Europe: A History (63 page)
MADONNA
O
UR
Lady of Monserrat is a statue of indeterminate age, though the monastery which houses her shrine on the ‘Saw-Tooth Mountain’ in Catalonia was founded in 975. The small wooden figure, which was carved in a seated position, possibly in Byzantium, is crowned, and holds an orb on one side and the Christ-child on the other. The Child, also crowned, raises the right hand in blessing, whilst proffering a pine-cone in the left. The Madonna’s face, whose elongated features bear a look of utter serenity, is black.
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In 1384 an icon of the Virgin Mother and Child was brought to the Pauline monastery of Jasna Góra, the ‘Bright Mountain’, near the township of Częstochowa in western Poland. It was donated by the Prince of Opole in Silesia. Legend was to hold that it had been painted by St Luke on boards from the Holy Family’s table in Nazareth. More likely, it was copied from a Byzantine original. The head is covered by a dark cape edged with gold, and spangled with fleur-de-lis, and it is crowned beneath a halo. The eyes are half-closed, as if by tears, and a countenance of utter sorrow is emphasized by two long slashes or sabre-cuts which radiate from the right cheek. The face, like that of
la Moreneta
, is black (see Plate 20).
2
There is a Black Madonna at Notre-Dame de Rocamadour, centrepiece of a group of shrines built in the twelfth century into the cliffs of the Gorge d’Alzou in central France. The figure is said to have been carved by St Amadour or Amateur, whom legend links with Zacchaeus the Publican, a disciple of Christ.
3
Another tiny icon of a black madonna, of Byzantine origin, graces the altar of the crypt of Notre-Dame du Port in Clermont.
4
In Russia, the Black Virgin of Kazan has long been ascribed miracle-working powers. First discovered in 1579, buried in a field, the icon was installed in the Bogoroditsky convent in Kazan, shortly after the city’s conquest by Ivan the Terrible. One copy was taken to Moscow in 1612 to mark the expulsion of the Poles from the Kremlin; another was brought to St Petersburg in 1710 to mark the benediction of Russia’s new capital. A grandiose, neo-classical cathedral, completed by Alexander I, was built to house St Petersburg’s Virgin, which few people knew to be a copy. In 1904 the original icon was stolen from Kazan. It duly reappeared in Western Europe, and was acquired by the Orthodox Church of the USA—thus avoiding the fate of many famous Russian icons which were either destroyed during the Bolshevik Revolution or deposited in state art galleries.
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Monserrat, Częstochowa, Rocamadour, and Kazan are but four of the countless Marian shrines across Europe. In a continent of white faces, the Black Madonnas possess an air of added mystery.
La Moreneta
, patroness of Catalonia, saw the conversion of Ignatius Loyola. She became a focus of attention during the Napoleonic Wars, when the monastery was destroyed. She is well known in Sicily, in Mexico, and in Bohemia. Wallenstein, the Imperial General, was building a chapel in her honour when he was assassinated. The
Matka Boska
or ‘Divine Mother’ of Częstochowa, the ‘Queen of Poland’, first attracted pilgrims during the Hussite Wars, before assuming a national role during the seventeenth century (see p. 556). Together with her Lithuanian counterpart, the ‘Matka Boska Ostrobramska’ in Wilno, she is celebrated by Poles in all their churches, from Irkutsk in Siberia to Doylestown (Pennsylvania). The Virgin of Rocamadour was venerated by St Louis in 1245, by Charles le Bel (1324), and by Louis XI (1463). She inspired the
Litanie de la Vierge Noire
(1936) by Francis Poulenc. The Virgin of Kazan was adopted as the supreme patroness of the Romanov dynasty, a Russian counterpart to the Virgin of Blachernae in Constantinople. Unlike her Catholic counterparts, who receive special adoration during the Feast of the Assumption, her feast-day is held on 8 July (OS).
The cult of the Virgin Mary finds no place in the Bible. It first appears with the doctrine of the
Theotokos
or ‘God-bearer’ at the Council of Ephesus. It inspired the consecration of S. Maria Maggiore (432) in Rome, of Reims Cathedral about the same time, and of the rededicated Parthenon in Athens. In sixth-century Byzantium it launched the regular celebration of the Feasts of the Annunciation (25 March), the Assumption (15 August), and the Dormition, all favourite themes of iconography. From there, it spread steadily throughout Latin Christendom. In St Mary it presented a divine image of womanhood, the
Mater Misericordiae
, the
Magna Mater
, the spotless Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God—an ideal foil for the older Christian fixation with Eve, the sinner, and with Mary Magdalene, the repentant whore. It was vehemently denounced by Protestants, as by modern feminists.
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But it did not find formal acceptance until the dogma of Immaculate Conception in 1854. Demands for recognition of ‘the Co-redemptress’ were rejected at the Second Vatican Council.
Yet the Blessed Virgin does not cease to inspire. She is the foremost subject of Christian art, the recurrent source of mystical visions,
[BERNADETTE] [FATIMA]
,
and the recipient of ceaseless prayers
[ANGELUS]
.
The ‘fifteen decades’ of the Rosary are recited in her honour. Since 1568 the
Ave Maria
or ‘Hail Mary’ has had a permanent place in the Roman Catholic Breviary:
Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb.
Holy Mary, Mother of God! Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Charlemagne’s kingdom and empire were governed by an itinerant court that journeyed incessantly from one domain to the next; by a number of subordinate courts established in Neustria, Aquitaine, and Lombardy; and by a network of perhaps 300
comitates
or ‘counties’, each headed by an imperial lieutenant or ‘Count’. The work of the Emperor’s court was supervised by a staff of clerics, initially by the Arch-Chaplain Fulrad and later by the Emperor’s favourite counsellor, the Northumbrian monk Alcuin. Local bishops were often used to supervise the counts, and
missi dominici
, ‘royal legates’, toured the realm on fixed circuits. Law and order, and all appointments, were administered in the name of the King. A central silver coinage was introduced, with 240
denarii
to the pound. An international executive class, united by royal favour and often by marriage, made its appearance. A series of capitularies, or collected edicts, strove to encourage uniform rules for both Church and State. The tithe was made obligatory. Murder of a priest was made punishable by death. The clergy could only be judged by a court presided over jointly by count and bishop. Pagan cremations were banned. It may have appeared that a new, centralized political order was in the making. In reality, local customs and leaders retained much of their force.
Charlemagne’s court was certainly the focus of continental power and influence. An entry in the royal annals for 798 reveals its far-flung contacts:
A legate came from King Alfonso of Galicia and Asturias, Froia by name, who handed over a tent of marvellous beauty. But at Easter-time the
Nordliudi
across the Elbe rose in rebellion and seized the royal legates residing amongst them to dispense justice … The king collected an army and defeated them in battle and took hostages. And proceeding to his palace at Aachen, he received a Greek delegation sent from Constantinople. In this year, the star called Mars was not to be seen anywhere in the heavens from July to July. The Balearic Isles were plundered by Moors and Saracens. King Alfonso, who had plundered Lisbon, sent his legates Froia and Basiliscus in winter-time to the Lord King with breastplates, mules and Moorish prisoners as evidence of his victory. Then Christmas and Easter were celebrated in this place by the King.
2
It was in the court of Charles the Great that the ancient term of ‘Europe’ was revived. The Carolingians needed a label to describe that section of the world which they dominated, as distinct from the pagan lands, from Byzantium, or from Christendom as a whole. This ‘first Europe’, therefore, was an ephemeral Western concept which lasted no longer than Charles himself.
PAPESSA
A
CCORDING
to persistent medieval tradition, the throne of St Peter was once occupied by a woman. In the commonest version Pope Leo IV, who died in
AD
855, was succeeded by one ‘Johannes Anglicus.’ Leo’s successor had greatly impressed the Curia with learned lectures, having studied in Athens, but two years later caused grave scandal by dying in childbirth in a Roman street. This account can be traced to the work of Martinus Polonus of Troppau OP (
c
.1200–78), who presented the events as proven fact. His
Chronicon summorum pontificum imperatorumque
was a widely used work of reference. A different version made ‘Pope Joan’ the successor to Victor III, who had died in 1087. In this case, she revealed her sex by giving birth while mounting a horse. She was promptly tied to the horse’s tail and stoned to death. That account appeared in the
Universal Chronicle of Mainz
prepared by another inventive Dominican, Jean de Mailly, also in the mid-thirteenth century.
It is not remarkable that medieval chroniclers should have told strange tales; but it
is
remarkable that their fabrications should have passed without question for centuries. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio believed them. A statue of Pope Joan stands alongside those of other popes in the cathedral at Siena. When Jan Hus cited her at the Council of Constance as an instance of ecclesiastical abuse, he was not corrected. An enigmatic monument near the Church of San Clemente in Rome, at the spot where the Pope’s child was supposedly delivered, is said to have stood undisturbed until the 1560s. No scholar seems to have doubted the fable until the
Annales
of the Bavarian, ‘Aventinus’, published in 1554. Its historicity was only demolished definitively in treatises written by the French Protestant, David Blondel, in 1647 and 1657.
Textbooks of medieval history treat Pope Joan, if at all, as a minor curiosity. In fact, she signals a mode of gender image that differed markedly from that of a later age. There must have been something inherently credible in the fable for it to have persisted so long. Joan herself may not have been historical. But the fable certainly was.
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Charlemagne, however, was an energetic builder. He built palaces at Nijmegen, Engelheim, and Aachen. He bridged the Rhine at Mainz, and linked the tributaries of the Rhine and Danube with a canal, the
Kaisergrab
. He was the pioneer of romanesque architecture north of the Alps. By reputation, Charlemagne was also a great patron of learning. He himself, though a forceful orator, was illiterate. But he employed scholars of repute—Alcuin of York, Peter of Pisa, Agobard of Lyons. He collected manuscripts, revised the text of the Bible, published grammars, histories, and ballads. His lifestory, the
Vita Karoli
by Abbot Einhard, has
been called ‘the first secular biography’. Not everyone is impressed: one historian has blamed Charlemagne for ‘saddling us with a literary tradition of derivative book-learning which hangs today like a millstone round the neck of our educational system’.
3
[AGOBARD] [PFALZ]
Charlemagne did not hesitate to govern the Church as an integral part of his domains. At the Council of Frankfurt of 794 he rejected the decrees of the (VIIth) General Council of Nicaea. Bishoprics and abbeys were regarded as feudal benefices and subject to the law of treason. Whilst forbidding his bishops to engage in battle, he spread the Gospel by fire and sword. Whether he grasped the Sermon on the Mount is a moot point. His services to Christianity were eventually rewarded by canonization, though the process was obstructed for 351 years by reports that his sexual conquests were no less extensive than his territorial ones.
Charlemagne died on 28 January 814. On his tomb in Aachen, since lost, a portrait was placed, and an inscription:
Beneath this tomb lies the body of Charles, great and orthodox Emperor, who nobly increased the kingdom of the Franks, and reigned prosperously for forty-seven years. He died in his seventies in the year of our Lord 814, in the seventh indiction, on the fifth of the Kalends of February.
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AGOBARD
B
Y
all the omens, 810 was going to be Charlemagne’s worst year. There were two eclipses of the sun and two of the moon, all observable in Frankland. And sure enough, the Emperor’s pet elephant, a gift from the Caliph, died; there was a widespread outbreak of cattle-plague; and the Duke of Benevento rebelled.
All this, and more, was faithfully recorded by Agobard, Bishop of Lyons (
c
.779–840). What is more, Agobard found that the common people were drawing superstitious conclusions. They believed that their cattle were dying from a poisonous dust spread by the Duke of Benevento’s spies. They also believed that Frankland was being invaded by ‘cloud-borne ships’ navigated by ‘aerial sailors’. The invaders were said to be beating down the harvest of the Franks with hailstones launched from the sky, before carrying it off to the far-away land of ‘Magonia’. Agobard was not easily swayed by such stories which, after investigation, he duly refuted. Yet he did appear to believe that the Catholic Church was being invaded by Jews. When his collected works were discovered in 1605, it turned out that he had devoted no fewer than five treatises to the Jewish peril.
1
Agobard’s most remarkable departure, however, was to demand the establishment of a universal Christian law for a universal Christian commonwealth. ‘If God has suffered so that all be reconciled in his Body,’ he wrote, ‘is not the incredible diversity of laws … in opposition to this divine work of unity?’
2
Agobard was the first European centralist.
PFALZ
A
ACHEN
takes its name from the Roman spa of Aquisgranium, ‘Waters of Apollo-Granus’. Its warm, healing waters explain Charlemagne’s choice for the site of his favourite residence, the
Kaiserpfalz
. The French name, Aix-la-Chapelle, marks the famous chapel, now part of Aachen Cathedral, which Charlemagne added to his palace.
Charlemagne’s chapel was completed in 805. It is a three-tiered octagon, built in the Byzantine style of San Vitale in Ravenna, which Charlemagne had seen and admired. Its proportions are said to follow the mystical numbers of the seventh vision of St John’s Revelation. In its day it was the largest stone building north of the Alps. Round the interior of the octagon, above the first tier of Roman arches, there runs a dedication reputedly composed by Alcuin:
CUM LAPIDES VIVI PACIS CONPAGE LIGANTUR
Since the living stones have been joined in peaceful harmony,
INOUE PARES NUMEROS OMNIA CONVENIUNT
And all numbers and measurements are in agreement
CLARET OPUS DOMINI, TOTAM OUI CONSTRUIT AULAM
The work of the Lord who built this hall will shine brightly.
EFFECTUSOUE PUS DAT STUDIIS HOMINUM
The completed edifice crowns the pious efforts of the people
QUORUM PERPETUI DECORIS STRUCTURA MANEBIT
Whose work will remain forever as a monument of beauty
SI PERFECTA AUCTOR PROTEGAT ATQUE REGAT.
If the Author of All things protects and rules over it.
SIC DEUS HOC TUTUM STABILI FUNDAMINE TEMPLUM
May God therefore watch over this temple
OUOD KAROLUS PRINCEPS CONDIDIT, ESSE VELIT.
Which Charles the Prince has founded on a solid base.
The decoration of the chapel is heavy with the imperial symbolism which Charlemagne and his successors had revived in a new and naïve Christian setting. A mosaic inside the dome represents the Adoration of the Lamb. The
ambo
or pulpit is encrusted with fragments of Roman pottery, glass, and an eagle cameo. Egyptian columns in green and rose porphyry support the second tier of arches. The
pala d’oro
or altar panel portrays the Passion in classic Roman relief and in solid gold. The
Lotharkreuz
or Cross of Lothar is a magnificent Christian ornament of beaten gold encrusted with antique gems. It is surmounted by a central portrait cameo of the Emperor Augustus. The imperial throne, cut from simple slabs of white marble, looks down from the first-floor gallery as it did during all the 32 coronations of 700 years. The message is clear: the Empire which Charlemagne launched thought of itself both as Holy
and
as Roman.
In the twelfth century, on the orders of Frederick Barbarossa, the chapel was turned into Charlemagne’s shrine. In 1165 the body of the newly
canonized saint was transferred to a casket of solid gold. It was surrounded by a collection of suitable relics—the loincloth of Christ, the Virgin’s girdle, a splinter of Charlemagne’s skull—all placed in precious reliquaries. Barbarossa himself donated a huge, wheel-shaped, iron chandelier, the ‘Crown of Lights’, which is suspended in the centre of the octagon and which symbolizes the walls of the New Jerusalem. It bears another long inscription:
Jerusalem, celestial Zion; John, herald of salvation saw Thee … Frederick, Catholic Emperor of the Roman Empire pledged this crown of lights as a princely gift … Now, O Holy Virgin, he dedicates it to Thee. O
Stella Maris
, O Star of the Sea, take the humble Frederick into Thy care … and protect the Emperor’s wife, Beatrix.
Today the imperial chapel at Aachen is ranked among the foremost wonders of romanesque art. But it is more than that. It provides a history lesson more vivid than any book can offer. As visitors enter, they pass through the Wolf’s Door—so called after the legend of the wolf who cheated the Devil for possession of the chapel. It is a dull mind that is not gripped by the powerful fusion of the barbarian and the classical, of the Christian and the pagan, which provided the spiritual drive of the age. Here is Western Europe’s greatest memorial to a time when romanesque was a novelty, and when the centre of civilization still lay in the East.
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