medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Christopher Crockett wrote:
> i don't think i've ever seen this distinction between "devotional image" and
> "cult image" before, Jim.
>
> is it of your own devising, or one that is common in the literature (of which
> i am totally ignorint)?
>
I don't know whether it is common in the literature, Christopher, but it
is not of my devising. One source that mentions it is Richard Marks,
Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud: Sutton, 2004).
Devotional images of the Virgin, as I said, were very common. For
example, Peter Quinel, the bishop of Exeter in southwest England, in
1287 made an image of the Virgin Mary mandatory in every church in his
diocese. Obviously, these were intended as foci of personal devotion,
but the vast majority, at the very least, would not have been "cult
images", which would have made them the focus of a pilgrimage, with a
reputation for thaumaturgical healing, etc.
>> The same applied to many relics. It was only the most successful pilgrimage
>>
> shrines that lasted, and they were probably in the minority.
>
> surely this would be a function of the nature/importance of the relic (and of
> the Holy Figure which it pertained to), would it not?
>
Yes, but not all relics by any means attracted a noticeable pilgrimage.
Every altar in every church, for example, contained relics, but the vast
majority of them never acquired a reputation for out-of-the-ordinary
thaumaturgical intervention. As you know, Chartres Cathedral possessed
quite a sizeable collection of relics, but for very few of them is there
any evidence of working miracles. And the thaumaturgical reputations of
relics were far from being constant or homogeneously continuous. Some
of them, in fact, were quite momentary. One instance of the latter has
been brilliantly traced by Pierre-André Sigal, "Maladie, pèlerinage et
guérison au XIIe siècle. Les miracles de saint Gibrien à Reims,"
/Annales E.S.C/., vol. 24 (1969), 1522-39. St Gibrien was an obscure
Irish hermit saint who supposedly died in 509 near Châlons-sur-Marne,
and an oratory was built at the burial site. The small chapel was burnt
by the Normans in c.892, but the miraculous holy body remained intact.
At that time, Count Haderic arranged for St Gibrien to be transferred to
the abbey church of Saint-Remi, probably for protection. In the time of
King Philippe I, the gold and silver of his reliquary were stripped, in
order to feed the poor during a famine, and it was only in 1145 that the
relics could be translated to a new reliquary. This event provoked a
sudden efflorescence of reported miracles, which were scrupulously
recorded by one of the monks: 102 miracles were recorded between the
translation, on 16 April, and 24 August, a period of about four months.
After this efflorescence, the miracles faded away, and St Gibrien's
relics were gradually forgotten. Similarly, I would venture to claim
that most relics, even of important saints, have not had a homogeneously
continuous reputation for thaumaturgical intervention.
Cheers,
Jim
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