At the opening of the ninth century, a person in the central Frankish lands might have spotted a cleric desperately making his way to Tours. The fleeing man hoped to escape the punishments recently handed down by the ecclesiastical court in Orléans. Days earlier, he had committed a serious crime, been found guilty, and even been imprisoned. Yet somehow he had loosed himself from his shackles and escaped his captors. Now he sought sanctuary at the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. But the asylum seeker found no peace. His flight prompted the dispatch of a party from Orléans intent on securing him, though monks from Tours stopped them in their tracks. They returned home, soon to be replaced by a second group, larger and armed. Their arrival then instigated a brawl within the church's sanctuary between religious men on both sides—as well as a riot by the Tours townspeople, drunk and eager to defend their beloved saint. Again, the men from Orléans left empty-handed. Before long, Emperor Charlemagne learned of the incident and sent a royal investigator to Tours to determine the facts on the ground. This judicial inquiry brought further violence as the missus extracted—under torture—participants’ and witnesses’ statements. In the end, Charlemagne's investigator sided with Theodulf, bishop of Orléans: the cleric ought not to have been granted sanctuary at Saint Martin's due to his prior conviction. Punishment should, the emperor concluded, rain down upon the sinner. Yet what ultimately happened to the fugitive has been lost to the historical record. What remains are letters written by Alcuin, abbot of Saint Martin's, and Charlemagne.Footnote 1
Those letters and the incident that prompted them have sparked much scholarly attention. Luitpold Wallach and Hélène Noizet have discussed the evidence from the perspective of law; Janet L. Nelson, in the context of inter-magnate violence; Michael Driscoll, from the angle of penance; and Rob Meens, through the approach of conflict management.Footnote 2 Most recently, Samuel W. Collins has employed the event to frame his study of the Carolingian debate over sacred space, since the Tours incident offers a practical example of how competing theories about churches could play out in very real ways.Footnote 3 This episode, however, begs to be situated within the context of both the legislative texts that were central to delineating sacred space and other contemporary texts that depict challenges to legislative definitions of sacrality.
This essay undertakes an exploration of eighth- and ninth-century Frankish understandings and experiences of churches as holy spaces and thus builds not only on the work of Collins but also that of Julia M. H. Smith and Donald Bullough on lay religious experience.Footnote 4 On the broadest level, I argue that an array of texts—but specifically legislative, hagiographical, and epistolary ones—reveal both the widespread Frankish belief in churches as highly sacred spaces and the significant variations in the details and execution of that belief. More narrowly, I assert that Carolingian legislation worked to define, recognize, and maintain the sacred space of churches by insisting upon specific, respectful behaviors within them. Yet, after exploring an array of non-legislative texts well known in modern historiography that praise transgressions of these laws, I ultimately contend that not all misbehavior and misuse of churches defiled them. Rather, inappropriate behaviors often highlighted or even activated the sanctity of a space in a manner that legislation alone could not. Accordingly, this article embraces the approach of conflict studies by problematizing normative texts and reading transgressive behavior as constitutive (not just destructive) of sacred space specifically and religious life more generally.Footnote 5 Triangulating these well-known Carolingian legislative, hagiographical, and epistolary texts opens a window onto the views not only of early ninth-century elite Franks regarding churches as sacred spaces but also of the laity, an elusive group to scholars. Ultimately, I hope to raise questions about the extent (and limits) of Frankish beliefs regarding spatial sacrality, the reach of the Carolingian reform efforts, and the nature of lay religiosity.Footnote 6
I. Sacred Space and the Carolingian World
The Carolingian period was critical to the history of Christian holy space, as ritual practices and attitudes to churches shifted significantly in the eighth and ninth centuries.Footnote 7 For example, by 800 c.e., bishops had begun to perform elaborate rites for consecrating churches that firmly established church space as sacred and thus differentiated from the mundane world.Footnote 8 Terminology also changed in ways that highlighted ecclesiastical structures: Frankish bishops and abbots, by the 840s, came to accept ecclesia as a suitable term for the church building, not only the community contained within it.Footnote 9 Such emphases on churches as sacred spaces found additional support in Carolingian leaders’ attempts to unite their sprawling dominions, transform society, revitalize Christian belief and practice, and make the Frankish realm more Christian. Through the renovatio, the Frankish court, bishops, and church councils together produced a large body of legislation—capitula, capitula episcoporum, and concilia—to reform religious behavior.Footnote 10 This push to control habit and belief regulated Frankish interaction with space, and the resultant texts offer a fruitful avenue for exploring the diverse landscape in which ecclesiae existed.
Carolingian legislation reveals that the Franks did not write the Latin equivalent of “sacred space.” Spatium, when used, referred to a measure of time or vaguely to physical areas. When Franks wished to express the idea that holiness could fix itself to a location, the preferred term was sancta loca, or holy places. Such a designation often accords with Yi-Fu Tuan's description of places as sites possessing definition, meaning, and familiarity. Yet Carolingian points of sacrality could also bring religious power to surrounding areas with amorphous, continually shifting boundaries, thus conveying the meaning of space, as outlined by Tuan.Footnote 11
Regardless of terminology, Carolingian legislation shows significant spatial diversity and complexity. While Mircea Eliade divided the world into sacred and profane spaces, eighth- and ninth-century Latin texts refer to at least three types of places—sacred, secular, and pagan.Footnote 12 These categories, however, were not rigid, nor did they fully capture the Frankish spatial framework. A place could be gendered or designated by a person's lay or religious status. Additionally, there were varying degrees of sacrality, and the meanings attached to places could shift, such as when rituals made secular spaces sacred or miracles transformed pagan sites into Christian ones. As a whole, spaces fluctuated due to history, memory, events, and beliefs, and Frankish people played a vital role in these definitions and fluctuations, since even locations understood as inherently holy required the recognition of that holiness. This centrality of human experience to space effected a circularity: while sacred spaces necessitated strong regulations due to their holiness, the adherence to such regulations maintained that very holiness.
These legislative texts thus demonstrate both how humans produce space and how space produces human ideas and behaviors; they reveal an interdependent relationship between perceptions of spaces and behavior within spaces. Historians studying the Carolingian world are thus well placed to embrace social scientific methods and employ space as a methodological tool. Specifically, these Frankish texts reflect Henri LeFebvre's emphasis on space as a human product rather than simply a backdrop for historical drama, Rudolf Otto's emphasis on the numinous, and Jonathan Z. Smith's insistence on the role of ritual in the making of place.Footnote 13 Moreover, the interdisciplinary lens of space allows one to examine the past through various perspectives simultaneously—art, architecture, theology, legislation, devotion, and politics, among others—and dismantle modern disciplinary barriers artificially separating facets of the Carolingian world. Still, the historian must take caution and not indiscriminately apply universal spatial theories that flatten the particularities of divergent contexts. We ought, then, to heed Martina Löw's arguments for the vital importance of experience, belief, and perception to the creation of space as well as Robert Markus's discussion of the errors that can result from employing modern theories or experiences.Footnote 14 Ultimately, focusing closely on the texts helps keep us tethered to our specific context: the Carolingian church.
II. Carolingian Churches
Carolingian legislation presents churches as exceptionally sacred.Footnote 15 They were to be clean, bright, beautiful, and diligently constructed and covered. Clergy were to supply lights regularly and zealously.Footnote 16 As long as a church stood, Christians were to support it monetarily, with tithes financing both construction and decoration.Footnote 17
Carolingian leges also address churches’ structures and ornamentation. Altars were to be well constructed and made of stone.Footnote 18 Legislation increasingly required that altars be covered.Footnote 19 Some texts proclaim that churches were to be highly ornate.Footnote 20 “Regarding the ornamentation of a church, David said: ‘Lord, I esteemed the beauty of your house and the place of your glorious habitation.’”Footnote 21 Others warn against people esteeming gold more than the altar, and, in fact, the Carolingian court devoted the early 790s to debating and producing a treatise regarding religious representation.Footnote 22
Whether heavily or sparsely decorated, Carolingian churches were to be protected from deterioration, fraud, and injury, and their honors and privileges were to be maintained.Footnote 23 Even churches built by insincere men ought not to be destroyed but given daily honors.Footnote 24 Older churches were not to be deprived of money in favor of newer ones, but, in the case of an excessive number of ecclesiae, some could be razed.Footnote 25 Overall, Christians were never to allow churches to deteriorate or their roofs to fall into disrepair.
Appropriate behavior within churches helped demarcate the space as special, since to step into a domus Dei was to step into a house of prayer and site of religious instruction. Thus, legislation prohibited myriad behaviors that were permitted in the profane world surrounding these holy spaces. Recalling how Jesus cast the buyers and sellers from his temple, leges prohibited all business transactions.Footnote 26 Secular negotiations and placita were to occur only minimally, preferably in the atrium.Footnote 27 One conciliar act suggests expulsion for those who made placita within church walls.Footnote 28 (On the other hand, the altar possessed a sacred quality that made it optimal for confirming transactions, such as freeing a slave.Footnote 29) Additional activities banned from churches’ walls included feasts and picnics, the possession of animals, the storage of mundane goods, and strolls. There was to be no talking, no eating, no clapping, no idle speech or lying, and no leaving before the liturgy's conclusion. Confusion, disputes, and dishonest activities were also prohibited.Footnote 30
There was, of course, to be no evil or violence in a church or its atrium.Footnote 31 If one committed murder within a church, the punishment was death, though self-defense could bring a more lenient sentence. Beyond the church walls, killing was also condemned, though severity of punishment depended on the perpetrator's distance from altar (that is, the space's level of sacrality) at the time of the crime.Footnote 32 Those who committed crimes or participated in immoral acts were banned from churches: incestuous Christians were expelled and confessed murderers were forbidden entrance for forty days, for, as the legislation states, immoral acts pollute sacred space.Footnote 33
Carolingian legislation also presents a code of positive conduct. Christians were to visit churches frequently and faithfully, blessing themselves with holy water at the church's threshold and entering silently, reverently, and in fear of God.Footnote 34 Women were required to be veiled lest they be expelled, while men were explicitly not to don a veil.Footnote 35 Throughout the liturgy, the laity was to pray with sighs and tears, separating themselves from hateful words, and listening intently to the word of God.Footnote 36 Overall, peace was to be kept by all within the church.
Such peaceful, reverent comportment was expected to extend even to highly tense moments, such as the pursuit of sanctuary.Footnote 37 Sanctuary, an extraordinary quality possessed by churches, promised (in principle) peace to refugees.Footnote 38 Safety was to emanate from the altar throughout the church, into the atrium, and beyond the walls.Footnote 39 Within these zones, no refugee ought to be violently expelled.Footnote 40 That did not, however, suggest the fugitive's innocence or prevent his trial; rather, sanctuary was only a protection from violence.Footnote 41 Once guaranteed of their safety, refugees were to present themselves for judgment.Footnote 42 Those previously convicted of crimes, and especially murderers and men condemned to death, were not owed full sanctuary rights.Footnote 43
Legislation also reveals much about the laity's expected movement within churches, particularly in relation to its holiest site. Laypeople were to interact with the altar by venerating it in a regulated way and avoiding overcrowding around it.Footnote 44 Legislation admonishes Christians against committing perjury on the altar or doing other terrible deeds before it.Footnote 45 Spatial restrictions often fell along gendered lines, as women were told to remain in certain spaces. Laws exclude them from the sanctuary and prohibit their approaching the altar, instructing them to deliver their confessions at the chancel barrier.Footnote 46 The Episcoporum ad Hludowicum imperatorem relatio (August 829) reads: “We prohibit in all ways the illicit access of women to the altar.”Footnote 47 Yet when the altar cloths needed washing, the task fell to female parishioners. The clergy were to remove the linens from the altar, carry them to the chancel screens, and hand them over to the selected women. The return of the clean cloths likewise occurred at the chancel.Footnote 48
In further recognition of the altar's sanctity, clerical conduct was regulated there as well. Clergy were to minister to the altar of God with great love and reverence.Footnote 49 They were not to cover their heads nor bring staffs or walking sticks either near the altar or within the choir; instead, they were to carry only the necessary liturgical implements.Footnote 50 Furthermore, no one who served in the sanctuary could be involved in usury.Footnote 51 Activities within a sacred space ought to be reverent, and activities in the sanctuary ought to be performed by reverent individuals.
III. Transgressions and Pollution: The Incident at Tours
Yet if Carolingian legislative texts depict churches as sacred, they also problematize that sacrality and its attendant expectations. Laws, in a sense, capture only imagined space—whether the memory of a past space, the image of an ideal contemporary space, or aspirations for a future space—but not actual, lived space. By their very nature, they raise questions about the extent to which they are reactive, proscriptive, or descriptive. For example, secular and religious leaders felt the need to reiterate regulations pertaining to church space. They found it necessary to demand that deteriorating churches be repaired and to legislate appropriate behavior, suggesting that people did not always care properly for, or behave appropriately within, churches. Some texts explicitly state that people were not abiding by regulations; in his first capitulary, Theodulf writes, “We often see crops and hay collected in churches.”Footnote 52 Likewise, the Episcoporum ad Hludowicum imperatorem relatio, quoted above as prohibiting female entry to the sanctuary, includes rumors of women transgressing gendered boundaries:
Since we have heard by whatever report that in those provinces, against the divine law and the canonical institution, women approach the sacred altars and impudently handle the sacred vessels and priestly vestments and, which is of greater indecency and foolishness, they provide the body and blood of the Lord to the people and others who are likewise foul; we prohibit this, lest they presume to do even more.Footnote 53
Admittedly, these bishops might not be describing actual behavior but giving voice to paranoia about potential lay misbehavior. Yet, if we return to the dramatic struggle over the fugitive at Tours, we find a clear example of how laws could be contravened, provoking leaders to draft reactionary legislation.
Five letters of what would have been a twelve-document collection tell of the sanctuary case.Footnote 54 Alcuin penned four letters: one to Charlemagne; one to his two pupils and close friends, Witto (nicknamed “Candidus”) and Deacon Fridugisus (“Nathaniel”), both Anglo-Saxons at the Aachen court; one to a bishop of uncertain identity; and one to Arn, archbishop of Salzburg.Footnote 55 The fifth epistle offers Charlemagne's response to a now-lost letter from Alcuin.Footnote 56 Charlemagne's letter, which never engages with the general right of sanctuary, mostly rebukes Alcuin and his actions. The emperor aligns Alcuin with the guilty party, emphasizing the ire and harshness of the abbot's letter and implying a connection between his temper and how quick to anger the monks and laypeople of Tours were.Footnote 57 Charlemagne chides Alcuin for being a bad abbot, not aiding in the monks’ correction, and “sowing . . . discord.”Footnote 58
While scolding Alcuin, Charlemagne also responds to his arguments, emphasizing the specifics of the case and countering the abbot's points.Footnote 59 Charlemagne's arguments largely revolve around what was owed (or, rather, not owed) to the fugitive but also the disobedience of Alcuin, his monks, and the layfolk for ignoring an imperial order twice.Footnote 60 The emperor's overarching complaint is Alcuin's disrespect for authority and disobedience to the emperor. Since Charlemagne dwells on the legal details, he gives no explicit statement of his thoughts regarding the church's sanctity. That said, Charlemagne's claim that the fugitive should not have entered the church because he had not yet done penance may indicate his adherence to the view that sin polluted the church.Footnote 61 But beyond this conjecture, Charlemagne's letter does not suggest an inherent interest in maintaining the church's sanctity.
Fortunately, other texts provide greater insight into Charlemagne's understanding of church space in relation to the dispute. His 803 Capitulare legibus additum deals in great detail with the law of sanctuary and of immunity, outlining the laws governing: first, when and how a religious official must hand over a fugitive in his protection; second, the financial penalties for sanctuary guardians who do not; third, one's “right to seek that man inside the place of immunity” if he is not handed over; and fourth, who is culpable should a fugitive flee from a place of immunity.Footnote 62 The emphasis here on the handing over of a fugitive closely echoes the case at Tours, in which the sinner sought sanctuary in the church of Saint Martin's and immunity in the monastery of Tours.Footnote 63
The following chapter should also capture our interest: “If someone flees to a church for sanctuary, he should have peace in the atrium of that church, nor is it necessary for him to enter the church, and no one can presume to remove him from there through force.”Footnote 64 This statement is not unusual in its inclusion of the atrium within the zone of sanctuary—other legislation extends the power of sanctuary beyond the altar and nave into the atrium.Footnote 65 It is, however, the earliest Carolingian legislation that specifically emphasizes the atrium. Considering the great tumult and disgrace that occurred in Tours, this is most likely a reaction to that profanation of the ecclesia. It was unlawful and immoral that any violence occurred; how much worse that it occurred within the sacred space of the basilica—particularly inside the altar screens? The Capitulare legibus additum, written at the emperor's direction, may reveal Charlemagne's opinion on the incident. By emphasizing the atrium as a zone of protection, he may have hoped to prevent future violence within the church proper, especially the sanctuary. Overall, we can conclude that Charlemagne believed that churches were sacred spaces that ought to prohibit both convicted sinners (prior to the completion of their penance) and violence.
None of the relevant letters from Theodulf survive, yet he certainly agreed with Charlemagne's argument that the fugitive did not deserve sanctuary because he had already been convicted in an episcopal court. Moreover, we can imagine anger on Theodulf's part that Alcuin and others were questioning his jurisdiction at Orléans, whence the fugitive fled. The more fundamental aspect of Theodulf's opinion, however, relates to his understanding of ecclesiae as highly sacred spaces.
Theodulf's beliefs emerge in his first episcopal statute (circa 802), likely a response to the quarrel.Footnote 66 In this text, he writes:
One ought not to convene in the church for any reason except for the praise of God and for doing service to him. Indeed, deception and tumult, vain speaking and other such actions should be prohibited entirely from that sacred place. For where the name of God is invoked and sacrifice offered to God, it should not be doubted that angels are frequently present. Danger comes to those who say or do anything that is not proper to the place. If, indeed, the Lord ejected from the temple those who bought and sold the victims that were to be offered to him, how much more angry will he eject those who defile the place of the divine cult with lies, vain speech, laughter, and other trifles?Footnote 67
Theodulf describes the ecclesia as a holy place to be treated with respect and reverence, to be kept clean and pure, and to remain undefiled. His conception of ecclesiastical space, as Collins has argued, depends on a literal understanding of the connection between the biblical past and Carolingian present.Footnote 68 Theodulf places upon the contemporary church the same sacred powers, and thus restrictions, as Solomon's Temple. The result is an extremely holy space in need of protection—from sin, immorality, misuse, and even dirt. This emphasis on maintaining the church's purity rests upon Theodulf's understanding of sin as contagion.Footnote 69 Theodulf believed, as shown also in his second episcopal statute, that immorality was contagious:
Regarding lewdness, sacerdotes ought with all zeal to examine truthful men and have the fear of God before their eyes. And if incest is discovered, immediately the sacerdotes are to endeavor to correct this themselves or with the help of the archdeacon. And the bishops are to busy themselves to root out this very sin, lest by such wicked crimes they be polluted and destroyed and others in their vicinity come upon the anger of God.Footnote 70
Theodulf here explicitly makes the connection between impurity and pollution: evil acts could spread simply through proximity. Sin is tangible; it can spread to others and defile the church and its people. No wonder a convicted felon who had yet to atone for his sins ought to be prohibited from a space that, like its biblical ancestors, served as the house of the Lord and angels.
Considering Theodulf's above words on churches’ sacrality (and how strongly Charlemagne rebuked Alcuin), it is not surprising that scholars have largely ignored Alcuin's concern for the church's sanctity. Where Theodulf argued that sin polluted sacred space, Alcuin contended that sin could not pollute, leading to scholars’ assumptions that Alcuin was not equally concerned with the church's sanctity.Footnote 71 But just because Alcuin, as Collins writes, “saw no such connection between the mundane and divine worlds” does not mean he did not regard the church as sacred.Footnote 72 In Alcuin's mind, the ecclesia was indeed holy and in need of protection—but he identified a different attack on its holiness and thus sought to guard it in a very different way.
Alcuin argues in his letters that the fugitive cleric, despite being a terrible sinner, deserved sanctuary, and thus Theodulf should never have sent men to retrieve him. The abbot's claims, as Collins describes, result from his emphasis on canonical authority as an undeniable basis for sanctuary over and above contemporary, incident-specific Carolingian judicial or legislative decisions.Footnote 73 But Alcuin's arguments also proclaim a divergent conception of spatial sacrality, “refuting a model of sin put forward by Theodulf where sinners, by sheer proximity, brought the stain of sin to places that are otherwise pure.”Footnote 74 The abbot's concern for the church's sanctity prioritized not the prohibition of sin but rather protection, respect, and peace. What was important to Alcuin was that the church welcomed sinners who confessed, and, as he noted, this fugitive had confessed to Saint Martin, “an outstanding confessor of Christ.”Footnote 75 In fact, the ecclesia’s ability to welcome and protect sinners (who are all Christians, he reminds his correspondents) was integral to its holiness.Footnote 76 The Lord's gifts of forgiveness, mercy, and grace—not prohibitions on entry—made spaces sacred; the willingness to accept sinners into the fold and rehabilitate them gave churches their spiritual powers. The refusal of sanctuary to someone undercut not only the church's power but also its honor. Alcuin made this argument through a comparison between pagan respect for sanctuary and Theodulf's disrespect for it: “Is the church of Christ of less honor among Christians than the temple of Jupiter among pagans? Is the house of blessed Mary, Mother of God, to be revered less than the sanctuary of evil Juno?”Footnote 77 Since Alcuin linked holiness to acceptance and forgiveness, the forced extraction of a fugitive undermined the church's sanctity more greatly than mere violence or disruptive activities.
Even so, disrespect to the ecclesia had occurred on a very physical level. Alcuin complained that Theodulf's men had behaved inappropriately within the church. Thus, he questioned the number of men sent by Theodulf, implied that the men were willing to use force, and suggested that they provoked the townsfolk's reaction.Footnote 78 Moreover, even before the lay mob could act, Theodulf's men had approached the church in a hostile manner, profaned the ecclesia, brought weapons into the sanctuary, and climbed over the chancel screens. Their actions were so violent that Alcuin feared bloodshed by the altar and tomb—hence their expulsion.Footnote 79
Alcuin underlined his distaste for their behavior in his statement regarding who should receive the primary blame in the affair. Pointing his finger at the jailer in Orléans, Alcuin implied that his actions had caused this terrible profanation.Footnote 80 At the base of this accusation is his greater emphasis on treating the house of God properly than on following particular laws or decisions. Thus, despite Alcuin's repeated assertion that the fugitive deserved sanctuary, he also claimed that he did not cause the violence done to the ecclesia.Footnote 81 Further in the letter, he writes, “I confess in all honesty that I would not take all the gold in France to be responsible for causing so dangerous a disturbance in the church of Christ by my advice or action.”Footnote 82 Alcuin may have vehemently disagreed with Theodulf and Charlemagne, but he would never have undertaken profane actions within the ecclesia (or so he claimed).
Charlemagne, Theodulf, and Alcuin all had varied understandings of the incident at Tours. Where Alcuin argued that a church's power of protection and forgiveness ought to be guarded at all costs, excusing some of the violence that broke out, Charlemagne and Theodulf believed that sanctuary powers did not apply in this case, making the resulting disorder not only unacceptable (if necessary) but also the fault of Alcuin's monks. Both sides believed that the church space had been defiled, but Alcuin blamed the denial of sanctuary to a sinner while Charlemagne and Theodulf blamed the sinner's presence. The epistolary evidence reveals that the question was not whether the space was sacred but the reason for its sacrality, to whom its sacred powers extended, and what constituted its profanation. But if these three men agreed emphatically that churches were holy spaces that ought to be protected, can the same be said of the drunken lay mob ready to expel clergy violently from the church?
Although legislative texts repeatedly emphasize the prohibition of violence within ecclesiae, the townspeople of Tours were preparing for a fight within Saint Martin's. Yet the actions of this unruly mob say much about their respect for holiness, for nowhere is it suggested that they acted out of a disregard for the sacrality of the space, even if Alcuin, Charlemagne, and Theodulf were displeased by their involvement and behavior. Nor is there clear evidence that the mob perceived violence and sanctity to be compatible entities within the church, despite their intended actions (which might, at first glance, suggest such a perception). Rather, these laymen understood the threat against their most holy patron saint, Martin, to be so great as to necessitate a violent defense of him and, one might extrapolate, of the space where his relics resided. That is, if they did believe that fighting was incompatible with sacrality, the looming threat created a circumstance that overturned this conviction.
This is evident in Alcuin's positive descriptions of the laity's commitment to protecting their patron saint: “It was noised in the city that enemies had come from Orléans to profane the sanctuary of St. Martin. . . . Immediately the beggars gathered from every part of the city, ready to defend their protector.”Footnote 83 These layfolk, according to the abbot, understood that a sanctuary ought not to be profaned—but that meant that outsiders ought not to overturn the saint's powers of sanctuary. In a later letter to Charlemagne, Alcuin partially blames the mob for reacting violently, but he tempers this admission of their culpability with his recognition that “it is the natural thing anywhere to resent disrespect to one's saints.”Footnote 84 It is not even clear that his portrayal of the laity as acting “without reason” is as negative as some scholars argue. After all, the laypeople are an “ignorant group who always acts without thought,” while the Orléans ecclesiastics, who should have known better, still brought violence into the church.Footnote 85 Charlemagne's letter, in fact, implies his greater expectations for “wise teachers of the church,” such as Alcuin and his monks, than for the mob.Footnote 86
One (though not Theodulf or Charlemagne, and perhaps not even Alcuin) might then interpret the townspeople's intended aggression as not a profanation of a sacred space but rather the protection and assertion of its sacrality—even if accomplished through activities that in other circumstances might defile that space. That is, to uphold the church's sacrality (a sacrality they fervently recognized), the townsfolk felt it necessary to protect the right to sanctuary at any cost. We ought to note, too, that the laity is not the only group willing to engage in violence. Theodulf's men appeared to be gearing up to wrest physically the fugitive from the monks’ protective hold, and it may be that Theodulf viewed their use of force as a necessary evil (if that) in the larger struggle over sacred space, just as Alcuin justified his monks’ physical defense as doing less to defile the space than Theodulf's men's attempts at removing that fugitive. But if one does not see in this incident at Tours “the hand of God and the will of the divine in these crowds and their behavior,” one certainly sees it in the disruptive behavior of lay crowds depicted in contemporary hagiographical texts.Footnote 87
IV. Ritual Transgressions: Hagiographical Evidence
The incident at Tours offers a dramatic example of early medieval Franks breaching standards of conduct. Even if this cluster of offenses against the church proves singular, a constellation of hagiographical sources attests that people did not always abide by Frankish regulations. Churchmen in the Carolingian period, including men who knew intimately and thoroughly the reform efforts and thus the legislation related to churches, repeatedly narrated misbehavior within these sacred spaces.
In a ninth-century text documenting the posthumous miracles of Saint Hubert (whose relics had been translated to a Benedictine abbey outside Liège in 825), an impending storm threatens to devastate the surrounding area. The monks, impressed by the laypeople's religiosity in the wake of the storm, temporarily remove gendered restrictions: both men and women are invited into the abbey church to celebrate the saint's feast day and enjoy shelter. This temporary modification would find permanent status: the people proved so gracious, grateful, and generous that the monks, who, according to legislation, ought to prohibit women, decided to allow the women into the church on every feast day of the saint.Footnote 88
The monk Ermentarius described the 836 translation of the relics of Saint Philibert, noting without judgment how the abbey at Déas made compromises to facilitate lay devotion. At the original site, the isle of Noirmoutier, the relics’ elevation inspired the devotion of the faithful, who were miraculously healed when they came within close proximity to the saint's body.Footnote 89 A disabled girl named Aigrada was cured; a five-year-old girl regained the ability to walk; and a blind man named Baldradus gained his sight after throwing himself before the sepulcher and pleading with God. Another man received a vision that encouraged him to go to the sepulcher and wash his right eye with wine, while a woman named Audrudis approached the burial mound, fell down, and prayed until her damaged right arm became healthy.Footnote 90 The miracles continued for three full days as the infirm were released of their fevers, mutes received speech, the crippled were healed, and the insane gained sanity.Footnote 91
After the relics were translated to Déas, the fame of Saint Philibert and his miracles spread farther and wider, and more people flocked to this new resting place. Due to the great crowds of devotees, the abbey church became “unsuitable for the reception of a saintly body,” and the crypt structure was remodeled.Footnote 92 But although the reconstructions served to improve accessibility to the relics, a problem similar to that in the Liègois remained: women, prohibited from the monastery, could not approach the relics to venerate them. A compromise was reached when the abbey decided to allow women into the shrine for a year, from August 20, 836, to August 20, 837. This festival year facilitated numerous miracles that cured men and women. On the eve of the feast year's end, one final woman entered the church, approached the relics, and was healed. The following day, the gates were closed, and women were no longer permitted access.Footnote 93 Throughout the narration, the monk writes positively of the laity compelling their ecclesiastical counterparts to bend the rules.
The above example is, however, fairly tame when compared to the writing of a central Carolingian courtier named Einhard (circa 770–840). In 815, Emperor Louis granted Einhard two parcels of land, Steinbach (near Michaelstadt) and Mulinheim (later Seligenstadt), where he built churches to which he translated the relics of martyrs Marcellinus and Peter.Footnote 94 Einhard compiled the intrigues and miracles surrounding these events into his Translatio et miraculi sanctorum Marcellini et Petri, penned by 830 or 831. Three different sacred spaces emerge from the religious landscape: the informal, extra-architectural sites of relic processions; Einhard's private chapel at Aachen; and the other (public) churches. Although rituals and miracles occur within every space, the churches will occupy our attention here.
Laypeople experienced the greatest and most dramatic miracles in the church at Mulinheim. It was also there, within the most clearly and rigidly defined sacred space, a consecrated church, that an image of accessibility and freedom emerged. The laypeople fell into deep sleeps, yelped during Mass, ran at church walls, and interrupted liturgical life. They also overcame tremendous physical deformities and disabilities, achieving not just great health but also enhanced abilities. The old and young, male and female, deaf and blind, crippled and possessed, all behaved wildly, interacted with liturgical celebrants, entered into the church's holiest spaces, and then were healed. The laity repeatedly eschewed any notion of silent, reverent comportment, disrupting the services with yells and moans that caused the clergy to pause and attend to the commotion.
During a morning celebration of the divine office at Mulinheim, a blind man appeared to be suddenly hit. He trembled and screamed, alarming the entire church, and many rushed to the man.Footnote 95 Another example is the deaf and mute girl from Bourges who, during an evening service, suddenly, as if insane, slammed tablets together and threw them into the lay audience. She then rushed toward the left wall, jumped as if to climb the wall, and fell to the ground.Footnote 96 This certainly was not the behavior legislated by the Carolingian Empire.
The same girl also provides a notable instance of lay-clergy interaction during another evening liturgy when she fell into a deep sleep. Once awake, she approached the clerics and addressed one: “You are Ratleig. . . . You are known by this name and you are the servant of these saints.”Footnote 97 The named priest responded and briefly conversed with her. Beyond the interruption, there is the fact of its location: the church's central altar where the relics of Saints Marcellinus and Peter are placed, where the main sacerdotes preside, and where laypeople ought not to approach. Yet this transgressive incident was not isolated.
At the first Mass with the relics, a young man was cured of kidney failure after approaching the altar to adore the saints. Weeks later, a sixteen-year-old possessed girl was exorcised at the tomb.Footnote 98 On the martyrs’ feast day, a deaf and mute boy who served as doorkeeper “suddenly . . . arose and entered the church. He fell flat on his face beside the right side of the altar.” The sacristan rushed to get Einhard. When they discovered the boy, Einhard ordered him to get up, but he “could not be roused, for it seemed as if he had been overcome by a very deep sleep. But at last, like one awaking, he raised himself up. When he saw us standing around him, he stood up and spoke Latin,” rather than the expected German.Footnote 99
Einhard's descriptions of unencumbered lay movement through the church and sanctuary attest to “unlawful” behavior, boldly challenging the ideal Carolingian church described in legislative texts. One might be tempted to read this as an indicator of the chasm between theory and practice. The legislation was part of the Carolingian court's reform effort, and if it were not widespread, then it should not be surprising to find examples of churches lacking strict clerical–lay separation.Footnote 100 Likewise, one might argue that in a large empire with so many churches we should expect diversity. Einhard, however, was a prominent court member, intimately familiar with Carolingian reform movements, and a well-educated director of ecclesiastical building projects.Footnote 101 He recently had praised the late Charlemagne for being “especially concerned that everything done in the church should be done with the greatest dignity and he frequently warned the sacristans that nothing foul or unclean should be brought into the church or left there.”Footnote 102 Yet in this translatio text—a text whose intended aim, in the preface, connected it to the court-centered renovatio—Einhard did not criticize these wild incidents, even as he disparaged the religious observances of local people.Footnote 103 Moreover, it seems unlikely that a man so politically astute would describe problematic events if they did not serve his purposes—or, worse yet, if they worked against his aims.
In fact, Einhard's particular aims explain some of the contradictions. His Translatio emerged within a specific political context: Einhard, as Paul Edward Dutton has demonstrated, used the translation to maintain his courtly position against rival Hilduin and to persuade Louis the Pious to relieve him of public duties and financially support his churches. Meanwhile, Julia M. H. Smith has read the Translatio as an argument for correctio.Footnote 104 Nuances aside, both scholars have argued that Einhard employed this very behavior (what we might term lay misbehavior) in his churches to address his religio-political aims. To successfully compete with rivals, gain influence at court, and promote his view of the current political climate, Einhard needed divine confirmation of his actions. How better to show miraculous powers than through their transformative effects on society's weakest, poorest, and sickest! Einhard's Translatio, therefore, purposefully and necessarily demonstrated the laity's important, active role in the church. Laypeople validated the saints’ powers through the miracles enacted upon their bodies and were an integral part of liturgical life, not a destructive force in its progress. These Christians are neither passive in their devotion, as some scholars might expect, nor subversive to the extent that they are disruptive.Footnote 105
Yet, beyond its calculated political agenda, Einhard's text reveals much about the intersection of lay devotion, saintly miracles, sacred space, and ritual time. Space, after all, cannot be extricated from time, and hagiographical texts emphasize the importance of ritual time to sacred space. The Translatio relates a particular constellation of ritual moments: the relic translation.Footnote 106 In the Carolingian period, the translation of saintly remains, once a complement to the consecration rite, increasingly became its own ritual celebration and, according to Yizhak Hen, “one of the two major festive manifestations” of the cult of saints.Footnote 107 These relic translations, as Sabine MacCormack has described, adopted the framework of the Roman imperial adventus, an ancient ritual emphasizing the emperor's entrance into the city, the relationship between the emperor and those welcoming him, the protection bestowed upon the city, and the deus praesens.Footnote 108 Once Christianized, this processional event and these saints’ bodies sanctified the spaces through which they moved. Thus, medieval people used them to infuse places with sacrality and testified to the relics’ sacred powers through translation texts.Footnote 109
Both Einhard's relic translation of Marcellinus and Peter and the translation of Saint Philibert to Déas are thus akin to royal entries. These were examples of the Carolingian fusion of liturgical procession and imperial adventus: highly ritualized processions, abounding with liturgical elements, and welcomed by hymns and lauds.Footnote 110 These rituals necessitated the Christians’ acclaim, approval, and validation of the saints but also required the consent of the saints themselves—a consent manifested through the miracles enacted on their audience. Accordingly, these events could only occur successfully with the active and enthusiastic involvement of the laity.
Like the imperial adventus, relic translations were singular events that constituted breaks in quotidian liturgical life. They were rituals so exceptional that they allowed for, encouraged, and even necessitated the transgression of ordinary boundaries, both physical and ritual. The translations’ anomalous and highly sacred nature would then be further attested by the decision, subsequent to the adventus, to re-regulate the space, time, and experience of the Carolingian ecclesia through adherence to legislative statements on appropriate behavior. For example, once the spiritual power of Saints Marcellinus and Peter had been proven, Einhard constructed a second church at Mulinheim replete with chancel screens to protect the sanctuary and separate clergy and laity, thus more closely replicating the contemporary Carolingian churches that were highly divided.Footnote 111
Just as relic translations offered a particular ritual moment that was a break in ritual time—in which lay transgressions produced, rather than negated, sanctity—so, too, could other holy events produce these liminal moments. At times, the purposeful collapse of ecclesiastical regulations led to miracles and extraordinary lay devotion, emphasizing the transformative nature of Christian power. Accordingly, a monk could write positively of the monastery's annual cessation of gender restrictions. He, like Einhard, highlighted the significant Christian devotion evidenced by the laypeople and the power of the saint. Just as with Einhard's Translatio, however, such extraordinary moments were acceptable because they were just that: out of the ordinary. Rather than emphasize the one day annually when women were allowed into male monasteries, these regulations stressed the prohibition of women for the other 364 days. Put simply, the monks’ acceptance of women on the saint's feast day explicitly and powerfully reminded the laypeople that the norm was gendered exclusion.
Yet not all monks so quickly or easily succumbed to lay pressure by altering church space regulations. Adrevald of Fleury writes of how Abbot Boso of Fleury, sometime between 827 and 840, acquired saints’ relics from Saint-Denis. Boso brought his relics back to the monastery of Saint Benedict where they were placed in the abbey church of the Virgin. Soon lay devotion swelled: “No small number of men and women sought, with the greatest devotion, the relics of the martyrs, for the benefits of certain miracles carried out by the Lord through those blessed martyrs.”Footnote 112 Unfortunately, women had long been prohibited from entering within the monastery's external gates and thus could not venerate the relics. The Abbey of Fleury proved unwilling to break this monastic rule. Only when rumors of the translation spread and ever more people flocked to the abbey, creating a spectacle, did the laypeople's prayers “wrest [the saints] from the abbot and brothers, so that it was ordered that a tent be set up, outside the gate of the monastery, on the eastern side, in the place where a grove is.”Footnote 113 There the saints remained for a day, under the monks’ watch, so that the laity could venerate them. But on Sunday, the monks and clergy carried the relics back into the church for Easter Mass.Footnote 114
While this story also reveals the power of lay devotion, this devotion did not create liminal times that altered the church space. Rather, it created a new sacred space (in liminal moments, one might say) outside the church walls. The erection of this tent outside the ecclesia allowed the monks of Fleury to maintain their strict rules of monastic enclosure while also facilitating lay devotion. As a result, more Christians came, both from nearby lands and much farther places, to revere the newly translated martyrs, and through those relics the Lord performed incredible miracles. The blind regained their sight, the crippled began to walk, demons were exorcised, and those with incurable diseases were made healthy. The Abbey of Saint Benedict, meanwhile, enforced strict spatial restrictions that sharply curtailed the lay crowd's enthusiastic devotion as well as the accessibility of the relics.
V. Multiple Views of the Sacred
But what of the ordinary laypeople themselves? If Frankish elites made textual and ritual space for misbehavior that reinforced the spiritual power of saints and churches, we cannot know with as much confidence what farmers needing a place to store hay or a deaf girl from Bourges thought about their activities within church spaces. Nevertheless, at least a few credible theories present themselves.
First, any misuse of ecclesiae could suggest that the understanding of churches as sacred space was not universally held but only maintained (partially successfully) by the Carolingian elites who drafted legislation, penned letters, and recorded saints’ lives. This might be expected since spaces and places are social and cultural constructs, imbued with meaning dependent on the specific context, and unique to the individuals who interact with them. The fact that there may have been laypeople in the countryside who did not consider their local church sacred—or that whole communities may not have properly maintained their church's physical structure—does not mean that Carolingian churches were not sacred spaces. It may simply mean that not everyone held the belief that churches were qualitatively different from other spaces.
Although the socially constructed nature of space is undeniable, this particular explanation for misuse of churches seems unlikely. Such a theory often rests on multiple problematic assumptions. First, it suggests either that misbehaving lay individuals knew and opposed Carolingian legislative regulations or that the capitularies did not reach them. That is, layfolk were either disobedient or ignorant—neither of which we can know for certain. Second, this conclusion gives preference to the notion of the sacred held by the textual communities who created these leges (namely, the Carolingian leaders, their advisors, and top-level ecclesiasts). The throwing of banquets in ecclesiae, for example, was unquestioningly inappropriate to Theodulf, Alcuin, and their peers, but ordinary layfolk may not have considered feasting, secular negotiations, or hay storage as profane engagements. The laity may, in fact, have recognized the holiness of their ecclesiae but simultaneously believed that certain prohibited activities were perfectly acceptable according to their own conceptions of sacrality. Accordingly, some communities may not have seen the upkeep of the physical structure of their church as mandatory, focusing rather on spiritual matters to the detriment of the building's structural integrity. So while legislation provides the dominant (in the sense of created by those in positions of dominance) articulation of sacred space, it cannot provide all understandings of sacrality.
One must look, then, at the individual situations to consider layfolks’ understandings. Theodulf claimed, in his episcopal legislation, that people stored hay in churches—a clear violation of Christian and Frankish law and an affront to his sensibilities. The average rural farmer may have been aware that this was prohibited; he may also have agreed that the church was a holy place that ought to be protected from such behavior. Nevertheless, he may have contravened these laws when following them was inconvenient, problematic, or harmful—such as during a storm. Employing Tuan's terminology, we might label churches as pragmatic spaces to the laity and abstract ones to the clergy.Footnote 115 Yet perhaps this lay use of ecclesia as an agricultural storage space is more abstract than its surface reading suggests: the very storage of hay within a church, rather than undermining the church's holiness, may demonstrate the hay owner’s belief in its sacred power, if he expected the church to protect his hay from destructive weather on account of the space's consecrated nature. The choice to contravene laws regulating sacred space could result from dire or unusual circumstances rather than a disrespect for, or lack of belief in, sacred space. Ementarius substantiates this in his Life of Saint Philibert, revealing that it was not ordinary laypeople but monks who decided that disobeying monastic rules best served the community's needs and honored God. We have also seen how the actions and reactions of an unruly mob in Tours reveal much about serving a community's needs and respecting an ecclesia’s holiness. They, after all, chose an aggressive approach vis-à-vis the church's sacrality—seeking to attack those who might defile it.
VI. Conclusion
This essay demonstrates that behaviors deemed inappropriate by Carolingian normative texts—behaviors that challenged a church's sacrality through the threat of defilement—could, in certain circumstances, be understood in radically different ways. Screaming and running within the church, flinging one's body down beside the altar, and interrupting the priest as he performed Mass could all be welcomed as activities providing proof of the space's sacrality. In the case of Einhard's Translatio, the many and diverse ways in which individuals acted against Carolingian laws were deemed acceptable because those actions validated the holiness of the saints and thus the space itself. Every yell, jump, seizure, and interruption sanctified the space, even though such behaviors in normal liturgical life would defile that very same space and might require reconsecration.
That the very same activities within a church could be read in diametrically opposed ways emerges also in the dispute over the fugitive cleric's claim to sanctuary in the church of Saint Martin of Tours—though from a different perspective. In contrast to the events described by hagiographers, the events surrounding the Tours sanctuary case produced responses that both affirmed legislative prohibitions against tumult within churches while also asserting the validity, in exceptional circumstances, of violence in sacred spaces. Each individual involved in the sanctuary dispute believed so firmly in the sacred nature of the church that he was willing to resort to (or excuse others when they resorted to) inappropriate behavior and violence to affirm its sanctity. Thus, just as “inappropriate” behavior could create sacrality, as in the case of relic translations, so, too, could it protect sacrality.
Although one might assume that there existed significant consensus in the Carolingian period about what transformed spaces into sacred ones (namely, church consecration ceremonies), Frankish texts, in fact, reveal competing narratives about what mechanisms made things and places holy. Moreover, texts could serve different purposes from those intended during their composition. One might then read the very legislative texts that attempted to preserve the sanctity of churches as also undermining that sacrality if officials hewed to them too tightly. Respectful behavior in churches—and the laws that mandated that behavior—served important roles in recognizing, defining, and maintaining the holy nature of churches, but laws and behaviors alone could not produce holiness. Rather, it was the moments of miracle-induced misconduct and aggressive battles over space that created, protected, and most powerfully demonstrated the church's sacrality. In essence, then, Carolingian leges may have illustrated the sacred landscape of the Carolingian world and its churches, but they did little to produce that landscape. Capitularies and concilia only maintained the holiness that misuse and misbehavior had created. All in all, then, Carolingian texts from an array of genres forcefully reveal the dynamic relationships that beliefs, laws, rituals, and space held with each other.
