne kept his men in the abbey. According to royal letters responding to a complaint from Jeanne on October 6, 1491, “gens de geurre” had invaded the abbey during its vacancy and since then had been dissipating its wealth.36 André’s troops had occupied Sainte-Croix and the monastery was “full of soldiers . . .numbering 60 or 80 men,” who with “force and violence . . . seized the keys . . . and closed the abbey’s doors.”37 They harassed nuns who had voted for Jeanne de Couhé, physically injuring a few of the women and their servants. The men ate from the abbey’s stores, profaned the church, and attempted to prevent the nuns from communicating with the outside world. André’s men attacked the and construction in the area has not provided much concrete information about the monastery’s grounds. There was a church, a chapter house, a refectory, dormitory, and two cloisters (small and large), as well as some small chapels (dedicated to the Pas-Dieu, to the Virgin, to Saint Benedict), as demonstrated in a 1782 map published by Gaston Dez, “Histoire de Poitiers,” MSAO 10 (1966). There were also probably stables, kitchens, guest houses, smaller dormitories, and a separate residence for the abbess, based on descriptions of the abbey in fifteenth-century documents contained in ADV 2H1/1 and 2H1/2, but it is impossible to discuss their orientation within the monastery. The available space that the abbey occupied within Poitiers’ walls did not accommodate many buildings, and much of the nuns’ non-monastic staff and property might have been housed elsewhere. 36  ADV 2H1/1, October 6, 1491. 37 This fuller version is Jeanne’s description as reported by the bishop’s vicars: ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491.

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monastery, this time more viciously, likely believing they could challenge the election’s results and frighten Jeanne into yielding to Marguerite before the bishop officially confirmed her election. Indeed, the confirmation and the question of which candidate deserved to be confirmed was the main focus of all documents related to this conflict. Jeanne’s success in winning the election demonstrates her strong support among the nuns of Sainte-Croix. This was likely due to her family ties and her long record of service within the abbey. Her success might also reflect some resistance from Sainte-Croix’s nuns to further influence from Fontevraud, its reform, or from royal and papal usurpation of their rights. By choosing one of their own, these nuns insisted upon their traditional privileges. André’s men were not Marguerite’s only supporters, however: nearly a third of the nuns supported Marguerite, suggesting that a substantial portion of Sainte-Croix’s community desired Fontevrist governance. Marguerite’s supporters urged the king and bishop to confirm her as abbess, claiming that this smaller portion of the abbey community had “justly and canonically elected” her.38 Jeanne’s claim was based on winning more votes; Marguerite admitted she won fewer votes but nonetheless styled herself the abbess. Under the Benedictine Rule’s stipulation that a “wiser minority” could prevail, either could fairly claim the abbacy.39 Poitiers’ Bishop Pierre d’Amboise avoided confirming either Jeanne or Marguerite in 1491, perhaps out of disappointment for his niece, or because he recognized how combustible the situation at Sainte-Croix was.40 On October 2, two of SainteCroix’s agents traveled to the bishop’s residence in Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes, about 40km northwest of Poitiers, to ask Pierre to confirm Jeanne de Couhé’s election. They returned on October 7 with the bishop but he made no arrangements to ­confirm Jeanne’s election.41 Finally on November 26, 1491 Pierre took action by calling all interested parties to the cathedral, then he gave his vicars—Jean Poitevin, cantor of Sainte-Radegonde, Guillaume Bouchet, canon of the cathedral, and François Pilot, curé of Saint-Porchaire—power to investigate the election. The first two men had observed the election in September; all three seem to have taken their duties seriously and they compiled a long study of each woman’s claim.42 38  ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491. 39  “Marguerite de Vivonne aussi soy disaint esleue en abbesse dud abbaye de Saincte-Croix dud Poictiers”: 2H1/1, November 26, 1491, f. 1v. 40 Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 87. From an incredibly well-connected family, with well-placed ­relatives in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Pierre d’Amboise promoted his family when possible. Pierre succeeded in placing another niece, Anne de Prie, as abbess of the abbey of La Trinité in Poitiers; another niece, Marie d’Amboise, followed her in that position. His nephew Jean de La Trémoïlle succeeded him as bishop. 41  The bishop approved the abbey’s election in ADV 2H1/1, September 25, 1491; Jacques Dalet and Jean Fabry received the commission to act as the nuns’ procurors and seek the bishop’s confirmation of Jeanne’s election in ADV 2H1/1, October 2, 1491; the bishop had called for an investigation of the election before confirming an abbess: ADV 2H1/1, October 7, 1491; Jacques Dalet and Jean Fabry repeated their commission and asked the bishop to confirm Jeanne: ADV 2H1/1, December 8, 1491; Jeanne must have asked the king for assistance, since one of his notaries suggested that the bishop’s vicars hasten their process: ADV 2H1/1, December 18, 1491. 42  The three documented their investigation in ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491.

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In replying to letters from Jeanne begging for his help, King Charles VIII sent the embattled nuns mixed messages. Charles acknowledged in a letter dated October 6 that Jeanne had been elected abbess of Sainte-Croix “justly and canonically.”43 But while Charles’s letter ordered the men to “without delay leave the abbey and cease the dissipation of its wealth,” he did not send troops to enforce his words.44 We might generously assume that Charles was distracted throughout this conflict by his wedding to Anne de Bretagne in December 1491 and her coronation as queen in February 1492, as well as by asserting control after his sister Anne de Beaujeu’s long regency, which he ended in 1491. But the king may have had his own agenda: before the election Charles had promoted his relative, Isabelle de Bourbon, to the pope, hoping to give her the abbey of Sainte-Croix without an election.45 Jeanne’s election had followed Sainte-Croix’s procedure to the letter, however, making it difficult for Charles and Isabelle to vacate. In an astute move, Jeanne convinced the bishop’s vicars to dismiss Isabelle’s claim: she pointed to the Pragmatic Sanction that prevented appeals going to Rome before the king’s courts heard them, thus using the king’s own liberty over the French Church to block the candidate he supported.46 Receiving no practical assistance from the king, Jeanne begged for help from the seneschal’s lieutenant, Nicolas Royrand, but in vain.47 Royrand had led André’s troops into Sainte-Croix in support of Marguerite just a few weeks earlier, and he apparently continued to support Marguerite after the election. Without the support of the troops or local seneschal she had no way to enforce the royal letters ordering the men out of the abbey. For Jeanne and Marguerite the main issue continued to be the bishop’s confirmation, which each claimed she deserved, and the bishop’s vicars took their work seriously, moving slowly. On December 18 Jeanne pressed the bishop to move 43  Charles refers to Jeanne as the “justly and canonically elected abbess . . . and well liked sister Jehanne de Couhé, previously prioress of the cloister of this abbey”: letter from Charles VIII, ADV 2H1/1, October 6, 1491. 44  “sans delay ilz vuydent de lad. abbaye et cessent de lad. dissipacion de biens dicelle”: letter from Charles VIII, ADV 2H1/1, October 6, 1491. 45  Charles had already placed Isabelle’s sister Renée in the abbacy of Fontevraud: Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 172. Isabelle received papal bulls from Innocent VIII on September 27, 1491 and hired two procurors on October 7 to press her suit with the bishop. The bishop’s vicars suggest that Isabelle and Marguerite made common cause: ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491, f. 8ff.; Charles’s counselors in the Parlement of Paris accepted Jeanne’s position, declaring her “vraiment abbesse de lad. abbaye” whom “les religieuses de lad. abbaye ont justement et canoniquement esleue” and “Isabeau de Bourbon Religieuse de l’ordre de Sainct Benoist en l’abbaye de Fontevraud pretendant droit contre raison en lad. abbaye de Saincte-Croix de Poictiers,” mentioning the Pragmatic Sanction and the decrees of the Council of Basel several times: letter from Charles VIII in Parlement, ADV 2H1/1, November 18, 1491. 46  ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491, f. 6: “lesd. bulles . . . que lad. de bourbon se disoit avoir obtenue . . . directement contre la pragmatique sanction et l’on du royaume et contre les saincts decrees.” Although his attempt to promote Isabelle eventually failed, Charles continued to place relatives in control of powerful abbeys throughout his territory and Isabelle became abbess of La Trinité de Caen. Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 215n.405. See also Histoire de l’ordre de Fontevraud 1100–1908 (L. Cocharaux, 1913), 181–2. Jeanne’s argument demonstrates an understanding of the Parlement of Paris’s stance on the monarchy’s power over the Church: Lange, The First French Reformation, 83. 47  The king identified Royrand as Jeanne’s primary opponent: ADV 2H1/1, February 16, 1492.

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ahead with her confirmation, and suggested that the abbey was suffering greatly because he had not acted yet.48 When he still refused to act she sought further assistance from the Parlement of Paris. In turn Marguerite de Vivonne’s supporters alleged that Jeanne de Couhé had been elected under duress, since her brother Méry had entered the abbey with troops. Jeanne responded by explaining that every attempt had been made to follow proper procedure.49 While Marguerite had a good point, the fact that André had later brought troops into the abbey in support of his sister likely kept Marguerite from pressing this point much further. Nuns alleged that Jeanne had improperly promoted novices before the election in order to pad her votes, a charge that the bishop’s investigators examined closely.50 Through all of this maneuvering, André’s men continued to hold the abbey. Finally the king’s bailiff at Tours answered the nuns’ request for help on December 9, 1491.51 He came to Poitiers to enforce the king’s letters to Jeanne, but André’s servants forced him back. André then tightened his grip on the abbey, adding another thirty to forty men to the troops already inside. This still did not draw royal condemnation or episcopal action. By January 1492 André’s troops started taking even more drastic measures. According to royal letters, the men had attacked Sainte-Croix’s fiefs of Maillé and Vasles, both about 20km outside of Poitiers, with the aid of Louiset and Jeannot de Verger and Jacques de Flottes.52 Troops laid siege to the fortifications at Maillé, forcing the gate with an axe and a ram. Once in control of these properties the men began selling the abbey’s goods and provisions and destroying other property.53 Since the men had not intimidated Jeanne into yielding her position at Sainte-Croix they attacked properties the nuns relied on for survival since they lived off the rents and produce of these fiefs. This public and visible attack finally earned André and his men royal disapproval on January 17, 1492, when King Charles ordered their capture, but even this did not stop the “malefactors.”54 The king was not able to ignore such visible attacks, but he sent no troops to intervene and made no effort to check his seneschal’s officers, which suggests that the elected abbess still did not have Charles’ support. André de Vivonne’s men returned to Sainte-Croix in February 1492 and sacked the abbey for another week. With the renewed assault in February, and perhaps 48  ADV 2H1/1, November 18, 1491. 49  ADV 2H1/1, November 13, 1491. 50 Leslie Tuttle recounted an interesting case in the 1663 triennial election at Mont-SainteCatherine-lès-Provins. Two nuns received permission to visit a spa, in exchange for a promise to re-elect Abbess Suzanne Sauvage upon their return. When they failed to honor that promise, their Provincial punished them for apparent lewd behavior during the trip, and the punishment excluded them from participating in the election. The abbess won re-election by one vote: Leslie Tuttle, “From Cloister to Court: Nuns and the Gendered Culture of Disputing in Early Modern France,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 2 (1010): 11–33, 13. 51  Letter from Jean Beauvée, Bailiff of Tours: ADV 2H1/1, December 9, 1492. His assistance was supported by Charles VIII: P. Pelicier, Lettres de Charles VIII, roi de France: publiées d’après les originaux pour la société de l’histoire de France, vol. 3 (1490–1493) (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1902), 222–4; Archives Nationales X1A 9321, n. 29. 52  ADV 2H1/1, January 17, 1492. 53  ADV 2H1/1, January 17, 1492; January 27, 1492; and February 16, 1492. 54  ADV 2H1/1, January 17, 1492 and January 27, 1492.

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with the attack on Sainte-Croix’s fiefs, one of the nuns’ long-term rivals, the lord of Montreuil-Bonnin Raoul de Vernon, joined André.55 With lands close to SainteCroix’s fiefs of Vasles and Maillé, the seigneurs of Montreuil-Bonnin had caused trouble for the nuns for many years. They may have supported André in hopes that Marguerite would be a more friendly abbess, and because this was a moment that they could press an advantage and gain the control the family had long sought over Sainte-Croix. An order of the Parlement of Paris finally expelled André’s troops following an agreement between Méry and André on March 27, 1492, each acting for his sister.56 The bishop’s arbiters agreed to confirm Jeanne’s election as Sainte-Croix’s new abbess and the confirmation finally took place on July 24, 1492.57 Jeanne, now accepted by both sides as abbess of Sainte-Croix, promised to pay a pension of 250 livres per year to Marguerite, which may have compromised the abbey’s fortunes.58 André promised to support Jeanne’s election, to allow the bishop to confirm her as abbess, to leave the abbey and its property, and to pay compensation for his men’s pillaging.59 These violent actions had no negative consequences for André, as he became seneschal of Poitiers in April 1492—perhaps an element of the negotiations. Jeanne fully ratified this agreement on August 31, 1492.60 The attack on Sainte-Croix shows the abbess’s significance in her local community. The nobility had an enormous stake in the selection of candidates for this office, both for the prestige it offered their relatives and for the impact the abbess’s feudal rights could have on their own lives. The nuns’ close connections to their earthly families—already suggested in 1287—were crucial to these events. The de Couhé family was willing to use every resource, including force, in order to have Jeanne elected and her authority recognized. Although Jeanne’s family enjoyed a clear majority and she a long, respectable record of service in the abbey, her family had not believed she could be elected without pressure from Méry and his troops. Or, perhaps Méry recognized that other local families would seek control of SainteCroix, as did the king, bishop, and future seneschal. Although well connected with his position in the royal house, Méry was not strong competition for these powerful men. He disappeared from the conflict following the election itself, only to 55  For the troubles the seigneur of Montreuil-Bonnin had caused Sainte-Croix, see “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 80, 264; and ADV 2H1/58. 56  ADV 2H1/1, March 27, 1492. Although Méry acted here, it is perplexing why he had not brought troops to defend his sister after the election. 57  ADV 2H1/1, July 27, 1492. 58  This is roughly the same amount that Marie de Bretagne agreed to pay Marie de Montmorency when the latter agreed to give over the abbacy of Fontevraud thirty-five years earlier: see Annalena Müller, “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism: The Case of Fontevraud,” The American Benedictine Review 65, no. 4 (2013): 428–44, 430. 59  ADV 2H1/1, March 27, 1492; June 5, 1492; and August 31, 1492 all contain versions of the agreement; “Andre de Vivonne . . . promet faire vvider les gens d’armes et autres gens qui sont en lad. Abbaye . . . et aussi pour consenter l’eslection de lad. seur Jehanne de Couhe ester confirme par led. reverend pere en dieu monsieur l’evesque de Poictiers ses vicaires ou autres . . . lad. seur Jehanne de couhe et sera tenue de passer procurare pour consenter con lad. seur marguerite an et [. . .] chacun an 250 sols tournoys”: letter from Parlement of Paris, ADV 2H1/1, March 27, 1492. 60  ADV 2H1/1, August 31, 1492.

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reappear in Châtelet to make an agreement with André the following March. Documents do not reveal whether Méry was removed by the king, whether he believed that Jeanne should govern Sainte-Croix independently after her election, or why he served as Jeanne’s agent rather than leaving that task to one of SainteCroix’s procurors. In any case, the de Couhé family demonstrated a clear sense of purpose in having Jeanne elected, even if that required promoting novices, using troops to threaten the nuns, and suffering an armed assault on the abbey for months—allowing the abbey’s reputation and resources to decline rather than accepting a surrender. Although Marguerite de Vivonne represented an alternative to continued de Couhé control of the abbey, her own family proved to be similarly dangerous as André viciously insisted upon his sister, and continued to do so after Jeanne was installed. Even the king sought the advantage of Sainte-Croix for his relative and refused to do much to assist the woman who won the abbacy in her place, even though former kings had championed the powers, freedoms, and privileges of Jeanne’s position and that of her predecessors. These men craved the stature and power of Sainte-Croix’s abbacy for their own relatives, while at the same time they undermined the office’s authority in order to put them in the position. It appears that even Sainte-Croix’s own nuns lost sight of their traditional solidarity in protecting Sainte-Croix’s privileges during this contest for control. That these men were willing to use violence to influence the election underscores how fiercely the local nobility were willing to fight to protect their families and their own interests, even if lay interference had been strictly prohibited in abbatial elections. Throughout these conflicts, both sides of Sainte-Croix’s nuns relied on the networks of support and the abbey’s archive of privileges to claim authority during their crises. Their competing claims to Radegund’s strategy could benefit either side, but royal supporters still tended to prioritize those who had office on their side. The procedure for electing the abbess either became better defined and regulated over these centuries, or our sources began to focus more on the details of the elections, or both. The nuns who described Jeanne’s 1491 election wanted to show that every attempt had been made to follow established procedure since their goal was to win support against troops who occupied the abbey and disputed Jeanne’s claim. It was important to represent the regularity of the election. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, authorities beyond the abbey walls were clearly assuming a supervisory role: the bishop approved the election, and witnesses and notaries oversaw its orderliness. An assertion that procedure had not been followed proved a successful strategy for getting these observers and arbiters involved in contesting the election. None of these regulations, witnesses, or overseers brought any greater regularity to Sainte-Croix’s elections, however. In fact, this extraordinary attention highlighted the drama that might surround this process and reflects the heightened attention being paid to women who could claim significant ecclesiastical power. Eventually this external attention became a significant problem in the elections. Several of these complaints suggest that the monastic reform movement influenced Jeanne’s opponents. Several waves of reform rolled over Sainte-Croix, and reformers focused on the abbess’s quality and management skills. Previous abbesses

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had faced charges that they had misdirected church funds and property. The abbess was entrusted with the care of her monastery’s property, and ultimately the physical welfare of its community. It was her responsibility to ensure that the nuns received an adequate supply of food and clothing.61 Accusing her of mismanagement was, thus, a serious matter. Unhappy nuns charged Leubovera in 590, Isabelle de la Puye in 1284, and Jeanne de Couhé in 1509 with misusing the wealth of SainteCroix. These accusations alleged a serious failing in the abbess’s execution of her duties that prompted external authorities to launch investigations. While the first two complaints failed, charges against Jeanne—of neglect and fiscal mismanagement that harmed the abbey but benefitted her family—found their target. We can see calls for monastic reform in the sixth-century rebellion, the ninth-century change of Rule, the high medieval negotiations over jurisdiction, and the fifteenthcentury flirtation with the Fontevrist order. But ultimately reform arrived at Sainte-Croix with the 1519 Grands Jours. The model of female monastic reform that most affected Sainte-Croix in the fifteenth century came from Fontevraud’s Abbess Marie de Bretagne, who reformed over fifty houses.62 Fontevraud was a large double monastery founded as a Benedictine house about 80km from Poitiers in the early twelfth century by Robert d’Arbrissel, who had placed the abbess in control of both the order’s men and women.63 By the late Middle Ages Fontevraud’s abbess oversaw a vast network of priories and houses founded in the Fontevrist model. The two monasteries had reason to be close—Sainte-Croix had donated to Fontevraud at its foundation, they both sat in the diocese of Poitiers and so shared a bishop, both had developed close ties with France’s monarchy, and the abbesses were powerful women often from influential families.64 Fontevraud may even have shared devotion to Radegund, as an illumination of the miracle of the Pas-Dieu suggested in the Graduel de Fontevraud.65 61  By the later Middle Ages this maintenance took the form of an allowance that nuns of SainteCroix accused Jeanne of Couhé of neglecting in 1509: ADV 2H1/1. 62  Marie had requested papal assistance as early as 1458 to address problems in her abbey resulting from the Hundred Years War: see Müller, “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism.” See also François Uzureau, “La reforme de l’ordre de Fontevrault (1459–1641),” Revue Mabillon 49 (1923): 141–6. Finding the Rule concocted by these papal reformers unsatisfying, Marie established her own reformed Rule, for which she gained approval from Pope Sixtus IV in 1475: McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 414; Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 167–8; and Uzureau, “La reforme de l’ordre de Fontevrault,” 141–6. See also Jean de Viguerie, “La rèforme de Fontevrault de la fin du XVe siècle à la fin des guerres de religion,” Revue d’histoire de l’eglise de France 65 (1979), 107. 63  Fontevraud’s Rule was an adaptation of the Benedictine Rule: Tunc, “De l’élection des abbesses de Fontevraud à leur nomination par le Roi,” 206. 64  In 1104 Sybille, abbess of Sainte-Croix, gave Fontevraud rights to a wood in the parish of Couziers: Pavillon, La vie du bienheureux Robert d’Arbrissel, patriarche des solitaires de la France. S.l. (Saumur, 1666), 590; Tunc, “De l’élection des abbesses de Fontevraud à leur nomination par le Roi,” 206. Annalena Müller observes that from 1491 to 1670 all of Fontevraud’s abbesses were closely related to the French king: “Forming and Re-Forming Fontevraud. Monasticism, Geopolitics, and the Querelle des Frères” (Ph.D. diss, Yale University, 2014). See also Michel Melot, L’Abbaye de Fontevrault (Paris: Lanore, 1971). 65  Graduel de Fontevraud, Bibliothèque Municipale, Limoges, ms. 2 (17), f. 169r.

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Marie de Bretagne concocted a new notion of female monasticism, one that diminished the abbess’s role significantly.66 She imposed strict active and passive enclosure and required her nuns to live the communal life in poverty, particularly focused on communal sleeping and dining facilities.67 Due to great resistance, Marie was not able to accomplish this reform at Fontevraud’s main abbey. Instead, she retired to a priory with select nuns who wanted a more rigorous life.68 She succeeded in reforming this priory and created a reformed model future abbesses would press onto dozens of other houses, including both Fontevraud and Sainte-Croix.69 These efforts were part of a much broader late-medieval monastic movement such as that sweeping the cloisters of Germany, where reform followed a model similar to Fontevraud’s. Abbesses trained at key abbeys such as Derneburg, Wienhausen, and Ebstorf brought reform-minded practices adopted first by Windesheim and Bursfield with them to new institutions; local bishops and secular lords aided in the imposition of reformed liturgy and Latin use on resisting communities.70 New communities critical of traditional monasticism experimented throughout Christendom with alternate forms of governance, relating to society, or constituting religious community. The Observants and the Devotio Moderna— in addition to a range of supposedly fringe groups such as the beguines, Lollards, Beghards, and so on—valued personal and group poverty, care for the broader population, and a more diffuse notion of leadership. Even so, female tertiaries received pressure to embrace enclosure like traditional monastics in the later Middle Ages.71 During the early sixteenth century the Observants, too, focused on reform of houses they had already founded.72 And in France other monasteries exerted a

66  Chapter 56 of the Benedictine Rule, for example, suggests that superiors should dine at their own table with guests or members of the community whom the superior has selected for the honor: RB, 56; Marie’s reforms significantly changed this freedom. See Müller, “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism,” 428–44. 67  Müller argues that Robert d’Arbrissel’s original design rejected claustration for Fontevraud’s women since he preferred a more engaged, less secluded form of monasticism: “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism,” 439. 68  Uzureau, “La reforme de l’ordre de Fontevrault,” 141–2; Marie and her followers retired to the priory of Madeleine d’Orléans, which was in such disrepair that it required new construction before they could occupy it. Müller suggests that Marie de Bretagne had family connections to this priory through the d’Orléans side of her family: Müller, “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism,” 438. Other reform-minded superiors also encountered resistance from their communities, such as at Isenhagen in the 1440s and 1480s: Heinz J. Schulze, “Isenhagen,” in Ulrich Faust, ed., Die Männer-und Frauenklöster der Zisterzienser in Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein und Hamburg (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1994), 228–67. 69  Jean-Marie Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes (Paris: Éditions Champ Vallon, 2001), 38. Fontevrists helped to reform houses such as Les Filles Dieu, Fontaine, La Madeleine d’Orléans, Chelles, Montmartre, and Jouarre, among many others. 70 June  L.  Mecham, Shared Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany, ed. Alison I. Beach, Constance H. Berman, and Lisa M. Bitel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 17–18. 71  Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, 157. The Observants were introduced in Poitiers in the abbey of the Cordeliers in 1492–3: Favreau, Diocèse de Poitiers, 95. 72  Grégory Goudot, “From Lateran V to Trent: Reformations of the Religious Orders, Power and Society in a French Diocese: Clermont (1512–1560),” Franciscan Studies 71 (2013): 135–46.

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great deal of influence, such as Chelles, which sent more than forty nuns to other communities for the purpose of reform.73 Fifteenth-century reformers tried to impose a strict interpretation of enclosure on all female monasteries: the Council of Basel in 1431–49 formally instituted reform of liturgy for the Benedictine order and insisted that bishops enforce Periculoso’s enclosure on nuns.74 Marie de Bretagne insisted that female monasteries accept enclosure, personal poverty, and abbey community.75 Moreover, reformers gave bishops power to permit entry or exit; since enclosure also bound an abbess, only a bishop could grant permission to permeate the boundary of the cloister.76 Anxiety about new religious groups that emphasized community and service but did not require vows or enclosure likely encouraged traditional houses to stress those aspects that made them different—their rule and claustration— while embracing new ideas within the reform. And yet these statutes failed to limit all monastic women to the cloister, since Sainte-Croix’s nuns continued to leave their abbey or welcome guests inside, and faced very little criticism for their activities. The abbess kept a boat, horses, and a carriage; she left the abbey to administer her properties, to exercise her privileges of high justice, or to process with her community to the church of Sainte-Radegonde. In fact, the nuns’ departures were normal and necessary for the survival of their abbey and they mostly went unchallenged. As Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt observed for Spain, Periculoso was a problem for more than the nuns: “Almost immediately after its circulation, bishops and others betrayed an unwillingness to abandon the customary activity of nuns in medieval society and began making exceptions to the requirements of enclosure.”77 Many men also entered the monastery on a regular basis: canons to say a weekly mass, construction workers for building projects, and visiting family members or royal officials. For example, during the abbey’s 1491 abbatial election at least fourteen observers, notaries, and witnesses watched the election procedure within Sainte-Croix’s walls. At some times the nuns used the ideal of enclosure to their advantage—such as in the 1466–72 conflict with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde over Rogation Day Processions discussed in Chapter 6, when the nuns insisted that the men carry the abbey’s banners in the processions because the women’s enclosure prevented them from doing so themselves. 73  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 63. 74 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 83; Joachim  W.  Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV the Council of Basel and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978). John Van Engen noted that some at Basel advocated extending enclosure to Franciscan men: Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, 21. 75  By the 1460s, however, they faced pressure to become canons subject to a formal Rule, claustration, and traditional obedience: Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, 118, 164, 182, 232. 76 Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women, 92. Enclosure has drawn a great deal of attention, since medieval statutes, Rules, and commentaries emphasize the importance of strict active and passive enclosure for female abbeys. Jeffrey Hamburger and Roberta Gilchrist have examined the architectural efforts to prevent egress and to limit contact between nuns and outsiders who entered convents to tend the sick or perform the sacraments: Hamburger and Marti, Crown and Veil; and Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture. Smith discussed the impact of these constructed limitations on concepts of monastic space performed, imagined, and self-imposed by the nuns on their communities: “Clausura Districta.” 77 Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 107.

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Enclosure continued to be an ideal for reform-minded officials, however. In 1503 Bishop Pierre d’Amboise issued an order prohibiting nuns in Poitiers from leaving their abbey or opening their gates to anyone from outside the community, with the exception of the bishop and his vicars, upon threat of excommunication.78 His order suggests both a desire to enclose Sainte-Croix’s women and the abbey’s lack of attention to enclosure still in 1503. Given the violent assault on Sainte-Croix in 1491, the bishop could have intended to protect the nuns from further abuse, keeping troops out of the abbey. But this was not Abbess Jeanne de Couhé’s interpretation: she complained about the bishop’s interference to the archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal André d’Espinay (who had become papal legate in 1492), noting that the nuns needed to leave their abbey to participate in local processions, to tend their properties, and to get provisions for their abbey.79 She also demonstrated that men, such as construction workers or dependent canons, needed to enter Sainte-Croix in order to maintain it and the nuns’ spiritual lives. The archbishop amended the bishop’s order, saying that the women could receive priests after authorization from the bishop of Poitiers and that there were some religious services the women might participate in outside their abbey, such as going “processionallement” to see their foundress’s tomb at Sainte-Radegonde, but otherwise the women were ordered to observe strict active and passive enclosure.80 Reform was also an ideal held by members of chapters and monasteries that wished to root out “deformation” and make systematic changes to ensure their communities would live according to the proper precepts of the Church. Before the fifteenth century, such reform manifested in the creation of new orders and new foundations. In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reform efforts focused on established monastic houses and orders. By the 1480s French monasteries recovering from the Hundred Years War began to rebuild their temporal property and we see a revival of traditional communities of both male and female religious in this period. The Franciscan order in France in particular expanded in this revival and, after an intense internal debate, embraced the Observant movement by 1517.81 Reform for Benedictine abbeys in France was underway as well by the 1480s, focusing first on female houses, and primarily led by Fontevraud. Male communities followed suit by the start of the sixteenth century, as in Saint-Martin-des-Champs and Saint-Germain.82 In Poitiers, Bishop Pierre d’Amboise pushed for reform of Sainte-Croix and La Trinité. Pierre d’Amboise’s family was engaged deeply with the reform project. His brother, Georges d’Amboise, Cardinal Legate, helped Louis XII propel this reform 78  Pierre was one of the seventeen children of his father Pierre, who died at Agincourt, and Anne de Bueil. His brother Charles was one of Louis XI’s counselors and several of their siblings were also bishops or abbots, and one (Georges) became a cardinal. 79  Appeal from Jeanne de Couhé, ADV 2H1/2, September 7, 1503. Given that Pierre had advocated for his niece to become abbess of Sainte-Croix in Jeanne’s 1491 election, she might have been right to interpret him this way. 80 ADV 2H1/2, 1503; Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 201. 81  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 29, 20, 35–6. 82  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 39; Goudot, “From Lateran V to Trent,” 136.

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movement throughout France in the early sixteenth century. Indeed, when Pope Alexander VI made Georges d’Amboise Legate in 1501 he gave him reforming powers over some communities within larger houses. The d’Amboise family was large and well-placed in the Church, with seventeen children and many of them committed to reform, several with the ear of France’s kings. Louis d’Amboise, bishop of Albi, had reformed the canonesses of Sainte-Catherine to a house of Clarissians, reformed the Dominicans and Franciscans, and established the Carmelites in his diocese. Another brother, Jacques d’Amboise, abbot of Jumieges and then of Cluny, reformed Saint-Martin-des-Champs. As bishop of Clermont in 1506 he had the power—granted by his brother the Legate Georges—to reform the houses in his diocese. Their sister, Madeleine d’Amboise, was abbess of the priory of SaintMenoux in Berry, which she reformed. Pierre installed his nieces Marie d’Amboise and Anne as abbesses of La Trinité and of Saint-Menoux.83 Fifteenth-century monastic reformers also targeted the luxury nuns supposedly enjoyed within their monasteries. One of monasticism’s primary charges in observing the communal life was an oath of poverty. The monastery provided for the nuns’ needs with property held in common, while monastic rules required each woman to put aside personal possessions upon entering the monastery. Nuns were enjoined from wearing luxury fabrics, jewelry, or owning unnecessary personal items. This charge was particularly difficult for women in monasteries such as Fontevraud or Sainte-Croix, since noble or royal members were accustomed to comfortable lives prior to entering the abbey and families often provided for their relatives beyond the initial entrance donation with annual support and gifts.84 Prebends and benefices supported individual nuns with pensions of up to 15–20 livres per year in the fifteenth century.85 These financial contributions meant the difference between survival and collapse for a monastic house, especially if the abbess could not provide well for the community. Such individual forms of funding became targets of reformers who claimed that they disrupted the communal life and created rivalries.86 When reforming abbeys, Fontevraud’s Abbess Renée de Bourbon’s first task was to seize all revenues and redirect individual funds toward repairing and rebuilding common spaces for the whole community’s benefit. In Poitiers, this concentration of funds also meant reintegrating Sainte-Croix’s priories into the main abbey so that all of the community’s members resided there instead of in their various priories.87 Reform was popular with women who did not have 83  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 94–5; Favreau, Diocese de Poitiers, 87. See also François Villard, “Pierre d’Amboise évêque de Poitiers,” in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet à l’occasion de son 70e anniversaire par ses amis, ses collégues, ses élèves et les membres du CESCM (Poitiers, 1966). 84 Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain; Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 33; and Evangelisti, Nuns, 28. Princesses Clotild and Basina included a complaint against Leubovera that the nuns had to share their bathroom with the abbey’s low-status employees, as well as assertions that the abbess used abbey property for her own family. 85  “Anciens usages,” ed. de Monsabert, 265. 86  The bishop of Poitiers was tasked with regularly monitoring these items, and he attacked SainteCroix’s prebend system, finally disbanding them in 1520. Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women, 97. 87  de Viguerie, “La réforme de Fontevraud,” 113; Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 286.

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such benefits or who felt that such privileges harmed monastic community. The reform also stressed communal living, sleeping, and dining, and promised to end the hierarchical divisions that had grown in abbeys, particularly as families privileged relatives over the rest of the community. In order to provide such communal spaces, reformed monasteries often had to build new dormitories and refectories as existing spaces could not accommodate the whole community. The funds for such construction were not easy to gather, but King Francis I was generous to monasteries he reformed, especially between 1515 and 1522.88 Reformers also insisted that the abbess take a less exalted position over the community, requiring abbesses to spend more time sleeping in the communal dormitories and dining on simple food in refectories.89 In order to return nuns to proper observance of poverty, Marie de Bretagne limited the abbess’s personal wealth and power. She expected superiors to use the monastery’s resources to support the nuns rather than to glorify themselves, so that external gifts could cease. One of Marie’s goals was to remove the distance between the abbess and her community to improve harmony and humble the monastic superior. She further accomplished this by encouraging short terms and frequent rotation of the abbess position. At Chelles abbesses took on terms of about eight years, while SainteJustine-de-Padoue and Chezal-Benoît had triennial terms. Filles-Pénitentes added a further limit: abbesses could only serve twice, each a three-year term.90 Renée de Bourbon rejected this triennial limitation and did not impose it in places such as Sainte-Croix, Almenèches, or Saint-Martin-des-Champs when reforming them.91 Marie de Bretagne did not intend to leave the abbess vulnerable to external influences, however, or subordinate her to outsiders. Reform at Sainte-Croix began with the term of Abbess Anne d’Orléans.92 During her abbacy, Anne reformed six Fontevrist priories, imposing Marie de Bretagne’s new statutes on them.93 Marie’s reform was technically limited to Fontevrist houses until 1520, when Fontevraud’s abbess received permission from papal legates to reform houses outside her order, but Fontevraud still exercised influence over other abbeys before then, as when Anne served as abbess of Sainte-Croix. It is possible that 88  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 605. Chelles built a new dormitory, as well as new choir stalls to accommodate the whole community at prayer. New or expanded dormitories were also built at Yerres, Faremoutiers, Fontevraud, La Madeleine d’Orléans, and Jumièges. 89 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 83–6; and see Constance Proksch, Klosterreform und Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994). It was important for the reform at Chezal-Benoît, where the abbot was required to eat and sleep with the community rather than having separate lodgings after the reform: Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 427; and Guy Marie Oury, “Les Bénédictines réformés de Chezal-Benoît,” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 65, no. 174 (1979): 89–106. Communal dining continued to be a monastic ideal after the Council of Trent, but not a perfectly practiced reality. In the Franciscan abbey of Sainte-Catherine-lès-Provins, for example, a seventeenth-century election dispute revealed that the women associated and even dined in factions, with some nuns unable to even access the refectory: Tuttle, “From Cloister to Court,” 19–20. 90  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 428. 91  Jumièges, Yerres, and Faremoutiers rejected the triennial custom: Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 431. 92  Bernard Palustre, “L’abbesse Anne d’Orléans et la réforme de Fontevrault,” Revue des questions historiques 66 (1899): 210–17, 216; Müller, “Forming and Re-Forming Fontevraud.” 93  de Viguerie, “La réforme de Fontevraud,” 113 and 108.

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some of Sainte-Croix’s nuns sought her leadership, in hopes of bringing Fontevrist reforming ideals to Poitiers. Anne’s reforms in Poitiers were modest, but she did initiate several building and reconstruction projects at Sainte-Croix.94 She revised the dormitory roof ’s shape and helped restore the nuns’ refectory, changes that provided more communal spaces, especially the key dining and sleeping facilities. When Anne d’Orléans fell ill in Poitiers in 1491, Renée de Bourbon, one of King Charles VIII’s relatives, replaced her as Fontevraud’s abbess immediately and was the first to make a success of reforming that abbey.95 In Poitiers, Anne resisted the return of the de Couhé family that had governed Sainte-Croix earlier in the century, as we have seen, and sent instead for a Fontevrist candidate to replace her at SainteCroix. Anne’s death and the ensuing chaos demonstrate that not all of Sainte-Croix’s nuns were interested in reform or in continued influence from Fontevraud. Both the candidates opposing Jeanne had connections to the Fontevrist reform and it is possible that their candidacies were designed to promote that reform at SainteCroix. They failed to displace Jeanne, and reform stalled at the abbey. Some of Sainte-Croix’s nuns embraced the Fontevrist reform. They appreciated the reformers’ ideals of communal living, the reduction of luxury, and the cancellation of individual prebends. Such women might have desired a spiritual purity and equality for their communities that reform promised. They were attracted to the idea that reform increased the harmony of monastic life by equalizing the abbey’s members, even the abbess, and by ending the privileges noblewomen had enjoyed inside the abbey walls. Some nuns may have sought reform out of a belief that it would enhance their autonomy, as Anne Winston-Allen suggests for Observants: “Surprisingly, enclosure was used, in some instances, by women as a way to limit secular access and outside interference in their affairs.”96 Other nuns, however, valued their traditional methods of observing the monastic life and interpreted reform as an assault on female monastic authority.97 These divisions boiled over in 1509 when her sisters sued Jeanne de Couhé for “aggrandizing herself at the expense of the monastery.”98 They claimed that Jeanne had allowed the abbey buildings to fall into disrepair—the dormitory was dilapidated and the refectory had no chimney or windows—and that these problems were obvious to observers. They claimed that she resisted community with her sisters and neglected their care. The nuns complained that they no longer received their daily living allowance of 1 denier and their diet had been restricted.99 Jeanne’s 94  ADV 2H1/25. 95  Renée had a great deal more success and reformed thirty-two houses during her rule, with the majority between 1503 and 1534. She was assisted by her brother, Louis de Bourbon, who sent troops to overwhelm resistance: de Viguerie, “La réforme de Fontevraud,” 108 and 111. 96 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 10. 97  Evangelisti described a wide range of reactions from monastic women to enclosure and reform, regarding them as anything from empowering and liberating women to severely limiting their autonomy, so the issue was not simple for the nuns: Nuns, 41–65. 98 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 415; and ADV 2H1/2, 1509. 99  A long roll of the nuns’ complaints written by the prioress is unfortunately badly damaged: ADV 2H1/2, 1509. According to a customary from the abbey, the daily allowance included a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and the cash payment: “Anciens usages,” ed. de Monsabert.

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alleged neglect of her community had apparently borne out nuns’ fears during the 1491 election that Jeanne would privilege her family.100 We might wonder, however, how much of the destruction seen at Sainte-Croix in 1509 had been caused by the two sets of troops occupying the abbey in 1491–2. André de Vivonne’s reparations payment should have funded repairs long since—if he had ever paid. Sainte-Croix certainly should have had the wealth to rebuild: the nuns also alleged that Jeanne had misused 6,000–7,000 livres in rent money instead of maintaining abbey buildings.101 While Jeanne allegedly allowed the nuns’ dormitory to fall apart, she built a house large enough for only six nuns, less than a fifth of the community—and installed at least five of her own professed relatives in the new building. This was a serious error in her community’s eyes, particularly those nuns interested in reform. The complaining nuns alleged that rent money Jeanne withheld went instead to her lay relatives.102 We can get a sense of what the nuns might have sought from a much later drawing of Sainte-Croix, completed in 1699 (Figure 32). In 1509–10, a visit from the bishop of Poitiers, Claude de Husson—whose own 1502 election had required royal supervision—confirmed that Sainte-Croix’s refectory was indeed in a state of disrepair, making communal meals impossible. Instead, the women ate in small groups in various dormitories.103 The Parlement of Paris ordered Jeanne to direct at least one-third of the abbey’s revenues to her community, to pay for their food, and to eat with her nuns. This was such an important order that Jeanne called a special visitation in 1511, inviting several local observers to witness a communal meal and to inspect the condition of the abbey’s refectory.104 They discovered that only sixteen nuns ate together in the refectory; four nuns were ill and five more were tending them; and two nuns refused to even participate in this reformed version of their community. Whether or not the broader community desired reform at Sainte-Croix, Jeanne’s vulnerability after her election’s chaos allowed some nuns to attack her authority by engaging with the reform’s principles and insisting on dramatic changes to Sainte-Croix’s internal governance. Jeanne may have been in poor health already, or the stress of these processes against her may have taken a toll on her, as she resigned in 1511 and died the next year.

100  ADV 2H1/1, November 26, 1491; and 2H1/2, 1509. 101  ADV 2H1/1/2, 1509; BMP A6 (426); Robert Favreau, “Une élection à l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers en 1491,” Revue d’histoire de l’eglise de France 65 (1979): 75–87; and Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 170–6. Her family certainly benefitted from Jeanne’s election. 102  A long complaint lists various sources of revenue available to the abbey, such as local houses or woods owned by Sainte-Croix, and claims Jeanne mismanaged them; the complaint also specifies unrepaired damages to Sainte-Croix’s buildings, such as dilapidated chimneys: ADV 2H1/2, 1509. 103  ADV 2H1/2, 1510; Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 201. Claude was nephew of the archbishop of Sens. Claude’s election was attended by the seneschals of Poitiers and Toulouse, which suggested pressure from the king. 104  ADV 2H1/2; Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 201.

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Figure 32.  Louis Boudan, Veüe de l’Abbaye Royalle de Saincte Croix de Poictiers, aux Religieuses Bénédictines, 1699. BnF, Gaignières, 5995

MARIE BERLAND Marie Berland took control of Sainte-Croix when her aunt resigned in 1511. After Jeanne died, Marie sought to make the transition from acting abbess to the convent’s head permanent by entering the abbess’s choir stall on April 14, ignoring the community’s rights to elect their own superior. The king and bishop blocked her, however, by insisting upon the nuns’ rights to free abbatial elections. Two days later Bishop Claude de Husson had to force Marie Berland to recognize his authority when he approved an election for April 30, 1512, since she had already claimed her

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seat as abbess.105 These men were not above trying to influence that election, of course, as King Louis XII wrote to the nuns urging them to honor his “request” and vote in favor of his candidate, Madeleine d’Orléans, abbess of Saint-Ausone in Angoulême, half-sister of the future Francis I.106 Louis also wrote to Poitiers’ townspeople and insisted that they should intervene with the nuns in Madeleine’s favor, a dangerous request given the 1491 election’s violence.107 However, not all the interested parties agreed that an election was required. Guyonne Poupaille, the prioress of Saint-Romain, a local priory on lands Sainte-Croix held, protested that Jeanne de Couhé had appointed Marie Berland as abbess and had only resigned in her favor. Guyonne’s objection emphasized that the old abbess’s wishes should be respected over the rights of the community, arguing the primacy of the abbess’s rights and powers while undermining those of the community.108 Using scrutin once again, the scrutators counted thirteen nuns and five novices voting in Marie Berland’s favor, while the prioress and ten nuns voted for Madeleine d’Orléans. Madeleine’s supporters appealed the election to the Parlement of Paris, which kept to a pattern of supporting canonically elected officers and decided in favor of Marie in April of 1512.109 This matter’s quick resolution suggests that nobody wanted to repeat the 1491–2 scandal. Sainte-Croix remained in the de Couhé family’s hands. When she finally received the abbess title in 1512, Marie Berland was not able to enjoy her position for long. In 1518 Bishop Claude de Husson requested nuns from Fontevraud to reform both of Poitiers’ female monasteries, and Renée de Bourbon sent women to Poitiers’ abbeys of La Trinité and Sainte-Croix.110 His request was almost certainly a response to difficulty with Marie Berland, elected despite his campaigning for Madeleine d’Orléans, as well as to the king’s recently expanded powers over ecclesiastical offices in France under the Concordat of Bologna. Reaching out to Fontevraud for reformers in Poitiers would make sense to Claude, as Fontevraud was at the forefront of female monastic reform in the area, and the abbey was also under his jurisdiction as bishop of Poitiers. The bishop’s request and Marie’s election, among other factors, encouraged the king and Parlement to hold a Grand Jours in Poitiers.111 105  ADV 2H1/2 (April 16, 1512); also see July 14, 1512, when the Parlement of Paris orders men to defend her against those using violence against her. 106  Lettres des rois de France, princes et grands personnages à la commune de Poitiers, ed. Bélisaire Ledain (Poitiers: Imp. de H. Oudin, 1872), 193. 107  “nous avons esté présentement advertiz du trespass de l’abesse de sancte Croix de Poictiers. Parce que nous désirons singullièrement [que] nostre chère et amée cousine . . . soit proveue de la dicte abbaye . . . nous escripvons présentement aux religieuses d’icelle abbaye à ce qu’elles veuillent toutes unicquement postuller icelle nostre dicte cousine en leur abbesse. A ceste cause et que nous scavons que vous pourrez grandement server en ceste affair . . .”: Lettres des rois de France, princes, et grands personages à la commune de Poitiers, ed. Ledain, 193. 108  ADV 2H1/2, April 16, 1512. 109  Three letters linked together, ADV 2H1/2, 1512. The bishop must have confirmed her, but there is no record of the confirmation. 110 de Viguerie, “La réforme de Fontevraud,” 115. For Renée’s success, see Müller, “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism,” 438n.41. 111  The bishop had already gained visitation rights for the 1509–10 crisis. If there were any episcopal exemption for Sainte-Croix, it was certainly over by the end of the 1519–20 Grands

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During the 1519–20 Grands Jours King Francis I and Abbess Renée de Bourbon forcibly imposed reform on Sainte-Croix, along with many other abbeys.112 The Grands Jours were visits of the king and members of Parlement to regions distant from France’s eight Parlements, and thus were special opportunities for the king’s justice to be administered in these less directly governed areas. Holding a Grands Jours session in Poitiers demonstrated the near century since the city’s previous recognition with a Parlement under Charles VII, but it also offered townspeople renewed hope of gaining a more permanent Parlement, as had other cities the Grands Jours visited.113 This would not happen in Poitiers, but the king’s visit was yet another opportunity to demonstrate the town’s loyalty to France and a­ dmiration of their king. Poitevin historian Jean Bouchet included a long description of the welcome Poitiers performed during Francis’s royal entry, which Bouchet may even have organized.114 The French kings had long been involved in Church reform in their realm, such as we saw with the 1438 Pragmatic Sanction. Charles VIII had employed that power to impose Marie de Bretagne as Fontevraud’s abbess and to decide the abbacy at La Trinité.115 Reform in France was tightly connected with Gallicanism, which limited the involvement of the papacy in appointing bishops and abbots in France; the king became more involved in these appointments. Gallicanists celebrated this limitation on the papacy in France and the particularly Gallican and conciliarist Parlement of Paris opposed the efforts of King Louis XI to negotiate with the papacy in 1461 and 1472, negotiations in which he offered to limit the Pragmatic Sanction. Parlement “encouraged royal claims to greater authority over the Church—which were the basis of its own authority—at the same time as it resisted the king’s vision of reform, which it not unjustly felt to be targeted only at the Church’s wealth” and in opposition to the absolutist claims of both the monarchy and the papacy.116 The Estates of 1484 petitioned King Charles VIII for reform of the Church, which was then pursued by Louis XII and Cardinal Legate Georges d’Amboise, who focused on monastic reform with particular success in female monasteries, especially with the Cardinal Legate’s well-placed family’s assistance.117 Thus reform energized all aspects of the French Church, with the king expanding his authority over the offices and wealth of bishops, chapters, and monasteries who wanted to hold onto their traditional privileges, while Parlement limited papal involvement in France and protected the right of free elections. Beyond its obvious extension of royal, centralized authority, the king’s involvement in the Church was stabilizing, as Baumgartner observed that “[b]itter disputes erupted in the chapters over the elections. Many of these struggles dragged on for Jours: Louise Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 227–8. Most of the visitations were not by the bishop of Poitiers, however. 112 Pasquier, Grands Jours de Poitiers de 1454 à 1634. 113 Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century, 91. 114 Bouchet, Annales d’Aquitaine; Britnell, Jean Bouchet. 115  Müller, “Forming and Re-Forming Fontevraud,” draft chapter 1 shared with author, 19. 116 Lange, The First French Reformation, 83. 117 Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century, 36; Palustre, “L’abbesse Anne d’Orléans.”

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years, and some became violent.”118 The French king’s right to nominate abbatial superiors was again recognized in the 1516 Concordat of Bologna, which did permit the pope the rarely exercised right to reject royal candidates, but also severely undermined rights of free election for chapters and abbeys in France.119 Written by both King Francis I and Pope Leo X, the Concordat limited appeals to Rome, gave the king the right to appoint ecclesiastical officers whom the pope would then approve and canonically install, and gave the pope both the right to collect annates and to claim superiority to councils. While the Concordat gave the pope a victory by ending conciliarism it also gave the king of France extensive power over the French Church, particularly in the selection of its officers.120 And the expansion of the king’s power over the Church also brought the Parlement of Paris the ability to monitor French bishops, whose authority the Parlement severely limited by 1520, and to police abuses such as venality, simony, and pluralism. The Concordat established more clearly the French king’s ability to nominate abbatial superiors; it also severely undermined the rights of free election to benefices in France. Ultimately reform of the Church in France permitted the king to take control of ecclesiastical benefices not just from the pope, but also from bishops, chapters, and monasteries.121 King Francis I committed himself to reform during the early part of his reign, from 1515 to 1524. His reform-minded sister Marguerite de Navarre had already been reforming monasteries in her lands by engaging with reformers in the French court and with the Parlement of Paris’s assistance.122 Marguerite, like her mother Louise de Savoy, had great influence over Francis and served as his court’s great lady after Louise’s death.123 Francis renewed privileges for reformed houses, such as Chelles, Jouarre, Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Yerres, Chezal-Benoît, Saint-Sulpicede-Bourges, and Saint-Germain.124 Francis seems to have begun with royal monasteries, as places he might easily exercise his rights, and so the royal monasteries of La Trinité, Montmartre, and Saint-Germain-des-Prés received his attention.125 Interestingly, Jean Bouchet, the sixteenth-century Poitevin historian and devotee of Saint Radegund’s cult, possibly emphasized Radegund’s royalty in his book devoted to her in order to attract Francis’s attention to Sainte-Croix, as Bouchet was an 118 Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century, 41. 119 Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century, 41–3. 120  Lange argues that one result of the reform movement and this monarchical power over the Church was that there was no incentive for a Protestant Reformation in France as there was in England. The “First French Reformation” ensured that there was not a Protestant one: Lange, The First French Reformation. 121 Lange, The First French Reformation, 110, 257. The king and his advisors were aware of the benefits to them of engaging with the reform, but it is not necessary to see them as cravenly seeking power in pursuing monastic reform. They also argued and perhaps believed that reform of abuse within the Church avoided damnation for individual clerics, magistrates, subjects, and the king, whose salvation depended upon a pure Church: Lange, The First French Reformation, 255. 122  In 1515 she asked the Parlement of Paris “to help reformed friars enter a Dominican convent” in Le Mans: Lange, The First French Reformation, 78. 123  Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). 124  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 78–9. 125  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 124.

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enthusiastic supporter of reform for Poitiers’ communities.126 As we have seen, Francis also had a personal interest in Marie Berland’s abbacy, due to the slight against his sister in the 1512 election. Francis brought to Poitiers papal bulls granting him power to visit Sainte-Croix and La Trinité in 1519. His personal involvement in Poitiers meant that the nuns’ customary supporters—the pope and king—had allied against Sainte-Croix’s abbess, although by this point the pope had little power to resist the French king. Francis arrived in Poitiers with an entourage of archers and soldiers, a group whose size suggests he expected resistance from the women or from their families, a fair expectation given the violence of Jeanne’s 1491 election.127 The king’s officials conducted a great deal of business in Poitiers: they convicted and executed about a dozen men, they burned a heretic, and they heard 500 appels, but the Grands Jours’ most shocking act was to remove Marie Berland from Sainte-Croix, send her to Fontevraud, and replace her with a series of Fontevrist administrative prioresses, beginning on January 17, 1520.128 This dramatic change in government facilitated reform—both to reshape Sainte-Croix’s community and to retrain Marie Berland. Renée de Bourbon sent several Fontevrist nuns to Poitiers to ease reform for the community at Sainte-Croix.129 In fact, she sent twenty-four nuns to Sainte-Croix as part of the transition—more than she sent to any other monastery she and Francis reformed—and they probably outnumbered the remaining nuns from Sainte-Croix.130 The first administrative prioress, Perrette Le Voix, deported at least ten of Sainte-Croix’s nuns to Fontevrist priories so that they would not make trouble in Poitiers, and gave all the abbey’s offices to the remaining nuns. While the neighborhood’s petty nobility continued to send their daughters to Sainte-Croix, these other nuns, particularly those related to royal officials, dominated the community and its offices. Once the personnel change was complete, the prioress sequestered Sainte-Croix’s funds and property for six months while order was established. A new administrative prioress from Renée’s family, Isabeau de Beauvau, replaced Perrette by March 1522 and governed until 1534, when Marie Berland died and a new abbess could

126 Britnell, Jean Bouchet, 75; Jean Bouchet, Epistres, Elegies, Epigrammes et Epitaphes, composez sur et pour raison du deces de feu tresillustre et tresreligieuse Dame Madame Renée de Bourbon (Poitiers: Jean and Enguilbert de Marnef, 1535). 127  ADV 2H1/2; DF 27, 509; and Labande-Mailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 223 and 227. 128  According to the sixteenth-century Poitevin historian, Jean Bouchet, the townspeople were horrified by this treatment of the abbess and the nuns of Sainte-Croix. See de Viguerie, “La réforme de Fontevraud,” 116 and McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 415. See also Léon Faye, Le Parlement et les Grands Jours de Poitiers (Poitiers: A. Dupré, 1855). 129 Renée governed Fontevraud after Anne d’Orléans’ death, from 1491–1534, and imposed reform despite great resistance. She used the Parlement of Paris to expel members reluctant to observe Marie de Bretagne’s new statutes, sending them to reformed Fontevrist priories. Fontevraud itself finally accepted reform and enclosure in 1505: de Viguerie, “La réforme de Fontevraud.” 130  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 416. At Almenéches, for example, only sixteen Fontevrist women arrived to replace older nuns and an abbess who were all sent to other communities.

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take office.131 Bouchet claimed that the treatment of Sainte-Croix’s abbess and nuns horrified him and the townspeople.132 Sainte-Croix’s reform, like that of other reformed monasteries, emphasized communal life in shared dining and sleeping accommodations, and communal property achieved by the cancellation of independent benefices, prebends, or priories. Communal life required significant building work, and Sainte-Croix not only required new construction to create a larger refectory and dormitory, it also needed extensive repairs as a result of the 1491 conflict. Recognizing this need, in 1520 King Francis gave 300 livres for repair and reconstruction, but that covered only a fraction of the cost.133 He had been more generous with the nuns of Yerres, whom he gave 1,000 livres tournois the same year.134 It is unclear whether this difference was favoritism, punishment for Sainte-Croix, or an indication that the abbey’s finances were not actually that troubled. Communal property also required a significant reorganization of Sainte-Croix’s holdings and organizational structure. The external priories of Saix, Jard, and Pas-Dieu, had their benefices reattached to the main community rather than to individual prioresses. This also meant that the nuns had no need to travel to these estates, and claustration was enforced. No longer were the women permitted to process even to the church of Sainte-Radegonde for the saint’s feast days, a privilege that had been so important to them in previous disputes—and so carefully protected by the king fifty years before. Entrance to the abbey became more tightly regulated—and the abbey church gained a new grill.135 The canons of SainteRadegonde continued to serve at the abbey’s altar and to carry their banners, signs, and emblems during the town’s processions, but strict active and passive enclosure became more of a reality at Sainte-Croix.136 The reform involved a shift in the elections of Sainte-Croix’s superior: while Fontevraud’s reformed rule was still Benedictine and thus guaranteed the rights of the community to elect its abbess, that right was no longer free as the king of France now had the privilege to nominate candidates under the Concordat of Bologna.137 The Parlement of Paris continued to protect elected officials against royal candidates for the same office until 1528, but Sainte-Croix’s next election came too late: as the 131  Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 232. 132  He noted that Sainte-Croix had always been autonomous and that the nuns were free of any taint of scandal. See Bouchet, Annales d’aquitaine, 136. Bouchet may have felt responsible for the reform, since Francis focused on royal abbeys, and Bouchet’s 1517 Chronique had argued that SainteCroix was a royal foundation: Britnell, Jean Bouchet, 75. He notes this himself in the Annales d’aquitaine, and blames instead those who have said or written “plusieurs grand maledictions et privileges dudict monastere Sainct-Croix et contre ceulx qui pervertiront leur ordre et forme de vivre.” Specifically he names Fontevraud. Bouchet commented that the reform was imposed on Sainte-Croix and La Trinité “par force et violence” and that the removal of the two abbesses and their nuns was “piteuse a veoir” because they were both of great families (Amboise and Couhé). He noted that these abbesses were “dames vertueuses, chastes, pudiques et charitables,” going on to emphasize their charitable activities. He defended them, claiming they had had no scandals, broken no enclosure, and that they were both faithful, so there was no justification for their removal. 133  ADV 2H1/2, 1521; for the builders’ contract, see Crozet, Textes et documents, 226. 134  Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 117. 135  Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 234. 136  ADV G1346. 137 Lange, The First French Reformation, 121.

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Grands Jours removed Marie from the abbey but did not strip her of the title and the abbacy of Sainte-Croix did not become open until Marie Berland’s death in the 1530s. In 1531 Pope Clement VII removed any remaining rights to free elections in France.138 The abbey had no opportunity to test whether they could choose their own candidate, but given the success of royal candidates elsewhere in France, it would have been unlikely for Sainte-Croix’s nuns to ignore the king’s nominee again.139 While Renée and Isabeau had exiled several of Sainte-Croix’s nuns, they also brought new women into the abbey, swelling its numbers from about thirty in 1512 to over fifty in 1528, and eighty members by 1540, growth that the new building projects likely facilitated. Numbers declined again by the 1560s.140 Some of the displaced nuns may have returned to Poitiers after their resistance to reform was worn down, but Marie Berland was never granted permission to return to Sainte-Croix.141 According to Fontevraud’s “Vie et Registres des abbesses” Marie spent her time there devoutly serving God, and she remained devoted to Radegund, her “holy mistress and patron.” She never resigned her title and she remained abbess in name until her death on March 23, 1533, when she was buried before SainteRadegonde’s church altar.142 Upon Marie’s death, Renée de Bourbon arranged for her niece Louise de Bourbon to become abbess of Sainte-Croix, and two other Bourbon family members followed her as abbess. Thus, Sainte-Croix’s reform removed the de Couhé family from its problematic tenure over the monastery’s abbacy, but replaced it with the strong grip of another family, the royally connected Bourbons, that was gaining influence over abbeys around France.143 Louise, who had only governed the abbey through an administrative prioress, resigned Sainte-Croix in favor of her teenaged niece Madeleine de Bourbon in 1534 when Renée de Bourbon died and Louise became Fontevraud’s abbess.144 In view of her niece’s youth and inexperience, Louise held onto certain of Sainte-Croix’s benefices, with Pope Paul III’s 138 Lange, The First French Reformation, 121. 139 Lange, The First French Reformation, 121, 132, 259. Also consider the example of Chelles, which was reformed in 1499, with abbesses elected every three years until 1559, when the king ended elections and named his own candidates. Even the elections demonstrated royal influence as a Bourbon was elected in 1533. 140  Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 240. 141  At least one other nun never returned to Sainte-Croix: the prioress of Brieuil-sur-Chizé died in 1528, still at Fontevraud. And, like Marie Berland, Anne du Boys, prioress of Saint-Romain, refused to renounce her title until her death: ADV 2H1/83; and Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 236. 142  “Vie des Registres des abbesses de Fontevraud,” BN ms. lat. 5480 II; on microfilm: mi 19206; f ° 349–f° 371, f. 356. Many thanks to Annalena Müller for sharing this portion of her edition of this text with me. Marie’s appeals to the Grand Conseil are in ADV 2H1/98, 1524/5. See also LabandeMailfert and Favreau, Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, 224. 143  Annalena Müller’s book in progress argues that this process had already begun at Fontevraud, which the monarchy tightly controlled through the Bourbon family’s female members for generations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Müller, personal conversations, 2015. Bourbons also took control of Chelles in the sixteenth century. 144  Madeleine’s parents were Charles de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme and Françoise d’Alençon; she was related to both Louise and Renée de Bourbon. In 1534 she was about twelve years old, and her young age is one reason that Louise took over the management of Sainte-Croix’s properties at Fontevraud: Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 232.

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agreement and the unanimous support of the nuns.145 As Louise Coudanne observed, Sainte-Croix’s nuns had very little choice in the matter, but their docile acceptance of a thirteen-year-old abbess without election and without their benefices demonstrates the extent to which this reform had cowed the community.146 Madeleine remained at Fontevraud and governed the abbey through an administrative prioress. Jo Ann McNamara noted that the king of France “took control of the women’s goods in a gross extension of his commendatory rights” in 1519 through putting Sainte-Croix under the control of Fontevraud’s reforming, royal abbesses.147 Without Marie Berland or the support of external allies the nuns were powerless to resist these tactics, and their previous ally the French king had, it seems, turned against them while their other ally, the pope, was barred from assistance. But in many ways the king was supporting the rights of the community over the abbess’s traditional authority, now that the reform movement had presented these two in tension. Francis was the nuns’ ally, but not necessarily the abbess’s—a fascinating reversal of his own absolutist expansions of power at the expense of his Parlement, a pattern repeated throughout France.148 Male officials’ shifting support reveals the tension at the heart of Sainte-Croix’s internal conflicts: reform principles set the abbess’s power against the community’s freedoms. In supporting or promoting one, advocates undermined the other. While abbesses had traditionally fought fiercely to protect their community’s privileges and freedoms, Anne d’Orléans, Jeanne de Couhé, and Marie Berland fought more for personal and familial prestige, with the abbey’s rights as a secondary concern. And as the abbey’s nuns sought stronger community, they created a space for outsiders to manipulate the abbey. We can even see in this tension at Sainte-Croix a microcosm of the larger crisis between absolutist monarchical power and conciliarist constitutionalism that Tyler Lange identified as the crux of what he called the “first French reformation.” Like the pope or the king in France, abbesses such as Jeanne or Marie Berland sought complete, absolutist authority over the abbey, while the abbey’s nuns resisted that extension of abbatial power and insisted instead on their community’s rights. The Parlement of Paris tended to protect the abbess’s rights, once properly elected and installed, against the encroaching power of the king, but remained sympathetic to the community’s complaints against what the nuns depicted as an absentee, mismanaging, power-hungry, or selfish abbess. Shifting alliances and support networks in the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, complicated by these reform movements and debates over absolutist power, confused the traditional coalitions around Sainte-Croix. A confused election and newly confirmed royal privileges accelerated the slow process of reform at Sainte-Croix. 145  ADV 2H1/89. 146  Coudanne, “Le temps de réformes,” 229; ADV 2H1/89. 147 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 415. 148  Marie d’Alençon, relative of Louis XI, had held the abbacy of Almenèches in 1517 but the abbey went to an unknown at her death. The reform deposed this new abbess with the approval of even Marguerite of Navarre, who sometimes lived in the abbey, in favor of a woman connected to the king’s allies: Le Gall, Les moines au temps des réformes, 525.

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Throughout these disputes between Sainte-Croix’s abbesses and nuns several patterns emerge. Even though a show of force during or immediately preceding an election was not necessarily enough to invalidate an election, stories of molested and manhandled nuns won the beleaguered community sympathy and generosity, and ensured condemnation for the perpetrators. In all of these cases nuns of SainteCroix expressed dissatisfaction with their superior and made formal complaints seeking redress of their grievances. Although more than nine hundred years separate the first and last such grievances, Sainte-Croix’s nuns repeatedly raised the same issues, complained of the same flaws in their abbesses, and used similar methods in their attempts to remove an abbess from office. As we have seen, problems cited include the procedure of the election, the abbess’s management of abbey resources, her morality, her birth and social status, her local connections, and outside interference. Of these, it was the candidates’ birth, status, and connections that proved most devastating for the abbey’s harmony. Both the RC and the RB had warned against considerations of social status in selecting abbatial candidates.149 In practice, however, abbesses—particularly in as large and wealthy an abbey as Sainte-Croix—came from noble or royal families, typically local families with property or high positions in fiefs and parishes either controlled by Sainte-Croix or near its influence. Clotild was Charibert’s daughter, Basina Chilperic’s daughter, while Rothrude was Charles the Bald’s daughter. Isabelle de Bourbon and Louise de Bourbon came from the royal family, and Madeleine d’Orléans also claimed a royal relationship. Isabelle de Marmande, Marguerite and Alice, Marguerite de Vivonne, Jeanne de Couhé, and Marie Berland all came from important landholding families near Poitiers. The Rules also required nuns to sever ties with their families and turn instead to their new monastic community. As the abbey’s leader the abbess should have been above reproach in her dealings with her own temporal relatives, and the guardian of appropriate relations between her nuns and their families. Such might have been the ideal, but it was not always feasible, given the strong relationship between Sainte-Croix and important local elites. Local landholding families whose daughters joined Sainte-Croix were often the abbey’s tenants and provided for its wealth in rent and donations. These women remained connected to their families as nuns at the abbey, just as their families maintained a keen interest in their relatives’ welfare and the abbey’s endeavors.150 149 McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of St. Caesarius of Arles, 190. 150  Isabelle de Marmande’s relatives controlled Marmande, a possession of the abbey near SaintRomain and Vellèches, about forty-five kilometers north of Poitiers on the Vienne River. Several Marmande family members were mentioned in the abbey’s archives, including Aénor, sub-prior in 1281, another abbess named Béatrice who governed c.1329, a Pierre de Marmande (also known as de Buxière) who left the abbey 100 livres, and a Barthélemi who was associated with the abbey through his holdings in Saint-Romain: ADV 2H1/81 and 97; and Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 129. The estate of Vellèches belonged to Sainte-Radegonde while Marmande belonged to the abbey. One of Isabelle de Marmande’s supporters, Marguerite de Rivau, also shared a family name with other nuns of Sainte-Croix, including an abbess in 1353. Her family came from the fief of Rivau in the seigneurie of Saint-Romain, which would make Marguerite’s family close neighbors of Isabelle’s: ADV 2H1/97

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Nuns usually supported local candidates for the abbatial position over outsiders, probably out of concern for the abbey’s property and belief that a local abbess would both protect the abbey and be friendly to local interests. Their maintenance as nuns depended on the wealth that came from monastic possessions, and in some cases their earthly families also derived their livings from these properties.151 The only woman involved in the thirteenth-century dispute without clear ties to Sainte-Croix and its property was Isabelle de La Puye herself. Isabelle de Marmande, Marguerite de Rivau, and Alice de Chardonchamp all came from local noble families that were either the monastery’s tenants or vassals. From Marguerite and Alice’s accusations we know that Isabelle had been a nun at Notre-Dame of Compiègne in the diocese of Noyon, and that she had served as prioress of the Fontevrist priory of La Puye, located, like its mother house, within the diocese of Poitiers. Since all involved identified Isabelle as “Podia” or “La Puye” rather than by a more local designation, as that used for all the other nuns named, it seems safe to assume that the nuns of Sainte-Croix knew Isabelle primarily as prioress of La Puye and that they recognized no local connection between her and Poitiers or Sainte-Croix. This lack of local connection might explain the nuns’ hostility to her election. Local connections could also cause trouble if one family became too entrenched in the community or nuns favored their family too overtly, as in the case of Jeanne de Couhé and Marie Berland. Jeanne de Couhé had many intimate ties to Poitiers and to Sainte-Croix. She had entered the abbey in 1451 at age twelve and had been in the abbey for forty years before her election. She had been schoolmistress and cellarer, and had served as prioress since 1469. Her family was well represented in the abbey: six nuns and two novices at the abbey in 1491 were Jeanne’s relatives (about a quarter of Sainte-Croix’s women). Her family members also held prominent positions in the local ecclesiastical hierarchy, including four local curés, and her brother Méry was master of the queen’s household. Jeanne’s father, Jean, was lord of a local fief and held extensive lands around Poitiers. Jeanne had experience, connections, support, and a family history of leadership at Sainte-Croix, all of which made her a strong candidate for abbess. Nuns supporting Isabelle de Marmande and Jeanne de Couhé probably did so because of their personal relationships with the women and the promise of future support their strong family ties offered.152 and 98. Her fellow nun, Alice, came from Chardonchamp, located just north of Poitiers. Her family had arranged for a large donation to the abbey upon her entrance in 1268: ADV 2H1/1. Isabelle de La Puye’s only named supporter, Aéonor d’Agrissay was a nun at Sainte-Croix in 1264, and served as prioress of the abbey at the time of the dispute. The d’Agrissay family had at least three other members involved with the abbey in the second half of the thirteenth century, including two nuns, Jeanne and Pétronille: Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 132. 151  For an example of the familial concerns and pressures on Italian abbesses, see Kate Lowe, “Elections of Abbesses and Notions of Identity in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy, with Special Reference to Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2001): 389–429. Penelope Johnson has demonstrated the close ties between monastic women from the same families within the monastery, and between the nuns and members of their birth families living outside the walls. She has also argued compellingly that female monasteries in France desperately struggled for economic survival during the thirteenth century: Equal in Monastic Profession, 13–33. 152  Her aunt Isabeau de Couhé—the complainant in the 1466–72 dispute with Sainte-Radegonde (see Chapter 6)—served as abbess from 1456 to 1484. Jeanne appointed her relatives Dauphine de

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Indeed, Jeanne’s successor and niece, Marie Berland, entered Sainte-Croix around age seven, held various offices in the abbey, and was prioress of Saint-Romain in Jard at her aunt’s resignation.153 Traditionally the nuns selected an abbess from internal candidates but external candidates were allowed in the absence of a suitable nun from the community or fears, as in Jeanne de Couhé’s case, that an internal candidate might privilege her own family.154 While neither the RC nor the RB explicitly favored women from the community over outsiders in selecting superiors, unhappy nuns often suggested that a nun from Sainte-Croix was the most suitable candidate. Marguerite and Alice favored their sister nun Isabelle over an outsider, as did the supporters of Jeanne de Couhé, Marie Berland, and Odile. As women familiar with the community, its members, properties, tenants, and rivals, Sainte-Croix’s own nuns were often the best equipped candidates and the most comfortable choices for the nuns who must submit to their new abbess’s authority. The argument for superiors already living in Sainte-Croix did not succeed in every case—as when Isabelle de La Puye took office instead of her local rival, who may have been too young and inexperienced for the job, or when Marie Berland was removed in favor of an outsider better able to reform Sainte-Croix in 1520, or in 1484 when Anne d’Orléans, already abbess of Fontevraud, became Sainte-Croix’s superior upon the death of Isabeau de Couhé, who had steered the abbey through major crises well from 1456 to 1484. Based on later events, Isabeau’s success and the strength of her family’s position in Sainte-Croix may have made other members of the community uncomfortable, although there is not a hint of internal controversy during her abbacy. With these exceptions, voting nuns tended to prefer women already familiar with the community as abbess. Anne d’Orléans’ term as abbess at Sainte-Croix was unusual in several ways: she was an external candidate, she already held another office and such pluralism was unprecedented at Sainte-Croix, and she may not have even been elected.155 It is possible that some nuns feared the de Couhé family’s strength and sought an external Fougères prioress, Arture de Couhé sub-prioress, and Antoinette de Fougères, in charge of the refectory. She made her nieces Odette de Couhé, Marie Berland, and Anne Berland her officers. Marie Berland and Jeanne’s sister Antoinette de Couhé were each named prioress of Saint-Romain. Family members also held prominent positions in the local ecclesiastical hierarchy, including Adam de Fougères, curé of Latillé and Fosses; Jean de Fougères, curé of Fosses; Pothon de Couhé, curé of Jard and Vasles; and her brother Pierre de Couhé. Her other brother Méry held the prominent position of master of the queen’s household: Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 170–1, and 174. Jeanne’s father, Jean, was lord of a local fief, Roche-Agait, held extensive lands around Poitiers, and paid homage to the bishop of Poitiers in 1450 and 1462: Quittance, BN Lat. 17041, f. 23. 153  Favreau, “Une élection à l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers en 1491”; and “Heures et malheurs,” 170–6. 154 Hourlier, L’Age classique, 316. A previous abbess of Sainte-Croix, Hilaire (d. 1258), had been a member of communities distant from Poitiers, but she had also spent time in Poitiers’ abbey of La Trinité, and may even have been from Poitiers. She was known to have been a nun of the priory of Jard, which, although outside of Poitiers, sat on a possession contested by Sainte-Croix and SainteRadegonde: ADV 2H1/9; and Favreau, “Heures et malheurs,” 120–7. 155  Palustre, “L’abbesse Anne d’Orléans, 216. The Benedictine Rule did not prohibit external candidates: Hourlier, L’Age classique, 316. See also Thomas J. Bowe, Religious Superioresses: A Historical Synopsis and a Commentary: A Dissertation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1946).

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candidate in order to prevent that family from supplying another abbess. Jeanne de Couhé had been prioress of Sainte-Croix since at least 1480, and an imposition of Anne in 1484 must have been meant at least partially to block Jeanne and the de Couhé family from the abbacy.156 No records of Anne’s election exist, and a papal letter in September 1491 suggests that she received the position through the king’s commendatory rights.157 Since Anne was the sister of the future Louis XII, and King Charles VIII referred to her as his “aimée cousine,” family connections could have enabled her to become abbess at two royal monasteries.158 Another of Charles VIII’s relatives, Renée de Bourbon, replaced Anne as abbess in Fontevraud. In this case the nuns rejected the close family connections of a local woman and received a superior with much more prestigious connections, even if her appointment/election violated their rights. However, the nuns of Sainte-Croix had defended their rights to free elections before and would insist on them again, in Anne’s successor’s election. As with Eva, the successor to Rothrude who had insisted upon the abbey’s free elections (see Chapter 3), the nuns might have been eager to clarify their rights after a deviation. As Anne’s case shows, the abbey also dealt with pressures from external authorities in selecting their superiors. The king of France, the seneschal of Poitou, local landholders, the bishop of Poitiers, the prior of Sainte-Radegonde, and even the papacy interfered by suggesting their own candidates or by casting support behind one candidate. These authorities also exerted influence over Sainte-Croix when the nuns sought an audience for their complaints against their superiors by investigating the dispute, instituting sanctions, or arbitrating the election. The women of SainteCroix did not easily buckle under such pressure, however. Eleventh- and twelfth-century reforming councils had sought to limit the involvement of lay officials in the selection of bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastical offices by emphasizing elections, as well as prohibiting them from the investiture of bishops and abbots with the symbols of their office.159 Pursuing those prohibitions in 1215, Canon 25 of the Fourth Lateran Council specifically precluded 156  Barbier de Montault, Le Trésor, 205; DF V, 735. 157  Robert Favreau argues that it was the pope who imposed Anne through his commendatory rights: “Une élection à l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers en 1491,” 75, while McNamara asserts that this was the king’s power and choice: Sisters in Arms, 414–15. McNamara’s discussion of Sainte-Croix is confused on these pages, claiming that Sainte-Croix had “elected a nun of Sainte-Croix to succeed Anne [in 1492], but Anne was reinstalled with the help of her brother’s men-at-arms” but Anne was already dead by this point and it was Marguerite and Jeanne’s brothers who had invaded the abbey. She asserts that Anne’s re-election was contested by “[a] nun of Fontevraud who had been associated with Anne” and the following sentences use only pronouns to describe actions taken by both Marguerite and Jeanne. Pope Innocent VIII claimed that Anne had been selected through commenda on September 27, 1491: “in commendam ex concessione et dispensacione apostolica.” The king and pope likely worked together to ensure that Sainte-Croix had a desirable abbess: letter from Innocent VIII, ADV 2H1/1, September 27, 1491; and letter from Charles VIII, ADV 2H1/1, September 25, 1491. 158  ADV 2H1/1, October 15, 1491. Such pluralism was repeated by Anne’s successor, Renée de Bourbon, who held the abbacies of Fontevraud and of Trinité de Caen 1491–1504 before passing the latter to her sister: Müller, “From Charismatic Congregation to Institutional Monasticism,” 32n.107. Anne was the daughter of Charles d’Orléans. 159  On the eleventh-century reform, see Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, and Chapter 4 in this volume.

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those who gained offices through secular officials from holding the position: “Whoever shall presume to consent to the election of himself through the abusive intervention of the secular authorities contrary to canonical liberty, shall lose the advantage he has gained therefrom and shall be ineligible in the future.”160 Secular authorities continued to involve themselves in elections, however. In 1284 Marguerite and Alice added to the complaints against Isabelle de La Puye the charge that a “secular power” had forced her upon them.161 Like the complaint about an excommunicate nun’s vote, this charge could potentially have invalidated Isabelle’s election. The nuns presented no overt evidence that the king had intervened, but Philippe le Bel appeared to favor Isabelle de la Puye during his investigation into the nuns’ complaint: in January 1297 he granted the nuns the right to take seven units of wood from his forests so long as this Isabelle presided over the monastery. He specified that after her death, or after she gave up rule over the abbey, the nuns might continue to take a lesser portion.162 Philippe confirmed this gift in 1300 with the same language, stressing that this gift was in honor of Isabelle herself and that the abbey would receive the larger portion only so long as Isabelle continued as abbess, suggesting strongly that Philippe was Isabelle’s “secular power.”163 French monarchs had been subtly influencing elections at Fontevraud for years already; the connection between the monarchy, the Fontevrist priory of La Puye, and Philppe’s gift to Sainte-Croix makes it clear that Isabelle de La Puye had the crown’s support.164 Some nuns welcomed and even invited royal interference. Clotild and Basina expected their royal relatives to relieve them from their “unsuitable” abbess, and to put Clotild in her place. While Marguerite de Vivonne received the overeager support of her brother’s troops and the seneschal of Poitou in 1491–2, Jeanne de Couhé and Isabelle de Bourbon both petitioned the king for support of their claims against their rivals. In his first response the king actually conceded that Jeanne had been elected abbess of Sainte-Croix, but authorized Marguerite to seek bulls from the pope that would excommunicate Jeanne.165 Jeanne, in turn, hoped that royal troops might dislodge André de Vivonne from Sainte-Croix—much as Leubovera 160  Histoire des conciles oecuméniques, ed. Foreville, 4:25. 161  “[Q]uod se fecisset in abbatissam monasterii Sancte Crucis intrudi per potentiam secularem”: Digard, Les Registres de Boniface VIII, 2597 (March 21, 1298). 162  “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 279–80. 163  “[A]lii usum lignorum pro ardere ad quadrigatas habentes in foresta predicta percipere consueverunt quamdiu dicta Ysabellis ipsius monasterii regimini presideret, duxerimus concedendum; postmodum autem duxerimus concendum quod post decessum ipsius Ysabellis, vel postquam ipsa dicto regimini presse desisteret, abbatissa que pro tempore esset et conventus ejusdem monasterii medietatem dictarum septem quadrigatarum lignorum”: “Documents inédits,” ed. de Monsabert, 280–1. 164  See Tunc, “De l’élection des abbesses de Fontevraud à leur nomination par le Roi,” 205–13. Louis XII acted more overtly in 1512 when he exhorted the burghers of Poitiers to support, and the nuns of Sainte-Croix to elect, Madeleine d’Orléans abbess: Lettres des rois de France, princes et grands personnages à la commune de Poitiers, ed. Ledain, 193. From one perspective, Louis and the bishop of Poitiers acted to protect the nuns’ privileges by forcing Marie Berland into an election, prohibiting her from assuming the office based only on the former abbess’s approval. However, the king was also motivated by a desire to find an eminent position for his relative Madeleine and, unable to simply appoint her to Sainte-Croix, took an opportunity to push her onto the abbey. 165  ADV 2H1/1, October 15, 1491.

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had hoped to be reinstalled by Count Macco’s troops. Marie Berland sought and received royal approval for petitioning the papacy to legitimate her assumption of the abbacy without an election in December 1511. Jeanne and Marie even obtained papal bulls of resignation to support the power transfer as a resignatio in favorem, a strategy based on canon law to treat an office as private property, avoided both the community’s right to elect its officer and the king’s growing ability to appoint abbots and abbesses in France.166 The strategy had become popular among families with positions in the Parlement of Paris, who donated venally to the king for the ability to ensure family continuity in office and replace “the election of new counselors with royal appointment,” which Tyler Lange argued “aided the crystallization of a new parlementary elite.”167 Their use of this device might also have come from some question about the legality of electing a new abbess while a former abbess still lived. Although Jeanne de Couhé had resigned before December 1511 and Marie Berland took over immediately, Marie was not installed in the abbess’s choir seat until after Jeanne’s death the following April. Likewise, her successor Isabeau de Beauveau received the title of prioress, not abbess, when Marie was removed from the abbey in 1519, and an election for a new abbess did not take place until after Marie’s death in 1533. The custom, at Sainte-Croix at least, appeared to be that an official election took place only after the abbess’s death, even in the event of a resignation. One purpose for this custom might have been to eliminate the resignatio in favorem—abbesses resigning in order to pick their own successor, rather than leaving it to the vote of their community. Women on both sides of these election conflicts sought support from the same officials when pressing a claim to the abbacy or attempting to question an abbess’s legitimacy. Their grievances, while often having some basis in fact, were also rhetorical tools the women used in their requests for assistance, designed to appeal to and secure officials’ support. Each side, the abbess and her nuns, attempted to draw upon the support network the abbey had secured and maintained for centuries, each drawing on the main strategy Radegund had established for them. These were effective methods for challenging the abbess’s authority: although the response was not always what the plaintiffs expected, certain charges drew a hearing. The bishops’ council came to Leubovera’s aid, even if it did not end the rebellion. Both women seeking the abbacy in 1491 petitioned the king, and both received his support. Isabelle de Marmande had to wait, but she provoked questions about her rival’s competence and suitability. The nuns counted the French monarchy among their allies and expected the kings to protect and support them. The kings, in turn, remained interested in the abbey, particularly in ensuring that a competent woman— perhaps related to them—sat in the abbess’s seat. The nuns realized that the king was also playing familial politics. Despite that, the friendship of France’s kings was crucial to Sainte-Croix’s nuns, particularly in seeking aid against an unwanted 166  Denys Hay notes that the use of resignation in favorem turned some Italian monastic houses into entails kept within families: The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century: The Birkbeck Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, pbk 2012), 75. 167 Lange, The First French Reformation, 70; Bernard Guenée, Tribunaux et gens de justice dans la bailliage de Senlis à la fin du Moyen Âge (vers 1380–vers 1550) (Strasbourg, 1963).

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abbess or abbatial candidate. The nuns also recognized the importance of the episcopal power to confirm an election, but they used a variety of strategies to protect their own choices from his interference. Radegund had instead called on bishops from Paris and Tours; Isabelle de La Puye relied on the authority that the bishop’s confirmation brought her to end the suit of her rival; Jeanne de Couhé tried to pressure and shame the bishop of Poitiers into helping her when he dragged his heels confirming her; and Marie Berland attempted to operate without his approval. These tactics were more successful in the earlier period. As episcopal authority grew over the course of the Middle Ages, it became more and more difficult to sidestep the local bishop in favor of more distant assistance as Radegund had done. Jeanne and Marie also faced bishops of Poitiers with long tenure who were able to consolidate power and press their own programs over the town’s religious communities. Still, the nuns of Sainte-Croix preserved their privileges to select their own superior, even when their choice conflicted with the preferences of the bishop, who might delay confirming the new abbess but did not manage—at least, in these recorded examples—to reject her. This shift also encouraged Sainte-Croix’s abbesses to embrace royal assistance even when it was overbearing. Across 900 years Sainte-Croix’s nuns dissatisfied with their abbess impeached their superior through several standard accusations: claiming procedural irregularities that might invalidate her election; questioning her competence, particularly her skill with finances; attacking her moral or sexual purity; and questioning the quality of her status and connections. These were not simple repetitions; the nuns were sophisticated in their use of specific complaints designed to attract outside aid. Without making explicit reference to past contests, the women did seem aware of issues that would interest their network of supporters, even if they could not always substantiate their allegations. Whatever the veracity of these charges, they were serious enough to gain the ear of the king or pope. The nuns did not simply parrot the details of earlier contests, however, as they targeted their complaints to issues that continued to have important implications for female communities’ governance. The nuns were aware of contemporary debates about monastic elections and used current philosophies to both defend their rights and challenge their rivals. Complaining about an abbess’s fiscal incompetence was the most successful charge in attracting attention, and even might have motivated Jeanne de Couhé’s retirement. Accusations of procedural irregularity accompanied most of the disputes over elections, but none of the accusations could be proven. While the Benedictine Rule and the canons of Lateran IV had attempted to protect abbatial elections’ integrity, it seemed difficult at Sainte-Croix to demonstrate that procedural violations invalidated an election. Impeaching the abbess’s sexual or moral purity was the least successful method; neither Leubovera nor Isabelle actually suffered as a result of this accusation, which may explain why the fifteenth-century contestants did not deploy this weapon in their dispute. Judging by the pointed questions asked of Basina and Clotild, an allegation of adultery, homicide, or witchcraft could have impeached the abbess. It did require extraordinary evidence, however, to demonstrate the validity of these charges. Ultimately, however, these

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abbesses proved successful in weathering serious challenges with the assistance— albeit occasionally slow to arrive—of the abbey’s network of supporters. There was consistency in the issues prompting challenges against an abbess or abbatial candidate at Sainte-Croix. Concerns about an abbess’s competence threatened the stability of the city and its surrounding territory, and would always be an issue for secular and ecclesiastical officials. That these complaints also targeted the abbess’s morality suggests that concerns about female sexuality remained high across the Middle Ages. Sexual impropriety allegations against the head of a female house were crucial triggers, calling for serious investigation into the abbess’s activities. When nuns impugned the abbesses’ morality, they accused them of licentiousness and declared that they were inappropriate models for a holy community. Not only was it dangerous to set up a woman with questionable morality as a role model for her nuns, but rumors of suspect morality would certainly have undermined the abbess’s dealings with royal, noble, and religious authorities.168 That the nuns were willing to play on assumptions about female sexuality demonstrates both their familiarity with trends outside the abbey and their own eagerness for assistance. It also shows that the abbesses faced serious threats from their own communities, that the threat to female monastic authority was not always male, and that these women still relied on support from traditional allies to maintain their positions of authority. Support from male officials was still present in 1509, as royal authorities balanced the nuns’ needs against the abbess’s authority. But, with the case of Marie Berland, the monarchy’s own priorities began to take precedence over Sainte-Croix’s nuns’ rights and privileges.

168 See Mary  S.  Skinner, “French Abbesses in Action: Structuring Carolingian and Cluniac Communities,” Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 6, no. 1 (2000): 37–60.

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Conclusion This book has examined the consistent vitality of female abbatial authority within one unusual community over the course of a millennium. In 2005, as a graduate student, I had the privilege of spending time at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians discussing this project with Jo Ann McNamara. When I mentioned that the abbey of Sainte-Croix did not fit the pattern she and Penelope Johnson had discussed, she said “of course not, it’s Sainte-Croix!” Since this abbey was wealthier, better supported, and better managed than most other abbeys, she declared it an exception, one whose inclusion in larger narratives could not shift our understanding of medieval monasticism. This conversation fits well with the current “beyond exceptionalism” discussion taking place in studies of aristocratic and powerful women; it also was one I thought about often as a student. While Sainte-Croix was unusually wealthy, well supported, and well managed, it was not so exceptional that other abbeys could not or did not follow its model. Sherri Franks Johnson observed that nuns were quite aware of other female communities and able to draw on them as models or partners.1 Sainte-Croix’s example demonstrates what we might find by studying all abbeys—even the successful ones—across the longue durée and looking for consistencies across this span. At Sainte-Croix we find that monastic women not only commanded greater respect than has previously been assumed, but also that male officials much more actively supported such women’s claims to considerable power and authority in late medieval communities. Existing studies do not account for the consistent success of the abbesses of Sainte-Croix in exercising authority. This book suggests that the way we have studied late medieval female monastics’ authority has privileged misogynist or anti-feminine rhetorics, focused us on the attacks, and kept us from seeing the strength of the response from traditional Benedictine superiors. While the abbess of Sainte-Croix was unusually effective in protecting her privileges, her position was not unique. Examining the ways similarly strong and competent abbesses defended their privileges may reveal more extensive support for female religious authority. Competing fifteenth-century discourses concerning gender and authority enabled adept participants to craft arguments that encouraged male officials to support female authorities. While several rhetorical positions on the gendering of authority and women’s capabilities were available to her, Isabeau drew on the one that best supported her exercise of traditional authority, and which was sure to win her support from a king who was protecting his own traditional privileges from overeager subjects. However fragile their exercise of such 1 Johnson, Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval Bologna.

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Conclusion 269 powers might be, monastic women continued to receive extensive support for claiming public and potent authority over men within the Church. The abbess’s strategy of connecting to her network of supporters through the archive documenting her authority worked for centuries. And when that strategy was not available, the abbess was able to call upon her second strategy of emphasizing cultural connections to Radegund, demonstrating the power and authority of their patron saint and attaching her to the abbey to buoy female monastic authority there. This was not always smooth sailing. Family dynamics, the expansion of royal authority, and the growing strength of the reform movement together threatened the ferocious authority of Sainte-Croix’s abbesses. These braided issues account for the difference between Jeanne de Couhé—who was able to cling to her position even against great local opposition—and Marie Berland, who was removed under protest and never restored despite more than a decade of petitioning. Reform also justified a dramatic shift in royal policy toward the abbey that resulted in the removal of the abbess and in the nuns’ loss of the right of free election that they had claimed for so long. Yet, the strategy abbesses relied on even after the reform remained consistent with past practices. The nuns reached out for assistance from their allies, a strategy that had worked for centuries. Disgruntled nuns had complained about the negligence they perceived in Abbess Jeanne de Couhé and in the inappropriate election of Marie Berland. The kings of France took these concerns seriously and defended the community. In 1519 the king removed Marie Berland, an abbess he perceived as too problematic—which could be seen either as a violation of the previous alliance between the king and abbess, or as a stronger alliance between the king and Sainte-Croix’s community of nuns. The king did maintain his pattern of support for Sainte-Croix and for abbesses of the monastery, particularly once a regime of Bourbon abbesses was installed. 1519 was an anomalous breach, but not necessarily a complete rupturing of the nuns’ strategy or their network. Over the course of these nine centuries the nuns’ relationship with the canons of Sainte-Radegonde alternated between siblings, rivals, and opponents, but throughout this time the nuns held onto their traditional superiority over the chapter they insisted was their dependent. While the existing evidence emphasizes moments of conflict, these were likely rare interruptions of a much warmer and harmonious community shared by the two institutions devoted to Radegund. Ultimately, her model as a confident, generous, and influential holy woman inspired her devotees to claim similar authority for themselves.

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Index Note: Tables and figures are indicated by an italic “t” and “f ” following the page number. Abbaye-aux-Dames-de-Saintes 96 Abbesses of Sainte-Croix Agnes  21, 29–30, 33, 39, 41n.69, 43, 47–9, 57–8, 60, 74–5, 77–8, 80–1, 109t, 142, 177, 198–9, 218, 229 Adalgarde 91 Agnes, c. 1240  198–9 Anne d’Orléans  236, 249–50, 259, 262–3 Béliarde  87–8, 100–2, 107–8, 122, 132–4, 170–71 Dedimia  30–1, 76–7, 85, 89n.9, 97 Hilaire  198–9, 262n.154 Isabeau de Couhé  201–5, 205n.14, 211–28, 211n.26, 236–7, 261n.152, 262, 268–9 Isabelle de Marmande  173, 231–6, 260–1, 265–6 Isabelle de La Puye  173, 200, 231–6, 243–4, 260–2, 264–6 Jeanne de Couhé  231, 236–53, 256, 259–67, 269 Jeanne de la Vergne  165–6, 198–200, 231–2 Jeanne de Plaisance  198–9 Leubovera  21, 60, 77–85, 97, 230, 243–4, 264–7 Louise de Bourbon  258–61 Madeleine de Bourbon  258–9 Marie Berland  231, 236n.28, 252–67, 269 Abbey of Lérins  40–2, 54–5 Abbey of Saint-Savin  96, 98–9, 237–8 Abbey of Saint-Cyprien  96, 100 Abbo of Burgundy  76, 89–90, 187–91, 198 Abelard, Peter  149–50, 152, 162–3, 208–9, 225 Adèle, Countess of Poitou  93, 96 Adventus, see procession Agnes of Burgundy  96, 144–5 Agnes of Poitou  144–5, 154–5 Agnus Dei  198–9 Alice de Chardonchamp  234–5, 260–2, 260n.150, 264 Anne de Beaujeu  240 Anne de Bretagne  240 Anstrude  51, 76, 81, 84–5 Apanage  22–3, 137, 170, 172–3 Archbishop of Bordeaux  47–8, 69n.44, 75n.80, 91, 233n.15 Ascension Day  202–3, 207n.18, 209–12, 222 Asceticism  8–9, 30–1, 33–4, 37–8, 40–4, 52–5, 57–9, 77–8, 97–8, 107–8, 114, 121t, 123–6, 128–9, 131–4, 159, 171, 177, 184–5, 187, 193–4, 199 Athies  35–6, 119

Baldwin 51 Balthild  33–4, 38, 56, 69 Banners  23–4, 71–3, 192–3, 209–14, 218–22, 218n.56, 223n.64, 227, 246, 257 Baptistery Saint-Jean, Poitiers  39, 39n.62, 95, 139–40 Barking Abbey  209–10 Basina  43, 45–7, 77–85, 97, 230–1, 248n.84, 260–1, 264–7 Battle of Poitiers 732  18–19, 92–3 1356  18–19, 23, 137–8, 214–15 Battle of Vouillé  34–5 Baudonivia  2–3, 21, 28–34, 36–8, 40–2, 45–8, 50–1, 53–9, 61–2, 65–9, 72, 74–7, 79, 84–5, 89–92, 97–8, 103–6, 108, 109t, 122, 128, 132, 173–5, 177, 183, 187–93, 196–7, 219 Beguines  13–14, 153–4, 203–4, 246 Benedict of Aniane  98 Bella 109t, 183–4 Benedictine Rule (RB)  98–9, 122, 143, 154–5, 159, 232, 236, 239, 245n.66, 257–8, 260–2, 266–7 Benefices  95, 155–6, 168–9, 176, 208–9, 231–2, 248–9, 255, 257–9 Also see prebends Bennett, Judith  3–4, 14–15, 20 Bertechar 35–6 Berthegund 80–1 Bertrand du Guesclin  214–15 Bishop of Poitiers Claude de Husson  251–3 Gauthier de Bruges  233–4, 233n.15 Gilbert de La Porée  159–60, 166–7 Isembert II  95–7, 144–5, 157, 234n.23 Maroveus  29–30, 49–51, 60, 66–77, 79–82, 84, 95, 128, 157, 199 Pascentius  29–30, 50–1, 67, 95 Pientius  47–8, 50–1 Pierre II  95–7 Pierre d’Amboise  236–7, 239, 247–8 Plato 29–30 William 159 Blanche of Castile  22–3, 144–5, 171, 186–7, 225–6 Bouchet, Guillaume  239 Bouchet, Jean  216–17, 219, 254–7, 256n.128, 257n.132 Brunhild  25, 29–32, 38, 45–8, 68–71 Burgundofara  33–4, 38, 51, 76

Dictionary:

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310 Index Bursfield 245–6 Button windows, see Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers Bynum, Caroline Walker  18, 53–4, 123, 147, 154–5, 228n.81 Byzantium  29–30, 45–6 Caesaria  31, 38, 40–2 Caesarian Rule (RC)  27, 31, 32n.30, 40–3, 42n.79, 47–8, 51, 62, 72–3, 76, 79, 82, 97–100, 151–3, 153n.74, 232, 260–2 Caesarius of Arles  26–7, 33–4, 38–45, 49, 69 Vita (VC)  30, 40–2, 54–5, 57 Canon 25, See Councils, Fourth Lateran Carloman 90–1 Carot, Henri  178–83, 192–4 Chainulf 51 Charibert  29–30, 45–6, 78–80, 260–1 Charlemagne  92–3, 95 Charles VII  179n.29, 205, 214–15, 217, 254 Charles VIII  240–2, 250, 254–5, 262–3 Charles the Bald  90–3, 95, 260–1 Chartres Cathedral  183, 186–8 Châtelet 242–3 Chaucer, Geoffrey  225 Chelles  91, 245–6, 249, 249n.88, 255–6, 258n.139, 258n.143 Chezal-Benoît  249, 255–6 Childebert  35–6, 68–9, 75n.80 Childebert II  46–7, 68–9, 77–85, 95 Chilperic  31–2, 43, 45–7, 62, 68–71, 78–80, 260–1 Christine de Pisan  14n.53, 203, 225 Cistercians  13–14, 146–8, 151–4, 153n.71, 167–8 Clain River  25, 39, 55–6, 95 Claustration, see enclosure Clermont  31–2, 61, 247–8 Clothar  34–9, 45–50, 63, 78, 84–5, 91n.18, 103–4, 108–9, 109t, 114–19, 123–4, 130–1, 184–5, 193, 198, 205 Clothar II  42–3 Clothild, queen  25–6, 30, 33–5, 37–8, 52 Clotild  45–6, 77–85, 97, 230–1, 248n.84, 260–1, 264–7 Clovis  34–5, 52 Cluny  87–8, 93, 98–9, 144–7, 159 Conciliarism  222–3, 255 Concordat of Bologna  214, 253–5, 257–8 Constantine  52, 62, 66 Constantinople 60–74 Councils Agde 39 Basel  240n.45, 246 Chalcedon 51 Clermont 42–3 Fourth Lateran  203–4, 232–3, 263–4, 266–7 Tours 66–7 Count/Dukes of Poitou and Aquitaine Alphonse of Poitiers  22–3, 170–3, 183n.34, 185–7

Austrapius (of Aquitaine)  47–8 Hunald (of Aquitaine)  92–3 Hunald II (of Aquitaine)  92–3 John, see John, King of England Macco (of Poitou)  81–2, 264–5 Odo (of Aquitaine)  92–3 Ragnemodus (of Aquitaine)  47–8 Ramnulf II (of Poitou)  92–4 Richard, See Richard I Waifar (of Aquitaine)  92–3 William I/III, the pious  88, 93–4, 96 William II/IV, Iron-Arm  87–8, 94, 96, 136–7 William III/V, the Great  96, 136–7, 144–5, 154–5 William IV/VI  133–4, 144–5 William V/VII  87–8 William VI/VIII  88, 144–5, 157 William VIII/X  96–7 William IX/XI  96–7 William X/XII  136 Cuthburga 38 Cura monialium  11, 16–17, 100, 148–50, 152–3, 162–3, 208 D’Amboise family  247–8 Georges  247–8, 254–5 Marie  239n.40, 247–8 Pierre, see Bishops of Poitiers De Virginitate, See Venantius Fortunatus De Beaumont, Jacques  236 De Flottes, Jacques  241 De Couhé family  261–2 Isabeau, see Abbesses of Sainte-Croix Jeanne, see Abbesses of Sainte-Croix Méry  236–9, 241–3, 261–2 De Verger, Louiset and Jeannot  241 De Vivonne family André  236–41, 241–3, 247, 251, 264–5 Marguerite  236–8, 241–3, 260–1, 264–5 D’Espinay, André  247 Derneburg 245–6 Devotio Moderna, See Modern Devotion Disciola 177 Dominicans  12–14, 247–8 Double monastery  16–17, 44–5, 99–100, 149–50, 167–8, 228, 244 Ebroin  81, 95 Ebstorf 245–6 Edward I  186–7 Edward II  186–7 Edward IV  214–15 Edward, the Black Prince  23, 214–15 Eigenkloster 45–6 Eleanor of Aquitaine  5–6, 136–8, 142, 172–3 Eleanor of Castile  186–7 Elections  6, 20, 22–4, 77–8, 91, 100, 139, 157, 160–6, 170–1, 173, 198–200, 206, 229, 269

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Index 311 Ely 175–6 Emma of Blois  96, 133–4 Enclosure  12–13, 14n.53, 16–17, 98–9, 101–2, 108–9, 114, 119–26, 128–9, 131–5, 146–9, 152–4, 163–4, 167–8, 191, 198, 203–4, 206–8, 245–7, 250, 257 Ethelburga 38 Etheldreda 38 Eufronius of  Tours  29–30, 47–8, 50–1, 70 Faremoutiers  51, 76, 81, 84–5, 91, 97 Farmer, Sharon  8–9, 18, 147 Felicitas 52 Felix of Nantes  48, 50 Fleur-de-lis  177–8, 185–7, 194, 217 Florent d’Allemagne  237–8 Fontevraud  9–10, 142, 148–50, 152, 158, 234–60, 262–4 Fourth Lateran Council, See Councils Francis I  214, 248–9, 252–7 Franciscans  13–14, 247 Fredegund  25, 31–2, 38, 46–9, 70–1, 83–4 French Revolution  16–17, 19n.69, 72–3 Gallicanism 254–5 Galswintha  38, 46, 70–1 Geoffrey Greymantle, Count of Anjou  94 Germanus of Paris  29–30, 36, 39, 47–8, 50 Gerson, Jean  203, 225 Gertrude  38, 51, 76 Goda 109t, 187–91 Grand’Goule  55–6, 129n.115, 192–3, 218–22, 220f Grands Jours  7–8, 243–4, 253–4, 256–7 Gregory of  Tours  21, 27–34, 37–52, 54–5, 57–85, 89–91, 97–8, 103–4, 122, 131–2, 173–4, 177, 187–91, 198 Grimoald 51 Guichart  172–3, 185–6 Gundovald 46–7 Gundrade 90–1 Guntram  46–7, 68–9, 79–80, 82 Helena  37–8, 57–8, 62, 65–6, 72 Henry I  87–8 Henry II, Plantagenet  136–8, 142, 160n.97, 172–3 Henry III  144–5, 154–5 Hermanfrid 35–6 Hild 38 Hildebert of Lavardin  171–4, 184–5 Hildegard of Bingen  6, 149–51, 225 Hincmar of Rheims  95 Hugh, Count of Paris  94, 100–2, 140–1 Hugh Capet  87–8 Hugh of Die  144–5 Huguenot  178–83, 218n.56 Hundred Years War  23, 205, 214–15, 225–6, 247

Ingitrude 80–1 Inventory  58–9, 131–2, 178–83, 211n.26 Isabeau of Bavaria  225–6, 225n.72 Isabeau de Beauvau  256–7 Isabelle de Bourbon  260–1, 264–5 Itta  51, 76 Jacobus de Voragine  219n.61 Jard  257, 261–2 Jean Poitevin  239 Jerusalem  60–2, 66–7 Joan of Arc  214–15 John, King of England  136–7, 217n.48 John II, King of France  214–15 Johnson, Penelope  9–11, 163, 212, 231–2, 268 Jouarre 255–6 Judith of Bavaria  90–1 Justin II  62–5, 70–1 Justina  39–40, 84–5 Juvénal des Ursins, Jean  224 Karras, Ruth  3–4 La Fèvre, Jean  225 Lange, Tyler  225–6, 259, 264–5 Lateran IV, see Councils League for the Public Weal  214–15 Leprosy  57–8, 58n.173 Libellus  21–3, 88–9, 102–19, 121–34, 137–8, 142–3, 156–7, 170–4, 177, 183–5, 187–94, 196–200, 205–6, 219 Lillich, Meredith Parsons  18–19, 178–83, 187–96, 198–9, 216–17 Louis IV  94 Louis VI  136 Louis VII  136–8, 172–3 Louis VIII  172–3 Louis IX  22–3, 137–8, 171–3, 185–7 Louis XI  202–3, 214–15, 218–19, 222–3, 254–5 Louis XII  205–6, 247–8, 252–3, 262–3 Louis de Crussol  202–3, 213–14, 222–3 Louis of Lower Lorraine  87–8 Louis the Pious  90–3, 95, 98–100 Louis the Stammerer  90–3, 99–100, 103–4 Louise of Savoy  225–6, 255–6 Lyons 31–2 Madeleine d’Orléans  245n.68, 252–3, 260–1 Maillé  160–2, 241–2 Maillezais 96 Mammas 61–2 Marguerite de Navarre  255–6, 259n.148 Marguerite de Rivau  260–1, 260n.150 Marie de Bretagne  242n.58, 244–6, 249–50 Mary Magdalene  130, 187n.47 McNamara, Jo Ann  9–11, 30n.21, 146–7, 259, 268

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312 Index Mèdard of Noyon  36, 47–8, 54, 69–71, 114–19, 128, 177–8 Metz 29–30 Miracle of the Keys  176, 192–4, 215–18, 220–2, 227–8 Miracle of the Oats  36, 124n.106, 192–3, 207n.18 Miracle tales  19, 22–3, 170–2, 175–7, 184–5, 187–91, 193–4, 196–7, 199–200, 229 Modern Devotion  13–14, 203–4, 245–6 Montierneuf  94, 96–7, 157–8 Montreuil-Bonin  23, 205, 241–2 Mummolus 45–6 Mystics 13–14 Nivelles  51, 76, 81, 97 Notre-Dame-la-Grande  139–40, 165f, 172, 176, 194, 197–8, 215–18, 227–8, 233–4 Notre-Dame-Hors-les-Murs, See Sainte-Radegonde Nouaillé  96, 144–5 Observants  203–4, 245–7, 250 Octavian  160–4, 231–2 Odile  91, 262 Odo of Cluny  98 Paris  29–30, 44, 100–1, 136, 186–7, 214–15, 265–6 Parlement Paris  214, 222–3, 240–2, 251, 253–9, 264–5 Poitiers  205, 214–15, 254 Patriarchal equilibrium  3–4, 14–15 Peace of God  96, 143–6 Pepin I of Aquitaine  90–3, 95, 136–7 Perpetua  52, 54 Pas-Dieu  55–6, 122, 177, 192–3, 216–17, 244, 257 Perrette Le Voix  256–7 Periculoso  146–7, 152–4, 167–8, 203–4, 228, 246 Philip II Augustus  136–8, 172–3, 205 Philippe le Bel  200, 234–5, 264 Philippe le Hardi  185–6 Pilot, François  239 Pinzochere, see beguines Poitiers Walls  39–40, 44, 68, 138–43, 164, 167–8, 209–10, 229, 237n.35 Commune  137–8, 141, 170 Popes Alexander II  88, 96–7, 145–6, 154–9, 206 Alexander III  159–60 Alexander IV  247–8 Boniface VIII  146–7, 152–3, 234–5 Clement IV  231–2 Clement V  165–6, 233n.15, 234n.21

Clement VII  257–8 Eugene III  159 Gregory VII  96–7, 144–6, 154–7, 159 Honorius IV  234–5 Hormisdas 42–3 Innocent II  158–9, 162–3, 168–9 Innocent VIII  237n.31 Leo X  255 Nicholas III  233n.15 Pascal II  234n.23 Paul III  258–9 Pius II  214 Sixtus IV  222–3 Pragmatic Sanction  214, 222–3, 227, 240, 254–5 Prebends  156–7, 248–50, 257 Processions  23–4, 29n.16, 48, 71, 73–4, 102, 106–7, 160–2, 165–6, 183–4, 192–3, 199–201, 209–13, 237–8, 246–7 Protestant Reformation  16–17, 255n.20 Radegund Asceticism  9–10, 30–1, 33–4, 37–8, 40–4, 52–5, 57–9, 77–8, 97–8, 107–8, 114, 121t, 123–6, 128–9, 131–4, 171, 177, 184–5, 187, 193–4, 199 Cell  37–8, 43, 52, 55–8, 74–5, 108–14, 109t, 119–33, 121t, 183–4, 191, 194, 197–8 Charity  30, 33–6, 54, 58–9, 88–9, 107–9, 109t, 114, 123–6, 130–2, 177, 193–4 Deaconess  30, 36, 47–8, 54, 108–9, 114–19, 177, 193 Funeral  8, 21, 42–3, 47–8, 51, 60, 74–7, 84–5, 89–90, 122, 132, 173–4 Hair shirt  52–3, 97, 109t, 124, 128, 131–2, 196–7 Laurel tree  97, 109t, 121t Maternity  2–3, 8–9, 29–30, 33–4, 37, 48–9, 53–8, 65–6, 70–1, 128–31, 171, 176–7, 187, 193–8 Miracles  19–23, 25–6, 30–1, 33–4, 36–8, 52–6, 58–9, 68, 72, 76–7, 88–90, 107–14, 124–33, 170, 229, 244 See Miracle of the Keys, Miracle of the Oats Relics  8, 22–3, 26–9, 44–5, 54–5, 69, 74–7, 87–8, 100–3, 108, 130–3, 139–40, 142–3, 163–4, 170–2, 174–7, 191, 193–9, 205–8, 213, 220–2 Royalty  8–9, 33–8, 58, 63, 66, 77–8, 107, 114–19, 170–2, 174, 177, 184–5, 187–91, 196–9, 255–6 Tomb  6–7, 21–3, 44, 58–9, 65f, 72, 74–7, 81–2, 86, 88–90, 100–3, 107–8, 132–5, 138, 163–4, 170–200, 205–8, 247 Virginity  36, 56–8, 65–6, 72, 88–9, 128, 130–1, 171, 191, 196–7 Writing desk  97 Ramnulfus 90–1 Raoul de Liez  187–91

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Index 313 Rebellion at Sainte-Croix  21, 28–33, 43, 47–50, 54–5, 60, 68–9, 75, 77–85, 97, 243–4, 265–6 Recared 46–7 Reform  7–8, 11, 24, 78–9, 83–4, 90–1, 96, 98–9, 104–5, 134–5, 138–9, 142–64, 167–9, 205, 229, 269 Regula ad virgines, see Caesarian Rule (RC) Relic of the True Cross  21, 23–5, 31–2, 37–8, 47–8, 55–6, 60–76, 64f, 81–2, 88, 94, 97, 102, 107–14, 132–3, 138, 142–3, 156–7, 170–2, 174, 176, 187–91, 194–6, 198–9, 205–6, 210–11, 219–22 Reovalis 61–5 Renée de Bourbon  248–50, 253–4, 256–9, 262–3 Resignatio in favorem  264–5 Richard I  136–8, 142 Robert II  87–8, 101–2 Robert d’Arbrissel  148–50, 152, 244 Roberts, Michael  37–8, 52–3, 57–8, 84–5 Rochechouart de Bourbonnais  236–7 Rogation Days  23–4, 72–3, 202–3, 209–14, 216–23, 246 Royrand, Nicolas  236, 240 Rusticula 42–3 Sadalberga  33–4, 38, 56, 76, 81, 84–5 Saint-Aignan, Orléans  44, 87–8 Saint-Denis, Paris  44 Saint-Eutrope, Saintes  88 Saint-Germain-des-Prés  247, 255–6 Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, Poitiers  39, 50–1, 67–8, 80–2, 89–90, 94–6, 139–41, 144–5, 160–2, 176, 234–5 Saint James, Compostella  176 Saint-Jean, Arles  27, 31, 39–43, 47–9, 54–5, 57, 69–70 Saint-Martin, Tours  44, 80–1, 176, 227, 247–9, 255–6 Saint-Nicolas  94, 96 Saint-Pierre Cathedral, Poitiers  72–3, 95, 100–1, 136–7, 164, 172, 208–9 Saint-Pierre-le-Puellier, Poitiers  169, 212, 227–8 Saint-Rémi, Rheims  44 Saint-Romain  229, 252–3, 261–2 Saint-Serge, Angers  87–8 Saint-Sulpice, Bourges  255–6 Sainte-Chapelle, Paris  186–7, 187f Sainte-Geneviève, Paris  44 Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers Organ  198–9, 212–13, 218, 227 Stained glass  22–3, 170, 208–9, 216–18 Saint-Jean-d’Angély 96

Saints Æthelthryth  8–9, 175–6, 191n.54 Agatha 132–3 Aigrain 69 Benedict 232 Denis 69 Genevieve 186–7 Hilary of Poitiers  25, 32–5, 39, 50–1, 61, 67–70, 90, 95, 172, 176, 207n.18, 215–18 Julian 61 Margaret  72, 104–5 Martin of  Tours  45, 48, 50, 61, 69, 95 Michael 218–19 Pachomius 76 Romanus 69 Saix  36, 55–6, 61–2, 119, 193, 257 Salic Law  225–6 Scrutin  232–4, 237–8, 253 Sigebert  29–33, 45–9, 60–75, 78 Sisterbooks 12–13 Soissons  35, 70–1 Sophia 62–6 Syon Abbey  209–10 Taylor, Craig  225–6 Theudebert 46–7 Thuringia  8–9, 34–6, 63, 66, 123–4 Tours  36, 44–51, 61, 70, 79–81, 94, 175–6, 187–91, 241, 265–6 Treaty of Andelot  46–7, 79–80 Treaty of Verdun  92–3 La Trinité  93, 96, 103–4, 169, 212, 227–8, 247, 253–6 Troy 63 Ultrogotha 37–8 Université de Poitiers  214–15, 224n.67 Vacancy  231–2, 238–9 Vasles 241–2 Vellèches  229, 260n.150 Venantius Fortunatus  2–3, 21, 25, 60–77, 79, 84–6, 95, 97–8, 103–33, 109t, 149–50, 173–7, 183–5, 187–91, 196–7, 219–20 Virgin Mary  6–7, 44, 56–8, 74, 89–90, 128–9, 171, 176–7, 183, 185–6, 193–8, 215–18 Visitation  16–17, 152–3, 167–8, 251 Votive offering  176, 193, 197–8 Wienhausen 245–6 Windesheim 245–6 Wulftrude  76, 81 Yerres 255–7 York Minster  186–7