Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100-1389: Interpreting the Case of Chartres Cathedral
Director: Penelope D. Johnson

PSC-CUNY Research Award (BMCC, City University of New York) - 2003

Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant (American Historical Association) - 2000

Faculty Travel and Research Summer Grant (Iona College) - 1999

NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers/Andrew W. Mellon New Media Program: Gothic in the Ile-de-France – 1998

New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science Student Travel Grant – 1998

Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant (American Historical Association) – 1996

Phi Alpha Theta – 1989 -

"Christian Sanctuary and Repository of France's Political Culture: The Construction of Holiness and Masculinity at the Royal Abbey of St.-Denis."

The thirteenth-century church of St.-Denis was at one and the same time an important sanctuary and a vast repository of male political culture. At the abbey the Church's spiritual authority and France's monarchical might fused, elevating each other to create a church so special that medieval people venerated as relics even the earlier churches on which it lied. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws on historical and art historical evidence, this paper focuses on the masculine traditions that helped cultivate the power and prestige of the abbey church.

In the body of France's monarchs the qualities of masculinity and holiness were joined. This union was perhaps best articulated in the person of King Louis IX (d. 1270), who later would be canonized a saint. The Capetian dynasty experienced a long period of unbroken male succession that encouraged many to believe (and as of the fourteenth century to bitterly argue) that the ruler of France must be male. At the same time many believed that France's kings had a sacred touch that - like the relics of the saints - could cure various maladies, including scrofula. In the central Middle Ages, as the French kings chose to be buried at St.-Denis with increasing frequency, the connection between holiness and masculinity was further emphasized as the sacred abbey that had been consecrated by Christ himself became the final resting place of the vast majority of the kings of France.

The symbiosis of holiness and masculinity at St.-Denis is also found in its material culture. The abbey served as a repository for royal documents that ultimately were used for chronicles of the history of France and its monarchy. It also housed numerous symbols of male power: coronation vestments, a crown, spurs, a scepter and a sword attributed to Charlemagne that was used in coronation ceremonies. However, of all the objects that the abbey of St.-Denis contained, the one that best represented the fusion of holiness and masculinity was the Oriflamme, the great battle flag of France, which the king took when he went to war. The Oriflamme was a special standard because its saffron-colored silk sprinkled with golden stars had been charged with the holy power emanating from the abbey's relics. Therefore, as France's armies charged into the manly sport of war, they were guided - literally and figuratively - by the sacred standard stored in this most holy of Christian sanctuaries.

Currently under consideration for publication in a volume on holiness and masculinity in the Middle Ages.

"Body as Champion of Church Authority and Sacred Place: The Murder of Thomas Becket."

On the afternoon of December 29, 1170 the body of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, lay bloodied and lifeless on the paving stones of his cathedral, victim of the long and bitter war he waged against Henry II, King of England, over competing rights of sacerdotium and regnum. Though at first the archbishop's remains appeared to be gruesome reminders of one of the Church's most enduring and divisive struggles, the accounts of the murder reveal that Thomas' body and blood sublimated the threats to the Church and in the biographers' hands became symbols and agents of ecclesiastical triumph.

The accounts of this stunning violation of sacred person, place, and time testify to the discord that existed between king and archbishop. Beyond their political value, these documents are rich sources of cultural history that reveal information about medieval attitudes toward bodies, in particular Thomas' consecrated body, and how it negotiated disputed church authority and championed the violated sacred place of Canterbury Cathedral in twelfth-century England. Written by the archbishop's supporters, the first-hand accounts suggest that Thomas' mutilated corpse managed to achieve what Thomas had not been able to do in life: initiate a reconciliation of church liberty and royal privilege and, in so doing, draw England into Rome's orbit. The biographers' descriptions of Becket's body affirm his triumph over his royal foe and demonstrate that Henry's crown of gold and jewels paled in comparison to Thomas' bloody head. Far from remaining a violated widow, Thomas' body and blood restored honor to his ecclesiastical bride and established Canterbury Cathedral as one of the most important pilgrimage sites in medieval Europe.

Forthcoming in A Great Effusion of Blood: Interpreting Medieval Violence, Oren Falk, Mark Meyerson and Daniel Thiery, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).

"Thomas Becket" and "Francis of Assisi." Forthcoming in Holy People of the World: An Encyclopedia, edited by Phyllis Jestice (ABC-Clio, 2003).

"From Boundaries Blurred to Boundaries Defined: Clerical Emphasis on the Limits of Sacred Space in the Later Middle Ages." In Alex Smith and Alison Brookes, eds., Holy Ground: Theoretical Issues Relating to the Landscape and Material Culture of Ritual Space (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 956, 2001): 85-90.

Although it is impossible to dichotomize sacred and profane in the Middle Ages, it would be equally wrong to argue that they were one in the same. Many medieval people, particularly the clergy, had rituals to appropriate places to God, in other words to recognize and direct sacredness. As the twelfth-century scholar monk Hugh of St. Victor argued, the temporal world hosted competitions between good and evil that shaped and gave meaning to earthly lives. Any space that was used to worship God, therefore, had to be cleansed of this struggle. Belief in a world contentious with positive and negative forces distinguishes medieval attitudes toward sacred and profane from our own.

The ideal of sacred space in the Middle Ages is revealed in the rite of consecration in which Christian communities invited God to communicate with them in a specified location. Like any good hosts, these communities attempted to create an attractive environment for their invited guest. The purification of space and the boosting of its sacred charge with the bodies of the holy rendered a space sacred. This idealized conception of sacred space, however, was often compromised by mundane concerns that encouraged people to use churches for non-devotional activities. The desire to conserve money, steal away privately, protect people and belongings and sell wares in the busiest areas of medieval towns and cities encouraged the non-devotional use of medieval sacred spaces. That many medieval people considered the nave to be (at least to some degree) the domain of the laity within the area of the greater church may have made mundane uses seem appropriate to some.

Yet sacred spaces appear to have become less ambiguous as the Middle Ages wore on. Research has suggested that in the late Middle Ages the use of space became rigidly defined and that sacred spaces were not excepted from this trend. Elements of later medieval architecture such as external bridges, opaque screens, high reredoses and compartmentalized chapels appear to have reflected the strains and stresses of society. It is likely that this trend was related to the challenges made to ecclesiastical authority in the late Middle Ages when the Church and its view of Christianity were becoming estranged from the world at large as faith and reason were increasingly looked upon as two separate realities. It appears that as the Church became less relevant to its society it became insecure. In response it enclosed itself in spaces that became reserved to a degree that it appears they had not been previously. Although clergy could not exclude laity indiscriminately, they could restrict access to their churches and cloisters, rendering sacred places more reserved. Therefore, as loyalties were gradually torn by emerging identity groups such as guilds, "nation states," and alternative churches the Church suffered a loss of security that was reflected in the uses of sacred spaces. It seems that sacred spaces became truly reserved and forbidden as identities shifted, confidence waned, and Europeans began to order the fascinating and complex ambiguity of the Middle Ages.

"Protestant Monasticism: Waldensian" in the Encyclopedia of Monasticism. ed. William M. Johnston (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000).

"Mundane Uses of Sacred Spaces in the Central and Later Middle Ages, with a Focus on Chartres Cathedral." Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 30 (1999): 11-36.

Although technically reserved for worship, church buildings were put to numerous non-devotional uses in the Middle Ages, raising the question just how set apart from daily life medieval churches were. Relatively little has been written about this subject, despite its importance as a signpost to the contours of the medieval understanding of sacred space. It is the goal of this paper to break ground for what promises to be a fascinating avenue of exploration into the cultural history of medieval northwestern Europe by considering the conflict between the theory and practice of medieval sacred space as it unfolded in Chartres Cathedral during the Later Middle Ages.

People regularly tested and challenged the order of officially recognized sacred places, and the clergy responded to these challenges in a variety of ways, deeming some non-devotional activities as either harmless or necessary. Others, however, were not tolerated and were even considered sacrilegious and condemned. At issue usually was the area within the church structure, but certain objectionable activities in cloisters and cemeteries also created controversy. Just as all areas of the church building were not equally sacred, not all non-devotional activities were equally profane. People negotiated sacred places and rendered them less restricted than one might expect from the rite of consecration, the official ecclesiastical statement on the church building. Considering non-devotional uses of churches will enable historians to reconstruct a history of the living church.

"Birth, Flesh & Bodies: The Construction of Sacred Space in The Miracles of Our Lady of Chartres." Medieval Perspectives 14 (1999): 98-114.

Although the clergy of Chartres Cathedral intended their church as a heavenly Jerusalem on earth, nevertheless the cathedral's documents suggest that the church's power was founded on and mediated by worldly and human flesh. This paper discusses how the body was central to the function of Chartres, a cathedral that offers poignant examples of how corporeal metaphors could differentiate sacred place in the central Middle Ages as it competed for pilgrims. Central to this process was the mediating power of the cathedral's most important relic, the sancta camisia or holy shift that the Virgin wore during the Nativity. By claiming that the shirt had touched the two holiest Christian bodies (the only relic to do so) the clergy of Chartres hoped to spread their cult far and wide.

They weren't successful. Chartres, the largest diocese in France, was favored by the king, blessed with fertile wheat fields, and claimed numerous relics, but it never became the major pilgrimage center its clergy had wanted it to be. The ad campaign the bishops and canons launched to elevate Chartres from other churches (an effort focused by the Miracles of Our Lady of Chartres), however, reveals one community's conception of ideal sacred place as it solicited funds to help rebuild the church claimed by a devastating fire in 1194. In their attempt to generate pilgrimage the clergy of Chartres reveal that flesh and bodies of the holy, suffering, and dead were crucial to the cathedral's internal culture. They were Chartres' mediums, the canvasses which Jesus, through his mother, wiped clean and painted anew.

"The Medieval Heresy that Refuses to Die: Catharism, Then and Now." Review of Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages, H-NET review for H-CATHOLIC, June 2001.

"Reuniting Genders." Review of John Kitchen, Saints' Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography, in Cross Currents: The Journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, 51 (spring 2001): 139-41.

"Heresy, Conquest and the Unification of France: The Albigensian Crusade." Review of Jonathan Sumption, The Albigensian Crusade, H-NET review for H-CATHOLIC, February 2001.

"The Crusades." ProQuest History Online KnowledgeNotes, 2002.

"William the Conqueror and the Norman Conquest." ProQuest History Online KnowledgeNotes, 2002.

Translated selections (from the Latin) of Edward Grim's account of the murder of Thomas Becket. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, ed. Paul Halsall.

"Burying the Bodies of the Most Christian Kings: Capetian Corpses and the Construction of Politics and Sacredness at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis." Paper presented at the Thirty-Seventh International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2-5, 2002.

During the later Middle Ages the Capetian kings and the monks of Saint-Denis waged aggressive campaigns of self-promotion to increase their prestige. Part of this effort was each community's attempt to tap into the power of the other, elevating the political and sacred profiles of both monarchy and abbey. Although these campaigns manifested themselves in a variety of media including chronicles, charters, popular literature, stained glass and manuscript illuminations, nowhere were they better expressed than in the burials of the kings at the abbey. This is especially true of the thirteenth century when alterations to the tomb program created a new narrative for the relationship between politics, sacredness and the history of France.

Throughout the Capetian centuries the two facades of Christian sacred space - building and body - became one within the monastic church as all but two of the kings elected to be buried there. Hoping that it would become a royal cemetery for many years, by the thirteenth century the monks acknowledged that their church functioned as a royal necropolis. To accommodate the growing number of corpses they expanded the transept in all four directions and the tombs were rearranged to reveal to the viewer the place of the Capetians in the history of French dynastic succession. Also emphasized was the sacred nature of the kings' persons, with the miracle-working tomb of the saintly monarch Louis IX situated prominently in the center of the program. The tombs of Philip Augustus, Louis VIII and Saint Louis may have been covered in silver and gold and had golden boxes suspended over them, perhaps suggesting that the surrounding area functioned as a shrine and that the boxes contained relics, remains of the holy kings. The political and sacred iconography monarchs and monks used to construct the sacred space at Saint-Denis is revealing. It is very possible that this hybrid language they wrote communicated to a wider audience the need and desire for national unification under a sacred ruler at a time when France was still very much decentralized.

"Christian Sanctuary and Repository of France's Political Culture: The Construction of Holiness and Masculinity at the Royal Abbey of St.-Denis." Paper given at the University of Huddersfield as part of "Holiness and Masculinity," July 12-14, 2001. Abstract is available above, under "Publications: Chapters."

"Mundane and Profane Uses of Chartres Cathedral in the Later Middle Ages." Given at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, July 9-12, 2001. Abstract is available above, under "Publications: Articles."

"Negotiating the Powers of Good & Evil in Twelfth-Century Europe: The Purifying & Fortifying Liturgy of Church Consecration." Paper delivered at the Convivium Center for Medieval & Early Modern Studies at Siena College, Loudonville, New York, October 13-14, 2000.

In the medieval view of the world temporal existence was the middle stage in a rite of passage from damnation to salvation. The material world with its competing forces of good and evil was a place where the sins of the past and the promise of the future merged. The contentious character of worldly existence where people struggled against corruption demanded that any place to be used for worship first be purified and then fortified against ever-pressing forces of evil. This belief, coupled with a social need for religion to manifest itself externally as well as internally, carved an exterior façade for a religion of the soul.

By expelling evil from a place - and therefore altering the contest of cosmic power in favor of good - the public ritual of consecration created a break in the contentious landscape of the medieval world. The rite consisted of three main phases. The first was the separation of the building from its physical surroundings; this was done by the bishop, clergy, and people circumambulating the edifice. Purification of the building and its altar of all impurity was the aim of the second stage. The final phase of consecration focused on the protection and fortification of the newly cleansed place - in other words, keeping the powerful threatening forces of evil at bay. The bishop anointed the exterior of the altar and the interior of the church's walls, tracing crosses on them. He then completed the rite by saying a mass in the newly established Christian fortress and stronghold of consolidated spiritual power.

"Violent Deaths as Commentaries on Vice-Ridden Lives in the Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent." Paper given at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, July 10-13, 2000.

The Memoirs of the Benedictine monk Guibert of Nogent seeks to teach its audience about the importance of living a moral life. One of the ways it attempts to accomplish this task is by recording the evil deeds of Guibert's contemporaries and the violent deaths which they later suffered. The Memoirs bristles with descriptions of immoral people - such as heretics, bishops, lords and commune supporters - who experience brutal and ignoble deaths in twelfth-century northern France.

This paper explored Guibert's perception of the relationship between the quality of one's own life and the circumstances of his or her death. It focused on the violent deaths Guibert recorded and closely examined how the agent and method of death informed his broader commentary on the character of the victim. The paper was particularly sensitive to how the author reacted to monks', nuns' and priests' violations of the ideals of the Gregorian reform, which were earnestly championed during his lifetime. It also paid close attention to how the ill treatment of the body of the deceased (e.g. disfigurement, dismemberment and partial burial) served to punctuate an immoral person's life's end.

"From Boundaries Blurred to Boundaries Defined: Clerical Emphasis on the Limits of Sacred Space in the Later Middle Ages." Paper given at the 1999 annual meeting of the Theoretical Archaeological Group, School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, December 14-17, 1999. Abstract is available above, under "Publications: Articles."

"The Political Clout of a Martyr’s Body in Twelfth-Century England: The Assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket." Paper given at Iona College's Dean’s Symposium, December 2, 1998. Abstract is available above, under "Publications: Chapters."

"Body as Champion of Church Authority and Sacred Place: The Murder of Thomas Becket." Paper given at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies Annual Conference, "Violence in Medieval Society," October 24, 1998. Abstract is available above, under "Publications: Chapters."

"Using the Body to Elevate Space: The Pious Propaganda of Thirteenth-Century Chartres Cathedral." Paper given at the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA) Conference, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, October 15-17, 1998. Abstract is available above, under "Publications: Articles."

"Raising Money and Generating a Cult in Thirteenth-Century Northern France: The Miracles of Our Lady of Chartres." Paper given at the New York Friends of the Saints, New York, New York, October 9, 1998.

"Monarchy, Monastery and Mutuality: Relationships between Politics and Religion at the Medieval Abbey of Saint-Denis." Lecture to be given to The Archaeology Society of Staten Island and the Staten Island Society, Archaeological Institute of America, Wagner College, January 12, 2003.

Tour of The Cloisters. Staten Island Archaeological Society, June 15, 2002.

Speaker in the Humanities, New York Council for the Humanities, 2000-2003: "The Profane History of a Sacred Place: The Civic Context of Chartres Cathedral."

• The Archaeology Society of Staten Island and the Staten Island Society, Archaeological Institute of America, Wagner College, March 4, 2001
• Orange County Community College, Middletown, New York, April 11, 2001
• Senior Citizens of Bronxville, Bronxville, New York, March 26, 2002
  

Organizer: "Medieval Maternity, I: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Song, Spirituality and Sculpture" and "Medieval Maternity, II: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Medical and Other Manuscripts," two sessions to be held at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, July 14-17, 2003.

Invited Chair and Commentator: "Real and Imagined Topographies: Mapping Social Space," a session held at the Medieval Academy of America's annual meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 10-12, 2003.

Chair: "Mundane and Profane Uses of Medieval Sacred Spaces I: Misuses and Abuses of Churches and their Precincts," "Mundane and Profane Uses of Medieval Sacred Spaces II: Synagogue, Mosque and Shrine in the Central Middle Ages," and "Mundane and Profane Uses of Medieval Sacred Spaces III: (Re)Negotiating Boundaries for the Holy," three sessions held at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, July 9-12, 2001.

Roundtable Participant: "Exile in the Middle Ages: Definitions, Representations." International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, July 9-12, 2001.

Organizer of Conference:"Same but Different: Exploring the Cultures and Histories of the Eastern Catholic Churches," Iona College, November 6, 2000.