Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul

54.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Different Saints, Different Cults

DIVERSITY has long been a distinguishing feature of France. Perhaps the most consequential example has been the distinction between north and south France that still marks a contrast between modern French dialects. This particular distinction was already important in Roman and early medieval Gaul too. By being incorporated comparatively early into the Roman empire southeastern Gaul was closely linked to Italy, and its cities and local aristocrats quickly absorbed the lifestyle and classical culture characteristic of the Mediterranean world. Northern and central Gaul, in contrast, were among the last components of the empire and always retained their connections with and orientation toward Britain and Germany. Classical culture and its corresponding lifestyle were slow to spread; so in northern regions in which beer remained a common beverage, wine from the Mediterranean became the equivalent of the firewater that would later assist Europeans in their conquest of the New World, an addictive commodity that allowed the civilized conquerors from the south to exploit the natives in Gaul and Germany.¹ Within these larger divisions more localized diversity was also readily apparent, because each region, each city, even each village often retained its own patois, dress, and customs.

Christianity in Gaul spread at first primarily into cities near the Mediterranean or along the Rhone River and long retained its contacts with the Greek East. Eventually Christianity extended its influence into central and northern Gaul, but only from the later fourth century, precisely the period during which the Roman administration was beginning to retreat to the south. Despite its claim to represent a singular orthodoxy Christianity was no more successful at overcoming local diversity than Roman magistrates had been at imposing an effective centralized administration. The bishops who met at Gallic councils may have scolded peculiar local customs, but they were unable to impose uniform practices and beliefs even on fellow bishops who preferred to preserve their own autonomy. Tours offers a telling example of the persistence of these local variations, in part because the Loire River is often taken as an approximate boundary between northern and southern Gaul,² in part too because as a metropolitan see its ecclesiastical province included cities in Brittany, a region that had always been marginal to Roman Gaul. In the early sixth century Bishop Licinius of Tours and two of his suffragan bishops warned priests in Brittany against the use of women as fellow hosts during the celebration of mass. Although these bishops attributed this challenge to ecclesiastical unity to the influence of a Greek heresy, in fact the ministry of these women perhaps indicated the survival of an ancient Celtic practice.³ Local diversity remained common in Gallic Christianity at the end of the century. Councils may have occasionally tried to promote liturgical uniformity, if only within ecclesiastical provinces, but Gregory of Tours offhandedly acknowledged that various cities celebrated the liturgy differently.⁴

The rise of saints’ cults coincided with the general expansion of Christianity in late Roman Gaul. Because the local affiliations of these cults became so dominant, it is predictable that their development would reflect the particularism generally characteristic of Gallic society. The distinctiveness of three saints’ cults in central Gaul is particularly well documented. Julian was thought to have been a martyr during one of the last general persecutions of Christianity; Hilary served as bishop of Poitiers until his death in 367; and Martin served as bishop of Tours until his death in 397. Tours eventually became the center of the cult of St. Martin. Not only did his cult become the most illustrious in late antique Gaul, it is also the best documented for modern historians, primarily because in the later sixth century Bishop Gregory of Tours compiled a large anthology of miracle stories about the saint. Gregory and his friend Fortunatus also compiled collections of miracle stories about the cults of St. Julian at Brioude and St. Hilary at Poitiers respectively. Although these two cults were not as popular as the cult of St. Martin, their particular characteristics emphasize firmly that the cult of St. Martin was not necessarily representative of saints’ cults in late antique Gaul. The following sections of this chapter will discuss how the cult of St. Martin eventually overcame the slowness of its development at Tours to become so dominant that Merovingian kings hesitated to visit; how the presence of a former Merovingian queen overshadowed the cult of St. Hilary at Poitiers; and how the rural cult of St. Julian had little impact at Clermont, the episcopal seat of the diocese. A candid acknowledgment of these distinguishing characteristics allows modern historians to avoid two weaknesses common to many studies of late antique saints’ cults. One is conflation of the evidence, the tendency to use information about different saints’ cults indiscriminately to create a virtually generic cult of the saints; the other is chronological compression, the failure to recognize that particular cults went through phases of prominence and obscurity. Even though Gregory may have insisted that a single Lord works through the powers of many saints,⁵ cults differed and cults changed over time. The diversity and particularism characteristic of Gallic society therefore combined with historical circumstances to generate three quite different cults of St. Martin, St. Hilary, and St. Julian.

1. The Cult of St. Martin

The cult of St. Martin first appeared within his lifetime. During his travels people pulled threads from his clothes and gathered the straw on which he had slept as relics that later protected them from illnesses; one man placed a letter of Martin on his feverish daughter, who then recovered; and even non-Christians knew about his reputation.⁶ People also began to collect stories about Martin’s life and miracles. After hearing some of these stories a young Gallic aristocrat named Sulpicius Severus decided to compose a Vita of Martin.⁷ When he visited Tours, Martin’s magnetism and insight so impressed him that he completed his Vita before the bishop’s death; in fact, in a dream he once saw Martin smiling as he held a copy of the book.⁸ By the time of its hero’s death Sulpicius’s Vita had already transformed Bishop Martin into St. Martin, someone worthy of imitation whose example would stimulate readers to true wisdom.⁹

Immediately after Martin’s death in 397 the saint’s body became an object of rivalry between the two cities that had a special claim to his patronage, Poitiers and Tours. According to a tradition that Gregory later recorded, upon hearing that Martin had become ill at Candes both cities had sent delegations to hover in anticipation at his deathbed. The citizens of Poitiers noted that Martin had once lived as a monk at Ligugé in the Poitou and claimed that they should have his body because Tours had enjoyed his blessing during his episcopacy. The citizens of Tours argued that because Martin had revived two dead men before becoming bishop but only one afterward, they should keep his body so that he could complete what was unfinished during his lifetime. That night the citizens from Tours spirited the saint’s body away through a window of his cell. At Tours an enormous funeral procession accompanied the body to its tomb.¹⁰

Since this tradition explained how his episcopal see rather than his first Gallic monastery had acquired his body, it seems to suggest that after his death the image of St. Martin as bishop took precedence over the image of the saint as monk. In fact, however, the image of the saint as a model bishop did not become dominant, even at Tours, until a generation later. Bishops had been among Martin’s earliest critics, and already at his consecration some had objected that his unkempt appearance made him unworthy of the episcopacy of Tours.¹¹ After his death bishops and clerics in Gaul still refused to honor St. Martin for fear that his merits would highlight their own inadequacies.¹² Instead communities of ascetic aristocrats or of monks were responsible for the earliest development of the saint’s cult, although here too each community supported different ideals.

While continuing to collect additional stories about St. Martin and to publish them in his Dialogues, Sulpicius also founded a secluded fellowship on his family’s estate in southern Gaul, for which he built two new churches. Between the churches he constructed a baptistery, in which he featured a portrait of St. Martin. This icon was now to represent the paradigm of the perfect life for the newly baptized, whose faith the saint protected with his deeds and courageous words.¹³ But although Sulpicius may certainly have admired Martin and wanted to perpetuate his memory for this community, in the process he modified the saint’s image in accordance with his own aristocratic outlook. Although Martin had come to Gaul as a soldier from Pannonia and was not a local aristocrat, Sulpicius’s conception of the saint as the rule of righteousness and the compendium of virtues corresponded closely with the values of the aristocratic life-style in which he himself had been trained.¹⁴ His ascetic community too mimicked the life of rural retirement that Gallic aristocrats had enjoyed for centuries. Furthermore, at his settlement Sulpicius also commemorated the tomb of Clarus, a priest who had established his own small monastic community near Martin’s monastery at Marmoutier and who had died shortly before Martin’s death.¹⁵ Although Sulpicius and his friend Paulinus of Nola virtually equated the two in their admiration of the example of St. Martin and St. Clarus,¹⁶ it is not obvious how Clarus had earned this comparable respect, since it had been Martin who had powerfully influenced Sulpicius’s decision to reject secular honors and who had once healed Paulinus.¹⁷ But for Sulpicius and Paulinus perhaps Clarus’s most attractive feature was that, like them (and in contrast to Martin), he had been a most distinguished young man before committing himself to an ascetic life.¹⁸ The traditional values of the Gallic aristocracy certainly died hard. In the early fifth century Sulpicius dedicated one of his new churches with Clarus’s tomb, and Paulinus composed verses to describe Clarus’s achievements; so both gave more homage to the tomb of this aristocratic disciple of Martin than to the tomb of St. Martin at Tours.¹⁹

Another version of St. Martin appeared at Marmoutier, the monastery Martin had founded outside Tours across the Loire River. During his lifetime some monks had doubted his claims to have had visions of Christian saints and pagan gods.²⁰ But after his death the monks had a series of verse inscriptions engraved near the saint’s cell. These four inscriptions conveyed a strong sense of longing for a lost leader who may now have become their patron before God in heaven, but who would never again appear in person: The warrior sleeps, a man who must be missed.²¹ So although Marmoutier remained a functioning monastery, it seems to have lost much of its wider influence after Martin’s death. In a passage written before Martin’s death Sulpicius had claimed that all cities wanted monks from Martin’s monastery as their bishops.²² In fact, few did become bishops, and Marmoutier became increasingly important simply as a shrine to St. Martin. All four inscriptions leave the impression of being placards describing various sites and objects for visitors, such as the saint’s cell, his stool, his bed, and the spot where he had prayed. Other monks hence made pilgrimages to Marmoutier to visit these sites and remember the monastic life of Martin.²³ In addition, by the middle of the fifth century the liturgical celebrations at Tours included a trip to Marmoutier during Lent, during which crowds of people visited these stations commemorating the saint’s monastic career: the people licked and kissed and moistened with their tears each spot where the blessed man had sat or prayed or where he had eaten food or laid his body to rest after his many tasks. ²⁴ At the end of the fifth century Bishop Volusianus of Tours expanded the settlement at Marmoutier by constructing a church dedicated to St. John.²⁵ So although Martin may have founded this monastery in order to escape the bustle of Tours by re-creating the solitude of the desert,²⁶ eventually Marmoutier lost some of its isolation by becoming primarily a memorial shrine that attracted the congregation of Tours, pilgrims, and perhaps mere tourists too.

At Tours itself the incipient cult of St. Martin had meanwhile fallen into apparent disfavor. His successor in 397 was Brictio, who had lived at Marmoutier before becoming a cleric. Brictio had once confronted his bishop and claimed that he himself was more holy because decades earlier Martin had defiled himself with his service in the Roman army, and because Martin had anyway now become senile. At the time Martin had tolerated these invectives by concluding that demons were influencing Brictio.²⁷ According to a tradition that Gregory recorded, Martin had furthermore not only foreseen Brictio’s accession to the episcopacy, he had also warned him to anticipate many misfortunes. Both predictions were accurate. Lazarus, who later became bishop of Aix but may have been a monk at Tours at the time, eventually made some unspecified diabolical accusations against Brictio, although other Gallic bishops, as well as Pope Zosimus of Rome, then defended him.²⁸ But by 430 the citizens of Tours were no longer willing to tolerate their bishop’s arrogance and accused him of adultery. Brictio first attempted to demonstrate his innocence before the tomb of St. Martin and then traveled to Rome to appeal for the assistance of Pope Xystus. In his absence two other men served as bishops of Tours, until Brictio finally regained his see in 437.²⁹

The accession of Brictio seems to indicate the ascendancy at Tours of a faction that had been opposed to Bishop Martin, and his subsequent disgrace perhaps suggests a revival of support for the cult of St. Martin. The monks at Marmoutier and ascetics elsewhere may have been venerating the memory of St. Martin for decades already, but at Tours the cult of St. Martin finally developed comparatively late, and then primarily as a device to resolve lingering feuds over the meaning of Bishop Martin’s career. In 430 Brictio had appealed for the saint’s assistance at his tomb, and after his return from Rome he constructed over the saint’s tomb a small church that he apparently dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, the illustrious apostles of Rome whose bishops had supported him during his conflicts.³⁰ So not until almost the middle of the fifth century did the cult of St. Martin finally acquire two consequential associations at Tours, one with the citizens that allowed the cult to serve as a unifying rather than a divisive force in the city, and the other with the bishops, who now usually staked their reputations on the cult’s prominence. Thereafter people began to visit the saint’s tomb to be healed; and Brictio and most subsequent bishops of Tours were now also buried in the church over the saint’s tomb.³¹

The influence of St. Martin subsequently became more widespread, both at Tours and throughout Gaul. Brictio’s successor was Eustochius, who constructed a church dedicated to St. Gervasius and St. Protasius inside the walls of Tours. By the middle of the fifth century Tours was on the edge of the settlement of the Visigoths in Aquitaine, who were Arian Christians. Eustochius may well have decided to honor these two Italian martyrs because of their connection with Bishop Ambrose of Milan, a contemporary of St. Martin whose discovery of these martyrs’ relics had been part of his campaign against Arianism. Yet according to the tradition that Gregory recorded generations later, St. Martin had himself acquired these relics.³² Because this tradition therefore interpreted Eustochius’s new church as an indication of his homage for some saints whom St. Martin had once honored, people could instead consider St. Martin himself as a champion of Catholic Christianity against the Visigoths and their Arianism. In 458 the Visigoths besieged the Roman general Aegidius in Arles, who was rescued after appealing for St. Martin’s assistance. And when Gregory later argued with Arian Visigoths from Spain, he classified St. Martin with heroes from the Old Testament as witnesses to the correctness of Catholic Christianity.³³ In comparison with some of his contemporaries, such as his mentor Bishop Hilary of Poitiers, Bishop Martin had been remarkably aloof from current arguments over Arianism; but by the middle of the fifth century his cult nevertheless came to represent Gallic opposition to Visigothic Arianism.

At about the same time the saint’s cult was expanded again at Tours, this time by Perpetuus, who became bishop in 458 or 459. His promotion of the cult had several components. One was the construction of a new church over the saint’s tomb. Once Perpetuus decided that the original small church was unworthy of the miracles that St. Martin performed at his tomb, he constructed a larger church. Both locals and others helped; the citizens of Tours transported the columns, and the bishop of Autun sent marble for the cover over the saint’s tomb. Perpetuus also commissioned a series of murals for the walls of the church and a set of accompanying inscriptions that were engraved on the walls and that described and interpreted some of the murals.³⁴ At least two of the more illustrious poets of later fifth-century Gaul contributed. Paulinus of Périgueux composed a poem for the nave of the church, and Sidonius, later bishop of Clermont, one for the apse. Upon the completion of the church Perpetuus convened neighboring bishops, abbots, and clerics to the festival of St. Martin on July 4 that commemorated the saint’s consecration as bishop; and as a result of Perpetuus’s revitalization of the cult, thereafter this festival also celebrated both the dedication of this new church and the transfer of the saint’s sarcophagus to its apse.³⁵

Transfer to this new church effectively consolidated a new image for St. Martin. During the dedication of Perpetuus’s church, people became discouraged because of their difficulty in lifting the saint’s sarcophagus. According to a tradition that Gregory later recorded, finally an angel appeared in the guise of an old abbot and helped them move the sarcophagus to the new church. Previously ascetics and monastic communities had promoted the saint as a monk. Now, even though St. Martin would remain an important patron for monastic establishments, this angelic abbot had helped effectively to bury the image of St. Martin the monk in favor of a revised image of St. Martin the bishop. So during the sixth century one man visualized the saint clothed in a bishop’s robe; and when St. Martin appeared to another man in a vision, he introduced himself as Martin, bishop of Tours.³⁶ Because of the reforms of Perpetuus, the bishops of Tours and not the monks of Marmoutier now became the major guardians of the cult of St. Martin the bishop.

Perpetuus also revamped the schedule of the liturgical festivals at Tours by drawing up precise timetables of fasts and vigils for the entire year.³⁷ St. Martin was one of the few saints in Gaul to have two annual festivals, on July 4 and November 11 (the latter marking his death), and his festivals were certainly prominent in these timetables. So was his new church. Perpetuus’s schedule of vigils mentioned both universal Christian festivals and the festivals of local Gallic saints. The cathedral within the walls of Tours was the setting for the vigils of some of the universal festivals such as Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter; other churches or shrines dedicated to other saints provided the settings for the vigils before their festivals; but the church of St. Martin was the setting not only for the vigils before his two festivals but also for the vigils before some of the universal festivals, such as Ascension Day and Pentecost, and before the festivals of other Gallic saints and other bishops of Tours. With Perpetuus’ revision the new church of St. Martin in the suburbs had effectively replaced the cathedral as the focal point of most of the liturgical calendar at Tours.

A final component of Perpetuus’s promotion of the cult of St. Martin involved written accounts. Just as Sulpicius Severus had once come from outside Tours to compose a Vita of Martin, so Paulinus of Périgueux had already begun independently to versify Sulpicius’s Vita, perhaps because St. Martin had relieved his eye ailment. Paulinus’s initiative therefore hints at the existence of veneration for the saint’s shrine even among laymen outside Tours. Perpetuus was impressed enough by Paulinus’s poem that he sent him Sulpicius’s Dialogues and invited him to versify it too. Paulinus sent his completed versification back to the bishop, along with a cover letter in which he complimented Perpetuus extravagantly while bemoaning his own literary inabilities equally extravagantly. Perpetuus had meanwhile been compiling a collection of stories about the saint’s posthumous miracles, and eventually he invited Paulinus to versify that anthology as the final book of his long ballad about St. Martin.³⁸

Perpetuus’s promotion of the saint’s cult was a self-conscious revision and updating of the past. His new church replaced a smaller church; the murals and inscriptions memorialized various deeds of Bishop Martin; in the process of rewriting Sulpicius’s books Paulinus of Périgueux had also made them more relevant to his times; and Perpetuus had effectively written a sequel to Sulpicius’s books by collecting the saint’s posthumous miracles. Because buildings, murals, and books were all means of communicating messages about the saint’s power that were comprehensible to both literates and illiterates, Perpetuus had effectively popularized the cult, not in the sense of aiming it simply at ordinary people, but rather in the sense of making it more accessible both to educated elites throughout Gaul who might read Paulinus’s verses, and to ordinary people who could visit the church, view its murals, participate in the festivals, and listen to readings about the saint. Subsequent revitalization of the cult, and presumably of other saints’ cults elsewhere too, followed the same pattern. A century later when Gregory again promoted St. Martin’s cult at Tours, he too reconstructed churches, repaired the murals in the church of St. Martin and added more in the cathedral, reiterated the importance of the writings of Sulpicius and Paulinus of Périgueux, and collected more posthumous miracles as a sequel to Perpetuus’s collection. The past shaped the present, and the present repeated the past; the apparent timelessness of the miracle stories that Sulpicius, Perpetuus, and eventually Gregory recorded is itself a telling indication of the continuing vitality of the saint and his cult over these two centuries.

Perpetuus’s activities transformed Tours into the city of Martin.³⁹ Yet although Perpetuus was obviously a pivotal figure in the development of St. Martin’s cult, it is important to put his actions into a wider context. Perpetuus was not the only bishop who now promoted a local saint’s cult. During the second half of the fifth century the construction of churches and the expansion or initiation of saints’ cults were common throughout Gaul.⁴⁰ The cult of St. Martin was therefore one among many, and the mere availability of more evidence should not necessarily imply that it was already in the later fifth century the most prominent cult in late Roman Gaul. Other unforeseen historical circumstances influenced its further development.

Under the Roman Empire Tours had been distant from any hostile activity on the frontier along the Rhine. Although during the mid-third century that frontier had nearly collapsed, by the end of the century the activities of a series of usurping Gallic emperors and then of the Roman emperors had again restored control, and during the fourth century an emperor and his court were usually resident in northern Gaul at Trier. But in the early fifth century even the pretense of an effective frontier had disappeared as many barbarian tribes migrated into Gaul. Among them had been the Visigoths, who in 418 settled in Aquitaine. Initially the Visigoths assisted Roman troops as allied federates, but by the middle of the century as Roman administration became increasingly a memory they began to expand their own kingdom into eastern and central Gaul. Occasionally emperors or their commanders sent assistance to various Gallic cities.⁴¹ But without an effective Roman administration in northern and central Gaul to provide the semblance of a central authority, local Gallic aristocrats and Roman generals joined barbarian chieftains in asserting their own influence. In north-central Gaul, for instance, the Roman general Aegidius established a renegade principality centered at Soissons, and some of the Franks who had been settled in northern Gaul since the early fourth century even accepted him as their own king; his son Syagrius succeeded him with the wonderfully hybrid title of king of the Romans.⁴² In contrast to its isolated location in Roman Gaul, Tours was now caught in the middle between Visigothic, Frankish, and Roman kingdoms.

The bishops of Tours therefore had to make political choices about which of these competing kingdoms to support. Unlike other Gallic aristocrats and bishops, they tended to look north to Soissons rather than south to the Visigothic capital of Toulouse, and the traditions that Gregory later recorded claimed that the Visigoths had deposed some of Perpetuus’s successors for disloyalty. These bishops of Tours probably preferred to oppose the Visigoths in part because of their uneasiness about the Visigoths’s Arianism, in part too because St. Martin had already once before assisted Aegidius.⁴³ But when Syagrius, Aegidius’s son, faced defeat by the Frankish king Clovis, he fled to the Visigoths at Toulouse.⁴⁴ Syagrius hence abandoned more than his kingdom at Soissons, because by fleeing south he had also disavowed his family’s association with the cult of St. Martin and its opposition to Arianism. So by assuming control over Soissons, Clovis also in a sense inherited this connection with the cult of St. Martin and its promotion of Catholic Christianity against the Arian Visigoths.

Clovis’s campaigns marked the further expansion of the Franks from their earlier settlements in northern Gaul, as well as the consolidation of his own rule over other Frankish groups. But he and his dynastic successors were always somewhat uneasy about the effectiveness of their royal authority, because not only were they attempting to control their Frankish supporters, they also had to cope with great Gallo-Roman aristocrats who retained much local influence. Gallic aristocrats had already survived the imposition of a Roman administration centuries earlier. Some had acquired the distinguished ranks and high offices that were indications of imperial patronage; a few had even attempted to become emperors themselves; most had retained control over or ownership of the land, always the surest source of influence and wealth in the ancient world, and had been content to function as brokers between imperial administrators and the native population. With the dissolution of the imperial administration during the fifth century their descendants had cultivated new means for maintaining their local reputations and influence. One was promotion into the ecclesiastical hierarchy; another related method was association with saints’ cults. At Tours Bishops Eustochius, Perpetuus, and Volusianus had all been members of a wealthy Gallic family that claimed senatorial rank, and their activities in constructing new churches and patronizing the cult of St. Martin certainly also promoted their own and their family’s reputations.⁴⁵ Other families came to dominate other sees and other cults. So by the time the Franks began to expand beyond northern Gaul during the later fifth century, many of these saints’ cults were already linked closely with particular cities, their bishops, and some of the leading families.

In order to facilitate his acceptance among Romans, Clovis had to demonstrate his support for these established saints’ cults. Although he also fought in eastern Gaul with or against the Burgundians and the Alamans, eventually he prepared a campaign against the Visigoths in 507. According to Gregory’s later account, in preparation for this battle Clovis ordered his troops not to pillage the territory of Tours, sent gifts to the church of St. Martin at Tours, and received the assistance of St. Hilary at Poitiers. After his victory he returned to the church of St. Martin at Tours in 508, assumed some of the trappings of a Roman emperor, and distributed largess to the citizens.⁴⁶

It is most important, however, not to overestimate Clovis’s support for the church of St. Martin. In a final attempt to mediate between the Franks and the Visigoths, King Theoderic of the Ostrogoths did not mention any religious disputes;⁴⁷ and although Gregory had stressed Clovis’s respect for St. Martin, in fact the king did not mention the saint in his instructions to his army before the battle with the Visigoths.⁴⁸ During the sixth century the cult of St. Martin certainly did not become any sort of royal cult for the Frankish kings; Clovis, for instance, soon went to Paris and never returned to Tours. His departure from Tours neatly symbolized the uneasiness that these new kings felt in trying to accommodate themselves and their royal authority to a dominant cult. Although he and his Merovingian successors realized that they had to come to terms with the cult of St. Martin, just as they had to accommodate influential bishops, great Roman aristocrats, and their own Frankish supporters, acknowledging dependence upon St. Martin was not an easy concession to make. According to a later, probably apocryphal, story, after Clovis had had to pay twice what he intended in order to retrieve his horse from the church of St. Martin, he admitted that the saint drove a hard bargain for his assistance.⁴⁹ Subsequent kings usually respected the power of St. Martin, in particular by granting immunity from taxation to the citizens of Tours. They also released a captive who called on the assistance of St. Martin, threatened to execute men who robbed the saint’s church, and sealed their treaties by citing the saint as one of the judges and avengers who guaranteed compliance.⁵⁰ But most would probably have tacitly agreed that the price of deference for St. Martin’s support was too high. During the sixth century only Chlothar ever again visited Tours during his reign to pray at the tomb of St. Martin, in part perhaps because he was still upset over his wife Radegund’s departure, in part too because he needed forgiveness for having been responsible for the death of his son Chramn.⁵¹ Renegade sons of the royal family might come to Tours to seek sanctuary at the church of St. Martin, and dowager queens such as Clotild, Clovis’s widow, might serve at the saint’s church and even influence the selection of bishops at Tours,⁵² but the ruling kings (and queens) kept their distance, never even bringing their ill sons to the saint’s tomb.⁵³ Even when a king wanted to consult with St. Martin, he did not go in person. King Chilperic instead sent a letter that was placed on the saint’s tomb, along with a blank sheet of paper for the saint’s response; but St. Martin did not reply.⁵⁴ Only King Childebert may have built a church dedicated to St. Martin, but then in such an obscure spot in northern Gaul that modern scholars cannot identify it with certainty.⁵⁵ During the sixth century the cult of St. Martin was not closely associated with the Merovingian kings.⁵⁶

Instead, Clovis and his royal successors preferred to promote new cults for new saints. His father Childeric had once granted the requests of Genovefa (Geneviève), an ascetic at Paris; after her death in ca. 502, Clovis and his queen Clotild constructed a church near her tomb.⁵⁷ By the time Clovis was buried in this church in 511, it was dedicated to the Holy Apostles, perhaps in imitation of the church that the emperor Constantine had similarly dedicated in his new capital city of Constantinople and in which he had been buried; and by the time Clotild, a daughter, and two grandsons were buried in this church, it had also been dedicated to St. Peter, a patron saint of Rome. So in the process of adopting the new cult of a recent Gallic saint, Clovis had furthermore expanded his pretensions by linking himself and his dynasty with the greatest cities of the Roman Empire and their imperial associations.⁵⁸

During the sixth century his successors promoted other new cults in Paris, Soissons, and Chalon-sur-Saône. These cities were three important early centers of Merovingian influence in north-central Gaul and Burgundy; they were also, significantly, not metropolitan sees. At Paris King Childebert constructed a church dedicated to St. Vincentius, a Spanish martyr whose relics he had apparently acquired after invading Spain in 541; by the end of the century he, his nephew king Chilperic, two of Chilperic’s sons, and Chilperic’s wife Queen Fredegund had been buried in this church.⁵⁹ Bishop Medard of Noyon once consecrated Radegund, formerly a wife of King Chlothar, as a deaconess;⁶⁰ after Medard’s death, Chlothar and his son Sigibert constructed a church in his honor at Soissons, in which both were eventually buried.⁶¹ King Chilperic, another son of Chlothar, also venerated St. Medard by composing a poem in his honor, by granting some villas to the saint’s church, and by hoping to find a cure for an ill son at the church.⁶² At Chalon-sur-Saône King Guntramn promoted the cult of St. Marcellus, an obscure local martyr about whom even Gregory knew very little. The king built, or rebuilt, the saint’s church, founded a monastery there, and richly endowed both. He celebrated the saint’s festival in this church, and both an assassin and a refugee knew they might find him there. His wife Austrigild and their two sons were probably buried in this church of St. Marcellus, and upon his own death in 592 he was buried there too.⁶³ The cults of St. Genovefa, St. Vincentius, St. Medard, and St. Marcellus were therefore associated with Frankish kings from their inceptions, and the eventual spread of these saints’ influence might be an indication of the acceptance of royal influence too. Leontius of Bordeaux, for instance, may have once pretentiously introduced himself to a king as the bishop of an apostolic see, but he also had the sense to construct a church dedicated to St. Vincentius.⁶⁴ Bishop Germanus of Paris likewise had a reputation for occasionally confronting Frankish kings, and he maintained a close association with the cult of St. Symphorianus, in whose monastery at Autun he had once served as abbot; but upon his death in 576 he was nevertheless buried in the church of St. Vincentius at Paris.⁶⁵ Relics of St. Vincentius were also found in villages near Poitiers and Tours, and Bishop Eufronius, Gregory’s predecessor, had constructed a church in his honor at Tours.⁶⁶ Eufronius was also probably responsible for placing relics of St. Medard in a church in another village in the Touraine, and Gregory himself owned the saint’s staff and once visited his tomb at Soissons.⁶⁷

The Merovingian dynasty thus gradually acquired its own patron saints, whom even bishops considered important enough to honor. The dynasty also eventually developed a closer relationship with the cult of St. Martin, although still often by avoiding direct contact with Tours. First, some Merovingian queens and princesses took the lead by following Clotild’s example and demonstrating their own devotion for the cult. The Merovingian princess Bertha, for instance, even after marrying King Æthelberht of Kent continued to worship in a church dedicated to St. Martin outside Canterbury.⁶⁸ In 588 Fortunatus visited Metz and the court of King Childebert, who had three years earlier regained Tours for his kingdom. There Fortunatus celebrated the summer festival of St. Martin by reciting a poem in the presence of the king and his mother Brunhild in which he claimed that kingdoms honored the saint as their patron.⁶⁹ Brunhild seems to have noted the hint, because during her subsequent period of ascendancy she promoted the saint’s cult, in particular by joining with Bishop Syagrius of Autun in the construction of a church dedicated to St. Martin in the city’s suburbs.⁷⁰ Second, although Merovingian kings still did not visit Tours, some continued to honor the saint’s cult. King Dagobert I donated royal taxes to the church of St. Martin at Tours and also provided the funds to have the saint’s tomb decorated with gold and jewels.⁷¹ In the middle of the seventh century his son King Sigibert III perhaps rebuilt a church dedicated to St. Martin in his capital city of Metz, in which he was then buried.⁷² And finally, the Merovingian kings eventually also acquired a special relic of St. Martin. In his versification of the writings of Sulpicius, Fortunatus had retold the story about Martin cutting his military cloak in half to share it with a beggar at Amiens: this soldier’s white cloak is more valuable than an emperor’s purple cloak.⁷³ He had reiterated his praise for the saint’s cloak in his laudatory poem before Childebert and Brunhild.⁷⁴ As relics from their visits to Tours most pilgrims had had to settle for dust from the saint’s tomb, slivers of wood from the railing, or wax from the candles in the church; but by the later seventh century at the latest the Merovingian dynasty had acquired the cloak of St. Martin.⁷⁵ This cloak was now probably the only major relic of St. Martin outside the Touraine, and its acquisition is a telling indication of how, in order to feel comfortable in acquiring the saint’s patronage, the Merovingian kings had had to abstract a part of him from his stronghold at Tours. Although kings had patronized the church of St. Martin at Tours and some dowager queens had even visited, the Merovingians seem to have preferred to support both his and other saints’ cults elsewhere than at Tours.

The acquisition of St. Martin’s cloak indicated in part an attempt by the Merovingians to maintain their authority in the face of challenges from great aristocrats, in part too an attempt to bolster specifically the prominence of the Neustrian subkingdom in northwest Gaul. Another indication of Neustria’s prominence during most of the seventh century was the increasing importance of the cult of St. Dionysius (St. Denis), who was thought to have been the first bishop of Paris and a martyr during the third century. Genovefa had once promoted the construction of a church dedicated to St. Dionysius at Paris.⁷⁶ Although King Clovis had honored the cult of St. Genovefa, during the sixth century St. Dionysius did not immediately become a distinctively royal saint.⁷⁷ King Chilperic may have been an early patron. In 574 soldiers from the army of his brother King Sigibert tried to loot the saint’s church at Paris; aristocrats allied with Chilperic swore oaths in the church; and in 580 one of his sons was buried there.⁷⁸ In the early seventh century his grandson King Dagobert I certainly began to patronize the church, and soon the saint’s church and monastery became a principal site for Merovingian, and eventually some Carolingian, royal tombs.⁷⁹ So by promoting their own saints’ cults at Paris, Soisson, and Chalon-sur-Saône the Merovingians had effectively created a buffer along the Seine and Saône rivers between their primary interests in northern and eastern Gaul and St. Martin’s shrine at Tours.⁸⁰

The cult of St. Martin had developed slowly during the first part of the fifth century, in part because Martin had been a distinctly unconventional bishop whose confrontational behavior and controversial claims had led to dissension even at his episcopal see of Tours. The domestication of Bishop Martin into St. Martin at Tours was hence perhaps a more difficult process than the spread of Christianity into the countryside of the Touraine. But once a more pragmatic mythology of St. Martin had modified the historical memories of Bishop Martin, both the bishops of Tours and their congregation could accept the saint’s cult as a means for harmony rather than disintegration in their community. The prominence of the cult of St. Martin made Tours an important city in late antique Gaul. Various ascetics and other pilgrims began to visit.⁸¹ Eventually King Clovis also visited; but after his departure most of the Merovingian kings kept their distance from Tours during the sixth and seventh centuries. The power and the influence of the saint’s cult that other pilgrims found attractive was disconcerting to these kings, who had enough problems trying to establish their authority. They instead decided to promote other saints’ cults, new cults for which their patronage was decisive at their inceptions. In fact, the pedigrees of some of the saints they now supported also made them more attractive to these kings, since Medard certainly and Genovefa perhaps too had had Frankish ancestors.⁸² As the Franks settled into Roman Gaul, their kings preferred to patronize these semi-Frankish saints, or at least to promote the cults of recent saints. The success of the bishops of Tours in expanding the cult of St. Martin had therefore not only limited interference by the Frankish kings at Tours; it also kept most of them from visiting at all. So even though King Clovis, soon after his victory over the Visigoths, had once worn the cloak of a Roman general and paraded like a Roman emperor at Tours, not until more than a century and a half later did the Merovingian kings finally dare to acquire the cloak of St. Martin.

2. The Cult of St. Hilary

Although the cult of St. Hilary was less prominent than the cult of St. Martin, its early development was somewhat similar. Like Martin, Hilary was thought to have revived some dead people; unlike Martin, he had made his reputation as an opponent of Arianism already during his episcopacy at Poitiers.⁸³ At least by the later fifth century a church that contained his tomb had been constructed in the suburbs of Poitiers. People thereafter venerated his shrine as a place to obtain healings, and him as a champion of Catholic Christianity, the blessed defender of an indivisible Trinity.⁸⁴ Perhaps because Hilary had once been Martin’s mentor, perhaps too because of the proximity of Tours and Poitiers, their cults in these twin cities were often linked.⁸⁵ Bishop Perpetuus included the festival of St. Hilary in his schedule of the vigils that were celebrated at Tours; Abbot Aredius of Limoges named both saints as his heirs; and kings cited both saints as the guarantors of a treaty.⁸⁶

But as with the cult of St. Martin, the early Merovingian kings had little direct contact with the cult of St. Hilary. In 507 when Clovis was preparing his campaign against the Visigoths, he sent envoys to the church of St. Martin, and later a fiery beacon from the church of St. Hilary guided him to battle. In 580 when Gregory objected to Chilperic’s idiosyncratic theological pronouncements by citing the teaching of St. Hilary, the king had the sense to realize that this saint would be a powerful opponent.⁸⁷ Merovingian kings also continued to influence the selection of bishops at Poitiers, as at Tours and other cities. But Gregory never mentioned a single instance of royal patronage or financial support for the church of St. Hilary at Poitiers or for the saint’s cult anywhere else in Gaul.⁸⁸ Neither did Fortunatus, who also never mentioned St. Hilary in any of his verse panegyrics for the Merovingians. Even though kings acknowledged the influence of St. Martin and St. Hilary, they preferred to keep their distance from both.

In fact, although Bishop Germanus of Paris visited and some pilgrims came from Cahors and perhaps Bourges,⁸⁹ most who went to the saint’s church were apparently locals. The most prominent supporters were the bishops of Poitiers. As successor to Bishop Pientius King Charibert promoted Pascentius, the abbot of the church of St. Hilary.⁹⁰ Pascentius soon commissioned both a Vita of St. Hilary and a collection of miracle stories. The Italian poet Fortunatus had arrived in Poitiers by 567, and although he knew little about St. Hilary, he soon learned, probably from the bishop himself, since in the dedication of his Vita Fortunatus described Pascentius as the saint’s special favorite.⁹¹ The cult of St. Hilary at Poitiers again resembled the cult of St. Martin at Tours. Bishops of Tours also developed special relationships with the patron saint of their see, and the cult of St. Martin, although more influential than the cult of St. Hilary, was still predominantly a regional cult.

But in the middle of the sixth century both the cult of St. Hilary and the bishops of Poitiers suddenly faced a novel challenge when Queen Radegund left her husband, King Chlothar, and decided to adopt an ascetic life. After Bishop Medard of Noyon consecrated her as a deaconess, she endowed the shrines of various saints before visiting the church of St. Martin at Tours and the shrine commemorating his death at Candes. Then she went to a villa in the Poitou where, like a new Martha, she began caring for the ill and destitute.⁹² Despite her connections with the royal court, important bishops, and various saints’ cults, Radegund’s presence was not necessarily a threat to the bishops of Poitiers. Other royal women, usually upon being widowed, had retired to other cities and had patronized cults. Radegund also decided to found a convent within Poitiers that King Chlothar then endowed.⁹³ Again, her convent and its royal patronage were not necessarily threats. At Tours, for instance, she had already founded a monastery;⁹⁴ and Ingytrud, who was probably an aunt of King Guntramn, founded a convent in a courtyard of the church of St. Martin in which a daughter of King Charibert temporarily resided.⁹⁵

Bishop Pientius hence helped Radegund in the construction of her convent. Duke Austrapius also assisted, and King Chlothar then began grooming him as Pientius’s successor.⁹⁶ So even though Bishop Germanus of Paris had served as the liaison between Radegund and King Chlothar,⁹⁷ initially the bishop of Poitiers and his apparent successor intended to cooperate with Radegund and her convent. But after Chlothar’s death in 561 King Charibert inherited control of Poitiers; and upon the death of Bishop Pientius, Charibert supported as his successor Pascentius, who had close ties with the cult and church of St. Hilary. Pascentius and his successor Maroveus were not closely involved in the subsequent expansion of Radegund’s convent. Several bishops eventually wrote to commend Radegund upon the foundation of her convent, including the metropolitan bishop Eufronius of Tours, four of his suffragan bishops, the metropolitan bishop of Rouen, and Bishop Germanus of Paris.⁹⁸ Significantly, neither the bishop of Poitiers nor his metropolitan, the bishop of Bordeaux, signed this letter. In this letter the bishops noted that Radegund was following the example of St. Martin; but they did not mention St. Hilary at all. They also noted that the women joining Radegund’s convent were coming from their episcopal dioceses;⁹⁹ but they did not mention the Poitou as a recruitment area. Agnes became the first abbess of this convent, and although Radegund claimed that the bishop of Poitiers had consented to her selection, Bishop Germanus of Paris consecrated her.¹⁰⁰ Radegund and Agnes later exchanged greetings and gifts with Bishops Ragnemod of Paris, Avitus of Clermont, and Gregory of Tours, and with Abbot Aredius of Limoges.¹⁰¹ When Radegund once invoked the patron saints of her convent, she mentioned St. Hilary with St. Martin but listed both after the True Cross and the Virgin Mary. And when in a vision she instructed a man to construct an oratory, she also told him to dedicate it with relics of St. Martin.¹⁰² So although Gregory later insisted that she and her convent had always been subject to bishops,¹⁰³ Radegund’s clear reliance upon bishops and saints from elsewhere in the foundation of her convent certainly posed a challenge to the authority of the bishops of Poitiers and the cult of St. Hilary.

Bishop Maroveus had reason to be apprehensive, all the more so because Radegund also started to collect relics. Once she sent an envoy directly to the patriarch of Jerusalem to fetch relics of an Eastern saint.¹⁰⁴ Soon after Maroveus assumed the episcopacy of Poitiers, Radegund wrote to King Sigibert, who then controlled Poitiers, and asked his permission to request a relic of the