Carrying the saint
The role of relic porter was not a simple one. Several texts reflect a concern for the personal merit and spiritual health of those who physically supported the weight of the relics, and warn of the consequences of failing to measure up. The miracles of St. Landeric suggested in dramatic fashion that a willing and eager spirit was not all that was required:
This also I think should not be omitted: when on that same day the body of kind Landeric was to be transferred to the aforementioned village for the purpose of legal action, as it was being carried out from the temple, a certain man named Willebert ran up to the porters on the threshold, and he persuaded one of them that that he himself should support the burden. But the feretrum sprang back from the shoulders of the approaching [man] and hung in the air without anyone holding it up. He fell headlong onto the ground, stupefied by the power which had been demonstrated, until finally with hymns and praises having been sung by the brothers he could get up. These things were done, 1 think, because he had not previously weighed the merit of his conscience in the scales, whether he should consider himself worthy to support the members of so holy a patron.55
The text implies that had Willebert perhaps been a little more reflective and a little less hasty, he might well have been able to carry the saint. This concern for preparedness is mirrored in other texts which indicate that porters might undergo a careful selection and preparation process; when the relics of St. Genevieve were to be brought around Paris in an attempt to stop a plague, “the better people of the familia of the sacred virgin were elected” to carry the saint. In preparation, they not only purified themselves with fasting and prayers, they also took a bath.56
Landeric’s hovering reliquary was something of an anomaly; more frequently, saints tended to “express themselves,” as Evermar did, by manipulating the weight of their reliquary. A happy saint being carried by a worthy team supposedly weighed almost nothing; when St. Benedict was being
Relics and their companions as travelers 93 returned to Fleury, for the porters he was “a burden without weight.”57 An enemy of the saint would, in theory, find things tougher going. When the relics of St. Agilus were brought to a convocation of the relics of Rebais and Jouarre, the praepositus Roger of Jouarre wanted to help carry them back afterwards. The saint, however “did not allow [himself] to be raised to the neck of an enemy” and the reliquary became so heavy that Roger groaned under the weight. Helpfully reminded by the people that he was illegitimately holding several properties which belonged to the saint, Roger recognized his error (earning him a complimentary description as a vir moderatissimus) and gave it all back; the saint’s reliquary then became so light that Roger had the impression that rather than him carrying it, it was carrying him.58 Though certainly scripted, the incident reinforced the expectation that the act of carrying a saint’s relics afforded that saint the opportunity to weigh in on the personal merit of their porter.59
These implied porter-saint relationships were useful in political and legal contexts. Successfully carrying the saint’s relics confirmed that the saint was pleased with their bearer(s), in addition to providing a politically effective tableau of humility and piety. A charter of Baldwin VII, done at Lille in 1117, indicates that the count carried Amandus’ relics as a ritual action which paralleled the witness of the charter itself:
That same day, I [Baldwin] ordered that the body of St. Amandus, the glorious priest of Christ, be carried to the wood that was to be divided; where, in testimony of this division, I myself, though unworthy, carried the most holy body of that same saint.60
Here, the act of portation took on both a legal and spiritual character. The inclusion of the count’s ritual role as porter in the charter reaffirmed his status as someone who was indeed worthy of carrying a saint as well as the saint’s tacit approval of the proceedings.61 By carrying Amandus’ relics, the count opened a moment of direct dialogue between himself and the holy.
These expectations regarding the roles and personal merit of a reliquary’s porters found perhaps their boldest expression in the account of the second “translation” of St. Bavo, in reality a relic journey undertaken in 1058 in the context of the rivalry between St-Bavo’s and St-Peter’s of Ghent. In the course of this account, which is marked by both literary ambition and intense bitterness toward St-Peter’s, the hagiographer compared Bavo’s reliquary to the Ark of the Covenant on its travels back from captivity by the Philistines. He addressed the porters of the reliquary directly, and emphasized the spiritual value of their work:
Listen, you who are carrying the ark of God, going on to Bethsames, that is to the ‘house of the sun,’ participate in the joy over this and a thousand other proofs in the vestibule of [your] mind, certain that if you carry the ark, turning neither to the right or left, when you see the God of gods with pious Bavo, you will be gods. Whence that psalm: ‘I said, you are gods and all sons of the Most High’...62
The depth of this reference to the Ark makes the analogy a bit obscure. Bethsames was the first city the Ark encountered once it had been released by the Philistines on a cart pulled by two oxen, who turned “neither to the right or left” but headed directly for Israelite territory. While the comparison of porters to oxen may seem uncomplimentary, the author’s point was that carrying the reliquary on its travels was a distinct type of privilege that would translate into heavenly rewards. The Ark was used in this passage to connect the wonder and power of Bavo’s reliquary with the positive implications of that power for those physically responsible for it.
If the task of porter was so fraught, both with risk and reward, was it a privilege the church reserved to its own? Nicole Herrmann-Mascard concluded that the question of lay portation of sacred objects was defined by a gap between ideals of strict hierarchy and more egalitarian realities. From the sixth century onward, church councils and legal scholars indicated that the touching and carrying of sacred objects should be reserved to religious personnel; equally clearly, these restrictions were almost entirely ignored in practice.63 The texts regarding relic journeys support this determination. The suggestion in the Cluniac customaries that once the relics had been escorted to the walls, they might be carried by either brothers or laymen is paralleled in hagiographical texts, which describe relics being loaned out to the lay population so that they and not the monks themselves might carry them around. For example, the miracles of St. Vitonus (Vanne) report that in response to a summer drought, a crowd of laypeople came knocking on the door of the monastery demanding that they be given the body of the saint. The priests were responsible for raising the body and bringing it outside the monastery, where the crowd was waiting with gifts and kisses for the saint. At that point, they became the saint’s bearers, “as sons of the most desired father,” carrying him around and calling for his help before returning to the monastery.64 Another loan occurred during the journey of the canons of Laon through France, when a castellan borrowed a Marian reliquary in order to carry it barefoot with his knights to a rival’s castle as a peacemaking gesture.65
Despite the fact that lay portation of relics is described in many central medieval texts, the texts regarding the flight of St. Cuthbert’s relics do suggest that there may have been tensions surrounding the implications of relic-carrying for lay porters. The text accompanying the illustration of the reliquary being moved (Figure 3.1) is one of the later additions to Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert. Known as “Miracle 6,” it describes the transportation of Cuthbert’s relics to Lindisfarne to escape a putative attack by William the Conqueror in 1069.66 The bishop and congregation of Durham, along with others, thought it best to flee before the arrival of the army, but found the tide was too high to cross to Lindisfarne as they intended. Miraculously, the relics parted the sea and allowed everyone to be able to cross without wetting
Relics and their companions as travelers 95 their feet, giving the anonymous author the opportunity to compare the episode to the crossing of the Red Sea during the Exodus. In the image, the waters part dramatically as they touch the leading porter, also evoking the description in Joshua 3 that the Jordan parted when it touched the feet of the priests carrying the Ark. Yet Cuthbert’s porters are clearly depicted as laymen, not monks or priests. As Malcolm Baker has noted, the illustrator of ms. 165 paid careful attention to the details of the text itself, and indeed Miracle 6 specifies that the reliquary was carried by (noble) laymen as it crossed to Lindisfarne.67 The text also claims that the experience of carrying the reliquary was so powerful that afterwards these men became monks at Durham, where they continued to share their memories of that day with their fellow monks:
But also the delight of the brothers, who also in life [were] nobles and more noble in seriousness of behavior, at that time carried the feretrum in military habit, now however with us in the monastery of that father, that is having professed in Durham, are true monks in act and habit. [They] are accustomed to attest often to us with great compunction of heart and with the sweetest narration, in what way the waves of the sea preceding them followed continuously in their footsteps, so that [the waves] neither went before [them] when they were proceeding little by little, nor remained behind for a long time when they were moving on quickly.68
The imagery and text of Miracle 6 work together to paint relic-carrying as a transformative experience that could prompt the conversion of lay porters to a monastic life.69 However, the later history of Miracle 6 suggests that this image of lay portation leading to conversion may not have been altogether desirable. When Simeon of Durham compiled his well-known Historia Dun-elmensis Ecclesiae in the early twelfth century, he had access to the text of Miracle 6 and borrowed much of its content for the description of the miracle itself. However, Simeon left out the subsequent monastic profession of the porters of the reliquary. Anne Lawrence-Mathers has identified this as a pointed omission, suggesting that there may have been some ambiguity about the identity of these porters and their conversion, an unwillingness to condone the carrying of relics by the laity, or perhaps, mere disinterest in their fate as irrelevant to the miracle.70 Whether Simeon’s omission should be interpreted as erasure or not, it is clear that legal and conciliar disapproval of relic-carrying by laymen did not translate to practical restrictions during the central Middle Ages.
