Text and object: Fleury and the relics of St Benedict, c. 750–c. 1140

Thesis

In this doctoral thesis, I examine the cult of relics in France between the late eighth and early twelfth centuries. Through an exploration of the veneration of the body of St Benedict of Nursia, author of the Rule of Benedict, at the monastery of Fleury, I consider how medieval monks thought about the role of relics within their community and how the treatment and materiality of relics affected the development of saints’ cults. Using the abbey’s exceptionally rich sources I demonstrate the connective power of relics and how they served to join disparate places, times and individuals in medieval imaginations of their pasts and presents.

In ‘Part I: Relics in Theory’ I examine how the Fleury monks reinterpreted two core texts, the Historia translationis sancti Benedicti and Gregory the Great’s Life of Benedict in light of their possession of Benedict’s body. I argue that the monks developed a literary tradition which used relics as physical markers of continuity and enabled them to discuss their connection to past iterations of the community, even after traumatic events such as the monastery’s sack by Vikings. In ‘Part II: Relics in Practice’, I centre inquiry upon the materiality of the relics housed at Fleury. I identify physical interaction, not textual authority, as the factor which determined why some cults flourished at Fleury while others rapidly dwindled and I analyse the complex ways in which monastic communities ‘got to know’ their saints. From this research, I argue that relic cults remained dynamic and varied in the post-Carolingian world as each generation of Fleury monks reinvented and rewrote what Benedict’s body meant to them.

Authors: Miller, JD

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-gwxpo81j1
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: relics; monasticism; hagiography; France; Benedict
• Subjects: Middle Ages; Latin; Saints; History