Clermont, Cahors, Agde, and Paris. During this early period, relics were also imported
from Rome. In 397, Victor of Rouen brought relics of twenty-three martyrs from Rome to
Rouen.
Relics were so important in the conversion of pagan Gaul that parts, and entire bodies,
of saints were bought, sold, and stolen. Augustine mentions relic sellers in the 5th
century, and Gregory of Tours writes about Syrian relic mongers in France in the 6th. In
the 7th century, the body of St. Benedict of Nursia was stolen from Monte Cassino after
the abbey was destroyed by the Lombards and brought to Fleury (which became Saint-
Benoît-sur-Loire), where his relics attracted pilgrims until the 11th century, when the
monks of Monte Cassino claimed to have found the true relics still at their abbey.
The establishment of sanctuaries and pilgrimages to shrines continued throughout the
tempestuous reigns of the Merovingians, who supported such shrines. Clovis (d. 511) had
a shrine built over the tomb of St. Geneviève (d. ca. 500) in Paris, and Dagobert (d. ca.
639) has been credited with revitalizing the shrine of St. Denis, who became the patron
saint of France. It is also from the Merovingian period that the early Marian pilgrimage to
Ambronay in Burgundy is dated (7th c.), and we begin to see the establishment of shrines
in rural monastic settings.
The ever-increasing interest in sanctuaries and pilgrimages received impetus during
the Carolingian dynasty. Charlemagne was an ardent collector of relics, which were kept
at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen). The most important, the swaddling clothes and loincloth of
Christ, were exhibited once every seven years and attracted hordes of pilgrims.
Carolingian aristocrats also donated relics: Charles the Bald gave the Virgin’s tunic to
Chartres in 876, from which time the pilgrimage to the cathedral can be dated.
Even more important for the history of pilgrimage, the Carolingian hierarchy
reinstated the ruling, first decreed at the Fifth Council of Carthage in 401, that required
all altars to contain relics. This necessitated the procuring of more relics than were
present in the Frankish kingdoms, and Carolingian ecclesiastics were major movers in
procuring saints’ bodies and other relics, especially from Rome but also from Spain. For
example, in the early 9th century, Abbot Hilduin acquired the body of St. Sebastian from
Rome for Saint-Médard in Soissons.
Trade in relics flourished, and the frequency of theft increased, with more than fifty
documented instances from 800 to 1100. Among the most famous of these thefts in the
Frankish lands were that of St. Foy’s body, stolen from Agen by a monk of Conques in
the 860s, and that of Mary Magdalene’s, said to have been stolen from Provence and
brought to Vézelay in the late 9th century. Both became objects of major pilgrimages.
Despite the political fragmentation after the collapse of the Carolingian empire and the
incursions of the Vi-kings, pilgrimage to sites of cultic worship increased during the 9th
and 10th centuries. By the 11th century, the cult of relics and pilgrimage were major
aspects of religious practice, and they provided important sources of financial support for
French monasticism. Funds brought in by pilgrims helped in the ambitious building
projects begun in the 11th century by many monastic houses.
Typical of this development is Mont-Saint-Michel. Pilgrimage to this sanctuary began
after an apparition of the archangel Michael to Aubert of Avranches while the bishop
slept (708). The archangel directed the bishop to build a sanctuary at the top of Mont-
Tombe, a granite rock some 550 feet high in the bay near Avranches. A small sanctuary
was built and relics were received from the archangel’s shrine on Monte Gargano in Italy.
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