7 The Corporate Identity of the Canons of Saint-Martin

[Just after the Viking incursion against Tours in 903] the sheep who had evaded the mouths of wolves—under the protection of their pious pastor [Saint Martin] and with the counsel and aid of the princes of France—took refuge and constructed this noble wall around the basilica, which had formerly stood nude, about 150 paces outside of the city. . . . And from then on, through the prayers of such a great intercessor, God strengthened the bolts of the doors of our Zion and blessed his sons in it and laid down peace within its boundaries. . . . Evidence of [Saint Martin’s] protection toward us is in the books that recount how he frequently rescued us, our possessions, and even the city itself from enemies; evidence of his favor is in the multiple experiences by which ... we feel his favor overflowing toward us; evidence is in the serenity of peace and the affluence of riches by which we rejoice that the city of Cbateauneuf is strong. And testimony of our affection toward him—both our own and that of all the populace—lies in the fact that, unlike what is done in other churches, we do not appoint vicars—and indeed up until now no vicar has ever been allowed to enter the choir. Rather, day and night we ourselves serve both God and his saint.

—Philip and Renaud, dean and treasurer of the chapter of Saint-Martin, Letters Written in 1180–81¹

On first consideration, the language in this passage conveys the impression that the religious and communal concerns of the canons of Saint-Martin resembled those of the monks of Marmoutier. Like the monks, who identified their monastic community with the chosen people of the Old Testament, Philip and Renaud represented their community as Zion, the home of the chosen people. Like the monks, the canons associated recovery from the Viking invasions with the physical and spiritual renewal of their community, and they attibuted the continued well-being of their group to the protection of Saint Martin.

Yet one striking feature of this passage alerts us to differences between the canons’ representations of their community and the monks’ representations of Marmoutier: unlike the monks, the canons did not clearly distinguish the collective identity of their chapter from that of their secular neighbors. At times they used the first-person plural to refer to themselves. They took pride, for instance, in the fact that “we”—that is to say, the canons—did not appoint vicars to perform the liturgical offices at the basilica. At other times, however, Philip and Renaud’s “we” referred to all the inhabitants of Châteauneuf. Thus, Philip and Renaud somehow associated the canons’ act of devotion—the fact that they did not appoint vicars—with the populace at large. Along similar lines, they applied to the secular, urban space terms that the monks of Marmoutier used to describe their monastic community. They associated the “peace” God laid down in “Zion” with the city rather than with a religious community that was cloistered from the secular realm.

This Zion breathed the rhythms of secular time and commercial pursuits.² Philip and Renaud would claim that at least on certain days—such as Saint Martin’s feast of May 12, which had become the urban patronal feast of Châteauneuf—the sacred took over, and the city resembled “the entrance of paradise.”³ When the day or week of a feast was over, however, the citizens of Châteauneuf turned their attention to profit and justice: “When the crowds of people [who attend the festivities for Martin’s November feast] return to their own houses, the inhabitants [of Châteauneuf] drop everything and concern themselves exclusively with seeing that the law cases of the markets and inns satisfy with all integrity of devotion those who were injured during the solemnity.”⁴ Philip and Renaud obliquely alluded here to the fact that Châteauneuf s courts of high justice met each year for a number of days before and after Martin’s November feast.⁵ But perhaps despite themselves, they also indicated that even on sacred days, when Châteauneuf approximated the entrance to paradise, the canons and inhabitants of the town were preoccupied with profane concerns. Pilgrims poured into the town, especially during the November feast, bringing business and profit to the local shopkeepers and inns. There was money to be made, and there were disputes to be settled over who was to make it.⁶

Philip and Renaud’s language points to the absence of any clearly articulated boundary separating the community of canons from the secular realm. The canons made no clear attempt to distinguish the identity of their religious community from that of the town of Châteauneuf. Their values, moreover, were blatantly secular: they associated Saint Martin’s favor with “the affluence of riches” that blessed his town and its inhabitants. Indeed, they made a clear distinction between Marmoutier, in which religion and piety flourished, and Saint-Martin, which was renowned for its wealth: “In no city of the Christian world does any saint have two churches as noble and rich as . . . Marmoutier . . . and [Saint-Martin]. . . . That one is . . . incomparable in its religion and alms to the poor; this one, in the privilege of signs and the glory of riches.”⁷

Along similar lines, the canons sometimes linked the interests and identity of their community with those of their lay abbots, the Capetian kings. There is no history of the chapter of Saint-Martin, no work that parallels the first and second versions of the History of Marmoutier, which reconstructed the history of the monastic community by accounting for the continuity of its inhabitants, emphasizing the collective rights and privileges that the monks themselves obtained.⁸ The only major historical work from Saint-Martin, the Chronicle of Tours (written in or soon after 1225), was a history of Francia, which provided one of the most innovative sources of prestige for the Capetian kings.

According to the author of the chronicle, Hugh Capet’s mother was the granddaughter of the Carolingian king Louis the Child (who had actually died childless), and thus Hugh’s accession to the French throne did not in any way represent a break in the Carolingian royal line. Neither, according to this author, had the Carolingians represented a dynastic break, for Pipin, the first of the Carolingian line to be crowned king, was a descendant of the Merovingian Childeric. Thus the kings of France in the thirteenth century were part of a single continuous Frankish royal bloodline.⁹

These claims were not entirely new. About the year 1200, Giles of Paris had described a direct genealogical link between the Merovingians and the Carolingians. And he, as well as other propagandists for Philip Augustus and Louis VIII, had made vague assertions that there were links between the Carolingians and the Capetians. Still, no one in French royal circles had previously established a specific link between Hugh Capet and the Carolingians.¹⁰

In their writings from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the canons of Saint-Martin tended to mesh their values and identities with those of the town that surrounded them and of the king who was their lay abbot. This was not a completely new situation. As I noted in the introduction to this section, the amorphous qualities of the chapter of Saint-Martin can be traced back to the ninth and early tenth centuries. Yet the sources indicate that, like other houses of secular canons, the chapter of Saint-Martin experienced a number of centrifugal forces in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that undermined even further whatever solidarity and religious character remained to the community.

First, the burghers of Châteauneuf rebelled against the canons’ seigneurial rights over their town. In chapter 9 I discuss at greater length the canons’ reactions to these rebellions. For now, however, let me suggest that to assert their hierarchical authority over the burghers, the canons of Saint-Martin had to behave in worldly ways.

Much like their Italian counterparts, the burghers of Châteauneuf were proud of the material possessions that were theirs to display:

The men ... of Châteauneuf are so illustrious that they walk about exuberantly purpled, with an abundance of gold and silver, grisling and vair, and a variety of splendors and glories from all over the world. They marvel, in rich affluence, at their doubled wealth. Their houses are all turreted; protected with fortifications, they reach to the sky. A daily and manifold splendor of dishes decorates their tables. Almost none of them ever drinks from a cup unless it is a gold or silver goblet. They play “wildcat” and dice, and they hunt with birds of the sky. Jovial and munificent receivers of guests, they greatly absolve their debts to God, to those who deserve honor, and to the poor. For their patron—that is, the blessed Martin—and for other saints as well, they build churches with wondrous stone floors and carved capitals. . . .

So great is the beauty ... of the women, so many the number of beauties, and so immense their beauty, that the truth of the matter seems to exceed trustworthiness. . . . Precious clothing of exceptional elegance adorns their beauty, and in certain cases, I should say, it increases it.¹¹

As this description suggests, status and display were closely intertwined. If the canons of Saint-Martin were to rule the burghers of Châteauneuf, they needed to prove that their status, and hence their power, was greater than that of the burghers.¹² To do so they needed to put on the appropriate display—to imitate noble habits of hunting and gaming, and perhaps to don secular hairstyles and dress as well.¹³ Inverting the hierarchy and renouncing symbols of wealth may have been fine ideals for religious men who wished to withdraw from worldly involvement. But as Peter the Chanter, the Parisian theologian and fellow secular canon, made clear, churchmen who held positions of responsibility over others were dead wrong if they thought they would give up the material symbols that bolstered their authority: “I ought not to put aside my noble horses and precious ornaments ... on account of the scandal [of others], for the truth of justice would be at risk. For if I were to take on a mean habit and conduct myself as if I were lowly and contemptible . . . my subjects would become disobedient and do evil things . . . and thus I would not be able to exercise justice [and] . . . they would have fuel for sin.”¹⁴

It is no wonder, then, that a number of twelfth- and thirteenth-century observers perceived that the canons of Saint-Martin were prone to worldly ostentation.¹⁵ The canons’ lavish behavior was fraught with symbolic significance. It was an essential part of their corporate identity and collective power.

In addition to challenges from the burghers of Châteauneuf, the canons of Saint-Martin faced an even greater threat to their corporate identity from their own abbot, the Capetian king. Although the Capetian kings had held proprietary rights and domain over the chapter of Saint-Martin since the time of Hugh Capet, the reign of Louis VII represents a major turning point in the pattern of effective intervention in the governing of Saint-Martin and its town of Châteauneuf.¹⁶ The renewed relationship between the king and the chapter is best illustrated by the fact that in 1139 Louis appointed his brother Henri treasurer of Saint-Martin. This pattern of family ties would be repeated again and again: Philip Augustus appointed to the position of treasurer of Saint-Martin two royal cousins (including Renaud, the coauthor of the letters of 1180–81) and his own illegitimate son, Pierre Chariot.¹⁷ From the time of Philip Augustus on, the Capetians relied on their right to appoint the dean and treasurer of Saint-Martin as a means of rewarding and remunerating members of their administrative government. In fact, as Quentin Griffiths recently argued, Saint-Martin was one of only three houses over which the Capetian kings had such close control of appointments and upon which they consistently drew to build up their administrative governments.

By the early thirteenth century, the men appointed by the king as dean and treasurer of Saint-Martin were serving regularly in the royal court.¹⁸ And the Capetian court was not the only growing bureaucracy that threatened the integrity of the community of Saint-Martin. Beginning at the time of Innocent III, various popes claimed the right to give canonries at Saint-Martin to their close associates.¹⁹

Canonical prebends were convenient both in meeting the needs of rulers and in providing incomes for students and scholars in the newly emerging universities. For these reasons they contributed to the problem of absenteeism, which began to plague houses of secular canons in the twelfth century.²⁰ At Saint-Martin, the problem of enforcing residency was at the core of reform statutes that were issued by papally appointed commissions in 1204 and 1208. In 1204 the statutes established that an ordinary canon had to be in residence for seven lunar months. Absence for a single day during those seven months would deprive him of his prebend. A canon could not count himself present on any given day unless he attended matins, mass, and vespers. The 1204 statutes also stipulated that a fine of two sous was to be imposed on each priest of the week (the responsibility rotated among the six officers who were priests and the abbot of Cormery, which was subordinated to Saint-Martin) every day that he failed to perform the mass when it was his turn to officiate. Similarly, deacons were to pay seventeen deniers each time they missed a mass. The chapter general, which was convened three times each year, would be delayed no more than a month to await the arrival of absent priors of the house.²¹ The statutes of 1208 returned to the issue of residency, this time dealing with the officers, or priors, of the chapter, who held liege prebends. Priors would be deprived of the fruits of their prebends if they failed to be in residence for six months.²²

These two sets of statutes attempted to define a canon’s responsibility to be in residence. Nevertheless, they left ample room for exceptions. Canons who had obtained permission from the chapter could hold their prebends while attending school, going on pilgrimage, or serving the church in an official capacity, and illness or bloodletting constituted legitimate excuses for absence from daily services.²³

The more strictly defined residency requirements did not, then, eliminate the possibility of excessive absenteeism. Perhaps to ensure continued ceremonial display in the absence of a sufficient number of full resident canons, vicars choral were introduced at Saint-Martin in 1222.²⁴ In 1237 this measure was made official: the number of full canons was reduced from 150 to 50, 20 demi-prebends were established, 30 prebends were set aside for honorary canons—such as the count of Anjou and the abbot of Marmoutier—and 56 prebends were now designated for vicars choral, whose primary purpose was singing in the choir.²⁵ Vicars, who were not voting members of the chapter and were in positions of clear subordination to the canons, had the same residency requirements as ordinary canons—seven months, and they too could gain permission to attend school and go on pilgrimage. But no vicar who was away in such circumstances could draw from his daily benefice, and the chapter retained the right to revoke a vicar’s permission to attend school if the need arose. Hence high absenteeism was less likely among the vicars than it was among simple canons and those holding liege prebends. Indeed, the problem of absenteeism was probably greatest among the high officers with liege prebends, and it did not disappear after 1237. In 1255 the pope issued an indulgence to the dean of Saint-Martin declaring that his presence anywhere on Saint-Martin’s property (which extended as far as Lombardy) would count toward his required six months’ residency for his prebend.²⁶ And in 1262 the fine against priests of the week who failed to perform the daily mass was raised from two sous to five for each mass they missed.²⁷

Much of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century evidence thus seems to suggest that centrifugal forces were pulling the canons of Saint-Martin away from whatever sense of religious community their chapter had once known, submerging them in the ostentation and materialism of urban life and drawing at least some of them into courtly circles. Like Marmoutier in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Saint-Martin in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries was being stretched out by the forces of social and political change.

Yet there was no literary work from Saint-Martin that paralleled, in sentiment and function, the Deeds of the Abbey of Marmoutier. None of the canons attempted to revive a sense of community and mutual responsibility among the brothers by appealing to conscience and affection. Indeed, I know of no literature from Saint-Martin that even deals with relations among the canons. When the issue of the canons’ responsibility came up, as it did in the reform statutes, it was implicitly defined as the obligation to perform—to be present in the choir for the requisite liturgical hours—rather than the obligation to meet the needs of other individuals.

In their attempts to bolster responsible behavior, Saint-Martin’s reformers made no appeal to conscience or to the emotions of individual canons. Rather, both the reformers and the initiators of the general customs of the basilica instituted a system of material rewards and punishments that would be meted out to canons who did or did not show up for the offices they were expected to perform. Canons who failed to fulfill their residency requirements—including daily attendance at matins, vespers, and mass—were deprived of their prebends; priests of the week who failed to perform the mass were fined; canons who neglected their responsibility to attend matins during the week of septuagesima were deprived of a part of the manual distributions of that week; and only those who were present at Sunday mass could get their share of the sales taxes collected that day.²⁸ Similarly, those who performed liturgical tasks that went beyond their minimal duties received material rewards: one-sixth of the oblations (up to two deniers each) for singing at mass on feasts of seven candelabras; two deniers for attending a weekly Sunday procession that was established in 1191; one hundred sous to be divided among those who attended the anniversary service established in 1212 for Josbert of Sainte-Maure; four lampreys for carrying the Osanna on Palm Sunday.²⁹

A system of clearly defined exchanges provided the canons with sufficient motivation to fulfill their liturgical responsibilities. There was no need for an appeal to conscience, since regulation and supervision were simple matters: each canon was required to be physically present in the choir of the basilica at certain designated times of the day and year; if he was absent, the entire chapter knew it and could thus take appropriate action. These rewards and punishments may themselves have worked to undermine the canons’ sense of community by sending them a message that their relationship to the basilica was limited to a set of clearly circumscribed contractual obligations. Even when they underwent reform, the canons were encouraged to mirror the mentalities of their urban environment, to think in terms of credits and debits.

Protecting Corporate Interests

Nevertheless, despite the attenuating forces that worked to undermine their fraternal bonds and collective identity, the canons of Saint-Martin did not simply allow their community to dissipate. In fact we could argue the opposite—that challenges to their collective rights heightened the canons’ sense of their corporate identity.

It would be wrong, for example, to conclude that the primary purpose of the Chronicle of Tours was to serve the interests of the French king. Rather, the author of this text directed a much greater portion of his writing to the corporate interests of Saint-Martin. In asserting those interests he was not alone—for the ceremonial life and administrative record of the canons focused repeatedly on the defense of their collective rights and privileges.

Through a selective use of earlier sources the author of the Chronicle of Tours not only gave disproportionate attention to Tours in his representation of French history, he also conveyed the impression that the kings of Francia had always favored Saint-Martin and graced it with numerous gifts. The implicit message to King Louis VIII and his successors was that they would do well to imitate Clovis, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald, Louis the Stammerer, and Charles the Simple, who had visited Saint-Martin, buried their family members there, and of course lavished gifts and privileges on the house.³⁰

Such references to royal precedent did not simply hover in the literary realm. The canons were quick to remind the king, whenever the need arose, that his heritage obliged him to protect the interests of Saint-Martin and to honor its privileges:

Since by the generous donations and charity of your fathers the church of Saint Martin is enriched, it is elevated to the noble summit of the churches of your realm, and it adheres to you especially as lord, father, patron and author, just as a member of the body adheres to its head. . . . Therefore we ask your royal majesty that for the love of the blessed Martin you warn [the count of Nevers—he was one of the honorary canons of Saint-Martin] as your loyal man to leave the possessions of the blessed Martin alone . . . since your precedessors, the kings and emperors . . . wanted [Saint-Martin] to be immune from all customs and exactions and thus privileged it with special liberties. And when those liberties inspire the envy of many, it is your role to protect and guard them.³¹

Not only through historical memory but also through ritual act, the canons reminded their king and abbot that his proper relationship to them was one of defense and protection. Thus, when they took their oaths as abbots and canons of the basilica, fifteen kings, from Louis VII in 1137 to Louis XIV in 1650, repeated the words that a twelfth-century canon of Saint-Martin had inscribed in a richly decorated Carolingian manuscript of the Gospels:

I, N, with God’s assent king of the Franks, abbot and canon of this church of the blessed Martin of Tours, swear to God and to the blessed Martin that among other things I will be the protector and defender of this church in all its necessities and uses, guarding and conserving the possessions, honors, rights, privileges, liberties, franchises, and immunities of the same church, insofar as I am able supported by divine assistance, with right and pure faith. May God thus help me and these holy words.³²

Through appeal to memory and ritual action the canons of Saint-Martin voiced their own interests to the king, reminding him that Saint-Martin had played an important role in the history of the kingdom and that the king owed it his protection and defense. Their relationship with their royal patron thus paralleled Marmoutier’s relationship with the Angevins. But Marmoutier does not provide the only significant parallel to the canons’ use of the past. By the time the canon of Tours wrote his Chronicle, the monks of the abbey of Saint-Denis had taken on the role of royal historiographers. In endeavoring to write a history of the realm that both legitimized the French king and promoted the interests of his religious institution the canon from Tours may well have had in mind the historians from Saint-Denis—Suger, Odo of Deuil, and most especially, Rigord. Like Rigord, who completed his Deeds of Philip Augustus in 1196, the canon from Tours not only provided arguments supporting the view that the king came from a single royal line that stretched back to the first Merovingians, but he also placed his own house in a central position vis-à-vis that royal line.³³

One striking difference distinguishes the historical work of the canon of Saint-Martin from the historical work of Rigord and other monks at Saint-Denis. The monks of Saint-Denis took great pains to remind their king that the supreme “patron and defender” of the realm was Denis, who constantly worked miracles to protect the members of the royal line. Rigord, for example, recounted how Philip Augustus recovered from a hunting accident after appealing to God, the Virgin, and Denis, and how his young son Louis recovered from a serious illness after Denis’s relics, along with others from his abbey, were carried in procession through the streets of Paris.³⁴

The author from Tours made no such claims on behalf of Saint Martin. Indeed, although a number of canons of Saint-Martin and observers of their basilica recorded Martin’s most recent miracles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, none of these works described a recent miracle that Martin had performed for the king.³⁵ The canons still recounted the story about the assistance the Merovingian king Clovis received from Martin before he defeated the Visigothic king in 507, but they did not draw out the potential implications concerning the continued relationship between Martin and the royal line, and they gave equal attention to Martin’s role in assisting Count Geoffrey of Anjou in his victory over Thibaud of Blois in 1044.³⁶ Concerning their own era, the canons either were not interested in perpetuating the theme of Martin’s special role in the French realm or felt they were no longer in a position to do so. The king was still the “protector and defender” of the house of Saint Martin, but the saint was not the protector and defender of the king.

Certainly the tradition was there had the canons wanted to seize upon it. Not only did the stories by Gregory of Tours (which the author of the Chronicle of Tours appropriated) provide ample opportunity for portraying Martin as the “protector and defender” of the realm, but the canons of Saint-Martin were still quite familiar with the sermon of Radbod of Utrecht, which had appealed to Martin as the potential savior of the Carolingian line. Moreover, Johannis Beleth—one of the best-known liturgists of the twelfth century—had recently recalled to people’s minds the fact that the Frankish kings once carried Martin’s cape into battle.³⁷

Apparently the canons of Saint-Martin did not offer up their saint as the “patron and defender” of the Capetians and of the French realm because they did not want to. To them—and their writings make this abundantly clear—Martin was the “patron,” “defender,” “protector,” and “possessor” of one community and only one: the chapter of Saint-Martin and the walled town of Châteauneuf, which it ruled.³⁸

Of course the Capetian king was an indirect beneficiary of that patronage, since he was the lay abbot of the chapter of Saint-Martin and hence one of its members. It appears, however, that the canons of the chapter deliberately avoided identifying Martin’s patronage and protection with the king and that they did so because the rights the king exercised as lay abbot were a threat to the corporate identity and integrity of the community.

A number of sources and incidents from the early thirteenth century suggest that most of the members of the chapter of Saint-Martin were not happy with the situation the king was imposing on them and that they frequently resented the officers they themselves could not elect. In 1206, for example, the canons struggled with their dean (the king’s appointee) over the right to control the corporate seal of the chapter. After they had wrested control of the seal from the dean, they entrusted it to two officers they themselves elected.³⁹ In 1232 the canons struggled with the pope himself over the issue of absenteeism. Gregory IX granted permission to Pierre Chariot, the illegitimate son of Philip Augustus and treasurer of Saint-Martin, to stay away from the chapter. Ostensibly Pierre was granted this exemption from the chapter’s rules in order to study theology, but the real reason was probably so he could be closer to the royal court in Paris. The canons resisted the pope’s decision and gave in to his pressure only after they received the concession that the treasurer had to reside at the basilica at least one month each year.⁴⁰

The use of aggressive rituals also points to tensions between the canons and their officers. According to the reform statutes of 1204, the canons could (and probably did) employ the powerful ritual of the clamor if relations with their officers broke down over the issue of residency. The chapter was to perform the clamor—a liturgical appeal for God’s assistance against one’s enemies—during the mass each day for forty days or until the officer had complied with the chapter’s rules. If he still failed to do so by the end of the forty days, his prebend and rights were to be taken away.⁴¹

The struggles within the chapter of Saint-Martin in the early years of the thirteenth century arose in large part as a result of the impositions of the Capetian kings on the internal governance of the community. As a rule, the canons of Saint-Martin were not hostile toward their Capetian lay abbot. After all, one of them provided the Capetians with the text portraying Hugh Capet as a descendant of the Carolingians. Moreover, the canons were eager to remind the king that he was the “protector and defender” of their house and that they adhered to him “just as a member of the body adheres to its head.” Nevertheless, a lay patron who was not only king but also lay abbot (an extremely rare position in the High and late Middle Ages) and who exercised the right to appoint the most important officers of the community—such a friend and patron also had the potential to become a great danger to the integrity of the community. It was important to remind this patron that his duty was to protect and defend the house, and that all his predecessors had fulfilled their role in this way. But it was also important to withhold for the community itself a “patron and defender” who was above the king and who did not serve the king in the same way he served the community. This was the role Saint Martin played for the canons of Tours.

When Philip and Renaud recalled the role their saint had played during the Viking invasions, their theme was that Martin resided at their church and was their patron and defender. They did not ignore the stories Radbod of Utrecht and the monk of Marmoutier had already recorded, but they molded the earlier stories in a different way. Thus, though they did not go as far as the monk of Marmoutier had gone in portraying the Frankish king as a slothful and ineffective ruler, neither did they make any reference to Radbod of Utrecht’s idea that Saint Martin was a special protector of the Frankish royal line.⁴² Rather, Philip and Renaud pointed to the miracle of 903—when Martin’s relics saved the city of Tours from the Vikings—as a shining example demonstrating that the saint continuously favored his community—both the chapter of Saint-Martin and the city of Châteauneuf that it ruled.

In their interactions with other individuals and groups the canons of Saint-Martin made manifest their own existence as a corporate group. Acting together at highly charged ritual moments, they called upon their king and abbot to protect them, and as I show in chapters 8 and 9, they reinforced their hierarchical claims vis-à-vis both the archbishops of Tours and the burghers of Châteauneuf.

It is one thing, however, to be able to say that the canons of Saint-Martin protected their common material interests by acting collectively; it is another to argue that they constituted a community. After all, legal rights and privileges in medieval France were granted corporately, and thus many people acted collectively to protect their interests.⁴³ But when they were not struggling with other groups, did such people consider themselves members of a community? Did they come together to express their common identity? And in the case of the chapter of Saint-Martin, whose canons were chastised so many times for their apparent failure to live up to certain standards of the clerical order, did that common identity extend beyond mere practical material interests?

Rituals of Community

It is impossible for us to know whether the canons of Saint-Martin felt themselves intensely bound to their chapter and its ceremonial religious functions. They have not left us their thoughts on these subjects. What we can analyze are their actions and most especially their incorporative rituals: entry ceremonies, ceremonial gifts, foot washings, and commemorations of the dead. What we find in these ceremonies is that the canons put considerable effort into reinforcing their collective bonds and, especially in their attention to the proper care of the dead and dying, that their preoccupations extended beyond the practical material concern of doing their job so as to receive remuneration. We also find that, like the language of the canons, their incorporative rituals hovered between monastic rituals, in which the solidarity of the group was clearly articulated, and the more fluid rituals of various groups in high medieval cities. And their corporate assistance to the dead and dying was not as intense, in the early thirteenth century, as was the assistance monks gave each other.

Like houses of Benedictine monks, chapters of secular canons, including Saint-Martin, had entry rituals. These rituals involved an oath that established the new brother s obligation to the community, a ceremonial redressing—or redefining—of the new member, incorporative actions symbolizing the establishment of a new bond between the entrant and his brothers, and a liminal period when the status of the new brother was different from that of the others. There were, however, significant differences between the entry rituals of Benedictine monasteries and the entry ritual of Saint-Martin. Indeed, in its rituals Saint-Martin shared as many characteristics with urban guilds and confraternaties as with Benedictine monasticism.

A new Benedictine monk was marked for life, bound forever—at least in principle—to the community and its way of life. His entry into the monastic vocation was nearly as significant as the ceremony of baptism, and indeed the ritual symbols for entering a monastery paralleled those of baptism.⁴⁴ Hence the Benedictine Rule prescribed a lengthy liminal stage that preceded the ritual of incorporation. This stage, the novitiate, gave the novice time to consider the implications of the commitment he was soon to make and to back down while it was still possible to do so. The novitiate also enabled the new member to cleanse himself of secular pollutions before he fully joined the sacred and unpolluted community. When the new monk finally underwent the ritual of incorporation, the circumstances in which he made his solemn oath symbolized the gravity of his commitment: “When he is to be received, he comes before the whole community in the oratory and promises stability, fidelity to monastic life, and obedience. This is done in the presence of God and his saints to impress on the novice that if he ever acts otherwise, he will surely be condemned by the one he mocks.”⁴⁵ After giving his promise orally, the professing monk then wrote it out and placed the document on the altar. Even if he later broke his oath and left the abbey, the monastery was to keep the document, which thus provided visible and tangible evidence that a covenant had been broken.⁴⁶

The reclothing of the monk also symbolized that he was in his very essence permanently remade, just as was a neophyte Christian at the time of baptism. In the oratory, the abbot stripped the incoming monk of his old clothing and dressed him in the monastic cowl, which (at least by the eleventh and twelfth centuries) had just been blessed and sprinkled with holy water.⁴⁷ As he undressed and then dressed the entrant, the abbot stated: “May the Lord strip thee of the old man with all his acts. . . . May the Lord clothe thee with the new man, who is created according to God in justice and the sanctity of truth.”⁴⁸ After the entrant had been dressed, he was then incorporated into the entire community: each of the brothers kissed him.⁴⁹

At Saint-Martin the ceremony of entry was different because the circumstances were different. The new canon was not marked for life, nor did he enter a community that was set apart from the pollutions of the secular realm. Rather, he entered into a set of well-defined obligations to a corporate group. Thus the essence of his oath was his promise to be “faithful in all the business and causes that pertain to the community of this church and to defend the liberty, honesty, and utility of the same church.”⁵⁰

The gravity of the entering canon’s new obligations and the bonds of his new community were certainly not as intense as were those of a professing monk. Nevertheless, we should not minimize the effects of the entrance ceremony and the bonds it helped to form. The canon’s entry promise was a solemn oath, and it was addressed not to an abstract corporation but to the men who made up the group and who depended on the loyal behavior of their brothers. This dependence was highlighted by the canon’s promise that he would “not reveal to anyone those counsels of the chapter whence damage or shame might come to this church or to its persons.”⁵¹

An emphasis on the ceremonial function of the chapter, rather than on the remaking of the man, was made clear in that the new member was not ceremonially undressed and remade by a superior or a brother. Rather, at tierce, after he had taken his oath in the chapter, he was led to the choir, already dressed in the chapter’s choir vestments. He himself took on his new clothing in private, rather than in a public ceremony. These were, moreover, vestments that he wore when he was in the choir. They were the uniform of his ceremonial function—that of performing the liturgy at Martin’s tomb—not the mark of his complete remaking.

When the new canon arrived in his ceremonial garb at the door of the choir, he bowed to its four corners while the other canons bowed to him.⁵² He was then placed in his new stall, where he proved his ability to carry out his new function by singing the responses at all the services on that day. In some circumstances, then—when an entering canon was already a member of the clerical order—the ritual of incorporation was not particularly intense. It required the new member of the choir to perform his singing function, but it did not involve any physical contact, which would highlight his new relationship with his brothers.

The ritual for new members who had never before been in clerical orders, however, required physical contact of a highly charged symbolic nature. At mass the new member was led to the altar, already dressed in his choir vestments, wearing a napkin around his neck. There the priest of the week began to make the new canon’s corona, or crown, by cutting off a bit of hair from the top of his head. The priest then kissed him, and he was led in turn to the deacon, the subdeacon, the dean, the treasurer, and finally, to every other member of the chapter. Each member cut a bit of the new canon’s hair and kissed him. Each of the brothers had a stake in the behavior and status of the new canon. Each therefore tangibly took part in remaking him into a member of the clerical order.⁵³ A number of abbeys had rituals for tonsuring a new member, but in most cases the abbot or a single priest did the honors. I know of no other case in which every member of the community participated in the ritual shearing.⁵⁴ In this ceremony, and in others as well, Saint-Martin’s ritual symbols stressed lateral bonds among the canons rather than hierarchical bonds between the individual canon and a superior.

The tonsuring rituals for new canons at religious houses that were subordinated to Saint-Martin stressed, by contrast, hierarchical relations. When a man became a canon at Léré, where Saint-Martin had “all spiritual and temporal jurisdiction,” he had to be presented at Saint-Martin to swear his oath to the chapter and priors. If he had never been tonsured, the priest of the week tonsured him during the mass. The customal of Saint-Martin specifically stipulated that “he is not to be led among the canons in the choir to be tonsured, as if he were our canon.”⁵⁵ Incorporative rituals were reserved for the canons of Saint-Martin alone.

As at other chapters of secular canons—and the same was true for lay confraternities in high medieval cities—the “liminal” stage of a new member of the chapter of Saint-Martin followed his ritual of entry rather than preceding it. Since he was not making an irrevocable commitment, or conversion, to a new way of life, the canon did not need to undergo a period of probation when he could still change his mind. And since the community was not ritually set apart from the pollutions of the world, he did not have to be cleansed before he could enter. But because the nature of a chapter of secular canons was fluid and somewhat amorphous (and this was generally true of lay confraternities as well), the new member did need to learn, through contact, what the community was. Hence new members of many secular chapters and lay confraternities were expected to observe a period of full participation in the group’s activities.⁵⁶ At Saint-Martin, new canons had to meet strict residence requirements from Easter until the feast of Saint John, on December 27. This period of residency, which exceeded the seven months for ordinary canons (and for ordinary canons, those seven months did not have to be consecutive) and allowed for no exemptions, enabled the new member to get a feel for his community, its membership, and its liturgical rhythms. The requirement also ensured that the new member would be present for all four of Saint Martin’s feasts (May 12, July 4, November 11, and December 13).⁵⁷

Although Saint-Martin’s ceremony of entry, and those of other secular chapters and lay confraternities as well, was not as intense as the Benedictine ceremony of profession, it served the purpose of consolidating bonds between a new canon and his brothers. Other incorporative ceremonies consolidated the bonds between a new treasurer or dean—the chapter’s two most important officers—and the canons. In addition to undergoing an entry ceremony that paralleled that of a new canon, each new treasurer or dean had the right to eat at the houses of all the canons on the day of his entry.⁵⁸ Relations between the chapter and these two officers were frequently tense, in part because the officers held so much control over the chapter and in part because they were imposed on the chapter by the king.⁵⁹ Hence the obligatory meals served the function of symbolically establishing a desired friendship.⁶⁰ That the canons were required to feed their new officers, however, reinforced the relationship between superior and inferior. The right to visit the house of another and to demand nourishment there—the droit de prise—was the prerogative of the more powerful over the less powerful: the king held the droit de prise over various abbeys, the count of Blois held the droit de prise at Marmoutier’s priories, Saint-Martin held the droit de prise at the religious houses that were subordinated to it, and the archbishop of Tours, as I have already discussed, had lost his droit de prise at Marmoutier and Saint-Martin. Hence the new officers’ right to nourishment at the houses of the canons symbolically reinforced his position of authority. It was also a payment for the justice and administrative services these officers would provide.⁶¹

The meals also reinforced the bond between the canons and their officers, and that need was met as well by ceremonial exchanges of gifts that were repeated throughout the liturgical year. The gifts flowed in both directions and hence reminded both the canons and their officers that their relationship was one of mutual service: the chapter owed the dean three measures of wine “of the best quality”; and in exchange (the customal of the chapter made it very clear that the one gift was linked to the others) the dean was to provide each of the canons with spiced wine, which he delivered on Easter, Pentecost, and Saint Martin’s feast of July 4.⁶²

The entry meals for the dean and treasurer reinforced their authority and consolidated bonds of friendship. Nevertheless, as I have already indicated, the canons also had recourse to their own authority vis-à-vis these officers. When their officers failed to meet their obligations to the chapter the canons could, and apparently did, employ powerful rituals such as the clamor.

The relations between the officers of the chapter and its members were fraught with danger, and so there was a constant need to reinforce the hierarchical friendship. Yet, the customal of the chapter suggests that the most frequent ceremonies at Saint-Martin worked to reinforce the horizontal bonds of brotherhood. Some of these rituals, such as the periodic group tonsuring, resembled and probably were derived from monastic rituals. Others appear to have a greater affinity with the rituals of lay confraternities.

Saint-Martin’s practices for Maundy Thursday, in which the canons reenacted the events of Christ’s Last Supper, closely paralleled both monastic rituals and those of late medieval confraternities. Like their monastic peers, the canons imitated Christ by performing two maundies, or ritual foot washings: first each canon washed the feet of a “poor man” he himself had introduced into the chapter for that ceremony; and later in the day all the canons washed each other’s feet. After the latter ceremony the canons engaged in a round of ceremonial wine drinking.⁶³ Both maundies were emotionally and symbolically intense, working to reinforce bonds between the chapter and the broader community and among the members of the chapter themselves. And both closely resembled the monastic ritual, except for three important differences.

First, though the canons certainly humbled themselves in washing each other’s feet and the feet of the poor, they did not go to the lengths of some monks, who bowed down and “worshiped Christ” in the poor before washing their feet and kissed their feet when the washing was done.⁶⁴ The canons, unlike the monks, had not embraced such humility as part of their calling. Moreover, they were intensely aware of symbols of status and hierarchy—too aware, in all likelihood, to kiss the feet of, or prostrate themselves before, the poor men of the city they ruled.

The second difference between the monastic ritual and that of Saint-Martin involved the way the poor men were chosen: in monasteries each monk had a poor man introduced for him by the almoner or an officer from the town.⁶⁵ At Saint-Martin, by contrast, each canon brought in his own poor man, thus highlighting the canons’ daily contact with their secular surroundings and enhancing the possibility of forming patron-client relationships between individual canons and members of the urban community.⁶⁶

The third difference between Saint-Martin’s maundy and that of a Benedictine monastery involved the washing of the brothers’ own feet: in monasteries, and in some cathedrals as well, it was the head of the community—the abbot, bishop, or dean—who took on the role Christ had played at the Last Supper by washing the feet of all his disciples.⁶⁷ At Saint-Martin, by contrast, the canons apparently washed each other’s feet. The difference is striking: all the canons were ritually humbled by washing the feet of a poor man and of a brother; but all were simultaneously, and equally, exalted by playing the role of Christ. In all likelihood the canons would have considered it too much of a symbolic threat to allow any single officer to lord it over the others by exclusively playing the role of Christ. As in their tonsuring ceremony, the canons of Saint-Martin transformed a ritual that usually stressed the hierarchical relations between the brothers and their superior into one that stressed the horizontal and collective ties of the brotherhood.

If the consolidation of a sense of brotherhood was one important outcome of Saint-Martin’s entry and foot-washing rituals, it was an implicit prerequisite for the death rituals. Like the monastery of Marmoutier, and secular confraternities as well, Saint-Martin provided its members with an artificial family that enhanced or even replaced the natural family in providing spiritual assistance for the dead and dying. To be sure, the elaborate funeral processions for the canons of the basilica—which were attended by all the canons of Saint-Martin and all the monks, canons, and nuns of five religious houses that were subordinated to the basilica, as well as by the monks of the nearby monastery of Saint-Julian and ten monks of Marmoutier—helped enhance and reinforce the collective status of the chapter.⁶⁸ Still, there is no question but that the care given to the dying and the dead arose from the conviction that the dead needed help and that their spiritual brothers were the ones who should see that it was provided.

In this sense, then, there was no difference between the provisions for the death of a canon of Saint-Martin and those for the death of a Benedictine monk. And indeed the specific rituals at Saint-Martin paralleled those of a monastery. In both cases the entire community assembled at the bedside of a sick man; in both cases he was closely attended day and night by a few men who constantly prayed for him; in both cases the entire community gathered again at the moment of death and then for the funeral; in both cases proper remembrance involved almsgiving, commemorative meals, and commemorative masses-—usually a cycle of thirty.⁶⁹ By the early thirteenth century, however, there was no specification, as there had been in the tenth century, that living canons of Saint-Martin would assist their dead brothers by completing the satisfaction for their sins.⁷⁰ Furthermore, a concern for status and formality and a hierarchical division of labor undermined the intimacy of the “fraternal” support provided to sick and dying canons. The chapter ensured that six “priests of charity” would watch each sick canon, praying for him and eating with him day and night until he either recovered or died. These six men also gathered for one last meal at the dead canon’s house on the day he was buried. But these priests were not the social equals of the canons, nor were they full members of the chapter. Rather, they were employees of the chapter whose remuneration consisted of a fraction of a full canon’s prebend plus the right to inherit the vestment of every canon when he died.⁷¹

In the early thirteenth century Saint-Martin thus provided for the “fraternal” assistance its canons needed at the time of death, but without the intimacy that characterized the assistance Benedictine monks gave each other.⁷² There is also evidence that the canons’ fraternal assistance for their dying and dead members was not always considered sufficient. Some canons gave substantial gifts to the chapter to endow special commemorations for their souls.⁷³ Others apparently chose to assume the monastic habit before their deaths.⁷⁴ Still others donned the habit of the Augustinian canons at the priory of Saint-Cosme. The residents of Saint-Martin believed this priory provided a “door to health,” because it was “an apt place for doing penance.” It was like “a terrestrial paradise from which souls that were cleansed by the bath of penitence” were “more easily transferred to the celestial paradise.”⁷⁵

There is no doubt, then, that the ceremonial life at Saint-Martin reinforced fraternal bonds among the canons and that the community came together to provide brotherly assistance for those making the critical passage from this life to the next. But the bonds of this community were not as intense as those of a monastery like Marmoutier, and the canons’ collective identity was not as clearly set apart from its surrounding environment as those of Marmoutier and Saint-Cosme.

In their language and rituals, the canons of Saint-Martin assimilated the values and manners of their urban environment while at the same time preserving a sense of their collective identity and religious vocation. Among themselves, they were jealous defenders of lateral relations. When they interacted with other groups, however, they were intensely hierarchical. As I show in the following chapters, their orchestrations of the ceremonial rhythms of Châteauneuf marked the emerging city as subordinated to and defined by the lordship of Saint Martin and his house.