Sacred Plunder. David M. Perry
means to commission translatio narratives in their homelands. We know about the Venetian men who stole the body of St. Simon because a text that tells their story happens to have survived. A few fragmentary and non-narrative texts provide additional examples. According to one of these, Walon of Sarton, canon of Picquigny near Amiens, became a canon of a church in Constantinople. Having decided that he had experienced enough of the East after the disaster of Adrianople, he took a few silver reliquaries that he had found hidden in his new church and sold them to finance his journey home. He then gave the relics (a finger of St. George and yet another head of St. John the Baptist) to the cathedral at Amiens.104 In another legend, an English priest who served as Baldwin’s chaplain was sent back to the capital from the battle of Adrianople to fetch the Holy Rood, a relic of the True Cross traditionally borne into battle by the emperors of Constantinople, but which Baldwin had accidentally left behind. Unfortunately, Baldwin was killed before the chaplain made it back to the battlefield, so the chaplain hid the cross and took it with him back to Bromholm.105 Henry of Ulmen’s gifts also generated surviving documentation, including a new reliquary for the relic of St. Matthias that he had donated to Trier, with an inscription commemorating the donation.106 Several seventeenth-century French church historians describe two cross-shaped reliquaries holding fragments of the True Cross that Robert of Clari had allegedly brought to the Monastery of Corbie from the imperial palace chapel. The reliquaries and inscriptions that attributed these items to Clari were lost, probably during the French Revolution, but an inventory from Corbie from 1283 mentions the relics that “Robert of Clari, soldier, brought from Constantinople.”107 The attribution is credible; as noted above, Clari catalogued some of the more important relics of the imperial chapel in his chronicle. It is interesting that he returned with objects from the chapel but never described his acquisitions. Does this represent an outright theft or evidence of sacrilegious looting in the first three days, or did Nivelon perhaps give Clari, his soldier, the tiniest of fragments of the relics that the bishop claimed from the palace churches? The sole complete copy of Clari’s chronicle exists in a vellum book once belonging to Corbie’s library, so one can at least note a connection between the knight and the monastic institution.108 There must have been many more such relic translations as crusaders finished their terms of service or simply gave up. Clari made no note of his own translation, although Corbie’s inventory did. Surely other soldiers offered similar gifts to their favored churches.
Not only have accounts of relic translation been lost to modern historians, but some relics themselves were lost during the transition from Greek to Latin rule. Three of the bishops on the crusade took or sent relics home. A fourth prelate, bishop-elect Peter of Bethlehem, could not have returned to Muslim-controlled Bethlehem, and he died at Adrianople before he might have selected an alternative site for his sacred plunder. A Greek text blames Conrad of Halberstadt and bishop-elect Peter for stealing the relic of consecrated bread from the Last Supper.109 The “Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium” never mentions this relic and most certainly would have noted its possession if Conrad had held on to it. Alfred Andrea speculates that Peter lost the relic at Adrianople. No post-Adrianople record of the relic’s presence has been found.110
The second phase witnessed many translations of relics—some seized during the first weeks, some obtained later. Within about five years, although these dates are not firm, most of the people who participated in the crusade had died, gone home, or settled permanently in the Latin Empire. Many acquired relics—by theft, by gift, by purchase, or by authorized acquisition. As the participants’ movements ceased, the great exodus of relics slowed, but it never stopped. Forgeries complicate the matter. As late as 1215, criticisms of relic-selling in Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council indicate that relics, including forgeries, were being sold and distributed throughout Europe.111 Invented items no doubt joined and perhaps even comprised the majority of the mass of looted relics in this black market of the sacred. When perusing the lists of Fourth Crusade relics, one sees many heads of St. John the Baptist, True Cross fragments, and other easily fabricated fragments of various objects. Authentication proved difficult, and the looting of Constantinople gave a reasonable provenance for the unscrupulous forger to employ.
The Third Phase: The Height of the Latin Empire
During the relatively short life span of the Latin Empire, Latins continued to send relics from Constantinople to the West. Again, one can divide the known cases of relic acquisition into two groups: authorized and unauthorized. The rulers of the Latin Empire and other newly conquered lands continued to use their relics as diplomatic gifts. The most important and best studied of these cases concerns the translation of the relics of the Passion to King Louis IX of France in 1239. But there were others. Emperor Henry (r. 1206–16) followed his brother’s pattern of doling out minor, or small, relics, as did his successors.112 Meanwhile, Latin clergy in Constantinople mined their treasuries for suitable objects for translation. In some cases, the clergy simply sent the relics west in their original reliquaries. At other times, they seem to have shaved off small parts in order to form new relics. The Venetians proved particularly interested in claiming relics from their churches in an expanded Venetian quarter of Constantinople, and our sources present some of these translations as unauthorized.113
Riant’s collection of “Epistolae et Instrumenta” provides ample evidence of Henry of Flanders’s emulation of his brother. The letters and grants are all relatively short and contain little information about where and how Henry obtained relics. As emperor he would have encountered no difficulty in doing so, and he sometimes provided bills of authentication for them. A testimonium de reliquiis found in Lyons, dated April 6, 1208, bears witness to the transfer of relics of the True Cross, St. Stephen the Protomartyr (yet again), St. Thomas, and St. Eustachius to Archbishop Raynaldo. Pontio de Caponay bore the relics, and Henry provided him with this short authentica.114 Other texts give even less information. One simply records that Henry sent “infinite relics of the Savior, Mary, the apostles, the evangelists, the prophets, the martyrs, the confessors, and female saints, and pious benefactors” to two German monks, Thomas and Gerard.115 What could this list mean? Did Thomas and Gerard somehow acquire dozens of tiny fragments one by one, or did Henry give them a sack filled with them? A 1215 document from Clairvaux is clearer. Hugo, formerly abbot of St. Ghislain in Hainaut (Henry’s homeland), delivered a relic of the True Cross from Constantinople to Clairvaux as a gift from the emperor. The document provides a very brief history of the Fourth Crusade in order to show how the relic came to be in Henry’s hands. Again, the purpose of this account was authentication.116
Documents that testify to the movement of relics out of newly Latinized churches by their new owners demonstrate that the phenomenon spread beyond Constantinople and lasted for decades. In 1215, Archbishop John of Neopatras, from Thessaly, sent a finger of St. Nicholas “and other relics” to the Monastery of Gembloux in Belgium.117 In 1216, Archbishop Warinus of Thessalonica sent a finger of St. John the Baptist to a monastery in Phalempin, Flanders.118 In 1218, the Cathedral of St. Albans in Namur, Flanders, catalogued its relics, which included a spine from the Crown of Thorns and some of Christ’s blood, both from Constantinople.119 We do not know their provenance, but Baldwin’s and Henry’s generosity to the religious houses of their region has already been noted. A 1224 testimonial on relics is attributed to William of Villehardouin but was almost certainly produced for Geoffrey I Villehardouin, “prince of Achaia” and nephew to the marshal of Champagne.120 The prince sent a reliquary to the church of St. Remigius in Reims, Champagne, his family’s home city, via an old monk named Arnuld de Lotti. Inside the reliquary were drops of blood that he “believed” to have been shed from the side of Christ on the cross.121 We do not know where the prince acquired this relic. In 1230, Walter, reeve of Beata Maria of Cinctura in Constantinople, sent relics to Lambert, the reeve of Beata Maria in Bruges. These included an arm of the Apostle Bartholomew, an arm of St. Blasius, and relics of St. Laurence and Stephen the Protomartyr (again). In 1232, Anselm, the procurator of St. Mary Magdalene in Constantinople, brought together multiple relics of, yet again, St. Stephen the Protomartyr. Anselm, like Walter, sent these to Lambert of Bruges.122
The above are just a sampling of the relics sent from the Latin Empire and Frankish Greece to Western Europe. Relics had always flowed licitly from church