CHAPTER 5
Carolingian Architecture and Liturgical Reform
Royal Ritual and Court Architecture
The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis
The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, like so many others mentioned in Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks, began as a funerary chapel in a Gallo-Roman cemetery. Gregory makes only oblique references to the abbey not because it was lacking in interest, on the contrary, because under royal patronage and as the burial place of Merovingian royalty from the sixth century,1 it was becoming a serious rival to his own church and shrine of St Martin. The growth of Saint-Denis is of great importance to both the history of architecture and the liturgy. St Denis, or Dionysius, was one of the missionary bishops Gregory refers to as the ‘Seven Bishops’. He became the first Bishop of Paris, and was martyred in the middle of the third century. Gregory’s occasional references to the Church of Saint-Denis are very negative, including an oath sworn over the altar and grave of the saint that resulted in swords drawn at the very tomb of the saint and the church being spattered with blood. The men were nobles at the court of King Chilperic, an evil tyrant, according to Gregory.2 This particular contribution to the reputation of the patron, Chilperic, was surely intended to reflect on the reputation of the shrine, which was already rising in status relative to Saint-Martin in Tours.
Research suggests that after St Denis was buried in 251 in the pre-existing Gallo-Roman cemetery, the huge Gallo-Roman decorated stones uncovered on the site had been reused in the church of 475; this was the church of which Gregory wrote. Others maintain that those stones had formed part of an early mausoleum built over his grave.3 Whichever is true, its origins conform to a familiar pattern. The church of 475 was used for services (which were temporarily suspended in the aftermath of the bloody brawl), but it would appear from the text to have been very small. The tradition, first documented in the ninth-century Gesta Dagoberti, attributes a very considerable rebuilding to Dagobert I, doubling its size in the 630s. Whether Dagobert provided these foundations and a very much larger building, or a ‘foundation’ in terms of lands and wealth, is a moot point. At the very least he had the existing building lavishly decorated. As a result of Crosby’s excavations at the site and close consideration of the documentary evidence, he is very clear that:
No documents of the seventh or eighth centuries refer to Dagobert’s work as more than a sumptuous embellishment of the church dedicated to Saint Denis, and no text before 836 mentions any rebuilding by Dagobert. The fact that the passage in the Gesta Dagoberti referring to Dagobert’s ‘complete construction’ is clearly a reworking of the charter of Clovis II, 654, and it interpolates what was not present in the earlier document, would indicate that the whole tradition was invented by the ninth-century monks. Furthermore the explicit reference in such texts as the Chronica Fredegarii to a rich decoration of the church, and to nothing more, provides compelling arguments for stating that there was no rebuilding of the church at St-Denis from the end of the fifth to the middle of the eighth century. In other words Saint Genevieve’s church protected the relics of Saint Denis for about three hundred years; and Dagobert I was responsible not for an entirely new building, but only for the adornment of the already existing shrine.4
Whatever the extent of Dagobert’s work at Saint-Denis, by the time he finished, it was an impressive and rich interior with silver revetment in the apse, cloth of gold on the walls of the nave, and over the tomb of St Denis, a marble baldachin decorated with gold and gems.
There was a legend to the effect that on the eve of the consecration of this church, all had left except a leper who had tucked himself away. During the night he saw a great light, with Christ himself in the midst of the Apostles, accompanied by St Denis as well. The Saviour was dressed in pontifical robes, and together they celebrated the liturgy of consecration. He told the leper to inform the king what had happened, and as proof, he released the leper from his diseased skin and flung it against the wall. The relic remained in the abbey for centuries as proof of its very special status.5 When King Dagobert I was alive, he gave rich endowments to the abbey, and when he died in 639, he was buried there. Almost nothing of this structure remains above ground apart from three capitals which were deliberately reused in the twelfth-century rebuilding by Abbot Suger.
Around the year 754, Pepin the Short was anointed a second time at Saint-Denis by Pope Stephen II6 who had journeyed across the Alps during the winter of 753 to solicit the King’s aid against the Lombards (see above, page 88). It was probably on his return from the campaign against the Lombard threat that Pepin began rebuilding the church to celebrate his victory.
The method of king-making amongst the Merovingian Franks is unknown, and until the conversion of Clovis, it took place in a pagan and warrior-class context. By the late seventh and early eighth centuries, the Merovingian kings had been reduced by a series of royal minorities and two assassinations to mere figureheads. Power resided with Charles Martel, the ‘Mayor of the Palace’ from 717. He was buried at Saint-Denis. Pepin was Charles’s son, and along with his brother, succeeded to power in 741; five years later, his brother retired to a monastery. Pepin consulted the Frankish nobles in 750, and having secured their support, he sent an embassy, including Abbot Fuldrad of Saint-Denis, to Pope Zacharius to get his approval to remove the powerless Merovingian King Childeric III and assume the title himself.
Royal Ritual
With the pope’s approval, the king-making ritual took place at Soissons, where he was anointed with holy oil by St Boniface and the Frankish bishops before enthronement. The anointing was an innovation. The pope, in giving his approval and later re-anointing Pepin at Saint-Denis7 on 28 July 754 (a post-baptismal anointing which Pepin would not have received according to the Gallican rite), he also gained access to Pepin’s military power. It was perhaps in token of this that he invested him and his sons with the title of Patrician of the Romans.8 The linking of royal and baptismal anointing affirmed the notion of the Franks as a ‘chosen race, a royal priesthood’, the new Israel. Liturgical ceremonial affirmed their biblical self-understanding, but it also changed things, gave legitimacy, transformed reality. By anointing Pepin’s young sons, Charles and Carloman, at the same time, first by way of confirmation, then as kings, the pope inaugurated a new dynasty, the Carolingians, enjoining the Franks ‘on pain of interdict and excommunication, never to presume in future to elect a king begotten by any men other than those whom the bounty of God has seen fit to raise up and has decided to confirm and consecrate by the intercession of the holy apostles through the hands of their vicar, the most blessed pontiff’.9 According to Crosby, it was under their rule that the Abbey of Saint-Denis was enlarged, which of course is a direct reflection of their political ambitions at least from the time of Charles Martel. Their association with Saint-Denis was an essential sign of the legitimacy of their rule.10
The Lombards continued to pose a very considerable threat to Rome, and they failed to return lands to the pope as agreed with Pepin, so Charles (Charlemagne) led a Frankish army against them in 773. At Easter 774, he made a ceremonial entry, an adventus, into Rome to celebrate the feast at St Peter’s. The pope’s officials met him thirty miles from Rome with the papal standard. A mile from the gates of the city, he was met by the army and the papal crosses, and in their honour the king dismounted from his horse and walked to the steps of St Peter’s. He kissed each of the steps as he mounted to meet Pope Hadrian at the doors of the propylaeum. Then, in imitation of the custom in Constantinople, they exchanged the kiss of peace and entered hand in hand. Benedictus qui venit was sung as they processed down the nave.11 It was an imperial entry, but it would be another quarter of a century before he received the title of Emperor in the same basilica. Not surprisingly, this radical step was accomplished by an enhanced rite:
Pope Hadrian (772–95) seems to have added yet another ritual to the inauguration process for Frankish kings: the first such occasion on which a coronation is mentioned is 781 – the consecrations at Rome of Charlemagne’s son Carloman as king of the acquired realm of Italy, and of his little brother Louis as king of Aquitaine. The pope may well have borrowed the idea of coronation from Byzantium where it was the centrepiece of the imperial inauguration. Hence in 800, the pope crowned Charlemagne emperor, in imitation of Byzantine ritual. But whereas Byzantine ritual featured coronation only, and not anointing, in the West the popes stressed a linkage between the two. In 816 a pope again crossed the Alps to anoint and crown as emperor Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious who had succeeded his father two years before. The idea of coronation had long since been invested with Christian connotations. In the New Testament, a heavenly crown was held out as the reward of faith for all Christians. In the liturgies of the early church, baptismal anointing was presented as a symbolic coronation, and the whole initiation rite as a kind of king-making, complete with acclamations to the newly-raised. The linking of anointing with coronation was thus in itself not really a papal innovation. The application of both to a Frankish king was. And in the ninth century, it was picked up by Frankish clergy themselves.12
Saint-Denis Rebuilt
On 24 February 775, Charlemagne attended the dedication of the newly rebuilt Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, the first of all truly Carolingian buildings. The size of the community required a large monastic choir, and with a steadily growing number of pilgrims to the shrine of St Denis, special architectural provision was necessary for access to and security of the relics. Building had probably been started by Pepin, who encouraged the use of the Roman liturgy, though it was not until the turn of the ninth century that a degree of uniformity was achieved by Charlemagne. Archaeology has provided mounting evidence that this shift to a more standardized liturgical use had a profound effect on the architecture of Carolingian churches. Crosby notes of Saint-Denis at this time that: ‘the eastern end of the church was a single apse that projected about six meters beyond the walls of the transept. … This feature [the apse] identifies the edifice as belonging to the series of churches built according to the “Roman custom”. And it should immediately be noted that Saint-Denis was the first church of this type to be built north of the Alps.’13 Furthermore, the plan of the crypt, with two curved passages, strongly suggests an annular crypt (or ring-crypt) with a confessio behind and below the high altar. Access to the crypt was by stairs on either side of the altar. This arrangement is very similar to the earlier examples in Rome, San Pancrazio (625–38), San Crisogono (731–41), and of course, also closely related to the prototype, St Peter’s, as remodelled under Gregory the Great, though there the confessio is in front of the altar.14 It would appear that Abbot Fuldrad, in charge of the rebuilding at Saint-Denis, had been very observant on his visit to the pope on behalf of Pepin. Two examples of ring-crypts, at Saint-Luzius, Chur, and Saint-Maurice d’Agaune in present-day Switzerland, have been identified as possibly even earlier than that at Saint-Denis, but these too have been associated with growing contact between Pepin and the pope, who went through Saint-Maurice on his way to see Pepin in 753/54.
Bishop Chrodegang of Metz was another member of the pope’s Frankish escort that winter. Together they stayed at the Abbey of Romainmôtier, where there is a remarkable survival from that period – a very beautiful ambo on a platform of two steps with stairs on either side. Chrodegang would repeat the form and style of that ambo in his future building projects at Metz.
The work begun at Saint-Denis by Pepin was a Roman type of aisled basilica. Charlemagne had his father, Pepin, buried in a western apse that was flanked by two towers – a ‘westwork’ of experimental form. Just as Pepin had begun the rebuilding of Saint-Denis on a Roman model which was completed by Charlemagne with the vigorously experimental westwork, so the work of ridding the pope of the Lombardic threat was also begun by Pepin and completed by Charlemagne. By the time of the election of Leo III as Pope in 795, the alliance between pope and King of the Franks was such that Charlemagne wrote to him saying:
My duty is by Divine aid to defend everywhere with armed might the Church of Christ from inroads of pagans and from ravaging of infidels without; from within to fortify it by the learning of the Catholic Faith. It is your part, holy Father, to support our fighting by hands raised to God as those of Moses, so that, through your intercession and the guidance and the gift of God, Christian people may ever have victory over his enemies, and the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ be glorified throughout the world.15
Military victory over pagan Saxons and Avars was sealed symbolically by the baptism of the vanquished, and in conquered Saxony, churches were built to establish religion and order. Liturgy and architecture were being used as military and political instruments.
Charlemagne expected the same work from his own clergy, who were either with him on campaign or at home at court, as he expected from the pope:
So we have held three days of solemn litany, beseeching the Lord for peace and health and safe return. Our priests prescribed a fast during this time from wine and meat; but those who needed wine through sickness or advanced years were allowed it on payment of one solidus a day, if they could afford it – if not, of one denarius. Everyone was bidden to give alms according to his goodwill and means. Each priest, unless he was sick, said a special Mass; each one who knew his psalter well enough chanted fifty psalms; and they all walked barefoot in procession.
Now I should like you to consult the clergy at home for the same ritual there.16
Charlemagne wrote this letter in 791 to his queen, Fastrada, whose verse epitaph was written three years later by Theodulf, court poet, and later appointed Bishop of Orléans.
In his drive for education and reform, Charlemagne saw himself as a new Josiah, the Old Testament king who rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem and reformed its worship.17 In 781 Charlemagne recruited Alcuin of York to establish a school and library at Aachen. Charlemagne had already in 774 received a collection of books of Roman canon law as a gift from Pope Hadrian and with these he stepped up the reform of the Frankish Church and the Romanization of the Gallican rite, begun by his father.
Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious, was deposed in 833, and when restored, he was crowned and reinvested in Pepin’s Saint-Denis by Frankish bishops following the innovative procedures established by the pope at Louis’s coronation in 816. Saint-Denis made itself indispensable to the legitimacy of the Royal line. When Abbot Suger rebuilt Saint-Denis again in the twelfth century, the royal Merovingian and Carolingian associations were so important that despite the radical nature of the rebuild, they governed the whole approach: the integration of the new with the old. The integration of different periods of architectural elements was a sign for the historical continuity reaching back from Capetians through Carolingians and Merovingians to the Patron Saint of the monarchy. As the embodiment of this historic continuity, the prestige and fortunes of the Abbey itself were also greatly enhanced.
Thus, walking around the new crypt ambulatory at Saint-Denis, the twelfth-century viewer would have been able to see both the authentic Merovingian pieces as well as constant variations on them along the polygonal piers separating the crypt chapels. …
In the centre west bay the capitals should be read within the context of the special historicizing character of that bay. The unusual octagonal shape of the bay, resulting from the size and plan of the massive piers alternating with arched openings, was recognized by Crosby, but he did not relate it to its obvious predecessor, the polygonal bay in the westwork, thought in the twelfth century to have been constructed by Charlemagne around the burial site of Pepin. That the capitals were copied after Merovingian originals in the eighth-century nave would have confirmed for the viewer the association of the new work with its historical predecessor. In fact, this bay was part of an iconographic sequence that began with the new façade with its twin towers and crenellations, at once triumphal arch, city gate and fortress church: the visitor passed through the portals, with their oft-cited royal associations, into the westwork evoking Pepin and Charlemagne and hence into the nave of Dagobert. The experience became a royal journey back in time to the high altar above the original burial place of Denis.
… What is embodied in the physical structure of the building, the ultimate synthesis of past and present, culminated in the translation of the holy bodies, in ‘the venerable shrines executed under King Dagobert’, from their original burial place in the crypt up to the new chevet. Religious past and secular present were conjoined as Louis VII, the ‘Most Serene King of the Franks’, carried (devoutly and nobly, according to Suger) the châsse of Saint-Denis to its new place in the chevet.18
What is so beautifully brought out in this passage is how three-dimensional physical architecture manifests the same values as, and is completed in, the temporal movement of the ceremonial of the liturgy, in which not only religious, but also social and political relationships, and power, were displayed, enacted and embodied.
The Palatine Chapel at Aachen
During the 790s, Charlemagne’s imperial ambitions were clearly shown by the palace chapel being built for him by Odo of Metz at Aachen (Figure 5.1). The main relic to be installed here was the cloak of St Martin.19 Pope Hadrian permitted Charlemagne to remove columns and marble from the palace at Ravenna, the residence of the last Emperor of the Romans. These columns and the marble were reused to produce a magnificent interior with deep historical resonances. The ground-floor piers were faced with polychrome marble revetment and porphyry. The segmental vault was covered in a gleaming gold mosaic showing the 24 elders of the Apocalypse and the Lord enthroned, originally probably the Lamb.20 The Apocalyptic iconographic programme and, it has also been suggested, the measurements of the building present it as the Heavenly Jerusalem, and the sovereign as ‘a little lower than the angels’. The mosaic programme continued in the ambulatory and galleries.
The plan was modelled on San Vitale in Ravenna, built by Justinian I in the sixth century, whose liturgically based mosaics are the last known major imperial works of art before iconoclasm (see Figure 5.2). But there are also echoes of the Rotunda over the Holy Sepulchre, the classical mausoleum, and its lineal descendant, the Christian baptistery, Constantine’s Golden Octagon at Antioch, SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and the imperial throne-room in Constantinople – the Chrysotriklinos. Charlemagne’s throne, said to be modelled on Solomon’s throne for the man known in the intimacy of the court as ‘King David’,21 was indeed elevated in the western gallery opposite the altar of the Saviour below the mosaic of the Lamb, with a view of the altars of the Virgin and of St Peter below. This position gave him a clear view of the liturgy, but enthroned, he was invisible to the rest of the chapel. The liturgy was the focus of the architecture, but visible or invisible, you could hardly be unaware of the presence of the imperial throne.
Even on the exterior, the imperial bay is marked by the western tower flanked by stair towers giving access to the galleries for the Emperor and his court. On the entrance façade at gallery level was a great concave niche where, some believe, the ruler could appear to the assembled crowds in the atrium below, from which point the niche was strongly reminiscent of the Palace of the Exarchs in Ravenna. At this point it is worth noting the palatium mosaic in S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, which originally showed a figure under each arch of the palatium, the one in the middle most likely intended to be Theodoric ‘appearing to his subjects surrounded by the splendours of his palace and by his court dignitaries who performed the courtly ceremonial around their king. After the Byzantine conquest of Ravenna, this mosaic was reset and the dignitaries standing in the arcades, together with Theodoric himself, were erased to be replaced by a blue and gold background.’ The panegyrist Ennodius referred to Theodoric in imperial terms (though not as emperor) as princeps et sacerdos, and the framing of imperial, royal and holy figures within arches, or similarly under a baldachin, becomes an increasingly familiar theme.22 Charlemagne would bring the statue of Theodoric, whom he saw as the first German Emperor, from the pediment of this palace back to his own palace at Aachen.
On the cross-axis to the north and south of the palatine chapel there were entrances to aisled basilicas, which have long since disappeared. The great four-metre-high bronze doors originally at the entrance in the westwork, and the railings of the galleries, were Classical revival pieces cast in Aachen’s foundry. These include a large bronze pinecone, intended as a fountain, with spouts at the ends of its spines. It would have been technically very challenging to cast, and part of its base is incomplete. This was a copy of the pinecone fountain in the atrium of Old St Peter’s in Rome, recalling his own crowning as Emperor. The doors themselves have lion-headed handles, perhaps alluding to the Holy Sepulchre, since Early Christian ivories show such handles on its doors.23 The square eastern apse housed the altar of the Virgin on the ground floor and the altar of the Saviour at gallery level, opposite the throne.
Bishop Theodulf’s Oratory at Germigny-des-Prés
A common architectural language (and a will to produce a common liturgy on the Roman model) emanated from Aachen through elite court circles. Around the year 798, Charlemagne appointed Theodulf, a Visigoth, but also a highly cultivated courtier and poet, Bishop of Orléans and Abbot of Fleury at Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire. The Libri Carolini, now ascribed to him, is a work with an important section on icons which shows both the Frankish attitude to the iconoclastic debate and Theodulf’s personal artistic erudition and taste.
Between 799 and 818, he built an oratory for himself within the nearby Gallo-Roman villa at Germigny-des-Prés. The Catalogue des abbés de Fleury, written about a century later, is clear about Theodulf’s intention: ‘He vied in this with Charlemagne, who, at this time, had built at his palace of Aachen a church of such splendour that its like could not be found in all of Gaul …. Theodulf consecrated his oratory to God, Creator and Preserver of all things and had a master artist represent, above the altar, cherubs covering the mercy seat of Divine Glory with their wings.’ This mosaic has been connected to a section of the Libri Carolini commenting on I Kings 6.19, and to the illustration of contemporary Jewish Bibles; one study concludes that: ‘it is clear that the mosaic decoration at Germigny-des-Prés represents a form of Iconoclastic art’, the only art justified by the Bible, according to Theodulf.24 The images seem curiously to deny their own materiality, hovering as a vision on a gold ground. The inscription around the apse reads: ‘Beholder, gaze upon the holy propitiatorium and cherubim: and see [how] the ark of the covenant of God shimmers. You, perceiving these things and ready to beset God with prayers, add, I emplore you, Theodulf to your invocations.’25 The argument of the Libri Carolini, it is true, denies that images can contain the spiritual properties of their original and should not be venerated, but they are not against images per se. Moreover, they cite Gregory the Great concerning the usefulness of images for teaching scripture to the illiterate.26 With some of the extended narrative cycles, however, it would take a great deal of preaching to make them comprehensible to the populus.
His poetry painted picturae of the seasons, the seven liberal arts and a mappa mundi. John Beckwith believes that there was ‘a “gallery” of paintings and that there were frescoes depicting the seven liberal arts, the four seasons and a map of the world’, and others have argued that Theodulf’s mappa mundi may well be reproduced in a manuscript from Ripoll (Vat. Reg. 123).27 Mary Carruthers, however, maintains that: ‘there are two pictures described in his poems, an “arbour mundi” and a “mappamundi.” Neither is now accompanied by a drawing; as I will argue, there is no reason to suppose they ever were.’28 She argues that these were mental images and maps for contemplation and the ‘picturing’ or ‘mapping’ of thought, as the poem about the mappa mundi says: ‘A shape for the whole world is here painted, / It will give you to understand a great matter in a small body.’
While Umberto Eco refers to the aesthetics of the Libri Carolini as being ‘of pure visibility, and at the same time an aesthetics of the autonomy of the figurai arts’,29 this can surely only apply to Theodulf’s formal appreciation of the arts such as metalwork and pottery, rather than these other picturae, and the figurai arts in general. Whether or not the Ripoll mappa mundi reproduces one by, or belonging to, Theodulf or one on the wall of his villa, and whether the poem describes a fresco of ‘the Seven Liberal Arts Painted in a Certain Picture’ in the villa, the mental and physical picturae would all function in the same way; the poem ends:
This tree bore both these things: leaves and pendant fruits,
And so furnished both loveliness and many mysteries.
Understand words in the leaves, the sense in the fruits,
The former repeatedly grow in abundance, the latter nourish when they are well used.
In this spreading tree our life is trained
Always to seek greater things from smaller ones
So that human sense may little by little climb on high,
And may lastingly disdain to pursue the lower things.30
Though this foray into memoria would appear to be straying well outside the confines of both liturgy and architecture, the function of memoriae, of decorative programmes, the form and disposition of the architecture itself, and the temporal unfolding of the liturgy (particularly when in procession through architectural spaces) could all be similarly used for contemplation of the structure of knowledge of the world ‘in which our life is trained’, as a reflection of its Creator. The knowledge and truth to which the monk aspired was not ‘encrypted’ into visual forms and liturgical action, rather they were instruments of contemplation with which to draw together, focus, re-integrate and synthesize material from memory.
The oratory was built on a centralized plan, but was very much simpler than the palatine chapel at Aachen. It is a cross-in-square, originally with a lantern over the crossing, and with either domes or barrel vaults over the aisles. The horseshoe arches betray Visigothic influence, but its decoration, particularly the mosaic of the apse showing seraphim and cherubim over the Ark of God, was Byzantine in inspiration. There was an apse on the central bay of each side, and the eastern apse, which housed the altar, was flanked by absidioles. The western apse was for the bishop’s throne. The oratory, its form, decoration and its liturgy reflected the erudition and imperial connections of Theodulf and the glories and reforms of the imperial court.
Carolingian Liturgical Reforms
The education of the clergy and people in orthodox belief was of particular importance to Theodulf, who required in his Statutes that his clergy explain the liturgy to the people. In this, too, he vied with his master Charlemagne. His Statutes give precise instructions on the sacraments, the liturgy, religious and moral education. It is very likely, then, that sermons were in the vernacular. He further required that before baptism, all candidates must be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, presumably in the Latin of the liturgy. Theodulf’s Statutes were the earliest amongst the west Franks, and were influential and widely accepted in Charlemagne’s dominions.31 Bringing this education into vast numbers of isolated parishes posed huge difficulties. Few of those would possess a manuscript of the Bible or a lectionary, since they were necessarily hugely expensive to produce.
It may be surprising to the modern mind that such emphasis was placed on religious education and the liturgy in the government of Charlemagne’s realms, until you consider, as Dennis Nineham points out, that: ‘Charlemagne insisted that all his subjects must be Catholic Christians. Failure to be baptized meant disenfranchisement and virtual outlawry. Citizenship and being a Christian were synonymous.32 Building up the Church Catholic through education and building up the state were part and parcel of the same thing to Charlemagne, which is not at all surprising in a polity built on sacral kinship. The Carolingian renovatio was also a radically new and all-embracing vision for the structure of society. All the relationships between the individual, the Church and the state were embodied and enacted in the liturgy and frozen in the architecture, making them not just the objects, but the instruments, of education and reform. The personal life of every member of society was punctuated by liturgical rites, as was the calendar, and even the farming year by Rogation Days, with their processions through the fields, psalms and prayers for the harvest. For Charlemagne, military success also depended on prayer and the liturgy. Carolingian reform was all-encompassing, and what follows will show that two of their most effective instruments for education and reform were liturgy and architecture.
Bishop Chrodegang and the Roman Use at Metz
Romanization of the liturgy proved to be a slow process, partly because of the time and expense involved in producing the manuscripts, partly because of the independence of the bishops, and partly because of the differing needs and resources of the ecclesiastical establishments. The adoption of the papal mass would naturally have enhanced the prestige of a presiding Frankish bishop, but it is very difficult to imagine all of them being able to command the necessary resources. However, there are one or two notable exceptions. Klauser points out a sentence added to the end of Ordo II which, ‘probably added by an editor commissioned by the Frankish court or by a Synod, states quite clearly that Ordo I must be followed just as faithfully in the episcopal cities of France as in Rome itself … “The bishops who preside over congregations in towns must perform everything in the same way as the Pope.”’33 Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz from 742 to 766, did just that. He had been one of Pope Stephen’s distinguished escort from Rome in 753/54, and he did in fact introduce sung stational masses modelled on papal practice in Rome.34 This was continued by his successors, but Angilramus of Metz gradually withdrew, and appointed surrogates to perform the stational liturgies since his presence was required at Aachen as chaplain to Charlemagne from 784: ‘And that the clergy of Metz had to be lured into taking part in the stational services by the prospect of an honorarium can only be attributed to the fact that they no longer appreciated the usefulness of the system of stational masses.’35
Around the year 754, Chrodegang drew up a rule for his cathedral clergy based on monastic life, and over the course of the eighth century it was widely adopted in the Frankish realms. A common life required special architectural arrangements for the chapter, including a chapter house, oratories, dormitory and refectory. He provided these at Metz, had the Cathedral of St Stephen redesigned, and also introduced Roman chant. The earliest part of the church was fifth-century, which had been enlarged in the sixth. At the west end of Chrodegang’s new church was an atrium, a western tower with a first-floor chapel dedicated to St Michael; at the east there was a substantial transept and a choir over a crypt. All this is familiar, but Chrodegang’s most significant changes concerned the liturgical furnishings, including an episcopal throne and a baldachin in a chancel enclosed by a low screen. Two ivory panels for the cover of the Sacramentary of Drogo (Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 9388), a son of Charlemagne and successor of Chrodegang as Bishop of Metz from 823 to his death in 855, are each divided into nine compartments;36 astonishingly, these highly detailed works show, in fine miniature, Chrodegang’s liturgical and architectural arrangements in use by Drogo, who is shown wearing the pallium granted to him in 844.
The front panel shows an ordination, the Baptism of Christ, the Ascension, the blessing of an altar, the Sermon on the Mount, the translation of relics and their installation in the altar, signing with chrism, blessing of the baptismal font on Holy Saturday, and a baptism (see Figure 5.3). It would seem that the sequence was mixed during a restoration. The importance of the architectural setting of these liturgical acts is very clear, and the liturgical furnishings appear in great detail. According to Heitz, the compartment showing the dedication of a church has the Bishop on the left outside knocking on the door to gain entry; in the middle, the procession bearing in the relics, and to the right, the bishop installing the relics in the altar. In the Holy Saturday compartment, the font is at the top of three steps, and is covered by a baldachin with a segmented dome. The bishop stands behind the font, gesturing over it in blessing with his right hand, and looks to his left to read from a sacramentary held by a sub-deacon. They are surrounded by other clergy, with one to the left with a bucket, and one to the right with a ewer, probably containing oil. The Sacramentary itself features prominently in the scenes of ordination, blessing the altar, and blessing the font on Holy Saturday.
The back panel shows specific moments in a mass unfolding within the liturgical setting of Chrodegang’s cathedral (see Figure 5.4). Again the compartments are out of sequence, but the main points in the mass involving the bishop can be identified. In the middle at the top, the bishop, flanked by deacons and preceded by candles and incense, is bowing low, reverencing the altar. Next, top right, he gives the kiss of peace to his assistants. Here the form of the altar is revealed as a very architectural design, with columns and arcading at the side. Above it is a hanging crown. During the whole time encompassed by these two compartments, the antiphon was being sung, and here it is worth pausing to point to another ivory in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (M.12/1904) showing the precise moment when the bishop is signalling to the choir that he is ready for them to stop. His book is open and the text is clearly legible: ‘Ad te l[e]vavi anima[m] mea[m] deus meus in te confido non erubescam [neq]ue inrideant me inimici mei etenim universi qui te expectant non confunden[tur]’ (‘To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies triumph over me. Let none who look to you be put to shame’), this, from Psalm 25 verses 1 and 2, is the beginning of the introit for Advent Sunday, the beginning of the liturgical year.37 After the signal, the introit would end with the ‘gloria patri’, and at the’sicut erat’ he would kiss the Gospel, as in the compartment middle left in the ivory panel on the back of the Sacramentary of Drogo.
The bishop then proceeded to his throne, and facing east (central compartment), the Kyries were sung. When these were finished, he would face west and intone the ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’, and turn to the east while the singing continued. Turning west, he would greet the people, ‘Pax vobis’, and again turn east for the collect. Interestingly, in the scene showing the bishop standing facing east before his throne, the canopy of the baldachin over the throne becomes visually confused with the roof of the cathedral itself, and even with what appears to be a raised reliquary above the canopy over the altar.38 This visual ‘elision’ may indicate an elision of meaning, where all these coverings set their respective spaces apart, sacralizing them all within a hierarchy of holiness. Careful inspection, however, can distinguish the roof of the nave with diagonal tiles, the baldachin over the altar, with fastigium and reliquary, and the arched canopy over the throne. Top left, he is shown seated on his throne, very like the one that still exists. The only significant amount of time he spent on his throne was during the lections. The baldachin over the altar has curtains drawn back, and hanging reliquaries can be seen. Next – bottom right – the deacon appointed to read the Gospel would approach for a blessing, and in this compartment appears to be kissing the bishop’s hand or ring; in the Roman stational liturgy, he would kiss the pope’s feet, as in eastern court ceremonial.
The hierarchical separation implied in the depiction of the architecture appears to be a reflection of two things: in the first place, the fight against Arianism in Gaul and Spain had a long history, to the point where the emphasis was on the majestic divinity of Christ; and secondly, the Latin of the mass was entirely inaccessible to all but a few: ‘Thus in the Carolingian Empire the Mass-liturgy, so far as understanding its language was concerned, became a clerical reserve. A new kind of discipline of the secret had developed, a concealment of things holy, not from the heathen – there were none – but from the Christian people themselves.’39 The linguistic separation of the rite and the doctrinal exaggeration would eventually result in a growing architectural separation, with the altar moving to the eastern wall of the chancel and the separation of the rood screen, though this was very much later, with the first hard evidence dating to the eleventh century at Fleury.40
Three more panels show the second part of the Eucharistic celebration. The middle right-hand scene is of the bishop receiving the offertory at the entrance of the chancel by the screen. Bottom left, the bishop is seen at the altar with an attendant receiving the host, and in the left half of the panel, separated by a slender column, he is distributing the consecrated bread. In the middle at the bottom, the bishop is at the altar, lifting the chalice to consume the consecrated wine.
Around the Cathedral of Metz there were other churches in the episcopal group ranged around the chapter claustrum, including the mid-eighth-century St Paul built by Chrodegang, the late-eighth-century St Gorgon, and the seventh-century St Peter, for which Chrodegang built a new screened choir with an ambo and throne. Relief carvings from the church are very probably fragments from that screen. One shows a saint, also identified as Christ holding eucharistic bread, standing between two carved columns under a canopy. The character of the carving is similar to the contemporary ambo at Romainmôtier and another at Saint-Maurice, both churches on the route taken by Chrodegang and the pope in 753.41 The architectural setting of the holy figure, an aedicule or baldachin, proclaimed his status in the same way that Chrodegang’s architectural changes, which included the chancel screen, baldachin throne and canopy, enhanced the position of the bishop in a very similar way to the Roman rite itself. This added prestige offered great encouragement to the independent princes of the Church to build grand new architectural settings for the liturgy and to adopt a standardized Roman order. Frankish bishops otherwise answered to no one but the emperor or the pope; they never did, and Duchesne maintains they never would.42
Liturgical Manuscripts and Reform
The richness and variety of the Gallican liturgy is known from the manuscripts of the Missale Francorum (Vatican Reg. lat. 257), Missale Gallicum Vetus (Vatican Pal. lat. 493), the Missale Gothicum (Vatican Reg. lat. 317) and the Bobbio Missal (Paris BN, lat. 13246). Liturgical practice was extremely varied and localized, as was belief. Orthodox belief and teaching were naturally best served by a standardized liturgy, and Pepin encouraged the re-establishment of Roman usage by conforming the text as far as possible to the Gelasian Sacramentary and adding to it all the material useful in the Frankish context. One manuscript (MS Cambrai 159) represents the ‘Hadrianum’, or form (of the Gregorianum) sent by Pope Hadrian in the later 780s to Aachen at the request of Charlemagne. The papal ‘Hadrianum’ needed considerable supplement for use in the Frankish kingdom. The supplement, formerly attributed to Alcuin, is now associated with Benedict of Aniane.
The result was what has been called the ‘mixed eighth-century Gelasian Sacramentary’ (represented by the manuscript Vat. Reg. lat. 316). Once this mix was accomplished with the addition of the necessary material, the Frankish rites ceased to be copied – none of the manuscripts is later than the third quarter of the eighth century. The mixed type of book was found particularly useful in the monasteries, ‘and in the library catalogue of St Riquier of 831 there are listed no fewer than nineteen Gelasian Missals’.43 Caution must be exercised when drawing conclusions from this, since it cannot be known when the missals came into the possession of the monastery. It is very probable that at least some were in use at the monastery before Angilbert became Abbot in 790, but subsequently they would also provide material for the extraordinarily elaborate liturgy he designed for the vastly enlarged abbey re-founded by Charlemagne. The manuscript Reg. lat. 316 was produced in the middle of the eighth century near Paris, possibly at Chelles, and is illuminated with colourful architectural framing of the liturgical text, including impossible double-horseshoe Visigothic arches. The colourful and rhythmical stylistic effects may give valuable clues to the effects sought in the architecture as well.
On a basic level there had to be provision for continuing local variation because the commemoration of local saints required special masses, and many ecclesiastical establishments had very specialized functions, as was the case at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis. There, of all places, it was important for the authority of Rome to be visible, since royal authority and legitimacy were based on papal blessing.
Priests were to be taught the meaning of the prayers of the mass and to chant the psalms in the Roman rather than the Gallican chant: ‘The clergy are to learn the Roman chant thoroughly and that it is to be employed throughout the office, night and day, in the correct form, in conformity with what our father of blessed memory, King Pippin, strove to bring to pass when he abolished the Gallican chant for the sake of uniformity with the Apostolic See and the peaceful harmony of God’s holy Church.’44 Pepin had already begun the Romanization in the 750s, when Pope Stephen had given him an antiphonal and responsory and Chrodegang had enthusiastically carried out liturgical reforms at Metz. In 760, Bishop Remidius of Rouen, a son of Charles Martel, was in Rome on an embassy, and obtained Pope Paul’s permission to take the second master of the scola cantorum back with him to instruct his monks in chanting the psalms. When the master was summoned back to Rome, some of Remidius’ monks went to be trained there: ‘it mattered that elements of Roman culture should re-emerge; music, as a central part of the liturgical ritual, as a vehicle of poetic expression, and as one of the seven artes liberales, occupied a pivotal place in this cultural programme’. It also mattered that singing together became a figure for unity in the highly diverse Frankish lands. The monarch literally wanted them all to be’singing from the same hymn-sheet’. But the programme was by no means wholly backward-looking:
It is hardly too high a claim to state that the century between 770 and 870 was the most intensive period of musical development of the whole Middle Ages; to this age belonged the invention of a detailed system of musical notation (some of the essential elements of which have remained in the western notational system ever since), the systematisation of modal behaviour (literally the grammar of relationships between individual tones and groups of tones), the final shaping of a characteristic melodic dialect for an enormous melodic repertory (the ‘Gregorian’ chant), and the setting down in textual form of a theory of modes.45
It was c. 784 that Charlemagne received the mass book known as the Sacramentarium Gregorianum or Hadrianum from the pope, as noted in a letter from Pope Hadrian I.46 Furthermore, in scriptoria, mature experienced monks were needed to produce accurate manuscripts of the lectionary Charlemagne commissioned from Paul the Deacon in the 780s, since many existing texts were corrupt, which prevented proper observance of the offices. Biblical reform was also undertaken during the last quarter of the eighth century at centres including Corbie, Metz, Orléans and Tours under Alcuin.47 Education, such a strong centralizing and standardizing force (as demonstrated in the nationalist use of standardized language in schools in Germany, France and the Netherlands in the decades leading up to the Great War), was encouraged in all religious houses both for the monks and the laity. Unity was essential in Charlemagne’s far-flung realms (as it was in those nation-states in the face of external threats), and unity of practice and orthodoxy of teaching was certainly not to be found in the local nature of the Gallican cult, either in its devotion to local saints or its independent liturgical practice. Such unity could only be found in appealing to the primacy of the See of Peter. In the event, the Hadrianum needed a very considerable supplement, traditionally written by Alcuin, now generally accepted to be by Benedict of Aniane, to cover the needs of the Gallican rite. For one thing, the Hadrianum was a papal mass-book, containing stational masses for the Roman basilicas, but it did not have masses for ordinary Sundays. Very considerable supplementary material was necessary, and the mixed use that resulted eventually found its way to Rome itself, ironically replacing the older Roman use from the eleventh century.48
However much Charlemagne had tried to standardize the liturgy, he had clearly been only partially successful, no doubt due to the stubborn independence of the Frankish bishops. When Walahfrid Strabo wrote his Little Book about the Origins and Development of Certain Aspects of the Liturgy in 840, the liturgy was still subject to great local variation.49
Angilbert and his Liturgy at the Abbey of Saint-Riquier
Charlemagne’s closest courtiers were frequently rewarded with bishoprics or abbeys, and sometimes both, like Theodulf at Orléans and Fleury. Angilbert, like Theodulf, was a highly cultivated poet, and was known in court circles as ‘Homer’. He had acted as envoy for Pepin in Rome, and then often for Charlemagne too, and was clearly a key figure at court. Charlemagne introduced him to the pope as ‘the counsellor of my intimate and private ear’.50 Though Angilbert never actually married her, he had a family by Charlemagne’s daughter Berthe.
In 790, Charlemagne made Angilbert Abbot of Saint-Riquier, at Centula near Abbéville in the Somme. He immediately razed the existing abbey and began a vast new building programme with magnificent funding from Charlemagne. These buildings, then, were somewhat earlier than Charlemagne’s own chapel at Aachen, begun in 792. Angilbert loved the arts, was an original poet and thinker, and had an exuberant personality, all qualities which he invested in the grand new buildings of the abbey. The scale of the rebuilding, as known from the excavations, was enormous. An early seventeenth-century engraving of a now-lost drawing from an eleventh-century manuscript has been used as a basis for the reconstruction of Angilbert’s work, but serious questions have been raised because it is known that there was considerable destruction by fire during a Viking raid in 881.
The great work was completed in 799, and Charlemagne and the court kept Easter 800 (19 April) with Angilbert at Saint-Riquier. As the king’s special envoy to the pope, he paved the way for the events which took place at Christmas that year, when Charlemagne was crowned Emperor. Almost exactly a year before, on St Mark’s Day, Pope Leo III had been attacked, blinded, had his tongue mutilated, and was imprisoned in a monastery on 25 April 799. Having recovered from his wounds, he managed to escape to the court of Charlemagne at Paderborn. There is at least circumstantial evidence that Charlemagne had consultations with many of his closest advisers and with the pope preparing for events culminating at Christmas 800. Under the protection of the Frankish king, he had returned to Rome during the previous Summer. In November Charlemagne arrived, and on 23 December Leo swore on oath that he was innocent of the crimes which were alleged to have led to the attack. Two days later, Leo crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans during the Christmas Mass in St Peter’s. Charlemagne claimed that it was unexpected, and some allow this enough credibility to at least pass over lightly,51 but Charlemagne took up the role with gusto, appropriate ceremonial and symbolism. Alcuin toyed with the idea that the title should be ‘of the Christians’ as a way of unifying the diverse peoples of the realm.52
The engravings of the new buildings of Saint-Riquier53 show round western and eastern crossing towers each about 180 feet high, with large multi-storeyed transepts and side-aisles running the length of the intervening nave (see Figure 5.5). At either end, the apses (giving the building a combined length of about 250 feet) were flanked by round turrets – an arrangement that Conant relates to the narthex of San Vitale in Ravenna, and which reappeared at the chapel at Aachen in its westwork. It was the westwork of Saint-Riquier that was the most original and influential architectural element. Conant calls it ‘the earliest really imposing and boldly articulated façade in church architecture – a historical landmark’. Recent archaeological evidence has confirmed that there was an atrium in front of the west end.54 Angilbert himself was buried in the outer vestibule, which was flanked by circular stair-towers giving access to the chapel above. The inner vestibule had a font, an altar and the capsa maior, containing 25 relics of the life and Passion of the Saviour. This low vaulted space carried the lofty and galleried centralized Chapel and ‘Throne’ (altar) of the Saviour above, making the westwork a complete vertical church, reminding the pilgrim at the outset of his journey of the primary focus of worship. With the font’s connotations of death and resurrection, this centralized space had distinct echoes of the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Liturgically, the Chapel of the Saviour could be used independently; it is even described as ‘the Church of the Holy Saviour’ in contemporary documents.
The Palatine Chapel at Aachen was also dedicated to the Holy Saviour, just as the main church at Saint-Riquier was dedicated to the Saviour and All Saints. Royal Chapels in westworks were often dedicated to the Saviour:
At the time when the palace clergy of the Carolingian rulers were building a Westwerk at the entrance to their churches it was a policy to present the emperor in both imperial and Biblical terms as a Messiah, the new David destined to reunite the peoples of God, who was comparable to the Savior. It was not uncommon for the emperor to be designated ‘the Savior of the World’ and in the protocol of 877 he was called ‘Salvator mundi’.55
If this argument is accepted, the teaching function implied in the dedication of this part of the church was double-edged, to say the least, since the throne of the emperor was to be found there, as at Aachen. The conflation of the Emperor with the Saviour would, however, be no new idea; it had been used in imperial circles from the time of Eusebius. On the other hand, Charlemagne did not take part in the liturgy in the same way as the Byzantine emperor, with the Easter liturgy focused on his own person, as did Charlemagne’s grandson, Charles the Bald.56
The altar in the Church of the Saviour was one of a remarkable 30 altars accommodated in various chapels of the complex on different levels in this veritable ‘city of God’.57 At the crossing was a twin of the western round tower, and off that to the east was the Throne of St Riquier, a seventh-century ascetic, at the high altar. This circular architectural form at the crossing, then, was a ‘martyrium’, equivalent to the ‘Palatine Chapel’ at the west.
The Ordo, containing the services composed by Angilbert for use in his abbey, also describes how during solemnities, when there were four choirs singing antiphonally from different parts of the church, the boys’ choir sang in the galleries of the westwork. At other times, when only three choirs were used, the boys sang as an angel choir in the galleries at the west end of the apse near the ‘throne of St Riquier’, while a choir of monks sang at the altar of the Holy Cross, and a third group sang under the buticum, which has been suggested was the baldachin.58 At other times, the three choirs were disposed in different parts of the building, including the altar of Crispin and Crispinian, ‘whom the common people adore’, or of St Maurice. The architecture, the offices, the chants, the liturgical calendar, the relics, and the social and ecclesiastical structures were all closely co-ordinated. Rabe maintains that at the end of each office, a third of the choir left the church to attend to other aspects of the life of the monastery, leaving the other two to chant psalms. They would return to sing the next office together, after which another third would leave – a remarkable laus perennis in a continuous and highly elaborate liturgy unfolding in a complex series of architectural spaces and related buildings.59
Fundamental to it all was orthodox teaching. For example, vespers was celebrated by the monks at the tomb of Richarius (St Riquier) in the apse, and when that was finished, they went to a large relief of the Passion, singing psalms all the way. When prayers were complete at the Passion, they divided into two choirs, one proceeding to another large relief of the Resurrection, another to a third relief of the Ascension. Private and liturgical prayers were said at those stations, then one choir went via the altar of St John, the other past the altar of St Martin, and passing more altars, they combined again at the altar of the Holy Cross, in the middle of the nave. Naturally, when vespers and matins were held in the Holy Saviour, it was necessary to take a different but equally complicated route, ending up again at the altar of the Holy Cross. Processions often left the confines of the main church and took in the two other churches in the triangular cloister – essentially, they were credal processions, affirming orthodox belief.60 But this is not to say that they were simply about narrowly conceived content; they were rich and varied sequences punctuated at stations: ‘The processions in St.-Riquier show in a particularly rich way how a locational memory could be woven into the very fabric of monastic buildings.’61 The altars, reliquaries and the canopies above were all decorated with gold, silver and gems.
Although the liturgy followed Roman practice, Angilbert was as original in the way he mixed in Gallican elements as he was in the design of the architectural setting. To a poet like Angilbert, the Roman rite must have been a distinct contrast, possibly as barren as Dix suggests:
Accustomed to elaborate symbolical ceremonies and the more rhetorical and flowery style of the Gallican and ‘Frankish Gelasian’ prayers, the people of the north were likely to view the simplicity of Gregorian as baldness, its sobriety as dullness and the pregnant brevity of its prayers as cramping to their own exhuberant and affective devotional style. As it stood they would never bring themselves to make it the framework of their own devotion.62
The complexity of the architecture accommodated his own processional presentation of the liturgy. The Trinity was the basis of his theology and the reason for the threefold grouping of the architecture, and even the relics. Offices and masses were held in the three churches of the triangular group, and the triangular arrangement of the cloister provided for the complex processions between.63 On Saturdays, the offices took place in the Church of Mary the Mother of God and the Twelve Apostles. It was a twelve-sided, centralized structure at the south-western angle of the cloister. The central altar was dedicated to Mary the Mother of God, and there was an altar for one of the Apostles on each of the walls. On Marian feasts and Maundy Thursday, all the offices were said here, and at Pentecost, mass was celebrated. The unusual triangle of the cloister was completed at the eastern angle by the Church of St Benedict and the Holy Abbots Regular.
Angilbert did not escape criticism for his highly dramatic presentation of the liturgy. Surely it was with this in mind that his friend Alcuin wrote, still rather fondly of his friend ‘Homer’, to Adalhard, Abbot of Corbie: ‘I fear Homer will be angry at the statute forbidding shows and devilish fictions, all of which Holy scripture forbids.’64
Amalarius of Metz and Allegory
The elaborate celebration of the liturgy with processions through a highly symbolic architecture, not to say landscape on Rogation Days, was theologically interpretive and didactic. This strand of Carolingian liturgical understanding reached its most extreme in the writings of Amalarius of Metz (c. 775–c. 850). After 835, he administered the See of Lyon following the deposition of Archbishop Agobard. Amalarius had been a pupil of Alcuin’s, and wrote the first Carolingian systematic exposition of the liturgy. At the time, most works explaining the liturgy were simple expositions of the mass, for example the monk of Corbie who began: ‘Why do we celebrate the mass? For a number of reasons. In the first place …’ – clearly a straightforward catechetical approach to educate the people.65 Amalarius, on the other hand, was highly allegorical in his interpretations, especially in his detailed study of the offices, De ecclesiasticis officiis. He went to Rome in 831, and in the preface to the third edition of the work he pointed out many differences between the Gallican and Roman uses.66 In that work he encouraged the amalgamation of the Roman and Gallican use, so the process was clearly taking a long time.
His text was very influential, but some particularly idiosyncratic sections were so extreme that they were actually declared heretical at the synod held in Quiercy in 838. Some of his ideas had surely been influenced by his presence in Constantinople on a diplomatic mission between 810 and 812, and this may go some way to explain why they were so exceptional when the norm was simple catechesis. He also introduced changes to ceremonial, especially chant, which Angobard described as ‘theatrical sounds and stagey musical settings’ (theatrales soni et scenicae modulationes). In this ‘liturgical theatre’, Amalarius interpreted not only the words, but every action allegorically. Though not as explicit nor as extreme as Amalarius, this must broadly have been Angilbert’s intention at Saint-Riquier.
For example, on Rogation Days in early summer, the whole monastic community of Saint-Riquier, the people of the village, and of the seven neighbouring parishes, all processed in ranks of seven (for the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit) through the countryside, and with antiphons, prayers and singing psalms they prayed for the harvest. Heitz has pointed out that on the ivory cover of the Sacramentary of Drogo, the deacons and sub-deacons are seen ranged three plus four, and four plus three: ‘Voila! We find Angilbert and his Institutio de diversitate officiorum of Centula!’67 In the Rogation procession, the boys also sang laudes, prayers ‘for the good estate of all Christendom’, and the creeds. The monks sang litanies, ‘first the Gallic, then the Italic, then the Roman’. The simple responses could be sung by all, literate and illiterate alike. Rogation Days first appear in the Gregorian Sacramentary in Rome, but Angilbert seems literally to be taking the whole local population with him from the familiar to the new standard as an all-inclusive and elaborately co-ordinated celebration. The liturgy unfolded through time and the architectural spaces of the monastery complex which was the ‘City of God’, but beyond that it spilled out and animated the’sub-urban’ spaces of the town and the whole of the surrounding landscape.
Key architectural elements expressing both theological and political dimensions of the liturgy were being developed along the processional axis of the church, in the westwork, the choir, the sanctuary and the apse. Experimentation with the form of the western entrance of the church, begun at Saint-Riquier and Aachen, continued, at Charlemagne’s suggestion, at the Monastery of Aniane founded in 782 by Benedict. Like Saint-Riquier, Aniane was the result of a unified conception, but one significant change at Aniane under legislation by Louis the Pious was the participation of the laity; the processions were confined to the church, the monks’ choir was screened, and movement of the laity within the church was limited.68
The Development of the Westwork
Of all the architectural changes which affected the liturgy, none was more emblematic of the religious and political situation during the Carolingian period than the development of the westwork. The adventus was a ceremony originally celebrating the arrival of a god or a deified ruler. Now it had been transformed to celebrate either the arrival of the king or of relics of the saints – members of the ‘heavenly court’. Its original architectural manifestation was the city gate or triumphal arch. Now this tradition would be applied to the west front of royal abbeys in particular.69 Finally, it would also be applied to cathedrals as ‘the house of God and the Gate of heaven’, or the ‘City of God’.
The Senate had granted Julius Caesar the honour of having a fastigium or gable on his house, and the fastigium became a common element in the sanctuaries of Byzantine churches in honour of the Emperor of Heaven. The westwork which Charlemagne built over the grave of his father Pepin at Saint-Denis may have belonged to an older tradition,70 but its historic royal associations would be instrumental in later developments at Saint-Riquier and Aachen. The reconstruction of the façade of Saint-Denis implies a relatively modest façade relating to eastern examples especially in Syria, such as Qalb Lozeh.71 In Rome, the image that may have exerted a direct influence was the panel on the door of Santa Sabina which has also been interpreted as showing either the Lord, or conceivably the emperor, acclaimed by an angel at the towered gate of heaven. Theologically, by extension it may be any faithful Christian who, having been anointed at baptism, is about to receive their heavenly crown. However it is interpreted in detail, architectural and liturgical symbolism meet in this image. Charlemagne’s adventus at Rome and St Peter’s at Easter 774, at the dedication of Saint-Denis in February 775, at Saint-Riquier at Easter 800 or his appearance to the crowds on the balcony or tribune of the Chapel at Aachen framed in the great niche all have powerful resonances of sacral kingship.
The Gatehouse of Lorsch
An interesting example of what is a purely honorific entrance-gate, free-standing like a triumphal arch, is the triumphal gate of the monastery of Lorsch, Germany, founded between 760 and 764 under the auspices of Chrodegang of Metz (see Figure 5.6). There was a large atrium in front of the monastic church, consecrated in 774 by Lullus, Archbishop of Mainz. This was a basilica with a forecourt, nave and aisles. Distinctively, the first square cloister appeared here, and soon became a staple of monastic building. The ceremonial gate stood unattached in the open space towards the western end of the atrium, well within the proper western entrance-gate. On the ground floor are three large open arches opening on to a clear space with a spiral staircase at either end on the cross-axis which led to a chapel above. Its prototype would appear to have been the propylaeum of Old St Peter’s in Rome, and as there, the building was used to greet honoured guests and in stational liturgies such as Palm Sunday. The gate is said to commemorate Charlemagne’s victory over the Saxons.72
In the churches of the West, the westwork itself was an invention of the eighth century as a symbol of the Carolingian monarchy:
While some of the churches in the West are described as in modum turris and Apollinaris Sidonius refers to a church at Lyon with ‘a bulwark of stone rising up high and strong at the west front’, there is no specific evidence of there having been any churches with a two-towered façade before the end of the eighth century. Even if the builders in some instances may have been influenced by the gateway symbolism of the Bible, the figurative imagery of St Augustine’s City of God, and the precedent of the Syrian churches, it is nevertheless true that the towered façade was uncommon, if not unknown, in the West before it became an expression of political ideas in the Carolingian period.73
Pepin may have had himself buried face down at the west door of Saint-Denis as an act of penance, but Charlemagne transformed his humility into honour by erecting the westwork over the tomb, and the emperor had his throne in the tribune of the westwork here at Saint-Denis and at Saint-Riquier, just as he did in the tribune of the westwork at Aachen.74 The gatehouse at Lorsch functioned in a very similar symbolic way within royal ritual and as a gateway to the monastic complex as ‘City of God’.
The Abbey of Corvey
The westwork at Corvey on the Weser, near Höxter, is a prime example of an imperial chapel in a westwork, and the only Carolingian example to survive. Corvey was founded in 822 by monks from Corbie Abbey near Saint-Riquier, and the westwork was built between 873 and 885. It had a great central tower with a pair of smaller, but very tall, flanking towers. The tribune over the entrance was of two storeys, consisting of the imperial chapel and a gallery above with the throne. This elevated position placed the emperor in front of a west window, surrounding him with light – a very different presentation of sacral kingship from Charlemagne’s at Aachen. As at Saint-Riquier, the angel choir probably sang from this upper gallery, and musical notation called ‘neumes’, which uses letters of the alphabet, has been found scratched into the plaster of its walls.75 The most important new development at Corvey was at the east end, where wrapped around the apse was an aisle which opened onto three separate chapels. This is an early sign of the ‘chevet’ scheme that will become increasingly important in Romanesque architecture – apse, ambulatory and radiating chapels.76 This would be essential for the management of the crowds of pilgrims already increasing in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Despite the originality shown in the combination of elements to create a form like the westwork, it was none the less dependent on the revival of earlier Roman imperial imagery expressive of the divine authority of the emperor. Not long after being crowned emperor, Charlemagne issued a new seal with an architectural symbol of Rome and the inscription, RENOVATLO ROMANI IMPERII – ‘the revival of the Roman Empire’.77 That Roman revival was true both of the architecture and the liturgy, and it became of central importance for the classical revival of the Romanesque. But that new classicism was based on a new political, liturgical and cultural situation, and significantly, the westwork, as symbol of the old situation, was outdated and began to change, as at Werden and Cologne, and at Rheims in 976 it was no longer to be found. The Romanesque westwork was a dramatic architectural form that lost its specific royal liturgical function. It came to be associated with the prestige of the foundation, rather than act as an architectural language with a specific reference to imperial and liturgical meanings. This is what happened at Jumièges, an arrangement repeated at St-Etienne, Caen, and which would travel with William the Conqueror to England.
Notes
1 Romero (1992), p. 15; HF V.34; Vieillard-Troiekouroff (1976), pp. 262–5.
2 HF V.32.
3 Crosby (1987) is of the former, Perin (1991) is of the latter view; these are discussed in Blum (1992), pp. 5–6.
4 Crosby (1942), p. 67; see also Romero (1992), pp. 29–30; despite this very clear position, Blum (1992), for instance, footnotes Crosby (1942), pp. 29–50 and plan, pl. 3, when she writes: ‘Excavations indicate that it was hardly more than a chapel. Then, under the patronage of Dagobert I, the chapel built on the urging of Ste. Geneviève was enlarged to the east and west to more than double the original size’ (p. 6); Clark (1995), p. 98, also refers to the ‘nave of Dagobert’, though his real concern is the later church, and this may have been a kind of shorthand.
5 See Crosby (1942), p. 43.
6 Also referred to as Stephen III, since ‘Stephen II’ died only four days after his election.
7 Clausule de unctione Pippini, translated in Dutton (2004), p. 13.
8 Duckett (1951), p. 57; Crosby (1942), p.76, gives the precise date.
9 See the Clausule de unctione Pippini, translated in Dutton (2004), pp. 13–14, and Nelson (1987), p. 152.
10 Jackson (1995), pp. 23–4, makes inferences regarding liturgical actions and texts used at the ceremonies for Pepin, Carloman and Charles, using texts from the sacramentary of Angoulême (c. 800) and the Clausula de unctione Pipini regis, Saint-Denis, 767.
11 Duckett (1951), pp. 72–73.
12 See Nelson (1987), pp. 142–3, where ‘Carolingian Royal Ritual’ is discussed in detail. See Thegan’s Life of Louis, section 17, in Dutton (2004), p. 164.
13 Crosby (1942), p. 97.
14 Crook (2000), pp. 80–85.
15 Translated in Duckett (1951), p. 87.
16 Translated in ibid., p. 97.
17 McKitterick (1977), pp. 2–3.
18 Clark (1995), pp. 97–8.
19 Grodecki (1966), p. xxiii.
20 But see Heitz (1980), pp. 74–7.
21 Duckett (1951), p. 85.
22 MacCormack (1981), pp. 232 and 237.
23 Henderson (1994), p. 260; see also the panel of ‘the Women at the Tomb’, c. 420, in the British Museum, illustrated in Morris (2005), p. 74, and noted in Lasko (1994), p. 11.
24 The Libri Carolini is discussed in Eco (1986), pp. 99–100; the Catalogue des abbés de Fleury is translated in Barral I Altet (2002), pp. 137–8; Beckwith (1969), p. 16, makes the link with Iconoclasm.
25 Translated in Dutton (2004), p. 100.
26 See Mayr-Harting (1992), especially pp. 48–50.
27 Beckwith (1969), p. 16, talks of a ‘gallery’, and in a footnote refers to Vidier (1911), who makes the connection with Vat. Reg. 123.
28 Carruthers (1998), p. 210.
29 Eco (1986), p. 100.
30 Translated in Carruthers (1998), p. 212.
31 See Dutton (2004), p. 112, and McKittenck (1977), especially pp. 139, 187 and 207.
32 Nineham (1993), p. 28.
33 Klauser (1979), p. 71.
34 MS lat. 268, Bibliothèque Nationale.
35 Klauser (1979), pp. 79–80.
36 There are illustrations and discussion in Heitz (1980), pp. 13–15 and 201–5; my analysis compares the scenes with the liturgy described in Klauser (1979), pp. 62–5, and assumes that Chrodegang would follow the papal mass as closely as possible.
37 Rankin (1994), pp. 274–5.
38 For one of a similar form, see the ciborium presented to King Arnulf by King Odo or Charles the Simple in about 896, see Hubert, Porcher and Volbach (1970), pp. 256–9, illustrated on p. 258.
39 Jungmann (1959), p. 62.
40 For an extended discussion, not entirely focused on England, see Spurrell (2005), passim.
41 Architectural details in Barral I Altet (2002), p. 144; the carving is discussed in Lasko (1971), pp. 80–81, Heitz (1980), pp. 13–17, and Hubert, Porcher and Volbach (1970), pp. 28–33, and illustrated on pp. 29 and 276.
42 Duchesne (1903), pp. 103–4.
43 Hen (1995), p. 60; Bishop (1918), p. 14; see also McKittenck (1977), pp. 125–7.
44 ‘General Admonition’, 789, c, 80, translated in King (1987), p. 218.
45 Rankin (1994), pp. 276 and 278–9.
46 McKitterick(1977), p. 123.
47 Brown (1994), pp. 21 and 23; McKitterick (1994), p. 222.
48 Duchesne (1903), p. 104.
49 See Harting-Corrêa (1992), especially pp. 79–81.
50 Duckett (1951), p. 104.
51 Einhard’s Vita, section 28, gives much of this detail, translated in Dutton (2004), p. 44; see also Brown (2003), p. 435.
52 Collins (1991), pp. 270–71 and 277, and Collins (1998), 141–7.
53 Heitz (1980), Pétau, 1612, illustrated on p. 52, and Mabillon, 1673, illustrated on p. 53, both Bibliothèque nationale.
54 Conant (1978), p. 44.
55 See Baldwin Smith (1956), p. 89; he disagrees with Conant that Aachen derives from San Vitale, see pp. 95–6, and Conant (1978), p. 48.
56 Mayr-Harting (1992), p. 57.
57 Conant (1978), p. 468 n. 3; see Rabe (1995), p. 114, for Bernard on the atrium, and Heitz (1980), p. 54, for the number and distribution of the altars of the abbey.
58 See Bishop (1918), p. 322, where the Ordo, which contains the details of the services and use of the building, is reproduced in a Latin edition, and Conant (1978), p. 45.
59 Heitz (1980), p. 54; Rabe (1995), p. 123.
60 See the reconstruction by Bernard, reproduced in ibid., fig. 7. Rabe’s disposition of the dedications is useful, but speculative.
61 Carruthers (1998), p. 268.
62 Dix (1945), p. 580.
63 See Rabe (1995), pp. 122–4.
64 Translated in Hen (1995), p. 230.
65 McKittenck (1977), pp. 148–53.
66 Jungmann (1959), p. 57.
67 Heitz (1980), p. 204.
68 Rabe (1995), p. 143.
69 See Baldwin Smith (1956), passim, the reconstructed plan is shown on p. 124; Stalley (1999), pp. 46–9, is more guarded about the imperial connections, placing greater emphasis on the liturgical use.
70 Crosby (1942), pp. 123–5.
71 See Krautheimer (1986), p. 153, and Peña (1997), pp. 144 and 147.
72 See Conant (1978), pp. 54–55, and Barral I Altet (2002), pp. 150–51.
73 Baldwin Smith (1956), p. 76.
74 Ibid., pp. 82–3.
75 Stalley (1999), p. 49.
76 Conant (1978), p. 64.
77 Stalley (1999), p. 39.