Thomas Lecaque
Studies in the Crusades
12-6-2011
Ma Foi and the Provencal Crusade: Saints and the Peace of God in the First Crusade
The final march the Jerusalem in 1099 from Ma’arrat-an-Nu’man began with Raymond
IV of Toulouse, Count of Saint-Gilles, forced to action against his will. Though the so-called
“People’s Crusade” ended in tragedy in Asia Minor, and the so-called “Princes’ Crusade” was,
theoretically, governed by major princes and counts, during the siege of Antioch popular piety,
and popular action, began to change the nature of the march.1 As the wealthiest leader to set out
on the crusade, old, experienced, with a large contingent and collaborating both with Urban II
and Adhémar of Le Puy, the papal legate, one would expect Raymond’s prospects in the East to
be particularly bright, and his chronicler, Raymond d’Aguilers, implies his leadership role in the
Crusade post-Antioch.2 But St. Andrew gave him this leadership role, appearing to a poor
Provencal priest named Peter Bartholomew, and his fortunes and Raymond de Saint-Gilles
became intertwined. Jay Rubenstein has argued that Raymond adopted Peter Bartholomew’s
millenarian movement, focused on the poor and the Holy Lance, and that in doing so he
essentially backed the wrong horse than he failed to achieve his temporal goals. 3 I would like
to add to this premise that the religious background of 11th century Provence left Raymond de
Sainte-Gilles with clear motivations to invest his prestige and symbolic capital in what seems to
a modern historian a foolhardy movement. The Liber miraculorum sancte Foy and the
1
See Wikipedia’s article on the First Crusade for People’s vs. Princes’ Crusades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade
2
Jay Rubenstein, “Godfrey of Bouillon versus Raymond of Saint-Gilles: How Carolingian Kingship
Trumped Millenarianism at the End of the First Crusade,” in The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages:
Power, Faith, and Crusade, eds. Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 60;
Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, tr. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill
(Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1968), 57.
3
Rubenstein, 69.
importance of the Peace of God in the Toulouse-Rouergue region provides historians with a
window into the organizational background of the Provençal contingent in the First Crusade—a
world of pious violence, ever-present saints, and a preexisting structure for peasant-prince
actions.
The First Crusade was not a cohesive event, and the contingents that participated in it
organized themselves and experienced the crusade in very different ways. The eyewitness
traditions that have survived to the present day focus on two groups: the Lotharingian contingent
of Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin, and the Provencal contingent of Raymond of
Saint-Gilles, each with two accounts.4 The ways each group viewed the crusade—its actions, its
protagonists—are very different. For the Lotharingians, this is viewed as part of a cycle of
history, a continuation of Carolingian and perhaps Imperial Roman ideals of religious
stewardship, kingship, and connection to Jerusalem.5 For the Provençals, however, the crusade
becomes a moment of apocalyptic realization, a millenarian movement to bring about the Second
Coming.
We will be focusing on the Provencal accounts, a group under the combined leadership of
Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, papal legate, and Raymond IV of Toulouse-Rouergue. From the
earliest stages of the march in Asia Minor, it becomes clear that the Raymond d’Aguilers saw
saints marching with the crusaders, accompanying them in their battles. After the battle of
Dorylaeum, Raymond recounts that:
4
Fulcher of Chartes and Albert of Aachen, who is the best source for the assumed lost Lotharingian
chronicle that he and Gubert de Nogent shared; Raymond d’Aguilers and Peter Tudebode. Albert of Aachen is
usually considered second-hand at best, but I share the belief that he is basing his work on oral accounts and a nowlost primary account—in my opinion, therefore, he should be counted as a very important source for the
Lotharingian crusaders.
5
Matthew of Edessa’s discussion of Godfrey bearing the sword of Vespasian into battle, for example, on the
Roman connection; see Matthew Gabriele’s An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and
Jerusalem before the First Crusade for the Carolingian elements.
some recounted a remarkable miracle in which two handsome knights in flashing armor,
riding before our soldiers and seemingly invulnerable to the thrusts of Turkish lances,
menaced the enemy so that they could not fight. Although we learned this from apostate
Turks now in our ranks, we can certify from evidence that for two days on the march we
saw dead riders and dead horses.6
Not only did saints participate in the battle, but they healed the sick Count during the march
through Asia Minor afterwards:
Distasteful as the following may be to scoffers, it should be made a matter of public
record because it is an account of the miracle working of divine mercy. A Saxon count in
our army, claiming to be a legate of Saint Gilles, said that he had been urged two times to
command the Count: ‘Relax, you will not die of this infirmity because I have secured a
respite for you from God and I shall always be at hand.’ Although the Count was most
credulous, he was so weakened by the malady that when he was taken from his bed and
placed upon the ground, he scarcely had a breath of life. So the bishop of Orange read
the office as if he were dead; but divine compassion, which had made him leader of his
army, immediately raised him from death and returned him safe and sound.7
These two quotes are part of Raymond d’Aguilers text. At the time he wrote these sections he
was still working with Pons of Balazun, a Provencal knight who died at the siege of Arqa.
Raymond d’Aguilers was a canon of Le Puy, attached to Adhemar and the personal chaplain of
Raymond de Saint-Gilles. While his sympathies are fully with the Count, as his account of the
First Crusade progresses, the saints stop being allies and start being the driving force of the
populus, and thus the Crusade.
“Following the capture of Antioch, the Lord, unfolding His might and goodness, selected
a Provençal peasant to console us and to deliver the following message to Raymond and
Adhémar.”8 With this line, Raymond introduces the reader to what is, for him, the dominant
event on the First Crusade: the discovery of the Holy Lance at Antioch. Saint Andrew appears to
Peter Bartholomew and tells him where and how to find the Lance, and this rusticus immediately
6
7
8
Raymond, 28.
Ibid.
Raymond, 51.
gathers the Bishop of Le Puy, the Count of Saint-Gilles, and Peter Raymond of Hautepol,
another noble, to share this divine revelation.9 The reaction is divided. “The Bishop considered
the story fraudulent, but the Count immediately believed it and placed Peter Bartholomew in the
custody of his chaplain, Raymond.”10 The next night, another vision takes place, with Christ
himself appearing to a Provencal priest, Stephen of Valence to tell him that the tribulations of the
crusaders are due to their sins. The only solution and salvation is for Adhemar of Le Puy to
purify the people. Stephen reports this vision “in a called assembly, swore upon the Cross to
verify it, and finally signified his willingness to cross through fire or throw himself from the
heights of a tower if necessary to convince the unbelievers.”11 Finally, after a series of other
visions by Provencal priests and knights, the Lance is discovered in the Church of St. Peter by
Peter Bartholomew, and when he finds it, St. Andrew appears once more to inform him that
“’Behold God gave the Lance to the Count, in fact, had reserved it for him alone throughout the
ages, and also made him leader of the crusaders on the condition of his devotion to God.’”12
The discovery of the Lance was an important event in the history of the First Crusade,
and it is mentioned in all of the primary chronicles. The main Northern French historians are
dismissive of the event, however, as a morale-boosting trick that was later disproven.13 For the
Provencals, this was the decisive moment of the crusade, the crux of their journey: proof of
divine favor and the blessings of the saints, and a tangible relic that became the rallying point for
their contingent and Raymond of Saint-Gille. Peter Tudebode, a Poitevin priest in the Provencal
contingent, fleshed out several of these visions, which were equally important in his chronicle as
9
Raymond, 52.
10
Raymond, 54.
Raymond, 55-56.
11
12
Raymond, 57.
13
Fulcher of Chartres and Ralph of Caen.
in Raymond d’Aguilers. The vision of Stephen of Valence, for example, is expanded in that the
Lord, Mary his mother, and the Apostle Peter all appear in his vision, and the Lord said:
Stephen, tell my people to turn back to me and I shall return to them; and after five days I
shall order the greatest possible aid for the Christians. Each day Congregati sunt shall be
sung throughout the whole army. Further, Christians shall do penance. They shall in
bare feet make processions through the churches and give alms to the poor. The priests
shall chant mass and perform communion with the body and blood of Christ. Then they
shall begin the battle, and I shall give them the help of Saint George, Saint Theodore,
Saint Demetrius, and all the pilgrims who have died on the way to Jerusalem.14
Stephen tells this vision to Adhemar, who forces him to swear to its veracity on the Gospel and
Cross, but does not allow him to undergo the ordeal. Barefoot processions, care for the poor, the
leadership of the priests: in exchange for these concessions on the part of the warrior class, the
Lord promises the aid of the saints and the sanctified dead in battle.
Peter Bartholomew’s vision is similarly influential, and Peter reports that upon hearing of
Saint Andrew’s proclamation:
Raymond joyfully came to the church, and there Peter showed him the place before the
door of the choir to the right side. There from morning to evening twelve men dug a
deep hole and Peter found the Lance of Jesus Christ, just as Saint Andrew had disclosed,
on the fourteenth day of incoming June. They accepted it with great joy, and singing Te
Deum laudamus they bore it happily to the altar. Thus great euphoria seized the city.
Upon report of this discovery, the Frankish army came to Saint Peter’s Church to see the
Lance. Likewise Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians came singing in high pitch, Kyrie
eleison and saying: ‘Kalo Francia fundari Christo exsi.’15
For Peter Tudebode, this is a similarly pivotal event, one so important that not only the entire
Crusader army, but the native Christians break into song, praising the miraculous discovery of
the Lance.
In both accounts, the discovery of the Lance leads to a change in the attitudes and
behavior of the mass of the crusaders. Peter reports that “the Christians carried out instructions
14
Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, tr. with an intro. by John Hugh Hill and Laurita L.
Hill (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1974), 74.
15
Peter, 83.
just as the Lord Jesus Christ had commanded them through the priest, Stephen, with three days
of fasting and by confessing their sins, by processions from one church to another, by absolution,
and by faithfully receiving communion of the body and blood of Christ. They also gave alms to
the poor and celebrated masses.”16 Raymond, while not reporting these preparations before the
battle with Kerbogha, describes the exit of the Crusade army from Antioch to face the Turks in
similar terms: “In typical clerical procession we advanced, and, may I add, it was a procession.
Priests and many monks wearing white stoles walked before the ranks of our knights, chanting
and praying for God’s help and the protection of the saints,” and when they were outside,
“barefooted priests clad in priestly vestments stood upon the walls invoking God to protect His
people, and by a Frankish victory bear witness to the covenant which He made holy with His
blood.”17 The crusader army, or at least the portion described by the Provencal chroniclers,
clearly decided to make the exchange the Lord had offered to Stephen of Valence—victory in
exchange for concessions.
The Crusader army won against Kerbogha, despite overwhelming odds. Despite
discussions of treachery in the Turkish army,18 or the brilliance of Bohemond’s tactics,19 for the
crusaders themselves the victory was a miracle. For Peter Tudebode and Raymond d’Aguilers,
the Holy Lance was one of the decisive factors, borne proudly into battle by the Provencal
contingent. For Peter, it was Adhemar himself who carried it; Raymond d’Aguilers claimed that
he himself bore it into battle.20 For Raymond, this was enough—the Lance, the most powerful
16
17
18
Peter, 85.
Raymond, 62-63.
Ibn al-Athir advances this idea
19
See John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994)
20
Peter, 86; Raymond, 63.
relic possessed by the Crusader army, ensured their victory over the Turks. For Peter, however,
Stephen of Valence’s vision and the measures taken to live up to the bargain came with an added
effect:
In addition, a vast army riding white horses and flying white banners rode from the
mountains. Our forces were very bewildered by the sight of this army until they realized
that it was Christ’s aid, just as the priest, Stephen, had predicted. The leaders of this
heavenly host were Saint George, the blessed Demetrius, and the Blessed Theodore.
Now this report is credible because many Christians saw it.21
Both Peter and Raymond’s accounts from the battle for Antioch on are replete with visions of
saints, appearing to numerous members of the Provencal contingent, participating in battle,
healing the injured, and leading the Crusaders to discover new relics and thus enlist new
supernatural allies.
This framework, of allied saints appearing to clergy and thus leading the populus to
victory over evil is not a creation of the Crusades. In fact, it is the framework that would make
the most sense for a Provencal priest, as it was dominant theme of the Peace of God movement,
which was centered in eleventh-century southern France, especially in the regions of Aquitaine
and the Toulouse-Rouergue, where the Provencal contingent in the First Crusade came from.
When secular lords were unable to provide sufficient protection from secular ills, ecclesiastical
leaders turned to their neighboring patron saints and the populace of their territories for
assistance in keeping the peace.22 Councils of bishops, convened by bishops and also including
local abbots and major secular figures, were joined by the relics enshrined in local monastic
21
22
Peter, 87.
Thomas Head and Richard Landes, “Introduction,” in The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious
Response in France around the Year 1000, eds. Thomas Head and Richard Landes (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP,
1992), 2.
churches, “where the saints could serve as witnesses and representatives of divine authority.”23
The gathering of relics acted as a magnet for the surrounding populace, who converged on the
“large open fields that were the favored sites of Peace councils. There—surrounded by clerical
and lay magnates, by saints, and by their social inferiors—members of the warrior elite took
oaths of peace, framed in a context that mobilized what a modern observer might call popular
opinion.”24 This brief description of the Peace councils shows obvious similarities to the
activities before the battle of Antioch, where the warriors exited the city into the plain with
clergy in tow, wielding relics into battle, supported by saints and by the vast mass of the populus
who would come to attach themselves to Raymond and the Provencal contingent.
Within the specific context of the Toulousain-Rouergue region, however, we see more
striking similarities still in the activities of Saint Foy, and her participation in the Peace of God.
The cult of Sainte Foy, venerated in the village of Conques in the Rouergue, sprang to
prominence in the tenth century, after the translatio of her relics from Agen to the monastery. In
the mid-tenth century, a new church dedicated to the Holy Savior was built there, and in the mideleventh century an even larger church was constructed to accommodate pilgrims.25 Conques
was not only a pilgrimage site because of the relic of Foy in the tenth and eleventh century, but it
was also part of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostella as it grew in the mid to late
eleventh century. The particular path, the Via Podensis, began in Le Puy-en-Velay, home of
Bishop Adhémar. The guidebook for pilgrims to Santiago instructed pilgrims to stop along the
way to visit Sainte Foy’s “very precious body.”26 Despite its somewhat remote location in the
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid.
25
Pamela Sheingorn, Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 17-18.
26
Sheingorn, 12.
northern Rouergue, it was connected via pilgrimage routes to major ecclesiastical centers
throughout the region.
It was also connected to the greater world of Occitania politically, being part of the
nominal domains of the Counts of Toulouse-Rouergue until after the reign of Alphonse-Jordan in
the twelfth century. This relationship between count and saint, we shall see, was not always
mutually supportive, but the counts of the Rouergue were certainly important actors in the
business of a major monastery like the church at Conques. Conques worked hard to liberate
itself from the domain of the counts, using Carolingian-era documents of immunity from Louis
the Pious and Pippin I of Aquitaine to claim exclusive authority over its domain.27 This struggle
shapes the Liber miraculorum sancte Foys, the main text not only for the cult of St. Foy but also
for the Rouergue in the eleventh century, and also the way St. Foy was understood by the
knightly classes. Conques participated in the Peace of God councils, prominently displaying the
majesty of Foy in opposition to “lawlessness” on the part of mounted warriors.28 More than a
passive participant in the Peace of God movement, St. Foy directly contributed to combating
lawless milites through visionary performance and through direct action.
The first author of the Liber miraculorum was Bernard of Angers, a Chartres-trained
cleric who visited Conques sometime around 1013 and composed the first of the four books of
the Liber. He was perhaps inspired by his visits to a church of Sainte Foy in Chartres while he
was in school there, or perhaps he was inspired by meeting Guibert the Illuminated, the subject
of the most famous of Foy’s miracles, discussed below.29 Between 1013 and 1020, he composed
27
Sheingorn, 13.
28
Sheingorn, 14.
29
Sheingorn, 39-40.
some forty-nine chapters in two books, finishing the last nine shortly before his death.30 These
two books form the core of the Liber, though two continuators write in it up to the mid-eleventh
century, with additional miracles found in a wide variety of post-1050 texts.31 These texts cover
a wide time period, from the height of the Peace, which Conques participated in, to the golden
age of the cult of St. Foy, lasting 1050 until about 1150.32
While Bernard certainly had his own agenda while writing the chapters, either to create a
lesson on pride for scholarly clerics in France33 or as an example of clerical reform and
supremacy,34 his commentary shows that Foy is an anomaly in his experience. The two books
that he wrote are filled with almost ethnographic reports on what he described as peasant faith in
the Rouergue, creating it as the antithesis of French practice.35 In 1.7, a group of his fellow
Angevins encounter a man who accuses Bernard of being a liar, leading to a long apologia about
St. Foy’s miracles resurrecting mules;36in another section, he apologizes for the mockery he and
another cleric had directed towards the majesty, even calling it an idol, because he feared St.
Foy’s wrath.37 Dominique Barthelemy’s analysis of the source argues that Foy’s divine
vengeance fits within a greater tradition of feudal hagiography of the eleventh century, but there
30
Kathleen Stewart Fung, “Divine Lessons in an Imperfect World: Bernard of Angers and The Book of Sainte
Foy’s Miracles,” in The Middle Ages in Texts and Texture: Reflections of Medieval Sources, ed. Jason Glenn (North
York, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 120.
31
Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingon, Writing Faith: Text, Sign, & History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 108.
32
Sheingorn and Ashley, 124.
33
Fung, 121.
34
Sheingorn and Ashley, 51.
35
Sheingorn and Ashley, 29.
36
Sheingorn, 64.
37
Sheingorn, 78.
is something a little different about her—a little more violent, a more malevolent, and between
her majesty and her visionary appearances, a little more omnipresent.38
Bernard’s preface warns his mentor, Fulbert of Chartres, that something unusual exists in
the Rouergue: “Better yet, if the unusual novelty of the miraculous content disturbs you, I
prostrate myself on the ground to beg this of your brotherhood: that after my return you also
come here, not so much to pray as to gain knowledge through experience. For through lack of
experience you might prematurely judge something false whose truth, once you have seen it for
yourselves, you will proclaim thereafter.”39 The first book sets the tone very quickly—the first
story, that of Guibert the Illuminated, is one of a man who is simultaneously master, godfather,
and priest blinding his servant and godson over a woman.40 As Bernard describes it, “Then
Gerald suddenly slid off his horse and, with the very fingers with which he usually touched the
sacrosanct body of Christ, he violently tore out the eyes of his own godson and tossed them
carelessly to the ground.”41 A mystical bird plucks Guibert’s eyes, “The magpie or dove at that
very hour took up from the ground the wretch’s eyes, which were covered with fresh blood. The
bird flew above the mountaintops and appeared to descend to Conques with its burden,” and
Guibert slowly follows it to Conques, where he is nursed back to health.42 Unable to perform
other types of work, he becomes a jongleur. After a year passes, St. Foy appears to him in a
vision and promises him healing and vengeance on his attacker. The healing she provides comes
with force, for “it seemed to Guibert that he saw two light-filled globes like berries, scarcely
38
Dominique Barthelemy, Chevaliers et miracles: La violence et le sacre dans la societe feodale (Paris :
Armand Colin, 2004), 83.
39
Sheingorn, 41.
40
Sheingorn, 43-44.
41
Ibid.
42
Sheingorn, 45.
larger than the fruit of the laurel tree, which were sent from above and driven deeply into the
sockets of his excised eyes. The force of the impact disturbed his brain and in a state of
bewilderment he fell asleep.”43
While this is the most famous of St. Foy’s miracles, it is not typical; there are other
healing stories, and other blinding stories, but within a few chapters St. Foy’s miracles turn
bloody with St. Foy herself as the instigator of the violence. The fifth chapter, for example,
deals with the death of Rainon, a knight who attempted to attack one of the monks of Conques,
and died when Foy caused his horse to throw him.44 Another man named Guy, who mocked the
miracle of Gerbert’s eyes, died “a sinner’s death,” and a huge snake exited his bed sheets when
he expired, slithering away through the crowd.45 Foy defended one of her pilgrims from enemy
assault by causing celestial thunderclaps to frighten them off.46 A noble who mocked the
majesty of Foy while attempting to take land from Conques died, along with his wife and
household, when Foy caused his house to collapse on them.47 Pons, a member of the entourage
of the counts of Carcassonne, was killed by lightning for attempting to attack monks.48 These
deaths at the hands of Foy come from the first of four books, and they are not alone; in Bernard’s
second book, Sainte Foy declares that “I myself have killed Hugh,” who attempted to take
money from Conques.49
43
44
Sheingorn, 48.
Sheingorn, 59.
45
Sheingorn, 68.
46
Sheingorn, 70.
47
Sheingorn, 72.
48
Sheingorn, 75.
49
Sheingron, 126.
This action is difficult to defend, for a modern audience or for a contemporary one. The
trope of the trickster figure, in its most extreme form as a combination of good and evil at the
boundaries of acceptability, is how some modern historians have reconciled “this astonishing
portrait of Foy as serial killer,” a “holy figure [who] can perform acts which by human norms
would be unacceptable, violating these norms of human behavior in order to protect the monastic
community.”50 Within Bernard’s narrative, then, Foy takes direct and violent action on behalf of
her patrimony, defending her monastery with lethal force. When she does not take action
herself, Bernard records that she allowed one of her monks to be her champion: Gimon, warriormonk, guardian of the sanctuary, and maintainer of the Rule in Conques—another paradoxical
figure in the eleventh century.51 Gimon, “whenever wicked men invaded the monastery with
hostile intent,” became an armed defender.52 Bernard writes that:
He rode at the head of his armored ranks, leading the campaign, and with his own daring
he heartened the spirits of the fearful, giving them strength to face manfully either the
reward of victory or the glory of martyrdom. He declared that they had a much greater
obligation to vanquish false Christians who had attacked Christian law and willfully
abandoned God than to subdue those pagans who had never known God. He said that no
one who wanted to be worthy of leadership should become cowardly, but rather, when
necessity demanded, should battle forcefully against wicked invaders so that the vice of
cowardice would not creep in disguised as patience.53
When Gimon’s strength was not enough, he would go to the majesty of Foy and harangue her
into providing divine aid to help in the struggle, combining prayer and invective until St. Foy’s
power joined his own strength.54 Bernard clearly feels the need to defend these actions, and ends
50
Sheingorn and Ashley, 37.
51
Sheingorn, 96. There is a clear link to the office of lay abbot here; however, I would focus on the fact that
Gimon is a real monk, not a lay lord taking an office—this is much closer to the Militant Orders.
52
Sheingorn, 94.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
by saying “Therefore it is my considered opinion that Gimon ought not to be blamed for his
harsh manner of speaking when I’ve heard his deeds described as irreproachable in every way,
except that he used to go on expeditions armed.”55
The same violence appears in the two books by Bernard’s continuators, written slightly
later in the eleventh century, though the stories by this time have follow much more predictable
hagiographical topoi. There is an emphasis on the integration of the monastery into the feudal
community, and the miracles tend to focus on healing, freeing prisoners and non-lethal injuries.
In the third book, however, a warrior named Siger, who robbed Conques, has a curse prayer
unleashed on his family by the monks, causing his entire lineage to die horribly of disease. 56 The
very next miracle describes how an adherent of Foy, fighting under her banner, triumphed over a
much larger enemy band.57 The decline in violence in the miracula over the passing of time,
with the continuators who take over in 1020 up to the latest additions around 1075,58 could be
seen as indicative of less violence in the Rouergue and its inhabitants; certainly, when thought of
as stages of writing, this is what it suggests.
For those who read it in the 1080s and 1090s, at the eve of the crusade, textual criticism
and various recensions would not have been foremost in the experience of the Liber
miraculorum. The first two books, those by Bernard, stand out as the most memorable, even
after the entire text is read. They are practically unique in medieval miracula in that the miracles
“are interwoven with his own reflections on the circumstances in which he was writing, the
manner in which his relationship with the monks at Conques evolved, and his personal reactions
55
56
Sheingorn, 95.
Sheingorn, 167.
57
Sheingron, 168.
58
Fung, 120.
to the cult of St Faith.”59 The miracles blend with the experience of the man writing them, his
wonder and his path to conversion in the cult of St. Foy carrying the reader with him. The
monk-continuators use these texts, allowing them to survive in their extant form, as part of a
story of growth, where the cult of Foy, from a small, somewhat-backwards village, expands over
the world. Their central location in the Rouergue, their constructed dominance over their home
region, comes from Bernard’s books; the later books build on that foundation, but these books
are the core of the cult of St. Foy.
In those books, St. Foy “renders punishment for overt acts of hostility towards the cult
and lack of recognition of either her own or the monastery’s power,” regardless of the morality
of action, either her own or the actions of her supplicants.60 The so-called V-L miracle collection,
added on to the collection between 1060 and 1080 at Conques, are the closest of all the additions
to Bernard of Angers in terms of narrative voice.61 The anonymous writer begins his first
miracle by writing “Therefore I must disregard the ill-will of this decadent age I live in, because
my heart clings fervently to these words from Holy Scripture: ‘Vengeance belongs to Me, and I
will repay’.”62 For Bernard of Angers, the monastery’s enemies were part of the local society,
“skeptics and lawless castellans.”63 The monk-continuators, while including battles against local
castellans, make St. Foy’s struggles part of the universal struggle of good and evil. For the V-L
author, the violence of the time and the vengeance of St. Foy might have been emphasized, but
for the lack of effective enemies in the Rouergue. Castellans fight each other while respecting
59
Marcus Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 1999), 48.
60
Sheingorn and Ashley, 126.
61
Sheingron and Ashley, 110.
62
Sheingorn, 227.
63
Ashley and Sheingorn, 104.
St. Foy’s abbey, so she heals their wounds; demons are fought and destroyed, but in the bodies of
supplicant peasants.64 The only effective enemies towards anyone in the text are outside of
Occitania altogether—St. Foy frees peasants of her Spanish priory from Arab captivity.65
The violence of the saint and her active intervention on the part of her partisans show
clear links to the use of saints in Raymond d’Aguiler’s and Peter Tudebode’s works, with saintly
warriors descending on the field of battle and aiding the crusaders through vision and deed. But
outside of St. Foy herself, important as she is to eleventh-century history in the ToulouseRouergue region, is her participation in the Peace of God, mentioned above. Bernard reports St.
Foy’s trip to the Peace council of Rodez:
The most reverend Arnald, bishop of Rodez, had convened a synod that was limited to
the parishes of his diocese. To this synod the bodies of the saints were conveyed in
reliquary boxes or in golden images by various communities of monks or canons. The
ranks of saints were arranged in tents and pavilions in the meadow of Saint Felix, which
is about a mile from Rodez. The golden majesties of Saint Marius, confessor and bishop,
and Saint Amans, also a confessor and bishop, and the golden reliquary box of Saint
Saturninus, and the golden image of holy Mary, mother of God, and the golden majesty
of Sainte Foy especially adorned that place. In addition to these, there were relics of
many saints, but I can’t give the exact number here.66
This can be compared to Raymond d’Aguilers portrayal of the end of the siege of Arqah, where
St. Andrew appears to Peter Desiderius, a priest who has seen several visions by that point, and
instructs him to leave the siege and go to the church of St. Leontius, where the relics of four
illustrious saints wait to be carried to Jerusalem.67 The relics of St. Cyprian, St. Omechios, St.
Leontius, St. John Chrysostom were found, as well as a chest containing unknown relics, which
were thought to be St. Mercurius until St. George, the actual saint, appears to Raymond
64
Sheingorn, 227-229..
65
Sheingorn, 243.
66
Sheingorn, 98.
67
Raymond, 111.
d’Aguilers.68 St. George further instructs Raymond to take vials of the blood of Mary and of
Thecla, also found in the church, on the march to Jerusalem. The gathering of saints for the final
confrontation at Jerusalem, the marshalling of spiritual forces, is reminiscent of the gatherings
for the Peace.
The Peace councils and saints were also gatherings of the populus, even as they were
used by ecclesiastical and lay lords. The author of Translatio sancti Viviani episcopi around the
year 1000 describes the annual feast of St. Vivian at the abbey of Figeac, very close to Conques,
where “‘crowds of innumerable people used to come from all directions.’ On one of these
occasions the abbey church became so overcrowded that the ‘maiestas [a reliquary made in the
form of a bust] of the venerable confessor’ had to be carried outside into a tent built in an open
place so that the pilgrims could gain access to the relics.”69 Figeac is a fairly major monastery,
but even small monasteries attracted large crowds to their saints when miracles were reported,
such at the abbey of Saint-Genou-de-Lestree (near Bourges), when after a century their patron
Saint Genulph began performing miracles.70 These gatherings sometimes created direct
opposition between popular piety and ecclesiastical culture; Bernard of Angers speaks to this in
relation to peasant vigils at St. Foy’s church, where instead of maintaining solemn silence and
respect the hours, the peasants “relieve the weariness of the long night with little peasant songs
and other frivolities,” to the detriment of the dignity of the occasion.71 St. Foy appears on the
side of these peasants, opening the doors of the church to them after the monks attempt to force
them out. The rift between populus and ecclesiastic culture may have been wide, but the local
68
Raymond, 112.
Berhard Töpfer, “The Cult of Relics and Pilgrimage in Burgundy and Aquitaine at the Time of the
Monastic Reform,” in Head and Landes, 45.
69
70
Töpfer, 46.
71
Sheingorn, 137.
churches were able to maintain control over the masses, co-opting this popular piety by using the
saints and their role as caretaker.72
As pilgrimage centers grew, so did lay interest at all levels. In 1010, the abbot of SaintJean-d’Angely ‘revealed’ that the head of John the Baptist had been found and that all
“‘Aquitaine, Gaul, Italy, and Spain should hasten there moved by the news.’ The spread of the
news and the good advertising of the monks in Angely is remarkable; they managed to mobilize
an incredible number of lay and clerical pilgrims, among them the monks of Saint-Martial from
Limoges, some sixty miles away, who carried the relics of their patron accompanied by nobles
and innumerabilis populus in procession to Angely.”73 This event was overshadowed by the
monastery of Vezelay, which was claimed in 1037 to possess the relics of Mary Magdalene, to
even greater pilgrimages. The pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostella are codified in the
mid-eleventh century, and pilgrimages to Jerusalem also pick up. The popular piety evident at
Conques is not the only place where popular sensibilities and ecclesiastical culture differed, but
throughout this period, “the French church succeeded—mainly through the efforts of the
monasteries—to channel the movement of the masses into forms approved from above, and at
the same time to achieve much greater prestige and influence for itself.”74
Beyond the saint and pilgrimages, however, was the desire of both populace and church
to deal with violence, the core of the “Peace of God.” Christian Lauranson-Rosaz has argued
that the origins of the Peace of God, ideologically if not institutionally, can be traced back to the
Auvergnat, to a council held at Aurillac in 972, a decade before the council of Charroux (989).75
72
73
74
75
Töpfer, 48.
Töpfer, 49.
Töpfer, 57.
Christian Lauranson-Rosaz, “Peace from the Mountains: The Auvergnat Origins of the Peace of God,” in
Head and Landes, 104.
This council shares some things in common with the later councils, but much more clearly than
most, at Aurillac the union of bishop and peasant can be seen. As Lauranson-Rosaz writes:
behind the bishops’ desire to reestablish peace in their dioceses, we can also sense that of
the rustics to once again gather in assemblies for all free men, a scandalous desire to
return to an older way just as the cleavage between fighters (bellatores) and manual
laborers (laboratores) was taking hold. From that time on, there would always be latent
ambiguity in the actions of clergy for the peace, in the popular support they provoked and
which they could not do without.76
For the populus, the Peace of God was a powerful maneuver, allying themselves with the church
and the saints against the predatory warriors for their own benefit. Whether or not the poor had
any real part in the councils, whether or not the church had any intention of aiding them or were
just manipulating the crowd, whether or not their presence was just a rhetorical construct, the
memory of the event is such that it, like other Peace councils, became an instance of “essentially
popular impact.”77
The modern consensus of the Peace of God suggests the opposite role, one in which the
nobility and the clergy used the Peace of God to maintain “peace”, defined as the status quo for
themselves. The council of Le Puy, the official clauses, stipulated the following:
(1) Bishops had the right of plunder (predam facere) to obtain their rents, and those who
led a military escort (conductum) had the right to slaughter animals and requisition food
supplies along the way. (2) One could seize whatever one wished to, build or lay siege to
a fortified place, as long as one was on one’s own land, allod, benefic, or domain for
which one had the comanda. (3) One could exercise the right of seizure over male and
female serfs (villanus; villana) or demand from them a ransom (redemption) if they were
dependents of one’s own domain or benefice or of a territory that was the object of
dispute. (4) One could establish a mala consuetude, which thus became legal, over
ecclesiastical lands retroceded to laypeople.78
76
Lauranson-Rosaz, 114.
77
Lauranson-Rosaz, 120.
78
Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, “The Enemies of the Peace: Reflections on a Vocabulary, 500-1100,” in Head
and Landes, 71.
These rights suggest an end to violence between ruling groups, rather than an end to violence;
the nobility and the church are using the Peace to reinforce their rights over their own territory,
restoring the legalistic framework by which they exploit their own peasantry.79 This is certainly
how the legal evidence—the charters, oaths, and conciliar canons—portray the Peace councils,
and how the elite would have viewed them.80 When applied to the First Crusade, both sides—the
peasantry and low clergy on one side and the nobility and bishops on the other— thought that
they could channel the Peace of God into achieving their own goals.
When the Crusaders finally captured Jerusalem, Raymond de Saint-Gilles was offered the
crown; his refusal was an admission of his inability to muster broad-based support that was
based on the failure of a particularly Provencal solution to the problem.81 The Peace of God and
the alliance of saints were important for motivating the Provencal-peasant coalition into action,
and Raymond’s adoption of the Holy Lance as his emblem allowed him to take control of the
populus for his own goals. But quickly after that battle of Ma’arrat-an-Nu’man, the populus
began to take control of the situation. They tear down the walls of the city and force Raymond to
continue the march against his will. The followers of the Lance have wrested control from the
nobility, and it is a control Raymond de Saint-Gilles will never recover.
This is merely an introductory look at the way the Peace of God and the Provencal
contingent of the First Crusade were related. Recent studies, especially Marcus Bull’s book
Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c.970–
c.1130, have argued against a relationship between crusading and the Peace. While his point is
79
Magnou-Nortier, 78.
80
Head and Landes, 2.
81
See Rubenstein, “Godfrey of Bouillon versus Raymond of Saint-Gilles: How Carolingian Kingship
Trumped Millenarianism at the End of the First Crusade.”
well made, that the Peace of God is not part of causal chain leading to the First Crusade, the
Peace of God is still part of the consciousness of the Provencal contingent, especially the clerical
elements who benefited the most from it. As Raymond d’Aguilers introduces himself, he is
“Raymond, Canon of Le Puy,” one of the centers of the Peace movement. 82 By examining how
the Peace of God, the wars in Spain, the miracula of the South all worked to construct
socioreligious identities among the clergy and the laity, a better understanding of the largest
individual contingent on the Crusade can be formed.
82
Raymond, 15.
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