Writing Normandy by Felice Lifshitz;

Author:Felice Lifshitz;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The migration of Neustrian relics in the Viking Age: evolution of a royalist “topos”

The cessation of Frankish and Flemish aggression against Normandy, or rather the effective closing of the borders of the duchy to potential Frankish and Flemish aggressors in the latter part of the tenth century, seems to have put an end to the phase of translations in which the ruling elites, up to the level of Carolingian kings, played a decisive role in the quasi-public, quasi-official transfer of saintly treasures. There is some indication, however, that the theft of desirable Neustrian relics from the Viking principality continued on a less formal level up to the end of the tenth century. If we can believe Hariulf of St. Riquier, writing just before 1088, a cleric of Bayeux who was distressed by the lack of appreciation displayed locally for the valuable Neustrian heritage of the Bessin, surreptitiously removed the relics of St. Vigor of Bayeux to Ponthieu, where they were genuinely valued, in approximately 981. But there is the rub: can we believe Hariulf?39

39 Hariulf, “Adventus beatissimi Vigoris episcopi a Neustria in Pontivum” and “Assertio de sancto Vigore,” in Chronique de l’abbaye de St Riquier, ed. Ferdinand Lot (Paris: Picard, 1894), pp. 162–166 and 186–188. The composition of Vigor’s own biography (“Vita Sancti Vigoris” [BHL 8609 and 8611–8613], ed. Carolus De Smedt, AASS November 1: 297–305) has been dated over the past few centuries to anywhere between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, with the two most recent contributions to the debate advocating the late eleventh century and the late eighth or ninth centuries, respectively (John Howe, “The Date of the ‘Life’ of St. Vigor of Bayeux,” AB 102 (1984): 303–312 and Nancy Gauthier, “Quelques hypothèses sur la redaction des vies des saints évêques de Normandie,” in Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes. Miscellanea in onore di Victor Saxer [Studi di Antichità Christiana 48; Vatican City, 1992], pp. 449–468, at p. 455). Howe’s arguments seem well founded in principle; however, it is equally plausible that the biography was composed at St. Riquier (or elsewhere) as at Cerisy-le-Forêt. In any case, neither the various versions of the vita Vigoris nor the scholarship on the question offers any help in resolving the main question at issue here, namely how and when and, indeed, whether relics of Vigor were taken out of the province of Rouen.

We have already seen that a late-twelfth-century Capetian royalist historian of St.-Germain-des-Prés falsely claimed possession of relics of Audoenus. Aimoin’s Continuator and Hariulf are not the only late-eleventh- and twelfth-century historians to claim possession of the Neustrian relics of Normandy. In some cases, such as that of Hariulf, no earlier evidence either supports or disproves the claim, which comes out of nowhere in the late eleventh century; more importantly, the church of Bayeux never riposted in any way. In other cases, such as that of Audoenus, the claims of extra-Norman institutions to possession of Neustrian relics were disputed by intra-Norman institutions. It may well be that, by the later eleventh century,

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