The Miracle of the Bloody Foreskin at the Council of Charroux in 1082: Legatine Authority, Religious Spectacle, and Charismatic Strategies of Canonical Reform in the Era of Gregory VII

Abstract

In 1082, at the council of Charroux convened by the papal legate Amatus of Oloron, astonished witnesses observed the Holy Prepuce, a rare body relic of Christ himself, to be miraculously spotted with fresh blood. This spectacular miracle holds implications for our understanding of charismatic strategies of religious reform in France in the era of Pope Gregory VII. Gregory’s use of standing legates with regional mandates, such as Amatus, was a novelty in papal administration, but the legates, though empowered as proxies of the pope, were often weak lieutenants. When they could not induce or coerce cooperation, they frequently confronted the impotence of their legal–canonical mandates. The miracle at Charroux, I will show, exemplifies an alternative charismatic strategy, harnessing liturgical art and spectacle to magnify the legate’s stature as an authority in the context of the Eucharistic controversy and religious reform.

The little treasury in the chapterhouse of the ruined abbey of Saint-Sauveur de Charroux in southern Poitou houses several remarkable liturgical artworks. The most famous of these is a small, golden capsule (Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3) decorated on the front and back with niello images of Christ, bearing on its circumference the awesome declaration, HIC CARO ET SANGUIS XPI CONTINETUR (Here is preserved the body and blood of Christ).1 In 1082, at the council of Charroux convened by the papal legate Amatus of Oloron, this same vessel was discovered, hidden within the church. Amatus, the standing legate of Pope Gregory VII, is remembered as one of the great adversaries of the heretic, Berengar of Tours, whose arguments against the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharistic elements fueled the Eucharistic Controversy of the eleventh century. At Charroux, the legate and his companions opened the rediscovered reliquary to reveal a second reliquary medallion (Figure 4 and Figure 5), which also survives in the treasury at Charroux. This vessel in turn contained the so-called sainte Vertu, the foreskin of Christ, which the astonished witnesses in 1082 observed to be miraculously spotted with fresh blood, a Eucharistic and distinctly anti-Berengarian miracle thus of the body and blood.2

This marvelous event holds unexplored implications for our understanding of charismatic strategies of religious reform in France in the era of Pope Gregory VII. Gregory’s use of standing legates with regional mandates, such as Amatus and Hugh of Die, was a novelty in papal administration, though the legates were often surprisingly weak lieutenants.3 They pursued a vigorous reform agenda, but lay and religious authorities, including nominal allies, routinely ignored their summons, questioned their jurisdiction, and openly resisted or even attacked them in council. When Gregory’s legates could not induce or coerce cooperation, they frequently confronted the impotence of their legal–canonical mandates and tactics. The miracle at the council of Charroux, I will show, exemplifies an alternative charismatic strategy for confronting this resistance, using liturgical art and spectacle as sources of charismatic authority to strengthen the legates’ canonical powers in the context of the Eucharistic controversy and church reform.

1. Canonical Reform and Legatine Authority in the Era of Gregory VII

History records almost nothing about the council of Charroux beyond the miracle of the sainte Vertu, but the official business of legatine councils in the era of Gregory VII commonly involved more practical if contentious questions of law, religious discipline, and theology.4 In Max Weber’s influential tripartite classification of authority, the legates operated chiefly under a rational–legal authority of Church law (Weber 2019). Though legally empowered as proxies of the pope, they lacked both the traditional authority and the personal charisma of Gregory VII. For a variety of reasons related to the novel character of their regional legations, the legates found it difficult to enforce their legal mandates, and opponents often made an insulting and dramatic show of their defiance.

Before Gregory VII, the popes commonly assigned legates to manage specific affairs, giving them more concentrated power in the context of disputes and negotiations between parties who often had compelling interests in a mediated solution. In his earlier days as Cardinal Hildebrand, Gregory VII himself had been, for example, twice dispatched to France as a legate in 1054 and 1056, convening councils at Tours and at Chalon-sur-Saone, the first of which touched on the Eucharistic teachings of Berengar of Tours, the second of which principally addressed the problem of simony (Cowdrey 1998, p. 32). Such legations were narrower in purpose, limited in duration, and more strongly motivated by a desire for papal intervention on the part of the interested parties. In this mission-specific context, the legates themselves held considerable authority to conduct their business, even if they had little if any power to set their own agendas. By contrast, Gregory’s new standing legates, Amatus of Oloron and Hugh of Die, had open-ended, regional mandates, and even the regional limits of their legations were flexible. Nominally, at least, Amatus presided in Aquitaine, southern France, and Spain, while Hugh held a mandate for Francia, the north, and the east. However, both men also convened or co-presided at councils in each other’s nominal territories, working collaboratively as often as they did independently. They undertook specific missions on behalf of the pope but also pursued their own initiatives and improvised agendas without his knowledge or direct authorization. Amatus and Hugh enjoyed a freedom that even permitted them to act contrary to Gregory’s express instructions.5 This freedom and the novelty and ambiguity of their standing, regional mandates came at a cost to their effective authority. Some clerical leaders saw the legates as meddling, especially in situations in which the legates appeared to be acting without explicit direction from the pope. It is equally apparent that some also resented and questioned the legates’ new interventionist methods.

A year before the council of Charroux, for instance, the legate Amatus was embarrassed in Tours, where the canons of the abbey of Saint-Martin refused to receive him in solemn procession befitting his quasi-papal dignity.6 Amatus repaid this insult by excommunicating the entire chapter of canons, who ignored this punishment and in turn pronounced their own sentences of excommunication against the legate’s partners in Tours, including the archbishop, Ralph (Farmer 1991, pp. 44–46; Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 12, pp. 459–61). The secular canons of Saint-Martin were wealthy, powerful, and confident in the support of the King of France, Philippe, the lay abbot of Saint-Martin whose open opposition to the legates gave the canons a potent temporal ally. Amatus had little leverage to compel their obedience, and they continued to resist the legates’ efforts in Tours in the years that followed. Indeed, in 1095, when Pope Urban II passed through Tours during his voyage through France in support of the First Crusade, the canons demanded and received the pope’s apology for the earlier sentence of excommunication imposed on them by Amatus, no doubt a humiliation for the legate, who was traveling with Urban (Farmer 1991, pp. 44–46). Records of Urban’s visit to Tours conspicuously note that Amatus was ill and unable to assist at the dedication of an altar at the abbey of Marmoutier (Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 14, p. 100). Was it embarrassment as much as illness that led Amatus to take a day off in Tours?

As the example of Amatus at Tours suggests, the legates sometimes confronted the real limits of their nominal authorities, yet they also plainly recognized the value of liturgy and spectacle as complementary sources of authority to strengthen their legal mandates. Amatus desired to be received in solemn procession by the canons of Saint-Martin not merely to extract a symbolic acknowledgement of his authority. He wanted no doubt to embody the pope, to share his charisma at least briefly in the context of a spectacle that bestowed majesty as a function of ceremony, a gravitas that clings to one’s person rather than descending from a dry procedural writ.7 Such spectacle should be regarded as a form of hyper-mimetic, charismatic representation of the pope.8 The complaints of the canons of Saint-Martin seem to support this understanding of the hyper-mimetic function of the processional spectacle. The canons claimed to have resisted Amatus’s demands for the processional reception on the grounds precisely that this ceremony was reserved exclusively for the person of the pope. If they were to receive Amatus as the pope’s legate in this manner, they asked, how then could they distinguish the unique and superior person of the pope himself when he should come to visit?9 Their argument presumes that the spectacle of the procession contains a real aspect of the pope and, furthermore, that the procession confers this aspect of the pope charismatically on its focus in a manner that would threaten the distinction between Amatus and Gregory VII by representing the legate as the pope himself.

Amatus’s desire for a ceremonial reception speaks to a strategy of influence: the legates of Gregory VII used ceremony and liturgy as means of access to the charisma of the pope. They were for this reason extraordinarily eager to perform ceremonial and liturgical duties, a fact that has passed without much scholarly comment in previous studies in the fields of both church history and monumental art. The legates’ consecratory activities are commonly treated as incidental to their political and religious objectives in the communities that they visited, but consecration could be an end itself. The legates traversed the country in their legatine capacities seeking new places to consecrate altars and churches, to ordain and baptize, to bestow blessings and pronounce anathemas.10 In 1077, for example, Amatus visited the abbey of Gellone at Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert to consecrate a new altar amid a long-running dispute over the independence of Saint-Guilhem from its parent abbey of Aniane (Richard-Ralite 2017). The monks at Gellone eagerly received Amatus as a papal authority, whose visit and consecration gave a papal seal to the abbey’s claimed rights and privileges. Thus did Amatus also at times find allies willing and eager to facilitate liturgical ceremonies that conferred papal charisma on the legate and that, by means of the legate, bestowed papal imprimatur on his partners.

In other cases, the legates employed liturgy as a strategy for imposing papal authority, annexing contested territory by means of consecration. In 1077–1078, Amatus promptly improvised a new consecratory itinerary after the Archbishop Wifred of Narbonne attacked the council of Girona and forced the legate to flee. Under the protection of his ally, the Count of Besalú, Amatus and an entourage of other refugees from the council meandered across Catalunya from Girona to Banyoles to Besalù to Sant Pere de Talteüll to La Seu d’Urgel and Sant Serní de Tavèrnoles, consecrating altars, deposing abbots, reforming and donating abbeys and, no doubt, performing other liturgical and ceremonial rites now lost to memory.11 In some ways, the voyage of Amatus through Catalunya in 1078 anticipated the famous voyage of Urban II through France in support of the First Crusade in 1095–1096 (Crozet 1937). At each stop, Urban found the opportunity to consecrate altars and churches, pursuing a politics of consecration that both amplified the majesty of the pope through the spectacle of the liturgy and cultivated the support of the local partners to these performances. Likewise, Amatus used liturgical performance as a source of power and authority to influence potential allies on his voyage through Catalunya. The strategy was successful. Months after he was driven out of Girona, Amatus returned to convene a second council which proved a key milestone in the Roman reform of the Iberian church (Fazy 1908, pp. 85–86; Degert 1908, pp. 49–53).12

Many other examples attest to the legates’ recognition of the powerful “charisma of the liturgy”, as Jaume Aurell has termed it (Aurell 2022a, 2022b). An eleventh-century chronicler, for example, was clearly struck by Amatus’s dramatic disruption of a baptism at Albi, where he traveled to confront the schismatic Bishop of Albi, Frotard, who was excommunicated by Amatus and Hugh of Die at the council of Toulouse in 1079 (Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 14, p. 50). The chronicler reports that Amatus, when he was provided chrism for the ceremony that had been consecrated by Frotard, hurled it to the ground publicly, declaring it execrated rather consecrated, “fit for the unction of asses rather than Christians”13 At his own cathedral of Oloron, a pagan idol buried in the portal as part of the rite of consecration of the church reveals the profound extent of Amatus’s creative imagination for the spectacle of liturgical performance (Brown 2020).

In their roles as canonical proxies of the pope, the legates borrowed the charisma of the liturgy to promote the “majesty of the law”, as we still say today. This expression acknowledges, among other things, the irrational dependence of the law on its own solemnizing formalities and ceremony. The judge enthroned in curia might be said to wear the charisma of the law,14 and the legates of Gregory VII desperately needed access to such authority to reinforce their weak legal mandates. Opposition to their projects went well beyond insult and disobedience. The region’s lay and religious powers often used force and threats of force to intimidate and attack the legates and their allies. The legate’s religious adversaries brought their armed, lay supporters to church councils, where they frequently refused to recognize the canonical authority of the Roman legates. Violence was not uncommon. Isembert, Bishop of Poitiers, sent his knights to attack Amatus at the council of Saint-Maixent in 1074, rather than submit to papal authority (Brown 2020). Wifred, Archbishop of Narbonne, did the same at the council of Girona (Degert 1908, pp. 49–52). Ralph, Archbishop of Tours, likewise menaced Hugh of Die at the council of Poitiers in 1078, before making peace with the legates (Rennie 2011).

2. The Limits of Legatine Authority: The Example of Tours

This last example offers especially pertinent insight into the weak authorities and political challenges that impeded the legates’ efforts to win concessions from powerful religious and secular leaders. Ralph of Langeais was elected to the office of Archbishop of Tours in 1072 through the direct patronage of Philippe, King of France (Halphen 1906, p. 201). Gregory VII was elected pope in 1073, but neither he nor his legates showed special interest in Tours until 1075, at the earliest, when Berengar of Tours was assaulted at the council of Poitiers, convened by Amatus and Gerald of Ostia (Brown 2020). Tours was increasingly a focus of the legate’s attention in the years thereafter. In 1076, Gregory recognized Dol as the metropolitan seat of an archdiocese, a status long claimed by the bishops of Dol and long disputed by the archbishops of Tours (Cowdrey 2008, pp. 214–15; Cowdrey 1998, pp. 353, 396). Gregory’s approval of Dol was calculated to antagonize both Tours and King Philippe I: Dol belonged in 1076 to the geographic sphere of influence of William the Conqueror, the ascendant King of England and Duke of Normandy. William and his Norman lieutenants interfered in the region throughout the 1070s and early 1080s, with the intention of extending their influence in Brittany and the region of Maine and perhaps binding the Breton diocese to the Norman political world (Halphen 1906, pp. 180–86; Cowdrey 1998, pp. 344–45, 460–61). Against this political backdrop, in 1078, Hugh of Die convened a council at Poitiers, one of the chief purposes of which was to consider charges of simony against Ralph of Langeais, mooting his removal from office (Rennie 2011, pp. 2–3). Ralph initially refused to cooperate and menaced violence, but Poitiers had already been made safe through the earlier efforts of Amatus and Gerald of Ostia, and the council continued under the protection of William VIII, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine.

The fact that the council was held in Poitiers and not in Tours is itself a sign of the limits on the legates’ power and of their pragmatic and strategic adaptations. The council would no doubt have failed if convened in Tours, in enemy territory. In Poitiers, the legate was freer to act but his edicts had little immediate effect on Ralph, who misbehaved at the council and returned to Tours relatively unchastened and unreconciled, no doubt aware that the legates had little power to harm him in his seat in Tours. However, the council of Poitiers in 1078 was only the opening stratagem in the legates’ plan to coerce Ralph’s support for the pope. Amatus soon after excommunicated Ralph,15 and in 1079, Amatus and Hugh went to Brittany on Gregory’s orders to convene a council at Dol, where they considered a dispute between the abbey of Marmoutier and Ralph, placing further pressure on Ralph by threatening an unfavorable decision (Fazy 1908, p. 98; Degert 1908, pp. 63–64; Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 14, p. 96). Amatus then returned south by way of Tours, stopping at Saint-Épain between Chinon and Tours, where he ordered Ralph to call upon him (Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 14, pp. 669–70; Fazy 1908, pp. 111–12). It is not clear that Ralph complied. An exchange of letters between Amatus, Ralph, Bishop Arnald of Le Mans, and Gebuin, Archbishop of Lyon and Primate of Gaul, reveals Ralph openly questioning the legate’s authority (Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 14, pp. 669–74). After first ordering Ralph to visit him in Touraine, Amatus then commanded his attendance at a council in Bordeaux to be convened in late 1080. Ralph was plainly reluctant to comply with any of the legate’s requests, no doubt sensitive to his duty to and dependence on King Philippe, who had flatly refused to cooperate with the pope and his legates. Gebuin, alarmed by the legates’ interference in his own clerical territory, questioned Amatus’s authority and, for good measure, ordered Ralph to come to Lyon at the same time that the council of Bordeaux was scheduled to convene. Several months later, Ralph duly appeared … but at the council of Bordeaux, where Amatus heard the dispute between Ralph and the Bishop of Dol, ruling in Ralph’s favor (Fazy 1908, pp. 88–89, 111).

Amatus leveraged Ralph, it seems likely, by promising to support the archbishop’s claims over Dol. It appears that Gregory and his legates, having first empowered and then undermined Dol, offered Ralph a choice: support the legates, or Rome would support an archdiocese at Dol. Indeed, after Ralph began to cooperate with Amatus, Dol’s fortunes waned, and Ralph’s claims were confirmed by the pope and his allies (Cowdrey 1998, p. 353). Ralph nevertheless found himself in a difficult spot. His obedience to the papacy weakened his position politically in Tours. In the early 1080s, he faced conflicts with the monks of Marmoutiers, the canons of Saint-Martin, the Count of Angers, and King Philippe (Farmer 1991, pp. 43–44). The canons cited Ralph’s obedience to the legate as a sign of disloyalty to the king and one of their principal grievances against him (Delisle 1840–1904, vol. 12, p. 579). The Count of Anjou and King Philippe chased Ralph from his seat, eliciting the pope’s rebuke, but the king finally had little choice but to accept his archbishop’s cooperation with Rome (Cowdrey 1998, p. 353). Philippe also was opposed to an empowered archdiocese at Dol, which might further extend the influence of William the Conqueror and weaken Tours, his own seat of influence. He had no choice, perhaps, but to accept a compromise that preserved the power of Tours. The king and his proxies, especially the canons, nonetheless drew the line at allowing the legates into Tours itself. Thus, Amatus was able to turn the archbishop Ralph into an ally even as he weakened that ally in his own seat and failed, consequently, to establish a meaningful foothold for the papacy in Tours. The canons and the king could not be leveraged, and they greeted the agents of Rome with insults and excommunications.

3. The Legatine Councils and Conciliar Speech

Despite such opposition and political obstacles, the legates of Gregory VII, especially Hugh of Die and Amatus of Oloron, successfully transformed the legal and religious landscape of France from Poitiers to the Pyrenees, which became one of the most productive and important regions for new canon law activity in the Latin church in the late eleventh century.16 Legatine councils were essential to this success. Between 1073 and 1084, Amatus and Hugh of Die together convened more than twenty councils, including as many as five in Poitiers and ten in broader Aquitaine.17 The councils addressed disputes and produced new consensus on matters of church law and theology. The councils of Girona and Poitiers in 1078, coordinated and convened almost simultaneously by Amatus and Hugh, both became landmarks of canonical reform in France and Spain, yielding thirteen new canons at Girona and ten closely similar ones at Poitiers, which rapidly found their way into new collections of canon law. Council participants included in aggregate most of the important clerical and monastic hierarchy of France, who came to the meetings equipped with their own records, witnesses, and textual authorities of law, making these assemblies, which occurred one after the other in a short space of time, a moveable colloquium of law. Poitiers and southwestern France emerged as an epicenter of new canonistic activity in the late eleventh century. The so-called “Poitevin” collections of canon law, produced in the region during this era, are crucial works of law and monuments to the reforms sought and largely achieved by Gregory VII, at least in southern France. The Poitevin collections include the Liber Tarraconensis, a manuscript likely produced in southwestern France and exported to Spain sometime after 1080, a precedent for the adoption of Roman canonical reform in northern Spain. They also include the Collectio Burdegalensis, a manuscript directly associated with the series of councils held in the region of Bordeaux by Amatus beginning in 1079 and with the abbey of La Sauve-Majeure, co-founded by Amatus in 1079.

It is apparent that councils were essential to the strategy and, ultimately, the success of the legates’ agenda. Our direct knowledge of the councils is, however, profoundly circumscribed, limited chiefly to the dry, formulaic language of charters. We know little about how the legates in the face of stiff opposition accomplished such sweeping change. We know little about the forms and contents of conciliar speech, the styles of negotiation, and the strategies of persuasion practiced by the legates and their allies. Surviving council charters are rare and speak narrowly to at most a handful of the many matters addressed at the councils. They document foundations, donations, and the resolution of disputes, discrete council outcomes that, decontextualized in monastic cartularies, are often difficult to interpret as evidence for the legates’ reform agenda.

Some indirect records offer more vivid impressions of conciliar speech and negotiation. Letters and other missives written in anticipation or in the aftermath of councils often speak to the charged and even violent character of interactions at the councils. Bitter invective, hyperbole, falsehood, and threats are common in these epistles. The letters of Gregory VII after the council of Saint-Maixent condemn Isembert for his assault on Amatus in passionate terms, for instance (Cowdrey 2008, p. 93). In anticipation of the council of Saintes in 1092, the Count of Anjou slandered the legate Amatus, calling him “neither a monk nor a priest”, and threatening violence should the legate decide against the count’s allies at Vendôme in a dispute with the monks of Saint-Aubin.18 Saint-Aubin in turn wrote a complaint after the council denouncing the legate for his decision against them, accusing the count and legate of corruption, bribery, violent intimidation, and other crimes (de Broussillon 1903, vol. 2, pp. 219–23). In 1095, the monks of Saint-Aubin were still so angry that they refused to receive the pope and Amatus and barred their entry to the abbey when Urban II visited the city of Angers (Gorjeltchan 2019, pp. 51–52). The canons of Saint-Martin in their letter to Urban II mocked Amatus as Ralph’s lover, after Amatus excommunicated the chapter of canons at the council of Issoudun in 1082.19 Such colorful if slanted and indirect or second-hand accounts of council business nonetheless reflect a social dimension intrinsic to the politics of reform but largely missing from the language of council charters and legal collections.

4. Spectacle as Conciliar Speech at the Council of Charroux

Our understanding of eleventh-century church reform is further complicated by the fact that many councils, including that of Charroux, produced few or no surviving charters or letters; they have thus been largely excluded from our histories. The council of Charroux remains shrouded in mystery, our knowledge of its business dependent chiefly on two considerably later sources. The earliest is a Historia recounting the miracle of the sainte Vertu, composed more than a decade after the council and preserved in the abbey’s Liber de constitutione (de Monsabert 1910, pp. 39–41); the second is a brief notice in the twelfth-century Chronique de Saint-Maixent, which confirms the miracle and adds only that the council of Charroux was also the occasion of the consecration of a new altar in the abbey church (Verdon 1979). The invention of the sainte Vertu is recorded in the Charroux Historia by an author who represents himself as an eyewitness of the event. His detailed account says little explicitly about the council: the author names several bishops present for the miracle, led by Amatus, but mentions only in passing that these bishops constituted a “council”, which according to the author used its authority to confirm and to sermonize on the miracle.20 On first reading, the Historia appears to hold value chiefly for our knowledge of the abbey, and modern readers, primarily students of Charroux, have assumed that the author’s motive and narrative were irrelevant to the affairs of the council. On the contrary, the Historia was most likely composed ca. 1095 in connection with the visit to the abbey by Pope Urban II, accompanied by Amatus of Oloron and other participants in the council in 1082 (McNeill 2015, pp. 205–23; Treffort 2007, pp. 277–96). Together, Urban and Amatus consecrated the church’s high altar beneath the rotunda tower (Figure 6 and Figure 7), modeled after the rotunda of the church of the Holy Sepulcher, above the new crypt, on which construction began immediately after the council (Gabriele 2011, pp. 47–50). The Historia thus addressed some of the very persons who had organized the council, who produced the miracle of the sainte Vertu, and who were returning in 1096 to celebrate the completion of the crypt built to the house the relic.

Although the Historia says little directly about the council, it does make clear that the discovery of the reliquary, if not the miracle, was planned, anticipated, and thus coordinated with the timing of the council. According to the author, the new Abbot of Charroux, Fulcrad, installed in 1077, hoped to recover the lost relic, which the narrator asserts had been hidden by Charroux’s abbé-chevalier, Count Audebert II de la Marche (Treffort 2007, pp. 290–91). The narrator reports that Fulcrad and unnamed others prayed to Audebert to reveal the location of the relic. The count at last agreed to cooperate, and Fulcrad and his allies “fixed a day on which the display of the sainte Vertu would be given to all those who came together at the place where it was held”.21 News of this impending event spread among the people of Aquitaine, the narrator continues, and on the appointed day, the bishops led by Amatus came together with an “innumerable” host of other lay and religious witnesses, including many knights and soldiers, all motivated by the desire to honor the sainte Vertu (de Monsabert 1910, pp. 39–40).

Let us now restore in our mind’s eye the abbey church of Charroux as it appeared on this occasion (Figure 8). Construction on the church had been underway for some time since the abbey was heavily damaged by fire in 1048. The consecration of a new altar in 1082 represented the completion of the renovation or reconstruction of some part of the church, but we must envision a busy site of ongoing work: of cranes and stone and dust, of mortar and masons. In fact, the constructive installation of the new altar was planned to coincide with a demolition to begin the new building campaign that would complete the abbey’s choir tower, crypt, and rotunda.22

Here, I wish to observe that scaffolding and cranes are architectural signifiers more powerful in their own muscular, dynamic way than the pristine but inert walls and stones of a finished building, which look to the eye of the viewer as though they have always existed in their fixed and stable condition. The aesthetic of religious reform in the late eleventh century was defined by destructive and constructive activity: demolishing and erecting, smashing and building, clearing and planting (Brown 2020, p. 155). In the performance culture of the Middle Ages, the act of building itself signified with an urgency and reference to the intention of the builders that was not possible for a completed monument.23 In much the same way, charters and epigraphic dedications are only poor relics of the vital performances of oath and sacrament that dignified the immediate purposes of their authors. The invention of the sainte Vertu occurred by design in the performative setting of such a public and significant work in progress. It was from this perspective a species of building miracle, tied directly to the constructive and, thus, the spiritual and sacramental renewal of the church.

As the Historia recounts, Fulcrad waited until the council itself to excavate the reliquary from its secret place: the narrator tells that the assembly gathered at the site, and Fulcrad and Amatus only then caused that part of the building to be demolished publicly, before the eyes of the watching crowd.24 This scene suggests some of the drama of Indiana Jones, demolishing walls or digging up pavements to recover lost, ancient treasures, but the demolition was also a public groundbreaking. I have little doubt that the hiding place corresponded to the location of the future crypt and high altar, the last part of the abbey of Charroux to be rebuilt.

Having broken through the stones of the old church to uncover the lost reliquary, the holiest men at the assembly, Amatus at their head, proceeded to open the first capsule, discovered the second, and observed the prodigy of fresh blood, another hyper-mimetic spectacle: the invisible miracle of Eucharistic transubstantiation, the sacrament of body and blood made manifest in the bleeding flesh (caro et sanguis), as affirmed by the reliquary’s inscription) of the body-part relic of Christ himself. The narrator describes all this, in addition to the ostension of the bloody relic, which overcame the doubts of the incredulous, and finally the sermon delivered by the council of bishops. I am particularly interested in the social implications of this elaborate performance—the rousing, exciting acts of procession, demolition, invention, opening, and ostension, followed by sermonizing, whose rhetorical purpose was likely to thrill as much as to instruct the crowd by representing the enormity of this miracle. The drama of the invention in all its dimensions made the sainte Vertu an accessory of the persons who orchestrated and delivered this performance. The miracle of the bloody foreskin, embodying the miracle and theology of the Eucharist, further endowed the consecration of the altar of Charroux with extraordinary significance. The consecratory mass, most likely conducted after the invention of the relic, shared the Eucharistic aura of the miraculous relic and gave the legate and council, as masters of this moment, further opportunity to borrow the aura of the relic and the charisma of the liturgy.25

The sainte Vertu itself appears to have been invented for this occasion. There is no record of the existence of the holy prepuce of Charroux prior to the council of 1082. As previous scholars have reconstructed, the legend of the prepuce reworked older legends associated with a relic of the cross (Cabanot 1981; Treffort 2007; Remensnyder 1995, pp. 166–82). The outer reliquary capsule preserved at Charroux is a work from late eleventh-century France, contemporaneous with the miracle (Frolow 1966, p. 40; Remensnyder 1995, p. 177). It was most likely produced or acquired for the invention of the sainte Vertu. Its unambiguous inscription asserting the presence of the body and blood both anticipates and verbally reproduces the elements of the miracle. The inner, Byzantine reliquary medallion is at least slightly older, and its internal, cross-shaped relic cavity suggests that this object corresponds to the older reliquary of the true cross, appropriated and reframed by the new reliquary capsule as the holy prepuce (Frolow 1966; McNeill 2015, pp. 220–21, n. 33; Remensnyder 1995, pp. 176–77). The dramatic invention of the relic of the foreskin placed the legate Amatus at the heart of a miracle that affirmed the nascent theology of Eucharistic transubstantiation against the heretical views of Berengar of Tours and his supporters.

5. Charismatic Spectacle and Legatine Authority

To what end did Fulcrad and Amatus arrange this elaborate performance, which with the dedication of a new altar seems to have constituted the most important business of the council of Charroux? It was not the first time that Amatus orchestrated such a spectacle. Other happenings organized by him offer insight into the legate’s method and purpose. The very first and perhaps most important initiative of Amatus’s career involved a comparable sacramental spectacle of creative destruction, involving the consecration of an altar at the recently founded abbey of Montierneuf in Poitiers (Brown 2021). In 1074, while under a sentence of interdiction and suspended from office, Isembert, Bishop of Poitiers, consecrated the first altar in the new monastery of Montierneuf. Isembert’s defiance of the pope and his legates prompted his excommunication, and Amatus convened a council at Poitiers in early 1075 for the destruction of the execrated altar and the consecration of a replacement. The ritualized destruction of an altar as an act of punishment must have made for a remarkable spectacle, amplified by the council’s consecration of two or perhaps three new altars in replacement. Though history preserves no description of these rites, there survives a suite of three poetic invectives addressing the legates and likely written for publication at the council of Poitiers, calling for the punishment of Isembert:

De quodam prelato cupido et avaro

I.

Errant qui credunt gentem periisse Ciclopum:

  En, Poliphemus adest multiplicator opum,

Excedens alios uultuque minisque Ciclopes,

  Tantalus alter, inops esurit inter opes.

Cum sit tam capitis quam mentis lumine cecus,

  Dedecus omne docet, dedocet omne decus.

Rupe caua latitans cupiendo, timendo laborat;

  Quosque tenere potest, ossa cutemque uorat.

Ecclesiam lacerat, deglutit publica fratrum,

  Nec saciare potest mentis hians baratrum

Pontificum legate, decus, pater optime partum,

  Ad solitum redeat, coge nefas, aratrum.

II.

Exilaras mestos, Hilaris pater, Hilarienses,

Cuius uirga regit, docet accio Burdegalenses:

Iura foues reprimisque dolos, sed digna repenses

Qui delere uolunt que tu, pater optime, censes.

Luce tua remoue tenebras animosque serena;

Dumque redis nobis redeant solacia plena

Afficiatque semel Polifemum debita pena.

Tam caput elatum confringe minasque refrena.

III.

Edibus in nostris ferus hospitibus Diomedes

Intulit insidias, fecit manus impia cedes;

Nunc moriens hostis nostras sibi uindicat edes

Ut suus in dotes proprias habeat Ganimedes.

Iusticie legate rigor, defensio ueri:

Arbitrio cuius pendet moderatio cleri:

Hoc tantum facinus prohibe dignum prohiberi;

Hostis frange minas et nos assuesce tueri.

(About a Certain Lustful and Greedy Prelate

I.

Those people are mistaken who believe that the Cyclopes’ clan died off:

  look, a Polyphemus is here who makes his wealth manifold.

Outdoing the other Cyclopes in both his demeanor and threats,

  he is a second Tantalus, hungering needily amid abundance.

Since he is blind spiritually as well as physically,

  he teaches every dishonor and unteaches every honor.

Lurking in a cliffside hollow, he toils in desire and fear;

  and those of whom he can lay hold, he devours their bones and flesh.

He tears apart the Church, he gobbles the brothers’ communal property,

  but he cannot satisfy the yawning chasm of his mind.

Pontifical legate, glory, best father of fathers,

  force this wicked person to return to the usual plow.

II.

You gladden glad father the sad followers of St. Hilary,

you whose rod rules the people of Bordeaux, whose conduct teaches them:

you cherish laws and restrain treachery, but may you make fitting returns

to those who wish to destroy what you recommend, best father.

Through your light remove darkness and brighten hearts;

and as you return, may complete solace return to us,

and may due punishment cause harm to Polyphemus once and for all.

shatter the head that has risen so high and restrain the threats.

III.

In our house a savage Diomedes

laid snares for guests, an impious hand caused bloodshed;

and the enemy now dying claims our house for himself

so that his Ganymede may have it as his dowry.

Legate, rigor of the justice, defense of truth,

upon whose judgment depends the governance of the clergy:

forbid this great crime, which deserves to be forbidden;

break the threats of the enemy and keep the habit of protecting us).

(Ziolkowski and Balint 2007)

The poet mythologizes the conflict, describing Isembert as a monster and the legates as righteous heroes. Per the poet, Isembert is another Polyphemus, a cyclops devouring the common property of the Church; he is the wicked host Diomedes, luring his guests to their doom, an insatiable Tantalus, and a pederast amassing the wealth of the Church as a dowry for his Ganymede. The poet exhorts the legates to smash, shatter, and break this enemy, language that seems to allude to smashing the execrated altar and thus to shattering the bishop’s legal–sacramental authority.26 It appears that these poems, which petition the legates as epic heroes to combat these monsters, were composed to be published during the council at the trial of Isembert. It may seem strange to consider such witty, profane invectives as examples of conciliar speech, but as likely artifacts of the council, such poems remind us that mockery, insult, and provocation are also common modes of public and even official discourse.

As events showed, the hyperbole and violence of the poet’s petition spoke authentically to the business of the council. The council’s judges shattered Isembert’s altar, and this ritual violence turned then to physical violence, as the assembly of distinguished clerics, canons, and monks devolved into a mob that attacked and nearly killed the controversial scholar and teacher, Berengar of Tours, who was in attendance. As I have written previously, it is possible, perhaps likely, that Amatus exploited the sacramental opportunity afforded by the destruction of the altar to rouse the mob against Berengar, whose heretical teachings fueled the eleventh-century Eucharistic controversy (Brown 2021, p. 223). In any case, the scandal at the council of Poitiers reignited interest in Berengar’s heresy. Threatened by the mob, Berengar was compelled to endorse a profession of belief in the Eucharist written for him by Amatus and the council, the text of which preserves perhaps the earliest verbal formulation of the concept of transubstantiation (Somerville 1972). The Church’s renewed interest in Berengar led several years later to his trial and a new punishment at Rome, in 1079, though he renounced his confession soon after his return to France, leading to a final trial led by Amatus in 1080 at the council of Bordeaux.27

By this time, Amatus’s conflicts with Berengar had escalated into a public feud with the entire chapter of canons at Saint-Martin, to which Berengar belonged. Amatus attempted to force the canons to receive him in ceremonial procession, while the canons refused his visit and insulted the legate and his ally Ralph, the Archbishop of Tours. The two sides retaliated against each other, trading excommunications in 1081.

It was at this juncture that planning for the council of Charroux began. The consecration of the altar and invention of the sainte Vertu appear in this context as urgently relevant both to the legate’s loss of face through his humiliation at Tours and to the ongoing crisis over Berengar’s heretical beliefs, in which the rebellious canons of Tours, supported by King Philippe, posed a substantial challenge to the pope and his legates. The drama of the relic’s staged rediscovery and the subsequent prodigy of blood, along with the consecration of the altar, witnessed by a large and diverse assembly of lay and religious powers, dressed the legate in the charismatic authority of a sacramental miracle.

In closing, I observe that the selection of the abbey of Charroux to host the council was itself a strategic decision that exploited both the support of allies and the symbolic potential of the site to maximize the public impact of the invention of the sainte Vertu. Fulcrad, the Abbot of Charroux, was none other than the brother of Ralph, Archbishop of Tours, the ally of Amatus, whose mutual conflicts with the canons of Saint-Martin and the King of France directly preceded the council and miracle (de Monsabert 1910, p. XXXVIII). The abbey of Charroux, with legendary ties to Charlemagne and thus to the lineage of the kings of France, was famously the site of the council of Charroux in 989, which proclaimed the Paix de Dieu (Favreau 1989, pp. 213–19). Architecturally, through its relation to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the abbey church offered a setting powerfully appropriate to a miracle involving the body of Christ (McNeill 2015, p. 215). With construction of the crypt to house the relic beginning after the council, it offered the legates the prospect of a building in progress, inviting donations and support to engage the public’s active attention for years to come. With the completion of the crypt and rotunda, Charroux provided the legate Amatus and the pope the opportunity to preside in 1096 over the consecration of the new space, to reaffirm the miracle and its lessons. No doubt, all of this was equally if not more attractive to Fulcrad and the monks of Charroux, whose abbey stood to benefit enormously from the miraculous discovery of the most holy relic. The pilgrimage and religious devotion to the sainte Vertu at Charroux helped substantially to fund construction and to enrich the abbey in the decades that followed. The advantages to Charroux thus offered strong inducement to support the legates’ goals. Yet this also served the legates’ purposes, as an object lesson to other potential allies: obedient collaboration with Rome promised material benefits.

I have attempted in this essay to resituate the reliquary and miracle of the sainte Vertu in their proper context as matters of central importance to the council of Charroux. Likewise, I have attempted to establish the significance of this obscure council for our understanding of the reform agenda of Amatus of Oloron. My account clarifies some previously enigmatic aspects of French church history in the age of Gregory VII. However, my larger purpose is to draw attention to open questions about the nature and varieties of conciliar speech and legatine authority in the era of Gregorian Reform. The career of Amatus of Oloron included many dramatic, colorful, and even marvelous occurrences of sacramental violence, public spectacle, consecratory performance, and building miracles. These episodes have sometimes been treated as merely anecdotal evidence for the history of church reform. I have attempted to show that they are, on the contrary, vital and revealing evidence of the legates’ persuasive strategies and the social contexts of their objectives. Sacramental spectacle was essential to the legates’ work, from the great miracle of the sainte Vertu to the dozens of more commonplace consecrations and other ceremonies that they orchestrated. Such spectacle I believe constitutes its own form of persuasive speech, aesthetic and charismatic in nature rather than rational and legal. Sacramental spectacles served both as means and ends of the legates’ religious objectives. As a means, spectacle lent charismatic authority to reinforce the legates’ weak legal mandates. As an end, sacramental spectacle embodied the liturgical and theological positions that the legates sought but often struggled to enforce on the strength of their canonical authority alone, as the miracle of the sainte Vertu so richly demonstrates.