CHAPTER 4

Late Antiquity in the West and the Gallican Rite

The Fifth Century in the West

From 401/2, the Emperor of the West, Flavius Honorius, was resident in Ravenna for both strategic and defensive reasons. Under his half-sister Galla Placidia, Regent during the minority of Valentinian III (425–50), Ravenna was adorned with some of its finest buildings, including her mausoleum and San Giovanni Evangelista. Barbarians had made deep incursions, be it either as migrants or invaders, into many areas of the Empire, and over a period of three days in August 410, Alaric the Goth sacked Rome itself. It was a profound shock that the Imperial and religious capital of the world should fall to heretic barbarians. St Augustine, who wrote his City of God in response to the sack of Rome, said elsewhere: ‘Universum regnum in tot civitatibus constitutum dicitur Romana civitas’¹ (‘The universal empire, established in so many cities, is called the Roman city’). Of course, Rome had, as a consequence of the emperor’s long absence, declined in its administrative importance since it was no longer the imperial residence, but in the East as well as in the West, people saw themselves as Roman citizens, and the Bishop of Rome was recognized as first in precedence and authority. He took precedence even over the Bishop of Constantinople, or ‘New Rome’, who had been recognized as second in authority at the Council of Constantinople of 381, though ‘New Rome’ would challenge old Rome during the papacy of Gregory the Great. Both the Roman Empire and the Church saw themselves as having a universal calling, so the brief sack of Rome and its permanent occupation by barbarians in 476 on the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Emperor, struck at the heart of Western cultural identity.

These Germanic tribes had been evangelized in the fourth century by Ulfila (c. 311–83), who had been consecrated bishop in 341 by the Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. Ulfila’s exile effectively exported Arianism to the Goths; he translated the Bible into Gothic, and the liturgy was also in the vernacular. Yet, although these barbarians were for the most part heretical Arians, they were still Christian, and the ideal of a universal Christian empire was still, even after the fall of Rome, deeply embedded in contemporary culture. Their relations with the emperor in Constantinople were complex and tense, but generally positive. He granted them Roman titles, and they in turn recognized the authority of the emperor of the West in Ravenna. Ricimer, the Ostrogothic ruler of Italy, was given the rank of patrician, while at the same time making and removing a sequence of puppet emperors. Odoacer, because he finally deposed the last Western emperor in 476, was, perhaps not surprisingly, refused the title of Patrician by the emperor of the East. The barbarian conquerors adopted Roman law, art and, gradually, language. The Arian Ostrogothic ruler Theodoric (490–526), from his capital in Ravenna, treated the Western Church with great respect, and with the secular administration dismantled, the Church, the clergy, and ultimately the Bishop of Rome assumed the central role as both guardians and purveyors of Romanitas, enhancing their prestige and power.

The Sack of Rome may not have been as destructive or violent as generally imagined, but the stories contained in various documents are difficult to reconcile, which means that in widely varying historical situations they have been used to equally diverse ends. Zosimus, in his New History (V.39), tells of starvation followed by plague as the siege progressed. On the other hand, Orosius, in his History against the Pagans, written in 417–18, a few years after the events, was trying to show that the pagan past was even worse than the Christian present, and in trying to explain away the disaster that had struck at the heart of the Church, maintained that few were killed, as there was little resistance and the Visigoths, though barbarians, were under instruction not to loot the churches and showed great respect towards them and the shrines of the saints (VII.39). Augustine speaks of the clemency of the Goths towards those who sought sanctuary in ‘the sacred places of the martyrs and the basilicas of the Apostles’.²

Financially, it was a setback for the Church because of the loss of Italian estates, but the pope had other enormous estates, especially in North Africa, and revenues from those provided the means for the Church to support the poor of Rome. Soon the Church was also able to build, including the basilica of Santa Sabina little more than a decade after the Sack, Santa Maria Maggiore from c. 430, and S. Pretro in Vincoli, dedrcated in 439/40. Between c. 380 and 440, about half the domus ecclesiae were being replaced by large basilicas.³ These churches were less complex and more standardized than the great diversity of the Constantinian period. Norms were established for different liturgical functions, including congregational worship, baptism, the cult of the martyrs, and private devotion. Traditional practices continued, especially in the depths of the provinces, but great basilicas and village churches throughout the West took on a simple familiar shape with nave, apse and aisles, with local needs and customs (both architectural and liturgical) dictating variations.

Santa Sabina

Santa Sabina is the best surviving example of a fifth-century basilican church (Plate 7). It was built between 422 and 432, just prefiguring the great burst of building under Sixtus III. Like the columns of San Clemente, those at Santa Sabina are spolia, probably salvaged from a single older source, since in this case they are perfectly matched and probably of the second century. Emile Mâle is lyrical about their perfection, praising the beauty of the Parian marble, Corinthian order and Classical proportions:

they do not at all resemble those rows of dissimilar columns, taken from collapsed temples and arcades which the later architects of temples were content to use. All equal and all perfect, they belong to a time when art was still faithful to its laws. Did they come from a temple or from some rich mansion destroyed by the Goths under Alaric? We do not know.⁴

He continues his praise of its proportions and ‘all this perfection in the service of the Gospel’. Most interestingly, he concludes this section by saying: ‘At the time Santa Sabina was built St Augustine was still alive; and how often, when reading St Augustine, are we reminded of Plato! Thus do the pagan columns of Santa Sabina lead us on towards the Christian altar.’ What is important here is the appeal to the perfection of Classical Antiquity – that is, an appeal to the cultural, in the absence of political, authority of Classical Rome as the inheritor of the mantle of Greece.

The interior shines with light admitted by 26 windows in the nave and apse, reflected by mosaics, still visible on the interior of the entrance façade below the windows. The inscription in the mosaic says that the church was built under Pope Celestine I (422–32) by Peter from Illyria, and the Liber Pontificalis tells us that it was consecrated by Sixtus III. Here the chancel, with barriers and an ambo either side, extends five bays into the body of the church, but in this case there is no solea extending further down the nave. The arrangement is one of simplicity, clarity, authority and order, in the face of a chaotic world.

The wooden doors themselves are magnificent contemporary survivals (a full 18 of the original 28 panels) which show Old and New Testament scenes in parallel. One extremely interesting panel shows a man and an angel in a church surmounted by a cross with clergy ranked below (see Figure 4.1). Their gestures are ambiguous. If, like the other scenes, this has a biblical source, then it may be Zecharias (who was to be father of John the Baptist) having been struck dumb during his encounter with the angel, being unable to respond to others as he emerged from the Temple. If so, then why is there a cross above the building? The angel seems either to be commending the man (perhaps Peter of Illyria, or even Theodosius II?) to the assembled clergy, or all of them, and their prayers, to God. The man is either greeting the clergy, or possibly offering prayers on their behalf. Could this be a bishop⁵ (even Pope Sixtus III at the consecration of Santa Sabina?) and his clergy during the liturgy, with an angel connecting their worship with the worship of heaven?

Figure 4.1 Santa Sabina, Rome, panel from the doors, perhaps showing a bishop and his clergy in ranks and an angel interceding on their behalf; photograph Bill Storage.

Santa Maria Maggiore

In 431, the Council of Ephesus proclaimed the Virgin Mary ‘Mother of God’, and it was perhaps the following year when Pope Sixtus III (432–40) began building Santa Maria Maggiore. Even after the loss of vast Italian estates, he was still able to provide the church with a silver altar and silver and gold altar-plate.⁶ It has been convincingly argued by Emile Mâle that the wonderful mosaics of the church (which though they are of the life of the Virgin, are focused on the person of Christ) are an answer to the ‘adoptianist’ heresy of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who considered that Christ was not born divine, but became divine through a sinless life. The Christological controversies left subtle marks on art, architecture and liturgy. The Virgin appears as a Byzantine empress, but is placed to the side, while Christ, as a young child rather than a baby, is seated on a jewelled throne attended by angels and adored by the Magi. It is the image of a child who was born the Son of God – a clear statement of orthodoxy.

The artistic history of Santa Maria Maggiore reveals the way other doctrinal disputes were played out and had consequences for the liturgy, not in terms of its texts, but rather in its performance. In the eighth century, Pope Stephen (752–57) installed two remarkable images in the church: one was an icon of Christ said to have been painted by St Luke and completed by angels. According to legend, it had been saved from destruction by the iconophile Patriarch Germanos, who was deposed in 730 and replaced by the emperor with an iconoclast, Anastasius. In 731, Gregory III succeeded to the papacy and held a synod which declared excommunicate anyone who destroyed or dishonoured any likeness of Christ, the Virgin or the saints.⁷ Patriarch Germanos is said to have set the icon adrift in a boat which miraculously carried it across the sea and up the Tiber into the hands of the pope, to whom its advent had been revealed. To install it in Santa Maria Maggiore was an act of defiance to the iconoclast Emperor Constantine V Copronymus (741–75). In 753, Constantine V called the Synod of Hieria, not attended by Pope Stephen, nor the Patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem or Alexandria. The Synod declared icons of the Virgin Mary and the saints to be idols, and ordered their destruction. Pope Stephen had also had another majestic icon made for the church. It is unclear whether it was just encased in or even entirely made of gold, but either way it emphatically declared his iconophile orthodoxy. In 753, it was Stephen who, with Rome threatened by the Lombards and without hope of support from Constantinople, crossed the Alps with a Frankish escort in mid-winter to solicit help from the King of the Franks, Pepin the Short. Pepin sent his son Charles to meet the pope in present-day Switzerland and accompany him through the Frankish realms. In 755, Pepin agreed to help, then went on to defeat the Lombards and establish a papal state. The pope now fell increasingly under the protection of the Franks, and saw the emperor in Constantinople as an enemy. If the iconoclastic emperor of the East, who had caused such widespread destruction of icons and relics, had come to Rome’s aid rather than the King of the Franks, and consequently, if iconoclasm had struck at the heart of the Western Church, then it would be difficult to imagine how radically this might have changed Western religious practice as a whole, including the liturgy and its setting, since the cult of saints, relics and pilgrimage was becoming fundamental to Western development. Exiles from the violent iconoclastic purges in the East hugely enriched the art, architecture and liturgy of the West.

Relics became simultaneously the focus of the liturgy and architecture, and as early as 401, at the Council of Carthage, a canon was approved that all altars without the body of a bishop or relics of a martyr should, where possible, be destroyed.⁸ Locally, at Santa Maria Maggiore, fragments of the crib and grotto of the Nativity are the only relics that are known to have been there in the early Middle Ages, and may have been installed after the Arab conquest of Jerusalem in 638. This was particularly appropriate to the dedication of the church, and was clearly an evocation of Bethlehem, translating the sanctity of the martyrium to a place of safety. The development of a confessio in Santa Maria Maggiore c. 700 may have been associated with these relics, and indeed the fragments excavated in the eighteenth century were described as stone, chalk and wood from the grotto of the Nativity. By the late eleventh century, the relics of the apostle Matthias and of the Virgin, pieces from her clothing, some strands of her hair, and her milk are also listed as being in the church. There is no concrete evidence to link the confessio to the relics of Matthias, but the story goes that the Empress Helena brought them back with her from Jerusalem. On the other hand, St Jerome was first buried in the Church of the Nativity, then at some unknown date translated to Santa Maria Maggiore, presumably because of the association with the relics of the grotto.⁹

Pilgrim age to a shrine included touching or kissing relics, as with the wood of the True Cross at the Anastasis in Jerusalem, and as Egeria recorded of that relic, it was necessary to control access. Increasing pressure of numbers forced architectural solutions. A centrally important example of this was, of course, St Peter’s in Rome. In the fifth century, its antiquity and prestige acted as a bulwark against iconoclastic arguments, for example when, in 406, St Jerome refuted the Gaulish Vigilantius’ arguments that earthly remains were not worthy of veneration: ‘So does the Bishop of Rome do evil, when he offers sacrifices to God over what to us are the hallowed bones but to you is the miserable dust of the dead men Peter and Paul, and when he treats their tombs as the altar of Christ?’ Of course, the practice was extremely ancient and had already been discussed in the Didascalia Apostolorum, probably written c. 230 in Syria.¹⁰

The Form of the Roman Chancel and the Performance of the Liturgy

The archetype of the rebuilt parish churches of Rome is San Clemente (see Figure 4.2). The late fourth- (or early fifth-) century architects filled in the courtyard rooms of the horreum and built the simple basilica at first-floor level, with the nave over the court, and aisles over the side rooms. The whole was preceded by an atrium or courtyard colonnaded on all four sides. It would appear that the Mithraeum continued in use in the lower-level apartment house, perhaps as late as 395, when Mithraism was outlawed. The Church acquired that part of the site, where the apse was then built. This basilica stood until c. 1100, when it was replaced by the present one, reusing much of the liturgical arrangement of the screened choir and ambo from the early basilica (see Figure 4.3), just as the early basilica had reused columns of high quality which may have been taken from another building of the third century on the site.¹¹

Figure 4.2 San Clemente, Rome, plan and section of the early twelfth-century church and of the reused liturgical furnishings of 533–35; Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.

Figure 4.3 San Clemente, photograph showing the liturgical furnishings; photograph James Anderson, Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.

The liturgical arrangement is closely related to that of the Lateran Basilica, which had a solea beginning either at the doors or perhaps halfway down the nave, the latter being the arrangement adopted at San Clemente itself (installed between 533 and 535), as well as San Pietro in Vincoli (dedicated 439/40), Sto Stefano in the via Latina (between 440 and 460), Santa Maria Antiqua (mid- to late-sixth century), and San Marco (some time between 550 and 650).¹² Archaeological evidence confirms that the common chancel arrangement in fifth-century Rome included a solea or scola cantorum, that is, a long passage projecting from the chancel and protected by barriers, as was the case not only in the Lateran Basilica, but in so many Byzantine churches as well. In addition, these Roman churches had further barriers that reached out laterally from the corners of the sanctuary across the side aisles. At San Clemente, the pavement of the lower church points to a similar arrangement enclosing at least the right-hand aisle. The parapets of the scola cantorum in the present church display the monogram of John II, who was pope during 533–35. These must have been salvaged from the earlier arrangement, and transferred when the basilica was rebuilt in the early twelfth century.

Working back from the architectural form to the liturgical function, in an early article on the archaeological data, Mathews qualifies what earlier liturgists (including Jungmann, Duchesne and Dix) had to say, by mapping the chancel arrangement (in the absence of earlier manuscript evidence) onto the rubrics of the Ordo Romanus I, ‘which is generally accepted as a description of the stational mass in the seventh century in Rome’:

A comprehensive study of the early rubrics, of course, is not called for here. What we have selected is a number of problem areas in which the ceremony of the Mass, by its external ritual, would be liable to explain the spatial disposition of the early Roman chancel. These areas are four: 1, the ceremonies of pontifical entrance and exit; 2, the readings of Sacred Scripture; 3, the procession of the offertory; and 4, the procession of the communion.¹³

What is particularly notable, since the focus is on processions, is that whereas in the East the patriarch and the emperor led the processions, in the West the order was from the least to the greatest significance. Hence, the pontifical entrance was the climax of a series of processions beginning with representatives of the clergy of Rome processing down the length of the nave to the apse, or at Santa Maria Antiqua, to benches on either side of the apse, because it was unusually small. Meanwhile, members of the parish and a guard of honour would process through the city to meet the pope on his way from the Lateran: ‘At Santa Maria Maggiore and the other great basilicas of Rome, procession through atrium and narthex, down the nave and toward the apse, was the culmination of a richly contextualised ritual of procession through the city, particularly at times such as Christmas when this basilica was the centre of papal liturgy’¹⁴ Over the course of the liturgical year, the urban geography was sacralized and the unity of the congregation of Rome given real expression.

It is worth pausing here to note that though Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna is a church of very different proportions from the contemporary Roman basilica, its mosaics (dating from c. 550) give an impression of these stately processions, though what is depicted is heavenly processions of virgins and martyrs (Plate 8). Again, within the fabric and decoration of the church, the worship of heaven and earth meet.

In the papal celebration in Rome, on his arrival he retired to a vestry, from which a sub-deacon would lead an acolyte with the Gospel-book to the altar. At the altar, the sub-deacon received the book from the acolyte and placed it with due honour on the altar. Next came the cantors and boys, after receiving a papal blessing. They took up their places on either side of the scola, with men on the outside and boys inside. This left a route clear for the papal procession. First came a guard of honour of military standard bearers, then seven candles, a thurifer with incense (both of these were imperial honours), and the archdeacon and deacon either side; finally came the pope himself, led by the hands by two deacons (reflecting Eastern court ceremonial).¹⁵ The guard of honour would stop at the solea, effectively forming an extension to it and leaving enough room to allow the papal procession to pass between them. Room would likewise be left in the solea between the cantors singing a psalm. The congregation answered the cantors with an antiphon. Before entering the sanctuary, the pope was met by a sub-deacon and acolytes bearing bread consecrated at the previous papal mass. This emphasized the unity of the sacrament over time; and after the consecration, some of the bread would be sent to the tituli, or parish churches of Rome, unifying the celebrations across space.

After entering the sanctuary, the pope gave the kiss of peace to the senior bishop, priest, and deacons. He then knelt on the apse side of the altar (or, according to Jungman, prostrated himself in prayer) while the other clergy kissed its sides. As the introit ended, the pope then rose, kissed the book of the Gospels, then the altar, and went to his throne. Standing at his throne in the centre of the apse, he faced east and the Kyries were sung. Turning west, he sang the introduction to the Gloria, then back towards the east while the rest was sung. At the end, he again turned and greeted the people with ‘Pax vobis’, said a prayer and a collect. All sat down, and a lection from the epistles was read from the ambo. Alleluias were sung, and a responsorial psalm, or gradual, by a single deacon from the gradus, or step of the ambo. The architectural elements along the axis of the church in this way became punctuation for the spatial unfolding of the text of the mass.

When the lector saw that the pope, bishops and clergy were in their places, he approached the pope for a blessing, then kissed the gospel and took it from the altar where it had been placed during the entry procession. Accompanied by candles and incense, the gospel was taken by the deacon as lector up into the ambo, and the gospel was sung, after which a sub-deacon would take it to all the clergy in succession for it to be kissed.

More remarkably, the sermon is not mentioned at all in Ordo I, and may even have fallen out of use by the middle of the fifth century, though Pope Leo’s own sermons were clearly exceptional, setting the standard of orthodoxy. Rome, longer than most cities, maintained the exclusive right of the bishop to preach from the lessons.¹⁶ In the early fifth century, Sozomen wrote that there was no preaching at Rome. Within two centuries, towards the end of the sixth, Gregory the Great was unwilling to do without a sermon even though the thrust of his reforms was to simplify the mass and reduce its length.¹⁷ Dating of archaeological evidence suggests that the ambo may well have been introduced through Byzantine influence in the sixth century. In this context, where preaching may have fallen out of use, it is interesting to reflect on Foucault’s notion of discourses.¹⁸ The liturgical text, the Ordo, was clearly a key statement, but the rubrics along with the archaeology help to reconstruct the praxis or actual presentation of the liturgy, and as the transfer of bread between masses shows, its architectural, temporal, and even urban context contribute to the full significance of the larger Christian ‘discourse’.

The point is that the liturgical year, with its celebrations of saints, martyrs and seasons, took the pope out from the Lateran to celebrate his stational masses at different churches according to the particular significance of the day and its association with the place. It emphasized that the Christians of Rome belonged to one congregation who inhabited a holy geography within sanctified time, the City of God. The dress of the participants indicating their roles, their hierarchical ordering, the coordinated movement of the processions, the flags, the urban and architectural routes, the connotations of the materials making up the architecture and liturgical furnishings, the vessels and works of art, which include text in the mosaics of the walls, all this forms the matrix into which the liturgical text and its performance are embedded. Together, it is an extremely complex yet clear articulation, every aspect of which could be tightly controlled, whereas preaching week by week and day by day by ordinary clergy within discrete congregations could all too easily fall into error, or even heresy.

A very significant original contribution is made by Mathews in his reconstruction of the organization of the offertory and the distribution of communion. His reconstruction is based on the archaeological evidence for the architectural arrangement of the solea/scola cantorum in San Marco and, partially, in San Clemente.

He suggests that for the offering, the clergy descended from the apse to the eastern ends of the aisles which appear to have been separated off with low chancel barriers at San Marco, and at San Clemente there is evidence for this arrangement at least at the end of the right-hand aisle in the lower church. In these enclosed ends of the aisles, the offerings would be made by the people, and communion would be distributed at the entrances. At the offertory, the pope, accompanied by the clergy, would descend to the enclosure at the end of the aisle on his left to receive the bread-offering from the men of rank in order, and then proceed to the other side, similarly to receive the gifts of the women. The small flasks of wine and loaves of bread offered by each were passed by the pope or his archdeacon to the assistants to fill chalices, and the bread was passed to fill linen cloths held between two acolytes.¹⁹ Other clergy followed behind, performing a similar action with the rest of the congregation.

The gifts were then placed in order on the altar by the archdeacon, while the pope washed his hands in preparation for the eucharistic prayer. The pope was now at the altar facing the people, with the deacons behind and acolytes to either side, and the bishops and priests in their places in the apse. The sub-deacons were ranged to the west side and facing the altar. The pope again greeted the people with ‘Dominus vobiscum’ (‘The Lord be with you’) and said ‘sursum corda’ (‘Lift up your hearts’), the people responding as now. Then he sang the special preface for that particular mass, followed by the Sanctus, a long passage listing those for whom the oblation is being made (corresponding to the ancient reading of the diptyches), and the consecration during the Canon of the Mass, at the end of which there was an elevation of the bread and wine so they could be seen by the congregation. At this point, he then placed a small piece of the bread from the last papal mass in the chalice, and broke off a piece from the newly consecrated bread for this use at the next papal mass.²⁰ The pope administered the consecrated bread to the clergy from his throne, and his senior assistant administered the chalice. Then, as a parallel action to the offertory, the pope and archdeacon administered communion to the men of rank at the entrance to the screened end of the aisle to his left, then to the women of rank at the barrier in the opposite aisle. As at the offertory, priests and deacons followed, communicating the rest of the men, then the rest of the women. For this, they brought the wine in a large scyphus and administered the sacrament through a tube called a pugilaris. Meanwhile, back at his cathedra, the pope would communicate all his other assistants, including all the sub-deacons, cantors, and his guard of honour. Klauser describes the simplified, and shorter, later form of distribution from c. 700.

When all had communicated and the altar and altar-plate had been set in order, the pope gave a series of blessings, after which a deacon announced the end of the mass: ‘Ite, missa est.’ The congregation responded ‘Deo gratias,’ and the procession took the pope back to the secretarium. This architectural/liturgical arrangement became strongly established, and continued in Rome (with some modifications, especially limiting the movement of the people, necessitated by pressure of time and numbers) until the ninth century.

Byzantine Influence in the West

In 533, the year the chancel barriers of San Clemente were installed and John II became pope, Emperor Justinian began a series of campaigns to re-conquer the Western Empire which had been overrun by barbarians. After celebrating victory in north Africa with a spectacular triumphal parade in Constantinople, Justinian’s general, Belisarius, was dispatched via Sicily to Italy in 536, and in 540 he entered Rome. In a little less than two decades, a devastated Italy had been freed from Ostrogothic rule by 554. In Italy and Africa, but not in Gaul, the Church was in a position to reassert authority and orthodoxy over Arian heresy, though the Lombards arrived in northern Italy in 568. Victory had come at a high price: there had been one of the greatest plagues in history in 542, striking Constantinople and the Eastern provinces, and throughout the period Justinian was having to buy off (not entirely successfully) attacks by Persians and Arabs on the Eastern front. The Italian campaign had been long, and had been fought with relatively small resources, with the Byzantine forces greatly outnumbered by the Goths. Italy was devastated, many of the Senatorial class fled to Constantinople, and the Roman Senate collapsed as an institution.

Gregory the Great and the Gregorian Sacramentary

Byzantine influence on the Roman Church, both positive and negative, can be seen in the person of Gregory I (the Great). His father was a senator, and Gregory became Prefect of Rome in 573. The next year he became a monk in a monastery he had founded in his own house. With wealth based on Sicily and Rome, he established monasteries in both, and supported the poor of Rome. Around the year 578, he was sent to Constantinople as a papal diplomat, and became close to the emperor and his family. After about seven years in Constantinople, he returned to Rome with a hearty dislike of Byzantine politics. As pope from 590, his name is traditionally linked with the development of the liturgy by reorganizing the scola cantorum for singing what we still call ‘Gregorian chant’. Apart from some local practice (which Gregory encouraged), such as the Ambrosian chant of Milan, the earliest manuscripts that include musical notation are all remarkably consistent. Gregory was thought to have codified the local Roman rite in the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary c. 595, which would come to have enormous influence.

Notably, the Gregorian Sacramentary contains a Mass on the Octave of Christmas which affirms the reality of Mary’s motherhood of Jesus – a liturgical refutation of Arianism. Dix notes that very few saints of the New Testament have festivals in this compilation (at least as received at the Court of Charlemagne in the 780s). These are closely related to the cult of relics, and include the feast of St Peter’s Chains on 1 August, which celebrates the dedication in 461 of the Roman basilica in which the relic was kept (San Pietro in Vincoli), and the Feast of St Stephen, the Protomartyr, celebrated on 26 December from the end of the fourth century. Stephen’s relics were discovered in 415, which caused a great wave of enthusiasm, and his feast was being celebrated in Rome after the middle of the century, and the discovery of his relics (‘Inventio Sancti Stephani’) was at one time itself kept on 3 August.²¹

During the century prior to the production of the Gregorian Sacramentary, other liturgical collections had been compiled: the earliest manuscript is probably the so-called Gelasian Sacramentary (codex Vat. Reginensis lat. 316), which has traditionally been associated with Pope Gelasius (492–96), though this manuscript is thought to have been written in France c. 750. Another has been attributed to Bishop Maximian of Ravenna (546–56). Sacramentaries were produced for use and represent the point at which that use was becoming fixed and standardized.²² Klauser’s summary of the relationships between the traditions is as follows:

… the Roman collection which forms the basis of the Codex [Reginensis] we have been dealing with reflects the state of the liturgy as it was in Rome before the time of the Gregorian Sacramentary, but after that of the Leonine. Since, however, the Leonine Sacramentary itself takes us right into the second half of the sixth century, the Roman core of the Gelasian Sacramentary cannot have originated much before the Gregorian Sacramentary.²³

The Leonine Sacramentary (more properly referred to as the Verona Sacramentary, Verona Codex lxxxv) is now thought to have been compiled from collections of prayers, some of which do appear to be associated with Pope Leo) made by the clergy of the tituli of Rome, but compiled (according to Hope) in Verona c. 600. In fact, it is more of a compendium of prayers rather than a true sacramentary meant for use.²⁴ The dates and relationship of the original compilations have been much studied and debated, but what is relevant here is the similarity of forces and developments at work in both architecture and liturgy. In both, local canonical forms are emerging, which shows just how varied local practice must have been, but at the same time the immense importance of what would become the standardizing Roman model is becoming evident. The long process of codification of liturgical forms and standardization of architectural form continued into the seventh century within the Italian context; in Gaul, and within the Gallican Rite, that process had a very much longer and even more complex history.

Late Antique and Merovingian Architecture and the Gallican Rite

Gaul had long been a difficult part of the Empire to govern. Christianity had taken root there in the second century, when Irenaeus was Bishop of Lyon. During the second quarter of the third century, under the Consulship of Decius, seven bishops were sent to Gaul: St Saturninus to Toulouse, Gatianus to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paulus to Narbonne, Dionysius to Paris, Stremonius to Clermont-Ferrand and Martialus to Limoges. Decius had been successful in campaigns against the Goths on the Danube frontier, and was proclaimed emperor by the army. Gregory of Tours relates in his History of the Franks how a disciple of the bishops converted a number of men at Bourges whom he ordained: ‘They were taught how to chant psalms, and they were given instruction in building churches and in celebrating the rites due to Almighty God. As yet they had little chance of building a church, so they asked for the house of one of the townsfolk, so that they could make a church of it.’ Here we have in detail a description of the creation of a domus ecclesiae:

The Senators and other leading men of the place were still committed to their own heathen religion, and those who had come to believe in God were from the poorer classes …. They did not obtain the use of the house for which they had asked; and they therefore went to see a man called Leocadius, the leading Senator of Gaul, who was of the same family as that Vettius Epagatus [an ancestor of Gregory himself] who, as I have already told you, suffered martyrdom in Lyon in the name of Christ. They told him of their Christian faith and explained what they wanted. ‘If my house,’ he replied, ‘which I possess in Bourges, were worthy of being put to such a use, I would be willing to offer it to you.’ When they heard him they fell at his feet. They said that his house was indeed suitable to be used for religious ceremonies and they offered him three hundred golden pieces for it, together with a silver salver. Leocadius accepted three of the golden coins for luck and refused the rest. Up to this moment he had believed in heathen gods, but now he became a Christian and turned his house into a church. This is now the most important church in the town of Bourges, constructed with great skill and famous for the relics of Stephen, the first martyr.²⁵

This is a pattern familiar from other parts of the Empire, with converts for the most part poor, but with rich and influential patrons. That is not to say, however, that this congregation did not have considerable resources of its own, offering 300 gold pieces and a silver salver, though this may have been exaggerated to enhance the generosity of the patron in refusing payment. He was, after all, a kinsman of Gregory’s. The story is also an example of how these grand senatorial families not uncommonly continued their patronage and influence, often keeping bishoprics in the family for generations. The house was said to be ‘suitable for religious ceremonies’, presumably in its present state for the time being, but it was ‘turned into a church … now the most important church in the town of Bourges, constructed with great skill’, which implies that in the intervening time, careful architectural changes were carried out, just as they had been in the almost contemporary example at Dura Europos.

In the 250s, the Franks and the Alamanni crossed into imperial territory over the Rhine. In the second half of the third century, a number of Gallic emperors emerged to provide for the defence of Gaul. Late in the third century, Constantius, father of Constantine the Great, restored order in Gaul, and subsequently, under Constantine there was an imperial capital in Trier. The presence of the emperor in a city or territory was no small matter. He was the embodiment of authority, and until the confrontation between Ambrose of Milan with Valentinian II, his mother Justina (both Arians), and then with Theodosius I (the Emperor of the East), that imperial authority encompassed both the temporal and the spiritual.

The Influence of the Imperial Adventus on the Ceremonial of the Cult of Saints

In 335 or 336, when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria was in exile in Trier, he compared the Incarnation of the Son of God with the presence of the emperor; both emperor and Godhead had to appear before the people to maintain the kingdom and prevent usurpers: ‘But when the real king comes forth and is revealed, then the deceitful revolutionaries are refuted by his presence, while the citizens, seeing the real king, abandon those who formerly deceived them.’²⁶

The adventus, or arrival of an emperor or god, had been a pagan and imperial ceremony which became invested with new Christian meanings across the whole of the Empire, both East and West. In Ambrose’s Milan, the emperor’s adventus was key in the siting of the Basilica Apostolorum, and it became the model for the ceremony accompanying the translation of relics in the East, as shown on the Trier ivory. A traditional adventus was celebrated in 357 at the entry of the Emperor Constantius, son of Constantine the Great, into Rome. He rode in a golden carriage, posing as stiff as a statue, his gaze fixed straight ahead. Despite the jolts caused by the road surface, he suppressed all movement, appearing like the statue of a god. He became the very image of an emperor, and significantly, it was possible to perform an adventus with images or insignia of an emperor. The honour accorded corresponded to the authority embodied – to the Emperor himself, or his insignia, the citizenry would shout their requests for justice or relief from a particular tax.

As in the East, so in Gaul the adventus ceremony was transformed into a Christian idiom for the translation of relics. At the translation of relics to Rouen in the late fourth or early fifth century, Bishop Victricius preached a sermon in which he encouraged the people to celebrate the arrival of the saints and the building of a new church as a ‘palace’ to house them. As at an imperial adventus, the people made requests before the saints for pardon, not from taxes, but from their sins – both inevitable facts of life. Ceremonial forms can travel and be translated (or ‘baptized’), and any contrast with the original meaning of the forms can even intensify their effectiveness in their new application. Victricius was explicit about the contrast in his sermon:

If one of the emperors were to visit our city today, every street would happily be covered with garlands, women would fill the rooftops, and a wave of people would surge from the city gates. … People of every age would sing of honour and of war, and they would marvel at the flaming splendour of the emperor’s cloak and at the imperial purple. … But now, instead of the royal cloak there is right here the garment of eternal light. Here is the purple, … here are diadems decorated with the splendid gems [of different Christian virtues].²⁷

Reliquaries, Church Plate and the Power of Gifts

These ‘gems’ of Christian virtues became real gems as reliquaries became more elaborate, and gifts dedicated by the rich and powerful became more spectacular. Even the props and accoutrements of the imperial adventus could be transposed into the Christian context, such as the astonishing fifth-century Roman parade mask reused for the head of the reliquary of Ste Foy, with enamelled eyes and the surface overlaid with gold and jewels. Here is an image to which any emperor would aspire at an adventus. The forms, materials and use of reliquaries were a direct extension of the virtues and holiness of the fragments they contained. These fragments were existential connections with the hosts of heaven. Such connection was a conduit of the power and authority of the Emperor of Heaven which was more direct, and certainly more stable, than the power and authority derived from the presence of the imperial insignia, or even the emperor of Rome himself.

Although the adventus ceremony had been translated into a Christian idiom, it retained its imperial associations and bridged the two worlds. Clovis, King of the Franks in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, was a pagan, and Gregory of Tours records that his queen, Clotild, tried to convert her husband by doctrine, but without result: ‘When she brought her son for baptism: she ordered the church to be decorated with hangings and curtains, in the hope that the King, who remained stubborn in the face of argument, might be brought to the faith by ceremony. The child was baptised; he was given the name Igomer; but no sooner had he received baptism than he died in his white robes. Clovis was extremely angry.’ Despite this unpropitious encounter with Christianity, when Clovis was at war with the Alamanni in 496, the battle was going against him and he prayed to Christ, ‘If you will give me victory over my enemies, and if I may have evidence of that miraculous power which the people dedicated to your name say that they have experienced, then I will believe in you and I will be baptized in your name.’ Immediately, the Alamanni fled. When Clovis was subsequently baptized, colourful hangings lined his route to the baptistery, which had been prepared by Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, with burning incense, and ‘God filled the hearts of all present with such grace that they imagined themselves to have been transported to some perfumed paradise.’ This was Clovis’ adventus into the Christian religion, and the imperial nature of the occasion was not lost on Gregory: ‘Like some new Constantine, he stepped forward to the baptismal pool …’. He had driven a hard bargain with Christ in his demands for a sign, but he was baptized a Catholic, and his sister, who had become an Arian, also became a Catholic.²⁸ Clovis had begun the expansion of his kingdom by defeating the Roman general Siagrius. Now, as a Catholic, he had an excuse to attack the Arian Visigoths and seize the rest of Gaul.

When Clovis drove the Arian Visigoths out of Gaul across the Pyrenees in 507, he killed their king, Alaric II, and seized most of his treasure, though not the treasures from the Temple of Solomon (which had been seized in the Sack of Rome) and other symbols which had become tokens of their dynastic power. Alaric’s father-in-law was Theoderic the Great, King of Italy, whose splendid mausoleum still stands in Ravenna.

The dedication of treasure at a shrine established what may be seen as the traditional patron-client relationship between the saint and the pilgrim. The patronage of the saint could be very practical indeed. Before attacking Alaric, Clovis sent gifts to St Martin’s church, seeking another sign. When his messengers entered the church, ‘it happened that the precentor was just beginning to intone this antiphon: “For thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle: thou hast subdued under me those that rose up against me. Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies: that I might destroy them that hate me.” [Ps. 18: 39–40] When the messengers heard this psalm they gave thanks to God. They made their vows to the saint and went happily back.’²⁹

Naturally, Clovis was victorious, and when he had consolidated his power over former Gothic lands, it suited Anastasius, Emperor of the East, politically to name him Consul. Clovis assumed the title in St Martin’s church at Tours, where ‘he stood clad in a purple tunic and the military mantle, and he crowned himself with a diadem. He then rode out on his horse and with his own hand showered gold and silver coins among the people present all the way from the door of Saint Martin’s church to Tours cathedral. From that day on he was called Consul or Augustus.’³⁰ By gifts, he became a ‘client’, so to speak, of St Martin, and St Martin his Patron Saint; then, by gifts of money showered on them, his new people became his clients in turn. These gifts, of coins, treasure and imperial titles, and the ceremonies when they were given or liturgies during which they were displayed all defined power and patronage. This was no play-acting, it was reality given physical expression. The physical objects were tangible evidence of the truth. When a royal gift was a reliquary, or became part of one, its display proclaimed to all both the wealth and power of the donor, and that however great and powerful the giver, the saint, as patron, was far greater as an intercessor in heaven. This would achieve its greatest demonstration in the Saint-Denis of Abbot Suger and in Canterbury Cathedral’s shrine of St Thomas Becket.

Very little remains of reliquaries and dedicated objects of this early period due to many factors, including the nature of gift-giving and the dedication of treasures and their high value, making them susceptible to plunder and being melted down. Virtually all we have left of the treasure and altar-plate contemporary with Gregory is a sixth-century oblong paten (or perhaps it is a portable altar) with its central cross and raised border in cloisonné enamel. The piece is from the treasury of Gourdon (Saône-et-Loire), and is now to be found in Paris in the Cabinet des Médailles.³¹

A particularly rich example of an abbey treasury which escaped the ravages of plunderers, including the Revolutionaries, is still to be found intact at the Abbey of Conques. The reliquary of Ste Foy in that treasury contains a fifth-century parade mask, some very ancient cameos, cabochons and other jewels, but the assemblage dates only from the ninth century, when the relics themselves, having been stolen from a monastery at Agen, first arrived at the Abbey of Conques on 14 January 866. Fixed to the throne of the reliquary, and contemporary with this, was a rock crystal engraved with the crucifixion (c. 870) and an Ottonian crown. This reliquary was augmented and built up, but also cut back and renewed like the throne – a process which continued up to the twelfth century. In the same treasury is a twelfth-century reliquary of the True Cross in the form of a miniature Holy Sepulchre mounted on a cube with medallions showing Sampson and the Lion, the Good Shepherd, and Christ in Majesty. Its form and the iconography declare it to be a physical and real connection with the instrument of Christ’s glorification, and through him as the Shepherd of our souls, our glorification as well. Here is also a reliquary called the ‘A’ of Charlemagne, which holds another relic of the True Cross, and the ‘châsse of Pepin’ dating partly from the eighth, but mostly from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, which is, at least in origin, one of the oldest in the treasury. It is a small, gabled and distinctly architectural reliquary of 18 cm by 18 cm. This is a form frequently seen on an altar in medieval pictures. Elements of some of the reliquaries at Conques are Carolingian, and even Merovingian (dating from the time of the previous dynasty reputedly founded by King Merovech). The relics themselves are equally diverse: a fragment of the Holy Sepulchre was given by Pope Pascal II in 1100; a relic relating to the circumcision and the umbilical cord of Christ (both now lost), bread from the Last Supper, the Holy Blood, relics of the boys in the burning fiery furnace, Daniel, hair of the Virgin, and relics of Apostles, saints and martyrs.³²

The Architectural Setting and the Liturgy in Merovingian Gaul

Merovingian Architecture

Relics were a physical connection between the pilgrim and the reality of Holy Scripture and the continuing presence of the holy in more recent people of faith. Pilgrimage had been a growing part of private devotion since the time of Constantine and his mother, Helena. Egeria herself appears to have been a nun (or female religious of some sort) from Aquitania in Gaul on pilgrimage during 381–84. By the time of Gregory of Tours, two hundred years later, the numbers of pilgrims had swollen. In his History of the Franks, Gregory placed his reader before the same reality of the events of Holy Scripture and holy people by using the first book to ‘cover five thousand, five hundred and ninety-six years from the beginning of the world down to the death of Saint Martin’.³³ The literary and physical connection (through relics and holy places) with the story of salvation and the power of the saints was integrated in the liturgy and its physical architectural setting, which in turn were unified with the worship of ‘angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven’: Gregory relates how:

The wife of Namatius built the church of Saint Stephen in the suburb outside the walls of Clermont-Ferrand. She wanted it to be decorated with coloured frescoes. She used to hold in her lap a book from which she would read stories of events which happened long ago, and tell the workmen what she wanted painted on the walls.³⁴

Clearly, specific narratives were of great concern to her and the dedication of her church, and a miracle and blessings ensued for the woman. It may well be that the book was an illuminated manuscript from the cathedral library, since her husband was the bishop. The architectural and spatial relationships between the frescoes on the walls of the building affected both the narrative and meaning of the paintings originating in the sourcebook.

An altogether grander setting, also frescoed,³⁵ was provided for the shrine of St Martin, who was highly venerated amongst the greatest of saints at Merovingian Tours. At least some of the architectural details given by Gregory in his History have proven to be archaeologically verifiable:

In the city of Tours Bishop Eustochius died in the seventeenth year of his episcopate. Perpetuus was consecrated in his place, being the fifth bishop after Saint Martin. When Perpetuus saw how frequently miracles were being performed at Saint Martin’s tomb and when he observed how small was the chapel erected over the Saint’s body, he decided that it was unworthy of these wonders. He had the chapel removed and he built in its place the great church which is still there some five hundred yards outside the city. It is one hundred and sixty feet long by sixty feet broad; and its height up to the beginning of the vaulting is forty-five feet. It has thirty-two windows in the sanctuary and twenty in the nave, with forty-one columns. In the whole building there are fifty-two windows, one hundred and twenty columns and eight doorways, three in the sanctuary and five in the nave. The great festival of the church has a threefold significance: it marks the dedication of the building, the translation of the Saint’s body and his ordination as a bishop. You should observe this feast-day on 4 July; and you should remember that Saint Martin died on 11 November. If you celebrate this faithfully you will gain the protection of the saintly Bishop in this world and the next. The vault of the tiny chapel which stood there before was most elegantly designed, and so Bishop Perpetuus thought it wrong to destroy it. He built another church in honour of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and he fitted this vault over it. He built many other churches which still stand firm today in the name of Christ.³⁶

Already in 472, Perpetuus had elevated St Martin’s body from its crypt evidence that the number of pilgrims, as well as the number of miracles, had even then become so great as to require an architectural solution. Access had become totally inadequate. The tomb was built in the apse, and it seems that it was possible for pilgrims to enter and touch the sarcophagus in order to be healed, in the same way as Gregory himself had been relieved of headache and eye problems.³⁷ The liturgical festival recorded by Gregory in the extract above celebrated both the church building and the saint it honoured, and keeping the festival brought the saint’s protection now and in the world to come. The original small chapel found so inadequate by Bishop Perpetuus had been built by St Brictius in the early fifth century over the tomb. Late in the fifth century, it had become commonplace to build churches over hypogea, underground tomb-chambers containing the body of a saint. The cult of the saints and the associated liturgy not only influenced the form and fittings of the architecture, it often dictated precisely where the churches should be built.

The Merovingian Rite

The shrine of the local saint was particularly important, and so was the associated liturgy. St Saturninus of Toulouse was celebrated lavishly, even grandiloquently, on his feast-day with the proper preface:

It is very meet and right.… And most chiefly should we praise thine almighty power, O God in Trinity, with special devotion and the service of our words of supplication for the triumphant sufferings of all Thy saints: But especially at this time we are bound to exalt with due honour the blessed Saturninus, the most loud-thundering [conclamantissimum] witness of Thine awful name: whom the mob of the heathen when they thrust him from the temple thrust also into heaven. Nevertheless thine high-priest sent forth from eastern regions to the city of the Tolosatians, in this Rome of the Garonne as Vicar of Thy Peter fulfilled both his episcopate and martyrdom.³⁸

The altar furnishings, the architectural setting and the liturgy were all clearly elaborate and impressive.

Another indication of how elaborate the contemporary Gallican Rite was, is given by Gregory in his story of the saintly Bishop Sidonius, of Clermont-Ferrand, who was from a leading senatorial family of Gaul and married to the daughter of the Emperor Avitus. At this time, the facility of memory was highly prized, but even then it was seen as just short of miraculous when:

Some malicious person removed the book with which it was his habit to conduct the church service. Sidonius was so well versed in the ritual that he took them through the whole service of the festival without pausing for a moment. This was a source of wonder to everyone present and they had the impression that it must be an angel speaking rather than a man. I have described this in more detail in the preface of the book which I wrote about the Masses composed by Sidonius.³⁹

It would appear that it was still not unknown for Bishops to compose, probably even extempore if the Bishop was skilful enough, the collects and preface, though it seems that these ‘propers’ (that is, prayers and readings appropriate to the day or particular celebration) were more usually prescribed at this date. The Missale Gothicum (Vat. Reg. lat. 493), copied in Burgundy, probably at Autun, just more than a century after Gregory completed his History of the Franks in 594, has a set of propers including Prefatio, Collectio, Collectio post Nomina, Collectio ad Pacem, Immolatio, Post Secreta, Ante Orationem Dominicain, and Post Orationem Dominicam.⁴⁰ If this complexity reflects an earlier complexity from the time of Sidonius, then the Bishop either had an amazing eloquence to be able to extemporize, or an even more remarkable memory, since these propers were specific to the day, and so used only once a year.⁴¹

It was expected that the bishop would bring his flock in every way into the divine presence; an extreme example was St Salvius, who, according to Gregory, died and went to heaven, only to return to his earthly body as he was being carried to his grave. He then revealed the glories of heaven to his people. While this was not something all bishops were able to mediate directly to their flock, they were able to integrate them with the worship of heaven especially in the liturgy, as did Bishop Sidonius, and in its architectural setting, as did his predecessor Bishop Namatius, who built the Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand where the number of windows meant that ‘one is conscious of the fear of God and of a great brightness, and those at prayer are often aware of a most sweet and aromatic odour which is being wafted towards them’.⁴² This is also reflected in the language and form of the Gallican liturgy; although no complete manuscript texts of the liturgy itself survive from this early date, contemporary with St Martin in the fourth or even Gregory in the sixth century,⁴³ Gregory mentions the bishop singing the canticle, the Benedictus,⁴⁴ with its emphasis on the people, and implying that they were the new Israel. Similarly, the Bobbio Missal (a Gallican missal which already integrated Roman material) from c. 700, in one of the collects for baptism, reads: ‘O God who restores that which is lost and preserves that which is restored, God who has ordained that the reproach of Gentile birth shall be taken away by the sign of your Name, so that men may be accounted worthy to approach the fount of baptism …’⁴⁵ Manuscripts of the late seventh or early eighth century include the Benedictas (‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people’) or the Benedicite (‘O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord’) before the Gospel.⁴⁶ The people seem to have been very active in the liturgy, and were provided with many responses. The rite varied from place to place, and abounded in dedicated propers. The celebration was dramatic, colourful, long, elaborate and sensuous, with quantities of incense. The architecture, like that of Namatius’ cathedral at Clermont, was expected not just to provide the setting for the drama, but to heighten it, and like Gregory’s frescoes in his cathedral at Tours, to enhance the colourful ceremonial. Just as the people were more active, so was the deacon, who still conducted a good deal of the worship of the people and their movement within the space.

After the Benedictus, which was original to the Gallican rite, came the Gospel procession with candles and incense, and the deacon sang the Gospel, which was followed by a Latin translation of the Greek Trisagion. Then came a sermon, followed by a deacon’s litany which was a close translation from the Eastern rite and was interspersed by the congregational response precamur te Domine, miserere, a paraphrase of the Kyries. At a later date, the Great Entrance was imported from the Eastern rite in some places (perhaps via Spain, see page 139ff), where it seems also to have effected the architectural arrangement with the introduction of a sacristy on either side of the apse after the manner of the Eastern prothesis and diaconicon. This arrangement was to be found at the cathedral at Clermont in the middle of the fifth century, as described by Gregory:

It has a rounded apse at the end, and two wings of elegant design on either side. The whole building is constructed in the shape of a cross. It has forty-two windows, seventy columns and eight doorways. In it one is conscious of the fear of God and of a great brightness, and those at prayer are often aware of a most sweet and aromatic odour which is being wafted to them. Round the sanctuary it has walls which are decorated with mosaic work made of many varieties of marble. When the building had been finished for a dozen years, the saintly Bishop sent priests to Bologna, the city in Italy to procure for him the relics of Saint Agricola and Saint Vitalis, who, as I have shown, were assuredly crucified in the name of Christ our Lord.⁴⁷

The Cult of Relics

In the middle of the sixth century, there was also a strong connection with Constantinople, and liturgical practice in Gaul shared some characteristics with the East, especially elaboration and variability, particularly of ‘propers’. St Radegund, Queen of Lothar I sent to the Eastern emperor for relics for her nunnery, and Justin II and the Empress Sophia gave a relic of the True Cross to her envoys. This is still in the nunnery, in a small gold triptych (whose wings have been lost) just over 2 inches square which is possibly the original Byzantine reliquary.⁴⁸ Relics were extremely powerful diplomatic gifts, or appropriate relics could be very costly, perhaps the reason that it took twelve years before Saint Namatius could provide relics for the Cathedral at Clermont. When Gregory succeeded to the See of Tours in 573, the cathedral had been destroyed by fire, and Gregory had completely rebuilt it by 590: ‘I rebuilt it, bigger and higher than before, and in the seventeenth year of my episcopate I re-dedicated it.’ The culmination of his History of the Franks, completed in 594, is the enumeration of his building projects and furnishing them with a wealth of relics. The relics of the Legion reputedly martyred because, as Christians, they refused to take part in pagan sacrifice were found by Gregory in the Church of St Martin, and:

As I was examining the relics with great care, the church sacristan said to me: ‘there is a stone here with a lid on it. I don’t know what it contains. … He fetched the stone and I, of course, carefully opened it. Inside I found a silver reliquary which contained not only the relics of those who had actually seen the Holy Legion but also the remains of many saints, martyrs and holy men. I took charge of it, and at the same time I also took a number of other hollowed-out stones in which had been preserved the relics of other holy apostles and martyrs. I was delighted with this gift sent by God. In my gratitude to Him I kept a number of vigils and said Masses. Then I placed in the cathedral all that I had found, except that I put the relics of the martyrs Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian in Saint Martin’s cell, which adjoins the cathedral.

In the whole diplomatic etiquette of giving and receiving gifts of the time, Gregory was indebted to God for the gift of these many relics, which were so powerful and so valuable as to be worth encasing in gold and silver, and which would in turn attract the gifts of kings and pilgrims. Gregory’s debt was to be paid liturgically and architecturally – in vigils and masses, and buildings as reliquaries-writ-large to house the holy objects. Gregory concluded the narrative of his History just before beginning the epilogue:

I found the walls of Saint Martin’s church damaged by fire. I ordered my workmen to use all their skill to paint and decorate them, until they were as bright as they had previously been. I had a baptistery built adjacent to the church, and there I placed the relics of Saint John and Saint Sergius the martyr. In the old baptistery I put the relics of Saint Benignus the martyr. In many other places in Tours and its immediate neighbourhood I dedicated churches and oratories, and these I enriched with relics of the saints. It would be too long to give you a complete list.⁴⁹

The cycle of frescoes in Gregory’s Church of St Martin ‘stressed the charitable behaviour and militant antipaganism of Martin’, and over the sanctuary arch was written: ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’⁵⁰ The liturgy joined in the worship of heaven, of ‘angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven’ (some of whom were physically present in the saintly relics) singing the Sanctus, and the architecture placed them physically on its threshold.

The cult and shrine of St Martin were the definitive Gallican answer in practice to the priest Vigilantius, at the foot of the Pyrenees in Gaul, who criticized the veneration of relics, and this physical answer was coextensive with the written answer earlier in the fifth century by Jerome from Bethlehem. The cult of St Saturninus had recently been expanded in Toulouse, and Vigilantius, who had just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was responding to this, by now growing, practice in Gaul: ‘Most significantly, Jerome now represented a version of Christianity that located its meaning and authority in specific places, tangible objects, regulated ceremonies, and a number of holy books. Vigilantius had questioned all these assumptions about the authority of Christianity.’⁵¹ Jerome’s position has profound consequences for the form and performance of the liturgy and the structure, function, and even veneration of its architectural locus. Consequently, the funeral of Bishop Martin was described by his biographer Sulpicius in terms of an imperial triumphal entry. The entry was, of course, both into the heavenly Kingdom and to the place of his permanent presence, his shrine, where his authority and power would be always available for the service of his people, in death as the patron saint, as it had been in life as their bishop.

Whether or not Gregory was exaggerating the number of his works, besides the rebuilding of the Church of St Martin, for the sake of rhetoric, he was clearly a prodigious builder, and we do know that he consecrated other churches at Petit-Pressigny and Pernay (both Indre et Loire), both with relics of his uncle St Nicetus,⁵² yet nothing remains of these buildings, and moreover, there is precious little hard archaeological evidence giving us insights into the detail of Gallo-Roman ecclesiastical architecture. The only excavated church cited by Pierre Lavedan is Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, dated by him to the fourth century. There was an enormous narthex, a nave and a five-aisled apse. Fragments indicate that the interior was plastered and painted with white flowers on a red ground. Probably, the baptistery of Marseilles is also from late that century. Of fifth- and sixth-century work, there are the other baptisteries of Provence: Fréjus, Aix, Riez, Vénasque, Mélas and Valence. Of Merovingian work, there are fragments at Saint-Pierre in Vienne and the Cathedral of Vaison.⁵³

The Merovingian Baptistery

As so often, the dating of these early baptisteries is disputed. The Baptistery of Saint-Jean, Poitiers, with its very ancient font, may date in part to the late fourth, but more likely the fifth to seventh centuries (see Figures 4.4 and 4.5). At the Council of Auxerre in 578, Canon 18 forbade baptism except at the Easter service, apart from the dying and infirm, but Canon 3 of the second Council of Macon of 585 makes it clear that baptism continued to occur popularly on saints’ days, and all were enjoined to return to the custom of Easter baptism.⁵⁴ This gives an indication of the frequency of use for the baptistery (which was supposed to be shut during Lent), and by looking at the order in the Missale Gothicum, we can get a picture of how the building was used, perhaps in the sixth, but more certainly by the end of the seventh century.

Entry into the Baptistery of Saint-Jean, Poitiers is from the west into a half-octagon separated from the main baptistery by a pair of columns. It was presumably here in this first chamber where the vigil was kept, a candle was lit and a series of prayers said; when the service of baptism began, opening collects were said, one for the candidates, next a prayer admonishing the candidates to ‘Receive the sign of Christ: accept the words of God: receive the light of the Word of God: for this day Christ confesses you to be his own. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ The words of this collect all but demand actions, especially in a liturgy known to be as extravagant as the Gallican: signing with the sign of the cross; presentation of a Bible, and presentation of a lighted candle. The next collect would have the officiant sign the candidate: ‘your eyes to see the clearness of God; your ears to hear the voice of the Lord; your nose to savour the sweetness of Christ; your mouth to confess the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; your heart to believe the holy and undivided Trinity …’. The Trinitarian formula was very important in the fight against Arianism.

Figure 4.4 Baptistery of St Jean, Poitiers, sections; from Dehio and von Bezold (1887–1901), vol. I, pl. 84, no. 2; (1736b.l&2) Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Figure 4.5 Baptistery of St Jean, Poitiers, view from the northeast; courtesy Allan T. Kohl/Art Images for College Teaching (AICT).

Proceeding through to the second chamber, there is a very ancient font in the middle, an apse on the north and south walls to either side, and a small sanctuary in the eastern apse. The font was blessed, then the water, and the Holy Spirit was invoked to sanctify the water; then the sign of the cross was made with chrism to exorcize the water. The officiant breathed three times on the water, then the chrism was poured in, making the sign of the Cross. This was followed by baptism in the threefold name and anointing with chrism. The new Christians now had their feet washed, and a white robe was placed on them. The three elements of this part of the rite, chrism, footwashing and white robe, may be the key to the two side absidioles and the apse, or the rite may have continued straight on to the first mass of Easter after two more concluding collects. If so, the footwashing may have taken place at the font, turning then to the apse, where mass was celebrated with references to baptism in both the Preface and Immolatio:

It is meet and right, fitting and right, that here and in all places we should thank you, should sing your praises and offer sacrifices and confess your mercies, O Lord holy, Father Almighty, everlasting God .… For this is the night which has knowledge of the saving sacraments, the night in which you offer pardon to sinners, make new men from old, from worn out old men restore full grown infants whom you bring from the sacred font renewed unto a new creature. On this night your people are new born and brought forth unto eternal day, the halls of the kingdom of heaven, by your blessed ordinance human conversation is changed to divine … the night in which Adam was set free, the night in which the piece of silver which had been lost was found [Luke 15:8], the night in which the lost sheep was carried on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd [Luke 15:5], the night in which the devil slept and Christ the Sun of Righteousness [Mal. 4:15] arose, when the bonds of hell were burst and its bars broken, and many bodies of the saints broke out from their tombs and entered the holy city [Matt. 27:52]. … For you Almighty God, the multitude of heavenly beings and the innumerable choir of angels unceasingly do praise, saying, Holy …⁵⁵

The liturgy is very visual, and presents a potential decorative programme in itself for its own architectural setting – elements of which have already been noted in other baptisteries, such as Adam, the Good Shepherd, the Sun of Righteousness may be an interpretation for the problematical ‘Christ-Helios’ in the crypt of St Peter’s, Rome, and the resurrection of the saints is a very common theme. The extant frescoes at the Baptistery of Saint-Jean, Poitiers are later additions, but much of the fabric is consistent with an early date, despite Romanesque changes and much restoration.

Hypogea and Funerary Crypts

Another important liturgical space in Poitiers is the Hypogeum of Dunes. A significant number of relics were installed at its consecration, and this has given rise to a dispute as to whether this was a place of pilgrimage or a funerary chapel. Camille de la Croix, who excavated the monument in the 1880s, maintained that it was a martyrium, but Crook believes, on the basis of inscriptions, that it was for burial ad sanctum, that is, in a place near saints or their relics. Besides the coffins that crowd the space, there are up to 37 burials in a cluster around the hypogeum.⁵⁶ Inside, there is too little room for regular access by pilgrims, but as a cella memoriae, it has an altar and is fully equipped for worship, including what must have been intimate memorial masses. An inscription identifies it as the tomb of Abbot Mellebaude, and archaeological details such as the intertwined plant and animal motifs of the carving place the work in the late seventh or early eighth century. One of the carved sarcophagus lids has labelled images of the Evangelists Matthew and John (the eagle), the Archangels Raphael and Raguel, and below, the names Laurentius, Varigatus, Hilary and Martin. It may be that there was another matching slab with Mark and Luke, Michael and Gabriel. These invocations of saints who were biblical, Roman and local, drew on their power for help and support in death, much as relics functioned for the living.

The example of the Church of Saint-Martial in Limoges will serve to illustrate typical developments at a site where a shrine church was built over a hypogeum, or funerary crypt.⁵⁷ St Martial was the Apostle of Aquitaine, one of the ‘Seven Bishops’ of the mid-third century, and the first Bishop of Limoges. He was buried in a vaulted crypta cut into the soft tufa stone in an extramural Gallo-Roman cemetery. This was excavated in 1960 and 1962, just to the north of the Romanesque basilica. It was originally the shrine of St Valerie, and was created by Martial. Probably near the turn of the fourth century, it was enlarged to accommodate St Martial and his two priests in stone sarcophagi in a corner, which is how it was seen by Gregory. In the eighth century, the relics were moved to the church above, and the funerary chapel was reordered as a church.

Other examples attributed to the fourth century include Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in Provence, reputed to be the tomb of Mary Magdalen. It does contain four Gallo-Roman sarcophagi, though these may have been introduced later. A similarly mysterious burial is found in St Victor’s Church in Marseilles. Victor was a Roman soldier who was martyred in 303, but a coin deliberately inserted to the sealing-mortar of one of the two tombs is a newly minted coin of the Emperor Decius dating to 249–50. Part of the rather spacious chapel can be dated to the fifth century by the mural decoration, so the Christian cult may have begun then, at the foundation of the Monastery of St Victor c. 420. It was here that Bishop Theodore took up residence during a great plague, ‘giving up all his time to prayers and vigils’.⁵⁸

Other crypts are thought to be originally fourth-century or to be the very places of which Gregory wrote, including the tomb of St Maximinus at Trier, and the two burials below Saint-Seurin, Bordeaux. Eric Fernie supports the idea that the crypts at Déols were as seen by Gregory, but Crook believes them to have been rebuilt in the late tenth century.⁵⁹ The fact remains that there is enough consistency across the range of examples and a high enough level of literary and archaeological evidence to give a relatively secure picture of what they were like, their range of uses (including the liturgical), and their development, including the fact that there was a period from the end of the late sixth century when crypts ceased to be as important in the cult of saints, when the relics were moved into the church above, as seen in the example of Saint-Martial, Limoges.

A particularly important example is a mausoleum in an ancient cemetery on a hill about two kilometres outside Augustodunum, modern Autun. The city may have had one of the most ancient Christian communities in Gaul. Saint-Symphorian was said to have been martyred here c. 180, and Gregory records that Eufronius built the Church of St Symphorian before being elected bishop of the city.⁶⁰ Certainly Bishop Reticius of Autun, who is mentioned by both Jerome and Augustine, was one of three Gallic bishops called to the Council of 313 by Constantine. Excavations have uncovered what appears to be the first funerary basilica at Autun, which numismatic evidence proves must have existed by the middle of the fourth century at the latest.⁶¹

These funerary basilicas were the early nodes in the matrix of holy people and holy sites that was being spread across Merovingian Gaul and becoming the objective of pilgrimage and the source of power and wealth for many religious houses. Liturgy is very like religious drama, in that its existence as text, like the dramatic text, is vestigial at best. It only comes into full-blooded existence when enacted and embodied. The presentation of the liturgy (or a play) is interpreted through its dramatic presentation, its vestments (or costume), and the arrangement of its architectural setting (props, stagecraft and the theatre itself). The cosmic drama, enacted liturgically through the offices, the sacraments, the lectionary, the calendar, has become a Christian discourse embedded locally in the architecture, but by the end of the Merovingian dynasty it also spread as a mantle over the whole geography of Gaul.

Notes

1 Augustine, De Consensu Evang., II, 58, quoted in Dix (1945), p. 385.

2 See Cameron (1993b), p. 38, and Ward-Perkins (2005), pp. 21–2; City of God, I.1.

3 Krautheimer (1983), p. 94.

4 Mâle (1960), p. 52, continuing his argument to p. 53.

5 Bill Storage thinks it highly unlikely that this is a bishop, because of what appear to him to be riding boots.

6 Mâle (1960), p. 63.

7 Duckett (1951), pp. 51–2.

8 Crook (2000), p. 13, and Kemp (1948), p. 15.

9 De Blaauw (1987), pp. 196–201, gives a very full discussion of the church and its relics..

10 Discussed in Crook (2000), p. 12.

11 Claridge(1998), p. 286.

12 For background, see Krautheimer et al. (1937-77), vol. V, p. 87, Mathews (1962), pp. 73–4, and Krautheimer (1980), pp. 47ff.

13 Mathews (1962), p. 75; see also his summary of the rubrics, the analysis by Duchesne (1903), pp. 161ff, Klauser (1979), pp. 59ff., and Jungmann (1959), pp. 50–56.

14 See Kieckhefer (2004), p. 32, and in more detail, De Blaauw (1987), pp. 26ff.

15 See Jungmann (1959), p. 52.

16 De Blaauw (1987), p. 36.

17 See Mathews (1962), p. 86, where he refers to Duchesne (1912), p. 171, and Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. VII. 19; Hope (1980), p. 234; Klauser (1979), p. 64; Jungmann (1959), p. 53.

18 See especially Stringer (2005), pp. 10–14.

19 The practice described by Klauser (1979), p. 65, is later (c. 700) than that described by Mathews (fifth and sixth centuries), which was extremely time-consuming. See also Jungmann (1959), pp. 53–4.

20 For the dating and composition of the Eucharistic prayer, see Duschene (1903), pp. 176–83, and Klauser (1979), pp. 65–6; for the Gregorian reforms, see ibid., pp. 47ff.

21 Dix (1945), pp. 377–8.

22 Ibid., p. 566.

23 Klauser (1979), p. 56.

24 For a good discussion of the manuscript tradition, see Hope (1980), pp. 222ff.; see p. 225 for the dating of the Verona Codex.

25 HF I. 31.

26 Van Dam (1985), p. 22.

27 Translatedin ibid., p. 60.

28 HF II.29–31.

29 HF II.37.

30 HF II.38; see also Smith (2005), pp. 200–201.

31 The paten and a chalice, also from Gourdon, are reproduced and discussed in Vieillard-Troiekouroff (1976), p. 124 and plate v; Lasko (1971), p. 35, suggests it may be a portable altar.

32 See Renoue and Dengreville (1997), pp. 72–91.

33 TranslatedinThorpe(1974), p. 99.

34 HF II.17.

35 HF VII.22.

36 HF II.14.

37 Crook (2000), p. 71.

38 TranslatedinDix (1945), p. 381.

39 HF II.22; the book about the masses by Sidonius has unfortunately been lost.

40 Whitaker (2003), p. 258; for the structure of the mass, see Hen (1995), pp. 67–70.

41 For the form of the Gallican Mass, see Jungmann (1959), pp. 35–7.

42 The quotation is from HF II.14; for the story of St Salvius, see HF VII.1, and Van Dam (1985), pp. 62–3.

43 See the helpful summary of extant later manuscripts in Hen (1995), pp. 44–53.

44 HF VIII.6.

45 Whitaker (2003), p. 269.

46 Maxwell (1945), pp. 49–50.

47 HF II.16; and see Lavedan (1956), p. 83, for his interpretation of the architectural arrangement.

48 HF II.40; Martin Conway, ‘St Radegund’s Reliquary at Poitiers’, Antiquaries Journal (1923), pp. 1–12; also illustrated in Lasko (1971), p. 74.

49 HF X.31.

50 Van Dam (1985), p. 137; Genesis 28:17, in McManners (1990), p. 80.

51 Van Dam (1985), p. 138.

52 Crook (2000), p. 49.

53 See Lavedan (1956), pp. 82–4.

54 Whitaker (2003), p. 257.

55 Translatedin ibid., pp. 262–3.

56 Crook (2000), p. 61.

57 The subject of funerary chapels is very extensively treated in ibid., pp. 51ff.

58 HF II.22.

59 Crook (2000), pp. 60–61.

60 HF II.15.

61 Young (2001), p. 171.