Relics in Palm Sunday processions

Over time, Cluny came to invest more of its identity in certain special saints whose relics they had acquired. Their reliquaries were important enough to be identified within the customaries as unique objects, and formed the backbone of one of the most spectacular liturgical processions of the year: Palm Sunday.³² The author of the Liber tramitis put together a diagram to show the order of the Palm Sunday procession, demonstrating both the importance of these relics and their hierarchical relationships to one another (Table 2.1). At least four reliquaries were carried separately on Palm Sunday, spaced out by other portable liturgical objects (crosses, candelabra, censers, etc.). First came the “relics of the holy fathers,” followed by the relics of St. Gregory (pope), the relics of St. Marcellus, the arm of St. Maur, and finally, the image of St. Peter. The specification that these reliquaries were carried by “four or two” brothers suggests that they were placed on biers or had poles attached to them for transportation, as in contemporary images of relic translations and the transportation of the Ark of the Covenant.³³

This diagram mapped out the ordering of the procession, but also reflected Cluny’s attitudes towards these relics as a source of identity and meaning. The relics were implicitly ranked by their order in the procession; the anonymous “relics of the holy fathers” were first, the image of Peter was last and thus the most important.³⁴ This sense of increasing prestige is also suggested by the fact that the “relics of the holy fathers” and the relics of Gregory and Marcellus could be carried by two porters, but Peter’s image was always carried by four (though this could also indicate its physical weight). Maur’s inclusion and placement is more obscure. Although his name is not given, it is likely that brachium denotes his arm reliquary, along with the imperial scepters and apple (sceptrum,pomum) donated to Cluny by Henry II. These items were recent acquisitions at the time of the composition of the Liber tramitis, and under Abbot Odilo the cult of Maur was being actively cultivated as Cluny’s link to St. Benedict.³⁵ Given this, it is possible that Maur’s status relative to the other great patrons of Cluny was somewhat in flux, and so we find his arm associated with other objects carried right before the image of Peter, but not identified by name or given space in the row denoting the other major reliquaries.

Table2.1 The Palm Sunday procession in the Liber tramitis

Though the procession diagram clearly suggests that the five reliquaries were individual objects uniquely associated with individual saints and carried separately, it is not clear that the relics of Marcellus and Gregory were actually in different reliquaries. The final chapter of the Liber tramitis, likely composed prior to the description of the Palm Sunday procession, contains an inventory and descriptions of some of Cluny’s notable relics.³⁶ The inventory describes a single silver reliquary containing the relics of Pope Marcellus and Pope Gregory, and a glass vial with a hair of St. Maiolus.³⁷ It is possible that this is the single, unnamed “large reliquary” referred to in the Palm Sunday descriptions of the Consuetudines antiqui-ores, which predated the Liber tramitis?* Were the two saints placed into separate reliquaries between the composition of the relic inventory and the composition of the Palm Sunday description such that they could be carried individually? While this is a possibility, the later Cluniac relic inventory of 1399 also indicates that a single reliquary contained relics from Marcellus and Gregory, suggesting that if the saints were separated, they were reunited in a single reliquary at a later date.³⁹ More likely, the Palm Sunday diagram imagines an individuality for these two saints that did not correspond to physical reality.

The puzzle of whether or not Marcellus and Gregory’s relics could have traveled individually is paralleled by the complicated nature of the image of Peter. The image was a very special object for Cluny.⁴⁰ It was the only reliquary specifically named in any of the redactions of the Consuetudines antiquiores two versions specify that the himmaginem of Peter was to be carried by two brothers in the Palm Sunday procession.⁴¹ Peter as a saint had special significance to Cluny, which had been dedicated to Peter and Paul. Yet the image’s description in the inventory challenges simple understandings of its nature as a reliquary; it was in fact not a singular object but an amalgam of holiness. While it did contain Peter’s relics, the image concealed an exceptionally wide-ranging collection of objects, including Mary’s clothing and a piece of Christ’s crib.⁴²

Thus, the Liber tramitis presents a disconnect between the complicated realities of relics-as-objects and the prescriptive image of the Palm Sunday procession. The diagram invites readers to view Cluny’s most prestigious relics as distinct persons who could be clearly arranged into a specific order. Just as one person might walk before another in procession, so too could Gregory be carried in front of Marcellus; the fact that Peter’s image was presumably a bust-reliquary suggests a visual personhood as well. All the saints named and carried in the Palm Sunday procession—Peter, Marcellus, Gregory, and Maur—had reputations and histories which gave them individual significance to Cluny, whether hearkening back to its founding (Peter), its ongoing connections to the papacy (Peter, Marcellus, and Gregory), or its vision of itself as the successor to the legacy of St. Benedict (Maur). In these men, eleventh-century Cluniacs saw motifs that reflected their contemporary concerns and positioning, and the Palm Sunday procession mapped them out in the form of their relics. Although this ideal may not have corresponded to lived reality, the Liber tramitis particularly developed a vision of relics as named, ranked, and linked to a single saint’s hagiographical and personal identity.