body-parts reliquaries-the state of research

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Body-Part Reliquaries: The State of Research BARBARA DRAKE BOEHM The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abstract For the first time since the nineteenth century, pub-

lished articles, monographs, conferences, and lectures dedicated to the medieval cult of relics have proliferated during the past decade.' Studies specifically of reliquaries that assume the form of parts of the human body have begun to occupy a small corner of this field of research. The newness of this pursuit in literature published in English is evidenced in the rather awkward and inelegant term "body-part reliquaries" that has been adopted in the context of this publication of papers that were first offered at the College Art Association in San Antonio in February 1995. This essay surveys the state of research on "body-part reliquaries." By way of specific example, particular emphasis is placed on French works, a number of which survive and about which there is con- siderable documentation. Given the perspective of the author, a museum curator and specialist on the subject of head reliquaries, consideration is also placed on the installation of such reliquaries in American museums and what that suggests, historically, about their perception as works of art.

Throughout the nineteenth century and until well after the Second World War the study of reliquaries, and within that context the classification and study of those whose con- tainers assume the form of parts of the human body, was largely the province of historians drawn to their subject either by virtue of their vocation in the Roman Catholic Church, or by their interest in national patrimony. One of the earliest scholarly investigations of the medieval veneration of saints, including, somewhat incidentally, the enshrinement of their relics, was written by Stephan Beissel in 1890.2 Beissel was a member of the Bollandists, a Jesuit group devoted to the study of hagiography and responsible for the publication of the Acta sanctorum and the Analecta Bollandiana.3 The first encyclopedic attempt to discuss and analyze the medieval production of reliquaries of all types was written by Beissel's student and fellow Jesuit, Joseph Braun. While teaching archaeology and art history for his order at Valkenburg, Frankfurt, and Pullach near Munich, he published probing studies on focused themes of the liturgical arts, including Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Munich, 1924), Die liturgische Gewandung im Occident und Orient nach Ursprung und Ent- wicklung, Verwendung und Symbolik (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907), Sakramente und Sakramentalian (Regensburg, 1922), and Das christliche Altargeriit in seinem Sein und seiner Ent- wicklung (Munich, 1932). Within this context, Die Reliquiare des christlichen Kultes und ihre Entwicklung was published in

Freiburg im Breisgau in 1940, with an introduction by the author signed on the Feast of Pentecost and bearing the nihil obstat of the Society of Jesus.

Braun listed both surviving and recorded reliquaries, exhaustively tallying their number over the course of Middle Ages, as well as the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He classified reliquaries by their form. Under the rubric of "Re- dende Reliquiire" ("Talking Reliquaries"), which included all manner of reliquaries whose form apparently related to the relics they contained,4 he first listed examples in the form of a foot, then others shaped like a hand, finger, rib, arm, leg, followed by figural reliquaries in the form of a head or bust. For reliquaries in the form of a head or a bust alone, over 150 examples were cited. Braun's work established an approach to the subject that has been imitated, but not surpassed, by iso- lated publications since 1964 by Kovaics, Bessard, and Falk.5

Churchmen likewise played a role in the numbering and study of medieval reliquaries preserved in France. Abb6 Tex- ier noted the presence of forty-seven reliquaries in the form of an arm in churches of the Limousin alone.6 The publication by Bouillet and Servibres of the Majesty of Saint Foy at Conques, the golden image that enshrines the head of the virgin saint, and their translation of the legend of Saint Foy into French, were done in the years immediately following the bishop's investigation of the relics in the nineteenth century.7 An introductory letter from the bishop of Rodez and Vabres declared the book to be "une oeuvre d'apostolat capable d'6difier les ames," noting that "l'aimable sainte vous a d6j'a marqu6 sa gratitude par les satisfactions qu'elle vous a prodigu6es."8

Overall, however, the study of reliquaries in France has largely been advanced by historians concerned with docu- menting national patrimony. The first example of a body-part reliquary preserved in France-the head of Saint Maurice, commissioned by Boson, king of Provence from 879-887 and brother-in-law of Charles the Bald-was described in 1625 by Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, an indefatigable historian and naturalist.9 Its appearance was recorded in two pencil sketches as part of his wider investigation of important monuments of the history of France, including the vessels preserved at Saint- Denis, notably the chalice of Abbot Suger.10 The pivotal article discussing the reliquary recorded by Peiresc in the seventeenth century was published by Eva Kov~cs only in 1964.11 The bust reliquaries that formed part of the treasury of Saint-Denis are recorded among and alongside a wide variety of liturgical objects in the engravings of the cabinets published by Dom M. F61ibien, Histoire de l'abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France

8 GESTA XXXVI/1 ? The International Center of Medieval Art 1997

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FIGURE 1. Saint-Nectaire, Bust Reliquary of St. Baudime, as recorded by Anatole d'Auvergne, Revue des societ~s savantes, ser. 2, 1 (1859) (photo: Bibliotheque nationale, Paris).

(Paris, 1706). The appearance of the head reliquary of Saint Louis from the Sainte-Chapelle was recorded as the frontis- piece engraving for the 1688 Paris edition of Joinville's His- toire de s. Louis IX. In the nineteenth century, the journals of French archaeological societies, on both the national and local levels, were of great importance in making known reliquaries like the bust of Saint Baudime at Saint-Nectaire, recorded by Anatole d'Auvergne in 1859 (Figs. 1-2).12

Ernest Rupin discussed a number of reliquaries in the form of busts in a separate chapter of his book, L'Oeuvre de Limoges, published in Paris and Brive in 1890. As a native of the region, and sometime president of the Soci6t6 arch6o- logique et historique du Limousin, he dedicated himself to publishing the metalwork that he attributed to the Limousin. In so doing, he classified reliquaries by their form, noting that, while the majority of reliquaries contained bodies or body parts, it was often the case in the Middle Ages that the "enve- lope" reflected the contents.13 Rupin also published an article

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FIGURE 2. Saint-Nectaire, Bust Reliquary of St. Baudime, 12th century (photo: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites, Paris).

on one head reliquary in the region, the head of Saint Martin from Soudeilles.14

His work did not pass without notice, for it was in the context of Rupin's publication that two examples were pre- sented to J. Pierpont Morgan, the American banker whose vast collection of medieval art forms the nucleus of the Me- dieval Department's holdings at the Metropolitan Museum.15 Both the bust of Saint Yrieix (Fig. 6) and the one of Saint Martin-then in parish churches of the Limousin and now in the Metropolitan Museum and the Louvre respectively-were acquired for his collection in the first decade of this century.

Morgan's acquisitions of these objects along with other liturgical arts seems to have been a function of his own keen antiquarian taste and the development of his "princely" collection, rather than of his own faith (Morgan was an Episco- palian) or of his national heritage. Henry Walters of Baltimore, a Roman Catholic and Morgan's only real rival as an Ameri- can collector of medieval liturgical art, apparently did not have

9

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FIGURE 3. Bust Reliquary of Saint Juliana, After 1376, New York, Metro- politan Museum of Art (photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

a taste for "body-part" reliquaries. Morgan's interest does not seem to have been shaped by mainstream art history, but by the example of French amateur collectors; there was no Berenson-like figure influencing his choice of these singular works of art. In fact, beyond the confines of Roman Catholic literature and discussions of patrimony, art historical study continued to ignore such works, and when discussing them, to be dismissive of them.

As national treasures, reliquaries in the form of parts of the body were important items in the great Exposition Uni- verselle held in Paris in 1900. The culmination of the investigation of such reliquaries as national patrimony was the 1965 exhibition Trhsors des eglises de France, which included nineteen head/bust reliquaries and twenty-one arms, as well as foot and thigh reliquaries.16 By contrast, two years later, the international loan exhibition held at Cleveland, Treasures from Medieval France, focused on sculpture and manuscripts.17 Al- though it featured thirteen works of art that likewise had figured in the Paris show, it included but a single example of a bust reliquary and none of other body parts.

By this time, body-part reliquaries had begun to enter into art historical literature following Harald Keller's theory,

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FIGURE 4. Bust Reliquary of Saint Juliana (as in Fig. 3), x-ray photo- graph of wooden core with gesso build-up (photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

published in 1951, that they were key elements in the rebirth of monumental sculpture. Keller asserted that the individual limbs and truncated torsos represented the first attempts on the road to representing the entire human figure.18 It was this line of research that informed a number of subsequent con- siderations of this material. In the 1950s Rainer Riickert be- gan a study for a doctoral dissertation on the subject of head reliquaries. Again, the principal motivation was the examination of the "evolution" of medieval sculpture. The result was an important article on sculptural metalwork of the Limoges region, without further investigation of the bust reliquary as a form in Western medieval art.19

The only publication on reliquaries to follow the Tresors des eglises exhibition was entitled "Les Bustes Reliquaires et la sculpture."20 The single entry on a bust reliquary in the Cleveland catalogue of Treasures from Medieval France discussed the work as the equivalent of a Renaissance portrait bust-emphasizing the degree of naturalism it achieves, sug- gesting again an "evolution," towards the canon of Renais- sance art.21 For American scholars of the Renaissance, such as Irving Lavin22 and Anita Moskowitz, the importance of bust reliquaries has been their relationship to Renaissance

10

portrait busts, Moskowitz maintaining that "reliquary heads and busts tend, throughout the Middle Ages, toward portray- als that suggest individual likenesses."23

In an American museum context the treatment of body- part reliquaries has likewise focused on them as portraiture. Of the four busts of companions of Ursula in the Metro- politan, three were purchased between 1959 and 1970. The papers for their acquisition stressed their importance as portraiture, and indeed, their installation until the late 1980s atop a credenza at The Cloisters was a setting more appropriate to Renaissance busts than to devotional objects.24

In addition, museums have pursued what might be called the archaeology of reliquaries, meticulously examining their construction and their contents, rather than considering them for their aesthetic importance or historical context. A notable example was Paul Pieper's study of the Head of Saint Paul at Miinster, published in 1967,25 and Rudolf Schnyder's of the head of Saint Candidus.26 In 1963, Thomas Hoving examined the bust of Saint Juliana at The Cloisters using x-ray technology (Figs. 3, 4), just as the French had done for the image of Saint Foy at Conques. Perhaps unable to shake the parallels, he theorized the existence of an earlier male bust underlying the princess-like Juliana, just as Taralon, similarly, had iden- tified an imperial Roman mask as the face of the virgin martyr Foy at Conques.27 It was not until the publication of the Thyssen collection in 1987 that what Hoving saw as the peculiarities of the Juliana bust were explained in the context of Sienese polychromed sculpture.28 As a result, its relationship to lost reliquary busts such as those of Peter and Paul made for the Vatican29 or the Bust of Saint Agatha in the treasury of Catania30 (Fig. 5) was overlooked.

The disassembling of the reliquary of Saint Yrieix (Figs. 6, 7) at the Metropolitan Museum in the 1960s provides a particularly telling example of this approach to body-part reliquaries. During preparation for the Tre'sors des dglises exhibition, it came to the attention of French and American art historians that there were two versions of the reliquary. That this fact had not been explored since the acquisition of the reliquary in 1917 is in itself testament to the inattention these works of art have received. The response was to strip the Saint Yrieix in New York of his silver sheathing. In fact, careful comparative examination of the examples in Paris and New York based on existing Monuments Historiques photographs would have shown conclusively that the New York example was the original, even though the relic itself had been trans- ferred to the copy in France in 1907. Since the 1960s the wood core and silver revetment of the reliquary head of Saint Yrieix have been exhibited side by side, the prevailing opinion being that the core, a masterly piece of Gothic wood carving, is too beautiful to cover.

Such thinking springs from a prejudice in art historical literature that undervalues "minor arts" like goldsmithswork, and especially sculpture in precious metal. The 1975 edition of Gardner's History of Art includes no body-part reliquaries

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FIGURE 5. Bust Reliquary of Saint Agatha, 14th century and later, Church of Sant'Agata, Catania (photo: after Rossi, 1956).

of any kind. In fact, Gardner illustrates no Romanesque or Gothic goldsmithswork, at all. The one inclusion is a Caro- lingian bookcover-the Codex Aureus of Saint Emmeram. In periodical literature reliquaries have been considered par- enthetically in relation to other questions. For example, the head reliquary of Saint Alexander preserved in Brussels has been examined chiefly for its importance in the beginnings of champlev6 enameling. Other forms, especially arms, but also, exceptionally, fingers and thighs, have barely been considered at all.31

This disregard may be attributed, in part, to the fact that so much goldsmithswork has been destroyed, and that, in American museums, it is particularly rare.32 But I would ar- gue that reliquary sculpture has been not merely undervalued, but, in some circles, considered suspect, as well. Although body-part reliquaries were embraced as a subject by Roman Catholic historians in Europe, they were generally rejected as a subject of serious research in America. An important exception-and virtually the only discussion in English of bust

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13

reliquaries before the 1990s-is Ilene Forsyth's Throne of Wisdom, published in 1972.33

Long recognized as a classic study of Romanesque carved wood images of the Virgin and Child, Forsyth's book is ex- tremely important to the study of body-part reliquaries for two reasons. First, it refutes Harald Keller's assertion that these reliquaries were created as the first halting and incomplete efforts of sculptors of limited ability. Second, it treats such reliquaries as a genre of sculpture with its own distinctive aesthetic-manifest in the hieratic quality of the figures, their otherworldly mien, the use of precious metal and stones. For- syth notes the disregard in which objects like the bust of Saint Baudime had been held by earlier scholars:

Considered the Christian 'idols' of the Early Middle Ages, they have been thought more pertinent to a study of reli- gion than to a serious history of sculpture. It has been difficult for art historians to realize that sculptures en- dowed by the boundless medieval imagination with the power to speak, to weep, to fly out of windows, to bring rain in time of drought, to deter invaders in time of war, or simply to box the ears of the naughty, might also have aesthetic merit.24

Body-part reliquary images, by virtue of their style and/or their materials, often fall outside the canons we have con- structed for the art of Greece and Rome or of the Renaissance. Even for medievalists, their revetment with precious materials distances them from the now colorless and consequently dis- passionate limestone of the portal figures of Gothic cathedrals. The insistent presence of these reliquary objects is frankly unsettling.

This distinctive, affective aesthetic, articulated by For- syth, was the focus of Ellert Dahl's study of the Majesty of Saint Foy.35 But while Forsyth's apologia for Romanesque images was accepted for the polychromed wood sculptures of the Auvergne, her discussion of the larger context of cult images did not win many converts. Catholicism's insistence on the importance of the image has long been perceived by some (including some Catholics) as pagan, "primitive," "popular," and therefore anti-intellectual. This was the argument that Bernard of Angers set out in his discussion of image reliquaries.36 This was the belief of Protestant Reformers on the Continent and in England-elitists of the Word, as Margaret Miles37 has described them-who mocked and decried the importance of relics, even in rhyme:

The blessed arm of sweet Saint Sunday: And whosoever is blessed with this right hand, Cannot speed amiss by sea nor by land. And if he offereth eke with good devotion, He shall not fail to come to high promotion. And another holy relic here may ye see: The great toe of the Holy Trinity... .38

This was the argument of Platonists, and of the French Rev- olution, when churches were rechristened Temples of Reason, and of French intellectuals to the present day, as elucidated by Martin Jay.39 While other kinds of medieval sculpture can be (and often are) dissociated from their original religious context, and thus can be analyzed formally-for their relation to its supporting column, for contrapposto, for "naturalism" or "realism"--medieval reliquary sculpture is insistently cultic. At their very core, body-part reliquaries have a direct connection with a relic-with something that, but for the "odeur de sanctit6," would be associated with decay and putrescence.

While Caroline Bynum's pioneering work in examining medieval attitudes about the body has shown the rewarding depth of work for historians in this area, body-part reliquaries are only now being considered seriously by historians of art. My own interest in pursuing research on head reliquaries, considered arguably eccentric in 1986, was awakened by the experience of working in a museum context and by the sup- port of a French advisor, Danielle Gaborit-Chopin. Since that time the involvement of art historians with European training in issues that relate to the cult of relics has paved the way for more widespread investigation of reliquary sculpture. David Freedberg's Power oflmages has lent legitimacy to works that provoke an intense response.40 Hans Belting's work has been critical in opening up lines of research into works produced in the so-called "era before art."4'

And yet, body-part reliquaries are still too often deemed chiefly, as Emile Male declared, "to offer the perfume of the past." This "scent" can too easily infect scholars today. Mi- chael Camille, in his review of Hans Belting's Bild und Kult, confesses to a fascination with images, born of what he considered an extraordinary experience of witnessing a devout woman's efforts to expel demons from her daughter by bang- ing the child's head against an image.42 And in The Gothic Idol he marvels at the qualities of head reliquaries by musing: "Head reliquaries are in fact rather disturbing, decapitated objects."43

Has the recent study of body-part reliquaries in the Mid- dle Ages emerged almost as a parallel to the interest in study- ing third-world or "primitive" cultures and their religious practices? In recent years these have given birth to an exhibition entitled Le Crane: objet de culte, objet d'art, held in Marseille in 1972, and Heads and Skulls in Human Culture and History, in 1991, which, while held at the Malaysian Na- tional Museum was nevertheless reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, under the headline "An Exhibition that will really turn heads."44 The National Museum of Anthropology in Mex- ico City mounted an exhibition, Human Body, Human Spirit, exploring "human figures made in ritual circumstances for ritual purposes."45

There is, at present, a keen, almost voyeuristic interest in "dismemberment" during the Middle Ages. But the creation

14

of body-part reliquaries should not be perceived as a deli- ciously gruesome and gory aspect of the medieval cult of saints. The placement of a skull or other relic in its container was part of a solemn ceremony: the account of the discovery of the relics of Saint Privatus of Mende, their veneration, and their placement in reliquaries is typical in emphasizing the reverence of the bishop and the congregation, the importance of the bishop's sermon concerning the saint's life and the healing power of the relics.46 A decision to isolate the skull as a relic was not dependent on the saint's death by decapi- tation. Nor was the division of relics into other body-shaped reliquaries a function of a saint's tortured dismemberment. The subsequent veneration of the relic was equally reveren- tial in nature: the fourteenth-century account of the veneration of the head of Saint Martial at Limoges specifies that pilgrims went to the "altar of the head" as the monks sang the Te Deum and rang bells. There they wept and proclaimed their thanks to the saint before a crowd of witnesses before proceeding to the sepulcher in the crypt.47

We should be concerned about a method that may reduce works of art to mere sociological curiosities. It is not, or should not be, our final goal as art historians to tell amusing stories about the church of the Middle Ages, its beliefs or practices. It is only the beginning of our homework to know the catechism of faith through the course of the Middle Ages. We must applaud the publication of the legends of the saints in English.48 It is instructive to document modern processions of relics, like those of Saint Yrieix during the Ostensions that are held every seven years in the Limousin, to suggest the continuing tradition of the rites of the Middle Ages.49 Fo- cused analysis of the context, where it informs us about the object, is essential. In her study of the treasury of Trier Hil- trud Westermann-Angerhausen was able to show convincingly that the so-called Reliquary Foot of Saint Andrew was in fact a portable altar; similarly, in a forthcoming publication Joan Holladay has used contemporary church history to explain the choice of polychromed wood busts of Saint Ursula and her companions and the manner of their decoration at Co- logne.50 As they are in these studies, the links between context and works of art must be manifest; historical research that does not, finally, inform our understanding of the object is a discipline other than art history: finding out that Paul Revere rode through the towns around Boston the 18th of April in '75 may or may not tell us anything about him as a silversmith, and we are obliged as art historians to ask our- selves if it does.

It is important that we consider body-part reliquaries as part of the history of images; since Forsyth and Belting, such an argument now seems self-evident. Still, a large dosage of "old" art history must remain in the mix. The historian Patrick Geary, echoing the words of Marc Bloch more than a generation ago, has just recommended that historians use archaeology as part of their body of evidence;51 art historians

themselves need to reaffirm their focus on visual evidence and aesthetic issues. A linear evaluation of stylistic development following the tradition of the analysis of Romanesque or Gothic sculpture is not possible, given the now-limited body of material, nor what I would advocate. We must con- tinue to pay attention to questions of style and quality, and of attribution, as Pierluigi Leone de Castris and Danielle Gaborit- Chopin have done in the case of the silver-gilt, crystal and enamel arm reliquaries of Saint Louis of Toulouse and Saint Luke in the Louvre (Figs. 8, 9).52

Art historians need to examine how and where such reliquaries were conceived and executed. Though I have ques- tioned some aspects of their conclusions, the efforts of Jean Hubert and Marie-Clotilde Hubert in defining the geographic distribution of image reliquaries exemplify the kind of serious historical research that needs to be done for body-part reliquaries.53

Studies of patronage will reveal a great deal about the importance of body-part reliquaries in the Middle Ages. The reliquary made for Boson, king of Provence, was not an iso- lated example. The fourteenth-century head reliquary of Saint Martial was made at Avignon as a gift of Pope Gregory XI to his native diocese of Limoges.54 The Duke of Berry, known for his manuscripts, was also the patron of richly jeweled bust and arm reliquaries bearing his coat of arms.55

We need to consider how the appearance of these reliquaries related to their function. How did reliquaries in the form of bodily parts differ in function and/or material from sarcophagus-shaped chasses? In the Massif Central, for example, image reliquaries of precious materials that could be carried about were created to contain the skull of the saint, while other bodily relics were placed in a chasse for veneration at the tomb. How often can one see a hierarchy of relics suggested by the materials used to contain different parts of the body, as at Saint-Nectaire in the Auvergne in the fifteenth century? There, in 1488, Antoine, "seigneur de Saint- Nectaire," ordered the fabrication of a silver bust for the head of Saint Nectaire, a silver arm, a crystal ampulla enclosed in silver for the heart, a copper chasse for the rest of the body and a wood box for "Aliqua parva ossa beati Necterii et terra quae fuit reperta infra tumulum."56 At Bourges, the existence of a series of silver-gilt arm reliquaries of the cathedral's sainted bishops appears to present thematic analogies to the images of the bishops in stained glass.57

It is essential to consider how these works were viewed in aesthetic terms in the Middle Ages. It matters that the eleventh- century description of the head reliquary of Saint Valerien at Tournus called it "a comely image of gold and most precious gems in the likeness to a certain point, of the martyr,"'5 and that Bernard of Angers referred to the "animated, lively expression" of the image of Saint Geraud at Aurillac.59 Texts like these remind us that a head like the one of Saint Yrieix is not meant to be seen as a wooden core, but as a luminous,

15

:: ::: ::: :: :

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iiiiiiiiii ii ii iiiii iiiii iiiii

iiiiiiiiil

iiiiiiiiiiiii~~iii!iiii~i~iiiiiiiiiiiill iii~~i~iixiim.

FIGURE 8. Arm Reliquary of Saint Louis of Toulouse, 1337-38, musee du Louvre, Paris (photo: Courtesy of the musee du Louvre).

luxurious presence that was a likeness "to a certain point, of the martyr," and that it was considered beautiful. At the end of the thirteenth century, it mattered that the head reliquary of France's royal Saint Louis resemble the head reliquary of Saint Denis in appearance and construction-that the visual metaphor served to link the saints.60

The images on seal matrices, and on pilgrim badges, such as those of Thomas Becket, Saint Quentin,61 Saint Julien of Le Mans,62 or those, perhaps of Saint Denis, recently ex- cavated at Saint-Denis should be looked at more thoroughly in relation to descriptions of lost reliquaries. Images in other media may further inform us concerning the form and usage of body-part reliquaries. For example, an image of the relic of

AMON&~ ......

ICA*:

FIGURE 9. Arm Reliquary of Saint Luke, ca. 1337-38, musee du Louvre, Paris (photo: Courtesy of the musee du Louvre).

Saint Philip resembling a head reliquary appears in the cathedral glazing of the choir of the cathedral of Troyes, which acquired the head after the sack of Constantinople.63

Additional texts should be scoured for references to body- part reliquaries.64 Such texts can be related to what we know from surviving objects and provide a broader picture of the kinds of reliquaries produced in particular centers of gold- smithwork at particular periods. For example, the silver-gilt head of Saint Stephen of Muret from the Grandmont Treasury has been considered since the time of Rupin as part of the Oeuvre de Limoges.65 Yet, with its heavily individualized fea- tures, it seems anomalous in the context of Limousin metalwork. Early descriptions indicate that it once had enameled

16

... ..... ..... . ........ . . .......

ol

FIGURE 10. Bust Reliquary of San Gennaro, 1304-6, Treasury of the Ca- thedral of San Gennaro, Naples (photo: after Leone de Castris, 1986).

scenes of the life of the saint around the base. This description, plus the fact that it once bore the arms of Cardinal Brissonet, suggests that it should rather be considered in the context of Italian examples, such as the one of Saint John Gualbert at Passignano.66

Successive inventories of a single treasury can offer in- sights into the varying uses and changing forms of reliquaries in a particular location. Eight surviving inventories, ranging in date from 1396 to 1791, plus a number of documents suggest changing patterns of veneration at Mont-Saint-Michel. The body of Saint Aubert, a saint whose origins are obscure but whose body was preserved at the abbey, was enshrined in a chasse; a separate reliquary for his skull was made in 1131. As with other recorded examples from the north of France before the second quarter of the thirteenth century, this twelfth- century reliquary for the head was not in bust form,67 but rather dome-shaped. A separate arm reliquary of Saint Aubert was first fabricated in 1477;68 the inventory specifies that it was used for the swearing of oaths. The patron of the arm reliquary, prior Oudin Bou~tte, also had a new chasse made for the body. While the reliquary for the skull of Saint Aubert was apparently not replaced, a new bust-shaped silver-gilt reliquary was fabricated at the same time for the head of Saint Innocent.69 There were also arm-shaped reliquaries for relics brought to Mont-Saint-Michel from abroad: the "osse- ment du bras" of Saint Lawrence, brought to the monastery from Rome in 1165. There were also reliquaries for the arms of female saints-an arm of Mary "la bienheureuse Egypti-

enne" recorded in 1396, and a single arm-shaped reliquary containing an arm of the virgin martyr saint Agnes and one of Agatha.70 Each of these three was necessarily an exception to the standardized image of an arm with its right hand gestur- ing in priestly blessing.

While we consider the evidence of lost treasures, we must likewise turn our attentions to great works of art that have not been adequately studied, of which the bust of San Gennaro in the treasury of his titular church at Naples, made by French goldsmiths,71 and the head of Saint Agatha in the treasury of Catania are but two examples (Figs. 10, 5).72 It is only through such probing study of individual problems that a more complete sense of the whole will emerge. If we consider Braun as our Arthur Kingsley Porter, laying out the corpus of reliquary sculpture, it is time to get on with focused studies of individual works and of the production of particular periods and regions. Only then can we approach any kind of encyclopedic understanding of medieval body-part reliquary sculpture, over the long course of the Middle Ages and throughout Western Europe.

NOTES

1. The CD-Rom for the BHA (Bibliographie de l'histoire de l'art) includes over 200 entries under the subject of reliquaries for the years 1990-1995.

2. S. Beissel, Die Verehrung der Heilige und ihrer Reliquien in Deutsch- land bis zum Beginne des 13. Jahrhunderts, Ergainzungshefte zu den Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, 47 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1890, reprinted Darmstadt, 1983).

3. See H. Delehaye, L'Oeuvre des Bollandistes a travers trois siecles, Subsidia hagiographica 13a.2, 2nd ed. (Brussels, 1958).

4. The container sometimes belies the contents. During a trip to Rome, Abbot Gauzlin of Fleury (1004-1030) purchased a golden arm in which he placed, not an arm bone, but a relic of the shroud of Christ. See Andre de Fleury, Vita Gauzlini abbatisfloiracensis monasterii. (Vie de Gauzlin, Abbe de Fleury), ed. and trans. R.-H. Bautier and G. Labory (Paris, 1969), 61-63.

5. See E. Kovics, Kopfreliquiare des Mittelalters (Budapest, 1964), sur- veying and illustrating forty-two examples; B. Bessard, II Tesoro. Pel- legrinaggio ai corpi santi e preziosi della cristianith (Milan, 1981), and B. Falk, "Bildnisreliquiare. Zur Entstehung und Entwicklung der metallenen Kopf-, Bdisten- und Halbfigurenreliquiare im Mittelalter," Aachener Kunstblidtter, LIX (1991/93).

6. Abbe Texier, "Bras," Dictionnaire d'orfrvrerie, de gravure et de cise- lure chretiennes... (Paris, 1857), cols. 279-80.

7. See A. Bouillet and L. Servibres, Sainte Foy, vierge et martyre (Rodez, 1990). The authentication of the relics was published two years before: Mgr. Bourret, Procks-verbaux authentiques et autres pieces concernant la reconnaissance des reliques de sainte Foy, vierge et martyre (Rodez, 1888).

8. A. Bouillet and L. Servieres, Sainte Foy, vierge et martyre, unpag- inated prefatory letter.

9. On Peiresc see La Grande encyclopddie: Inventaire raisonnd des sci- ences, des lettres et des arts (Paris, 1885-1900), XXVI, 256; J. B. Re- quier, Vie de Nicolas-Claude-Peiresc (Paris, 1770).

17

10. Six volumes of Peiresc's letters were included in M. Tamizey de Lar- roque, Collection des documents inidits sur l'histoire de France.

11. E. Kovics, "Le chef de Saint Maurice a la cathedrale de Vienne (France)," Cahiers de civilisation mdie'vale, VII (1964), 19-26.

12. A. d'Auvergne, "Notice sur le Buste de saint Baudime conserve dans l'6glise de Saint-Nectaire (Puy-de-Dome)," Revue des societis savantes, ser. 2, 1 (1859), 1-4.

13. "Dans tous les reliquaires qui viennent de passer sous nos yeux, on placait des corps entiers ou des parcelles de corps, ou bien des objets, comme des v&tements, qui avaient appartenu aux bienheureux en l'hon- neur desquels ces reliquaires 6taient executes. Mais il arrivait souvent, quand on possedait une partie determinre du corpus d'un saint, qu'on faisait un reliquaire de form speciale pouvant representer aux yeux, par l'enveloppe exterieure, la form de l'objet contenu dans cette enveloppe meme." E. Rupin, L'Oeuvre de Limoges (Paris and Brieve, 1890), 447.

14. E. Rupin, "Chef de Saint Martin en argent dora et 6maill6 XIe siecle, Eglise de Soudeilles (Correze)," Bulletin de la socite' scientifique, historique et archdologique de la Correze, IV (1882), 435-56.

15. On Morgan as a collector of medieval art, see W. D. Wixom, "J. Pier- pont Morgan: The Man and The Collector," in Migration Period Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3rd-8th Century: Highlights from the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection and Related Material Reconsid- ered, papers of the symposium held May 22-23, 1995, forthcoming.

16. Les tresors des iglises de France, exhibition at the Musee des arts decoratifs, Paris, 1965.

17. W. D. Wixom, Treasures from Medieval France, exhibition at the Cleve- land Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1967. See no. VII, 13, Bust reliquary of Saint Felicule from Saint-Jean-d'Aulps (Haute-Savoie), late fifteenth century.

18. H. Keller, "Zur Entstehung der sakralen Vollskullptur in der ottoni- schen Zeit," in Festschriftfiir Hans Jantzen (Berlin, 1951), 71-90.

19. R. RUckert, "Beitrdige zur limousiner Plastik des 13. Jahrhunderts," ZfK, XXII (1959), 1-16. Rtickert also published an article on the Byz- antine reliquaries for the skulls of saints, which traditionally do not assume the form of a human head or bust. See R. Riickert, "Zur Form der byzantinischen Reliquie," Miinchener Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, VIII (1957), 7-36.

20. E Souchal, "Les Bustes reliquaires et la sculpture," Gb-a, LXVII (1966), 205-15.

21. W. D. Wixom, Treasures of Medieval France, 318.

22. I. Lavin, "On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust," The Art Quarterly, XXXIII (Autumn 1970), 207-26.

23. A. Moskowitz, "Donatello's Reliquary Bust of Saint Rossore," AB, LXIII (1981), 41-48.

24. The four reliquaries are accession numbers 17.190.728, 59.70, 67.155.23 and 1976.89. They are now exhibited in a chapel-like setting at The Cloisters. They are discussed in terms of their original context in W. D. Wixom, "Medieval Sculpture at The Cloisters," The Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art Bulletin, XLVI/3 (Winter 1988/89), 40-41.

25. P. Pieper, "Der goldene Pauluskopf des Domes zu MUnster," in Studien zur Buchmalerei und Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters. Festschriftfiir Karl Hermann Usener zum 60. Geburtstag am 19. August 1965 (Mar- burg an der Lahn, 1967), 33-40.

26. "Das Kopfreliquiar des heiligen Candidus in St-Maurice," Zeitschrift fiir schweizerische Archiologie und Kunstgeschichte, XXIV/2 (1965/ 66), 65-127.

27. TP. E Hoving, "The Face of St. Juliana," The Bulletin of The Metro- politan Museum ofArt, NS XXI (1963), 173-81.

28. P Williamson, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Medieval Sculp- ture and Works of Art (London and New York, 1987), 98-103, no. 18.

29. The images of these destroyed bust reliquaries are illustrated in D. Gaborit-Chopin, Regalia: Les Instruments du sacre des rois de France (Paris, 1987), 57, figs. 7-8.

30. See E Rossi, Capolavori di orefeceria italiana dall'XI al XVIII secolo (Milan, 1956), 9, fig. 3.

31. For the finger-shaped reliquary of John the Baptist held by the saint, see Tresors des iglises, cat. 168, pl. 149; for the thigh at Saint-Gilad- de-Rhuys, see cat. 331, pl. 167.

32. The Cloisters, for example, as originally conceived, had no treasury for precious objects.

33. I. H. Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Ma- donna in Romanesque France (Princeton, 1972).

34. Ibid., 3.

35. See E. Dahl, "Heavenly Images: The Statue of St. Foy of Conques and the signification of the Medieval 'Cult-Image' in the West," Acta ad Archaeologia etArtium Historiam Pertinenta, VIII (1987), 175-91. The emphasis on this aspect of images was repeated by A. G. Remensnyder, "Un probleme de cultures ou de culture?: La statue-reliquaire et les joca de sainte Foy de Conques dans le Liber miraculorum de Bernard d'Angers," Cahiers de civilisation midievale, XXXIII (1990), 351-79.

36. Bernard of Angers, "Liber miraculorum S. Fidis," J.-P Migne, ed., PL, CLXI, 127-64.

37. See M. Miles, Image as Insight (Boston, 1985). 38. See J. Phillips, The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in En-

gland, 1535-1660 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1973), 19.

39. M. Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, 1993).

40. D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989).

41. His discussion of the bust reliquary of Saint Martial (actually four successive heads and busts) at Limoges is, however, an inadequate re- hearsal of the literature. The first recorded image was fabricated after 952; the second was made by 1206; the third was new in 1307; the fourth was created between 1370-1380 for Pope Gregory XI. See B. D. Boehm, "Medieval Head Reliquaries of the Massif Central" (Univer- sity Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1990), 322-28.

42. M. Camille, review of H. Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), AB, LXXIV (1992), 514.

43. M. Camille, The Gothic Idol. Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989), 279.

44. The article by John D. Wagner was published on August 20, 1991, p. A12.

45. From the flyer from the University of Pennsylvania Press for C. E. Tate, ed., Human Body, Human Spirit, A Portrait of Ancient Mexico, first published in 1993.

46. See C. Brunel, Les Miracles de Saint Privat, suivis des opuscules d'Al- debert III, eveque de Mende (Paris 1912), 59-74.

47. See E Arbellot, "Miracula S. Martialis Anno 1388," Analecta Bollan- diana, I (1882), 411-45.

48. A model in this regard is Pamela Sheingorn, ed., The Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia, 1995).

49. See E Lautman, "Ostensions et identitis limousines," in L~gende dorde du Limousin: les saints de la Haute-Vienne (Limoges, 1993), 78-89.

18

The exhibition, held at the Musee de Luxembourg in Paris in 1993-94, included a number of medieval reliquaries of exceptionally fine quality and importance. Because the exhibition's focus was on the broader topic of devotion to the cult of saints in the Limousin throughout history, the visual impact of the medieval masterpieces in the exhibition was significantly lessened.

50. H. Westermann-Angerhausen, "Die Goldschmiedearbeiten der Trierer Egbertwerkstatt," Trierer Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte und Kunst des Trierer Landes und seine Nachbargebiete, XXXVI (1973). J. Holla- day, "Relics, Reliquaries, and Religious Women; Visualizing the Holy Virgin of Cologne," forthcoming in Studies in Iconography, XVIII (1996).

51. P Geary, "The Uses of Archaeology. Sources for Religious and Cul- tural History," in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), 30-45.

52. See P Leone de Castris, "Une attribution 'a Lando di Pietro: Le bras- reliquaire de saint Louis de Toulouse," Revue du Louvre, XXX (1980), 71-76; D. Gaborit-Chopin, "Le Bras-reliquaire de Saint Luc au Mus~e du Louvre," Melanges Verlet. Studi sulle arti decorative in Europa (Antologia di Belle Arti), XXVII-XXVIII (1985), 5-18.

53. J. Hubert and M.-C. Hubert, "Piet6 chretienne ou paganisme: Les Statues-reliquaires de l'europe carolingienne," Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclisiastica delle campagne nell'alto medioevo: espan- sione e resistenze, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, XXCIII (Spoleto, 1982), 235-75. My discussion of their work appears in Boehm, "Medieval Head Reliquaries."

54. See Boehm, "Medieval Head Reliquaries," 322-28.

55. The inventory of May 10, 1405, of the palace chapel at Bourges notes the presence of silver-gilt and enameled heads of Saint James and of Saint Ursin, first bishop of Bourges. See "Tresor de la Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges," Annales archdologiques, X (1850), 143-44. For the arm of Saint Andrew at the cathedral of Bourges, see below, note 57. For the reliquary head of Saint Philip given to Notre-Dame, Paris, see H.-E Delaborde, "Le procks du chef de Saint Denis en 1410," Mimoires de la socie'te' historique de Paris, XI, 1884 (1885), 300.

56. L'Abb6 Forestier, L'Eglise et la paroisse de Saint-Nectaire. Notice historique, archdologique et religieuse (Clermont-Ferrand, 1878), 66, cit- ing from the inventory of 1622 preserved in the departmental archives of the Haute-Loire. The silver arm reliquary is preserved in the church. The bust was destroyed in the French Revolution and the bones burned in a fire of 1854.

57. For the arm reliquaries of Saints Williams, Austreille and Sulpice Se- vere, described in an inventory of 1537, see M. le baron de Girardot, "Histoire et inventaire du tresor de la cathedrale de Bourges," Me- moires de la socie'te' imperiale des antiquaires de France, XXIV (1859), 212. The cathedral also possessed the left hand of Saint Andrew with the arms of the Duke of Berry. For the stained glass, see Corpus Vit- rearum, Les vitraux du centre et des pays de la Loire, France, Recen- sement des vitraux anciens de la France, II (Paris, 1981), 175-76.

58. The text is given in R. Poupardin, ed., Monuments de l'histoire des abbayes de Saint-Philibert, 1905.

59. Bouillet and Servibres, 472.

60. The resemblance was noted by C. Enlart, "L'Emaillerie cloisonnee a Paris sous Philippe le Bel et le maitre Guillaume Julien," Monuments et memoires publie's par lAcademie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (Fondation Eugene Piot), XXIX (1927-28), 36.

61. For pilgrims' badges of a bust of Saint Quentin, see A. Forgeais, Col- lection de plombs historie's trouves dans la Seine, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863), II: 194-96. For a reference to the sixteenth-century seal of the chapter with the bust and a coat of arms of the city, see P Guerin, ed., Les Petits Bollandistes. Vies des saints de lancien et du nouveau testament, 7th ed., 17 vols. (Paris, 1878), XIII: 60.

62. The bust, known from an inventory of the fifteenth century brought to my attention by Denis Bruna, may be illustrated on a pilgrim's badge in the Musee national du moyen age.

63. See Corpus Vitrearum, Inventaire ge'ne'rale des monuments et richesses artistiques de la France, vol. 4: Les Vitraux de Champagne-Ardenne (Paris, 1992), 229, briefly discussed in P. Geary, "Saint Helen of Athyra and the Cathedral of Troyes in the Thirteenth Century," reprinted in Living with the Dead, 238-40. I am grateful to Mary B. Shepard for this reference.

64. William Diebold's scrutiny of Carolingian texts for his forthcoming publication provides a model. Texts pertinent to the Massif Central ap- pear in Boehm, 1990. Descriptions may be imprecise or deceiving, however. A reliquary at Clermont-Ferrand was referred to in a tenth- century inventory as a caput, but then described as having a palm and scepter, indicating that it may have been at least bust-length with arms. See Dou&t-d'Arcq, "Inventaire du tresor de la cathedrale de Clermont- Ferrand. Document de la fin du Xe siecle," Revue archiologique, X (1853).

65. Rupin, L'Oeuvre de Limoges, 448-49.

66. This was first suggested to me by Jean-Rene Gaborit. See Boehm, 1990, 182-83. For the reliquary see E Rossi, Capolavori di oreficeria italiana dall'XI al XVIII secolo (Milan, 1956), pl. XII.

67. Discussed in a paper I gave on "Le chef reliquaire de Saint Denis au tr6sor de Saint-Denis," at the colloquium in Paris, Trdsors du Moyen Age, March 15, 1991.

68. See J. Dubois, Aspects de la vie monastique en France au Moyen Age, 550-53, nos. 16, 16a; 554-58, nos. 16c-17.

69. Ibid., 583.

70. Ibid., 547.

71. See P Leone de Castris, Arte di Corte nella Napoli angioina (Florence, 1986), 194; 163, fig. 37.

72. See S. J. A. Churchill, "Giovanni Bartolo, of Siena, Goldsmith and Enameller, 1364-1385," BM, X (October 1906-March 1907), 120-25.

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body-parts reliquaries-the state of research

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