Preface

This book concerns the relationship between group identities and cultural expression. Specifically, it examines three medieval communities—the town of Tours, the chapter of Saint-Martin in Tours, and the abbey of Marmoutier near Tours—and the ways in which they defined themselves, or were defined, through the cult of Saint Martin. Because the three communities drew on Martin’s cult in different ways, my analysis serves to demonstrate, I hope, that culture is contested territory.

Sources from the early Middle Ages might lead us to believe that there was only one interpretation of Martin’s cult. As I indicate in chapter 1, the bishops of fifth- and sixth-century Tours, who controlled the cult, created an idealized image of Tours as Martin’s town, and of themselves—the heirs to Martin’s see—as the rightful leaders of the community. By the late eleventh century, however, the canons of Saint-Martin and the monks of Marmoutier had gained control of Martin’s cult, and they produced new legends and rituals that excluded the cathedral of Tours and its prelate from the symbolic urban community that Martin protected. The two houses also turned to Martin’s cult in efforts to define their own corporations and to enhance the interests of their lay patrons. They were especially anxious to strengthen the internal cohesion of their communities, which social and political changes threatened to undermine.

Marmoutier and Saint-Martin used Martin’s cult for similar reasons, but they differed in their internal structures and external ties and thus in the ways they elaborated and manipulated it. The cult of Saint Martin did not “mean” simply one thing. Rather, it leant itself to varying uses and interpretations.

By relating the manifold uses and meanings of a single saint’s cult to its specific local contexts, I have attempted to elucidate how that cult served the practical, psychological, and spiritual needs of different collective groups. Although my discussion focuses on the communities of Marmoutier and Saint-Martin, it also shows that Martin’s cult was associated with other groups as well—the comital lineages of Blois and Anjou, the cathedral community of Tours, and the burghers of Tours. If this were an ideal world, I would have analyzed the interpretations each of those groups gave to the cult. Unfortunately, however, the sources speak with the voices of Marmoutier and Saint-Martin alone.

Like many historians, I was drawn to my subject by personal concerns and convictions, and in turn I found that my subject shaped those concerns and convictions. As an undergraduate and graduate student, I first took an interest in the study of religion because I was both attracted to and disturbed by the propensity of Americans to explain, confront, or escape social and political processes by reformulating and reinterpreting their cultural and religious traditions. As a woman who is also a professional academic, I have become increasingly aware that I myself and those whom I know, love, and teach have been molded and affected by the cultural construction of our feminine and masculine identities. Indeed, the more I think and write about human society, the more I become convinced that we all find meaning in, and are shaped by, the groups we belong to, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and by the attitudes that we ourselves and those around us hold concerning those groups. My own intellectual approach to knowledge and experience thus compels me to preface this work by acknowledging the people and groups who participated in its formation.

Three teachers especially contributed to my general attitude toward the past and enhanced my enthusiasm with their demand for discipline. Lester Little, whose courses at Smith College first inspired my interest in the relation between religion and society, has remained a source of encouragement and advice and has provided enthusiastic support for my work. Caroline W. Bynum, through her courses, writings, and close readings of my earlier work and parts of this book, has been a source of intellectual stimulation and emotional courage. She has continually reminded me, moreover, that religion is a matter of meaning and that language—my own, as well as that of the people I study—is extremely important. Giles Constable patiently advised me in the early stages. I am grateful for his meticulous readings and for the lesson that it takes enormous discipline, endeavor, and caution to begin to make sense of the past.

Pierre Gasnault and Dom Guy Oury offered advice on the sources of the religious and institutional history of Touraine; Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt helped with certain problems regarding miracle collections, exempla collections, and ghost stories; and Megan McLaughlin provided useful references on prayers for the dead. David Herlihy, Gabrielle Spiegel, Elizabeth Brown, Edward Muir, and Junius Martin were gracious in reading an early draft and generous in offering advice. Patrick Geary, Barbara Rosenwein, Bernard Bachrach, Geoffrey Koziol, Jeffrey Russell, Warren Hollister, Michael Burger, Barbara Abou-El-Haj, Ronald Sawyer, John Martin, Alan Kaplan, and Thomas Haskell read parts of the manuscript and made many useful comments. Caroline Bynum, Thomas Head, Geoffrey Koziol, Barbara Abou-El-Haj, and Quentin Skinner shared their unpublished work with me. John Ackerman at Cornell University Press has demonstrated tremendous faith in my work and provided support and encouragement when they were needed. I am grateful to them all.

For financial support, I owe a large debt to the Committee of General Scholarships and the Sheldon Fund at Harvard for providing me with a Sinclair Kennedy Traveling Fellowship; to Rice University and the Mellon Foundation for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship; and to the University of California at Santa Barbara for two Faculty Career Development Awards and financial support for ordering research materials, preparing art, and hiring research assistants. Those assistants included Miriam Davis, Michael Burger, and Richard Barton, whose careful help in preparing the manuscript saved me an enormous amount of time and energy.

The Interlibrary Loan department at SUNY Binghamton was especially resourceful in ferreting out books for me, and I am grateful to the library staffs at Rice University and UCSB as well. Madame Laurent, curator at the Bibliothèque Municipale of Tours, offered useful advice and was always cooperative in sending microfilms and photographs. I am also indebted to the photographic staff at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the research and photographic staffs at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, and the staffs at the Bibliothèque Municipale of Charleville and the Archives d’Indre-et-Loire.

Portions of Chapter 4 appeared earlier in different form in my article “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61 (1986). Chapter 5 incorporates and augments material drawn from my article “Personal Perceptions, Collective Behavior: Twelfth-Century Suffrages for the Dead,” published in Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, edited by Richard C. Trexler. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 36. © Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, SUNY, Binghamton, 1985. I am grateful to the publishers for permission to reprint this material.

Finally, I thank my parents for their love and support and for the humane values that first shaped my approach to the world.

SHARON FARMER

Santa Barbara, California